‘One question,’ she repeated. ‘Ask wisely.’
My mind was full at once of all the things I would know. The maid – oh god, the maid, what happened to her? What was that? Why did the Witch pace the castle at night? Was she monitoring me? Why did Edgar never finish his letter? What was in the Tower and the ledgers?
Laying it all out, it was overwhelming.
The Witch tore a strand of chicken off the bone with her teeth and I felt queasy. Our picnic was strewn with scraps of gristle and cartilage, the beaky rib cage of the bird we had eaten and fingers of wing bone.
My voice was barely a whisper when I spoke.
‘What happened to the men before me?’
The Witch held my gaze with a steady eye, her expression perfectly blank and unreadable. ‘They remained at the castle until their lives ran out.’
She had answered and said nothing. I should have known it.
‘Let me ask one more.’
‘Mina,’ she warned.
‘Just one.’ My breath felt tight in my chest. ‘Have you ever taken a woman before?’
She studied me, and for a moment I thought she would dismiss me.
Then she spoke.
‘No.’
A small word that lit a wild-burning fire.
We packed the remains of the picnic and returned along the same path, this time the Witch walking ahead. I watched the sway of her hips, the flash of ankle, Achilles’ heel, the sole of her foot. I thought of the men who had come before me, watched her like I did.They remained at the castle until their lives ran out.
I thought then what a strange way to say they had died of old age without returning home.
But later I understood that wasn’t what she had meant at all.
SPRING
XIV
With April came another letter for the Witch. I was present for the arrival of this one, sitting in the study, legs slung over the arm of my chair and eating an apple while reading an English novel she had lent me about wide skies and empty moorland and ghosts of the past haunting the present. Wolf delivered the letter on a silver platter before returning to the kitchens, and the Witch read it frowning. I had come to know the different qualities of her expressions and this one carried with it a grave sorrow. She folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket. A ledger lay open before her and she studied its pages thoughtfully, before shutting it with a decisive movement.
‘I am going away for a while.’ She rose from the desk, today in a heavy stomacher and gauzy ruff, black hair fanning loose across her breasts. ‘You will remain here, Wolf will take good care of you. I should only be a week or two.’ She cut me off before I could speak. ‘No, you cannot come with me.’
I was growing predictable.
‘Will you really be gone so long?’
‘I am sure you will hardly notice my absence.’
We both knew that was not true at all.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I said.
She paused in the doorway, looking back with a complicated sadness and I felt bereft already. ‘Will you?’
I watched her carriage cross the bridge and loop down to the village, and felt my heart going with her. For the first time since I arrived, the iron gates at the bridge were shut.
She really was gone.
