The Return of the Witch (42 page)

“Tegan! Over here!”

I turned and saw Erasmus in a small rowing boat. He pulled toward me, working the oars with strong strokes, and I swam to meet him. Together we got Florencia into the boat. I scanned the water, but there was no sign of Lucrecia.

“Where is Elizabeth?” I asked Erasmus.

He nodded across the reach of water, back toward the boat I had just escaped from. “She has gone to face Gideon,” he told me.

“What! I must go and help her.”

“No.” He leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “She came for you, Tegan. She wants you safe. Stay here. I will go and help her.”

I shook my head. “She can't defeat Gideon without me.” I pushed away from the boat. “Look after Florencia!” I called back to him as I swam for the barge.

*   *   *

When I landed on the wooden deck of Gideon's boat, my bare feet made no sound, and my arrival went unnoticed. There was too much going on, with the great muddle of boats tangled together, the squeals and cries of those who had fallen in the water, and the general amazement at the coming and going of the sun, the way that night stole time from the day, and then day reasserted itself. Besides, no one expects to see a person descend from above. I had removed my heavy, soiled dress, leaving only my petticoats, my slip, and my boots. Erasmus had known what I was about to attempt, but even so I saw the shock on his face as I rose up from the tiny rowing boat we had acquired and lifted into the air. To fly was the quickest and safest way for me to get to Gideon's boat. If anyone had seen me, who would have believed them? In the carnival atmosphere of the eclipse many were already in their cups, or soon would be. Flying was something I did so very rarely (and usually under cover of darkness) that I should have been apprehensive and doubtful of my ability, but there was no time for dithering, no room for failure. I could hear Gideon's vile words of worship, and I knew what he was going to do if he was not stopped.

Gideon gasped when he saw me. His fury at watching Tegan jump from the boat was momentarily replaced with what I recognized as awe at my arrival.

“Elizabeth! That is quite an entrance. And an unnecessary one, as it seems Tegan has saved herself. For now.”

“She is more than a match for you, Gideon. It must be galling to discover that.”

“I would not have chosen her as an offering otherwise,” he said as he began to move toward me. “You were foolish to come here alone. You know you cannot overcome me. You have tried before and failed. Are you really content to give yourself in Tegan's place? Is that what you want, to be a martyr? You think she will be safe then? Do you really think I would let her go? When you are no longer here to help her, I will find a way to overpower her. My Master will show me the way.”

“It would seem you cannot do without his help. Was that always your truth, Gideon? Were you really never anything more than a puppet?”

“You knew what I was. You saw me all those years ago, truly saw me, in Batchcombe Woods. You saw where my power came from and you were in awe! You wanted me, Bess, even then.”

“No, not once I understood. Not once I knew. Is that why you led me back there? Right to that very spot? To remind me of that time?”

He gave a slow smile. “You still cannot accept that you are not the focus of my attention any longer, can you? There was a time when, yes, I'll admit it, I wanted you to look back, to find the power of that brief passion you had for me. To recall the strength of that love.”

“No, it was never love.”

“You have denied it for so long, there would be little point in trying to convince you now. I'm sorry to say my actions were, much as you won't wish to hear it, entirely to do with my plans for Tegan. I knew when I Time Stepped that you would come after me, and that you would do your damnedest to prevent my plans coming to fruition. I wanted rid of your interference. I wanted rid of you, my poor, lost Bess. And the best way I knew to deal with you was to place you in that time, in that life, where there were other people you cared for.”

“William.”

“And then I let the war do the rest. Even you would find your match in Cromwell's ambition, particularly if you were distracted by your rather nauseating conscience. You could not save your family, you had to watch your mother hang, you even had Archie die in your arms. William was about the only other person left for you to rescue, to make amends. With you busy sacrificing yourself for him, I could come to this place, to this point in time, with Tegan.”

“Except that you hadn't reckoned on William being the one to make the sacrifice.”

“Or the dogged persistence of your pet Stepper.”

“That was always your weakness, Gideon. You would never put yourself before someone else, so you could never see that others just might. You saw that I would, but you never had enough interest in people to look any further. It's called love, Gideon, which you would know if you had ever truly felt it yourself.”

