A Secret History of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

  She moved her hands to her hips, knowing the posture made her belly more prominent, and not caring. “What do you think is right, sir? What is it you want of me?”

  He pointed at her swollen stomach. “That child,” he said flatly.

  “My child? Why?”

  “An innocent child should be raised in a Christian home, with a mother and a father, not in this immoral nest of witches!” He hissed the last word, and the sulfurous odor increased.

  She thought he must stand at the doorway to hell itself, the hell he put so much faith in. She gritted her teeth and turned her back on him to go into the farmhouse.

  “We will come for the babe the moment it’s born,” he shouted at her.

  She paused and looked back over her shoulder. He stood pressed against the garden gate, his rusty cassock blowing in the icy wind, his flat hat gripped in one bony hand. He was the ugliest human being she had ever beheld, inside and out. Her belly began to ache, but with power now. As she whirled to face him, she felt as if the Mother Goddess herself spoke through her. “Go to hell, Monsieur Bernard! You will never set foot on Orchard Farm again!”

  He reached across the gate with his free hand, undid the latch, and stepped through. His bad eye rolled wildly as he strode toward her, his hand outstretched. He was muttering something, Scripture, prayer, perhaps just curses. Nanette couldn’t help taking a step backward. She could almost feel the grip of his bony fingers around her throat.

  The cat at her feet began to squall with a sound like a child screaming. The priest’s face turned the color of ashes, and he hissed, “Demon!” He seized the brim of his hat and spun it toward the cat, who yowled afresh when it hit him. The witch hunter snarled, “You will do as I say, whore,” as he reached for Nanette with both red-spotted hands.

  A harsh voice sounded from inside the porch. “Touch her, priest, and you die!”

  The witch hunter jerked to a stop, looking past Nanette to the porch. The door slammed, and Nanette felt Claude’s bulk at her shoulder. She cast him a sidelong glance. He had an ax in his hand, the same he used to split wood for the stove. He hadn’t stopped to put on his boots, but even in his stockings he was a daunting figure, tall, dark, muscled from years of farm work.

  The priest’s face contorted. “I’ll have that child!” he swore. “You’ll see!” He turned sharply away, his long black robe swirling about his boots, and banged through the gate, leaving his black hat lying in the dirt.

  Neither Nanette nor Claude budged as he hauled himself up onto the bench seat of his cart. Nanette winced as he yanked at the pony’s reins, jerking the poor creature to the left to turn the cart in the narrow lane. He looked back at them once, when the cart had bumped in a semicircle and was facing the road. Claude lifted the ax to shoulder height without speaking a word. The witch hunter shook a fist as he drove away.

  “He means it,” Claude growled, standing at Nanette’s shoulder.

  “I won’t give her up.”

  “We won’t be able to protect you.”

  “You just did.” She inclined her head to him. “I thank you. He meant to hurt me.”

  “He will bring others,” Claude said. He lowered the ax at last and ran his palm over the flat of the blade. “He will bring that other priest, the one from Marazion.”

  “Father Maddock.”

  “And other men. Your babe is just their excuse. What they want is to drive us out.”

  Nanette’s head pounded with the pressure of her bloodstream, and her belly still cramped with the deep ache of magic. She whispered, “Then I will get rid of him.”

  “How? What can you do?” Claude asked, but she was already on her way.

  She hurried out through the gate and set off up the tor as fast as her ungainly body could manage. The cat preceded her at a sinuous lope. Her sisters came after, drawn as if she had rung a bell to summon them. Isabelle left the milking half-finished. Florence and Fleurette walked away from the house with the breakfast dishes still unwashed. Louisette abandoned the cheese she was wrapping in the cold cellar. Anne-Marie emerged from the steamy washhouse, leaving a pile of smallclothes soaking in the wooden tub. She gathered a few things from the pantry and started up the path to the temple behind her sisters.

