Bewitching the Baron (22 page)

“They have taken to calling you the Raven Witch,” Sally said. “On account of Oscar, I suppose.”

They all three turned to Oscar, who was eyeing the plate of biscuits. “Poor hungry bird,” he said.

“Yes, he is a terrifying beast,” Valerian said, breaking up a biscuit and feeding him from her hand.

“You are on everyone’s mind and lips,” Sally continued. “You, and Gwen and Eddie. They are not speaking to one another, and Eddie is cured of whatever it was that ailed him. I do not know how to describe the mood in the air, though—tense and fearful, but excited, too, like when there is a fair at Yarborough.”

“Judging from the visitors we have had today, there does not seem to be much animosity towards Valerian,” Theresa said, sipping tea.

Sally shrugged a little uncomfortably. “That is there, too. All the men sit around The Drunken Raven, swilling ale and muttering darkly, and twisting everything that has happened to such a degree that you would not know you had taken any part in it. The more they drink, the more horrible and plentiful the stories become. Or so my husband tells me.”

“And Mrs. Torrance no doubt presides over them all, dirty bar rag in hand,” Valerian said. “She spreads more poison with that tongue of hers than any witch ever has with potions.”

“As long as they stay at the inn, I do not think we need worry about them,” Theresa said. “The baron’s protection may well be enough to restrain them to muttering only. And as for Mrs. Torrance—I would sooner believe the sun would cease rising than that that woman would cease her gossiping.”

Valerian tried to take some comfort from her aunt’s words, but wondered if this time it might be different. There seemed no way to live down what had happened this past week. She would be treated as even more of a leper than she had been before.

After Sally left, Valerian went outside to clean up her impromptu infirmary. She was moving the bench back against the cottage wall when she saw yet one more woman headed towards her through the knee-high grass of the meadow.
Oh lord, who now?
she wondered.

To her surprise, it was Mrs. Torrance herself. To her recollection, the woman had only once been out to the cottage, and that shortly after Valerian and come to live with her aunt. She had never asked what the innkeeper’s wife had wanted of Theresa, had been too wrapped up in her own grief over her parents to care.

Pretty pink ribbons fluttered from the straw hat Mrs. Torrance wore.

“Rrrr . . .” Oscar said from his perch on the edge of the roof.

“Oscar,” Valerian warned in her sternest voice.

“Rrrr . . .”

“Oscar, no!”

“Finders keepers! Rrrraw!” Oscar cried, and launched himself into the air and across the meadow at Mrs. Torrance’s hat.

“No! You bad, bad bird, come back here this minute! Mrs. Torrance, duck!” Even as she shouted it, she knew it was hopeless. She ran towards Mrs. Torrance, who stood rooted in place, her eyes wide with fearful fascination as Oscar flapped his big glossy wings towards her.

The battle was brief and bloodless. Mrs. Torrance covered her face with her hands, hunching her shoulders in terror as the black spawn of Satan landed atop her head with the weight of a thousand demons. His talons dug into the straw of the hat, scraping her scalp, and his wings beat the air about her face as he tried to lift off with his prize. A keening cry rose from Mrs. Torrance’s throat, and she stumbled around in a circle, blinded and whimpering, until at last the ribbon beneath her chin gave way, and Oscar and the hat rose free.

“Finders keepers! Oscar is a superior bird! Rrrraw . . .” Oscar’s voice trailed off as he flew into the woods with his prize.

“Mrs. Torrance, I am so dreadfully sorry. Are you all right?” Valerian asked, reaching her at last. She held the woman’s shoulders, checking visually for any injury Oscar might have wrought in his greed. The woman’s hair had been pulled loose from its pins, and stuck out from her head in ratty clumps.

The woman finally gathered her wits enough to recognize Valerian, and when she did she took a step back, her face turning angry.

“You! That bird!”

“I know, I know,” Valerian interrupted before she could go any further. “He is horrible he has no manners whatsoever. He attacked Baron Ravenall in just the same way.”

From the look in the woman’s eyes, Valerian knew she thought Oscar had been sent purposefully to attack her. “Please, come sit down. Perhaps Oscar will bring it back and we can salvage it. I will pay for it, if he does not. Please believe me, Mrs. Torrance, I would never let Oscar do such a thing if he were within my complete control.”

