Hexenhaus

by Nikki McWatters

  But right now my mother needs to tread very carefully in the real world and think with a rational and reasoning head and I am terrified that all the nonsense she has dabbled in has made her unable to do this. I am concerned that her otherworldliness will work against her in this very often cruel world.

  I ignore another look from Liam Chandling as I leave the school gates to get on the bus, and I feel a measure of comfort in the usual and routine when Ben sits beside me.

  ‘I’m sure it will all blow over and be forgotten before the week’s out,’ he reassures me.

  I’m not so sure.

  ‘I mean, your mum is lovely and Isaiah is a bit of a weirdo, not to mention his mother …’ Ben continues before being interrupted.

  Sophie is obviously eavesdropping because she shoves her face between our shoulders and weighs into the conversation that she has not been invited to join. ‘That’s not cool, Ben,’ she says sharply.

  She is right, of course. There is, from all accounts, something very wrong with Isaiah Hooper at the moment, and when questioned about what is causing him such distress, he can only say my mother’s name. But my mother also has the right to defend herself against the galloping accusations that she caused this weird malady.

  ‘Well, someone is clearly lying or very seriously mistaken about something. You can’t actually just jump to the conclusion that the liar is my mother, either, Sophie. That’s not fair,’ I retort, although I know that there is no good that can come of being defensive just yet.

  ‘Look,’ Ben cautions, ‘let’s just let the people involved work it out and keep out of it. We can only speculate and that’s dangerous. At the end of the day it’s up to a psychiatrist, or whoever, to figure out what’s wrong with Hooper. He’s either sick or very upset and I don’t know how one person can have the power to make that happen. I don’t want to get involved.’

  But I am in it. I am right there in it.

  We fall into silence while students squeal and growl around us. Paper balls, scrunched tightly, fly like cannons about our heads. I have the window seat and stare out at the landscape, a palette of undulating hillsides. My cheek is pressed against the dirty glass and I see a pair of hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching and leaving one another in an aerial ballet that seems to embody my own scattered thoughts. I think of my mother’s tears and protestations, and I think of the searing, burning accusation in the eyes of all the other students who know but know nothing at all. And I flit and duck between believing my mother wholly and doubting her. I know she would never ever willingly hurt anyone or anything. She cries when she finds a dead mouse in the kitchen. She is fickle and flighty. She is fragile and foolish. I just sometimes wonder if her total belief in the ethereal might be dangerous. Not dangerous in a life-threatening way, but in the way that she misses things, misses people’s feelings. She didn’t seem to understand at all how deeply I felt about seeing my father again. She just thrust that at me and I had to catch it like a ball coming at my face from nowhere. I worry about my mother as if she is my child sometimes. Mum is so gentle and soft, and in a hard, unforgiving world, that’s not necessarily always a great way to be. This whole Isaiah business has left a deep sourness in the bottom of my stomach. My mother is a white witch in the Wiccan sense of the word but, with enemies creeping out from under the rocks in town, I fear we’re going to need her to be a warrior woman. I’m not sure she has that in her.

  The bus passes wheat-stubbled fields that reach down toward a dam where geese potter. My breath fogs the window. I let a finger trace a cross in the condensation and shut my eyes and ears to the smell and clamour of sweat-stained school students as I try to let everything float away into a drone of dark silence.

  I hop off and Ben waves from the bus as I cross the road from the train gate to the Good Yarn corner store. I wonder what he’s thinking. I avoid the locals chatting in the main street, preferring to look down at my Converse shoes stepping one foot in front of another, as regular and predictable as my breath.

  May stops me and I startle when she calls my name. ‘Paisley. How’s your mum going?’ she asks as she catches up with me. I am so glad to hear a friendly voice. May is a loud and jolly woman with a big laugh.

  ‘She’s okay,’ I shrug.

  ‘Tell her to call me about the festival,’ she says with a smile. ‘I don’t want all this hocus pocus rubbish to get in the way of our plans. Full steam ahead. Tell her to call me.’

