The Return of the Witch

by Paula Brackston

  For a moment the only sound to be heard was the rapid and shallow, pain-filled breathing of the poor colonel. Even in extremis I could see his fury at being so manipulated. But a good soldier knows when to attack, and when to negotiate. He raised a feeble hand.

  “Take him back to the house,” he said. “We will address the matter later.”

  “He will go to Oxford?” I wanted to be certain. “He will get a proper trial? I have your word on it?”

  “Yes, yes! By all that is holy, woman, yes. Now, to the house!”

  And with that we all hurried back inside, William to the cellar, the rest of us to what was now the treatment room. High up in the cedar tree the robin began to sing again.

  15

  I knew I had only bought a little time for William, but he was, for now, safe from the hangman. My more immediate concern was how to treat Colonel Gilchrist without the word magic ever entering anyone’s head. It had not been difficult to summon a spell to inflict pain upon him, even though it went against my natural inclination to cause suffering in a situation other than self-defense. But I was defending William, and that had been justification enough, I believed. I noticed one or two of the guards and soldiers standing close to the incident had looked at me with suspicion and even fear. I would have to take great care with my remedy. If the colonel underwent a swift and miraculous cure that nascent suspicion could grow into a conviction that witchcraft was involved. After all, it was very convenient that the officer had been taken so ill at that precise moment. It would not go well for me, no doubt, if the patient died under my care, but if I were to make him well without apparent effort … And yet I could not submit him to surgery. The risks were far too many and too great. We had no anesthesia, no antibiotics, no way of working in sterile conditions, no possibility of replacing lost blood, and no skilled practitioner of medicine to assist me. No, I would have to find another way.

  My relief at being able to help William was overshadowed by my distress at the thought of Tegan and Erasmus still at Gideon’s mercy while I could not go to them. If I left now I would be abandoning William to the noose. It would have been impossible to choose between him and Tegan, but the choice was not, in truth, mine to make. I would not be permitted to leave until I had treated the colonel. I told myself that the sooner I did what had to be done at the Hall, the sooner I would be free to go in search of Tegan. Until then I could only pray to the Goddess that the enchantment upon her was continuing to lift, so that she would regain some of her own protecting magic. I instructed the orderlies to put the colonel onto the bed in the small room off the reception hall and undress him. I insisted we first try a draught to see if we could not shift the obstruction without the need for use of the knife. The possibility of avoiding surgery naturally found favor with the patient, so I hurried to the kitchen.

  Mary-Anne was struggling to maintain order. The army cook, a bulbous nosed sergeant by the name of Pearce, had all but taken over. The place was in chaos, and that fact that its new master appeared more than a little drunk, despite the early hour, was not helping matters. The two cooks were arguing about how the stove should be stoked, about the fetching of water, about the use of stores, about everything in fact. I had to raise my voice to make myself heard.

  “I must prepare a draught for the colonel,” I announced.

  Sergeant Pearce stood defensively before the stove. “Anything the colonel needs I shall see to. “’Tis not your business.”

  “Your commanding officer is dangerously ill, perilously close to death, in fact. I must make a concoction at once. Will you step aside, or shall I inform Captain Anderson that you are preventing me from giving Colonel Gilchrist the care that might save his life?”

  The army cook grudgingly shifted just enough for me to be able to take a pan and set it on the heat. I poured in water from the kettle.

  “Mary-Anne, would you be so kind as to fetch me rhubarb and dandelion from the garden. With roots intact, if you please. I shall also require honey, if you have any.”

  The housekeeper knew enough to recognize these plants as purgatives, nothing more, and did not question my need for them but hurried out to find them. While I waited for her I gathered pestle and mortar, board, and a broad knife. As I was doing so I clearly heard Tegan’s voice in my head! It was so unmistakably her, and so unexpected, I dropped the knife and it clattered onto the flagstone floor. When I picked it up my hands were trembling, but not with fear; with joy, for the voice I had heard was Tegan as herself; Tegan free and strong. The enchantment had been lifted! It was such a relief to know that I had managed to release her from such a poisonous prison, and to know that she no longer feared me. Wherever she was, she was well again.

