A Secret History of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

  “Why do you keep on?” Nanette asked.

  “It is our heritage,” Anne-Marie said. “Our birthright.”

  Isabelle sighed. “We thought it might be different for you.”

  “You were our last hope,” Anne-Marie said.

  “Yes,” Louisette said. “But now our line will die out. We have only sons, of course. If you have no gift, either …” Her deep voice cracked, and this evidence of emotion shocked Nanette more than anything.

  “You hoped the crystal would respond to me.”

  No one spoke, but she understood. They had tried to do everything right, waiting for the right time, saying the right words, following the traditions. They were disappointed in her, and as she realized it, the thrill of her first rite in the temple evaporated.

  The years passed, and the sisters persisted. They celebrated all the Sabbats. They chanted to, and praised, and occasionally pleaded with the Mother Goddess. Anne-Marie blessed the little soaps she made in the vat in the laundry shed. Fleurette perused the grimoire afresh each season for recipes for the simples she stored in colored jars in the pantry. But the crystal, despite their last hopes for Nanette, remained dark and lifeless.

  Florence said once, after one of the minor Sabbats, “It’s our punishment.”

  Her twin gasped, but Anne-Marie shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

  Florence clicked her tongue. “We left her there. Just—put her in the ground, with no proper ceremony to speed her on her way.”

  Louisette snapped, “It’s what she would have wanted! There was nothing we could do.”

  Isabelle said, “Our ceremonies aren’t much good, in any case.” No one argued with her.

  Now, despite the men’s objections, and with the witch hunter threatening them, the sisters gathered around their altar one more time. They uncovered Ursule’s scrying stone, and began their preparations as always, but there was a heaviness in the air, and desperation in their demeanor. Fleurette had tears in her eyes. Her twin stayed close by her, as if afraid she might break down. Isabelle set the fat white candle next to the stone, and Anne-Marie laid their offering of dried thyme and rosemary beside it. Louisette finished the sprinkling and stood gazing into the dark stone, her expression as hard as the granite walls around them. The others watched her, waiting for her to begin the rite.

  The long silence of the night was broken only by the whistle of the wind around the tor. Nanette breathed in the scents of thyme and rosemary and melting wax. She closed her eyes, comforted by the familiarity of it all, the protection of the cave, the presence of her sisters, even the solidity of the dormant crystal at the center of their circle. There was magic just in this, she thought, in this company, in this ritual, in their history.

  Louisette still didn’t speak. Nanette opened her eyes to see her staring at the stone, her narrow lips pressed tight. Anne-Marie whispered, “Is something wrong?”

  Louisette gave a shake of her head, not in the negative way, but in the way a person does when she can’t find words.

  Isabelle said, “Do you want one of us to begin?”

  Louisette expelled a breath and pushed back her scarf. “We have to do something different,” she said in a harsh tone. “Something has to change, or we are lost.”

  “Goddess help us,” Fleurette said, her little-used voice only a thread of sound.

  At that very instant a sensation began in Nanette’s belly. It reminded her of the way she had felt on the day of her first blood, achy and hot.

  Her belly began to throb. The feeling swelled and rose, filling her chest, warming her cheeks, rushing into her brain. Her breathing quickened, and her hands, without her volition, extended toward the crystal. One of the sisters made a sound, but someone else shushed her.

  Nanette stepped forward and laid her palms on the smooth quartz. She spread her fingers and looked between them into the depths.

  The circle around her tightened, the sisters moving closer, leaning forward, pressing shoulder to shoulder.

  Nanette didn’t know where the words came from. She had listened to Louisette, and sometimes Anne-Marie, reciting prayers for nearly four years. She had always believed they came from the grimoire, that they were written down, but now …

  Now words sprang into her mind, and she heard herself speak them in a steady voice.

  Mother of All, your daughters pray

  That you will lead the man astray.

  Confuse his path and cloud his mind,

  Make him as one fully blind.