  And then she’s gone, blustering back down the street.

  I go around the back of the shop, through the gate, past some wrought-iron garden furniture that has seen better days, past the succulent scents of the rehydrated herbs in the pots and up the steps, through the damp-smelling laundry, down the dark hallway, to the living room where my mother sits like a marble statue, upright, pale and pink, dressed in her white nightrobe. She has not dressed all day.

  ‘May wants you to call her about the festival,’ I say, frowning, but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘Someone else has come forward and made a complaint against me,’ she says in a small wooden voice. ‘A woman says she’s had chronic migraines since I did reiki on her. I think they’re all out to destroy the festival.’

  I feel sick and my legs feel heavy. This is just the beginning. I know it’s only going to get worse.

  VERONICA

  BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1628

  We ran until our feet ached, fleeing deep into the forest from the witch-hunters. Hans tried hard to keep up with me but more than once I had to stop, panting, to help him to his feet after a stumble. His knees would have been raw beneath his breeches but he soldiered on, teeth clenched. The pine trees flowed over hillsides and down into valleys, forming a blanket of forest. Between the trees, patchy and always pleasantly surprising, lay open fields running alongside blue-green streams speckled with mossy rocks, lichen-draped trees and apple groves with knotted branches sporting red-green fruit, some spoiled and bored out by hungry birds.

  We stopped in one particularly wide and open oasis, catching our breath. There was little chance of the men finding us, even if they had a mind to. It was more likely that they would sit astride their horses, stamping and steaming in the shadows, awaiting our return to the horse and cart. They might have been any soldiers or journeymen but something, some glimmer of knowing, had told me otherwise and it was just as well that I had listened to my inner voice. It rarely disappointed me. I was sure that we were safe from them. From bears and wolves, I was not so certain.

  I love the scent of apples. We feasted on them, Hans and me, until our bellies were full and we felt slightly ill. Then we dipped our hands as cups into the cold running water and slurped at it until our shirtfronts were damp. I looked at us, me with brambles and catching burs on my papa’s fine coat and Hans with his shock of blond hair and badly scuffed boots. We had nothing. Nothing except the clothing on our bodies. I had little doubt that our names, as the children of Rosa and Johannes Junius, condemned and confessed witches, would now be on a list of wanted fugitives. Even in Würzburg, if we ever made it there, we would need to be careful and keep our heads down. It would be best to keep off the roads and stick to the forest, although I had not yet come across any walking trails that might lead to villages or hamlets nestled here and there.

  ‘Where will we sleep tonight?’ Hans asked me as we lay back in the grass and let the warmth of the sun dry our shirts.

  ‘We will need to find some shelter, perhaps a hunter’s cabin,’ I told him, thinking of the beasts that stalked the forest at night. ‘Or if we are lucky we may come across a Gemiende or even a larger farming village.’

  I heard a noise and startled, my nerves seizing into a knot. I turned my head toward it, sitting up sharply. A boar grunted at the edge of the pines, looking at us with curious annoyance. His sharp curved tusks told me he was an adult male.

  ‘Just
keep very still and quiet,’ I cautioned Hans who was up beside me, crouched as if ready to leap at the first sign of movement from the ugly creature.

  We had, as a family, come for walks in these woods and taken our midday meal under the sun. Papa had told us to be most wary of the wild sows that might be protecting a litter of piglets in spring. They were more aggressive and threatening than the males. But summer was just fading away and it was too late for young pigs. Until then I had only ever seen boars and pigs on roasting spits with apples wedged into their gaping mouths in the marketplace.

  ‘He’s a big one,’ Hans whispered.

  The snout was twitching, picking up our scent among the other smells of the forest. We all sat there eyeing one another until the beast lost interest and padded back into the dark stretch of pines.

  ‘We’ll go the other way.’ I laughed with relief at Hans and helped him to his feet. ‘I don’t think we need to run anymore. They wouldn’t know where to find us. In this forest we are simply as small as the pine needles.’

