The Silver Witch

by Paula Brackston

  ‘The princess came to me, a short while ago. She asked me to help her.’

  ‘Asked you?’

  ‘It was indeed a measure of her desperation. She … she wanted to know if she would ever give you an heir.’ He draws back a little from me now, his face glum. ‘I sought answers to her question in a vision.’

  ‘And what did your seeing tell you?’

  I hesitate, but I must speak plainly. ‘She will never bear you a child. That part was clear…’

  He keeps his voice level, but I know this is a blow for him every bit as painful as the one I have endured. ‘And the other part? You suggest there was more.’

  ‘I saw men, an army; they were attacking the crannog. They were chasing you. They were relentless. They drove you into the lake…’

  He lets go my hand at last. He is quiet for a long time before he asks, ‘This vision foretold my death?’

  ‘I cannot be sure. There are other ways to read what I saw.’

  He gives a mirthless laugh, standing up and pacing around the room. ‘Soldiers hunt me to a watery grave? Such a vision speaks clearly to me.’

  ‘Which is why you have me to interpret such seeings for you.’ I try to get up, but the pain in my head is so sharp it is as if I have been struck anew. I clutch at the wound. Brynach hurries to my side.

  ‘You are not yet healed. Do not trouble yourself with…’

  ‘With your safety?’ I gasp as he lays me back on my bed. ‘It is my purpose, my prince.’

  ‘And one which I pray you live to fulfill for many years, but that will not be the case if you struggle from your sickbed too soon.’ He attempts a smile. ‘Consider how grumpy that would make Hywel, after all his hard work.’

  ‘Very well. I would not inflict his temper on you without me to protect you. I will rest a little longer before we talk. But talk we must.’ My efforts to cease his flapping around me like a mother hen are poor. Another thought occurs to me. ‘Have you been seen coming here? Hywel says you stayed with me. Were you not missed?’

  ‘Seren, when I thought you were … when I feared I would lose you forever, I vowed to any gods who cared to hear me, if you lived I would have us deny each other no longer. I would not keep from you, would not continue my life without you. No matter the gossips and whispers. No matter the disapproval. And I will discover who it was who wished you dead.’

  Such a declaration moves me so that I must bite my lip to staunch tears I do not wish him to see. ‘Such behavior might provoke another attack,’ I whisper.

  ‘You will not be unguarded.’

  ‘Am I to be bait, then?’

  He takes my hand again. This time he lifts it and presses it to his lips. I feel the softness of his kiss and the heat of his breath against my skin. ‘My love. My love. My love,’ is all he says.

  The following days and weeks pass in a heady mix of pain, indolence, and delight. Every day my prince comes to my home and sends Hywel away. For a few hours he is mine. If it is daylight we sit by the fire in my house and talk. If it is nighttime we go out and walk beneath the stars. Slowly my head heals and my strength returns. He courts me as if we were carefree youngsters, and always he is respectful, gentle and proper. He kisses my hand, but no more than this.

  This evening has a special beauty about it. The snow has gone and there is a smell of spring in the air. We walk under a full moon so bright it casts sharp-edged shadows. I lead Brynach to the lake and show him the perfect double of the moon that floats upon the water on such nights as this. We sit atop a smooth rock that juts out over the lake and peer down to study our own faces, side by side, slick and darkly mirrored on the silky surface.

  ‘No copy of you can be as wondrous as you truly are,’ he tells me.

  ‘I think it is a flattering likeness,’ I disagree. ‘The years have been kinder to me in the lake than out here. But it makes you look sorrowful, my prince.’

  ‘I am only so when I am away from you, my prophet.’

  ‘You have your princely duties,’ I say, and neither of us will choose to name these.

  ‘Would that you could be my princess,’ he says suddenly, a bitterness to his voice that I have not heard before. I put my hand on his.

  ‘Let us not waste our time together wishing for what can never be. I am content.’

