The Magdalena Curse

by F. G. Cottam

  What nonsense is this? I said.

  It’s true, Sir, he said.

  The Campbell woman blinded him?

  He blinded himself, the boy asserted. But the witch compelled him to inflict this awful mutilation on his person.

  I strode past the boy and on into the house. Daniel Cawdor, my correspondent, lay on an upstairs couch with his eye sockets bloodily bandaged and an expression of such abject misery about his remaining features as I will never forget. Practically, I had lost my witness to the Campbell woman’s occult mischief. But of the two of us, there was no question of who had lost more. The will to live is sometimes spoken of. That afternoon I looked upon the visage of a man in whom that will was entirely and completely expunged.

  Low in spirits with fatigue and the grotesque proof of this setback, I had the best forager in my party seek out a place for us to quarter. He returned to the lonely road where we waited within half an hour and we repaired to a tavern called the Black Boar which possessed both passable rooms and palatable food. I confess we were almost cheery after a meal of meat stew and fresh baked bread and the landlord’s good brew of small beer. Then something curious and unexpected occurred. The brave Cawdor boy, the very lad who had defied my fearsome sergeant, appeared and sought an audience with me I felt I could do no other than grant him.

  The story he told was most strange. But first he brought forth a warning I would have considered outlandish insolent were it not for the plain sincerity worn on the boy’s young and sorrowful face.

  You have no chance against her, Sir, he said. You travel too lightly. You have but the six horsemen.

  All proven veterans of the war, I said. I felt sorry for the lad. But I was not disposed at all well to disrespect of my valiant outriders delivered in a Scots brogue by an insolent pup.

  You do not travel in sufficient strength, the lad insisted.

  God Almighty himself requires only four horsemen for His Apocalypse, I said. I have six. The joke was poor and even blasphemous and I was sorry for it even as the last phrase left my lips. I was tired and the small beer at the Boar surpassing potent compared to that brewed in my own locality.

  She has a familiar, the lad said. I followed her. I am skilled at stalking and I followed the witch out of concern only for my father’s predicament in damning her publicly. She met with this creature in the forest where its deepest thickets lie.

  Was it a cat? I inquired of the lad. Am I to be wary of some exotic reptile or venomous serpent? Does the Campbell woman keep a toad, the warts of which to kiss before casting spells?

  My levity was an abuse of the boy of which I have been ever since ashamed and for which I have paid much penance.

  A wolf, he said. A wolf clothed as a man and standing upright in the abject mockery of a man, he said. She converses with it. It offers her counsel. Kill that creature and I believe you have her, Sir. Do not and I believe your enterprise entirely damned.

  What is your name?

  Matthew Cawdor, he said.

  And do you know, Matthew Cawdor, where we will find this abomination?

  I do, Sir, he said.

  Guide my men to it, I said. Do this without delay. Tomorrow I confront the accused. Have my men bring back the head of the abomination you describe. Accomplish this with all necessary urgency. Go now.

  They saddled up their tired horses and off my men went. I have pondered often since on the bloodlust that made me dispatch the party with such haste. Perhaps it was the excitement of the drink. Since, as a consequence, I have forsworn all drink entirely other than for plain water. But I do not in true conscience know what made me bid them go so unprepared for what they were to face. Perhaps it was simply that I believed the boy. I thought to deprive the witch of the power that had blinded his father.

  I never saw Matthew Cawdor again. He perished in the encounter with the fiend he led them to. Only two of my men returned, one mortally wounded, the other bearing their gruesome proof in his bloodstained saddlebag. The thing was fast decomposing by the time it was revealed to me, brought from the bag and placed on a plain deal table at the Boar in lantern light. Carrick, the only one of my men left whole, put it there with grim distaste etched on his honest features. A veteran of Edge Hill and Marston Moor and Naseby, I knew he had killed a score or more of men in battle in the recent war. But he looked at me with trepidation as he asked me did I intend soon to confront the woman served by the abomination whose remains lay rotting on the tabletop.