  She reached into her pocket and drew out the string of beads the priest had tossed at her. Her friend Meegan had one like it, a rosary, wooden beads and a clumsy cross strung together with cotton thread. Nanette was vague about its purpose, but she thought it must be some sort of ritual object, like the candles and herbs and scarves she and her sisters used. She clumped the beads in her palm and dropped them onto the flame of the candle.

  The flame billowed up, twice the height of the candle, then three times. The beads blackened and burned, drowning in wax. The cross was consumed by the unnatural flame. Nanette’s hands still hovered above the crystal, and as the beads burned, a glimmer of light shone in its depths, a shimmering spark that laughed up at her as if it had been awaiting this moment.

  She watched the spark dance within the stone as the surface of the candle turned dark with ash, and the wick collapsed. Rapt, Nanette gazed into the crystal—the great Ursule’s scrying stone—and felt its power surge through her body. The light faded slowly, reluctantly, but the tingle in her fingertips and her toes remained, as did the slight ache in her belly, the ache of energy and strength and purpose.

  The ache of magic.

  No one moved or spoke until Nanette drew a noisy breath, breaking the spell that mesmerized them. She stepped back from the stone and looked up at her sisters.

  Louisette’s head was thrown high, her eyes blazing with triumph. Anne-Marie’s features were soft with wonder, and Isabelle pressed her two hands to her mouth. Fleurette’s tears had fallen and were shining on her cheeks as they dried.

  Florence blurted, “What was that?”

  Nanette said, “A spell of diversion, as Louisette wanted. To turn the priest’s attention away from us.”

  “That spell is not in the grimoire!”

  Fleurette whispered, “Neither were many of Grand-mère’s.”

  “But—but how did you know what to say? What to do?”

  “She was inspired,” Louisette pronounced, her baritone ringing against the granite walls. “As Grand-mère was.” She regarded them all with blazing eyes. “The Orchiére line continues after all!”

  The sisters made their stealthy way down the tor and into the house. They had to forgo their usual honeyed milk for fear of waking the men. Each of them crept to her bed in silence.

  Nanette, though she went to her bedroom, couldn’t fall asleep. The goats would begin to bleat all too soon, but she lay wakeful in her bed, body and soul thrumming with excitement over what had happened. She was a witch. She was truly a witch, like her grand-mère Ursule, like Ursule’s grand-mère, like all the Orchiére grand-mères who had gone before. The crystal, having lain dormant for so long, had come to life for her. She felt as if she could do anything, make anything happen, work any spell in the grimoire.

  Louisette had whispered to her, just as they came into the house. “Be warned, Nanette. The spell may not work, even though the stone responded to you. Magic has its own rules.”

  But Nanette was bursting with confidence. She was seventeen, a woman grown, a proven witch. She was sure, in her bones, that the Goddess had heard her.

  She lay with her cheek pillowed on her arm and watched the stars fade over the sea until her nannies began to bleat.

  Yawning and dry eyed, she went down through the garden to the byre, a bucket in each hand. Tired though she was, she smiled as the she-goats crowded around her, and she breathed in their sweet, strong scent with new appreciation. She milked without hurrying
, savoring the sound of the pail filling and the warmth of the nannies in the cool morning. She relished the sense of being more fully alive than she had ever been.

  She had just finished, and released the she-goats out into the pasture, when she heard a faint mewling. She paused to listen, but it didn’t come again. No doubt it was one of the byre cats scratching through the hay in the loft, searching for mice. She covered her buckets and set them on a workbench while she scraped the byre floor clean. As she hung her shovel on its peg, she heard the sound again. It was definitely the sound of a cat, but high and fragile.

  A kitten! One of the cats must have gone into the loft to have a litter.

  The cats were usually Isabelle’s charge. She was fond of cats, but Claude forbade animals in the house. She hadn’t mentioned a litter. Nanette wondered if she knew about it.

  She left her buckets where they were and climbed into the hayloft. The mewing grew louder as she ascended, and she was met at the top of the ladder by the tiniest, most pitiful kitten she had ever seen.

