The Witch Maker (30 page)

‘Nothin' went wrong. I just thought it'd be better to wait a bit longer this time.'

‘
You
thought? Or your
brother
thought?'

‘
I
thought!' Tom Dimdyke said fiercely. ‘He's my lad. I didn't want it to happen until he was ready – until he was strong enough.'

Woodend nodded sympathetically. ‘Because he's not a callous bastard like your brother was,' he said. ‘Because you knew it'd be hard for him to give up to somebody else's care a thing he'd probably already have begun to love.'

‘Yes,' Tom Dimdyke said.

‘What the bloody hell's goin' on?' Wilf demanded. ‘Why won't somebody tell me what the bloody hell's goin' on?'

‘I'll tell you,' Woodend promised him. ‘But before that, I'm goin' to ask you one question. Did your dad bring a girl to see you recently – a girl who was just about to get wed? An' was it a Dimdyke she was goin' to marry?'

‘Yes, but what's that to do with—?' Wilf stopped suddenly, as if he'd been hit by a truck. His face turned even paler, and his hands started shaking. ‘Why
did
you bring the girl to see me, Dad?'

Tom Dimdyke looked at the floor, and said nothing.

‘I think he brought her to you for the same reason that your grandfather took your mother to see your Uncle Harry – except that in Harry's case, it was over a year before he became the Witch Maker,' Woodend told Wilf.

‘You ... you don't mean ... You can't mean ...'

‘The Witch Maker never marries, but his successor, in order to have legitimacy, has to carry his blood – which is the same blood as that of the first Harry Dimdyke, the local hero who tied Meg Ramsden to the post an' then garrotted her. Now do you think you can work out how that's
managed
?'

‘I ... I don't know.'

‘Yes, you do. The only way a king can ensure a child is his is to impregnate a virgin. Why should it be any different for Witch Makers?'

A look of almost indescribable agony came to Wilf's face. Slowly, he turned towards Tom.

‘When Uncle Harry told me he was my real dad, I thought he was lyin',' he said, almost sobbing now. ‘But he seemed so sure of himself that, in the end, I was forced to believe him. An' do you know what I thought then? I thought Mum an' him had betrayed you, Dad. I thought they'd slept with each other behind your back. An'
that's
why I killed him. That's why I took him all the way to the Witchin' Post and garrotted him like the evil slime he was – to get revenge for you! But you
knew
about it! You knew all the time.'

‘Yes,' Tom Dimdyke agreed. ‘The Witch Maker had to have an heir, an' that heir had to be brought up in the right kind of home. An' what better kind of home could there have been than the one we gave you?'

‘So you an' my grandfather forced my mother to sleep with your brother before you'd marry her!'

‘Nobody forced her. She went willingly. She saw it as her duty to the village. We both did. But for two people who were as much in love as we were, it wasn't easy. God knows, it wasn't easy.'

‘But you did it anyway,' Wilf said bitterly. ‘An' when it was all over, you took in your brother's bastard – an' called him your own.'

‘You
are
my own,' Tom said firmly. ‘You might not be the seed of my loins, like Mary is, but you're still mine. When I held you in my arms as a baby, do you think it mattered to me that the monster who was my half-brother had actually
fathered
you? I didn't love you any the less for that.' He paused for a moment, as tears streamed down his face. ‘
I'm
your real dad, Wilf,' he continued. ‘I always was.'

T
he weather forecast had predicted this would be the last day of the real summer, and if that were true, then the summer had chosen to go out in a blaze of glory. Those who could, flocked to the beach or lay in their gardens. Those who couldn't, looked longingly out of their office or factory windows, and promised themselves they would get in at least a short walk before darkness drew the curtain on this final golden day.

The three women, separated from each other by distance, but united in their connection to a dead Witch Maker, belonged to the group who could not take advantage of the day. They were all working. At least, that was what they told themselves. And, in fact, they were all, more or less, right.

Hettie Todd was helping her mother on the coconut shy. They were doing good business, and they needed to – because a long workless winter lay ahead. She knew now who her father was, and considered that she had come to terms with it. What did it matter who had planted the seed, she asked herself, when it was Zelda – wonderful, warm, kind Zelda – who had harvested it?

As she took the money and handed out the balls, she let her mind wander freely. She wondered where their winter quarters would be this year, and if Pat Calhoun would come with them, instead of going back to Ireland. She hoped he would, for though she had not yet fallen in love with him, she thought she very well might.

Monika Paniatowski was behind the wheel of her MGA. The bonnet had been resprayed, but the scars were far from healed. Her boss was on his first foreign holiday – he had taken his wife to Spain – and with Woodend away, the sergeant was finding she had more time on her hands than she was comfortable with.

When she had to drive across the town, as she often did, she had taken to going down the road where the Rutters lived. She'd convinced herself it was a short cut, and sometimes it was. She occasionally saw Maria and the baby out on the street during these journeys – the baby gurgling happily in her pushchair, Maria holding the pushchair handle with one hand and her white stick with the other. Paniatowski never made the other woman aware she was there, but sometimes she'd park and watch – just to make sure that Maria and the fruit of her womb reached the corner of the road safely.

She secretly suspected that she hoped that seeing Maria in all her need – and with all her courage – would lead to a dampening of the fires of passion she felt for the other woman's husband.

It hadn't worked yet!

