Hexenhaus

by Nikki McWatters

  One afternoon John returned from the bluster of the day with a dark shadow over his brow. The Privy Council in Edinburgh had granted an inquiry into the practice of witchcraft in Erskine in the case of Christian Shaw of Bargarran. A commission of men with strong connections to the Shaws, including some kin, had been established and people were being questioned, officially, with complaints and statements being taken. The Presbytery of Paisley, the nearest one to Bargarran, had lodged the complaint and the Reverend James Brisbane was the official investigator and chronicler of the unfolding events. A warrant had been issued for the arrest and questioning of one Katherine Campbell. They were coming after me.

  I had been looking forward to travelling the day’s journey by carriage to my new home, but John cautioned me that there was too much chest-beating and desperation to round up suspects in the Bargarran case. The open road would be no place for me yet, in case I came across someone who recognised me.

  ‘Your charcoal likeness is nailed to every tree in the district and you have a look that is not so common.’ He smiled at me, touching my cheek. ‘You are a rare beauty, Kat, my darling girl. You stay here safe and I will go and ready my family and estate. I will be back within the week. Paisley is no longer safe for you. I must take you home, but I will go ahead and ready it for the new Lady of Mar.’ John warned me to stay indoors and to not stray into the dangerous streets of Glasgow to chase away the boredom. And I promised.

  Three days. I lasted three days, driven mad by the sound of my own breath and the stale stink of a shut-up house filled with the fug of smoke and rotting refuse. I woke feeling like a caged bird every lonely morning until that fourth day when I decided to sneak a quick walk to the markets.

  I took out my heavy plaid cloak, complete with head covering, and pulled my hair back into a tight red round bun.

  The snow was thick underfoot, swallowing up my boots as I walked until I came to the well-cleared streets closer to town. There was a brilliant blue sky and sunshine as I navigated my way along the White Cart Water, a smaller tributary of a river that flowed down from the mighty Clyde. There were sun sparkles like diamonds on the ice crowning rooftops and lantern posts. I skulked along, huddled down, furtive as vermin.

  The marketplace crackled with noise and colour. Laughter was loose and my nerves were as fragile as glass. I wandered through the stalls of colourful produce and then turned to make my way home when a man bumped into me hard as he walked the other way. My cape fell back to reveal the shock and fear on my small, pale and lightly freckled face, a stray lock of red hair frizzling out over my eye like a runaway fugitive.

  He was a big moustached man in a black suit coat and a fancy white shirt. His face seemed bruised, the hair jarred loose. I recognised him at once as having been a visitor to Bargarran at sometime in the murky past. The look in his eye went from wry amusement to a lurid interest to a spark of recognition to the dark of anger.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the pretty Shaw maid, Katherine Campbell.’ He rolled the words in a rumble from his throat and reached out, grabbing me roughly by the wrist.

  I squirmed and tried to wrench myself free, but his grip was firm.

  ‘The witch,’ he shouted at passers-by. ‘The wanted woman from Bargarran. I have her. Summon the authorities.’

  A crowd began to gather, bulging into the street. I felt my blood pulsing in my face and belly. I was hot, burning up, and I knew I was trapped. Every part of my body wanted to run, howling. My free hand reached out to try to extract its mate but, as I touched the hairy paw of my captor, my fingers felt suddenly detached and light and dry. There was a strange floating feeling, a serenity, as I heard the words coming from someone else nearby.

  ‘You will be detained and questioned in the Tollbooth in Paisley for your part in the demonic possession of Christian Shaw of Bargarran. You will answer a charge of practising witchcraft.’

  The voices all came from around me like a terrible chorus, pressing against me, suffocating me. The panic began to rise like bile in my throat and I remembered the Bible verse that Reverend James Brisbane had repeated daily out at Bargarran since the mischief had begun. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’

  PAISLEY

  BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, PRESENT DAY

  Awkward much? I am standing in Ben’s garage, which doubles as his bedroom. The house is at the end of a long driveway and the old garage contains his parents’ cars, while the newer one attached to the house is a wide-open space that Ben has made his own. He has it decked out like an apartment with a sleeping area and a lounging area complete with large flat-screen television and a small table and chair where he can eat and presumably do homework and stuff. I am pleased to see a bookcase filled with books. I like a guy who reads.

  The others have left and I have been on the sofa with Ben. Things have gone from slightly nervous conversation and snagged stares across the room, to kissing. Two seconds into what is promising to be a very nice kiss, the door to the house opens and his mother stands there looking at us as we pull apart with guilt and embarrassment in equal measures. And instead of Mrs Digby apologising and quickly closing the door, which is what my mother would do, she puts her hands on her hips, frowns and starts laying into Ben for getting embroiled with that woman’s daughter. Then she points a finger at me and tells me to get out of her house.

  ‘You,’ she shrieks like a banshee. ‘I do not want my son fooling around with the local witch’s daughter. You may leave my house right now.’

  ‘Mum!’ Ben yells, standing up, his hands out in a pleading gesture. ‘What’s with that? What are you talking about? I’ve been friends with Paise for ages. Don’t buy into all this local hysteria. It’s madness.’

