Page 6 of The Queen’s Witch

“Don’t talk,” I said. “Drink this.” My hand shook so badly that I spilled wine on her bodice, but she drained the cup, and in a chilling mirror of Grandmother just before her death, a little color returned to her face.

“Tell me when you can,” I said. “In words. I do not need to . . . to be taken there again.”

“Ye did need to be there,” she said, her voice stronger. “Or ye would disbelieve it. No daughter wants to believe her mother was—and still be, in the Otherworld—like Joan. But know this, Alysoun: Frances gave Joan naught but love and patience. Too much of both. Frances was too soft. Ye be made of harder material, or will be when ye have seen more of the world. But that be not what made Joan as she was. I cannot say for certain, but Ned be a weak man, and when be dying . . . I believe he tried a bargain with the Dark One, as did others before him: continued life in exchange for his child. It be possible for mortals to bargain with the Dark One, but Ned had no magick to hold Him to His vow. And the Dark One does not honor bargains if He does not have to.”

Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed.

Mother Redcap continued. “So mayhap Joan belonged to the Dark One from early childhood. As ye saw, she left Frances, and sometime in her years away Joan tied the thrice-braided cord and further sealed her pact with Him. Yer grandmother knew that Joan caused the storm that killed yer father and twelve other men. Frances was afraid she might turn on ye, who looked so much like him. When she made that journey through the Fens to bring ye here, she thought ye would both be safe with me. I knew better.”

“Joan . . . she found us.” I could barely get the words out.

“With ease. A thrice-braided Sister who can cause storms at sea be powerful indeed, and I knew I could not match her. My only hope be to strike first. I set watching spells. When she grew near to Tydd Saint Stephen, I be ready. Before she even sensed me, I turned her into a hare. Forever.”

I must have shown my shock, but Mother Redcap did not pause, although her voice grew weaker. “I never told Frances what . . . I done. She believed that Joan never found us. But a month later, in Ainsborough, a hunter’s arrow wounded a hare. He followed its trail of blood and found a dying woman, and that be how he knew Joan for a witch. Death be stronger than even the strongest magick. Joan was buried in unconsecrated ground with iron rivets through her ankles and wrists to keep her from haunting the living.”

But not the dead. I did not say the words aloud. Mother Redcap’s face sagged, and her eyes closed. Perhaps she was right that I was made of hard material, for I did not let her spent weakness deter me. Abruptly my dread and confusion and anger all lifted, as fear will disappear when a mother must act to snatch a child from the path of a bear or wolf. Nor was I deterred because the wolf was my own mother. Not then, anyway.

“Mother Redcap, I still want to tie the thrice-braided cord. It is my right. I must free Grandmother. Help me. Please.”

Her old, exhausted eyes opened. I could not read their expression. She said only, “After the funeral. Now I am drained of power. Ye will learn that the great magicks always exact a price. Oh, my poor child—ye will learn.”

Grandmother was buried in the churchyard of Saint Stephen, as we had always buried our cunning folk. The Christian church bore the pagan Dagaz rune inscribed on the east wall and a carving of the Green Man within. Mark, a sailor who had gone so many more places than I, told me that in some places not even cunning folk were allowed burial in consecrated ground. Here on the north coast, generations of priests understood that village cunning folk were not servants of the Dark One. The small magicks, the only kind we practice, pose no threat to Rome. The whole village gathered to lay Grandmother to rest. Followers of Jesus and followers of the Goddess stood side by side around Grandmother’s grave and prayed silently in their own ways.

The bells of Saint Stephen tolled slowly, mournfully. Father Redmond said a service, and we few of the Sisterhood whispered our own blessings and spells for Grandmother. Mistress Prentiss stood with her husband and children. Not once did she look directly at me. Matilda grasped her mother’s hand so tightly that both their fingers turned white.

Mother Redcap did not attend. Unable to climb the hill to the churchyard, she refused to be carried. But her familiar was there, sitting quietly by a weathered gravestone, watching. If the big dog was Mother Redcap’s proxy, if it could somehow bring images back to her, I did not understand how.

“Ye can cry if ye wish,” Mark whispered to me. I leaned against him, grateful for his warm bulk. But I did not cry. Some griefs go too deep for tears. Some griefs, some angers, some resolves.

As Mark walked me home, he pulled me into our favorite grove of oak trees. Often, we had sat here before hard winter came to Norfolk, talking and kissing, coming to know each other. Here he had asked me to marry him. Here we had made our vows to always be true, always be loving, always be honest with each other.

I was not completely honest with him now. I had told Mark nothing of the horror of Grandmother’s death, nothing of what Mother Redcap had told me of my mother, nothing of my intentions. He knew only that I’d had my ceremony and was now a cunning woman. Had I told him more, he would have tried to dissuade me from what I knew I must do. But it was more than that. Once, Mark had expressed satisfaction that neither my grandmother nor Mother Redcap, the two women who had raised me, were thrice braided. “The Sisterhood who are full witches, they be too . . .”

“Too what?” I had asked.

He shrugged, unable or unwilling to complete his thought. And I, giddy with happiness and love, had not pressed him. After all, I was not going to become thrice braided. His fear, or prejudice, or whatever it was, had not mattered. It could not affect us.

So now I sat with him under the oaks and listened to him tell me his news, which he gave with a mixture of restraint for my feelings and excitement from his own.

“Alysoun, love, I have an offer to sign onto a ship leaving Tydd Saint Stephen in a fortnight, taking wool to Amsterdam. I would be away mayhap three months. With yer grandmother gone and . . . already we put off our wedding until ye be ready, as be only right. Ye said ye do not know how long that will be. The pay for sailors on this journey be more than I can earn fishing, and when I return, we can marry and afford a cottage of our own. And . . . I want to do this, Alysoun. It be a good plan. Tell me ye—you, I mean—understand and agree.”

I did understand. He wanted the adventure, the money, the escape from the death that filled my cottage. He did not consider that if we took or built a cottage of our own, Mother Redcap, an old and infirm woman, would be alone. I would deal with that later, after he returned. For now, his sea voyage would eliminate all question, argument, and dissent about my becoming thrice braided. Moreover, I knew that after Mother Redcap conducted my ceremony, I would have a long period of learning the spells, abilities, and forms needed for the great magicks. And there was no greater magick than entering the Otherworld. If Mark was away from Tydd Saint Stephen, all would be easier.

I said, “It is a good plan. The money will be welcome. And it is for only three months.”

“I love ye,” he breathed, and it was hard to leave his arms, where I belonged. Nonetheless, I broke away and slipped into the cottage. Mother Redcap sat in her chair by the hearth. In the dim firelight, her sunken old eyes gazed at me with what looked like pity.

The day after Grandmother’s burial, Mother Redcap kept her promise to conduct the ceremony that would make me a thrice-braided Sister. She sat as upright as she could manage, her veined and spotted hands folded on her lap. Outside, the changeable April sun shone warmly, but here all the shutters were closed, the room lit only by a single candle and the flames of a strong fire on the hearth.

She said, “Stand facing me and summon yer familiar.”

“Familiar mine, come to me,” I said in the old language, the only words I knew of that ancient power of naming. Pipkin ran to me from behind a wooden chest, just as he had run to Grandmother. An animal familiar could not die unless it were thrown into a fire or its cunning woman died, and Grandmother had bequeathed Pipkin to me before she—

“Hold him.”

I picked up my mouse.

“Now do not speak nor move while I summon my Third.”