The Witch of Glenaster (8 page)

“I should have thought to pull
down the blind,” said Cornelius, later, after we had moved upstairs. “I
panicked. I thought she was possessed…”

“Well, there’s no harm done,”
replied Thomas, who was gazing through a slit in the thick, black curtains that
were draped untidily over the window. “If we stay together, and see it through,
I’m sure all will be well.”

By now we could hear the
Festival working its way up the valley, and Thomas described to us how the
crowd outside, now several hundred strong, some wearing masks and some carrying
statues, were shouting and hollering as they climbed towards the shrine to
their god,
Arle
, which lay above
Broadfarrow
.
It had been crudely carved into the mountainside many generations before, and its
features were all but smoothed away, but still visible was its fierce jaw,
opening onto a manmade cave set deep into the rock, and also the small figure
clutched helplessly in its left hand, that was clearly meant to be that of a
struggling man.

The
Moonlanders
laid offerings of flowers and delicacies at this monster’s feet, and started to
sing a long and drearily repetitive hymn, which seemed to go on forever. After
that there was silence for a while, and we began to think we might get through
the rest of the night in peace, if we just kept quiet.

We were wrong.

Of a sudden, there came a great
hornblast
from the
mountain, that
echoed around the valley and rang painfully in our ears. This was followed by a
whooping and cheering from the crowd below, and it had a sickly tenor, as if
they were rejoicing in another’s suffering.

At the window, Thomas’s face
was swept by a dull orange light, and his eyes widened.

“Dear God, they cannot be…” he
said, and I looked across at Cornelius, and he stared back, face as white as
milk. Magnus clutched at my hand, his palms cold.

“What is it?” I asked.

Thomas turned to us.

“Keep away from the window,” he
commanded. “Cornelius, take them next door. Do not let them out of your sight.”

“But what is it…?” I demanded,
my curiosity besting my fear.

“Come on…” said Cornelius
gently, reaching for my hand.

“But I want to see…” I said,
pulling away. Magnus looked from me to Thomas, from Thomas to Cornelius, and
back again.

“Esther…” said Thomas, and he
sounded really angry, though his voice was soft. “Take your brother and go next
door.” As he spoke, I could see his right hand, the one that held the curtain,
was trembling.

“Let me see…!” I cried, and
dashed across the room, nearly knocking Thomas to the floor, and almost pulling
the curtain off its rail. It was only a few seconds – Thomas hauled me away,
grabbing me round the waist and ordering me to stay on the other side of the
room – but what I saw was enough, quite enough, to satisfy my foolish
inquisitiveness.

The crowd of people on the
mountain were now packed densely around the shrine, and their focus seemed
fixed on something that was lying on the ground; and they appeared to be
kicking it, and shouting at it, and hitting it with their hands. Then for a
brief moment the thing reared up out of the melee, and I saw that it was a
woman, a young woman; and her hair swept like smoke above her head as she
thrashed and fought to get free. But she could not - there were too many hands
holding her - and as she disappeared again beneath the sea of heads I saw
blood, crimson and dark and shining like silk in the firelight, spatter over
the faces of the people around her, as they lifted their feet and began a
marching rhythm, marching on the spot, tramp, tramp, tramp…

I stared at Thomas, but he
would not look at me, only held out his hand to stop me coming back. And I
cowered in the corner, holding on to my brother, and thought I heard Cornelius
weeping softly; but my brother seemed too stunned to cry, and only clawed at my
sleeve, as I sang silently into his ear.

“They call it the Winnowing,”
said Cornelius, his voice hardly more than a croak. “The –
victims
are
supposed to be volunteers…” Thomas looked at him. “It is supposed to appease
their god. We cannot interfere: they would kill us too…” And he stared ahead,
eyes as wide as pools.

We had hardly recovered from
our shock when the laughter began.

I do not think I have heard
again laughter the like of which we heard that night. For it was laughter
without humour, or compassion, or mercy. It was a mockery of happiness, and it
laughed only at us.

It started with the children.

They appeared suddenly outside
the house, and started to chant and sing, and giggle at our expense, calling
out for us to come down and play with them; and their laughter found an echo in
the adults below, a ripple of amusement that rode quickly on the air, and died
again with the wind. But this was only a prelude to what came after; for, a few
minutes after the children had run away down the hill, a low rumble met our
hearing, and it built steadily, so that we were all held in its grip. For the
sound that now stole across us did so like a knife against bone, and we all
recoiled from it, and felt ourselves abandoned. And slowly it formed itself
into a laugh, a bodiless, chaotic thing which seemed unmoored to sanity or
fate. And as it went on, for what seemed like hours, poisoning our hearts to
sickness as its volume increased, I knew that I had brought disaster upon us -
unwittingly perhaps, but of a certainty - because surely only those in league
with the Witch herself could conjure such a thing; and the Witch was after me,
and I would be powerless to defeat her.

And then, as swiftly as it had
come, it was gone; and we could scarcely believe it, and sat staring at each
other for some good minutes more. And then I think I cried, and my brother too,
and Cornelius also. But Thomas only turned his head to the wall, and would not
speak for a long time.

Magnus and I then slept, I
believe, for a short while, but we were disheartened to see when we awoke that
it was still dark, for the curtains remained closed, and there was only a small
candle burning.

Thomas sat in a chair, slumped
over, exhausted. Cornelius was gone. And then Thomas started to speak, and his
voice sounded lost and far away.

