A Secret History of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

“What has that fat Blodwyn ever given to the world?”

  “She was born into privilege, Irène. That’s her good fortune.” Ursule’s voice was hard as she handed Irène a paring knife and two potatoes. “You have your own good fortune, remember. Your own inheritance.”

  Irène sneered at her mother. “Oh, the craft! What good is it, if we spend our lives working like animals and living like peasants?” She waved the paring knife around at the cramped cottage, the soot-stained fireplace, the heavy oak table, the mismatched armchairs and assorted oil lamps.

  “We’re not peasants,” Ursule snapped, “though we might well have been, if Master Hughes had not given a lost, pregnant woman a chance to earn her living.”

  “I don’t want to live my life on charity!”

  “Charity?” Ursule banged the roast she was trussing onto the counter and whirled to seize her daughter’s arm. She was still a strong woman, broad shouldered and muscular, with a man’s hands and a man’s courage. Her eyes flashed dark fire, and her daughter knew she had now certainly gone too far. “You listen to me, Irène Orchiére. I’ve earned every bit of our living by good, clean hard work.”

  “Hardly clean—” Irène began, but Ursule shook her arm so hard that pain lanced through her shoulder and up her neck.

  “Clean and honorable!” Ursule cried. “I won’t have you saying otherwise!”

  Tears stung Irène’s eyes, and she rubbed her arm where her mother’s fingers had bruised it. “I just meant—shoveling pig manure and raking up chicken mess—”

  Ursule exhaled a long, noisy breath. She turned back to the pork roast, prodding it with her fingers. “I know, Irène. Not the life you would have chosen.”

  “At least if my father—”

  Without turning, Ursule threw up a hand. “Please don’t start on that again. Sebastien is doing the best he can.”

  “He’s never here!”

  Ursule exhaled again. She didn’t turn, but her voice was as sharp as the paring knife. “He’s here when he can be. The Grange might hire a musician once or twice a year, or there might be a wedding or a funeral in Tenby … It’s not enough for him. You know this.”

  Irène knew she should leave it at that, but it rankled. She never knew when Sebastien would show up, tutor her in French, teach her a few simple chords on his harp, then disappear again, and the harp with him. He could hardly have been more different from her mother, with his soft, clean hands, his spotless clothes, his fine manners. She began to peel the potatoes with quick, angry strokes of the knife, but she made her voice conciliatory. “I wish I could go with him when he travels.”

  Her mother’s tone softened, too, but there was a note of warning in it just the same. “I know, Irène. You can see why it’s not possible.”

  Irène quartered the potatoes and dropped them into the pot waiting on the hob. She pulled back her skirts so she could kneel on the hearth and add wood to the fire. “If Master Hughes is so wonderfully generous, why doesn’t he see to it we have a proper cooker?” she said, but under her breath so her mother wouldn’t hear.

  Irène suspected her mother thought she was lazy, because she complained so much about the farm work, but it wasn’t that. It was the mud and offal and filth that offended her. Since she had been a tiny girl, the chickens and their coop had been her job. As she grew older, Ursule had added feeding and caring for the pigs to her daughter’s chores. When she objected, Ursule said, “Why do you mind? Pigs are sensitive creatures. Intelligent.”

  “Then they should clean their own sty,” Irène muttered. Her mother had laughed then, but she no longer seemed to find Irène’s complaints amusing. By the time Irène had reached her mother’s height, Ursule expected her to weed and dig and haul just as much as she herself did, and none of Irène’s scowls dissuaded her.

  The only task she didn’t ask—in fact, would not allow—her daughter to share was the care of the Shire stallion. Aramis was old, and no longer able to pull a plow, but he was still an elegant creature, tall and silver and shining. Irène wouldn’t have minded brushing his thick, silky mane or riding him out where the two of them could be seen together. She would have loved to go trotting past the Grange on Aramis, looking down on the gardeners and grooms and dairymaids—and on Miss Blodwyn and Master Hughes.

  Ursule insisted on being the only person to handle Aramis. Master Hughes had allowed her to set aside a small pasture for the stallion, with a lean-to where he could escape the weather. She saw to his feed and grooming every day, no matter how long or hard the workday had been.

