The Witch’s Tower was not the only locked door.
The room beside my own was a far less risky venture.
The Witch, as ever, was shut up in her Tower, and I heard the sound of Wolf in the kitchens ordering around the maids undertaking the castle’s laundry. Curiosity got the better of me, and I wrapped the tin of keys in an old cloth to hide it as I returned.
With sweating palms, I kneeled at the door. There were tens of keys in the tin, some as large as my hand, half rusted and coarse. I considered the lock and selected a key that seemed likely. Of course, it did not turn, so I tried another, and another. As the pile of incorrect keys grew, I felt foolish, and afraid. If the Witch caught me, surely this would be considered prying – and for what? To find another room full of broken chairs or rotting carpets?
I should stop.
And yet, I kept working through the tin.
Until at last, one turned.
The lock was stiff and heavy, but it gave under my ministrations, and the door swung open.
Inside was a bedroom much like my own, the bed made up, but otherwise stripped empty. Every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust. In one corner was an escritoire, its lid drawn down, but I caught a flash of white feather where it had not been properly closed. It was stiff, and took a little effort to open, but when it lifted, it revealed a desk scattered with quills and dried-up bottles of ink.
And an unfinished letter, dated a little over fifty years ago.
I pulled back as though I had been burned.
I recognised the Witch’s hand well enough by now and this was not it.
Edgar Hässler.
How many times had I heard his name? Seen his mother kneeled before the shrine to St Anthony? This letter had been written by the man who had lived here before me.
My fingers hovered over the paper. There was no point pretending I did not mean to pry now, and if anyone had any right to know the business of a previous companion, surely it was me.
Before my fear could get the better of me I took up the letter and read it.
It was the work of a few moments. Edgar had only written a handful of lines before he had been interrupted, seemingly never to return.
Dearest Mother,
I write in the hope of this letter reaching you, though I do not know how, or when it will. This place is strange, in a way I cannot begin to explain. Correspondence does reach us – the Witch has newspapers from all over the continent – but the way for a man seems much harder to navigate. If this is the only letter that reaches you, then the thing I most desire to tell you is that I love you, and Frieda, and miss you. But I am proud to do my duty, though I would wish to better understand what it is. The Witch has told me
And there it stopped.
I threw the paper down in frustration. What had the Witch told Edgar? What did he know of our role here?
I searched the desk but found nothing. The rest of the room had been stripped. The clothes press and chest of drawers were empty, the sheets rumpled but nothing left beneath the pillow or under the mattress. If this had been Edgar’s room, any trace of him had been tidied away save the desk that had been protected by its tricky lid. Perhaps he had sat down on his first night here, frightened and lonely as I had been, to write to his family. Perhaps the Witch had told him the secret of his role here, and that had caused him to abandon his correspondence. Or perhaps he had struck his own bargain with her.
Looking at the dropped quill, the splash of ink, the sentence stopped dead, I had misgivings.
The Witch’s secrets piled up, and I had not a single answer at hand.
b
Unease sat with me for the rest of the day, like a stone I carried beneath my breastbone. No matter how busy I kept myself, I felt the weight of it, caught its shadows moving in the corner of my eyes. I had made a promise I did not know if I could keep.
I hid it as best I could from the Witch as we sat together that evening. Snow fell softly outside the window and the fire crackled; I closed my notebook and turned to the Witch.
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For spending time with me.’