  ‘Well, this is the first time I knew you and … her.’ She points at me again with a waggling finger. ‘Since when have you been bewitched by this little tramp? I thought you were dating Lara McDermont!’

  Great. Now, on top of feeling like a little tart, the daughter of the town pariah and some kind of hexing madwoman, she’s making me feel extra fabulous by bringing up Ben’s ex-girlfriend, the impossibly gorgeous Lara, who dumped him for Liam Bully-boy.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re being like this, Mum,’ Ben says, incredulously. ‘You’re better than that. You said it yourself, earlier, that it was probably all Annabel Hooper’s doing. You said the Hoopers are just doing it for attention.’

  His mother cuts him off and she’s actually shaking. I am turning into myself, trying to make myself smaller and more invisible as I slowly stand up next to Ben.

  ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Women who run around paddocks in the nude, worshipping the full moon, well, it’s a reflection of very loose morals. The apple never falls far from the tree.’ She glares at me as if I am standing there stark naked beside her son.

  ‘She doesn’t worship the moon or dance naked,’ I whisper, letting anger seep through my numbing shock. ‘And it is all Mrs Hooper’s doing, or a sickness or something, and nothing to do with my mother.’ Now I am shaking as I come to my mother’s defence.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Mum!’ Ben says through clenched teeth. ‘I’m really sorry, Paisley, she’s not usually like this. She’s acting like she’s possessed.’

  ‘Take that back,’ Mrs Digby snaps.

  Ben takes my elbow and turns around taking his garage door remote control from his pocket. He activates it and the groan of metal against metal begins as the roller door lifts, turning up into itself.

  ‘I’m walking Paise home,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back later. Or maybe I’ll go and crash at Brent’s.’

  ‘Don’t you walk away from me, mister,’ she screams after us as I grab my bag and follow Ben out into the night air.

  The ground is still wet but it has stopped raining and we walk fast and hard away from the shrill insults being hurled after us. I am broken with humiliation and completely mortified that a mome
nt of pure happiness when Ben had begun to kiss me has been replaced by such horrible degradation. I don’t know Mrs Digby very well at all, just to nod at in the street, but she has never before struck me as someone who would be so paranoid and small-minded.

  ‘I am so sorry, Paisley,’ Ben says, as he turns to hit the remote, hiding his mother at the same time.

  ‘I would like to say it doesn’t bother me but it really does,’ I tell him.

  ‘I really don’t want to get into that, okay?’ Ben says awkwardly. ‘It’s all anyone’s talking about and I don’t want to talk about it. It’s getting completely out of hand.’

  I stop, firm, feeling my shoelaces falling into a puddle. ‘Hey, Ben, neither do I!’ I say and am disappointed to feel the sting of tears in my eyes. ‘We’re being attacked by trolls on Twitter and Facebook. I can deal with that. I can just hit delete, but your mother isn’t the first to be a psycho about this. Someone spray-painted the front of the shop today as well. And it is getting totally out of hand. Everyone’s just dropped Mum and it hurts.’

  Ben puts his arm around me and pulls me toward him. ‘I really feel for you, Paise,’ he says. I can’t believe I am under his arm and sheltered against his strong chest. ‘You can’t stop the haters. There will always be haters. You have to just keep your head down and weather the storm. I’m just so sorry my mother is one of the haters.’

  We walk together along the street. The wet bitumen sparkles where the moonlight hits it and above us a three-quarter moon glides behind a cloud. Most houses are shrouded in darkness but a few have lights blaring and the flash of late-night television strobing from within. We hear the eerie hoot of an owl from the trees above and, as I look up to find it, I feel a drop of rain on my nose. Another splats on my forehead a split second after. Without words, we hurry up the hill over Birriga Avenue, crest the rise and then meander down to Erith where we cross the train tracks and walk up into the deserted main street. The little township seems haunted and abandoned as if in the wake of a nuclear bomb and the light rain is the fall-out. The shops are all closed although some, the pharmacy and the newsagency, have dim safety lights pumping through the long quiet hours.

  At my back gate, Ben and I turn to one another. He is much taller than me but I’m a short-arse. The rain is coming down steadier now. We hold hands and he bends to kiss me again. This time I let myself float into it and our faces and lips slick together in the rain, our hair plastered against our skin. It lasts forever and I don’t want to pull away, but we sense that it must end.

  ‘I’ll see you on the bus Monday, pixie-girl,’ he says. ‘I’m going to a dumb family thing in Sydney tomorrow. And I’m sorry again. For my mother. I’ll try to talk to her.’

  Inside I take a deep breath. Pixie-girl? He called me pixie-girl. I like it.

  Mum is banging around in the kitchen when I walk inside. I was hoping she would be peacefully tucked up in bed and asleep. I go to the bathroom and strip off my wet clothes, drape a towel around my body and go to my room to dig out some PJs. It’s late. Almost midnight. I decide to say goodnight to Mum and have a chamomile tea to help me sleep.

  ‘How was your party?’ Mum asks cheerily when I come into the old kitchen. She is sitting at the table playing with her tarot cards again.

  ‘It wasn’t a party,’ I tell her. ‘Just a gathering.’