  To justify the expense of Aramis’s upkeep, Ursule had agreed to let Master Hughes breed the old stallion to one of his mares, a fine gray Percheron. The mare foaled a strong, handsome colt for the Grange’s stables. On the rare days when work could be suspended for a time, Ursule took Irène up to to see the colt, which Miss Blodwyn had named Ynyr. Tom Butler, the horsemaster, said that Miss Blodwyn had taken a fancy to Aramis, and wanted a big horse of her own to ride.

  The stables at the Grange were elegantly laid out, with wide loose boxes, raked gravel paths, manicured paddocks, and modern coal-burning stoves to keep the horses warm on cold nights. They were, like the grounds and the great brick block of the manor house, scrupulously clean. Irène, whenever she visited the Grange, grew silent and heavy footed, oppressed by the bitter weight of envy. Even Tom Butler’s livery, well-cut jodhpurs and tall leather boots, made her feel dowdy, invisible in her cotton dresses. If Miss Blodwyn appeared in one of her elaborate riding habits, slapping at her leg with a braided leather quirt, nodding to the farmwife and the farmwife’s daughter as if she were a queen, Irène’s misery intensified. She curtsied, as she must, and kept her eyes down, not out of humility, but to hide her avarice.

  She knew well she was more beautiful, more intelligent, even better educated than the master’s daughter. Her troubadour father had taught her to speak fluent French. Her mother had taught her to read and do sums, and made her puzzle out recipes in Old French from her ancient grimoire. Irène had many virtues indeed. Humility wasn’t one of them.

  Nor was patience.

  As they walked home from one of their visits to the colt, Ursule said, “He’s growing nicely, I think. Such a pretty dappled gray. The stableman tells me he’ll try him under harness soon.”

  “I don’t know why you care, Mother,” Irène snapped. “He’s not yours. You’ll never be allowed to drive him.”

  Ursule answered with uncharacteristic mildness. “I wish you would call me Maman, Irène. And I feel as if Ynyr is mine, in a way. Because Aramis is mine, and Ynyr is a part of Aramis.”

  “Aramis is just a horse.”

  “He’s not just a horse. He’s much more than that. I would have no life without him, nor would you.”

  “I hate it when you talk like that!”

  They were in the lane, with the manor house and its landscaped grounds looming behind them, blocking their view of the setting sun. Stars winked above the expanse of the forest, as if they had emerged from the tips of the dark trees. Their cottage huddled like a cowed puppy, squat and dull, a thin stream of smoke rising above its flat roof.

  Ursule stopped and faced her daughter with her hands on her hips. The fading light caught the weathered lines in her face and picked out silver strands in her dark hair. Irène was startled at these signs of age. Ursule had always seemed as eternal as the sea stacks along Castle Beach, and no softer than those looming rocks.

  Ursule said, “I know you’re unhappy, and I’m sorry. I was also discontented at sixteen.”

  “But you like being a farmer.”

  “I do.”

  “Did you at sixteen?”

  Ursule’s lips curved. “I’ve loved working the land since I was a little child. It was the craft I was unhappy about. But I learned—my maman and I both did—that the craft will not be denied.”

  Irène blurted, “We don’t even know yet if I’m a witch.”

  “Shhh!” Ursule’s eyes widened and she ca
st a quick glance behind them. “Someone might hear you.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me! This isn’t the Dark Ages!”

  “It might as well be. There is always danger for such as us.”

  “You, perhaps. Not me.” She couldn’t help a reflexive glance around them, wary despite her denials. “If I’m not going to be—well, that—then I want to be a lady. I feel like a lady.”

  Ursule sighed and looked away from her daughter. “We should go. It’s getting dark.” She resumed her walk, and Irène matched her pace. Ursule said with a wry smile, “I will say, Irène, you look like a lady, thanks to your father. You are not one, though, and nothing you or I or Sebastien can do will change that.”

  “Even if I—”

  “If you what?”

  “I don’t know. Something.” Irène couldn’t bear the thought of spending her life as a farmwife, shoveling and feeding, digging and weeding. She shuddered at the idea of becoming her mother—growing gray, wrinkled, with perpetually dirty fingernails and filthy boots.