Mary Dimdyke, lying on her back, on a moor scented with gorse and wild primrose, looked up at a single swallow which was riding on the air currents above her. What joy it seemed to have, she thought. How much it seemed to relish its freedom. And what a fool it was not to have noticed the kestrel hawk which was hovering close by, and just waiting for its opportunity to strike!

Mary shifted her position slightly. The bracken against her back was a little irritating, but nowhere near as uncomfortable as the weight of the sweating, grunting youth who was pressing down on her front.

‘Have you nearly finished, Teddy?' she asked.

She didn't stutter. She had quite lost her stutter now.

‘I ... uh ...' the boy gasped.

‘Oh, do get on with it,' Mary said irritably.

His name was Edward Thwaites. He was the constable's nephew and, because he was from the village, he was probably also some distant relation of hers, too. He had been drooling over her ever since he had first started paying attention to girls, but she had kept him at a distance until now.

She had chosen him for two reasons. The first was that he was not very bright. The second was that what he lacked in brain power, he more than made up for in brawn. Though he was only eighteen, he was already bigger than his own dad – and that made him bigger than any other man in the village.

He hadn't been able to believe his luck when she'd suggested this walk together. He didn't care that her beautiful hair was gone for ever – that the new hair which was growing to replace it lacked its sheen and softness, and even contained the odd strand of white.

And why should he care, when she had breasts she would allow him to clumsily massage, and legs she would open when he asked her to?

That was all he wanted. That was all that any man – whatever he might claim –
truly
wanted.

Teddy gave a last strangled cry, and rolled off her.

‘That was lovely,' he said.

He was lying, of course. She knew that. It had been – at best – mildly satisfactory. But that wouldn't stop him coming back for more. Now he had had a taste, he was as dependent on her as any alcoholic is on his bottle.

‘Have you heard anythin' about your dad an' brother?' Teddy asked.

‘They come up for trial next month.'

‘You must miss them.'

He was not really interested, she thought. It was all pretence, so she wouldn't think him shallow – so she wouldn't come to believe that all he cared about was what she had between her legs. But pretence or not, it gave her the opportunity to say what she had been planning to say all along.

‘Yes, I miss them,' she told him. ‘It's hard for me to get by now they're in prison.'

‘It must be,' Teddy said awkwardly, already beginning his retreat from the subject.

‘Maybe you could help me out,' she said, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.

‘Me?' Teddy said, moving further away from her.

‘You,' she repeated.

‘But I'm just a farm labourer. I don't earn much.'

‘I never said you did. But you don't have to
earn
money to get your hands on it.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Oh, there are lots of ways to do it. You could take it out of that cash box that you told me your dad keeps hidden in the barn.'

‘But that'd be stealin'!'

‘Or when you're workin' behind the bar at the Bull, like you sometimes do, you could slip a few bottles of whisky into your pocket. I'd sell them for you, and you'd get half of the money I made.'

Or a quarter, she thought. Or perhaps even less than that.

‘It's wrong,' Teddy said.

‘An' once we had a bit of what you might call “capital”, we could put it to work for us,' Mary continued. ‘I could lend it out, you see, like banks do. An' charge interest. An' if people fell behind with their payments, you could go an' see them an' persuade them to cough up.'

‘I'm not sure ...' Teddy said.

‘You want us to keep on doin' this, don't you?'

‘Yes, but ...'

‘Then you'll do what's necessary to keep me happy. Besides ...'

‘Besides what?' Teddy asked tremulously.

‘You know what my Uncle Harry did to that girl from the fairground, don't you?'

‘He ... he raped her.'

‘An' if it had ever come out, he'd have gone to prison for a long, long time.'

‘I know that.'

‘An' if
I
said
you'd
raped me, the same would happen to you.'

‘You wouldn't—'

‘I was a virgin until half an hour ago. Did you know that?'

‘But you can't have been, or you'd never have ...'

‘Given in so easily?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘If you don't believe I was a virgin, just look down at your willie.'

‘Oh God!' Teddy groaned. ‘It's covered in blood.'

‘Yes,' Mary agreed. ‘But don't panic, because it's mine, not yours. That's what happens when you deflower an innocent girl.'

‘I never ... I didn't even ...'

‘So you will think about what I've said, won't you?'

‘Yes, I'll ...'

He'd do more than think about it, she told herself. He'd do
exactly
what she told him to.

Her father and her brother had been fools, she thought. The choice in this world was not between good and evil, as they had always believed – and
still
believed. It was both starker and simpler than that – it was whether you chose to become a victim or a predator. They didn't see it. They would
never
see it. Which was why they were now languishing in Lancaster Gaol.

Meg Ramsden – though she had lived and died nearly four hundred years earlier – would have been more at home in the modern world than they could ever have been. She had understood it for what it was. Yes, she had ended her life at the stake. But that was not because she had been playing the wrong game – it was because she played the
right
game
badly
.

Mary looked up at the sky again, just in time to see the hawk swoop down and dig its cruel talons into the soft flesh of the swallow.

‘Well, have you thought about it?' she demanded.

‘If I took a couple of pounds out of the box, I don't think my dad would miss it,' Teddy mumbled. ‘Will that do?'

‘For a start.'

But
only
for a start. A smile of triumph spread across Mary's face. She was on her way. She was no longer the girl who would sit there meekly while her beautiful hair was shorn from her head. She was a woman now. But not a new woman, exactly. More a new version of an older woman.

She could feel the blood of Meg Ramsden suddenly beginning to gush powerfully through her veins.