The Vanishing Witch (2 page)

But the day before the wedding, Æthelind fell asleep in a grove of oak trees and a snake crawled into her mouth, slid down her throat and coiled itself inside her. When she returned to her father’s mead hall, her belly was swollen as if she was great with child. The king’s son,
who was being entertained in the hall, was seized with rage that his intended bride should have shamed him by taking a lesser man to her bed.

Before all the company he drew his sword and struck off her head, but as her body fell to the ground, the snake slithered out from between her legs, like a newborn babe, and transformed into a beautiful human child, who cursed the prince. At once, the ground
that was stained with Æthelind’s blood fell away and the prince plunged through the dark earth into a pit of vipers. As the earth closed over him the serpents stung him to death, then instantly revived him that he might be tormented to death again. And thus he will suffer night and day throughout the ages until the great wolf Fenris breaks the chain that binds it, heralding the end of the world.

Meanwhile, Æthelind’s kin sorrowfully gathered up her head and body and burned them on a great funeral pyre. They placed her ashes in an urn with the golden boar’s head they had given her. The urn was inscribed with the ouroboros, the snake that devours its tail, a symbol of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. That night, when the moon rose, they carried the urn in a torchlight procession
to the top of a cliff, close to the walls of a ruined city the Romans had called Lindum. There they laid it in a cave with the burial urns of her elders.

And they say that when lightning flashes from the sky and thunder roars, Æthelind rides out over the cliff, her hair streaming in the wind, leading the wild hunt. But woe betide any man who witnesses that fearful sight, for she will hunt him
down until he can run no more and his body lies broken at her feet.

A killing ointment made of arsenic, vitriol, baby’s fat, bat’s blood and hemlock may be spread on the latches, gates and doorposts of houses in the dark of night. Thus can death run swiftly through a town.

‘Help me! I beg you, help me!’

The cry was muffled in the dense, freezing mist that swirled over the black river. As his punt edged upstream, Gunter caught
the distant wail and dug his pole into the river bottom, trying to hold his boat steady against the swift current. The shout seemed to have come from the bank somewhere ahead, but Gunter could barely see the flame of his lantern in the bow, much less who might be calling.

The cry came again. ‘In your mercy, for the sake of Jesus Christ, help me!’

The mist distorted the sound so Gunter couldn’t
be sure if it was coming from right or left. He struggled to hold the punt in the centre of the river and cursed himself. He should have hauled up somewhere for the night long before this, but it had taken four days to move the cargo downriver to Boston and return this far. He was desperate to reach home and reassure himself that his wife and children were safe.

Yesterday he’d seen the body of
a boatman fished out of the river. The poor bastard had been beaten bloody, robbed and stabbed. Whoever had murdered him had not even left him the dignity of his breeches. And he wasn’t the first boatman in past weeks to be found floating face down with stab wounds in his back.

‘Is anyone there?’ the man called again, uncertainly this time, as if he feared he might be speaking to a ghost or water
sprite.

Such a thought had also crossed Gunter’s mind. Two children had drowned not far from here and it was said their ghosts prowled the bank luring others to their deaths in the icy river.

‘What are you?’ Gunter yelled back. ‘Name yourself.’

‘A humble Friar of the Sack, a Brother of Penitence.’ The voice was deep and rasping, as if it had rusted over the years from lack of use. ‘The mist
. . . I stumbled into the bog and almost drowned in the mud. I’m afraid to move, in case I sink into the mire or fall into the river.’

Now Gunter could make out dark shapes through the billows of mist, but the glimpses were so fleeting he couldn’t tell if they were men or trees. Every instinct told him to ignore the stranger and push on up the river. This was exactly the kind of trick the river-rats
used to lure craft to the bank so that they could rob the boatmen. The man they’d found in the water had been a strapping lad, with two sound legs. Gunter had only one. His left leg had been severed at the knee and replaced by a wooden stump with a foot in the form of an upturned mushroom, not unlike the end of one of his own punt poles. Although he could walk as fast as any man, if it came
to a fight, he could easily be knocked off balance.