  ‘I am not!’ He throws a stone into the water and our faces are broken to pieces by the disturbance. He stands, still holding my hand, and leads me back from the shore into the cover of the woodland. An owl swoops by as we slip between the trees. Somewhere near a hedgehog snuffles, newly emerged from its winter sleep. Prince Brynach stops when he comes to the shelter of a mossy oak, pulling me to him in a swift movement, finding my mouth with his. His kisses are deep and taste of passion, of want, of longing. For a moment I do not respond, my mind forbidding me, years of trampling my own desire beneath the heavy tread of duty keeping me from expressing my own desire. But my body acts as if cut loose from my control. I feel my need for my prince’s love burning hotter than a fire of oak, and such heat melts my resistance and my reserve.

  ‘My love!’ he murmurs, shaking my hair free of its bonds and running his hand through it. ‘My living ghost, my silver goddess, my shining heart…’ He kisses my eyes, my face, my throat, hungrily, eagerly, the waiting and wanting of years at last overcoming him.

  My hands trace the muscles of his back as he presses me against the trunk of the great tree. So much strength turned to gentleness. So much power brought to sweetness for want of me.

  ‘Let me love you,’ he whispers in my ear. ‘Be mine now. Forever. I cannot live otherwise. I swear it.’

  I gasp, unnerved by the force of my own desire for him.

  He undoes the brooch that holds my cape, and slips the tunic from my shoulders, exposing my bare flesh to the moonlight. He touches the drawings on my pale skin, following the dark curves of the ink patterns.

  ‘I would know all of you, in all your wonder,’ he says, dropping to his knees to press his mouth to my quivering belly.

  And I know I can deny him no longer. I know I can never again turn from him. Let the future judge us as it will, the present is ours, and it is glorious!

  13

  TILDA

  They are both so shaken by the events at the dig that neither speaks on the journey back to the cottage. Lucas was in a state of understandable rage over the condition of the dig, the broken lights and the failed attempt to raise the remains. He didn’t blame Tilda outright, after all, how could he? And yet a large part of his anger was directed at her. If he could not say exactly how she had been connected to the calamitous occurrences that had so completely wrecked the dig, he clearly knew she was, in some crucial way, involved. There had been so much confusion, so much panic when the lights had started exploding, with people scattering in all directions, that nobody save Dylan and Tilda had seen the last falling light halt halfway to the ground. Or if they had, they had not believed what they saw, and quickly allowed themselves to banish the image from their minds and address the more tangible, pressing issues to hand, such as clearing broken glass and checking mangled equipment in the half-light. When Lucas’s language and demeanor became almost aggressive, Dylan was quick to defend Tilda, the two men nearly coming to blows until she simply turned and marched over to the Landrover.

  She is hugely relieved to be home again. As they approach the cottage she can hear Thistle howling, and the second she opens the door the dog bounds out, greeting her with such exuberance she is nearly knocked off her feet.

  ‘Okay, girl,’ she says, kneeling to hug her tightly. ‘It’s okay,’ she repeats.

  Dylan shuts the kitchen door behind him and leans on the Rayburn. He pushes his mop of hair back from his face. ‘Right,’ he says, the tension showing in his voice. ‘I really need to know what just happened.’ When Tilda says nothing, he tries again. ‘Look, maybe I’m just shaky because I narrowly missed having my head broken open, but I’m having trouble making sense of things. What I do know is
, I’m in one piece, nothing smashed or crushed, no bones snapped, standing here in your kitchen pretty hale and hearty, and the fact that I am is down to you, Tilda. It’s because of something you did.’

  She gets up, leaving the dog, and busies herself with finding small logs from the basket.

  ‘Tilda?’

  ‘I don’t know! You think I can explain it? Any of it?’

  ‘Any of what? This has something to do with what you saw in the Landrover, doesn’t it? Did you see the same thing again, down there at the dig? What made you jump into the trench like that?’

  ‘This is going to sound completely crazy.’ She shakes her head, pulling open the fire door and jamming wood inside. Smoke billows into the room.

  ‘I’m prepared for crazy,’ Dylan assures her. ‘I just felt crazy whistle past my ear. I just saw crazy stop a heavy object in midair.’

