Witchborn

by Nicholas Bowling

  Next, she stuck a finger in her ear, and scooped out the candle wax she had stuffed in there earlier that evening. For a couple of weeks now she had taken to collecting the little white blobs that dripped on to the floor from the governors’ candles, and used them to block out the laughing, crying and screaming that echoed sporadically through the passageways. It always got worse at night.

  Her cell looked strangely pretty in the moonlight, frozen into a delicate, white stillness. The floor had been swept, the bucket in the corner had disappeared, and she had been given a bundle of fresh straw to make her bed in, as though she were a prize cow. Above the straw hung a pair of manacles, which the governors had not used. They had tried, but her hands and wrists were too thin and kept slipping out. Nonetheless, they still served as a bleak reminder that she was a prisoner.

  A prisoner, not a patient. ‘Bethlem Royal Hospital’ read the inscription above the gate, but she had realized the truth of it very quickly. Bedlam, as they called it, was no hospital, and she wasn’t here to be nursed back to health.

  Alyce padded over to the window, her feet as hard and icy as the stones underneath them, and looked through the bars of her cell. A huge, ragged raven was perched on the gables of the governors’ lodgings. It flapped noisily across the courtyard, then glided over the gatehouse and out into the street.

  It wasn’t the other prisoners that kept her from sleeping as much as her own memories. They made a terrifying noise of their own, inside her head, that couldn’t be blocked out. Those last moments of panic: the fear in her mother’s eyes, the grip of her fingers on Alyce’s shoulders, so tight it had left bruises. Then the sight of the carriage pulling into the village at the bottom of the hill, her mother scrawling and sealing the letter, and bundling Alyce into the cellar underneath the cottage.

  Make for Bankside, she’d said. Find the hangman John Dee. Give him this letter.

  The trapdoor closing, and after that…

  Alyce’s frozen face became flushed and hot. Don’t think about it, she scolded herself. Her eyes stung. She thought she could smell burning. Nothing to think about. There’s nothing to be done.

  All the way to London, Alyce had muttered her mother’s words, over and over until they seemed to lose all meaning: Bankside. The Hangman. John Dee. Bankside. The Hangman. John Dee. She’d still been chanting when Master Makepiece had found her in the ditch, wrapped up in her wet, filthy hair and half dead from exposure. It was no wonder he’d thought Bedlam the best place for her. She must have seemed quite out of her mind. And maybe she was.

  When he’d first taken her in, she was only supposed to have stayed for a few days. There were endless arguments outside her cell about her upkeep, and how she had no one to pay for her, and how she should be thrown out to make way for an inmate who could bring in some much-needed funds. But her sponsor had stuck by her, despite the objections of his fellow governors, and it was now several weeks since she’d made this stinking cell her home.

  Suddenly, she heard the sound of a key rattling in the lock behind her. She hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes.

  Let it be the nice one. Please, please, let it be the nice one.

  It wasn’t the nice one. It was the other one. The fat one. The one who shouted at her, and scolded her, and told her she had been cast out by God, that the Devil was in her, and plunged her into baths of ice to cure her of her ill humour. Despite the cold, his face was red and sweating, with thin strands of straw-coloured hair slapped down on to his forehead. He was still panting from climbing the single set of stairs up to Alyce’s cell.

  ‘Hello, my dove,’ he slurred. Drunk, again. She shivered. ‘Cold one tonight. Everyone’s getting something to keep ’em warm, Master Makepiece’s orders.’ He spoke the name with barely disguised venom, and held out a bowl of porridge.

  Alyce crept forward and took it, keeping her eyes fixed on the governor’s glistening face. The bowl was freezing.

  He watched her as she retreated into the corner and lifted a spoonful of the grey slop to her lips.

  ‘Alyce!’ he said, frowning in mock outrage, and wagging his finger. ‘Good Christians say grace before a meal.’