  ‘A gathering? That sounds positively pagan.’

  I laugh. ‘No. It’s just what the guys call it. If it’s not a party, it’s a gathering.’

  I sit down at the table opposite her. She has showered and dressed finally and sits in a pale-blue shift with delicate white embroidery about the neckline. Her hair is pulled up into a high ponytail with wisps of lighter pink over her forehead. Her glasses are perched on the end of her nose and she is frowning down at the cards.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘You know those cards don’t tell the future. There is no logic behind that idea.’

  ‘It looks like it will be all right. This card, the Queen of Swords, that’s Annabel Hooper. And the Page of Cups, that’s Isaiah.’ She smiles up at me and I shut my eyes and sigh, wondering if my mother is beginning to lose the plot.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘These cards. They are covered with the Wheel of Fortune so I think things will start improving.’

  ‘Mum, I don’t think you should be counting on those cards. You need to take this really seriously. It’s time to act like a grown-up.’

  I feel that prickle of dread, a nugget of doubt lodging into the back of my mind. Is my mother going to be strong enough to weather this storm? I really hope it doesn’t end up with her being charged for ‘practising hypnotherapy on a teenager without parental consent, resulting in the triggering of a mental health episode’, which are the words the local gossips have used. It’s a weird-sounding, made-up charge, if you ask me, that someone, possibly Mrs Hooper, came up with after too much eggnog. It will come down to evidence by the doctors and the credibility of the relevant parties. The outcome and her strategy or defence are most definitely not going to reveal themselves to my mother in her little colourful cardboard cards.

  ‘Mum.’ I reach out and touch her cool, elegant hand. ‘I am happy that you find some comfort in the cards. I just …’ I know I’m sounding like the mother talking to the child again, but I’m getting used to it and I think she is too. In many ways I ground her while she keeps me afloat. We complement one another even if it is a bit topsy-turvy. ‘You need to have some science to back you up. Some actual psychology. You are a healer. You do help people. I know you do, because people love coming to you. You just have to explain what you do.’

  ‘No one has rung. No one has dropped by to say hello,’ she says forlornly. ‘Thank heavens for you, Paisley. What would I do without you?’

  I wonder that at least three times a day. This time, though, I’m out of my league. Mum needs more support than I can give her.

  I decide I’ll call my father tomorrow and talk to him about Mum. I am not doing it for him, not even for me. I am doing this for Mum.

  As I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep, I am tormented by the fear that Ben will have to take sides – his family or me. The thrill that we have moved our friendship to a new romantic level should feel wonderful, but I am nervous and afraid and fragile. I am so worried that all this horrible stuff going on around my mother will ruin my first big romance. I hear the rain falling heavily.

  VERONICA

  BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1628

  It was easy to become comfortable in the little cottage in the woods. Frau Berchta looked after us like orphaned kittens and while we did work hard to repay her kindness, it sometimes did not feel like enough. In the first few weeks after we arrived Hans and I spoke often of moving on and making our way to Würzburg, but we never did. Then, one day, Frau Berchta took me aside and held my hands in hers.

  ‘Veronica,’ she had said softly. ‘I sense that you have fear in your heart and that you are running from something terrible. Hiding from something or someone.’

  I could not lie to her and, with tears in my eyes, I told her the whole story, from the day they dragged my mother to the Hexenhaus to leaving Spur and our cart in the open field to be searched and stripped by the witch-hunters. The old woman listened carefully and then nodded, pulling me into a strong embrace.

  ‘I thought as much,’ she whispered. ‘You and your brother must stay here until this madness burning through the cities has passed. You are safe here. Please stay.’

  And so we had stayed on. It was not so long until the place began to feel like home. While it was a little lonely and isolated and I did miss the bustle and pace of Bamberg, I came to feel a part of those woods. It was strange to have a wolf visit us at night and sleep under the same thatched roof. Wolves were creatures of the night, but not Rudi. I had not mustered the courage to pat him, yet, and still felt a quiver of fear when Hans stroke
d him as he might a house dog.

  Frau Berchta spent most of her days spinning yarn and singing old songs in foreign-sounding words. I believe she may have been born far north in the lands of long night shadows and ice. She had some strange ways.

  We often saw hedgehogs waddling over the meadows and badgers darting guiltily from one thicket to the next. If you followed the stream far enough it spilled into a wide river. I was not sure which river it was but it was thick with fish and one could almost swish them out with the swing of a basket. The days were growing a little shorter, autumn was getting colder and the leaves were reaching their full colour. We learned the rhythm of the forest and felt her seasons in our blood. The deep pain of the loss of our parents never went away but it was softened and laid gently to rest in the peace and solitude of the woods.

  In those first three months there had only been two visitors. The first one was a young woman who looked pinched and sad. I first saw her at the edge of the meadow, hanging back in the shadows of the fringe of the forest. She looked timid and nervous and was wringing her hands and knotting her skirts into bunches beneath her little fists. I wondered if she was lost. Then I panicked, thinking that if she could find the cottage in the woods, so too could the witch-hunters. Hans was skipping stones into the stream so I put down my knitting and went with a certain wariness to welcome the woman.

  ‘Are you lost?’ I asked.