A Secret History of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

  Morcum took a mighty swipe with his heavy boot to kick the cat away. It hit the side of the stove with a sickening thud and lay still.

  Ursule shouted, “Morcum!” and strode forward.

  “Get back,” he snarled. He smacked her with his elbow so hard that she, too, fell. His big hands reached down for his mother-in-law and hauled her to her feet. She whimpered with panic, but he paid no attention. Ursule scrambled up, grasping at his arms, screaming threats and imprecations, but he ignored that, too. He pulled Nanette out through the broken door as if she weighed nothing at all.

  When Nanette appeared on the porch step, a clamor of voices rose, darkening the crystal morning air as if a thunderstorm had swept down from the moor. Ursule, still clawing at her husband’s hard hands, shook with horror.

  They were her neighbors, these men, people she had known all her life, but at this moment they were strangers. They were the monsters of nightmare, perhaps a dozen of them, their faces distorted, their voices shrill as cawing crows. Morcum dragged Nanette out to them as he might deliver a sheep for slaughter. They seized her with their brutal hands and bundled her into their waiting cart. Some were on foot, and some rode ponies. One drove the cart, and two more jumped into the back to hold Nanette.

  Ursule tried to push past Morcum to get to her mother, but he seized her around the neck with his hairy forearm and squeezed her under his elbow until she couldn’t breathe. Nanette ceased struggling. She slumped between her two captors, her head falling forward, her hands hanging nervelessly from her wrists. Ursule, struggling for air, could not even cry out her name.

  The whole hideous scene took no more than ninety seconds, and was seared into Ursule’s memory forever.

  As the cart set off down the lane, Morcum shoved her aside with a grunt. She cried his name, and called her mother’s, but neither he nor the other men—nor even Nanette, collapsed between her guards in the back of the cart—responded. In moments the cart, the men following it, and Morcum himself had disappeared. His final gesture to his wife was a shaken fist, and an order to stay where she was.

  Ursule hurried back into the house to fetch boots and a coat. The goats had begun to bleat, and the ponies stamped nervously in the paddock, disturbed by the shouts in the lane. Ursule had no choice but to ignore them. She seized the crock where she kept her market-day money and scooped all of it into her pockets before she raced to the byre to throw a halter on Aramis. She cinched a blanket around his broad back and stood on the mounting stool to get up. It hurt her heart to leave her goats crying to be milked, but it hurt far worse to think of her mother fainting, bumping along in a cart with neither cushion nor coat.

  Ursule could think of only one person to turn to, and it wouldn’t be easy. She would have to beg Father Maddock to intervene.

  She put her heels to Aramis’s ribs and urged him into his ponderous trot.

  St. Hilary Church had never seemed so cold and unwelcoming as it did on that awful morning. Ursule left Aramis tethered on the cobbled street and pushed open the heavy door to the sanctuary. The church was empty, and her footsteps made forlorn echoes against the stone walls and the arched ceiling. She ran to the sacristy, but the door was locked, and pounding her fists on it brought no answer. She had to run outside again, around to the back, where Father Maddock had his rooms. She dashed up the short stair to knock on that door, too, again without result. Just as she turned to go back down the steps, the bell sounded from the campanile with a thunderous gong that made her bones ache.

  There was a commotion on the green, a short distance from the church. With thudding heart and trembling hands, Ursule led Aramis in that direction. Just beyond the corner of the inn, where its sign swung over the street, she hesitated. The men who had come to Orchard Farm were clustered on the site where the market would set up. The cart that had borne her mother away was parked under the trees, the pony’s reins tossed negligently onto the ground and the pony himself cropping grass. Other townspeople, women, old men, even a few children, had joined the crowd, and at its center Ursule spied Father Maddock in his cassock and collar. He held a Bible in one raised hand, and he was shouting, but the wind whirled his words away.

  Ursule didn’t need to hear. His intent, and his rage, were all too clear.

  A knot of men around the priest turned as one, like a flock of ugly birds, and thrust through the crowd toward the church. Ursule stepped behind the drooping branches of a dead elm tree to watch them make their way to a door she hadn’t seen, which led down into the basement. Father Maddock followed them and closed the door behind him with a stern glance at the crowd outside.