  He had played this game before, and she always lost. She didn’t know what ‘grace’ was, and even if she had done, speaking was not something that came easily to her any more. Sometimes Master Makepiece coaxed a few words out of her, but she had never said a thing to this Master Kemp. In her silent world, she heard them talk about her. Melancholic, Makepiece had said. Kemp, on the other hand . . . well, his descriptions of her were a bit more imaginative.

  ‘If you can’t thank God for the food in front of you, girl, I’m not sure I can let you eat it in good faith.’ The governor reached out a hand to reclaim the bowl, and Alyce flinched. ‘Repeat after me: benedic nobis, Domine deus . . .’

  Alyce said nothing. She just stared.

  ‘Repeat after me,’ said Kemp, nourishing his frustration, allowing it to bloom across his face. His jowls wobbled. ‘Benedic nobis . . .’

  Again he was met with silence. In one motion, he stepped forward and grabbed Alyce’s chin in his stubby little fingers, and then began working her jaw up and down as though she were a puppet he might force to speak.

  Alyce grew hot with shame, which quickly turned to anger. She gripped the edge of the bowl, and hurled its contents at him. The porridge struck him square in the face with a deeply satisfying slap.

  There was a strange pause. Master Kemp peered at her through his lumpy, gelatinous mask. Oats clung to his eyebrows and dripped from his chin. Alyce wanted to laugh, for the first time in what felt like years. But then the moment passed. He wiped a sleeve over his eyes and roared into life, seizing her by the throat and pouring curses upon her.

  ‘Edmund!’

  The second voice surprised her. It was low and warm, but weary. Over Kemp’s shoulder she saw another man standing in the open doorway. It was Master Makepiece, the one who’d found her in the first place, and the only governor who shown her the slightest kindness. Kemp released her from his grip, and turned with a sharp sigh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She is even less likely to speak with your stinking breath in her face. Leave her be.’

  Master Kemp snorted. ‘She refuses to accept the Lord, Thomas! How can she ever hope for salvation if she cannot pray?’

  ‘Not all prayers need be spoken aloud, Edmund. God knows this child’s thoughts better than we do.’

  Master Kemp looked back at her. Alyce kept her face perfectly still.

  ‘It’s not right. She should be shouting her faith from the rooftops. Calling to Him, begging Him for forgiveness.’

  ‘She is not allowed on the rooftops,’ Master Makepiece said calmly.

  Master Kemp looked at him coolly, and then hiccoughed, ruining his composure. ‘All of the others, for all their caterwauling, they can still say a few words of prayer. They still know the power of the cross when they see it. But this one . . .’ He shoved his finger in her face.

  Master Makepiece allowed Master Kemp to trail off, and waited for quiet. ‘It hardly matters now, anyway. She is leaving. Tonight.’

  ‘Leaving?’ said Kemp.

  Leaving? thought Alyce.

  ‘Yes. They are waiting for her downstairs.’

  ‘They?’ It took a moment before Kemp realized who Master Makepiece was referring to. Then Alyce watched his sagging face split into a grotesque smile. ‘You see! I was right!’ He turned back to her. ‘You’d better get learning those prayers now, girl. I knew it!’

  Makepiece ignored him. ‘Come child. There is somebody to see you.’

  Alyce came forward, one cold foot settling in the spilt porridge as she went. She gave Kemp a wide berth, his grin like a carved, exaggerated mask in the moonlight. Once outside in the passageway, the air thrummed with the wailing and laughing and demented chattering of the other inmates. She wanted to plug her ears again.

  Master Makepiece placed a hand gently on her shoulder, an
d she looked up at him. His features were somehow soft and hard at the same time – as though the years had worn then down into an expression of resolved, immutable kindness. But tonight they looked sadder than usual. He peered at her from under his heavy eyebrows.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alyce,’ he said, and led her down the stairs.

  Without Master Makepiece saying anything, Alyce knew who was waiting for her down in Bedlam’s gatehouse. Of course the witchfinders had found her. Who else would it be? As she passed the other cells, white faces stared out through the tiny square windows, men and women, eyes wild and unblinking.

