Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

by Sara Pascoe

  ‘Aye, that scurrying sound? Rats.’ Hoy guffawed.

  Raya tripped and fell twice, once onto the cold stone floor, and once onto an ancient mosaic. The lantern swung in Hoy’s hand, making shadows dance on the dank stone walls. Hoy’s large ring of keys jangled with each step. They went through a maze of halls until they reached stone stairs going down. She struggled with the steps. Hoy shoved her, making her slide down the last of them on her bottom. The stench of human waste slapped her as hard as Hoy had. They took another two turns until they reached a large wooden door. There was an iron grate in the top half of the door.

  Hoy fumbled with the keys then opened it. Inside was a small room. Filthy straw lined the floor. The stench made her eyes water. She retched, her empty stomach bringing up nothing but bile. Oscar slid in behind her. Raya heard faint murmurings. She strained to see in this even dimmer light. There were two wooden doors on adjoining walls. Hoy grabbed her by the shoulder of her hoodie, pulling her close to him. He held the lantern up, illuminating their faces. She stared back.

  ‘Welcome to Colchester Castle Keep. You’ll have no problem paying for your stay – the Dutch are rich.’ Hoy laughed as though he was telling a story at a pub. He fetched another key and opened one of the wooden doors. He laughed again as he shoved Raya into this next room. Oscar slunk in. Hoy slammed the door.

  The key turned.

  Murmurings grew more audible; women’s voices. She heard footsteps and clinking shackles. She bent down and extended her hand into the dark. Oscar butted his head against it. She scooped him up.

  ‘Who are you?’ a voice said. It was so close, Raya jumped and dropped Oscar. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.

  ‘Look what we have here – a boy,’ the voice said.

  ‘My name is Rachel. I’m a girl.’

  ‘What happened to your hair?’ another voice said.

  ‘How old are you?’ a younger voice said.

  ‘Fourteen,’ Raya answered.

  ‘Me too,’ said the voice. Raya gasped. Her eyes had adjusted, she could see better now. ‘Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you,’ said the fourteen-year-old, blinking large, innocent eyes at Raya. ‘I’m Rebecca. Can I hold your cat?’

  A smack rang out in the small room. ‘Ow! Mother, what did I do?’

  ‘We have troubles of our own. Don’t bring more on us, you foolish girl,’ the mother said as she stole a glance at Raya. ‘This girl, boy, whatever it is, was put here for a reason, like us, and that’s her familiar.’

  A cackle came from the edge of the room. What looked like a heap of rags came to life, a worn, old woman. She raised herself up with a stick. She only had one leg.

  The others fell quiet. The woman hopped up to Raya. Rebecca picked up Oscar behind her mother’s back and gave him a cuddle.

  ‘Helen, help me, dear,’ the old woman said, nodding towards the woman who had asked about Raya’s hair.

  Helen stepped forward and supported the old woman. ‘Yes, Mother Clarke, of course.’

  The old woman inspected Raya, lifted her short hair with an encrusted, crooked finger, sniffed at the nape of her neck, and touched her clothing. Meanwhile, Raya sized up the room and the situation. There was the one heavy wooden door she’d come through, and a barred window that looked out to the ante room. They both looked pretty impenetrable. There was a wooden cupboard door high off the ground, but no ladder in sight.

  Raya quickly tried to scan the thoughts of her cellmates to see if there were any fellow witches. Not a single one. There were six women, well, five women and Rebecca, who seemed young for her age. Mother Clarke ran her hand down Raya’s chest. Raya jumped back, alarmed.

  ‘Aye, this one is a lass after all,’ Mother Clarke said.

  ‘What did you do? Kill a child? A cow, maybe?’ Helen said.

  Other voices asked questions all at once. The six of them circled Raya.

  She spun a story from the parts already in place; being Dutch, said she was an orphan who had worked in a travelling menagerie.

  ‘But why were you brought here?’ Helen said.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Raya said. She told them she’d disguised herself as a lad in order to get work at a stable. She then told the story of the cook accusing her of killing her dog. This made sense to them. Raya then asked them why they were all here, grateful to turn the spotlight away from herself.

