The Witching Hour (The Witches Pendragon Mystery Series Book 1) (7 page)

The
Chocolate Surprise
was supposed to have rendered me calm, yet at the appointed hour of midnight, I feel quite jumpy. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull on thick brown wool stockings and good solid boots. Standing up, I straighten out my robe, cinching the rope that serves as a belt. Then I pull the final trappings of my outfit out of my bag –my beautiful black hat. Unrolling it with flare, I smooth out the occasional wrinkle with my palm. Once returned to its original shape, I place it on my head.

“How do I look?” I ask Camille.

“Wonderful, Elfie. You look like a real witch!” she laughs. She should talk, she looks like a much bigger reflection of me, having replaced her wimple with her own pointy black hat.

Down in the kitchen, we find Hatha and Hendra already at work burning incense. We form a small circle and link hands as the grandfather clock in the hallway strikes midnight. Slowly, Hatha begins to chant the oath we take as witches.

“I am a witch of the Forest Fosse. I shall do no harm. I shall take care of the earth and my sisters who are goddesses of the earth. I shall love them and all creatures of the forest as I love myself.”

We speak in Anglian, our tone rising, with each and every word.

“I am a witch of the Forest Fosse…” I continue, becoming lost in the words.

After twenty minutes of chanting our oath over and over, we let go of each other’s hands.

“Perhaps the spirit is not brave enough to appear when we witches are together,” Hatha taunts.

“Perhaps not,” Hendra joins in. “Any spirit who harms a child is a definite coward.”

Their words make me frown. I’m not sure that taunting the dead Charlotte du Mont is the right way to go about things.

“I said, any spirit who harms a child is a definite coward,” Hendra repeats.

In a half a second, the temperature in the room plummets.

“The presence moves among us,” Hendra whispers.

“Charlotte?” Hatha calls, a look of compassion on her face even though we don’t know what to expect from this spirit. The smell of the incense in the room is strong, almost intoxicating. It smells of wet earth, decaying logs and green grass. Hatha calls it her “ghost incense.” She says spirits love it and it brings them out of the woodwork.

Perhaps it was the chanting, or the taunting, or the ghost incense, but suddenly, floating through the air, comes the glowing torso of a women, with her hair in elaborate braids and a long, blue gown that closes tight around her waist before the skirt fans out to the floor.

“You know my name?” Charlotte questions in a sickly sweet voice. A shiver runs down my spine and I shudder. Honestly, I don’t know how Noelle can take the ghost at her shop so lightly. I suppose after meeting a contingent of the dead, like she did one night in the Forest Fosse, one ghost doesn’t seem so bad.

I stare at Charlotte slack-jawed. Will she turn violent? I worry that since she’s already harmed two girls, she’s going to harm us. Camille must feel the same way, because as soon as Charlotte speaks, she turns a very pale white and falls forward in a dead faint. It’s all I can do to keep her from hitting the floor.

“That one’s got the heart of a lion,” Charlotte smirks as I try to keep Camille on her feet, tottering under her weight.

“Charlotte du Mont,” Hatha begins as Hendra rushes over to help me with Camille. “You are hereby informed that you are dead. You are to seek the light and to go towards it post haste.”

Above us, Charlotte laughs dismissively. “This is my home, and all of you are trespassing.”

With Hendra’s help, the two of us are able to rest Camille gently on the floor. Quick as can be, Hendra moves over to Hatha’s bag and pulls out some smelling salts. Overhead, Charlotte bobs up and down, her face a fierce pall. As Hendra bends down to hold the smelling salts underneath Camille’s nose, I wonder, will Charlotte turn nasty? Will she turn demonic?

“This is no longer your home, Charlotte du Mont, you have been dead for over 600 years. You are to seek the light and go on to your eternal reward,” Hatha persists in a calm but firm voice.

“No!” Charlotte shouts, and in a rage of fury she flies straight at Hatha almost knocking her down. Then, she sails away through the kitchen wall.

“She’s escaping,” cries Hendra.