As we were speaking a strange stillness settled upon the boat. The oarsmen, continuing to struggle to steer a course through the melee, seemed unaware of it, but Gideon noticed. He glanced about him and I saw that he was afraid. Few things on this earth could have kindled fear in the man, but what frightened him at that moment was not of this earth. And he was right to be afraid. I became conscious of a pressure upon my eardrums, though there was no sound. I felt the air thicken, as if prior to thunder, and anything more than a few strides away became curiously blurred. It was as if a giant bubble had formed in the center of the boat, transparent but tangible, and Gideon and I were within it, while everything and everyone else was outside. The boat then lurched and jolted in unnatural jumps and bounces, tipping the remaining rowers out of it. I understood what was happening then, and so did Gideon.

When I spoke I found I had to raise my voice to make it audible in the midst of this phenomenon. “You promised him a great prize, Gideon!” I reminded him. “You struck a bargain, and he has come to claim his payment. What makes you think he would settle for me?”

The unpredictable movements of the boat brought us both to our knees.

Gideon shook his head. “I am his disciple—he would not ask that I give myself. I have served him for centuries.”

A sudden pitching of the deck caused me to roll against Gideon, who was also sent sprawling. He clambered to his knees again, looming over me as I lay on the red-and-gold-threaded rug. “You will go in her stead!” His face was close to mine now, and I could see the madness in his eyes, and feel his spittle on my cheek. “Hell was her destiny, now it will be yours.”

“You're wrong about that.”

“Tegan!” I cried.

At the sound of her voice Gideon turned and stood, so that I was able to twist from under him and scramble beyond his reach. Tegan had swum back to the boat and was holding the side. Her hair was wet and sleek against her head, but she didn't look cold.

“If anyone is going to hell, Gideon, it's going to be you,” she said. And then she rose up out of the water. She did not pull herself up on the side of the boat, but simply rose, like a mermaid in a dream, her clothes clinging to her, water cascading as she lifted into the air and then settled on the deck only a stride from Gideon. She showed absolutely no fear, and why would she? For it was obvious to me, as it must have been to him, that her transformation was nearly complete. All that potential, all that gathered magic, raw and untested, had come together at this precise moment, beneath the unique influence of the eclipsed and reborn sun. Her eyes shone so brightly it quickly became hard to look at them. Her whole body appeared to glow, to pulsate with a magic the likes of which I had never seen before.

Even Gideon could not mask his astonishment. He did not try to take hold of her, but staggered backward. The boat had become dangerously unstable, and he struggled to keep his footing.

“Congratulations, Tegan,” he said. “You have at last become the magnificent witch you were meant to be. You will make a worthy sacrifice.”

As he spoke, the preternatural quality of the air around us increased. Slowly, the pressure within the bubble in which we found ourselves mounted. I could see the other boats and the people in them, see that they were shouting and moving about, pulling the oarsmen out of the water, trying to maneuver their own vessels, but they appeared far, far away. They seemed unaware of the dangerous phenomenon that was taking place aboard Gideon's boat. My witch senses were telling me to protect myself, sensing a great evil, a terrible blackness that could only emanate from one being. I started chanting, summoning the help of my sister witches, calling on the Goddess to lend us her strength and protection.

And all the while, Tegan continued her transformation. Her skin shone and steam rose from her wet clothes as the temperature of her body began to rise. Gideon saw how quickly she was changing and called upon his master to take her, to claim the prize that he had brought for him.

“My promise is fulfilled!” he declared. “The deal is completed, the payment made!”

A heaviness, a thickening in the atmosphere, at the very center of the sphere that held the three of us, began to darken, to throb, to take shape.

Tegan was not going to wait to see what emerged from that noxious fog.

“You've claimed your last victim, Gideon,” she told him. “Lucrecia is dead because of you. She died doing your dirty work. I'm not going to let you hurt anyone else. You are all out of chances, Gideon. All out of time.” And in that instant her hands burst into flame! She fought to remain steady, and I could tell that the heat was painful for her. I had worried about her using her magic before she was ready; we both knew of the risks. What if it was still too soon? What if she was not yet able to withstand the ferocity of the magic of the Sacred Sun? She leaned forward, marshaling all her strength, pushing the flames taller, higher, moving them toward Gideon.