  I patted Hans on the back and took his small hand in mine. We crossed through and under the wild apple trees and moved back into a shadow of firs and beech. The wind carried the fragrance of jasmine.

  With no way of knowing where we were going, I tried to catch a glimpse of the sun when the ceiling of branches thinned. I guessed that we were headed south-west. Feeling bilious from my apple feast, I occasionally stopped, thinking I might be sick. But I swallowed hard and kept up the pace again until eventually my stomach calmed. We walked for an eternity as the sun dipped over the hills and the shadows grew longer. Just when I thought we might need to climb a tree to be safe from wolves for the evening, I smelled the comforting smoke of a wood fire.

  In the next parting of the trees, I looked down to see a cottage with a small dilapidated fence enclosing it, a rusted gate and a clatter of chickens fighting one another for worms out the back. Between us and the house was a narrow ribbon of a stream, shallow and dotted with smooth stones. Behind the house was a shed, bursting with rotted, decaying wood. We would announce ourselves and beg to seek shelter from the forest in the shed and in return we might be able to do some work for the owner. A coil of smoke drifted up from the one small chimney and I could smell garlic on the afternoon breeze.

  We walked down the hill and removed our boots, carrying them aloft as we navigated our way from rock to rock, the cold water dancing between and over our toes. As we sat on the other side and restrung our boots to our feet, a voice called out to us, ‘Guten tag to you, kinder.’ We turned to see an old woman, stooped and frail with years, walking toward us. She held a beautifully carved walking stick to balance herself. ‘Are you lost? Where are your parents?’

  Her face was kind, her eyes merry and she had a veil of snow-white hair falling to her shoulders. She was dressed in a colourful shift, loose and flowing. I was so relieved that we had not been met by an angry man, I wanted to run to the woman and embrace her.

  ‘You look a sore sight.’ She smiled as she came to stand beside us. ‘Come and share some supper with me. I am Frau Berchta and you are most welcome in my home.’

  KATHERINE

  RENFREWSHIRE, SCOTLAND, 1696

  The local chapter of Jacobites met three more times in the next month to determine what was happening within the walls of Bargarran. I was their star witness. I told of the child’s night terrors and my own. Christian would go as rigid as a wooden plank and then thrash, turning her body almost inside out. There were moments, hours even, of lucidity at which times she would go about her play or Bible studies under the careful supervision of her new tutor, the Reverend Brisbane, who had come from an outer parish and grafted himself to the Shaws since the child started up her turns.

  I told my cohorts that, at first, it was thought to be an internal fever and the laird had called up their kinsman, Dr John White, but he had been baffled and so a physician from the nearby township of Paisley had come to call up a diagnosis and attempt a remedy. Most were beginning to think the child was malingering and having a disorder of the mind connected with the arrival of the bairn. Despite the blood-letting, her strange behaviour did not abate and I told the Jacobites, in a hush, that the child had most recently begun to claim that she was being attacked by invisible forces and had named me, of all people, me and Agnes Naismith as her assailants.

  ‘I can only imagine what those about the child are making of that!’ I said in a trembling voice. ‘The Laird and Lady Shaw are keeping a daily account of all the strange goings on and every word she utters. What’s worse they have opened the doors of the manor to let selected village folk come to see the sight for themselves; there is much gossip of Agnes and me.’

  ‘This is true,’ Farmer Lindsay agreed. ‘It’s all they are speaking of in the village and all the way to Paisley. People are suspecting witchcraft, though none too many are game to voice it in public.’

  The youngest girl, a pretty thing with blonde braids and the voice of a lark, agreed and joined in the conversation enthusiastically. ‘I heard tell that these parts is lousy with witches. They be known to weave carpets out of dead skin and stuff their pillows with human hair. They make dolls of the fingers of their victims and play board games with the teeth of hanged men.’

