The Vanishing Witch (65 page)

Catlin looked startled at seeing him and frowned. Her face was pale and damp. She plainly found the heat trying. In the
cruelly bright sunlight, the wrinkles seemed etched even deeper around her mouth and eyes. ‘I thought you’d be at the warehouse, Adam. Your father will be vexed if you aren’t there. Has . . . has he returned?’

Adam tried hard not to smile. This was easier than he had imagined. ‘He came back ages ago. He’s up in the bedchamber.’

Catlin stiffened. ‘The bedchamber? Didn’t he want his wine?’

‘Oh,
he took it with him. I saw him through the doorway. He’s probably asleep by now.’

‘Asleep?’ Catlin’s gaze darted upwards to the casement and her mouth curved into a smile. ‘And where is Leonia?’

‘Still up in the chamber with Father. I haven’t seen her come out.’

Catlin’s mouth tightened. ‘What’s she doing up there?’ Without waiting for an answer, she gripped Adam’s shoulder. ‘Go straight to
the warehouse. You don’t want to make your father angry, do you? I think you should stay late to make up for not being there this afternoon. It’s what your father would expect. It sets a good example to the men. If they see you shirking, they’ll become resentful and start to do likewise. Off you go at once and see you stay there this time!’

She gave Adam a little push towards the courtyard gate.
He ran across as if he had every intention of doing as he was told, but outside he flattened himself against the wall and waited, peering through the tiny gap between the wood and the wall, until he saw Catlin disappear inside. Slowly, he opened the gate just wide enough to slide through and slipped into the relative cool of the stables.

Moments later the gate opened quietly again and Edward,
casting furtive glances around, picked his way across the courtyard and into the house. Adam followed, pausing in the doorway. He could hear Catlin and Edward arguing in low voices.

‘. . . I’ve just seen Martin,’ Edward was saying. ‘He was being dragged through the city by the sheriff’s men. He’s not coming . . . and you said the hall . . . you said Robert would be in the hall. This isn’t what
we planned.’

The stairs creaked. Adam knew it was Catlin’s footsteps. She was going straight to the bedchamber. He hugged himself in anticipation. He’d worried that somehow he would fail Leonia, that he would not say the right things to make Catlin go upstairs or that he’d fumble his words and she would grow suspicious. But everything was perfect and Leonia would be so pleased with him.

When
Catlin opened the door that separated the solar from the bedchamber Robert was lying stretched out on the bed sunk in a deep sleep. Leonia was lying beside him, propped up on her elbow, her head resting on her hand. Her shift was pulled up and Robert’s hand lay between her bare thighs.

Catlin shrieked and flew to the bed, the riding crop raised in her hand. Leonia was already scrambling off the
bed, but she was not quick enough. She raised her arm to shield her face as Catlin struck. The whip caught her across the forearm and at once beads of blood blossomed along the angry welt. She slid off the bed and ran behind a wooden screen.

‘You little bitch!’ Catlin screamed.

With a groan Robert pulled himself upright. He was struggling to focus. His voice was slurred. His tongue seemed to
have become too big for his mouth.

‘Dare you . . . come back here! Warned you . . . told you to get out . . .’ He tried to swing his legs off the bed, but couldn’t seem to make them obey him. ‘Sheriff . . . sending for Thomas right now.’

He glimpsed a movement in the solar and his face contorted as he saw Edward hovering in the doorway. ‘Get him out of my house!’

Catlin lunged at Robert. ‘You
dare to accuse me of adultery when you’ve taken your own stepdaughter as your whore. You vile lecher!’

She raised the whip as if she meant to strike him. But he grabbed her wrist, trying to wrest it from her hands.

‘He’s a lecher, but he isn’t a murderer too, like you, is he, Mother?’

Leonia had moved towards the door and Adam, coming up behind Edward, had slipped round him to stand beside
her.

‘You do know that Catlin murdered Edith, don’t you, Robert?’ Leonia said calmly. ‘Just like she killed my father. You helped her, didn’t you, Edward?’

‘If I was going to murder anyone, it would be you, you ungrateful brat,’ Edward said savagely.

‘But you can’t, not yet, because my father left all his estates to me, not Catlin. If I die all my father’s money will go to my uncle. You need
me to stay alive until I’m old enough to marry you, don’t you, Edward? That’s the plan, isn’t it? Once I marry you all my inheritance becomes yours and you’ll murder me then, won’t you, you and my mother together?’