  I confess I looked with appalled fascination at this grim relic. The head was neither wolf nor man but both in some horrid collusion of breed. It looked savage, with its great jaw of coarse hair and bristling fangs. But with its sly grin and the cunning slant of its eyes it also looked intelligent. The remains of a linen shirt were bloodily present in a collar still about its neck. And a jewelled chain hung from a ring piercing the lobe of one of its human ears.

  Did it speak? I asked Carrick.

  Aye, he said. It damned us.

  How did it sound?

  Carrick thought about this. He drank from the mug of ale I had ordered him brought. There was a tremor, I noticed, in his hand as he raised the mug. Refined, he said, like a gentleman, but fierce unpleasant in tone. Hollow voiced, he said. Not a sound I would wish to hear in my life again.

  How did it kill the men who perished?

  It tore out their throats, Carrick said. It fought with unearthly quickness.

  How tall did it stand?

  It stood an inch or so above six foot, Carrick said.

  Fleas were leaving the horrible trophy on the table with hops and jumps, red and larger than any species I’d seen before and brazen in the lantern light. Burn it, I said to Carrick. Burn it without delay. Break the skull and bury the shards and the teeth in lime. Bury them deep, Carrick.

  Gladly, Sir, he said to me. And tomorrow it’s the witch we should burn.

  I countenanced the insolence of this remark without comment. Men should not speak to their officers so freely. But Carrick was a brave man who had endured a dreadful ordeal. And there might be more and worse to follow before we could return south to goodness and piety, away from the corruption and perversity amid which we had found ourselves cast.

  Elizabeth put the pages, half of them still unread, on the table next to where she sat. For the present, she did not want to read any more about her ancestor. She was too tired. She was too shocked by what she had learned already. Either Jerusalem Smith was deluded, the victim of some sort of hysteria, or he was a decent man out of his depth in dealing with something utterly diabolical. The problem was that sanity as well as decency hallmarked his every phrase. He might be ardent in his Protestant faith and Puritanism. But he was telling the truth. She rubbed her eyes. No wonder her mother had baulked at reading this stuff. It was much easier to believe the convenient myth of the brutal witch finder and his summary and indiscriminate punishments in the Highlands than to face the reality of corrupt magic coursing through your own bloodline. She had taken only a single sip from her glass of wine. She poured what remained into the kitchen sink, then showered and brushed her teeth and checked on her charge. Whatever dreams tormented Adam, he looked peaceful enough in sleep. Sleep was what she needed too. She went to bed.

  She was awoken at 4 a.m., having heard or sensed something not right. The room was dark. But she could see a figure standing at the end of her bed, the mass of this shape darker than the murk surrounding it, and solid.

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘Mark!’

  ‘Shh,’ he said. His voice was a low murmur. ‘I don’t want to wake Adam.’

  ‘Adam won’t wake. I’ve given him something.’

  Hunter seemed to limp forward. He sat heavily on the bed. He smelled of blood and sweat and antiseptic ointment. There was something wrong with him. His posture was wrong, as her eyes adjusted and gathered more of the detail of him.

  ‘So the dreams have begun again?’

  ‘What happened to you? Did you find h
er?’

  He laughed. There was no mirth in the sound. ‘It was more a case of her finding me.’

  She switched on the bedside light and sat up and looked at him. There was blood seeping through the shoulder and back of his rumpled suit coat. His right arm was pinned to his chest by a sling. There was a crutch lying on the carpet she had not noticed in the darkness. His face was very pale and one leg was thrust out before him as though he could not bear to bend it. Elizabeth pushed off the duvet and climbed out of bed. She slept naked, but this was not a time to be coy. She opened the drawer into which she had folded her underwear.

  ‘Why are you dressing?’

  ‘I’m taking you to my mother’s house.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘You’ll see. I’ve made some discoveries while you’ve been away, Mark. I’ve learned some quite useful things.’

  ‘What about Adam?’

  ‘We’ll take your Land Rover. I’ll drive. I’ll wrap Adam in his bedspread and carry him down and lay him on the back seat.’

  ‘Are you strong enough to carry him?’

