The Return of the Witch (33 page)

“His intentions may have been more earthbound. He knew there would be people you cared about living still at Batchcombe.”

“William.”

“Yes, William.”

“He knows me well. And he knew that I was once … fond of William.” I winced as I recalled the expression on his gentle face as he looked at me for the last time. I had loved him once, and thought that he had cared for me, only to have my heart and my pride wounded. Only too late I had come to realize that his feelings for me ran deeper. He proved that at the last. “Gideon rightly assumed that I would be distracted by the plight of someone who had meant so much to me in my youth. There was a very good chance that with the country in the cruel grip of war he could leave the circumstances of the day to overcome me, without having to directly deal with me himself. I can see that now. He was hoping I'd be killed there. If not recognized and hanged as a witch, then perhaps fall victim to the war.”

“He said himself, why should he bother to kill you when there was a whole army ready and willing to do so by the time you had allied yourself to a traitor and been observed practicing witchcraft?” Erasmus paused, looking at me thoughtfully, his expression one of distress, and I could see that the possibility that I might have died caused him real pain. He saw that I understood this and for a moment there passed across his face a look of such tenderness that I was quite moved by it. He quickly recovered himself and continued. “However, this is not a part of the pattern which is emerging.”

“It isn't?” I was still a long way from understanding the point he was trying to make.

“We must return to the planetary activity of the time,” he said. He picked up an umbrella that was propped against the bookshelf and used it to indicate the areas on the chart he considered important. “We have already established it was not the moon that influenced his decisions. At least, not directly.” He jabbed at the small white sphere on the chart and traced its orbit with the umbrella tip. “Although indirectly, of course, as one of the celestial bodies in our own solar system, the moon has its part to play.”

“
Her
part,” I corrected him, unable to think of the moon as anything other than female.

Erasmus ignored my comment. “What is of more interest to us—to
him
, indeed—is the solar progress. The habits and course of the sun.”

“I don't see Gideon as a Solarian.”

“Perhaps not. Nevertheless, this is interesting. See … here, and here…” Again he stabbed and pointed with the umbrella, trying to draw my attention to something I singularly failed to see. In an effort to clarify his point he fetched more papers and books and indecipherable notes, until at last, frustrated beyond endurance by my shortsightedness, he spelled it out to me.

“My dear Elizabeth, it is under your rather fine nose, right
here.
The common factor. All these dates coincide with the sun being at its weakest. An alignment creating a partial eclipse, the winter solstice—giving us the day of least daylight—one of the most cloud-ridden summers since the Dark Ages.”

I frowned at him. “You think Gideon was deliberately choosing these dates because of the comparative lack of sunshine?”

“It appears possible.”

“But, why? Why on earth would that matter to him?”

Erasmus smiled ruefully at me and gave an elaborate shrug before tossing the umbrella into the empty coal bucket. “I have not the faintest idea,” he said flatly.

If he was about to offer me his opinion on how what he had found might be of some use he did not get the chance to do so, for there came a loud and desperate hammering on the door. We both rushed to the window. Outside there was a small group of people on the street in front of the shop.

“The children appear to have returned,” said Erasmus.

“I see Lottie,” I agreed, but I don't recognize the others. Those two are much older. I think I treated one of them earlier.” As I spoke, Lottie looked up and saw us at the window. She beckoned for me to go down, and called up with a note of true desperation in her voice. “Something is badly wrong.” I said. I experienced conflicting desires, battling within me: I was desperate to continue my discussion with Erasmus and unravel the mystery of Gideon's plans, but I could see real anguish written on the child's face. I could not turn away from her. I hurried from the room. Erasmus followed. Once downstairs, he unlocked the front door. A teenage boy stood on the doorstep and now I could see that he was indeed the lad I had treated for a broken finger, and he still had my strip of scarf binding it to the splint. His injury did not, however, stop him from carrying a small child in his arms. The second young man with him whipped his cap from his head and twisted it nervously in his hands.