  Cats had never been Nanette’s favorite beast. She loved the ponies, and the goats, and the birds that wheeled above Mount’s Bay. Cats were useful, to keep the mice out of the goats’ feed, but otherwise they held little appeal for her.

  But this one, scrawny and gray, with one lopsided ear and eyes running with pus, called to her newly invigorated spirit. She climbed the last rung of the ladder and crouched down for a closer look at the little creature. “Where is your maman?”

  It pressed itself against her ankles and mewed again. She wasn’t sure she should pick it up. It could be lousy, or full of fleas. It crawled over one of her feet, and then, with one more sad cry, it fell to its side as if it hadn’t strength enough to stand. A male, she saw, a tiny tomcat with nothing to recommend it. Still, she couldn’t leave it there.

  She took off her apron and wrapped the kitten in it. She scanned the loft and checked behind the mounds of hay the men had piled there at the end of summer, but she found no other cats. If there was a litter somewhere, it wasn’t in the loft.

  With the kitten to manage, she needed two trips to get the milk to the cold cellar and handed off to Anne-Marie. When that was done she went in search of Isabelle, and found her pinning laundry to the clothesline.

  Isabelle smiled when she saw her. “Did you sleep?”

  “No. I couldn’t. But Isabelle—look.” She held out her folded apron and opened it to reveal the kitten. It looked like a scrap of gray rag lying nearly lifeless on the figured cotton.

  “Oh!” Isabelle whispered. “The poor little tyke! Where was he?”

  “He was in the loft. I couldn’t find the cat. I don’t even know if he’ll live.”

  Isabelle gently lifted the kitten and turned him this way and that. “He doesn’t look like much. He’s been abandoned, I think.”

  “Claude would say we should drown him.”

  “We won’t tell Claude. Let’s feed the little thing, and clean him.”

  “His eyes look bad.”

  “Yes, I see. He might be blind, but still …” Isabelle cuddled the kitten to her chest, with no evident thought for fleas or lice. “Can you get some milk? Or cream, if there’s extra.”

  When the kitten was washed and rubbed dry, and had lapped up an astonishing amount of cream skimmed from the butter churn, Isabelle held him up on her two hands. “He’s not blind,” she said. “See how his eyes are following you?”

  “Following me?” Nanette peered at him and saw that it was true. The kitten’s eyes were an odd sort of yellow, and they were fastened on her face. “Homely little thing, isn’t he?”

  “Beauty isn’t everything.”

  “What do we do with him now? He’s too small to stay in the byre alone.”

  Isabelle held him out, and when Nanette accepted him, though with some reluctance, the kitten curled up against her chest and promptly fell asleep.

  “You,” Isabelle said with a smile, “now have a cat.”

  “But I can’t! What about Claude?”

  “Keep him in your bedroom. Claude never goes there.”

  “What if he mews?”

  “Claude’s half-deaf. Louisette has to say everything three times before he hears.”

  Nanette suspected that wasn’t about Claude’s hearing, but she let it pass. He and the other men were scything hay in the farthest pasture, so she carried the kitten into the house. She still wasn’t at all certain about actually keeping it, but she couldn’t think what else to do.

  She found an old basket that had lost its handle and lined it with a bit of cotton. She set the basket beside her bed and nestled the kitten into it. He opened his yellow eyes once to blink at her, then closed them again. She stood, arms folded, looking down at him. “You are the most unprepossessing creature I’ve ever seen, but it seems you’re mine, at least for now.”

  All at once the sleeplessness of the previous night caught up with her. She yawned so hard her jaw cracked, and she sank onto the edge of her bed, rubbing her burning eyes. She lay down on her unmade bed, clothes and all, and settled onto her pillow. In moments she was as deeply asleep as if it were midnight instead of midmorning.

  When she woke, the gray kitten was curled beside her, its head tucked under her chin.

  On the next market day Nanette, in defiance of the witch hunter’s threats, wore her brightest headscarf and parked the jingle in the center of the green, where everyone would see her. It was a clear, cold October day, one of the last markets of the season. She arranged her wares as appealingly as she could and began a brisk trade, all the while keeping an eye out for the redheaded priest.

