Read The Warlock's Curse Online
Authors: M.K. Hobson
Tags: #The Hidden Goddess, #The Native Star, #M.K. Hobson, #Veneficas Americana
The Warlock's Curse
Table of Contents
The Warlock’s Curse
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Mary Hobson
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: October 2012
ISBN (electronic edition): 978-1-938860-01-0
www.demimonde.com
Translation of “Alcestis” by Rainer Maria Rilke used by permission of A. S. Kline
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012943773
The
Veneficas Americana
Series
By M.K. Hobson
— 1876 —
The Native Star
The Hidden Goddess
— 1910 —
The Warlock’s Curse
The Unsteady Earth
Once more he still saw
the girl’s face, that turned towards him
with a smile, bright as hope,
that was almost a promise: fulfilled,
to come back up from the depths of Death
to him, the Living —
At that, indeed, he threw
his hands over his face, as he knelt there,
so as to see nothing more than that smile.
“Alcestis,” Rainer Maria Rilke
Prologue
M
ASSACHUSETTS
C
OLONY
F
ULL MOON
S
pecial Magistrate Anson Kendall sat on the ladderback chair his son had fetched him and watched blood drip from the tips of Aebedel Cowdray’s fingers. Three days ago, the warlock’s hands had been fine and white as a woman’s, framed by pristine silk cuffs edged with Flemish lace. Now the cuffs were soiled and torn, the lace stiff and brown, and the slim fingers swollen and purple.
Peine forte et dure.
Punishment, strong and hard. The practice of pressing a warlock beneath heavy stones was commonly reserved for cases in which the accused refused to make a plea—but in Cowdray’s case, no plea was necessary. He was an unabashed practitioner of Satan’s arts; two score and five had he lived as a warlock, traded as one in South Carolina and Pennsylvania and New York, colonies that reckoned the weight of a man’s purse over that of his sins.
The colony of Massachusetts, however, was not so indulgent.
Governor Bradstreet, who had commanded Cowdray’s capture, had also ordered the swiftest of trials and the speediest of convictions. These would have been followed by the hastiest of executions—had the Special Magistrate not persuaded the governor to countenance a delay. A
slight
delay. Just three days, which Anson Kendall might use to discover how to save his wife’s soul. For Cowdray had laid a bewitchment upon her, a spell that only the warlock knew how to unmake. And no matter how many stones it took, Anson had sworn to learn the secret.
Three days ago, Cowdray had been defiant. He had laughed as the first stone was placed on his chest and had declared the second “a goose’s feather.” But three days without water, under the ever-increasing weight of the stones, had left his eyeballs bulging, red as grapes, and his tongue as thick as an ox’s. Three days of unrelenting torture had curbed his pride. Anson had permitted himself the luxury of hope.
But as night had become day, and day had passed to night and back to morning again, and stone upon stone had been added, a terrible certainty slumped Anson’s shoulders, as unbearable as the weight crushing the unholy vault of the warlock’s chest.
“You will never tell,” he whispered, allowing himself to finally realize it. He watched the man struggle for each breath, cracked lips moistened only by trickles of fresh blood. There was nothing Anson could offer him now. He could not promise to spare Cowdray’s life; he could not promise him ease or even respite from his suffering. The worst had been done—more than the worst—and Cowdray had not broken.
Anson sank back, releasing a long breath. It was nearly midnight. Over the gallows field the rising moon hung like a ghostly pearl set in battered pewter. A bitter wind whistled off Massachusetts Bay, rattling the winter-bare branches of the hemlocks. The air smelled of smoke and snow-sodden soil and mud-damp stone and blood.
He could hear a woman sobbing. The shudders and heaves were tinged with a note of frenzy. It was Cowdray’s whore—a dark poxy slut with red hair who had accompanied him from South Carolina, heedless of the dangers of entering Massachusetts. One of his witches, no doubt. Young and foolish. The others of his coven—it was rumored that there were hundreds—had wisely stayed away.
Anson gestured to his son, who stood with several of Governor Bradstreet’s men, warming themselves around a bright leaping bonfire. James Kendall was thirteen, tall as a man but not yet so broad in the shoulders; the sleeves of his black coat hung down over his hands. He was at his father’s side in two steps. He was a diligent boy.
Anson spoke so softly that his son had to bend down to hear him.
“Another stone. The largest that remains,” he said. “And quiet that damned harlot.”
James swallowed, but did not speak. Then he nodded, once. He went back to where the men were standing, and Anson could hear them murmuring quietly among themselves. No warlock had ever withstood seven stones. No magistrate had ever commanded it.
Anson passed a hand over his eyes, pressed the aching orbs with his fingers. He heard rough words being spoken to the crying woman, and her answering screams of misery as she saw the seventh stone being lifted. There was the sound of a blow, a muffled thud as the woman was cast to the ground. His head was throbbing. He felt small and empty, keenly aware of his own cruelty. He knew, in that moment, that there was something important in him that he could not find anymore, something that he would not be able to find again, but he did not care. He was watching a house burning, and the screams of the whore were his wife’s screams. Sarah could not be saved. All he could do was throw on more wood so that he might not have to suffer her suffering much longer.
It took three of Governor Bradstreet’s men to hoist the largest of the flat stones they had retrieved from the banks of the Forest River. As they settled it carefully atop the others, Cowdray released a long, wheezing groan, a bitter note on a cracked pipe. His eyes closed, lids barely stretching over the grossly protuberant orbs, and then he was still.
Anson waited a few moments then leaned forward to confirm that the warlock was finally dead. But as he brought his face close, Cowdray’s blood-red eyes flew open. He spat. Blood and spittle thick as porridge flecked Anson’s cheek.
“More ... will come ...” Cowdray rasped, pushing out each word on a wave of pain and fury, like a woman birthing a child. “Cannot ... kill us ... all.”
With the back of his hand, Anson wiped away the bloody spittle. Whatever part of his humanity had fled had taken his sanity with it, and now all was burning in the house of his imagination with his wife’s living, breathing, dead body.
“Yes, I can,” he said. “I will.”
His own father, the great Determination Kendall, used to have visions—divine visions, gifts from Almighty God. Now, looking into the bloody depths of Cowdray’s eyes, Anson was struck with a divine vision of his own, as sharp and staggering as a hammer-blow to his forehead. He saw bodies. Hundreds of bodies, thousands of them, slack and lifeless, witches and warlocks, swinging from gallows against skies aglow with flames and smoke.