“I'm Robin, missus. Begging your pardon, but Nipper 'ere's hurt bad. We was told you could help him.”

I looked more closely at the limp figure in the other boy's arms. It appeared to be a boy, very small, I estimated about six years old. He was unconscious and his left arm and hand were tightly bandaged in a bloodstained cloth. He was covered in grime and dirt, most of which looked like coal dust.

Lottie tugged at my skirts. “Please, missus, will you help him?”

Erasmus spoke before I could.

“Bring him inside,” he said, holding the door wide. “Take him through to the kitchen.”

Lottie led the way and I bid them place the boy on the table.

“Gently, now! Lottie, can you tell me what happened to him?”

“Nipper works with the ponies down the catacombs,” she told me.

“Catacombs?” Erasmus questioned her information. “What work would a child be doing in such a place?”

Robin put in, “Them's not real catacombs, mister. That's just what people call them. She means the tunnels at Camden.”

“Ah, yes.” Erasmus nodded. “Where goods are transhipped from canal barge to railway, I believe.”

Lottie went on with her story. “Nipper tends the ponies that pull the carts down there. He's small, see, and the ponies, they like him. He has to lead them along the tunnels when the carts are loaded up, then take them back to fetch more.”

“Do they transport coal?” I asked, wiping some of the grit from the boy's face so that I could open his eyes to check his pupils.

“That's right, missus. It gets shoveled into sacks off the barges before it goes on the carts. Old Mr. Antrobus, he's the one what says what goes where. He's supposed to check the loads, only this one couldn't have been fixed properly, 'cos it shifted as they was going down the hill. The pony got scared and started to run. Nipper ran with him. He tried to calm him down, but he's so small…” She broke off as tears spilled from her pale blue eyes and began to streak her dirty face.

I was carefully examining Nipper's limbs. He moaned softly when I touched his arm, but still did not stir into consciousness.

“Was he run over by the cart, Lottie?”

She shook her head. “It tipped. The tunnel bends a bit on that slope, and it toppled over. Nipper was trapped between the cart and the wall. Will he be all right, missus? Will he?”

“You did the right thing bringing him here,” I told her. “I will do my best for him.” The poor girl continued to weep silently. “Erasmus, why don't you take Lottie through to Mrs. Timms? I can manage here.”

“Excellent plan. Come along, young lady. Let's see if Mrs. Timms has anymore of that famous lemonade of hers, shall we?”

He showed the rest of the worried little party out and then led Lottie through the adjoining door to his housekeeper's kitchen, leaving me alone with my fragile patient. During my examination of him I had found remarkably few injuries aside from his damaged arm. There were numerous cuts and contusions, but his head appeared to have escaped harm. I suspected he had fainted from the pain his arm was causing him. As I unwound his make-do bandage the extent of the damage became clear. This was no simple fracture; the lower part of the limb and his hand had been crushed and broken in so many places I feared I might not be able to save them. What was of even more concern was the quantity of filth that had been pressed into the open wounds. The risk of serious infection was high. Yet again I cursed the fact that antibiotics were not available to us. I would have to bring all my healing skills to bear if Nipper were to stand a chance of surviving, those of the surgeon and of the witch.

The first thing to do was wash and redress the injury, setting the bones as best I could. After that I could worry about Nipper's minor wounds, getting him bathed, put to bed, and eventually fed. I found the kitchen scissors and began snipping away at the mangled fabric of his sleeve. As I neared the shoulder of the garment, and then his breast pocket, I detected a movement. I stopped, holding my breath. There must be rats underground. Could an opportunist one have hitched a ride beneath the poor boy's clothes? I snatched up the poker from the range and held it high, ready to beat off the thing as it emerged. But it was not a rat that came whiskery-nosed out of Nipper's jacket. It was a small, grubby, bright-eyed white mouse.