“I should not have come here,” Mrs. Torrance said. “I was a fool to do so. A fool!”

Valerian led her to the bench and sat her down. She was intensely curious as to just why Mrs. Torrance had chosen to darken their doorstep at long last. “Let me get you some tea, something to soothe your nerves.”

“No. Do not give me any of your brews.” She took several more deep, ragged breaths until at last she seemed to gain some control over herself. Valerian waited, having learned that silence was the best prompt to speech. She had no reason to like this woman, but if she had a physical complaint, Valerian would not hesitate to help her.

“Is your aunt here?” Mrs. Torrance asked at last.

“She is not seeing anyone.”

“Not seeing anyone. Huh. Not seeing anyone, or just not seeing me?”

“Not seeing anyone,” Valerian repeated calmly.

“I have come about the warts.”

She said it like Valerian should know whereof she spoke. “The warts? Yes?”

“Yes, the warts. They have been on the bottoms of my feet for ten years now, and I want to be rid of them. You tell her that. Tell her Alice Torrance is tired of those things, tired of standing on them all day, sending their pains through my feet, reminding me of what is past. If she will not take them off, then you do it. You have proven you can. You are neither of you in a position to say no to me, not when the whole town is ready to take my side, baron or no baron.”

Valerian wondered if perhaps the woman had been inhaling beer fumes for a little too long. What on earth was she on about? “Will you excuse me while I consult with my aunt?”

“You tell her Alice Torrance is here.”

Valerian left her glaring on the bench and slipped inside. Aunt Theresa was waiting for her, her expression halfway between exasperation and amusement.

“That woman,” Theresa said in a voice low enough not to carry out the window. “She has all the sense of a particularly malicious goose.”

“What is she going on about, with the warts and all? Do you know about this?”

“Ten years she has not spoken to me, and I have not missed the sound of her voice for one of them.”

“What happened ten years ago?”

“It is not a pretty story.”

“I do not expect it to be. This is Mrs. Torrance, after all, and apparently there are warts involved.”

“Ten years ago she came to me claiming to have been raped, and she asked me to rid her of the child the man had started in her belly. She was in such distress that I agreed and prepared the juniper. She was violently ill for two days, until at last her blood came. I thought that was the end of it.

“When she had recovered, she came to see me again, weeping as much as she had the first time. After much ranting and accusation, it became clear that she had not been raped, and had in fact aborted the child of her lover. She had been afraid that her husband would know the child was not his and she’d rid herself of it for that reason. She was feeling guilty now, though, and found me a convenient scapegoat. She claimed I had forced her to do it and stolen the baby for use in spells and incantations.

“I confess I lost my temper at that, and told the woman that until she accepted responsibility for her own actions, she would feel the pain of her guilt every day of her life. All I really meant was that she would never find a cure for the pain in her heart as long as she looked to other people instead of herself. If she would have just allowed herself to grieve for the babe, instead of blaming me, she would not have had this eating at her for ten years.

“But that is not what she heard. From what she said to you just now, she blames the warts on her feet on me.”

“So what should I do?” Valerian asked.

“What would you normally do?”

“Tell her they would go away in time, although apparently these have not,” Valerian said. “Or I would have her rub her feet several times a day in fresh nettles, to bring on a severe rash, and then soak her feet in very hot water. That sometimes helps, but it is not a pleasant cure.”

“Or?”

“Or, if the patient seemed particularly gullible, I would prescribe a ‘witchcraft’ cure, and have her do something ridiculous and frightening, like catch a cat at midnight and touch its nose to each wart three times while reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards. ’Twould scare the warts off her body.”

“Now,” Theresa asked, “which of the above seems the most suitable to our dear innkeeper out yonder?”

“Personally, I would prefer to rub her feet with nettles.” Aunt Theresa gave her a look, and Valerian pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “But I suppose it could be just as satisfying to scare the daylights out of her. I do feel a bit sorry for anyone who has spent ten years eaten up inside over a choice she made. But why did she come now?”

“I can only guess. Whatever reasons she may say she has, perhaps she is finally ready to forgive herself. And as the guilt goes, so can the warts,” Theresa said.