  Elizabeth zipped up her jeans and reached for her bra. ‘I’ll have to be. You can’t do it. I won’t drop him, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Is this really necessary?’

  Elizabeth brushed the hair off her face with her fingers. ‘It’s necessary for you to be well,’ she said. ‘You’re no good to any of us in the state you’ve got yourself into.’

  On icy roads, even with the four-wheel drive, it was a journey of thirty-five minutes to Margaret Bancroft’s house. On the route, Hunter gave Elizabeth a brief account of what had taken place during his time away. She listened without comment. Then when he had finished, she said, ‘How well did you get to know Lillian’s family?’

  ‘Depends,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Lillian was adopted. She never knew her real family. I got the impression that she had made strenuous efforts to find out who they were before we met, but that those efforts had been unsuccessful. She was sensitive on the subject. Why do you ask?’

  ‘There is a very strong physical resemblance between your late wife and myself. It’s almost uncanny. Why did you not comment on it?’

  ‘Should I have? The resemblance is coincidental. Drawing your attention to it would have been outré and macabre.’

  ‘You must have realised Adam would pick up on it.’

  ‘We’re not exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to medical help in this part of the world, Dr Bancroft.’

  ‘Come off it, Mark. You’ve just seen me naked.’

  ‘Look, Elizabeth. You have an outstanding reputation. I had bigger concerns for Adam than his noticing you share some superficial similarities with his mum.’

  Hunter tried to turn round to look at his son asleep on the rear seat. But the congealed blood was tight across his skinned shoulder and, constrained by the wound, he could not do so.

  ‘What were Lillian’s books about, Mark? Could you tell me something about their subject matter?’

  ‘They were children’s stories. I’ll show you some of them. When we get back from this pointless trip to your mother’s house, you can see for yourself.’

  Things were different between them, Elizabeth realised. They were no longer speaking to one another with the prim formality that had always marked their verbal exchanges in the past. She wondered if he had noticed and thought, probably not. He was in too much pain for such subtle considerations. She peered out through the windscreen at the snowy road, looking for landmarks in the featureless darkness. She saw that they were almost there.

  Like many elderly people Margaret Bancroft was a light sleeper. She answered her door almost immediately. She opened it on a wounded man accompanying her daughter, who was carrying a sleeping boy in a blanket. ‘What a beautiful child,’ she said. She looked up at Mark Hunter. ‘You must be very proud of him.’

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘We need your help, Mum,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘I can see you do.’

  ‘I know you thought you had finished with the bone magic.’

  Margaret Bancroft smiled at her daughter. ‘Yes. But I never quite believed it had finished with me. Come in. Put the boy on the sofa. Find somewhere comfortable to sit, Colonel Hunter. See if you can’t revive the fire, Elizabeth. The ashes haven’t quite gone out. I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘Tea isn’t the priority, Mum.’

  ‘It is for me. It’s nearly forty years since I last did what I am about to attempt to do. Before I do it, I need the fortification tea provides.’

  A short while later Hunter limped stiffly after Margaret Bancroft into her parlour. She came back alone after only a few minutes. Her fingers absently stroked the curls on the head of the sleeping child as she walked past the sofa. She sat opposite where Elizabeth sat, waiting by the window with the snow falling through the pane on the white world outside.

  ‘Was it hard?’

  ‘No. I’m old now, but it was never hard. The Colonel sleeps. He’ll sleep for a little while longer. When he revives, he will do so quite restored.’

  ‘I’ve been reading about our illustrious ancestor.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Judge Smith seems to have had a pretty bad press.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ruth Campbell was not exactly the blameless martyr to religious ignorance of our cherished little family myth.’

  ‘I never thought she was, Elizabeth. But I’ve never had the courage to find out the truth for myself. And I still don’t have it. Please don’t tell me any more.’

  ‘She looked like me, Mum. Why don’t you? I’ve sometimes wondered where my looks came from. It wasn’t Dad.’