  I was forced to turn my attention back to what I was doing. Mary-Anne bustled back into the kitchen clutching armfuls of the ingredients I had requested. I set about chopping and then grinding the best roots before putting them into the water to simmer for a minute. My every move was made under the critical gaze of Sergeant Pearce. I was thankful that my brew did not require a spellcraft, for it would have been difficult to perform any beneath such scrutiny. All that was necessary to stop the colonel’s pain was for me to reverse the spell that was causing it, which I could do quietly while he was drinking the strong laxative that would apparently remove the presumed obstruction.

  I was on the point of returning to the treatment room when Captain Anderson came into the kitchen. He sniffed at the mixture I was ladling into a small bowl.

  “What is this medicament? I must know what you are to dose the colonel with.”

  “It is a common remedy that just might prove efficacious, Captain. It is surely worth trying, if we can spare the colonel the risk and pain of the knife.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” he replied, clearly undecided. He turned to the sergeant. “You … you saw what was prepared. Is it fit for Colonel Gilchrist to drink?”

  The man shrugged elaborately. “I can see no good in it, sir, if I am to be honest. It is a wife’s remedy. Something to move the stools. Might as well give the man garlic to chew and brandy to wash it down.”

  The captain’s irritation was clear. “I did not ask for your quack’s pronouncement,” he snapped. “I wish only to be certain there is nothing … harmful, in the concoction.”

  The sergeant scowled. “It’ll not hurt ’im,” he said, “though I cannot say the same for ’er!” Here he jabbed a finger at me.

  “Why do you say so?” Captain Anderson wanted to know. “You say the draught is harmless, and this woman has saved the lives of many of our men.”

  “Aye, mibben she ’as. Seems to me she’s just saved the life of one of ’er own, too.”

  There was a charged silence, during which I knew all too well that the captain would be pondering the possible implications of these words.

  It was Mary-Anne who broke into these thoughts.

  “I have used such a remedy myself, sir,” she assured him. “I have seen it effect a cure, if used promptly.”

  The captain made his decision, nodded at me, and I hurried from the kitchen, following him down the hall and back to the patient’s bedside. Colonel Gilchrist was by now quite grey with pain, and I felt sorry for having inflicted such suffering, though he had brought my violence upon himself. I would work as quickly as I could.

  I bade him drink down the warm draught and two orderlies raised him to a sitting position so that he might do so. While they were busy helping him I stood very still, bowing my head a little, so that I could intone the vital words that would reverse the spell I had placed upon him. I knew that such agony could not be dispelled in an instant, but that was to the good. The potion would make its speedy charge through his body, the results would be unpleasant and humiliating, but not harmful, and by the time they had ceased, the last of the pain would lift, and the “cure” would be complete.

  When it was clear the colonel was out of danger I was permitted to go back to my duties tending the wounded. I was keenly aware that I
had won only a temporary reprieve for William, but I had to leave him now. I had heard Tegan, but that meant Gideon would likely have heard her, too. I could not let him find her first. She might not be sufficiently recovered to protect herself yet. After all, he had succeeded in taking her from Willow Cottage. This time I had to be by her side to confront him.

  I waited until I was not closely observed, the soldier that guarded the entrance to the hospital having become sufficiently relaxed about my presence once again to have lost interest in me. I let the general bustle of the house and the improvised ward mask my movements and slipped silently out through the French windows. I dared not look back, but walked purposefully away from the house. I had not gone farther than a dozen strides, however, before I heard my name being called and turned to find Captain Anderson standing on the terrace behind me.