  The Orchiéres were regarded as foreigners by the citizens of Marazion, but Nanette was accepted, for the most part, by the other vendors at the weekly market. Her wares were known to be of good quality. She dressed plainly, as they did, and spoke unaccented English and even a good bit of Cornish.

  Her friend Meegan, another farmwife, lived on a tiny holding on the eastern edge of the moor. She left her own wagon, where she sold eggs and freshly plucked chickens, and came to Nanette at midday in search of a cheese for her lunch. Nanette gave her a cake of Anne-Marie’s soap just to be friendly, and invited her to sit on the open gate of the jingle to eat.

  They chatted a bit, and Nanette asked after Meegan’s brood. “Five of them now!” Meegan said, “And me not yet twenty-three. Take my advice. Don’t go rushing into a wedding!”

  “Oh no,” Nanette said, shaking her head. “That’s not likely to happen. I never meet anyone. I think I’m meant to be lonely.”

  “A pretty thing like you? Someone will come along and sweep you right off your feet. You’ll see!”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Hmmm,” Meegan said, breaking off another piece of cheese. “I wouldn’t quite say my Bert swept me off my feet. Not much of a sweeper!” Her laugh was easy, and she elbowed Nanette as she said, “He tumbled me, though, that’s for certain sure.”

  “So then you were married.”

  “Not much choice, really. There was a bun in the oven—I should have stopped right then!” She laughed again, a burbling sound that made the pony’s ears twitch. Nanette smiled to hear it. No one at Orchard Farm laughed very much.

  “Best to marry first, my girl,” Meegan said comfortably. “My father was none too happy with me. And Father Maddock told us if we didn’t marry up quick, he’d put us out of the church.”

  “Could he do that?”

  “Oh aye. He could indeed. I expect that Catholic priest—the mean-looking one, with the red hair—he could put you out of your church, too. Then it’s straight to hell with you, and you wouldn’t like that!”

  Nanette understood the assumption that if she wasn’t Church of England, she must be Catholic. She filled her mouth with bread and cheese so she wouldn’t have to lie to Meegan, or admit she wasn’t a member of any church. Wasn’t anything, indeed, that Meegan would recognize.

  “Of course, that pries
t is gone now,” Meegan said, brushing crumbs from her generous bosom. “Good riddance if you ask me, hoping you won’t take offense. He gave me the shivers, with those little eyes peering around all the time.”

  Nanette’s mouth fell open, and she had to press her palm over her mouth to keep from spitting bread crumbs. Her heart began to thud so hard she thought Meegan must hear it.

  When she had managed to swallow, she said in a choked voice, “He’s gone?”

  “You didn’t know that?” Nanette shook her head. Meegan’s eyes widened. “Fancy that. Well, Father Maddock said his archbishop called him back. Something about the work not going well here.”

  “The work?”

  “He was supposed to collect money to build a Catholic church in Marazion, but no one wants that popery here, begging your pardon again. No one gave him any money, not even His Lordship across the water there.” She gestured with her chin in the general direction of St. Michael’s Mount.

  Nanette hardly dared speak. She wanted to dance, or turn somersaults. Gone! The witch hunter gone! It was everything she had asked for.

  A customer approached the jingle then, and Nanette jumped up to help her. She sold her a packet of fines herbes, one of Anne-Marie’s specialties, which always brought a good price. When her customer walked away, Meegan also was on her feet.

  “Thank you for the soap,” she said. “I’d best get back. I still have eggs to sell.” She paused, pointing into the half-empty bed of the jingle. “What’s that, then?”

  Nanette followed her gaze. “It’s a kitten,” she said.

  “What’s it doing there?”

  “It was a stray, and it’s adopted me, I guess. It goes everywhere I do.”

  “You like cats?”

  Nanette shrugged. “They’re all right. It wasn’t my decision, I’m afraid.”