“I wasn’t born above stairs,” Irene began. “Indeed, the house I was born in had no stairs at all.” Morwen blinked at her in surprise, and Irene’s lip curled. “Of course you wouldn’t understand that. You’ve had everything you could possibly want, since the moment you were born. And before.”
Morwen frowned, and Irene flicked one languid hand, brushing the thought away. “Never mind. That isn’t part of the story—only the result of it.” She pulled a blanket from the back of the settee and spread it over her lap, then turned her face to the starlit night beyond her window. “The only part of your heritage you’ve kept is the French language. I saw to that, at least.” She curled her legs up beneath the blanket. “But I should begin at the beginning.”
She began her recitation. Morwen listened, her lips apart and her eyes stretching wider and wider as the story unfolded.
Irene spoke of family roots in rural France. She told of a narrow escape from persecution, a clan fleeing the French shore in a rickety boat, braving cold seas and bad weather to make a new home on the southern coast of Cornwall. She spoke of mysterious rites, and suspicion, and accusation, and, last, an escape.
“Her name was Ursule,” she said. “Though outside of her family, most called her Ursula. She was only a farmer, but she was a good one. Good with animals, with a strong back and big hands like a man’s. She fled Cornwall with nothing but the clothes on her back, and the Shire stallion she rode.”
Morwen had not stirred throughout the long tale, but now she lifted her head. “A Shire? Like Ynyr?”
“Exactly like Ynyr, as it happens. Just listen, Morwen.”
Morwen dropped her chin again, and Irene adjusted the blanket over herself. “She was pregnant,” she said. “With me.”
Morwen couldn’t help a little gasp.
“That’s right,” Irene said. “I was born to a farmwife. She had no husband. No relations. She called me Irène.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“Peut-être. Hard for the Welsh to pronounce.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Far enough away that no one here knew me.”
“But why, Maman? And what happened to Ursule?”
“She’s gone.”
“I wish I had known her.”
“Why? You wouldn’t have had a thing to say to her. She spent her days tending cows and mucking out stables.”
“She was my grand-mère. Your maman. Aren’t you sorry she’s gone?”
Coolly, “We didn’t get on.”
“You and I don’t get on, either, do we?”
Morwen expected anger at that, but she received only a narrow, mirthless smile. “We’re more alike than you think.”
“In what way?”
Irene moved restlessly, and the blanket slid to the floor. She let it lie, and her gaze drifted again to the window, where the stars were beginning to fade into dawn. “Don’t you ever wonder why Ynyr knows your thoughts, Morwen?”
Morwen stammered, “Wh-what do you mean? How do you know that?”
Irene didn’t move her head, but her eyes shifted to Morwen’s face. “I know everything.”
“Jago must have told you.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“Ynyr is smart.”
“So was his sire.”
“Did you know his sire?”
Irene’s smile widened, though there was nothing amused about her expression. “Ynyr’s sire was called Aramis. It was Aramis who carried Ursule out of Cornwall.”
“Then how—Where did—”
“He was her only possession. Aramis, and this crystal. She used them both.”
“The crystal?” Morwen lifted her hands, helplessly, and let them drop. “Maman, please. I can’t understand what you’re telling me!”
Irene’s cold smile faded. “Do I have to start again at the beginning?”
“No! Just tell me what it all means!”
Irene rose from the settee and moved to the window. Her silk nightdress floated around her as lightly as if it were made of the morning fog just beginning to rise. She put her palms on the sash and stared out into the mist for a moment before she turned an impassive face to her daughter. “Witches, Morwen.”
Morwen had to moisten her lips before she could speak again. “Wh-what, Maman?”
“Witches. That’s what I’ve been telling you. Is it so hard to understand? They were witches. They fled Brittany, then Cornwall, to escape the witch hunters. Ursule was a witch. I’m a witch. In the crystal I see things, like where my daughter goes when she thinks no one is watching.”
Morwen jumped to her feet, the blood pounding in her head.