“I have seen many things, in my
travels about the world,” he said, slowly, “and I have faced many dangers. But
I think this night has been one of the worst. I would not have brought you this
way if I thought it would be this dangerous. I always knew the
Moonlanders
were strange folk, but if they have become
disciples of the Witch we are in a peril greater than I could have imagined.”
And he put his hand to his head, and I thought he might be about to cry. And I
got up, and went over to him, and laid my hand gently on his shoulder, and
said:

“You did not bring us this way.
We would have come anyway. If it is me the Witch wants, then I will continue my
journey alone, and you will all be safer without me. My brother can remain here
with Cornelius, and you can travel a different path to mine, or at least give
me a day or two’s head start. I will leave tomorrow, as soon as it is light.”

And Thomas laughed, and it was
welcome and unexpected.

“You have a brave head on your
shoulders, Esther Lanark,” he said, “and some wisdom. But you are still so
young; and the young are in love with martyrdom, but do not fully understand
its cost. No. I will accompany you to the Capital, as I said I would; and we
will face what dangers await together, and defeat them so.” And he smiled
broadly, and closed his eyes to sleep.

After an hour or so, there was
some light leaking in from the east; another hour more, and Cornelius, who had
kept up a watch downstairs after the laughter had died away, felt emboldened
enough to open the curtains. Outside, everything looked more or less the same,
though the garden was somewhat untidier, and there seemed some strange detritus
lying around: charms and signs used in sorcery, and, I saw, four dolls, two
small, and two slightly bigger.

“I shall burn those things
later,” said Thomas, and he went outside to get some air.

Magnus came down soon after,
looking weary and balloon-eyed; he squinted at me as he passed, and Cornelius
made him some porridge, which served to revive him somewhat. All four of us
felt closer than we had been, after what we had been through during the night.

I felt lighter in mind and
body, and was hungry for my breakfast when it came. Thomas told us to eat
quickly, and be ready to leave as soon as the daylight was at full strength. We
would head for the village of Lammas, south of the Three Fords, and there join
the Old Road, which would take us to the Capital, cutting through the fields of
West Cross, and the Middle Lowlands.

“And what about you, Master
Bryant?” asked Thomas. “Do you still wish to stay here? You would be welcome to
travel with us.”

Cornelius looked at him
strangely, but a smile played over his lips, and he did not seem disheartened,
for all that had occurred.

“I have my orders from the
emperor, to remain here until I am recalled, and that is what I intend to do.
Besides, I do not think they will harm me once you are gone. No, it is you who
should be careful, Master Taper. You say you have business with the emperor,
though I suspect there is some other, more dangerous errand you are on: I know
something of men, and of their moods and foibles, and there is something about
your story that doesn’t quite fit. But still, I do not think you a liar, or a
killer, of that at least I am certain. But be careful: there is bad witchcraft
at work here, and I think it follows you, though to what end I could not say…”

Thomas simply nodded at this,
then fetched up his hat and left the room. And he and Cornelius said no more to
each other in this life, except brief words of farewell when it came time to
take our leave.

A pair of greedy-eyed jackdaws,
hopping and squabbling over some trinket they had found in the garden, saw us
off from Cornelius’s house, and we made our way down the mountain with a fresh
supply of provisions, under a heartsick sky. I turned, once, when we were
nearly out of sight, to look back at that neat wooden home, crouched high on
the mountainside, and could just make out the small equerry, still watching us
as we left him behind. I could not say why at the time, but it made me sad; and
it makes me sadder now, writing this so many years later, because he showed us
such kindness, and we never saw him again.

But Thomas seemed
reinvigorated, and urged us not to tarry, for he thought we could be well on
our way out of the
Moonland
by nightfall, if we kept
a good pace. And even my brother had keener legs that morning, and he and I laughed
when Thomas started to sing, which he did when we had put a good few miles
between us and
Broadfarrow
.

We saw hardly any other faces
that day, and those we did weren’t friendly, and I wondered how Cornelius could
bear to live in this place, all alone.

“Do you think it is a
punishment?” I asked Thomas. “Cornelius being exiled here?”

Thomas thought for a bit, then
said, with a shrug:

“Who knows? He may have
volunteered, did you think of that?”

I chewed my lip in reply.
Volunteered! I thought it most unlikely.

I swung my arms back and forth
as we walked along, my hair blown into a friendly mess by the wind, my feet
lighter than they had been in days.

“That is how it is when one has
been close to death, and survived,” said Thomas. “One feels invincible.” It is
one of my most cherished memories of him: striding purposefully through the
ugly hills of the
Moonland
, his face full and red and
lightly bearded, his hair a wraith of greying curls beneath his soft hat, and a
whistle or a song never far from his lips, as if he had not a care in the
world. I little knew then how sad and sorrowing was his heart.

By the evening we had reached
the northern reaches of the
Moonland
, where the
mountains soften into grassy hills, and the people are somewhat friendlier. We
spent the night in a barn so dilapidated I feared for our safety, but we
emerged the next morning unharmed, and after an hour or two’s walking found the
Old Road, just north of Lammas, though here it was little more than a path,
overgrown and narrow. It led downward for several miles until it reached the
Three Fords, where one could cross the River Brace, the Fern’s great sister,
that broadens into a wide torrent further east, but here is only a stream,
split by two small islands, trickling through low rowans and small birch trees,
in no hurry to get anywhere.

“By midday tomorrow we should
be on the Road proper,” said Thomas, “and then, if our feet are lucky, on the
outskirts of the Capital itself in no more than a week. The wind favours us,
and so does God, I hope.” And he removed his hat to wipe an arm across his
brow, and smiled.

“And what are we going to do
there?” asked Magnus, eyeing me slightly. I looked at Thomas.

“Well – we’re going to see the
emperor…” I replied, though I hardly believed my own words.

“And what will he do?” asked my
brother, skipping slightly, an impatient crease on his brow. “Will he take us
home? Will he rebuild our house? Will he help us find Mum and Dad?”

I held his hand, and tidied his
hair.

“All those things, I hope,
little one,” I said, quietly. And we were all silent for a time after that.