  Margaret Bancroft bowed her head. ‘I used to look like you, Lizzie. Nature blessed me with green eyes and a pretty mouth just like yours. I used the magic to change my appearance.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The honest answer is out of shame that I possessed it. I did not want to look like Ruth Campbell’s descendant. I had a suspicion she had been bad. I did it subtly and over time. Your father was dying by then. I don’t know that anyone else really noticed. The change was gradual and you were an infant and people hereabouts had no adult resemblance to compare to mine.’

  ‘I want to thank you, Mum. I know you broke a solemn oath to do what you did just now. I know you are ashamed of the magic. But Mark Hunter is a good man and you have done a good thing and I am very grateful – and he will be too.’

  Her mother looked up at her and smiled. ‘You could have done it yourself, Lizzie. Sometimes I believe it skips a generation. Sometimes it might skip several. But it is very powerful in you, much more so than in me. I have known that from when you were a young child.’

  Her mother’s eyes were hazel under straight brows. And her upper lip was long. It really was quite a subtle change. But it was everything too. ‘You wanted me to read the judge’s account as a warning,’ Elizabeth said, understanding. ‘You want me to know what it is I should never attempt to do.’

  It was almost seven o’clock by the time they returned to the Hunter house. Adam still slept his narcotic sleep. This time his father carried him from the car to his bed. Elizabeth made breakfast for Mark and herself at the kitchen table and told him about the events that had taken place in his absence. He covered his face in his hands when she told him about the teacher’s call and the Brooke recital. She thought he might start to weep. He could endure much, as his life had proven. But if it went on, Adam’s suffering would undo him. She left no significant detail out, and he managed to retain his composure until she had finished.

  ‘Is there anything else, Elizabeth?’

  ‘There is just one thing. Late last night the Comte de Flurey telephoned. He left no message other than to tell you he had called.’

  ‘The Comte is as dead as the creature he served. As you said just now, Mrs Mallory possesses a gift for mimicry. It was her callin
g and she did leave a message, which is that she knows I am alive and where to find me.’

  As gently as she could, Elizabeth asked to see the books written by Lillian that he had promised to show her on their return. He went away and returned to the kitchen with a dozen slim volumes. He sorted five of these into a separate pile, explaining that they were a series. She picked up the first book in the series and opened it, saw an illustration and almost screamed. A foppish two-legged figure in a brocade waistcoat and a lupine leer stared out at her from the page.

  ‘Walter the Wolf,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s scary to look at, but sadly misunderstood. Children like a frisson of terror in their fiction. They must do. This was her most successful series by far. It still sells strongly all over Europe. They banned these books in the States, though. They were accused there of peddling moral turpitude.’

  Elizabeth flicked through the five volumes.

  ‘I can kind of see their point,’ Hunter said. ‘Wolves are not camp, kindly anthropomorphic characters with the clothes sense of a dandy. They are the coldest predatory killers of anything warm-blooded on the planet. I never much cared for these books, to be honest. I never saw their worth.’

  ‘This isn’t a coincidence, Mark. Neither is the way that Lillian looked. But Mrs Mallory doesn’t have green eyes, according to you. And you’ve described Miss Hall as fat and grotesque. I can’t make sense of it, there’s no pattern, no continuity. Or there is a pattern, but there are contradictions.’

  Hunter got to his feet and went and put fresh coffee in the machine on the counter by the window. ‘There isn’t really any contradiction,’ he said. ‘Mrs Mallory showed me her true face and it was Lillian’s, just as yours is Ruth Campbell’s. She had changed her appearance, as your mother did hers. But she has had more pragmatic reasons for doing so. A woman cannot go on living and not ageing without attracting comment. She has enjoyed any number of guises. And she has enjoyed the lives that went with them.’

  ‘What about Miss Hall?’

  ‘Your mother believes bone magic fundamentally malevolent. It can be used for good, but that is not its purpose. She realised that, flooded with exultation after killing Max Hector. Miss Hall gave me two clues about herself. The first was in calling me arrogant in the canvas cathedral for assuming we don’t share the world with a species the equal of our own. The second was her repeated insistence that she was more good than bad. Miss Hall was not a bone magician, Elizabeth. She was never the same as you or your mum or Lillian or Ruth or Mrs Mallory. She was something else entirely.’