Page 6 of The Snow Witch

Violet laughed. ‘Agreed. Have a good day, Ollie.’

‘You too, Violet. Maybe see you at dinner.’ He nodded to her and turned to walk out of the dining room. She seemed like she was doing some interesting work. But he couldn’t quite get over that flash of – something – in her eyes when he mentioned that Meg was an old woman.

If he was imaginative, which he wasn’t, he’d say it was a flash of ‘otherness’.

But that was just stupid.

* * *

Jake was having an early breakfast at home in Newcastle, scrolling through his phone as he finished his second cup of coffee. Well, he wasn’t scrolling so much as checking to see if Violet had messaged him this morning. Nothing had come through yet, but he’d had a message from her last night.

He knew she was excited to be heading to Northumberland for a few days to do some research on her book. She’d talked enthusiastically about the Newcastle Witch Trials, and even presented him with a list of names of the accused and convicted. ‘It’s not definitive,’ she’d said. ‘These things rarely are.’

And last night, she’d sent a photograph from, apparently, the top of an old fort, just as the day was darkening. All it showed was a vast, undulating landscape of fields and trees and a big arrow she’d drawn on the top of it. She’d captioned it:

Violet

The arrow shows where I think Coventina’s Well is. Hoping to have a better look tomorrow. Not too far from Newbrough where Meg the witch lived. x

He’d responded:

Jake

It looks like a fun place! x

Violet

The execution of witches was not fun.

Fair enough. That was him told!

So he changed the subject and started chatting about a new micro-pub that had opened up on the Quayside instead.

Today, Jake zoomed in on the photo again and smiled. It didn’t look much more than a big, boggy puddle, and yet, it had an inexplicable draw. Even just through the photograph. He imagined what it might have looked like before time destroyed the stone wall he knew had once surrounded it, and before nature claimed the space around it – he’d done his own bit of research about it to find out a little more.

He knew, for instance, that Coventina’s Well had been excavated in 1876 by a chap called Clayton. It had been a very different sort of excavation though to what one might do in the modern day – to the extent that the finds had been left out overnight and lead miners had seen fit to come and steal the offerings found inside the Well. But that was, of course, dependent on whether any offerings had been left behind, because Clayton was a generous man who had given things he discovered away to spectators who had come to visit the dig and watch him work.

The most fascinating bit to Jake, though, was the legend surrounding the Well. There had been a multitude of things found during the excavation – altars, coins, jewellery, statues… And it looked very much like most of it had been thrown in at the same time, in great haste. Why, he wondered now, had everything just been dumped in there? Jewellery, coins, etc, he could understand. It was common practice to give offerings in these sacred places. But whole altars? Statues? Pagan objects just drowned in the deep pool with no written explanation anywhere?

It was seriously intriguing.

One theory was that the fort had become a Christian place of worship and the Pagan artefacts had been ordered to be destroyed; another suggested they’d been thrown in there to hide them during a battle or a raid.

He supposed nobody would ever know, which made him even more interested in it.

Jake zoomed out again and moved the picture around. He saw the remains of the Mithraic Temple, just across the stream from the Well. The temple had belonged to the cult of Mithras – a dark, mysterious place where no sunlight was allowed. Now it was just ruins, and had three replica altars inside it, but Jake still wanted to go and see it. It suited his passion for Romano-Celtic religion and Paganism to a T, and the fact that Violet was so invested in Coventina’s Well ensured their interests dovetailed as they always had done.

He knew that the sacred water from Coventina’s Well had preserved the temple for centuries; blocked with offerings, the spring had flooded the ground nearby, protecting the stone building buried deep in the marshland…

Jake shivered. As he looked at the photo, he began to feel the stirring of some excitement: a buzz he usually only experienced at the start of the six-week holidays. He zoomed again and looked at the puddle – sorry, the Well.

But he couldn’t stop staring at it. Then a plan began to form. He was obsessed with Romano-Celtic religion and Paganism, loved anything to do with that or the history behind it, and it was half-term at school. He really missed Violet, if he was honest, even though she’d only been gone a day or so. The house felt too empty and it was too quiet without her laughing or tapping away on her laptop. They didn’t technically live together, but they spent most nights together. In fact, he was pretty close to asking her to move in with him properly. It seemed the logical next step. She had a tiny flat; he had a three-bedroom semi-detached which they spent most of their time in. So why didn’t he have a little trip to Hadrian’s Wall himself? Why didn’t he surprise her and make a bit of a holiday out of it?

He’d take the van, though. He knew she would need to work – so it technically wasn’t a holiday for her really – and he didn’t want to get in her way. He just kind of wanted to be near her. So they could spend time together when she was free and maybe have dinner together and stuff; and if he took the van, he could explore when she was busy.

Jake opened up his camping app and had a look. There were plenty of places up there he could stay if he took his van. He could be there in under an hour.

He swiped the camping app off the screen and looked at Coventina’s Well again.