A Witch in Love (30 page)

I opened my mouth to scream – and a hood was thrust over my head. Rough hands crammed the material into my open mouth so hard that I gagged and bile flooded my mouth. I could barely breathe, the material was stifling, and I drew desperate snorting breaths through my nose.

Someone was doing something to my wrists and with a huge effort I wrenched my hands free, clawing at the threads drawn tight around my neck, desperately trying to get some air, to see what was going on. They caught my hands and bound them too, and I was face down on my own bed, still fighting, but drowning in fear and sweat. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t … 
You can cast spells, you stupid witch!
, the voice in my head was like a panicked shout.

I gathered all my power for a huge burst – and a voice shouted, ‘Oi! She’s casting a spell! Stop her! Stick her now!’

There was a burning, stabbing pain in my thigh – and everything began to slow. It was a nightmarish feeling – everyone in the room was moving with normal speed but I was mired in tar, my limbs heavy and sluggish, my mind completely unable to gather … to gather … to think …

I felt my head loll, slip to one side, fall. There was a slithering rush and a blinding crack. My skull hit the floorboards. I slid into black.

I awoke to darkness and a pounding pain in my head. I was cold and stiff, but the worst was that I was unbearably thirsty. It hurt to move. When I tried, the pain sent little flickers sparking across my vision, but I couldn’t lie here and wait for them to come and find me.

Ignoring the stabs of pain, I tried to move my hands. They were still bound, but only with rope, and there was some room for movement. My feet – loose … No, wait, there was something round my ankle. A chain, but a long one. That was something at least – I could kick, even though the movement sent red flashes of agony searing across the blackness.

Cautiously I tried to move my hands up to my face. I could feel from the cold stone against my cheek that the hood was gone, but something felt wrong – there was something in my mouth, on my face. Something hard and cold, digging into my skin. My fingers met metal.

For a second I was puzzled, then as my hands moved across my skin, I realized what it was. A wave of fear and revulsion threatened to overwhelm me – but anger won. I grabbed and yanked, trying bodily to rip the thing off me. The movement was agony, sending red and black shards of pain ripping through my head – but I gritted my teeth and carried on.

Only after a long, agonizing eternity did I let my hands fall. I lay trembling on the ground, waiting for the pain and the blinding lights to subside.

The thing was a scold’s bridle – a witch’s bridle. I’d seen one in Winter Museum – a horrific rusty thing of indescribable misogyny and hate.
Used to silence the tongue of a scolding wife or punish women suspected of witchcraft
read the little dusty card. Even as a relic from the past it had made me shiver, trying to imagine the pain and fury of the women forced to wear the contraption.

Now I was wearing one myself. Bands of metal bound my head, forcing a steel bit between my teeth, pressing down my tongue so that I could barely swallow, let alone speak or call for help. Instead I made the only sound I could – a wordless bellow of fury that echoed around my small prison.

No one came. No one answered me. I was alone in the darkness with the cold, and the pain, and the thirst. I huddled my arms against myself, trying to pull my clothes tighter against the cold, and found I was still wearing Seth’s jacket. I buried my face in the collar, breathing in his familiar smell until I thought my heart would crack, and the tears leaked out through the metal bridle, and into my hair.

I must have slept, because when I awoke there was a tiny chink of light coming from a grille in the wall and I could see a beaker on the floor. Water. Water at last.

I scrambled to my knees and crawled across a stone floor to the beaker, trailing the chain behind me. It was just within my reach, the chain almost taut at my ankle, and I picked up the beaker carefully with my bound hands and drained it, painfully trying to swallow around the choking bit of the bridle. Half of it trickled through the metal-work and sloshed down my front, but it was the best drink I’d ever had – and for a moment I was too thankful to worry. They didn’t intend me to die of thirst, at least.