But the stranger on the bank would not give up. ‘I beg you, in God’s mercy, help me. I’m wet and starving. I fear dawn will see me a frozen corpse if I stay out here all night.’

The rasping tone of the man’s voice made it sound more like a threat than a plea, but Gunter had been cold and hungry often enough in his life to know the misery those
twin demons could inflict and the night was turning bitter. There’d be a hard frost come morning. He knew he’d never forgive himself if he left a man out here to die.

‘Call again, and keep calling till I can see you,’ he instructed.

He listened to the voice and propelled his punt towards the left bank, eventually drawing close enough to make out the shape of a hooded figure in a long robe standing
close by the water’s edge. Gunter tightened his hold on the quant: with its metal foot, the long pole could be turned into a useful weapon if the man tried to seize the boat.

The friar’s breath hung white in the chill air, mingling with the icy vapour of the river. As soon as the prow of the punt came close, he bent as if he meant to grab it. But Gunter was ready for that. He whisked the quant
over to the other side of the punt and pushed away from the bank, calculating that the man would not risk jumping in that robe.

‘By the blood of Christ, I swear I mean you no harm.’ But the man’s voice sounded even more menacing now that Gunter was close. The friar stretched out his right arm into the pool of light cast by the lantern. The folds of his sleeve hung down, thick and heavy with mud.
Slowly, with the other hand, he peeled back the sodden sleeve to reveal an arm that ended at the wrist. ‘I am hardly a threat to any man.’

Gunter felt an instant flush of shame. He resented any man’s pity for his own missing limb and was offering none to the friar, but he despised himself for his distrust and cowardice. It couldn’t have been easy for the friar to pull himself free of the mire
that had swallowed many an unwary traveller.

Gunter had always believed that priests and friars were weaklings who’d chosen the Church to avoid blistering their hands in honest toil and sweat. But this man was no minnow and he was plainly determined not to meet his Creator yet, for all that he was in Holy Orders.

Gunter brought the punt close to the bank, and held it steady in the current for
the friar to climb in and settle himself on one of the cross planks. His coarse, shapeless robe clung wetly to his body, plastered with mud and slime. He sat shivering, his hood pulled so low over his head that Gunter could see nothing of his face.

‘I’ll take you as far as High Bridge in Lincoln,’ Gunter said. ‘There are several priories just outside the city, south of the river. You’ll find
a bed and a warm meal in one, especially with you being in Holy Orders.’

‘It’s close then, the city?’ the friar rasped. ‘I’ve been walking for days to reach it.’

‘If it weren’t for this fret, you’d be able to see the torches blazing on the city walls and even the candles in the windows of the cathedral.’

Gunter pushed the punt steadily upstream, trying to peer through the mist at the water
in front. He knew every twist and turn of the river as well as he knew the face of his own beloved wife. He didn’t expect other craft to be abroad at this late hour, but there was always the danger of branches or barrels being swept downstream and crashing into his craft.

‘So what brings you to Lincoln?’ he asked, without taking his gaze from the water. ‘You’ll not find any of your order here.
I heard tell there was once a house belonging to Friars of the Sack in Lincoln, but that was before the Great Pestilence. House is still there, but none of your brothers has lived in it for years.’

‘It is not my brethren I seek,’ the friar said.

They were passing between the miserable hovels that lined the banks on the far outskirts of the city and the mist was less dense. Gunter was anxious
to drop off his passenger as soon as he could: he was impatient to get home, but there was something in the man’s voice that unnerved him. There was a bitter edge to it that made everything he said sound like a challenge, however innocuous the words. Still, that was friars for you, whatever order they came from. When they weren’t shrieking about the torments of Hell, they were demanding alms and
threatening you with eternal damnation if you didn’t pay up.

‘So,’ Gunter said, ‘why have you come? I warn you, Lincoln’s going through hard times. You’ll not find many with money to spare for beggars, even holy ones. You’d have done better to make for Boston. That’s where all the money’s gone since we lost the wool staple to it.’