  ‘What makes you think I have the answers?’

  ‘Okay, stop. Just stop.’ Gently, he shuts the stove door, takes Tilda’s hands in his and makes her stand and face him. ‘Small steps. First, what did you see?’

  ‘Lots of things. Moving about. Swirling. There was so much happening, so much that was so powerful and strange. Maddest thing is, it wasn’t scary, not that, but then … I saw … someone. Someone … bad.’

  ‘The same someone you saw before? In the back of Linny?’

  Tilda nods.

  ‘You think they came out of the grave?’

  ‘I think she was trying to. I think she would have if they hadn’t dropped the stone back in place.’ She meets his gaze now. ‘I think she will. When Lucas opens that grave again she’ll come out. And I won’t be able to stop her. And she’s dangerous, Dylan. Those lights didn’t fall on their own. We both know that. There was no wind, no one knocked them over. It was … whoever, whatever came out of that hole in the ground.’

  ‘But you…’ he squeezes her hands. ‘You did something … amazing. How…?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you ever done anything like that before?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she says, more sharply than she meant to.

  ‘Oh? So are we not, even now, going to talk about a boat motor that wouldn’t and then would start, or a clock that keeps stopping, or power supplies that blow?’

  ‘That was … is … different.’ She pauses, then explains. ‘I can control that sort of thing now. Most of the time. If I put my mind to it. Or rather, if I let my mind … I dunno. It’s not something I can put into words.’

  ‘Have you always been able to do that stuff?’

  ‘Only since I came here.’

  ‘You think there’s something about this place, something weird?’

  ‘Not this place, but me in this place. I don’t mean the cottage, but, well, around here. And that terrible ghost, whatever it is, the way it seems to seek me out … But mostly, it’s something about being near the lake that has … changed me. No, wait, it’s not that.’ A moment of clarity makes her smile, despite her rattled state. ‘I’m not different now I’m here, I’m more me. More my real self. More how I should be.’ She searches his face for understanding but sees only bewilderment.

  And who can blame him?

  She rubs her temples. ‘Look, I’m sorry, you don’t have to stay . . ’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘No. It’s just, well, I want to load the kiln. I want to fire the pots tonight.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I know this’ll sound ridiculous; I don’t fully get it myself yet. I don’t have it all worked out, I only know that the bracelet helped me today. Down by the lake, I couldn’t have done whatever it was I did without the bracelet. And the drawings on it match the drawings on my pots. It’s the connection that makes everything work … makes me able to do … things.’ She sighs heavily. ‘Trust me, I’m finding this as difficult to grasp as you are,’ she tells him. ‘If I try to figure it out any more I shall lose what sanity I have left. Right now I need to do something. Something I believe might help protect us from that … thing. And this is what I know how to do, okay?’

  ‘Then let me stay. Let me help.’

  ‘You sure you want to be near me? Seems stuff … happens around me.’

  ‘Or perhaps the only place that’s safe is with you, have you looked at it that way? I mean, you saved me tonight, no question.’

  ‘But I’m the one who saw the … ghost, apparition, thing that came out of that grave. I’m the one it keeps leaping at, keeps trying to scare the life out of.’

  ‘Safety in numbers then, better stick together. Yeah?’

  She hesitates, then picks up the basket of kindling and thrusts it into his arms. ‘Have it your way. You can set the fire in the kiln while I get the pots loaded.’

  The moment she steps back into the studio Tilda finds her mood shifts, as she knew it would. To engage in her creative endeavor is to lose herself in that act of creation, even when attending to the seemingly mundane process of preparing for a firing. As she carefully takes the wrapping off her pots and reveals them in their raw, unfinished state, she feels once again that powerful connection. A connection to the result of her own artistic effort, but also, this time, a connection to the ancient patterns and symbols she has worked into her pieces. She takes a minute to gaze at the bounding hares and the chasing hound. To let her eyes travel along the lithe, supple limbs, feeling their easy movement, imagining the strength of the muscles propelling the animals forward across frozen ground, immersing herself in the idea of their running free and wild, so that soon she is convinced she can hear the dual rhythms of their heartbeats, the hares’ fluttering and fast, the hound’s slower, but every bit as urgent and vital.