An icy smile grew on her mother’s face. “You are, too, as it turns out. I hoped you wouldn’t be. Life would have been simpler. I don’t trust you, and this is dangerous knowledge.”
Morwen croaked, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s not like you to be slow, Morwen! Why do you think Ynyr has always known your thoughts? You’re a witch. A witch. Like your maman. Like your grand-mère. Like all the women in the Orchiére line, evidently, unfortunate though that is.”
Morwen couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak. A heartbeat later she couldn’t see the bitter triumph on her mother’s face. A cloud of star-studded darkness enveloped her, and she crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.
3
For days after Irene showed her daughter the crystal, Morwen was ill. Someone had helped her to her bed that night, but she didn’t know who. By the next morning she was fevered and sick. The doctor was called and diagnosed influenza, but Morwen didn’t believe that. It was confusion and shock that had made her ill.
She tried to convince herself her mother had made up the story of witchcraft to punish her. Or perhaps, even worse, Irene was not in her right mind. If that was the case, what should she do? She couldn’t go to Papa, surely, but … what her mother told her couldn’t be true! It couldn’t. She had never heard of such a thing, and as she tried to wrap her mind around it, she felt worse than ever. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t eat, she could barely speak.
There was no one she could turn to for guidance. She didn’t trust Mademoiselle, and she knew her maid reported everything to Lady Irene. Jago was her only confidant, and Irene’s warnings made her afraid to mention it to him. She had never felt so alone in her life.
For three days she lay in her bed, burning with fever, struggling to understand. Her father came to see her once. He stood in the doorway to ask if she had everything she needed. Her maid came in and out, carrying trays of food she couldn’t eat, offering her broth that she drank but couldn’t keep down. Her mother sent a note, but kept her distance from the sickroom.
When word came from Jago that Ynyr wasn’t eating, either, she knew she couldn’t let the situation go on. She still didn’t know what to think, or what to believe, but lying in her bed wasn’t helping.
She waited until the maid had left her with a bowl of soup and a tumbler of water. She put them on her side table, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stood up.
It wasn’t easy. Her head swam and her knees trembled, but the thought of Ynyr drove her to the window. She opened it and sat beside it for a few minutes, drawing deep breaths of fresh summer air. After a time she began to feel a bit stronger. She drank all the water in her glass, and managed half of Cook’s good chicken soup. She waited a little longer, to be certain she wasn’t going to be sick again, and then rang for her maid.
Dressed, and with a shawl around her shoulders despite the bright sunshine, she left the house through the servants’ entrance and hurried to the stables. To her relief she heard Ynyr’s whicker as she drew closer, and Jago came out to meet her.
“Feeling better, you?” he said. “Yon great horse has been off his feed for days.”
“Is he all right?”
“He will be now.”
Jago led the way to Ynyr’s stall, and Morwen went in to put her arms around the big hors
e’s neck. She stayed to see that he ate a measure of oats and drank a good bit of water. She didn’t feel up to a ride, but the two of them went out into the paddock to bask in the sunshine. Jago stayed close by, but they didn’t talk except to plan how Ynyr might gain back the weight he’d lost.
That night Lady Irene sent for her daughter very late, when the rest of the house was asleep. Morwen was already in bed, but she jumped up willingly, and with a dressing gown wrapped around her went eagerly down the corridor. Perhaps, she thought, her mother would confess it had all been fiction. Perhaps she would even apologize, though she had never done so before. Perhaps her daughter’s illness had changed her mind.
None of that happened. Instead Lady Irene, with an air of ceremony, brought the crystal from wherever it was she kept it hidden, and set it on the inlaid table. She unwrapped it and folded the linen beneath it. She drew a tiny flask from her pocket and sprinkled a circle of water droplets on the floor. She had exchanged the taper for a fat new candle of white wax, and she laid out sprigs of green and brown herbs around it.
Morwen said, “Mother, what—” but Lady Irene threw up one long white hand for silence. She extended both her palms above the stone, and sat in silence for what seemed to Morwen a very long time.
