Familiar
I had never had so much attention in any of my lives. Eyes all around me staring at me expectantly. The madness of their crazed collective hysteria was invasive, like a heavy fog cloying each silky hair particle on my body. The dank, sweaty court room was quite frankly oppressive. All I wanted to do was escape but the violent shoving brutally of my captor replaced me back on my podium at each attempt towards escape.
She was watching me, my mistress, with the eyes of the hunted and the defeated. I could not help her and we both knew it. This witch trial had only one outcome, a noose.
“Is this the whore of Satan you serve?” the Inquisitor asked with the crackling voice of a wizened old man as he arched his witch finder’s staff dramatically in the direction of my Lady, shackled to her own cage at the front of the court room.
I nodded dejectedly, aware that no matter my response her fate was sealed.
The room erupted into a storm of jeering and cries of ‘WITCH!’ as the room of apparently defenceless townspeople took the slightest movement of my head to be confirmation. Savage. That’s what they were. Dirven crazed by the collective fear of the unknown.
My mistress noticeably receded at the onslaught. She was a strong woman but I wondered how much more abuse she could take. Under the dirt and grime that smeared her face and caked her gown and bare feet I could clearly distinguish the dark purple bruises and swelling of continued beatings she had clearly suffered in captivity. Her lip was split, her once delicate and soft stately hands were equally bruised and oddly twisted into claw-like talons where her torturers had clearly taken some devise to her little finger and thumb to force out a confession.
I longed to go to her, to give her the comfort she so often sought from me but my own captors would allow no such intimacy. I believe they were equally afraid of me.
I gazed up at my mistress, willing her to draw on my own strength, to keep her standing. Her bewitching green cat like eyes, so like my own, held mine for a long moment and I felt rather than saw her amazing determination return. Eyes parting she turned her rebellious glare back to the Inquisitor with a challenge. She practically sparked. She was all defiance but it only seemed to fuel the Inquisitor’s enjoyment of the proceedings.
He turned to me with a gleam and cried, arms raised to the heavens, “Tell the court of the events of last week that lead to the violent death of Archibald Duncan Heathering!”
The crowd roared with gleeful expectation for the revelation of an evil act. Noise surrounded me. I heard jeering a whisker’s length from my face. Someone shouted, “Burn the whore, she doesn’t belong here!” Another: “Death to Evil. Freedom for our land!” I was certain this person, a burly fifty year old, greying townsman, covered in filth and clearly someone who spent more nights in a gutter rather than a bed, lunged forward in the crowd towards my lady with some form of knife or weapon. The guards, grudgingly pushed him back and my small framed, usual vibrant lady, visibly drew back from the fierce passion in the man’s insanity-blotched face.
He wasn’t the only one. They were everywhere, people from all parts of the community, man woman, child servant, peasant, hermit, judge. The latter were the ones that stood out and whose presence could not be avoided. There were three of them, probably mid-fifties with white, tufty, receding hairlines, hidden beneath their purple canonical hats. Robes resplendent in the finery of the Church and the underlying odour of incense and sweat. The three men of God sitting in judgment called the court to order. The crowd quietened and the dampness of congealed body odours clung to me oppressively. So many scents.
All were watching me. If they could only believe. They thought they did but the reality was they could not. What this crowd was capable of was persecuting and condemning an innocent woman to an excruciating fiery death because of jealousy and ignorance.
Even if I could tell them no one would truly believe the reality of the event in question.
***
It had started as a day not particularly worthy of note. I had awoken to my Lady’s singing as the sun broke through from the kitchen window. Rising from my place by the fire I stretched to my full length, caressing the rough warm stones of the cottage floor with my toes. There is something quite satisfying in a good stretch especially after waking from a long sleep. There is a comfort in reacquainting oneself with the physical world after waking from the world we inhabit in sleep. Realty, in quite its own way, can be just as reassuring as a world of imagination.
She was happy. That song she sang was a special one in that respect. It was his song. I had first heard him sing it to her by the fire of an evening as she curled in his strong work hardened arms. He would hold her and rock her, stroking her hair much like he stroked mine and she would equally purr with contentment into his neck.
“You’re quite the cat my lass. Your skin’s as soft as fur and your hair’s as silken as the moonlight. Look how t’shines.” He would say, his soft baritone making the air around him vibrate.
He was fascinated by her hair. He often spoke of spells and enchantments holding him to her in a manner that no one could explain. She would just laugh and share that knowing look with me. We were both well aware that there was no magic other than the natural magic that had created the woman she was that drew him to her time and time again.