  Despite the cold, Nanette was perspiring by the time she reached the boulders that crowned the tor. Awkward as she was, her pace was slow, and her sisters had caught her up by the time she stepped into the dimness of the cave. There was no need for anyone to speak, to ask questions or give orders. The magic drove them, and its power was in full spate.

  There was also no time to lose.

  5

  The candle was not new, but it was white as milk and nearly intact, with a stout wick. It burned with a steady light as the sisters took their places.

  Nanette felt the need to hurry, but though the power sang through her, she moved slowly, her misshapen body more of a hindrance than a help. She had trouble drawing a deep breath, difficulty even staying on her feet as she faced the crystal. She held out her hands, her palms grazing the cool stone. The words were in her mind before she touched it, and the conjoined strength of the sisters infused every syllable.

  Mother Goddess, through your power

  Come to me in this black hour.

  Send the devil into the sea.

  Protect my babe, my family, and me.

  It was a good spell. A strong one, more specific than usual, uttered swiftly out of necessity. She spoke it three times three times, her words spilling over one another, and before she finished, the crystal began to burn. A light flared within the stone, red as fury. Nanette’s sisters gasped to see it. Nanette closed her eyes and the crimson light glowed through her eyelids, answering her, promising her.

  As she finished the rite, a new pain began deep in her body. This was not the ache of magic. This, she knew, was the beginning of her daughter’s life.

  She struggled to stand, to hold her place in the circle until the crystal’s fiery glow began to dim. Then, with a rending groan, she sank to her knees. The stone floor beneath her turned shiny with her broken waters, and her womb cramped, hard.

  Florence and Fleurette, the spinster twins, cried out in alarm. Anne-Marie admonished them not to frighten Nanette. “It’s just her time,” she said calmly.

  “No!” Nanette grunted. “Not until Yule—”

  “We can’t predict such things.”

  They let the first pain pass before they lifted her between them, Anne-Marie on one side, Louisette on the other. Isabelle said, “We have to get her down the tor.”

  “D’accord.” Louisette spoke calmly, too, as if women went into labor in a cave high on a hilltop every day. “Florence and Fleurette, you gather the things. Isabelle, will you go ahead? Make sure there’s nothing Nanette could trip on?”

  “Bien sûr.”

  Moments later Nanette found herself staggering out of the cave on shaking legs. The pain was gone as if it had never been. Only her sodden skirts and dripping thighs, cooling unpleasantly now, reminded her something was happening.

  “There will be more pains,” Anne-Marie said. “We’re going to get you down to your bed. It’s going to be hard, but you can do it. We’ll stop whenever the pains come.”

  Louisette said, “Tell us when you feel one beginning.”

  Clumsily they inched their way down the steep path, able to move forward only for short distances before Nanette was forced to cry out, “Maintenant, maintenant.” Each time, her sisters helped her down to her knees, holding her as she rode out the contraction. The pains that followed that first one lacked the element of surprise, but still, the intensity of them shocked her. Her body had taken control, and there was nothing she could do but submit to its will.

  The descent from the tor to Orchard Farm usually took thirty minutes or so. On this day it seemed it might take thirty hours. Florence and Fleurette soon caught up with their sisters, and Louisette sent them ahead to make preparations. Anne-Marie murmured comforting phrases int
o Nanette’s ear, and Isabelle walked ahead, keeping watch for loose stones or brambles that might cause Nanette to fall. Slowly, slowly they made their way down, following the twists and turns of the path.

  Halfway to the bottom they stopped again, at a point where the path broadened and straightened, opening up a view of the road to Marazion as it wound along the cliff. The sea beyond stretched to the horizon in a sheet of dull silver. As she groaned through a long, deep pain, Nanette yearned toward the water. She was no longer thinking of the witch hunter. The straining of her body, the heat of her labor, occupied her fully.

  But Isabelle had not forgotten. She had been peering down toward the gray winter sea, and now she exclaimed, “Look there! The priest!”

  As her pain began to ease, Nanette, panting, lifted her head. She followed Anne-Marie’s pointing finger, squinting through droplets of sweat. “I don’t see him,” she said hoarsely.