Morwen wriggled with impatience. She looked at the clock. She stared at the ceiling. She gazed out the window, where clouds shifted over a crescent moon. She scowled into the writhing candle flame, and was on the verge of uttering some impatient sound when a change inside the stone caught her attention.
Morwen leaned forward. She supposed she had caught a reflection of the candle flame, or of the moonlight falling through the window. Irene spread her hands, her fingers framing the crystal, and Morwen shot to her feet, horrified.
Inside the stone, where the crystal grew out of rough granite, an image appeared.
Morwen had peered into a Kinetoscope once, on a trip to Cardiff. This figure was like the ones in that device. It looked real, but distant, and unaware of being observed.
“Maman! What’s happening?”
“What do you think, Morwen?”
“It looks as if you’re … as if you can see people in that thing.”
“It’s not a thing. It’s the Orchiére crystal. And yes, I can see people. Evidently you can, too.”
“That’s Jago!”
“Yes,” Irene said coolly. “It is.”
“But it’s—Isn’t this like spying?”
“It isn’t like spying, Morwen. It is spying. I prefer the traditional term, scrying, but I don’t care what you call it. It’s useful.”
Morwen looked down into her mother’s eyes. They were nearly black in the shadowed room. “This is how you knew I’d been to the castle.”
“Knowing things makes you powerful, Morwen. You will learn that as a female, there are few enough sources of power.”
“But Maman, why do you need power? Surely Papa …”
The angry glitter in Irene’s eyes silenced her. Morwen backed away from the crystal, loath to intrude upon Jago in such a way. She sank into her chair and covered her eyes.
“Be grateful, Morwen,” Lady Irene said. “Not everyone could see that, but you have the gift, for better or worse. Your gift is what brought you Ynyr. You might as well be glad.”
“Ynyr loves me.”
“That may be. It’s not the point. Ynyr is your familiar spirit.”
Morwen dropped her hands. “My what?”
Irene made an irritated gesture. “The church will tell you it’s a bad thing, but they lie.”
“Father Pugh doesn’t lie!”
“Pffft. Everyone lies.” Irene snuffed out the candlewick between her thumb and forefinger and began to cover the crystal. “Ynyr is your familiar, the companion of your heart. We all have a familiar, if we’re lucky.”
“Did Ursule?”
“Ursule was close to all animals, but especially the horse that had belonged to her husband. Her mother’s familiar was a cat.”
“And … Maman, do you have a … a familiar spirit?”
Her mother laid the last fold of linen over the stone and stood, lifting the bundle in her two hands. “I did.”
“But now?”
“Now I don’t.” Irene turned away, the wrapped stone in her hands.
“Maman, wait! What was it? Why don’t you have it anymore?”
Her mother paused halfway to her bedroom, her face turned to the moonlit park beyond the window. “My familiar was a fox,” she murmured, as if she were speaking to herself. “A beautiful red fox, who found me at my old home and followed me here to the Vale. To my new life. For that, he was shot and killed.”
Morwen clapped both hands to her mouth. Through her fingers she breathed, “Oh no! Oh no, Maman, who—”
All at once she knew. She understood, and it was almost too much to bear.
Lord Llewelyn always boasted to visitors about the fox-fur rug that lay among the chairs in the parlor. He bragged about the difficulty of his shot, its accuracy, the skill of the taxidermist, the cost of the preservation. Morwen had trod on that fox rug a hundred times, and each time must have felt, to her mother, as if she were treading on her very heart.
“Oh, Maman,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Irene didn’t respond. Tentatively Morwen asked, “But what happened?”
Irene still gazed out into the park, her clear profile limned in moonlight. “He came when I found my gift,” she said, very low. “I knew right away what he was, and when the time came to … to leave my home, he followed. He found a den in the park. He used to wait right there.” She pointed, her long arm outstretched, the silk of her peignoir shimmering. “Right there where the wood begins.”
“Papa … did he know?”
Irene’s face, as she turned back to her daughter, was as flinty as the gravel in the drive. “I don’t know. Llewelyn watches me. I’ve observed him, in the crystal, going through my wardrobe, looking in my diary.”