  An old woman in an apron crowed to a companion, “They’ll find out now! They’ll see the mark of the witch!”

  Ursule stepped out from behind the branches that were hiding her and stared at the woman in shock. “What did you say?” she demanded. “What mark of the witch?”

  The old woman cackled, a vicious sound that turned Ursule’s stomach. “Don’t you know?” she cried with relish. “All witches have an extra teat! They hide it under their clothes!”

  Her companion, slightly younger, with a thick-featured face and a drooping bosom, emitted a scornful laugh. “All us knew it all along, din’t we, Pansy? All us knew those old women out to Orchard Farm was witches!”

  “Why do you say that?” Ursule demanded, but weakly. Her legs would barely hold her. She gripped the trunk of the dead tree for support.

  Both women turned suddenly to face her. Ursule felt like a cornered fox facing a pack of terriers. The older one said, “Don’t speak to us, do they?”

  The younger one said, “Allus jabberin’ away in some strange language, won’t speak Cornish, or English. Keepin’ up there in that old house and never comin’ down!”

  “Afraid they’ll be found out, like!” said the older one.

  The younger woman bent forward at her thick waist to peer at Ursule from beneath the brim of her hat. “Aren’t you one of them? You are! You’re the one that comes to the market—”

  The bang of the basement door interrupted her. The men who had gone in surged back up the stairs, with Father Maddock at their head. But this time they had Nanette with them, Nanette boneless, limp, her head hanging and her feet dragging as they hauled her up the steps.

  “A witch!” one of the men yelled in triumph.

  The crowd took up the cry. “A witch! A witch!”

  Ursule’s head whirled so suddenly she thought she would vomit. Her muscles turned to water. She lost her hold on the elm, crumpling to her knees among twigs and dry leaves.

  The two women lost interest in her in their haste to follow the mob carrying Nanette away. Ursule struggled to regain her feet. An unexpected bank of charcoal clouds rolled in from the west, covering Mount’s Bay, casting its shade over Marazion. Ursule, groping for something to pull herself up on, found a fine, soft hand beneath hers.

  She panted, gripping the hand like a drowning woman, and looked up into the face of her lover.

  It was Sebastien, his face drawn, his wonderful eyes clouded with anger.

  She moaned, “My mother … I must go after her … Help me!”

  “It’s too late, Ursule.” He drew her to him and put an arm around her shoulders, not as a lover, but as a brother. As a friend.

  “Sebastien, help me! You must help me! Maman—”

  He held her close to his chest. “Chut, chut, ma chêre. There’s nothing you can do.”

  The realization struck her like a blow. He wouldn’t fight them. No one would fight them. She was utterly alone in this battle.

  She pulled herself free of his hands, though he tried to restrain her. The crowd had already disappeared, shouting and jeering, down the road that led to the cliff. Ursule spun in a whirl of skirts and ran back toward where she had tethered Aramis.

  It was like running in a nightmare. Her feet were made of lead. Her arms flailed uselessly beside her. She reached the horse in moments, but every one of those moments felt like an
hour. Aramis threw up his head, alarmed by her rush and her panting, but though he trembled, he stood still as she crawled up onto his back and turned him toward the cliff. He broke into a trot and then his awkward, rocking canter when she smacked his ribs with her heels and called his name.

  She didn’t realize she was sobbing until the tears on her cheeks chilled in the cold air. She urged Aramis on, one hand on his reins and the other gripping his mane at the withers so she wouldn’t slide off. Her scarf was gone, and her skirt was rucked up around her knees. Her hands ached, and her neck, where Morcum had gripped it, sent blazing pains into her skull.

  By the time she caught up with the villagers, the cloud cover had parted. The sun glinted cruelly on the tossing sea below the cliff. It was the most frightening spot on the cliff road, a place Ursule always drove by with great care, a place where people came to throw things over when they didn’t want them found. It was said a popish priest had died there once, years before, slipped and fallen to his death on the rocks below.