It was the strange aftertaste that warned me: an odd bitter flavour. It wasn’t unpleasant – but whatever was in the cup, it wasn’t just water. As my head began to swim, I put both hands on the floor to steady myself. But it was too late. The stuff was taking effect. I had just time to look up and see a face peering through the grille, a grotesque, masked face grinning in triumph, and then the drink took hold and I collapsed to the floor again.

The next day, and the next, and the next, were all the same. They waited until I was too thirsty to resist and then offered me the drugged water. Sometimes it was a knockout dose, designed to put me under. Other times just enough to make me disoriented and confused, and then they would push food through the grille and disappear. I tried to resist, growing weaker and weaker as the thirst took over, feeling my lips begin to crack and my throat burn. But soon, pathetically soon, I cracked and drank.

I had no idea what was in the drink – or the food – but I knew what the effect was. It did something to my magic, kept me in a half-waking, half-sleeping nightmare where I couldn’t focus enough to shape a spell. The witch’s bridle, I guessed, was for the same reason, designed to stop me saying words of power, or calling spirits and demons to my aid.

The third day – or maybe it was the fourth or fifth or sixth – I held out a particularly long time, gritting my teeth and refusing to drink, until at last I fell into an exhausted doze. I woke to find someone in the room. Hands held my jaw open and they were pouring liquid down my throat. I choked and gulped against the flow – but it was too late. I could feel the lethargy begin to take hold … But before it dragged me under I had just enough strength to stagger to my feet and lash out with all my force.

Electricity crackled across the room and the hooded man yelled in pain and reeled back, swearing and clutching his arm.

‘Bitch!’ he bellowed. ‘Help! The witch shocked me!’

Figures came running, crowding into the room and I collapsed to my knees. The hooded man aimed a kick at my side and I fell, hearing the bridle clang as it hit the floor.

‘I’ve got the syringe,’ one of the new arrivals panted.

‘Bit bloody late,’ the hooded man said crossly. ‘She’s going under now.’

My head was lolling and the room was swimming in and out of focus, but I could hear through the roaring in my ears that their accent was local. These men were from Winter, Brighthaven, maybe Easthead. Not much further. They sounded like the traders in the market, like the fishermen who called to each other on the quay. Through the open door, the air smelt of the sea.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I tried to say, coughing the words painfully around the bit. The figure in black just shook his head.

‘Shut up, witch. You’ll have your say at the trial, soon enough.’

The trial … I closed my eyes and he aimed a last kick at my spine and left.

That night I lay between waking and nightmares and tried, desperately, to scrape together enough magic to release myself. I’d been stupid to waste my power shocking the guard. I’d been too weak to do any serious harm. But how to escape?

The room I was in was small and built of thick stones, and it stank like a pigsty. Maybe it
had
been a pigsty, once upon a time. The door was thick wood and I couldn’t reach it; my foot was chained to the far wall and the chain was too short to let me near. But the roof – the roof was the weak spot. It was made of slates, haphazardly piled on each other with gaps and chinks that let in daylight and rain. I doubted I could manage to blast my way out of the cell – but maybe, just maybe, if I could keep this stupor at bay for long enough, I could do a transformation spell. Witches could transform into animals and birds – I’d seen the Ealdwitan do it. I didn’t know if I could do the same – and even if I transformed myself, would I be able to transform back? But it was my best hope – to transform into something small enough to slip my chains and squeeze between the tiles to freedom. I had no choice. It was that or lie here and wait for my ‘trial’ – and I had no illusions about what the outcome would be.

As I lay there, I realized I could hear a dripping sound, like water over stone, and I dragged myself across the floor in the direction of the noise. It was coming from the corner of my cell and, when I got there, I found the stones were slick and slimy to the touch. A thin stream of water oozed down the wall. I tried to put my mouth to the trickle, but the bridle got in the way. It was so frustrating – I could feel the water just centimetres from my lips and I couldn’t touch it.