Catlin took a step back from the bed. ‘Do it, Edward! Don’t just stand there. Use the knife. Kill him! He’s drugged. You’re stronger than him. Strike now!’

‘But you said Martin would
be blamed . . . you swore . . .’ Edward gestured with the blade towards Adam and Leonia. ‘And what about them? I can’t do it in front of them. It’s too dangerous.’

‘They’re just children,’ Catlin shrieked at him. ‘We can deal with them later. You have to do it now! If you don’t, you’ll hang. We both will. Kill him. Just do it, you fool. Strike!’

Leonia lifted her chin. ‘He won’t do it, Mother.
He’s too scared. But I will, because I am your daughter, and you and that filthy old man have to be punished for what you’ve done.’

Leonia, watching the dumbfounded expression on Catlin’s face, threw back her head and laughed. She reached down under the top of her shift and pulled out something hanging around her neck. It was Catlin’s bloodstone necklace. One by one, she slid open the little
compartments at the back of each stone, shaking out the locks of hair so they fell to the floor – brown, blond, black, grey and a strand dyed saffron yellow.

‘Look at them, Robert. Look at all the people she killed, all the people who are coming for her. They’re all here, Catlin. Their ghosts are waiting for you.’

Robert saw Leonia reach for the candle on the table, but he still didn’t comprehend
the danger. His mind seemed to be enveloped in a fog. He watched, as if from far off, as she flung the lighted candle onto the flowers on the floor. He saw one of the rose petals smoulder and shrivel. Then, suddenly, a circle of flame flashed around the bed and leaped up the hangings. But it was only when the hem of Catlin’s skirts caught light, only when she began to shriek, that Robert understood
what Leonia had done. The flowers and the bed-hangings had been soaked in perfumed oil. In the same instant, he saw to his horror that he was completely surrounded by flames.

His first instinct was to shrink back into the centre of the bed as the fire leaped up around him. He caught sight of the terrified expression on Edward’s face in the solar, and the children standing, hand in hand, in the
doorway, smiling. Flames shot along the canopy over his head. Robert threw himself off the bed.

Catlin reeled into the corner of the room, trying to beat out her skirts and tear her gown from her. Robert made a lunge for the door, but the two children were standing there, unmoving. Then, hand in hand, they raised their arms. Robert could make no sense of what his drugged mind saw: snakes seemed
to writhe in front of him and a creature with a black-furred face and sightless eyes bounded towards him, snarling, its sharp white fangs bared to strike. Robert screamed, and threw himself to the floor in the doorway just as the blazing drapes came crashing down, engulfing Catlin in flames.

By the time Diot had come lumbering up the stairs, the whole bedchamber was ablaze, floor to ceiling in
a rolling mass of flame. The heat was so fierce and the smoke so dense that no one could get inside. Nothing could be done to help Catlin trapped in there, burning alive. Diot could only grab the children and hurry the poor little mites out to the safety of the street.

Neighbours came rushing with ladders and buckets of water, grappling hooks and brooms to beat out the blaze. They managed to
contain it. The bedchamber was gutted and the fire had burned through the floorboards, scorching the ceiling below, but it could have been worse, everyone said. The house, being made of stone, was still standing. And the tapestry, of which Robert had been so proud, remained miraculously undamaged. The crown in the maiden’s hair and the gold of the boar’s collar gleamed more brightly than ever.

Diot hugged her two charges to her massive breasts, rocking to and fro, the tears streaming down her sooty cheeks.

‘My poor, poor sweet babe . . . such a terrible way to die . . . If I’d thought for a moment ’twould end like this . . . Thank the saints that you lambs was both saved.’

Across her broad back, the children smiled triumphantly at one another.

Then, as Diot led them away, Leonia turned
around and gazed back down the street to where I stood with Mavet. She opened her clenched fist and blew a single rose petal towards us. It drifted in the wind, higher, higher over the great city.

We watched it disappear. She walked away and we followed her. Mavet and I will always follow her. She has always known we’ve been there, protecting her, teaching her . . .
killing
for her. After all,
I am her father. Isn’t that what fathers do? And Mavet has discovered humans are more fun to terrorise than rabbits, much tastier too. A single bite from those four sharp canines is all it takes, doesn’t it, my little demon of death? You might say we three are the most unholy trinity – father, daughter and our own little incubus.