“They say you’re a witch, them that hate you in town.” He had said on that first day he had first met her. She never denied nor confirmed his statement, merely smiled that sweet smile of hers and turned away. It was her turn from him that had so inflamed his need for her love.
As their romance blossomed the more like a lass in love my mistress became. She glowed, she sang, she danced and she loved her life.
He was there more and more. He became one of us. I accepted him into my house and my life and I loved him too. He was a comforting safe presence. He brought the smell of the outdoors and warmth with him whenever he entered and he always had a special greeting for me. No we adopted him as one of our own, unaware of the pain a betrayal from such a person could inflict.
This very morning, the day of said event, my mistress had been at the height of happiness. She sang she danced as usual but she revealed to me the secret of her joy. Curled in her lap, enjoying the scent of her skin through her woollen gown and the soothing caress of that regal hand I learned that beneath that soft wool was a new member of our family starting to grow. She momentarily placed a maternal hand to her womb and laying her head back smiled as contentedly as the rays of sun that streaked her face. I snuggled closer.
She was going to tell him that very day.
She met him in the field, drum of water and a loaf of spiced bread she knew he liked so much. I had followed in the hopes of sharing the news and some of the food that had smelled so appealing in preparation.
With much joy he greeted her, taking her into his arms and swinging her around in a wave of skirts. Their kiss was one of sweetness and as he gazed down into her captivating gaze he wound a strand of the sunlit gold that cascaded around her shoulders around his palm. Lovingly he raised the glistening silk to his lips before leaning down to place a soft kiss on hers.
There they stood in companionable love. I had become so used to such a comforting atmosphere I decided to curl up with my back against the drum of water and enjoy the warm rays of the sun.
I must have drifted into a nap as the next thing I was aware of was a painful hefty foot and a wave of cold water. I flew a mile in the air with fear and sudden surprise and let out a shrieking cry that would have alerted the deepest sleeper to a sudden wakefulness. It had been his great foot that had invaded my space of comfort and it was his large frame that threw my world into shadow.
Suddenly all was cold. There was no joy between them. In fact there was fear, hurt and rage. They were shouting at each other, words I could not fully comprehend. She was snarling, all feline and fierce as her eyes flashed at him. He, more resembling the bear, did not back down but faced her sharp tongue with his own brutish bluntness.
Neither was aware of my presence as I tried to escape. They were circling me, enclosing me inside their battle. I was caught up in her skirt as she stepped in to give that final slash of words insinuating his manhood could not keep her satisfied much longer should he wish to continue inflicting that odious need on her. And crack. The sound of rough work warn skin in sudden contact with soft cheek. My mistress fell back, taking me with her to the ground where she stared up at him in horror clutching her cheek in disbelief and fear.
Anyone would have hoped that in such a situation any man of worth would be instantly sorry, begging forgiveness and attempting to heal the hurt. But no, not this one. He stood, tall and strong, rippling muscles and fiery dangerously cold rage on his face.
“You are no more than a witch and a whore and I never wish to see or hear from thee again. You tell my wife and that’ll be the last your sweet tongue will ever whistle again!”
I was frightened and shrunk back into the safety of my Mistress’ warm comforting presence. Finally aware of my presence she lifted me into her arms and stood, caressing my shaking body as she collected her fear and shock. It cooled into an icy calm as she stared back at her once lover and spoke those fateful words.
“I curse you Archibald Duncan Heathering. I curse your unclean dark soul to the very depths of a fiery Hell! If you have any luck the journey will be short and painless. But if I have anything to do with it you will not go easily. I curse your muddy soul to spend all eternity searching for me only to know time and time again that no such relief will come to you. I curse all the fruits of your marriage to sicken and fade and I curse the woman you call your own real love to see you for the man you truly are! This is my curse Archibald Heathering and when you meet Satan at his gates” she moved so close to him there was barely room for my small form. Their faces now were mere breaths apart. “-remember who sent you there.”
She kept him in a frightful hold for moments then turned and left him staring after her.
Once back at the cottage I knew nothing would be right again.
She was all tears and anger as she destroyed the place I called home. Pots broke and smashed on the hard stone floor, plates and paintings alike were thrown into broken heaps. Herbs plants and flowers fell amongst the rushes and anything that reminded her of him found its way into the roaring fire. All but the neck tie, the one he had given her to tie back her hair one night. Standing contemplatively by the fire she brought the material to her nose and lips and inhaled. Her soft lithe frame heaved a wracking sob and she broke into a pile of misery on the floor.