  The shouts of the mob had diminished, but hatred was in every face, in the twisting lips, the reddened faces. Ursule tried to urge Aramis among them, but a lifetime of taking care with his enormous feet held him back. He wouldn’t force his way into a throng of people. He resisted her, pacing back and forth at the edge of the crowd, acknowledging her with nods of his head and anxious snorts, but refusing her order.

  On the far side of the crowd she saw Morcum, his broad figure swathed in his worn black coat, his hat pushed back, and his face, too, twisted with fury.

  Ursule turned Aramis, and tried to ride around the crowd, but the people had spread out, standing on tiptoe, shoving one another, vying for a better vantage point. Ursule desperately cast about for something she could do, someone she could appeal to, but she found no one. She could just see Nanette’s head and the tops of her shoulders; she was supported by two men who pulled her, unresisting, toward the edge of the precipice.

  Ursule didn’t realize she was screaming until Aramis reared, his huge hooves clawing the air, his head thrashing, his hind legs trembling. She clung to his back, her legs sliding, her hand cramping as she gripped his mane. Still she screamed, in wordless, blind panic, as strands of Aramis’s coarse mane stung her cheeks.

  Faces turned to her, ugly, ravening faces, blind with anger, hungry for violence. Only Aramis’s fearsome hooves kept them at a distance.

  The men were at the cliff edge now, Nanette helpless in their hands. Ursule felt as if her mind had left her. All her control was shattered. She could only shout, as impotent as her mother, “No! No! Please, no!”

  Aramis’s forefeet crashed down to the earth just as two burly men, one on either side, reached for Ursule. They surely meant to pull her down into their midst, possibly to share the witch’s fate. She felt an urge to give in to them, to resign herself. Better, perhaps, to die with her mother than to live with this memory.

  Aramis decided for her. He reared again, a silver monster of a horse, and the men fell back. Aramis spun on his hocks to get away from them, to get away from the mob. Away from Nanette.

  The big Shire struck out at a strong gallop, leaving the road, heading north toward the moor. Ursule’s legs automatically clamped around his barrel.

  She had never ridden Aramis at a gallop, and the speed and power of it shocked her. As if from a great distance, she heard the rhythm of his hooves on the ground, and the noise of the mayhem behind them began to fade.

  Except for one, final, devastating sound.

  The shriek could have come only from Nanette. It was a sound Ursule had never heard before, and would pray never to hear again. It was a long, winding scream that split the morning and silenced even the hysterical voices of the mob. It was a death cry, rising until it seemed it could go no higher, then dwindling into a mournful, hopeless, ghastly farewell. Nanette Orchiére, sister and lover and mother, Romani and witch, fell to the rocks below.

  When the cry ceased, Ursule knew her mother’s suffering was over.

  Aramis galloped on, his big body growing hot beneath her thighs. He carried her away, running long past the point at which his endurance should have given out. He showed no sign of stopping, charging across the moor as if he knew her life depended on him. When he finally slowed to a walk, his sides heaved, and spittle flew from his lips. His nostrils rattled with each desperate breath.

  Ursule didn’t try to guide him. She was sobbing with despair and sorrow and shock, and when he finally stumbled to a halt, she slid from his back to land hard on her feet. The two of them stood together, her forehead against his shoulder, his head drooping in exhaustion.

  She didn’t realize they had returned to Orchard Farm until, at length, she lifted her swollen face. Her poor goats had given up bleating. The ponies were gathered at one end of the paddock, clustered together with their tails to the wind as if they knew something was wrong. The door to the kitchen hung open, slanting from its remaining hinge.

  “Wait,” Ursule croaked to Aramis. He stood where he was, his head hanging so low she feared he might not recover his strength.

  She hurried through the gate and up the path to the kitchen door. She didn’t bother trying to close it, but raced into the pantry to find Grand-mère’s book. In moments she was on her way out. She seized a half loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese resting on the counter, thrusting everything into an empty flour sack, and trotted back to Aramis.