  “You will have to accept the way things are eventually. Your inheritance is different from that of Miss Blodwyn. That’s the way of the world.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “It rarely is.”

  Irène simmered in silence for the rest of their walk. The cottage was dark and cold when they went in, and Ursule hurried to light an oil lamp while Irène kindled the fire in the hearth. There was a bit of cold ham for their supper, with boiled potatoes and half a loaf of dark bread. Irène looked at it with distaste.

  “I suppose Miss Blodwyn is drinking champagne and eating roasted grouse.”

  “She may be. You’re having ham and potatoes.” Ursule sat down and used the carving knife to cut the ham into two equal parts. “Be glad you have anything to eat, Irène. Some don’t.”

  Irène took her seat and accepted a plate. She would have liked to refuse, but it had been a long day, and she was too hungry to make the gesture. When she had finished it all, and eaten two slices of bread with fresh butter from the Grange’s dairy, she rose to carry the dishes to the stone sink.

  “It’s Mabon, remember,” Ursule said, as she wrapped the remains of the bread.

  “Oh, Mother! Must we?”

  Her mother didn’t bother to answer.

  2

  Irène had begun to celebrate the Sabbats with Ursule when her monthlies began at thirteen. The only rites they had missed since that time were those that had fallen when Sebastien was with them. “He may or may not understand the truth about what we are,” Ursule said. “I don’t want to ask him, and if he doesn’t already realize, I don’t want to tell him. If he knew—if he knows—he could also be at risk.”

  Irène didn’t scoff. They had heard from one of the Grange’s cooks, when she came for garden produce, that a witch had been caught near Aberystwyth. Irène had seen her mother turn white beneath her sunburn, and clench her hands under her apron. The cook, Sally, told the story with relish, describing in awful detail how the witch had been stripped, examined by the deacons and the local priest, and denounced on the steps of the church. The witch—if witch she was—had been turned out of her village with nothing but the clothes on her back.

  “At least she’s alive,” Ursule had said bitterly, when Sally had departed with her basket of greens.

  “Why would she not be alive?” Irène had asked.

  Ursule drew her hands out from beneath her apron and looked at the palms. Her nails had cut into them, and they were spotted with thin lines of blood. “I’ve told you what happened to my maman, Irène.”

  “But that wasn’t Tenby. That was Cornwall! And it was sixteen years ago!”

  Her mother fixed her with a sorrowful gaze. “It never ends,” she said.

  “What doesn’t end?”

  “The persecution.”

  “But why should they go after some poor old woman in Aberystwyth?”

  Ursule sniffed and rubbed her nose with a grimy hand. “She probably cured someone of a cold, or a wart. Or failed to cure them. Either way, they think she knows things they don’t, and that frightens them.”

  “You would think they’d be grateful for women with knowledge.”

  “It’s rarely true. Men are vain.”

  “Even when they’re wrong?” Irène laughed. “That’s stupid!”

  “Don’t laugh, Irène. We have to be clever. We have to let men think they are stronger, smarter, wiser than women.”

  “Oh, Maman! Who cares what men think?”

  Ursule stood up, ready to return to her work. As she picked up her gloves she said, “Men make decisions for women, Irène, whether we like it or not. A kind man, like Sebastien, is a blessing. A cruel one—or a thoughtless one—is a curse. That’s life.”

  “It’s foolish. And not fair!”

  “I have no argument with that. Nevertheless, it’s the way it is. Men need to believe they’re in control.”

  “Then I hope I have the power, too, the way you do.”

  Her mother shrugged as she started for the door. “You may inherit it. You may not.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “There would be no more Orchiére witches. We are all that’s left.”

  “When will we know?” Irène demanded.

  “Only the Goddess has the answer to that.”

  Irène didn’t care if there were any more Orchiére witches. She cared about the power, though. She wanted it as much as she wanted to be a lady.