 

23

The first thing I learned when Taklit accepted me as her student was that, to her, the word was obviously the same as
servant
. From the moment we met, she barked orders at me, setting me to all the menial tasks necessary to survive in the desert. I had to sweep out the tent, tend to her camel and two goats, taking them to graze on the meager plants that grew between the rocks, or gathering their dried dung as fuel for the fire. At night, the temperature would drop dramatically, and Taklit liked to be warm, so it was up to me to keep the fire going. She would even wake me up, nudging me with her foot, to put more fuel on the damn thing, when she could easily have done so herself, given that she was awake.

“This is a servant's job,” she told me. “Taklit the Blessed is not a servant.”

“Taklit the Blessed didn't have a servant until a couple of days ago,” I pointed out. “How did she feed the fire then?” I asked. Her habit of talking about herself in the third person was catching.

She merely shrugged and said, “She used her magic.”

“But now she'd rather use me, right?” I said as I pushed another dried camel dropping into the flames. She didn't argue. In the mornings I would use some of the millet I had previously pounded into flour, mix it with a little water, and do my best to produce passable flatbreads. I was pretty pleased with the results. Of course, Taklit thought they were woeful versions of the real thing. It wasn't until day five that she took a mouthful and then grudgingly declared it “better.” It turned out Taklit had her own well, thank the Goddess, otherwise no doubt I'd have been made to trek miles to fetch water. The strange thing was, this well was only a few yards from where the Berber men had left me, and yet I hadn't seen it when we had stood there together. A whole line of camels and a dozen men had walked slowly past that exact spot, and yet none of them had seen it either. Later, when I better understood just how powerful Taklit was, it made sense. When I went to draw water from it again I found it not quite where it had been the day before. And the day after that it was somewhere else altogether. Perhaps she was the Greatest Witch Living after all. She certainly enjoyed making life harder for me than it already was.

One day, when there had been no breeze to dry the sweat that seemed to pour from me constantly, and I was nearing the point where I wanted to find shade, even if I had to share it with scorpions, and curl up and pretend I was somewhere,
anywhere
, that wasn't hotter than hell, Taklit pushed me just one step too far.

“Bring more water,” she told me, sitting herself down on a rock to gaze over the desert, which was something she spent a great deal of time doing.

I trudged off to the well, except it wasn't where it should have been. I searched for it, biting down my irritation. It was bad enough I had to wait on the wretched woman without her playing tricks on me for her own amusement. After half an hour of fruitless stomping about in the hot sand, I gave up and returned to where Taklit was busy doing nothing.

“The well is not there anymore,” I said.

“The well is where it is.”

“I can't find it.”

“Clever Witch cannot find a well she has been using for days? It might be Taklit must change your name to Stupid Witch,” she said with another of her choice snorts.

Something inside me snapped.

“And it might be I have to change your name to Taklit the Lazy!” I yelled, sand and thirst making my voice hoarse. “And how about we call me what I am … Exhausted Witch, Hungry, Tired, Seriously Fed-Up Witch? Or how about plain old Slave Witch!”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You are angry.”

“Too bloody right I am! You've had me cooking, lighting fires, collecting dung, dragging those goats of yours for miles looking for something for them to eat, and do I get so much as a “thank you”? No way! You just sit on your backside taking in the view while I slog away in this heat, waiting for you to decide to bother to teach me something,
anything
, that might make putting up with all this worth my damn while!” I stopped, breathless with the effort of shouting when all I felt like doing was crying from tiredness and frustration.

Taklit said nothing for a moment. I was so close to packing up and hitching a ride with the next camel train, in whichever direction it was traveling, just to get away from her. At last she did speak, and her voice was low and soft, which was a drastic alteration from her usual way of talking to me.

“Where did you learn the name Taklit the Blessed?” she asked.

“I heard of you years ago. From a witch I was studying with in France. And then later, from another in America who knew someone who had met you.”