  As she jumped up on the mounting block, the rising wind and slanting sun told her the day was far gone. Ursule slung the flour sack across Aramis’s withers, then paused to gaze at her beloved farm, at the house where she had expected to live out her days, at the graveyard where she had meant one day to lie. She would rescue the crystal from its hiding place in the cave, and she and Aramis would depart from Cornwall forever. They would leave Orchard Farm behind. Leave Nanette’s shattered body to float in its watery grave. Leave Morcum to stew in his righteous loneliness.

  For a second time that terrible day, Ursule was tempted to surrender, to give up her life as her mother had given up hers.

  But she had the babe to think of. Her daughter.

  The infant chose that very moment to quicken. She wriggled in Ursule’s belly with the undeniable sensation of life to come. Fresh tears, of grief and horror and gratitude, burned Ursule’s swollen eyes.

  She lifted Aramis’s reins and turned him toward the tor. For the babe’s sake, for the sake of the Orchiére line, they would go on.

  THE BOOK OF IRÈNE

  1

  1886

  Irène shook the remnants of chicken scratch from her skirt as she crossed the kitchen garden and let herself out through the slatted gate in the stone wall. She turned up the dirt lane to the cottage, pulling down the brim of her straw hat against the Welsh sun. She was halfway home when a horse’s hoofbeats quickened behind her. She stepped out of the lane and onto the weedy verge that ran along the forest’s edge.

  The Grange’s best gig was bowling toward her, the master’s thick-waisted daughter at the reins and his prized dapple gray between the shafts. Irène, though it galled her to do it, dropped a curtsy as it passed. Blodwyn Hughes flicked her whip to acknowledge the obeisance, and the gray broke into a canter. Dust rose from the wheels to cloud around Irène as she trudged on. She tugged up the hem of her apron to keep the swirling dirt from her nose and mouth.

  Blodwyn was no doubt on her way into Tenby for tea, or perhaps a visit to her dressmaker’s shop, in the High Street beyond the city wall. Irène imagined her driving the gig up to the stables, being helped down by a stableboy who would tug his forelock. Blodwyn would unfurl her parasol and stroll past the blue-and-yellow buildings, with the sea glinting green in the distance. The citizens would nod to her, call her Miss Blodwyn, hasten to open doors as she approached.

  Fiery resentment of all these things burned in Irène’s breast, and when she went into the cottage she slammed the door with unnecessary force, making the cast-iron soup pot rattle against
the hob of their open fireplace.

  Ursule turned from the sink, her brows rising. “Such violence! What is it this time?”

  Irène took off her hat and threw it at the rack. “I hate that girl!”

  “Which girl might that be, Daughter?” Ursule’s voice was mild, but Irène wasn’t fooled. Her mother would brook her bad tempers just so far.

  She slapped the dust from her printed cotton skirt. “Blodwyn Hughes.”

  “Miss Blodwyn.”

  Irène snorted. “I know, Mother. Miss Blodwyn. Dumpy, stupid Miss Blodwyn, who’s on her way into Tenby for a new dress that won’t make her look any better than that hideous thing she’s wearing.”

  “Master Hughes provides us a home, Irène. And work.”

  “I hate the work.”

  She saw she might have gone too far. Ursule’s voice sharpened, and her eyebrows drew together. “You would hate starving more. Or sleeping rough.”

  Irène had heard the story often enough. She hated being reminded of it. It wasn’t her fault her mother had had to flee Cornwall with nothing but her Shire stallion and a scrying stone! She stamped across the room to the peg rack for a fresh apron. “It’s all wasted on her,” she muttered. “When was the last time you or I had new dresses?”

  “If you want a new dress, I’ll ask at the Grange. They’ll give us a bolt of fabric.”

  “Mother! I don’t want to make my own dress! I want it made for me, properly fitted, with boning and a bustle and lace at the bodice!”

  “And what, daughter mine, would you do with such a dress?”

  Irène heard the sharpening edge in Ursule’s voice, but she was in full spate now, and she couldn’t stop herself. “Why shouldn’t I wear such a dress? Why should I be trapped in a house with three rooms, wearing hand-me-down boots, mucking out pigpens and chicken coops?”

  “Why should you live in the Grange, and be waited on hand and foot? What have you given to the world?”