  “Not him. His cart.”

  As her breath returned and the contraction receded, Nanette felt strong enough to struggle to her feet, careful of her balance on the icy path. Leaning on Anne-Marie, she looked along the road as it curled along the rocky cliff. “Oh!” she breathed, at last. “I see it! The pony, standing there in the cold—but where’s the priest?”

  “I don’t see him,” Anne-Marie said.

  Isabelle asked, “Could he climb down the cliff from that point?”

  “I don’t think so,” Louisette said.

  Nanette drove the road often. “No,” she said hoarsely. “It’s nearly straight down to the rocks. That’s where people throw things over when they want them gone for good.”

  “Goddess will it, the witch hunter’s gone for good, too,” Louisette growled.

  “He’s not there,” Isabelle said with certainty. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  This time when the pain seized Nanette’s belly, it was the babe and the magic together, a great swell of pain and power and triumph, rising and cresting over her like an ocean wave, leaving her drenched and panting and weak with gratitude.

  The labor went on into the night. Fleurette had a simple waiting to help, and Florence, though she had never borne a child herself, seemed to know precisely what to do. They walked with Nanette through the dark hours, between the pains. They rubbed her back and massaged her belly and held her when she cried. Not until the very end did she call Michael’s name.

  Florence clicked her tongue at that, but Fleurette whispered, in her hesitant way, “It’s a job of work to do on your own, Nanette. No choice about it.” Nanette was too far gone in her labor to understand in the moment, but she was to remember it later. Being born, giving birth, facing death—work to be done alone.

  The infant girl came into the world as the sun rose the next day, an Orchiére from her little head to her perfect toes. She was born with damp black curls and eyes dark as night. She protested mightily at the indignity of the cold air, the harsh light, the rough cotton Fleurette swaddled her in. Not till Nanette put her to the breast did she quiet, but by that time she had woken the house.

  One by one they came to see her, Louisette grimly proud, Anne-Marie smiling, Isabelle rapt. Even the men came to view the babe, though none made any show of emotion. Only Claude spoke, gruffly. “Another Orchiére girl.”

  “Yes, Claude,” Louisette said. “The line continues.”

  “Don’t know that yet.”

  “I do know it,” Nanette said. “I know it very well. And her name is Ursule.”

  Louisette made Claude and Paul go along the cliff road to rescue the priest’s abandoned pony, left standing in its traces at the cliff’s edge all through the winter’s night. As the men told the sisters later, they recognized the cart, and drove it along to the stable where it belonged. With their broken English, they managed to make the stableman understand where they had found the rig, and men from the town followed them back to search for the priest.

  If the tide had been in, they might never have discovered what had happened to Father Bernard. Since the tide had only just turned and begun to cover the causeway between the mainland and St. Michael’s Mount, the corpse of the witch hunter lay fully exposed, broken and bloody, on the rocks at the foot of the cliff.

  “They think he stopped for a piss and slipped over the edge.” Paul spoke with grim relish. “Hauled him up with ropes. Bones broken right through the skin, and his skull smashed like an eggshell. Those little eyes staring, like they used to stare at us, but now—”

  “Hush, Paul,” Anne-Marie said. “Nanette is nursing her baby.”

  Nanette, seated beside the woodstove with her babe at her breast, said, “I want to hear it. I want to be certain the witch hunter is dead. I want to know we’re safe at last.”

  Fleurette spun around at that, and the cup in her hands slipped, falling to the flagstone floor with a great crack.

  Her twin was at her side in a moment. “Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice. “What is it?”

  Fleurette only shook her head, but she had gone pale as fog, and her empty hands trembled. Florence encircled her with an arm to lead her out of the kitchen to their bedroom.

  Louisette tutted as she brought a broom to clear up the shards of pottery. Anne-Marie said, “Paul, you’ve upset Fleurette.”