Tentatively I went to her and taking me into her arms she cried into my small body the heart breaking tears of a woman broken. Her body wracked and heaved with hurt and sorrow. I could do no more than offer the comfort of my own body.
Eventually she drew away from me and taking my face in that soft smooth hand, gave a look of complete trust and love only I could understand.
***
I had fallen asleep again. The fire was too warm and comforting. I woke up and stretching, arched my back cracking all the plates of my spine back into a working pattern. I blinked around the now dark kitchen. All the light provided was from the fire behind me which cast an almost angelic glow around the edges of the table and small settle I had seen the two lovers curled up in many an evening.
Looking at the settle now through my night adapted eyes I could see the solitary figure of my Lady, curled into the defenceless foetal position of a new born child hiding from the world and waiting for the loving mother to encourage them in to take that first breath. So defenceless, so destroyed. My poor mistress.
With the confidence of a familiar I climbed onto her lap finding my long established spot. I felt the tears seep to my skin as they dripped from her chin but I did not mind. She was my source of existence and love from the beginning.
“My heart.” She whimpered into my soft embrace. “He has broken my heart. I have nothing. I am nothing.”
All I could do was give her the reassurance of my presence and there we sat a while. It was hypnotic; our gentle shared rocking watching the light from the hearth flicker across the room. Dancing shadows played across the wall and little glimmers and shards of light bounced off the broken posts and glass, casting odd magical sprite-like figures to mix and dance with the flitting shadows. There was a growing sense of a magic about to happen.
A soft humming started to emerge from my chest as I got taken up with the mystical creatures provoking me to join them and pounce. I wanted to catch them. The fire crackled little energetic sparks that gradually woke me from my daze. I needed to catch their magic, it was extremely important all of a sudden. She couldn’t stop me. I was out of her arms and flying around the room, catching a waif one second then losing it to see another. Why could I not hold them?
My Mistress was watching me and laughing but I was too preoccupied. I was most taken aback when something flew out of the fireplace hitting me on my side. In my most agile fashion I spun in the air to catch the missile and pin it to the floor. It was dead before I could do much more. I think it was probably the force of my impact with it and the speed in which I brought it into contact with the hard stone floor that forced the life from its tiny form. Its little heart gave out.
It could have been a mouse with its hairy little form and rodent ears and nose. Yet this mouse could fly and had wings, long and sinewy with claw-like feet, which twitched in the throes of death. I looked up at my mistress who was staring, just as surprised at my little gift as I had been at finding it. Feeling her need greater than mine I carried the creature to her and placed it at her feet.
She stood speechlessly staring down at the extremely defenceless little ball of fur, seemingly unable to comprehend the meaning of its presence.
I felt like I had been stationary, staring up at her for hours when she eventually broke the stillness and bent down to pick it up. She examined the creature thoroughly, pulling the wing to examine the tight muscle and pressing at the clawed talons the thing used as feet no doubt. It was like she was in a trance as she stared at the thing.
Then she looked at me. It was a look I had never seen in her eyes before and I do not wish to see it again. Not from my kind, gentle, soft, loving mistress. There was a glee in her eye, the cat-like twist making them flash dangerously. She had darkness in there, like she was no longer able to see me, only and evil intent.
With a terrifyingly swift movement to the table she placed the little creature on the mantelpiece looking with its little button black eyes into the blankness of death that it now inhabited.
I had no knowledge of the trap door she was now exposing from beneath the rug in front of the hearth. From this she pulled an extremely heavy looking dark oak box, which she heaved across the floor. She sat panting from the exertion of lifting it from its dark hiding place.
The room was cold, despite the roaring flames; the source of the cold came from this box. It had all kinds of strange markings in white paint and dark burnt passages into the heavy wood. Strong iron bars and bolts held the structural integrity of the box, corners and bolts rusting from perhaps decades maybe centuries of existence and little use. Yet there was something eerie and wrong about the box. It was not of this plain. There was an unearthly aura to it that told me to stay far away.
I did not like the box at all and my mistress recognised my aversion to its presence as she caught me backing away.
