He shook off his trembling and started walking through the crowd, searching out the perpetrator who had momentarily terrified him. It was difficult even for his determined stalking frame to pass through the people who hovered there in confusion, looking about. The smoke was very thick; people hacked and wheezed; ladies brought little sachets of fragrance to their noses in futile attempts to escape the stink of death.
Finally, the witchfinder saw the girl.
Again the chills of trembling terror temporarily debilitated him. He was stunned; caught motionless by fear. For as her screams had mocked him, had haunted him, so did her appearance.
Her hair was black, as black as a moonless night, so very dark and glossy that it might have been indigo. It was loose, and it waved in curls over her shoulders, down the length of her back.
Her skin was as pure as snow, as smooth as marble. Her coloring was ashen at the moment, but beneath her pallor lurked a complexion of ivory and rose. Her tense, white lips were full and shapely. Matthews could imagine, as he stood in his paralyzed state, that when she laughed her mouth would be like a rose, red and soft, and would taste like wine, sweet and potent.
Shewas the witch! Oh, sweetest Jesus! He had burned the witch, but she had come back. The devil had taken her from the flames, given her succor, and brought her back to haunt him, tempt him, beguile him, rob him of his senses and his manhood.
The townspeople knew who she was. This was no ghost to haunt them, but merely Brianna, Pegeen’s niece. She had lived in the forest with her aunt, growing wild and beautiful beneath Pegeen’s gentle tutelage.
Those who had opposed the execution, and those who had held doubts, no longer wavered. They had watched one die in the flames. Enough. They saw Brianna now—in the wake of that terror—for what she was: young, with all the loveliness and freshness of youth. She was one of them and they were proud of her exceptional beauty. Perhaps they hadn’t the nerve to risk their own lives, but if they could, they would help her.
Matthews kept staring at her, trembling inwardly.
She looked like Pegeen MacCardle but she was much younger. She was a girl still, but a maiden as tempting as ripe fruit, in the full bloom of youthful grace. In a plain dress of simple gray homespun she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen walk the earth.
Something stirred within Matthews’s state of spellbound fear. That something was desire, as riddling and gripping as the fear.
The look she gave him was of the most contemptuous disgust and horror he had ever witnessed. He was, he knew, from the clear message in her crystal-blue eyes, more heinous to her than the lowest of rats or snakes.
Fear suddenly passed. Desire remained. And fury. She was definitely the spawn of the devil. Only the devil could make a woman so provocative that she could reduce a man to a trembling, mindless creature lost to carnal thoughts and to dreams of her tempting ripeness.…
How dare she stare at him with fire burning brightly in her blue eyes, full of accusation and loathing! Only the devil could lift her chin so, could give the look of haughty aristocracy to the delicate features of this mere peasant girl.
This witch! The devil’s own!
He lifted a bony finger and pointed it toward her. “Seize her!” he cried out. “In the name of James II, Lord of all England, Scotland, and Wales, I accuse thee…”
Brianna MacCardle heard the words faintly—they came to her from the depths of a thick gray fog. Death had stunned her; horror held her tightly in a vise. Pegeen was dead. Oh, God, she was really dead. They had dragged her to the stake, tied her there, and set fire to her. The air stank with the scent of her charred flesh; it was too horrible to believe or fully comprehend.
Now this man, Matthews—the witchfinder—was staring at her.
His dark, probing eyes were on her. In them she could see a reflection of fire—the fire of the stake. He was calling her “witch.” …
And she turned to run.
Chapter 2
Huddled in an alleyway, Brianna remembered that she had been strenuously warned by those neighbors who had loved Pegeen not to come anywhere near the execution. But since the day when the men had burst into her aunt’s cottage and dragged Pegeen out into the midday sun, Brianna had been living a nightmare of confusion and horror.
She had been in the woods when the men had come. From the shadows of the huge and sheltering oaks that surrounded the little cottage, she had seen her aunt taken away.
The shouts in the streets seemed to be coming closer. Brianna tore down another alley, leaning back against the rear wall of a bakery. She was somewhat shielded from view by a series of grain crates, and she took the opportunity to breathe in great gulps of air. Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help but think back.
She had been stunned when they took Pegeen, shocked into immobility. When the truth of what was happening seeped through to her dazed mind, she had torn out after them, scattering the herbs and roots she had been collecting along the way.
The men on horseback—with her aunt their prisoner—were halfway down the road before she had panted her way to the front of the cottage. Needles of pain shot through her healthy young legs, and through her laboring lungs. She had paused only a second, then started to run again, her bare feet pounding down the dirt lane with a speed almost equalling that of the horses.
But Mistress Willow, their nearest neighbor in the forest, had managed to stop her, hurling her rounded form upon that of the slip of a girl.
“Brianna! You mustn’t go after her!” Mistress Willow pleaded, tears in her eyes, as she looked into the accusing eyes of the girl. “There’s naught you can do now, girl.”
“They’ve taken her…Pegeen.… They’ve taken Pegeen. The witchfinder has taken Pegeen.…”
Mistress Willow cradled the girl against her. “Pegeen is in God’s hands now, girl. And you can’t help her—but you can get yourself arrested too! We can do naught but wait, child, and pray that the Lord intervenes.”
