Page 99 of The Queen’s Witch

And gave off a terrible stench.

“No!” I cried, but it was too late. A dark shape, barely visible, took wavery form within the mist, and the Dark One’s laugh rang throughout the cottage, that terrible, monstrous laugh that was everywhere and nowhere.

In the chapel at Salle, Joan chuckled. “A pact with the Dark One. You progressed rapidly in malefic magick, did you not?”

Bredham Abbey rose around us, and I sickened Sister Beatrice at Agnes’s command. Agnes smiled as she gave me the instruction, but her smile was nothing compared to my delight in Beatrice’s suffering.

I set a “ghost spell” to frighten Sister Joan into leaving the abbey, for the first time making an offering to the Dark One of bone and holly and blood. Joy filled me, and I chortled about the nun’s terror.

I sickened unto death Bredham Abbey’s entire flock of chickens, and loved doing it.

Then a strange cottage, and a strange child at Grandmother’s feet. Uncertain, I tried to step toward the baby but halted just as abruptly. I knew who the little girl was: Joan, innocent as yet of malefic magick, raising her arms for her mother to pick her up.

Then both images vanished, and Grandmother’s face creased in despair. I tried to step toward her, to comfort her or warn her what was to come, but I could not move. And the images did not stop.

Samhain five years ago, in the forest with Agnes as she summoned the Dark One to destroy the Bredham Abbey bell tower. I saw Him only in wavering snatches as He appeared and disappeared, glowing with His own light, beautiful and desirable to a degree of no mortal male. Lust ripped through me, the same unholy joy as when I sickened Jane Boleyn and Elinor Sedlow and Sister Beatrice, when I killed the abbey fowl. The same pleasure but tenfold, twenty, and not only in my mind: in my breasts, in my loins. Desire that burned in its demand to be quenched. In the Dark One’s smile was the promise of lewd delights I had never known. My hands caressed my breasts and between my legs, even as I knew my touch was but a weak imitation of what He could offer.

I heard myself sob. Still more images:

I boiled a toad alive at Winchester to make an amatory charm for the queen of England to deceive her husband, a charm that sent Mark Smeaton to his death.

I tried to summon Anne in the deserted abbey, failed, and destroyed Agnes’s cottage, delighting in nearly killing her.

I agreed to murder Jane Seymour at Anne’s command. There was no way for the image to convey my desperate avoidance of that order.

I murdered a soldier raping a young nun at the sack of Loveryk Monastery. What I lived again was not my justification for the murder, but my deep joy in using malefic magick to cut the soldier’s throat.

“No,” I said aloud, and Joan laughed.

She conjured it then, the battle at the River Witham in Lincoln, where I had used the binding spell to hold a royal soldier immobile so that a rebel arrow could pierce his back. My second murder. I felt again the wild, hot pleasure spread through me, the exultation at taking a mortal life burning in me like wine, like arousal, like love. And then the malefic magick to summon the storm that shrouded the battle so Roger Ainley could escape, taking every last drop of my power but flooding me with shuddering joy.

“A killing storm,” Joan said. “Like mother, like daughter.”

And I knew it to be true. Knew this as well: The torment inflicted each Samhain on Grandmother was no bodily pain; she was beyond bodily pain. I had been the unknowing instrument of her torture. Eight years I had given to my pursuit of freeing Grandmother. And each time I used malefic magick in that pursuit, malefic magick planned for me by Joan in bond with the Dark One, using Agnes as their instrument, Grandmother had been forced to witness it. More than merely witness—to experience my unholy joy in causing pain.

There could be no greater anguish for any parent than to witness what a cherished, once-innocent child has become: one who takes joy in hurting, in killing, in evil.

That anguish had been forced on Grandmother twice, with Joan and again with me. In my arrogance, I believed that I was strong enough to leave behind malefic magick any time I chose; I had chosen it again and again, never considering any other path, justifying my actions to myself. The occasions for hurting others had been arranged for me, but the choice had been mine, and I had taken joy in it.

I tried to move toward Grandmother, could not, and collapsed on the chapel floor. To fight Joan now, even if I could best her, would only be to join again with the Dark One, to employ yet more malefic magick, causing Grandmother more anguish. I was defeated.

Joan’s laugh joined the Dark One’s, and both echoed off the stone walls, coating them with ice. From the floor, I glimpsed the carved Green Man on the ceiling, mingling with carved angels.

And then with something else.

It began as another swirl of mist high above me, mist as black as the Dark One, as cold, but utterly different. A smell filled the chapel, pungent and thick: the mingled scents of a female animal in heat, of a woman in desire, of menstruation and the blood of childbirth. The odor was raw, unrestrained female power, bound by neither the Dark One nor the laws of men.

Dangerous, wild as nature, the Goddess was nothing like I had imagined, and as much to be feared as the Dark One.

Immediately they joined in battle, while even Joan cowered in a corner and Anne fled behind the altar. The altar meant nothing to either of these elemental beings, and neither did we. They were two mists stalking each other, circling, joining, as shrieks filled the chapel and the church beyond. I witnessed what, even in my terror, I knew was not there: blood where there was no blood, torn and severed limbs where there were none, screams of anguish that were also screams of desire, and of desire fulfilled.

I did not, could not, witness the reality, for it was not and never could be mine. Mortal reality, I saw now, was but a pale reflection of the eternal struggle of these Beings, who were and were not the same Being. It was not a battle of good versus evil or male versus female, but something far more primal, something to which we mortals mattered only as manifestations of their struggle with each other, to use us or not as they chose. They destroyed each other, only to rise again, brute force emanating from nothing so base as brutes. The Otherworld was made and unmade and made again, eternally.

As I tried and failed to cover my eyes, I saw that everything mortals construct—kingdoms and laws, the Church, Cromwell’s new religion, the Sisterhood—all began in fear of the Goddess and the Dark One, perpetually enemies, perpetually joined, two aspects of the same Being. It acted, and miracles occurred, or magick succeeded, or kingdoms were created or destroyed, and none of it made any difference. To that Being, we were illusions who carried only a little of their infinite power.

I knew then, too, why men burned witches. The Sisterhood borrowed a tiny portion of the Being’s power. That was why the Goddess was now present, in this deadly dance that was both battle and lust, the elemental forces of life. The same forces that had shaped the lives of us four mortal women, now shrinking in fear.

And then, as abruptly as it began, the battle ended. Mists, shrieks, blood, and severed limbs all vanished, leaving behind two thrice-braided witches, a cunning woman, and the dead queen of England.