Morwen blurted, “Why did you marry him?”
“To be Lady Irene, of course. I was sick to death of farm life.”
“There was no love between you?”
“Love is an illusion, Morwen. It doesn’t last. It can’t be trusted.”
“And now you hate Papa.”
“Why should you think that? I am indifferent to him.” Irene gave a shallow sigh, a tiny, impatient sound. “Go to bed now. I will teach you what you need to know, because it’s what we do. I will teach you the names of our ancestresses. You’ll learn how to summon, and how to observe through the crystal. I will teach you the Sabbats, and the rites as they were passed down to me. But remember—”
Morwen had crossed the room to the door, and her hand was on the lock, but she paused. “Remember what?”
“You must never tell anyone,” Irene said tightly. “Not Jago. Not Father Pugh.”
“Surely, Maman, Father Pugh—”
“Especially him, Morwen.” Irene’s lip curled with disdain. “Don’t be deceived by that timid manner. His Scriptures tell him to destroy us. He would find the courage somehow.”
“But Jago—”
“Morwen. Not anyone. For a witch to be exposed means risking death.”
“It’s the twentieth century!”
“Barely. For some, it might as well be the seventeenth.”
Morwen shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Irene clicked her tongue. “Morwen, you’re old enough to understand something about men! They like women to look beautiful, to have good manners, to bear their sons. They don’t expect them—they don’t want them—to have minds of their own. Women must never argue, never cause scenes, never—never feel.”
“But Papa—”
“Your papa is no different. Don’t be deceived because he indulges you. When he wants something from you, he won’t ask your opinion on it. He will take it.”
“What does that have to do with being a witch?”
For a moment Irene was still, her eyes
gleaming pools of darkness. She smiled, but without mirth. “You’re not listening, Morwen. I’m telling you why men hate our kind. Do you think I am the woman I just described? Are you?”
“No,” Morwen whispered, her heart sinking.
“Then you see. Your father, like most men, is terrified of a woman who doesn’t fit his ideal of womanhood, because he doesn’t know how to control her. You need to remember that any frightened man is a dangerous one.” Her cold smile faded, and she turned back to the window. Over her shoulder she said, “I will tell you the truth, though, Morwen. I rather like a man to be afraid of me. It’s my reward for keeping the craft alive.”
Lord Llewelyn, only a week later, decreed that Morwen’s sixteenth birthday should be the occasion for a ball. Lady Irene accepted his wishes without demur. She would naturally leave all arrangements to Chesley, to Cook, and to Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle informed Morwen that there would be dress fittings and hairdressers and sessions with a dancing master.
Morwen protested. “Papa, we never have balls, or even parties, except for the church fete. Why do we have to do this?”
Her father looked up from his Times and scowled over the steel rims of his spectacles. “What?”
“This ball, Papa.” Morwen stood beside the fireplace, her arms folded and her fingers tapping impatiently on her elbows. “It’s my birthday. I don’t want a ball.”
“What you want is no matter. I know what’s best for you. It’s time you came out.”
“Out of what?” she asked, and was rewarded with a glint of annoyance in her father’s milky blue eyes.
“Girls of good family are properly brought out into society,” he said, and snapped up his newspaper again, blocking her view of him.
“Society? There is no society here, and I don’t care anyway.”
“You will care if you fail to make a good marriage,” Lord Llewelyn said, speaking to the inside of his newspaper.
“Marriage!” Morwen turned to her mother for help, but Lady Irene was tracing the fox-fur rug with her foot, showing no sign of having heard the conversation.
The rug, with its rich red pelt and head forever frozen by the taxidermist in Cowbridge, made Morwen shudder. She didn’t understand how her mother could bear seeing it there on the floor, something to walk across, to step on, as if it had never been a living, breathing, feeling creature. If someone shot Ynyr, she would have murder in her heart for the killer, even if it had been her father who wielded the gun.
A Secret History of Witches Page 23