***
When I come to it’s to a voice crying out for me to ‘Wake up, oh please wake up and don’t be dead’. My instinct is that I’ve not been out so very long at all. Opening my eyes, I spot Fenna through the bars of the neighbouring cell. She’s unmoving – for they’ve chained her to an iron ring in the floor, and her right leg is at an odd angle. When she sees me sit up, she starts to weep.
‘Hush,’ I say, though I know it’s sheer stupidity to tell her that. ‘Don’t let them hear you crying.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mehrab, it’s all my fault. They caught me outside of Aine’s Tor’ – just beyond the forest’s outer edge – ‘I wasn’t quick enough and… and they hurt me—’
‘Fenna, it’s not your fault.’ I crawl over, not ready to risk standing when my head’s so foggy and I can feel the heat beginning to rise in me. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘I’m so ashamed, Mehrab. And I’m so sorry. I never thought I’d—’
‘We never know what we might do in the worst of circumstances, Fenna.’
‘They’ll find Rhea.’
‘No,’ I say with a certainty I don’t really feel, ‘they won’t. She’s gone. Months ago. Little bitch and her fancy ways, couldn’t bear her any longer.’ If Fenna’s questioned again, tortured again, I don’t want her giving up anything of value. So, a lie might help protect Rhea a little longer. ‘Did you give me up? Or her?’
‘Her. At first. They just thought you’d be a woman sheltering her – I managed that lie – but when we got here, they talked to that Arnold boy who said you’d touched him without his leave? Then Peppergill and his wife, and the nursemaid you told about that toy? And the woman from the mill claimed you were responsible for her husband’s death – that you’d bewitched and seduced him as well as cursing her child? All called you a witch. That you’d ensorcelled the children, lured another five from the orphanage into the forest. That you were sending nightmares into households.’
‘My, how quickly they do turn. Now, scootch as close as you can and forgive me, this will hurt.’ I find the jagged line inside of my mouth where my teeth cut and worry at it until blood flows again. I spit the red price on the straw and reach through the bars to push her filthy skirts up so I can see the full extent of damage to her leg. The bruising is a terrible mix of purple-black and greenish-yellow, and as I run my hand down its length I feel two places where bone presses against skin. It’s a miracle she’s been able to walk at all. I press both hands onto the heated flesh, hope there’s no infection, that I’m in time to save her. I hope I’ve given enough blood for this service.
And she screams. She screams long and loud and I wonderif the god-hounds will come rushing back, fearful that I’m murdering their source of knowledge, that I might prevent them from extracting more information from Fenna, that they might not be able to find more witches to slaughter. Fenna screams until she at last passes out and I’m able to continue my work – sweating and bleeding – in peace.
Yet no one comes – perhaps they’ve left the building completely unattended. Trusting that even witches can’t break out of this bridewell. It must be mid-morning by now? Perhaps they’re all at the inn celebrating their victory over evil. Or perhaps just the four minions while so-calledFatherLoic makes himself at home in the Peppergill mansion. I wonder how many of my former patients, those who’ve been so polite to me, have come to me for help, whose lives I’ve improved or saved, are hoisting drinks with them?Ding-dong the witch is dead– or soon to be so.
Will Lutetia Arnold tell her son how well he’s done? Will Deva Peppergill be relieved to have me gone, the person who knew just how infertile she was? Will Thaddeus be delighted not to have me delivering his bastards and knowing exactly how many there are? Will Gida think her daughter will go back to normal, now that I am gone? Will Reynald be pleased in public to save his own hide, grieving in private? Or will he expand his business now there’s no one to guide births and deaths and everything in between? Who will hunt for his fungi and herbs now?
At last, I feel everything is repaired, each fragment back in place, vital fluids separated and returned to their rightful locations. Fenna will walk again, but she’ll have a limp.Quickly I check the rest of her, whatever I can reach through the bars, and heal the cuts I can, although the terrible rents on her breasts will never be right, and the scar tissue that grows over them under my palms is slow and struggles to close. But with the leg healed, with the knife wounds closed, shewillbe able to run if she has a chance, if she’s clever enough not to let them know she’s changed.
I draw my hands back, curl up close to the metal bars. I should be making plans, strategizing, being alert for the return of men-children who only mean us harm, but I’m exhausted in the extreme and cannot fight off the darkness. I fall asleep, promising myself it’ll only be for a short while.
***
When I wake it’s to rough hands lifting me, god-hounds dragging me once again.
I throw a glance at Fenna’s terrified face and the youngest one sees. Sneers: ‘Not her. Not yet. Still more to get out of her, more rebel witches to find with her help.’
Back up the wooden stairs so fast my feet barely get purchase but I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me trip. The sun is low in the grey sky; there’s no one around except Kian Arnold, not dead, alas, but with a gratifying stiffness and smirking at me as he holds a single burning torch aloft as the dusk creeps in.
The priests herd me to the mill pond at the side of Sanne’s mill, and along the little jetty that projects out over the still surface. At the end of that jetty Loic waits. There’s no sign of Thaddeus Peppergill. In fact, there’s no sign of anyone from Berhta’s Forge except Kian Arnold, who, as the god-brothersclamp chains around my wrists and ankles, now looks less sure of himself. That often happens as one gets closer to making bad decisions a reality.
One of the god-hounds – Mael? Alderic? Wilfred? Oeric? – makes me hobble to the edge of the little pier. It’s just that short walk – hobble – and by the time it’s done Kian’s face is stripped of its bravado. I don’t care if he’s afraid, if he feels sorry now – if I get out of this, I swear I’ll skin him.
If I were a witch like Rhea, I’d have burned them all long before this. If I were a witch who controlled water, I’d have drowned them with a tidal wave dredged up from both pond and river. If I were an earth witch, I’d bury them in the soil, a wind witch and they’d be carried over the treetops to land on rocks. But, alas, I’m none of those things.
Loic looks positively beatific. ‘You’re my one-hundredth witch. You should be proud – I am.’
‘Pride is a sin and I’m told it goeth before a fall,’ I say, then spit at him, red-flecked saliva adding to the stains on his robe, a souvenir of my death. ‘Do you think this will gain you glory? Elevation among the princes of the church?’
‘Of course it will.’
‘Here’s a little thing I know and I don’t need to be a witch to be certain of it: you’re always going to be an errand boy to those men, bishops and cardinals and archbishops. It won’t matter what you do, what you bring them, you’ll always be beneath their notice. Why else were you sent out so far? You think fetching Fenna will get you higher office? Your kind never gets beyond parish priest in some little backwater with barely a living. A tumbledown church and tiny rectory with a miserableold woman to cook and clean for you if you’re lucky. No princely purple garments for a lickspittle like you,BrotherLoic.’
He turns red with rage and pushes me, without further ado, into the mill pond.
The water’s icy cold and deep as I sink into it. The chains are heavy and drag me down. And I can’t dislodge them, can’t unpick them or will them to open. I can only struggle as my lungs begin to burn, bubbles popping from my mouth and rising, rising, rising as I sink lower and lower. I’ve avoided death for so long that this is awfully sudden, and an annoying surprise, to say the least.
When the last puff of breath is gone from me, when there’s only water inside, filling my throat, lungs, any cavity it can find, only then do I feel the chains around my ankles and wristsclickand fall away. I’m no less drowned – no less dead – but those are gone at least. I don’t know how. I’m not in a position to question it. The current catches me, a deep coursing that takes me to the weir at the end of the mill pond and flushes me out and over, to join the body of the River Ayda. Body face-up, staring at the sky, something pushes its way up from my chest, into my throat, mouth, out my lips: a wispy roly-poly little thing.