  Her stomach was too empty to feel sick. She just felt hollow, thin, like a sheet on a washing line. She started to sweat; boiling underneath her skin, freezing on top of it.

  ‘Though I do not agree with Master Kemp’s methods,’ said Thomas quietly as they walked in the echoing darkness, ‘he may be right about the need for prayer. When you are taken from here . . .’ He paused. Alyce stared at her feet. ‘When you are taken, you may find that you have few friends apart from God. Remember He will always listen to you.’

  I wouldn’t put money on that, thought Alyce. Her mother had hardly ever spoken about God. The other villagers did, though, and apparently He didn’t think very highly of either her or her mother.

  When they reached the gatehouse, it was bathed in the dull, rust-coloured light of a dying fire, giving it a slightly infernal feel. From a corner behind the fireplace emerged two shadows, more substantial than the others, as though the darkness itself had gathered itself together to give them form and motion.

  Curious, thought Alyce. These two looked very different from the men who had come for her mother. The fellow with the hat she saw in her dreams most nights. He had been confident, brazen, swaggering around in his pearls. This pair looked much more furtive, nervous even, both in black, rough-spun travelling cloaks with hoods over their heads. They also had swathes of material pulled up over their faces, so she could only see their eyes – and even those were blank and glassy in the firelight.

  ‘Alyce,’ said one of them. Strange, again. A woman’s voice, but the figure that spoke did not look at all feminine. The other man – or maybe he was a woman too – turned to look at his companion, as though he were just as surprised as Alyce was. ‘Please come with us.’

  Alyce swallowed. They must have tracked her all the way from her home. How was that even possible?

  ‘This is not right,’ said Master Makepiece, his hands on Alyce’s shoulders. His tone suggested he’d made this same speech before, and had never been listened to. ‘It is not Christian. How many winters do you think she has seen? Thirteen? Fourteen? I found her in a ditch. She has no one to pay her upkeep. Is there no room in your hearts for forgiveness of one so young?’

  The man stared at him, but didn’t reply. Then he turned to whisper something in his partner’s ear.

  The woman had not made any movements either, except to cock her head while she scrutinized Alyce. ‘Where are her effects?’ she asked. ‘What did she have on her person when you took her in?’

  ‘Only the clothes she was wearing,’ said Makepiece.

  ‘Fetch them.’

  The governor sighed. ‘It is our custom to give our patients’ apparel to almshouses, to clothe the poor.’

  ‘And have you done that?’ asked the man, who still had one eye on his companion.

  Thomas shook his head slowly. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then give them to us.’

  Alyce was suddenly very alert, poised between Master Makepiece and the two figures standing in front of her. The governor’s words had kindled a small, hopeful flame in her belly, which she fed and protected, holding her hands over her navel as though physically trying to keep it from going out.

  If they still had her smock, there was every chance the letter would still be stashed in a pocket. If she could reclaim that bit of parchment, escape Bedlam, get to Bankside – wherever that was . . .

  The hope inside her guttered and spat. She was so weak, so hungry, her nerves taut and brittle as ice. Maybe she wasn’t meant to escape, anyway. Perhaps that was her fate: that she was meant to be plucked out of existence just like her mother had been, an inconvenience to the smooth running of the world, a thorn in the side of the cosmos. Perhaps she deserved it, too, after what she’d done.

  Master Makepiece left her alone in the gatehouse with her captors, and shuffled out of the back door to whatever dank corner of the hospital they had stored her clothes in. Alyce shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’ she murmured.

  Neither of them answered.

  ‘You know what I did. You know who I am.’

  ‘We know who you are,’ the woman said. The fabric concealing her face rippled under her breath. ‘Do you?’

  The oddness of the question caught Alyce unawares. Was this woman toying with her? She could taste bile in the back of her mouth, as though she was about to be sick. She hated her. She hated them. More than anything.

  ‘Your mother never told you, did she? Before she died?’

  Alyce swallowed, and clenched her fists into two stony balls. ‘I’ll tell you what my mother said, before you burnt her.’

  ‘Listen, child—’

  ‘She said: “If they catch you, you have to kill them.”’