I lay back for a moment, trying to think, and then I sat up, feeling along the walls for something sharp, any kind of hook, a bit of sticking out stone or metal. My fingers touched something jagged – rusty metal, it felt like – and I hooked the hem of my dress over the projection, and then pulled and ripped until a piece of fabric tore free.

I crawled back to the damp patch and stuffed the piece of fabric between the cracks in the stone and waited until it was wet. Then I sucked. The water was disgusting – it tasted bitter and full of mould and slime. But it was wet. And it wasn’t drugged.

When the scrap of dress was sucked dry I pushed it back into the slimy crack until it was soaked again, then I sucked it, repeating the actions again, and again, until my thirst was slightly less.

Then I tried again to cast a spell. There was almost nothing there – I could feel that. Just as my muscles were weak and limp, with no power to kick and fight, I could feel there was no magic inside me, nothing to fight with. At last by straining every fibre, I managed to conjure a little witchlight, a pathetic thing really. It burnt very low, very dim, against the stone floor, and I cast my eyes up and round the cell, gazing at the mossy walls and stained floor.

The sight was so depressing that I let the light burn out and then I lay in the dark, wondering how long I’d been here and whether I’d ever see my home again.

Emmaline had been right. The Malleus had got me at last, as they’d said. And I’d been too stupid, too proud, too sanctimonious to protect myself. I remembered my words to Emmaline:
They’re only outwith, right?
The memory made me want to cut out my own tongue. Stupid Anna. Stupid, conceited, ignorant Anna. I’d underestimated them – just as Emmaline had tried to tell me. And what now?

No one would miss me for at least a week, perhaps longer. Dad would think I was with my grandmother. So would Emmaline and Abe. My grandmother would wait for my arrival – and then what? Phone the house, I guessed. But Dad wasn’t there. She didn’t have his mobile number. She didn’t know where he was. And in any case, she’d probably just assume I’d changed my mind.

And worst of all, Seth … my heart failed me as I thought of Seth. What would he think? Or maybe he’d already left Winter and wouldn’t even know. Would he care?

I let my head fall to the stone floor and wept.

When I awoke, some time later, the gaoler had come as usual and had left more water and some bread and dry cheese. There was a chink of light through the grille so I fell on the beaker, pretending to gulp it down just as ravenously as before, but I let a bit more than usual drip down my front. The room turned hazy and began to slip away, and I fell to the floor, hearing, as if from a long way off, the clank of the iron bridle as it hit the stones. But I didn’t slip into complete unconsciousness quite as fast as usual. As I lay on the floor, somewhere between waking and sleeping, I heard voices from outside, strangely distorted, but recognizable as human.

‘How long d’you think then, till the trial?’

‘Not yet – she’s still got too much fight in her, the bitch. We don’t want her trying that electricity thing again.’ The voice was bitter and I guessed that this must be the guard I’d shocked. ‘But soon. Coupla days maybe?’

‘And they’ve got the witnesses all lined up, have they?’

‘Yeah. Them boys identified her, said it was definitely her in the alley.’

‘What about the other girl – the one who turned her in? She’s ready, is she?’

‘Oh aye, she’s ready. More than ready. She’s been keen to see justice done for a
long
time.’

There was a grim laugh in his voice that made me shudder, and the first voice said sharply, ‘D’you see that? Did she move?’

There was a silence and even with my eyes shut I felt their gazes piercing the murk. I lay very still and tried to suppress even my breathing.

‘You’re imagining things,’ said the second man at last. There was something familiar about his voice, and I strained to try to think where I’d heard it before, but my drug-wasted brain wouldn’t cooperate. It put impossible faces into my head – boys from school. Bran. Seth. Tears leaked out of my closed lids.

They stood, watching, and then the same voice said, ‘Nah, she may be a witch, but she’d have to be a rhino to withstand that dose. It’d knock out someone twice her size.’

‘She looks pretty small, doesn’t she? Doesn’t look like she could hurt anyone much.’