  The six women told their stories of what they did and how they came to be here, in the Colchester Castle Keep, awaiting trial. What astounded Raya the most were not the bizarre things they were all accused of – killing children, feeding spirit animals, making a horse ill, killing a pig – all by sorcery and witchcraft, but that they believed they were guilty. All of these women lived on their own, or with their children. It sounded like they were all pretty poor.

  Raya was about to try to explain that losing your temper, even momentarily wishing bad luck on someone, did not make any of these things happen.

  ‘Don’t even go there, Raya,’ Oscar said. He was curled up on her lap now. The black dots on Oscar’s back had become a solid line once again and had grown wider. He was regaining his strength, maybe she could do good.

  ‘But this is so sad. These women admitting to crimes that weren’t even possible.’

  Raya and Oscar had chatted into what was likely the night. It was impossible to tell with no natural light filtering this far into the bowels of the castle. It turned out Raya had been lucky. The others, even the young Rebecca, all endured much longer Watching. Three days was typical. One had been ‘swum’ – tied to a chair and held under water, and because she didn’t drown – well, that made her guilty.

  ‘What about your lawyers? Don’t you get one?’ Raya asked. This resulted in a shower of guffaws, snorts, and questions. Luckily, she had the excuse of being a foreigner to explain all her odd ideas. The others settled into their spots on the floor and, to Raya’s surprise, fell asleep. But she couldn’t. She lay awake, cold and hungry.

  Was Bryony ever coming?

  Raya must have dozed off because she was startled awake by Hoy running a metal cup along the window grate. The sound of a key in the heavy wooden door was followed by Hoy coming in with a pot of pottage and a bunch of metal cups, although not enough for everyone. No one even said anything, used to taking turns. The food was gruesome, like thin, lukewarm porridge with a slight fishy taste, but hunger won. Hoy let them relieve themselves in the straw in the ante room, although not everyone had been able to wait. After a few minutes Hoy left them with the pottage and locked them back in.

  About an hour later Hoy returned, calling out, ‘Hello, ladies. I have a surprise for you.’

  He unlocked the door and shoved another shackled woman inside. She fell to her knees. She wore a tattered version of the usual sombre getup, including one of those stupid bonnets. She tripped on her long skirt trying to get up. Helen helped her.

  ‘Thank you. I don’t mean to be any trouble,’ the new woman said. Her voice was familiar – Bryony! Something between a gasp and sob came out of Raya.

  Bryony put her arm around her. ‘Rachel, my dear niece, so it is true – you are in here!’ Bryony said. ‘Don’t worry. Just play along,’ she said telepathically.

  Raya nodded while she caught her breath. ‘Oh, Auntie Bryony…’ but saying that made her cry harder.

  The other women looked on; kind faces of different ages blurred through Raya’s tears.

  ‘Shh, it’s OK, let it out. You’ve been through a terrible time,’ Bryony said.

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ Helen said.

  Rebecca stepped up to Raya and Bryony, her eyes wide. ‘You know each other?’ she said.

  ‘Are you daft or just deaf, girl? That’s the girl’s aunt,’ her mother said.

  ‘Come on, Anne, we’re all on our last nerves in here – the girl didn’t mean anything,’ Mother Clarke said.

  Anne West smoothed her daughter’s hair. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry, Rebecca,’ Anne said, then she stiffened, looked Bryony up and
down as much as the dim light would allow. ‘So just how did you manage to get in here, the same place where your niece is? That sounds like some powerful witchcraft if you ask me.’

  The women backed away from Bryony.

  ‘Come now. Who in their right mind would try to get in here on purpose? Even if you wanted to save one of us, you certainly couldn’t do it from in here,’ Mother Clarke said.

  The women murmured amongst themselves.

  ‘You’re right,’ Bryony’s voice cut through the buzz of gossip. ‘I had been looking for Rachel, for a long time, and that led me here. But not how you think,’ Bryony said. Oscar wound around Bryony’s legs. She reached down and stroked him.

  Rebecca sat down in front of Bryony as though she was about to hear a good campfire story. The others looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Rachel’s my brother’s daughter. He moved…’

  ‘I’ve told them I’m Dutch,’ Raya interjected.

  Bryony didn’t miss a beat, ‘…to the Netherlands, worked in the docks in Amsterdam, married a woman there, and they had Rachel. He died of pneumonia when Rachel was about…’ Bryony said telepathically to Raya, ‘Come on, chime in every so often, like people do.’