  “Do not entertain thoughts of leaving us, Mistress Carmichael,” he told me. “Colonel Gilchrist may yet have need of you.” He left unsaid the fact that my loyalties still lay in opposition to his own. I was not trusted. I was not a true ally of their cause. My determination to save William had proved that.

  “I thought only to take some air,” I said.

  “Then take it where you can be seen,” he said firmly. “And no further than the herb garden, where I’m sure you will find the air particularly suited to you.” He signaled to a guard, who came to escort me back to the house.

  I felt as trapped as William who was locked in the cellar. I decided my best course of action was to try to call Tegan. When her voice came to me the day before it convinced me that she was free of Gideon’s spell, in which case I should be able to reach her. An hour after my attempt at escape I announced my intention to gather herbs to make a poultice. At least I was allowed a degree of privacy in the walled garden, my appointed guard choosing to pace up and down outside the gate, presumably reasoning that I could not leave without him seeing me. As I stooped and snipped at the woody stems of the rosemary plant I closed my eyes and let my mind become quiet and still. Although my hands continued their simple actions, my thoughts were elsewhere, searching the woods with my mind’s eye, repeating her name over and over, willing her to hear me and answer if she was able.

  Tegan? Tegan, where are you? Tegan?

  I began to think it was hopeless, and then I heard something. Not a clear word this time, but a whisper of a word. Or the echo of a whisper. And it was most definitely Tegan who uttered it! But why so weak, so faint? I could only imagine that though she was free of Gideon’s enchantment it had left her drained, and she was not yet restored to full health. My heart yearned to go to her, wherever she was, to take her in my arms and make her well again. But the sound grew ever more distant until it ceased altogether. With a sigh I opened my eyes.

  And came face-to-face with Gideon.

  He was standing only inches in front of me, watching me, listening to me. Had he heard Tegan, too? It seemed to me inevitable that he would have been aware of our communication on some level. I glanced across the garden. The soldiers’ encampment was on the far side of the Hall, and the windows that overlooked the herbary were those of currently unoccupied rooms. It was typical of Gideon that he should somehow be able to evade the attention of an entire army! Even so, I was surprised he had not only succeeded in appearing before me unnoticed, but that he should risk doing so. Presumably, if he had been questioned previously he remained under suspicion. Coming uninvited into a command post for the Parliamentarian forces was surely a reckless move.

  “A bold move, coming here, Gideon. Even for you,” I said, adding more rosemary to my apron pocket.

  “I wanted to see for myself that she was not here.”

  “Do you plan to search the whole of Batchcombe Hall?”

  “I need search only your eyes,” he told me. “A glance was all I needed to know you do not have her with you. That and … well, your rather flimsy attempt to contact her tells me that you clearly have no more idea of where she is than I do.” He tipped his black hat forward a little to shield his eyes from the sun. I noticed that he did so with his left hand. I could see now that his right arm hung stiffly by his side. Erasmus’s knife must have caused a deep wound. Had it been sufficient for him to get away, or had he suffered Gideon’s furious response?

  “Why must you hunt her? If it is me you wish to take revenge upon, here I stand.”

  “I have said before, Bess, not everything is always about you.”

  “Then why, Tegan? You have your freedom again, why must you use it to hound the poor girl? You could go anywhere, do anything. Why not make your life away from us and leave us in peace?”

  “I chose my path a very long time ago. It was you whom I selected to accompany me on that journey, Bess, but you would not accept your destiny.”

  “I was never destined to be with you.”

  “That was your choice, and one which you have remained stubbornly wedded to all these years. You must at least accept that you are in part responsible for Tegan’s situation, for it is she who has taken your place. She will become what you refused to be. She is become that already, which you would see if you opened your eyes.”

  “What do you mean?” I was prevented from questioning him further by the sounds of my name, or at least that of Mistress Carmichael, being shouted by one of the orderlies. I spun about, searching for whoever it was who was calling for me. I had been missed and was being looked for. It would only be a matter of minutes before someone came to the garden to find me. If I screamed they would come running. Might not that be a way to have Gideon securely under lock and key so that Tegan would remain safe while I looked for her? But still I wanted to know more about what he had said. I turned back to him, demanding, “Tell me, how has she become what you want…?”