The friar gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘Do you think I walked
all these miles for a handful of pennies? Do you see this?’

Using his teeth and left hand, he unlaced the neck of his robe and pulled it down. Then he lifted the lantern from the prow of the punt, letting the light from the candle shine full upon his chest. What Gunter saw caused him to jerk so violently that he missed his stroke and almost fell into the river. He could only stare in horror,
until the man dragged his robe into place again.

‘You ask what I seek, my friend,’ the friar growled. ‘I seek justice. I seek retribution. I seek vengeance.’

September pray blow soft, till fruit be in the loft.

To guard against witches, draw the guts and organs from a dove while it still lives and hang them over the door of your house. Then neither witch nor spell can enter.

While I lived I was never one of those who could see ghosts. I thought those who claimed they did were either moon-touched or liars. But when you’re dead, my darlings, you find yourself amazed at what you didn’t
see when you were alive. I exist now in a strange half-light. I see the trees and cottages, byres and windmills, but not as they once were to me. They’re pale, with only hints of colour, like unripe fruit. They’re new to this world. But I see other cottages too, those that had crumbled to dust long before I was born. They’re still there, crowded into the villages, snuggled tight between the hills,
old and ripe, rich with hues of yellow and brown, red clay and white limewash. They’re brighter, but less solid than the new ones, like reflections in the still waters of a lake, seeming so vibrant, yet the first breeze will riffle them into nothing.

And so it is with people. The living are there, not yet ripe enough to fall from the bough of life into death. But they are not the only ones who
pass along the streets and alleys or roam the forests and moors. There are others, like me, who have left life, but cannot enter death. Some stay where they lived, repeating a walk or a task, believing that if only they could complete it they might depart. They never will. Others wander the highways looking for a cave, a track or a door that will lead from this world to the one beyond, full of such
wonders as they have only dreamed of.

Many, the saddest of all, try to rejoin the living. Sweethearts run in vain after their lovers, begging them to turn and look at them. Children scrabble nightly at the doors of cottages, crying for a mother, any mother, to take them in and love them. Babies lurk down wells or lie under sods, waiting their chance to creep inside a living woman’s womb and be
born again as her child.

And me? I cannot depart, not yet. I was wrenched out of life before my time, hurled into death without warning, so I must tarry until I have seen my tale to its proper conclusion for there is someone I watch and someone I watch over. I will not leave them until I’ve brought their stories to an end.

Robert of Bassingham gazed at the eleven other members of the Common
Council, slouching in their chairs, and sighed. It had been a long afternoon. The old guildhall chamber was built across the main thoroughfare of Lincoln city, and the bellows of pedlars, the rumble of carts and ox wagons, the chatter of people clacking over the stones in wooden pattens meant that the small windows of the chamber had to be kept shut, if the aged members were to hear the man next to
them.

As a consequence, the air was stale with the sour breath of old men and the lingering odour of the mutton olives, goat chops and pork meatballs on which the councillors had been grazing. It being a warm day, they’d been compelled to wash down these morsels with flagons of costly hippocras, a spiced wine, which had already worked its soporific magic on several. Three of the sleepers had
carefully positioned a hand over their eyes so that they could pretend to be concentrating, while a fourth was lolling with his mouth open, snoring and farting almost as loudly as the hound at his feet.

Robert was inordinately fond of hippocras but had deliberately refrained from imbibing, knowing he, too, would doze off. He was painfully conscious of the heavy responsibilities he had now assumed
as the newly elected master of the Guild of Merchants, the most powerful guild in Lincolnshire and still the wealthiest, even though it was not as prosperous as once it had been.

Robert was a cloth merchant of the city of Lincoln, well respected – at least, by those who measure a man’s worth by the size of his purse and influence. He made a good living selling wool and the red and green cloth
for which Lincoln was justly famed. Having only recently been appointed to serve on the Common Council he was one of its younger members, still in his early fifties.