  ‘I… I was ten when my dad died,’ Raya said and felt a wave of sadness about losing her grandfather when she was much younger.

  Bryony continued, ‘Then a few years later, Rachel’s mum came down with the plague. She only had a few days, but had a letter sent saying she’d arranged for Rachel to come back to England, to stay with me. She would get passage to Colchester.’

  ‘But when I arrived at Colchester, I couldn’t find my auntie. I waited around the port for a couple of days, but that was all the money I had for lodging, so I had no choice but to look for work,’ Raya added.

  ‘What happened, Auntie Bryony? Why weren’t you there?’ Rebecca said.

  She’s not YOUR Auntie, you little twerp, Raya thought, surprised at her stab of jealousy.

  ‘My auntie tried, but something happened, she couldn’t get there in time,’ Raya said.

  Bryony gave Raya a little squeeze around the shoulders. ‘Yes, that’s right. There were no carriages going that way for a while; everyone’s horses kept getting taken for the war effort.’

  ‘Where were you coming from?’ Rebecca said.

  Bryony looked at each woman in turn. ‘Devon, I was coming from west Devon, not far from Cornwall,’ Bryony said.

  ‘That explains your accent,’ Helen said.

  ‘I never met anyone from Devon before,’ Mother Clarke said.

  Raya was impressed – maybe Bryony wasn’t completely incompetent.

  Bryony shook her head, looked woeful. ‘By the time I finally got to Colchester, Rachel was gone and I had no way to find her. I left word at the dock, at inns, and with anyone else I could think of, but eventually I had to go home,’ Bryony said.

  ‘So how did you find me now?’ Raya said.

  ‘I got lucky. It must have been when you returned to Colchester after your stint with the menagerie, someone thought you fit the description and sent me a letter. That was about a month ago. I came as fast as I could,’ Bryony said.

  ‘But how’d you land in here?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Oh, that was by accident,’ Bryony said. The women were rapt.

  ‘I was rushing across the road and didn’t see a rider on a horse. I don’t know how I could have missed him, quite a sight in a cape with a wide-brimmed hat–’ Bryony said.

  ‘No, not the General!’ Rebecca said.

  ‘The one and only. His horse reared up, then hurt his leg when he came down. The caped man blew up like a cannon. He was sure I had bewitched his horse, because his horse shouldn’t have hurt himself by simply rearing up.’

  When Bryony finished her story, the women went back to their usual routine; sitting quietly, chatting, sleeping, and praying. After all the practice Raya had head-chatting with Oscar, she was able to do this with Bryony, too. Oscar lay on Bryony’s lap, his colour returning.

  Raya dragged her filthy sleeve across her eyes. ‘We CAN get out of here – you can do this, right?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve done it before.’

  This was nerve-wracking – her only hope of getting home was up to someone Raya had little faith in. She changed the subject, ‘How is everybody back home? How’s Pavel, Emma, Ian?’ She swallowed. ‘Is Jake getting better?’

  ‘Everyone’s fine. Jake’s coming along, getting better all the time,’ Bryony said.

  Raya let out a huge sigh. She was about to ask some more questions about Jake – like if he could talk and read all right, if he was paralysed in any way – but thought better of it, wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  ‘Raya, I don’t mean to be harsh, but we’ve got to get down to work. It’s not going to be easy, and well–’

  ‘I know, I know… time’s running out.’

  Bryony sighed, ‘Right, only two days to get home.’

  Hoy’s metal cup raked across the window grate again the next morning. He lit the torches in the wall outside their cell. The women stretched and hobbled about in their leg irons, including Raya and Bryony.

  They had tried to transport home all night. ‘All transports are feeling-led. Get your head and heart there and your body follows. You flung yourself here accidentally, but it was still driven by your feeling like you deserved to be punished, and you realising you’re a witch.’ Bryony paused, took a large breath which she regretted by the expression on her face, before continuing. ‘So now, we imagine what it’s like to be back home – let’s try imagining being in the Cosmic, eh?’

  They had tried all night, leading each other in detailed visualizations in an effort to help. They had finally dosed off while still trying.

  ‘Oh shit, we’re still here,’ Raya said.