Valerian got up and started searching the shelves for eerie paraphernalia to use in the cure. “Well, perhaps she will stop spreading so many lies if the warts do disappear.”

“Let us not start expecting gold to shower us from heaven.”

When Valerian returned outside, she was carrying an old wool blanket under one arm, in the other hand a basket with various animal bones and four stubby candles. She ignored Mrs. Torrance and spread the blanket on the ground, then set one candle at each corner and lit it. She stood in the center of the blanket in her bare feet, and with a sheep’s horn in hand pointed to the north, south, east, and west, all the while lowly chanting a memorized Latin passage on digestion from one of her father’s medical texts.

When she finished, she pointed the horn at Mrs. Torrance and stared for long moments, watching the color drain from the woman’s face.

“Remove your shoes,” Valerian ordered, keeping her voice low and flat, as she imagined a true sorceress might.

Mrs. Torrance scrambled to obey.

“Remove your stockings.”

When she had obeyed, Valerian stepped off the blanket, and pointed to its center with the horn. “Sit within the square of power.” Valerian could see a sheen of sweat on Mrs. Torrance’s face as she came and sat in the center of the blanket.

“Do you recognize this horn?” she asked, holding it out. Mrs. Torrance shook her head mutely. “It is the horn of a three-headed goat, killed at midnight on All Hallow’s Eve three centuries ago by the great druid queen Vama-wama. It has been twisted by the power of that which lies beyond sight.”

In a sudden movement, Valerian clamped the horn to her own forehead, over the linen bandage. She winced, then turned the expression into a grimace of agony for Mrs. Torrance’s sake. After a long moment she pulled the bandage away from her forehead, revealing the smooth white skin beneath.

Mrs. Torrance gave a little shuddering gasp of awe.

“This horn holds the power of the earth and the stars, and of the blood that flows in each creature’s veins,” Valerian said. “It knows what lives inside us, each and every one. It knows
you,
Alice Torrance. And it will free you.”

Valerian knelt at the woman’s feet and took one foot into her lap. “You will feel a freezing as of ice upon each wart.” She touched the horn to one of the flat warts, and Alice whimpered, tears spilling from her eyes. “You will walk home barefoot,” Valerian said as she worked, moving the horn from wart to wart. “And every morning and every evening you will scrub your feet with soap scented with roses, the scent of mercy.”

“I do not have any rose-scented soap,” Alice whined.

“I will give you some to start, and then your husband must find you more. You must wash your feet twice a day for each remaining day of your life. Nine days from today, Alice Torrance, you are to go to church and pray for your soul. On the morning of the tenth day, when you scrub your feet with the rose-scented soap, the warts will fall from your body. You will have been cleansed.”

Valerian put the second foot back down on the blanket, and waved the horn in a complex, meaningless pattern over Alice’s head. “Now stand up and say the Lord’s Prayer while I go get the soap.”

Aunt Theresa had the soap ready for her when she came inside. “A lifelong sentence of foot scrubbing?” Theresa asked.

Valerian shrugged, a crooked smile on her mouth. “It cannot hurt her. Her feet do not exactly smell fresh, and they are rough with dead skin. And I like the idea of unbathed Mr. Torrance going to Yarborough once a month for rose-scented soap.”

She went back outside with the soap, and Oscar flew down and landed on her shoulder. Alice’s mutilated hat lay upon the ground near the blanket, devoid of ribbons.

Valerian went to each candle and extinguished it, reciting body fluids in Latin as she did so. Mistress Torrance was still reciting her own prayers in the center of the blanket.

“Alice Torrance, you are free to step from the square of power,” Valerian intoned.

Alice opened her eyes and cautiously stepped off the wool. Valerian handed her the soap, then picked up what was left of the hat and gave it to her. “I am sorry about your hat. That part was not necessary.”

Alice clasped the crumpled straw to her chest like a talisman. “No matter.”

“I am afraid I will have to burn your stockings and shoes. It is part of the ritual. They are from your old life, and you cannot walk with them into your new one.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Remember now, morning and night with the scrubbing, and to church on the ninth day. The warts will fall off the morning of the tenth. You can go now.”