To my surprise, Hatha grabs up the long golden cross and rushes after the ghost. The rest of us follow with some reluctance. Even poor Camille comes traipsing along, having recovered from her fainting spell the moment she sniffed the smelling salts.

Out in the hallway, we hear Charlotte’s booming laughter. It’s so loud and so disorienting, it seems as if it’s coming from several directions at once. From her pocket, Hatha pulls out a sprig of nightshade. She holds it aloft and regards its leathery leaves and thick wooden stem with satisfaction. Then she bends down, places it on the floor and lights it on fire with a matchstick that she pulls from her pocket and strikes against the wall.

“Show us the way,” she calls to the puff of smoke that rises. The smoke curls around black as jet before it seeps underneath the door that leads to the basement.

Sweet Woden, not the basement!

“Quickly now, follow me,” Hatha directs. Like a hound following a scent, she pulls open the basement door and sweeps down the stairs. Hendra’s climbs down next. Even the ash-white Camille descends, ducking her head low on the corkscrew staircase. I watch them disappear, one, two, three, but I don’t follow. Instead, I glare at those stairs that lead to the basement with genuine loathing.

Screwing my courage to the sticking place, which is a phrase Monique uses all the time having picked it up from some bard who lived 400 years ago, I place a foot on the top stairs. The air coming from the basement is stale and cold. With grand trepidation I follow my fellow witches downwards into the abyss, my head held low, my heart in my throat.

By the position of Polaris, which I occasionally spy overhead when the clouds clear, I think it must be well after midnight. How many hours have I been sitting behind this tree? I chew on my fingernails, and watch the figures below who act as if they are in some sort of trance. Originally, they spoke Latin, but now they seem to be singing, or yelling, or wailing as the case may be, in an entirely made up language.

I watch as they use sticks to scrawl pentagrams into the dirt and wonder what special brand of lunatic have I run into? Who actually wants to meet Satan?

By now, I’ve been here so long that my sweater is soaked from the misting rain, and the blouse underneath is damp as well. For the one hundredth time tonight, I think about making a break for it. After all, I am not only soaked, I am also sore from sitting still for so long. And although Elise is still here, quietly standing to one side, this chanting of nonsense has gone on so long that perhaps she isn’t in any real peril at all.

I need to make up my mind. Should I stay or should I go?

Since nothing bad has happened for the last several hours, I decide to sneak off. As soon as I reach Amboise, I’ll go straight to the police station and let them know what’s happening out here in the forest.

I stand up, turning to leave, trying to be as quiet as possible, when
crunch –
I step on a twig and snap it in two. Instinctively I hunker down. Did anybody hear me? A hooded figure turns my way and my heart races wildly. He searches the woods as if trying to find the source of the noise, and I pray to the goddess Fray that he doesn’t find me.

Wait a minute, his eyes aren’t looking towards my hiding spot. He looks past me toward the forest. Something behind me is making a strange noise. There’s a rustling of sorts, as if there’s a struggle going on somewhere. A few minutes later another hooded figure emerges, coming into the clearing from behind some sycamore trees. This person is taller and broader in the shoulders than any of the other figures, and, to my horror, she/he is tugging some poor creature into the clearing.

The creature makes a horrible, desperate bleating sound. A goat? Why on earth is this person tugging on a goat?

“Behold the sacrifice!” the figure yells. Moving close to the fire, he/she pulls out something that I can’t quite make out. I lean way out from my hiding spot and I see the object gleam bright in the firelight. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realize it must be a knife.

“Behold the sacrifice!” the onlookers yell.

Run! Run and call the police
, a voice in my head tells me. Yet it would take me a good thirty minutes to bring somebody back to this spot. What to do? What to do?

As a witch, I am a sworn defender of all living creatures. I don’t eat them. If need be, I will have to intervene to save the animal.

I whisper my witch’s oath and immediately I feel my pulse quicken, I feel my blood thickening. I rise up from my crouched position. Every hair on my body feels as if it is standing at attention. I am strong. I am invincible. I am connected with mother earth.