  The pair looked at each other.

  ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t try,’ Alyce said, pointing a thin, dirty finger at them both. ‘Because I’ve already had some practice, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it.’

  She dashed to the door. Beyond it, the darkness and mist that had settled into the courtyard waited to embrace her. The woman shouted, lurching forwards, and just as Alyce got a foot upon the threshold, she felt the man’s huge hands clasp around her waist and haul her back. She tried to prise his fingers off her, but each one was buried firm as tree roots into her skin. Flailing, she jabbed him in the groin with a sharp elbow, and a muffled grunt escaped from the scarf covering his mouth.

  She was just squirming free of him when the woman grabbed one of her wrists, but that only gave Alyce more momentum as she whirled round and raked a handful of filthy nails across her face. The woman’s hood fell back from her head. Her features were deathly pale, angular, almost skull-like, and the dirty red glow of the fire only made them look more ghoulish.

  At the same time, she heard shouting and footsteps from the passageway. Master Makepiece was returning. The woman hurriedly rearranged the cowl and the layers of material over her face, while the man clutched at his manhood and whimpered. Alyce considered waiting for Makepiece. Her clothes. The letter. No, there was no time. She seized a tankard from the gatehouse table, swung it into the man’s temple for good measure, and then ran out into the courtyard.

  The main gate was shut. She would have to escape out of the back of the hospital buildings, past the remains of the chapel, through the graveyard. Her feet slapped against the flagstones as she ran, the madmen and madwomen peering sadly at her through the bars of their cells.

  When she reached the chapel wall, she stopped, panting. Moonlight filtered down between the branches of the yew trees, casting pale shapes and figures that twisted with the breeze. The place was alive with ghosts. She thought of her mother again, and physically shook the memory from her head. Think later. Just run.

  The woman’s voice echoed somewhere behind her, and Alyce leapt over the wall, into the graveyard. She ducked and weaved from one headstone to the next, among the poor, mad, buried souls of Bedlam’s past, feet crunching on the frosted earth. Behind the chapel ruins, another low wall, and a ditch, which she skidded to the bottom of, only just keeping her balance, until she planted her feet in six inches of dirty, freezing water.

  And then she was out, free, running across Moor Fields under the moon with the grass whipping her calves and breath exploding from her in hot, glistening clouds.

  The feeling of triumph didn’t last. She h
ad no idea where she was going. But she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Twice she thought she heard a man’s gruff voice carried on the wind, and each time she found another ounce of energy to drive her legs a hundred paces further. There was another sound, too – it was like the loose flapping of her own smock, a few yards behind her, above her head. Beating wings, she could have sworn. She only had the courage to glance behind her once, and when she did everything seemed swallowed up by the vastness of the midnight sky.

  She ran until she was at the foot of London’s city walls, and she followed them around until she was met by one of the great turreted gatehouses. The portcullis was down. The city was closed.

  Alyce’s tired legs buckled under her, and she crawled on all fours down into a corner where the wall met the tower. A variety of animals had marked their territory here, but there was a breeze, and after the stench of Bedlam she didn’t find it particularly bothersome.

  She got cold quickly, now she wasn’t moving. Her memories caught up with her too, as though she had momentarily outpaced them in her escape. She looked out over the open fields, and found the world an empty, lonely place.

  What am I doing here?

  Thinking of home – though she hardly wanted to – something occurred to her. She tucked her heels under her thighs and raked through the dirt for what she needed to keep her safe through the night.

  Straw. Sticks. Feathers. Bone.

  She twisted and wove them together, her hands moving deftly despite the cold, until they began to form a recognizably human figure. She could almost hear her mother’s voice, over her shoulder, encouraging her, helping her to get things right. Then she realized that, for the mommet to be anything other than completely useless, it would need some of her hair. There was nothing to be done with the horrible bristles that poked out of her scalp at the moment.

  Alyce sighed and curled up like a dog. She hugged her knees closer to her body, clutching the straw figure tightly, shivering too much to sleep.