  ‘Hush, Elizabeth,’ John quieted the girl and gave me a warm smile that made my belly turn. ‘We need to quell this fire not fan it. And we need to tread carefully, Kat.’

  ‘We must not meet again until the child recovers her wits,’ Farmer Lindsay chimed in. ‘With talk of witches there will be eyes and ears everywhere.’

  ‘The devil can have that child,’ Agnes grumbled under her breath.

  The group dispersed, melting into the shadows as fog, and I was left beside the well with John.

  ‘Agnes tells me you are of noble birth.’ I came out with the accusation as it was the first time I had found myself alone with him since I’d been informed of this. During our other meets he had been busy conspiring with the men, with little time for me. ‘Why could you not tell me that yourself before you kissed me and turned my head with false hopes?’

  There came a drifting, empty silence sliced open by the shriek of a night owl. I felt a shiver of darkness run down my spine as if the devil himself had just marked me and I rested my forehead on John’s chest, feeling the thud of his heart.

  ‘I am of noble blood,’ John said in a measured voice. ‘I am the Earl of Mar, inherited from my father who passed seven years ago. But I was left nothing but a title and debt and find no comfort in the haughty, greedy pandering by those in my station. I am a man of the people.’

  He put his arms around me and it comforted me right down deep into my bones.

  ‘It is true,’ he went on, ‘that I could not marry you in the current climate, but I am of a mind to. If you will wait, I will wait and when the tables have turned I will make you my wife. It is a terrible curse that such an honest man as myself is forced to walk such a secret path.’

  I looked into his eyes and smiled. It wasn’t quite a proposal of marriage, but almost, and I had never known such happiness as I did in those stolen moments.

  As Christmas approached, the child was dragged to and from Glasgow to see the most eminent doctor there. Laird John Shaw was livid, blaming everyone for his daughter’s malady, but the doctor had laid it at the child’s feet and diagnosed her with melancholic imaginings. He had prescribed some calming medication that worked for a time, but one morning, as I was busying myself with polishing the silver, the laird stormed into the room and glared at me. I looked up at him inquisitively. Shaw was a brawler, a bully and a drunk. He had been rich all his life and had powerful friends. He also had a knack of getting his way; he would charm or bribe or threaten and never took no for an answer.

  At Bargarran his portrait brooded from the wall in the main entrance hall. In it he was standing by a table, his hand on a Bible, his frown menacin
g all who passed. I shivered every time I looked at it. I did not like the way the man looked at me. Not one bit.

  ‘We have returned from Glasgow,’ he growled.

  ‘I can see that, M’Laird,’ I replied demurely, not in any way to give cheek.

  ‘Things have taken a turn for the worse. My daughter is now spitting up strange objects. Hair. Eggshells. And pins. Pins!’

  ‘That is mighty strange,’ I responded carefully. ‘I am sorry to hear of her woes.’

  ‘The doctor has called for a commission. He now claims her ails are of a supernatural cause. He has exhausted every other possibility. Erskine and the region all the way up to Paisley is harbouring a coven of witches. What say you of this?’

  I stopped what I was doing, wiped my hands on my skirts and slipped them into the two pockets, my fingers knotting in on themselves. My face was reddening and my heart thumped beneath my ribs. ‘What are you saying, sir?’

  ‘The girl has accused you and Agnes Naismith of coming to her in ghostly form and tormenting her. This sounds like witchcraft.’

  ‘She is sickly, sir. I shall pray for her,’ I spoke, my voice thick with fear and tears pooling in the back of my eyes. One word was galloping through my head. Witchcraft. It was a dangerous accusation. I had heard how these midland folk dealt with witches.

  ‘The Reverend Brisbane and some of his colleagues have long been pressing for this commission and they will begin an investigation. I will warn you now that if you have had a hand in bewitching my daughter, I will not rest until you burn.’

  ‘My Laird, this is a shock. I can scarcely speak. I am not a … not a witch. I am God-fearing and—’

  ‘My daughter is possessed by some evil intent and she speaks of you and the old hag Naismith.’