  Every minor or major Sabbat, so long as Sebastien was absent, Irène followed Ursule down to the root cellar beneath the cottage. They lifted the slanting door with care to prevent the screech of the hinges, and descended into the windowless space that smelled of cold earth and vegetables and drying herbs. They had to feel their way in the dark, because Ursule wouldn’t light a candle until they were down the three steps and had pulled the door closed above their heads. There was barely enough room to stand upright.

  Each rite began the same way. They covered their heads with long scarves, sprinkled a circle of salted water, and set a new white candle burning on their altar, a three-legged stool scavenged years before from a garden shed. Next to the candle Ursule set the ancient crystal with its jagged granite base. She kept a scarf over it until she was ready to begin, then uncovered it with a flourish. Irène thought the gesture should be accompanied with a swirl of music, the way they did things in the Tenby church.

  Irène wasn’t sure if it was the candlelight or the crystal that softened Ursule’s leathery face. Strands of her hair lifted as if in a light breeze, and sparkled silver in the darkness. Wisps of mist hung in the corners of the root cellar, barely illumined by the flame of the candle. The floor was so dark it was invisible. Ursule chanted praises to the Goddess and acknowledgment of the Sabbat. Irène watched intently, though she had to hug herself against the damp, and her breath fogged in the cold air. When her power came at last, she meant to be ready. She wanted to remember every moment of the ceremony, to repeat it in the proper way when her own turn came.

  Ursule always finished with a recitation of their history, the one she had learned from her own mother. She had made Irène memorize it, long ago, so they could chant it together:

  On this Sabbat of Mabon, we honor our foremothers: sweet Nanette, great Ursule, the prophetess Liliane, the Lady Yvette, Maddalena of Milano, Irina from the east, and all those whose precious names have been lost. We vow to pass the craft to our daughters so long as our line endures.

  When the echoes of their voices died away, they stood in silence for a moment before Ursule concluded with her own particular rite. She extended her hands above the crystal, spreading her strong fingers in supplication:

  Mother Goddess, hear my plea:

  Show my one true love to me.

  Ursule had explained how late she had come to the craft, how many years had passed before she believed. Irène supposed she might have had the same experience were it not for this rite. The crystal never faile
d to respond to this particular call.

  Magic descended around the miserable little cellar, warming the air, glittering here and there on jars and tins and hanging spoons. A light began as a spark deep within the ancient stone, visible only because the root cellar was so dark. It flickered and bloomed into a glow like that of a summer evening, and in its center, as if seen through thick, wavy glass, or as in a dream, was Sebastien. It was a marvel, and Irène longed to be able to make it happen herself.

  She bent over the stone to gaze at her father. He was asleep, his head nestled on a pillow, a blanket pulled up to his clean-shaven chin, his eyelids closed to hide his wonderful silver-gray eyes. He was still handsome. The lines in his face were somehow lighter, less marked, than those in her mother’s. If there was gray, it didn’t show in his fair hair. In the dimness of wherever it was he was sleeping, starlight gleamed on his clear profile and his closed eyelids. “Maman, do you know where he is?”

  “No.” Ursule withdrew her hands to tuck them into her sleeves. “I think he was going north, perhaps to Scotland. He wanted to go where his songs would be new.”

  Irène’s chest ached with the urge to go away herself, anyplace that wasn’t Tenby and a tawdry farmhouse with its unending chores. She thought of lovely dresses, fine foods, a house with windows and stairs and servants. She thought of Ynyr, the beautiful colt claimed by ugly Blodwyn, and could have wept with longing.

  3

  Sebastien managed to return to the Grange the day before his daughter’s seventeenth birthday. He came trudging up the lane from the Tenby railway station, his harp slung over one shoulder, his rucksack over the other.

  Ursule and Irène had spent the morning slicing potatoes into chunks, careful that each had an eye. After a hasty lunch they had begun the planting process, working up the plowed rows on their knees, setting the chunks under the loose soil. They were both muddy from ankle to knee, their hands grimy and their nails black with dirt. They wore broad-brimmed straw hats, but Irène felt the beginning of sunburn on her neck, above the collar of her faded work dress, and soil had gotten into her boots to chafe her toes. She was in as foul a mood as she could remember when her mother suddenly jumped to her feet, hissing, “He’s here!”