At the darkest hour of the longest night, the hell-wain drawn by the headless black horses trundles through the streets of the town, gathering up the shrieking souls of the dead.

Poor old Godwin, he understood a little, but there is much he did not. Pavia, Margaret, Catlin, and those were but a few of her names, did murder three husbands and a few others along the way, but it was not
with witchcraft, as Godwin believed, though you can hardly blame him for thinking that. She didn’t need spirits or spells to aid her. She was more than skilled enough to manage things on her own.

It was Christmastide, that season of goodwill towards men. Our little daughter, our Leonia, was but three years old, and as delicate and beautiful as a Christmas rose. I was deeply in love with her mother
and never tired of thinking up new ways to please her. So when Catlin’s long-lost son, Edward, arrived, recently returned from sea and overjoyed to be reunited with his dear mother, like Robert I was a fool and indulged my wife by taking in her son. After all, no man could be so cold-hearted as to turn away his stepson at Christmas, for even a beggar is welcomed to the fire at that season.

On
St Stephen’s Day, Catlin gave me one of her most charming smiles. ‘Warrick, my sweeting, it’s such a bright day and we’ve been sitting far too long around the fire. We should go hunting. I’ve been telling my son what a fine rider you are and he is longing for some sport.’

I was surprised and a little annoyed, for Catlin had shown no interest in hunting before, preferring dancing and mummery.
But now that her son wanted to hunt, she had decided she enjoyed it. But it would have been foolish to allow my churlishness to prevent me doing what I’d been itching to do since the Christmas feasting had begun. Hunting was my passion, riding out with my hawk on my fist and the hounds following one of my greatest joys.

So I was on my feet before the words had even left her lips, pulling on the
new pair of gauntlets she had offered as a Christmas gift, whistling up the hounds and sending stable-boys scurrying as I called for the horses to be saddled. I kissed my little daughter, Leonia, goodbye, promising her the prize from the finest beast we brought down.

We were riding over the heath, with some of the men and stable-boys following on foot to retrieve the hawks and carry any kills
that might be made. There’d been a frost, which lingered, sparkling on the bare branches of the trees. The ground was as hard as burnished steel. Edward and I were both riding with goshawks, using the hounds to put up the game, and vying with each other over how many hares, rabbits and game birds our hawks could kill.

Catlin was carrying a peregrine falcon, though, of course, only sending it
out when the hawks were safely on the glove. Several times I noticed her turning her head to look at me instead of watching the spectacle of the hunt, even when her own bird was flying. At the time, I foolishly thought it was pride in my prowess for, though I say it myself, I was a far more daring and expert horseman than Edward. But now I know she was watching for the first signs. And she did not
have long to wait.

I started to feel unnaturally chilled. Then, the next moment, I was roasting. Sweat was running down my face. The latter was hardly to be wondered at for I was riding hard. But I was dizzy and couldn’t control my movements. My arms and legs started jerking, so much so that the goshawk on my fist was bating and repeatedly throwing herself upside down, swinging by the leather
jesses around her legs, the ends of which were clamped tightly in my gloved hand. Dimly I knew that I should stop and dismount, but I was seized by terror. The baying of the hounds behind me was growing louder and louder, but I knew they were not mine. I turned in the saddle and saw, to my horror, a pack of monstrous hell-black hounds running straight towards me, each one encased in a ball of scarlet
and blue flames that streamed out behind them as they came.

Some of the servants came running up, trying to grab the reins of my horse, but the hounds were closing in and I knew it was me that they hunted. I spurred my horse away from them.

‘The hounds, the hounds of fire,’ I shrieked. ‘Draw your bows and kill them!’ But the men didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.

I must have flung
my hawk away from me, for I could see it wheeling overhead, shrieking, like a monstrous griffin. Its talons had grown as long as swords and it was diving at me. I covered my head with my arm and spurred my mount mercilessly on until the poor beast was foaming at the mouth.

It was only a matter of time before the horse slipped on the frosty grass and threw me. I fell against the trunk of the tree,
striking my head against the broken stump of a branch. My wife and Edward came galloping up, the servants running behind. I thought it was the hounds of fire that had surrounded me. I lashed out wildly, screaming and shouting in my terror.