  Bryony blinked, looked around. ‘I don’t understand why this isn’t working.’

  ‘We still have a couple of days, right?’ Raya, said unnerved by Bryony’s tone.

  ‘Well, technically. But we’ll be taken to the assizes this afternoon for the trial tomorrow, and the hang–’

  ‘I get it, I get it,’ Raya said.

  Bryony was distracted, thinking aloud, ‘I need to contact IHQ – get help. Something’s wrong.’

  ‘What? Was I doing something wrong?’ Raya said, but Bryony had stepped away.

  Hoy had come in and was handing out the usual slop. Raya had been hungry for days, the rations were so meagre. She forced a couple of gulps of the disgusting pottage then put the cup in Bryony’s hand. Bryony, trying hard to transmit to IHQ, failed to grip it. Raya managed to catch it before it hit the floor. Hoy saw this and gave Raya another one of his backhands for almost wasting valuable food.

  ‘There’ll be none for you next time, since you see fit to throw it around,’ Hoy said, then laughed as though this was an inside joke.

  ‘Today, you wretches are off to Chelmsford. Each of you will get a bill for your stay, to be paid if you live or not,’ he said, and laughed again.

  The women were quiet. Rebecca cried to her mother. No one asked anything about Bryony huddled in a corner, even when she started muttering. The others must have assumed she was praying for her soul as they prayed for theirs. Through the murmurings, Raya heard pleas for forgiveness, and begging to be spared the fires of hell.

  Rebecca, bored with praying, tried to play with Oscar. She wiggled a bit of straw in front of his face.

  ‘Oh, how humiliating,’ Oscar groaned.

  ‘Come on. Be nice to the poor girl. She doesn’t have long…’ Raya choked on the words. ‘…like the rest of us.’ A sob blurted out of her, there was no holding it back now. It looked like she was right – that Bryony wasn’t up to the task. She knew it was her own doing, her being here, but was it her fault? All that stuff people explained about new witches having power surges, like stomping on the accelerator, blah, blah. Oh, who cares about all that – I just want to live. I mean I haven’t done anything yet. H
aven’t had a real boyfriend. Never driven a car. I’ll never get to have my own flat. Her sobs were free and unfettered. And now I’ll have my last days in this disgusting stink-hole.

  * * *

  Faint footsteps got louder. There were two sets, and two voices. The key clanked in the lock on the outer door, and then in the cell door. There was a collective gasp at the silhouette of Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General.

  Raya snatched Oscar from the floor. The black colour ebbed and flowed as she clutched him to her.

  ‘Bryony,’ Raya called out in head talk. The grown-up witch followed Raya’s gaze towards the cat in her arms.

  She startled at seeing Matthew Hopkins, then her jaw set, and even though her eyes were open, you could tell her mind was elsewhere, probably trying to get them out of there.

  Hopkins strolled into the cell as though he was walking onto a stage. Hoy, much larger than Hopkins, was a funny sight, simpering, holding a lantern above Hopkins with every step. At least Hopkins didn’t have that dumb dog with him. He nodded to the huddled, filthy group. Some continued to murmur prayers, others whimpered or pleaded. Rebecca held onto her mother, rocking back and forth on her feet.

  Raya stepped closer to Bryony, who placed a hand on the cat. The black stripe down his back repeatedly got thicker then thinner. It looked like Hopkins and Bryony were evenly matched.

  The young witch turned away and closed her arms around Oscar. He gave a small squeak.

  ‘Sorry,’ Raya said aloud.

  ‘Silence,’ Hopkins bellowed. He twirled on his heels making an arc with his idiotic cape. He stopped when he saw Raya.

  ‘Aye, I remember you, you arrogant little witch.’ He stepped close to Raya and jabbed a finger at her without touching her. ‘There is another charge against you now.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Raya said.

  Hopkins licked his finger and paged through the sheaf of papers he’d held under his arm. He stopped and cleared his throat.

  ‘Rachel Hollingsworth, approximate age fourteen, of unknown history is hereby accused of: killing the Good Wife Robertson’s dog when denied a cup of her favourite witch’s brew, and…’ Hopkins paused for dramatic effect, ‘…of cursing the Good Mother Atkinson when she emptied her chamber pot, and thereby ruining her ale, robbing her of one week’s earnings.’