  It is past midnight by the time Tilda and Dylan are able to step back and look at the smoldering kiln, watching as reassuring amounts of smoke pour steadily forth from its short chimney. The construction looks home built, but nonetheless robust, and the mortar appears to be set firm in the gaps between the bricks. The snow around it has melted, so that it sits, stout and russet, standing out against the stark whiteness its glow illuminates close up, fading into the darkness a few strides on. It took them two hours to carefully load the shelves with Tilda’s pieces, and another to get the fire properly going so that they could then seal up the door.

  ‘You know, I think it might actually work,’ says Dylan.

  Tilda nods emphatically. ‘It will work,’ she says. ‘It has to.’

  At last, with the fire beneath the kiln packed with as much wood as will fit into it, Dylan is able to convince Tilda it does not need to be watched. They decide to go inside, get something to eat and come out and check and restoke the fire at regular intervals through the night.

  The cottage has warmed up in the hours they have been busy. The Rayburn fills the kitchen with a slightly smoky but welcome heat, so that the freezing temperature outside is kept at bay. In the sitting room, Tilda takes the bracelet from her pocket and puts it carefully on the small table by the window before laying a fire in the hearth and putting a match to it. Dylan fetches what food he can find from the kitchen.

  ‘Here we are,’ he says, setting down a tray on the coffee table. ‘Bread, passed its best, but still brown rather than blue; cheese, a tub of coleslaw, two packets of crisps, some chocolate biscuits and’—he waves a bottle triumphantly—‘the remains of the brandy.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can cope with booze,’ says Tilda, settling herself next to Thistle on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire.

  ‘Yes you can.’ Dylan gets glasses, then sits as close as Thistle will tolerate. ‘It is a known fact that a little alcohol is good for shock and exhaustion.’

  ‘That is rubbish.’

  ‘Really? Can all those Saint Bernard dogs with their little barrels be wrong?’

  Despite herself Tilda smiles. The events of the day have left her drained, and she is glad not to be alone.

  No, more than that; I’m glad Dylan is here.

  This r
ealization is comforting and unnerving at the same time. She takes a proffered glass from him and sips it, leaning back against the base of the armchair and gazing into the dancing flames in the hearth.

  ‘We will need to check the kiln in a few hours,’ she tells him. ‘We have to keep as even a temperature as possible.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Well, ideally, twelve hours.’

  ‘Okay, we can measure that by daylight, given that we can’t reliably keep a clock or watch working around you.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

  Dylan takes a swig of brandy. ‘No problem. We’ll go by the position of the sun. We must have set the thing going near eleven. Daybreak is about seven-thirty this time of year. As long as there’s not too much cloud we should be able to tell when the sun is directly overhead. What will we do then?’

  ‘Rake out the fire and let the temperature drop slowly. We should be able to open the kiln about noon the following day.’

  ‘Wow, that’s a long time to wait. How can you resist having a peek?’

  ‘Easily, seeing as to do so would wreck the firing. If the temperature inside the kiln drops too quickly the pots could crack or shatter, never mind what it would do to the glazes.’

  They sit in peaceful silence for a while, sharing the simple food, gradually letting the alcohol and the warmth of the fire take the tension from them. At last, Tilda can feel her feet again properly and her shoulders start to ache less as she relaxes them. Her eyes are gritty from tiredness, the drying effects of the cold weather and the irritation of the wood smoke. She finds herself rubbing them.

  ‘Why don’t you take them out?’ Dylan asks.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Your lenses. If your eyes are sore, you should take out your lenses.’ He shrugs. ‘You really don’t need them anymore, do you?’

  She opens her mouth to protest, to explain, to make the case for the covering up of her strangeness, but thinks better of it. Instead, she does as he suggests. The relief is instant and she stares at the shiny little discs of plastic in her palm, hesitating only a moment before flinging them into the fire. They hiss and flare, making Thistle start.