“You are still too young, too inexperienced!” he shouted at her. “You cannot control what you have summoned up, girl. It will consume you,” he insisted, standing his ground but forced to throw his arms in front of his face to fend off the encroaching heat. “Take her!” he yelled, looking wildly about him for signs of the evil he had called to earth. “Claim your prize!”

The fire had moved up Tegan's arms now. It reached downward to her feet and burned with such intensity I could not believe she would survive it. She seemed to falter then, to lose her footing and stumble, sinking to her knees. I heard her cry out. And I heard Gideon laugh. He was laughing at her, mocking her attempts to kill him! I had to act. I could not cower like a coward and watch her die trying to put an end to the man who had tormented her—tormented us both—for so many, long, fear-filled years. I could not. I had to find a way to help her, to give her my own strength. Hauling myself to my feet, summoning all the protective magic available to me, I ran at her, ran through the flames, and grabbed hold of her, flinging my arms around her shoulders, pulling her to me in a fiery embrace.

“Elizabeth, no!” she gasped. “It is too dangerous. Get back!”

“I will not leave you!” I cried, the pain of the fire making my voice hoarse. “Come, we will do this together.” With great difficulty, I helped her back to her feet. When she was standing once more I stepped to the side, which gave me some respite from the terrible heat. I took her hand in mine and we turned to face Gideon. As Tegan redoubled her efforts to fling the full force of the black fire of the Sacred Sun at him, I added my own magic, my own instinctive pulse of energy. It was a clumsy addition to Tegan's power, but it was just enough to tip the balance. That, and the strength that our standing together gave us both, for magic does not add, it multiplies; each kind working upon the other to magnify and enrich.

That was when Gideon started to scream. The flames had reached him and set his clothing alight. At the same moment, the unnatural bubble dissolved, letting in all the air, the sounds, the turmoil and commotion that was on the river around us. I saw the evil mass shrink and recoil before fading and finally spiraling upward. In its place I could plainly see the ethereal faces of my sisters come to help us! They whispered and chanted and swirled upward and downward, swooping past us with their gentle caresses of spells and blessings. They made no attempt to fight Gideon. They did not seek to attack him, only to protect us as best they could.

In truth, they did not need to do him any more harm. Tegan was doing all that needed to be done. She stood steady and tall now, and the fire that she sent to dispatch Gideon from this life, from this world, forever, found its mark in an inferno of hungry flames.

I thought he would rage and scream and curse, but for the first time in all the hundreds of years I had known him, Gideon looked defeated. He had no more fight to give. He looked at me the way an ordinary man might have. An ordinary man who had once loved an ordinary woman. Except that he had only ever been extraordinary. He gazed at me through eyes that were fast losing their focus. “Bess,” he said softly, one hand reaching out toward me. “
Bess!
”

And then the blaze engulfed him, the flames consuming his body, and his soul departed, snapped up by his waiting master, forfeit for his failure to offer up Tegan. The life went from his body, all that intelligence, all that experience, all that magic, used up and spent, come to nothing, mourned by no one. My nemesis, finally slain, gone to an end he brought upon himself, may the Goddess have mercy on his soul.

 

28

It was largely thanks to the general commotion and holiday mood of people who had turned out to witness the eclipse that we were able to slip away from the scene of Gideon's death. Those in close proximity were too concerned with putting out the blazing boat, and not having it set fire to their own, to notice Tegan and I plunge into the water and swim back to the rowboat. Erasmus hauled us aboard and rowed back to shore as quickly as he could. We collected Nipper and made our way back to Primrose Hill without earning more than a few puzzled glances, and pinched noses due to our wet and disheveled states and the filth that still coated some of our clothes. Erasmus carried Nipper, who was by then giving me real cause for concern, having become exhausted and being clearly in pain. Erasmus all but kicked open the door into his shop.