I have no choice but to walk straight into their circle and confront these depraved people.

The poor goat, sensing danger, lets out a pitiful plea and tries to pull away. The tall figure tugs at its ropes harder, and it bleats again. Never in my life have I experienced a more evil scene. I’m beginning to think we led a rather sheltered life back in the forest, allowing the regular humans to duke it out while we stayed safe and snug in the woods making soap, or weaving wool blankets. We never involved ourselves in the war for good and evil that was raging all across Anglia. Suffice it to say, I’ve never done anything as brave as what I’m about to do.

The goat bleats again pitifully and I realize it is time to show my true colors. I am just about to reveal myself when I hear a voice cry, “No stop!”

It is Elise. She steps forward and pulls off her hood. “This has gone far enough!”

For a moment everything is silent. I stand rooted behind the oak tree, bewildered by this girl’s act of bravery.

“I think you killed Hugo!” the girl accuses the broad-shouldered figure. The others gasp, which surprises me. You would think among a group of Satan-worshippers who are about to sacrifice a goat, the idea of killing a young man would not be so startling.

“Is this true?” another voice cuts in.

Again, absolute silence –no rustle of the wind, no hoot of the owl, nothing. Even the fire which has been crackling and roaring with intensity makes no noise. All eyes seem riveted on the figure with the goat.

“Satan commanded it, and so it was done,” the hooded figure says in a carrying whisper.

More gasps from the crowd.

“In that case, if our master commanded it, what you have done is right,” says a shorter figure, who steps forward. There is murmuring and a nodding of heads. To my horror, yet a third figure says, “Let us proceed. Let us make this sacrifice to the Lord.”

“No,” Elise cries and lunges for the man with the knife. Two other Satan- worshippers are quick to restrain her. A moment later, I watch in horror as the man holds the knife up above the goat’s head.

“YOU WILL NOT HARM WODEN’S CREATURES!” I bellow, stepping out of my place in the shadows.

I do not have my black gown, I do not have my black hat, but I am sure I look fierce all the same.

I walk towards them unarmed, chanting in my native Anglian, “I am a witch of Forest Fosse…”

The hooded figures appear stunned by someone emerging out of the woods and speaking in an ancient language, even though they have spent half the night crying out in made-up tongues. For a moment nobody moves. I stride right into the middle of the circle and wrap my arms protectively around the goat’s neck.

“You,” I spit at the monster of a human that has just confessed to killing Hugo. “You will not touch this animal!”

There’s a low, unnatural sounding chuckle. Underneath the cloak, I see a gleam in the man’s eye as he raises his knife high.

“Move away from the goat,” he shouts so furiously that I think he is a second or two from bringing down his knife straight at my face. And I wonder: will tonight be my last on Earth? Will I never return to the Forest Fosse, with its sweet smelling heather? Will I never again here the babble of the crystal clear Ouse?

Just when I am thinking all is lost, I hear more chanting coming from the woods. All eyes turn as Manon, Beatrice and Sheila stride into the clearing.

“I am a witch of the Forest Fosse,” they murmur in Anglian walking hand in hand towards us. Behind them I see they have brought Pierre along with two other policemen, who hold their guns at the ready. I watch as my sisters in witchdom stride into the middle of the clearing to form a protective circle around the goat and I look from the witches to Pierre. He has this insane look on his face, a mixture of fear and excitement. Crazed with power, he cries, “Everybody down on the ground, spread eagle.”

Nobody listens to his words, instead chaos ensues. Several of the hooded figures race off. In their haste to get away, a few of them shove Elise to the ground. Quickly she scrambles to her feet and races away like the rest of them. The police, watching the scene, appear torn, trying to decide whether or not to use deadly force.

Cornered, the would-be-goat-murderer throws off his hood, still holding his knife high.

“Etienne?” I cry, shocked to the core. That’s when the electrician does something truly horrible. With a swish, he brings the knife slicing downwards right into tiny Manon’s shoulder.