  I did not finish, for I was speaking to no one. As quickly as he had appeared, Gideon had vanished! This was a new talent indeed, and certainly a perplexing one. Could he now move about at speed and without being visible? How was that possible? I knew his spellcraft and magic well, and this was not something ordinarily within his gifts. There was no trace of him. Nothing.

  “Mistress Carmichael!” One of the orderlies came hurtling through the narrow gateway into the walled garden, his haste so great that he was red-faced and out of breath. “You are to come at once!” he panted. “It is James Page…”

  “The musketeer with the chest wounds?” I was already running alongside him toward the house.

  “He has taken a turn for the worse, mistress. We cannot stop the bleeding.”

  As I rushed back to the makeshift hospital I tried to recall the details of the hapless soldier’s injury. He had fallen beneath cannon fire, a nearby blast sending shrapnel ripping through him. In addition, three of his ribs were broken, as well as his left wrist, which had been horribly smashed. His wounds had been inexpertly attended to on the battlefield, and two agonizing days had passed before he had arrived at Batchcombe. He had been one of the first of the wounded I had treated, and I remembered it had taken two hours to remove all the remaining pieces of metal, stone, and even clods of earth from his body. The greatest threat to his recovery then had been the likelihood of infection, which we had fought off by scrupulously cleaning the open wounds, using washes of lavender and lemon, and applying sterile dressings. I was alarmed to hear that he was now losing blood so dramatically. I was not prepared for what I found. The young man had run from his bed and begun charging wildly about the room that served as the main ward. He had apparently been raving, shouting out all manner of incoherent fears and accusations, one minute attacking another patient, then setting about an orderly, before racing the length of the great hall and hurling himself straight through the tall window. He must have done so with tremendous force to have broken his way through the wooden frame, metal lattice, and the glass itself. He was on the paving stones outside, held down by two soldiers and an orderly, his face and arms a mess of lacerations, some still with glass within them. The worst of these had severed an art
ery in his arm. The nearest soldier, evidently a man of some battle experience, was attempting to staunch the flow of blood, but the more the musketeer struggled the faster it pumped out of him.

  “Let me through!” I flung myself on the ground beside the stricken man.

  The soldier screamed and fought against all of us with an astonishing strength.

  “I don’t understand it, mistress,” the orderly said, struggling to hold the patient’s kicking legs. “He leapt from his bed. Started running mad. But he has had no fever. I believed he would be restored to good health before long. And now…”

  “James!” I tried to make him hear me, to calm him. “James, be still. We wish only to help you.”

  “The guns!” he screamed, his eyes staring past me at a horror of the war visible only to him at that moment. “I can hear them! Dear Lord, the guns! We must run. Get away, I tell you, run!”

  “Hush, James, there are no guns. You are safe here.” My words were useless.

  “What is it, mistress, why has he taken on so?”

  “Bone fever,” I said, gasping as I wrestled to put pressure on his gushing wound. “Fetch me brandy, and needle and thread, and a candle. Fetch them now!” I yelled.

  I noticed Captain Anderson had joined us. He hovered uncertainly beside me.

  “The man has lost his wits,” he murmured.

  I explained as best I could. “His wrist was crushed. Tiny fragments of bone have traveled through his body in the bloodstream…”

  “The what?” The captain was at a loss to make sense of what I was saying.

  In my agitation I forgot to rein in my use of medical terms and references to things jarringly out of time. “His brain has become infected due to the bacteria caused by the compound fracture and in all probability the infection that has entered his system because of it. His mental confusion and psychotic state has been brought about as a result of…” I glanced up and saw the bewilderment on the faces around me. “… by what is taking place in his body. Hold him still! Where is that brandy?”