  Nanette shuddered and cuddled tiny Ursule closer. “No, Anne-Marie, it wasn’t Paul who upset Fleurette. It was me.” She looked down at the nursing infant, at her little rosebud mouth sweetly suckling, her eyelashes like the wings of a blackbird against her tender cheeks. “I was wrong, and Fleurette knows it. Evil is never vanquished.” She put her head back against the high back of her chair, careful not to disturb the infant. “We all have to face it. Even my poor child won’t escape.” She closed her eyes with a weary sigh. “So long as the Orchiére line persists, I fear, the struggle will never end.”

  The family cosseted Nanette for several days. Even Claude treated her gently. When little Ursule was five days old, he presented Nanette with a cradle he had constructed in secret, working behind the byre with his saw and hammer, polishing it so no slivers would scratch the infant, waxing its hinges so they swung smoothly to rock the child to sleep. Nanette thanked him, and praised him to Louisette, wringing a rare smile from her eldest sister.

  Isabelle took over the goats for a time, too, and that meant that when Father Maddock came from Marazion to visit Orchard Farm, Nanette was alone in the farmhouse with her babe.

  Above the howl of wind from the sea, she heard the clop of hooves on the road, and the softer sounds they made in the dirt lane. She had just laid Ursule in the cradle. She went to the kitchen window and lifted the curtain in time to see the priest tethering a brown gelding to a fencepost and brushing dust from his cassock. His garb was so similar to that of the dead priest that her heart missed a beat, thinking the witch hunter had returned from the dead. She half expected, when Father Maddock came through the gate, to see a ghoul with a smashed skull and protruding bloody bones.

  He walked to the front door of the farmhouse, a door that was never used, and pounded on it with the butt of his whip.

  Nanette hesitated, tempted to ignore the summons, but then decided that behaving normally, perhaps as Meegan would, was a better idea. She wiped her hands on her apron and tidied her hair with her fingers as she walked through the hallway to the door. It screeched on its rusty hinges, resisting her efforts to push it open. She succeeded, though it took three tries, and it scraped fiercely on the sill when it finally swung free. He raised his thin eyebrows at her.

  “Apologies, sir,” she said. “This door is never used.”

  “You never have guests?”

  As a greeting, it was hardly courteous. She lifted her chin, which put her head on a level with his. She said, in her best English, “You are the first in a very long time.”

  He was a fat man, with sparse brown hair and weak eyes. He held his flat-brimmed hat before his protruding belly, as if to hide it. “I am not here to pay a call,” he said.


  Her temper began to rise, and she folded her arms, striving to hold it in. “Well, then. You must have some other reason for coming all this way.”

  “I believe Father Bernard, before his untimely death, spoke to you about your bastard.”

  Nanette gritted her teeth, afraid she would say something disastrous.

  He sniffed. “I see that I’m right. I should tell you that I agreed with him. Though we serve different churches, our principles are the same.”

  “If you think,” Nanette said tightly, “that I would hand over my child to him or to you or to anyone, you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

  “I suppose the father refuses to marry you.”

  She unfolded her arms and put her hand on the latch of the door, ready to pull it to. “I prefer not to marry.” She thought she sounded a great deal like Louisette at that moment.

  His face reddened. “You should at least christen the poor thing. Save it from purgatory!”

  Nanette couldn’t help herself. She spit in the dirt at his feet.

  His face grew even darker, and his lips worked before he shouted, “For shame! Godless, the whole lot of you Orchards! Your child will be doomed for all eternity!”

  As if she had heard, Ursule began to cry. Nanette felt the instant response of her breasts, and she knew without glancing down that her bodice was soaked with milk. “Leave us alone,” she snapped, and with an earsplitting squeal of hinges, she closed the door in the priest’s face.

  She thought he had gone, and had settled into a chair to suckle the babe when she heard the fat priest’s tread on the back porch. She started at the sound, and the infant began to wail when the nipple slipped from her mouth. Nanette scrambled to her feet, her babe screaming in disappointment. The priest, his hat on his head and his whip in one hand, stamped into the kitchen without bothering to knock. Nanette hastily tried to cover herself.