“Nay Love, don’t be afraid. This has been in my family for generations. My mother passed it down to me; as the eldest it came to me by rights when she died. I’ve never felt the courage, nay the draw to see it, never mind open it since she showed me of its hiding place. Not until now at least. Mother was always afeared of such things. I believe she only kept it because her mother was so insistent she did. I don’t believe she once got it out in her whole lifetime. Well I suppose she never had reason to, not with Papa’s love. Oh mother you knew didn’t you? You knew that one day I would need it.”
With a jolt of determination she lifted herself from the floor and went to the box. Before she touched it however she drew back. There was what felt like a pulsation in the air, or perhaps that was the blood pumping around my body in anticipation. Whatever it was she did not open it. Well not yet. She stood contemplating the power that she was clearly feeling from the box and rather tentatively she reached out to it. Her hands remained suspended above the box creating a tension in the gap between box and palm. It was building and we could both feel it. She was perfectly still but something was happening. It was like the box was waking up from the power her palms passed into the ancient oak.
The hum I had heard earlier rose. It was building, the fire flittered, the imps, waifs and fairies danced with a growing intensity and frivolity over every space in the room. The shadows and chill were equally growing and pushing against the fire, which was expanding. There was a wind I am certain of it. The fire was raging out of the confines of the hearth and the edges of the tablecloth were flapping. My Lady’s hair was caught on the gale, silver blonde glinting locks were flying around her face and her skirts were equally flapping and whirling around her feet. A gust caught me and with fear I flew to the safety beneath the table.
With a sudden click the chest opened and darkness emerged from its core. She was a stranger, a woman I did not recognise as my mistress lifted from the heart of the ancient chest a large heavy book. It resembled the chest in its dark, thick covers with large iron bindings and lock. Somehow the lock opened and heaving the book to the floor in front of the hearth she opened to a page that seemed to call to her. It was like the book was alive, as the chest had seemed. I now realised it was what had lain at its heart that had given the chest characteristics of life. This book was the life force of something dark and extremely powerful.
I watched her now as she flew around the kitchen, out of the front door and back in with arms full of plants and herbs and grasses. She also produced from her skirts another animal. She placed it on the floor by the book.
Bringing some courage back to my limbs I crept from my hiding place and tentatively moved towards the pile she was building.
I could not identify the grasses and greens but I soon figured out what the glistening little creature she had pulled from her pocket was. Its long spring-like legs ending in webbed feet looked quite pathetic in the firelight.
She was back and she had a cloth, which she had pulled from the chest. It had an odd circular white symbol in the centre with stars and equally alien symbols I did not recognise surrounding the centre. Next she placed a bowl in the centre and returning to the book, ran her finger down the page. Taking a small, sharp knife and chopping board she went to work on the plants then she was placing candles in strategic positions around the black cloth in identified settings.
Her final task was arranging the ingredients in a line in front of her, including the doll she fashioned from some twigs, straw and a lock of familiar red hair.
Standing in front of the fire, radiating light, and staring down at her task, my mistress presented a terrifying spectacle of a stranger. It was an evil task she had in mind.
Momentarily taking a step away she began to undress slowly and seductively, leaving her outer gown, belt and corseted in a heap on the floor until all that was left covering her sensuous figure was her shift.
In a trance like movement she stepped back to her position in front of the fire and slowly squatted down into a crossed-legged position, hands sitting limply on her knees and eyes to the sky. A low murmur from the cavernous depths of her chest started a steady rhythmic pulse. I could not make out the words but it increased in tempo and pitch as she rocked back and forth, back and forth. The candles dance and spluttered in counterpoint to her beat as she flung herbs and spices she had previously prepared at the flames. They created scented and colourful smoke that filled my lungs with a power I could not recognise.
I became entrance with her steady movement, swaying to the pulse as the spell progressed. She got bigger in her movements and faster. Her arms raised and twisted with the rhythm of her chanting and the lights flickered their harmonic countermelody around her. The frog made it into the mix as she gutted the creature over the pot in the centre. Then the bat was equally dissected.
As the tempo increased so did her movement. She was on her feet dancing an elegant pavanne around her centre, her mouthpiece to her new master. She was singing as well, words I did not know but sounded familiar to her tongue, as if she had been speaking his language and singing his hypnotics songs her whole life.
In a soft movement she was over the pot, which was rippling to its own harmony within the song. Scooping the small gleaming knife from the floor she pulled a piece of her glorious silver blond hair forward and sliced a lock which followed the bat into the pot.
The next step caught me completely unawares. Leaning forwards she drew the silver blade across her breast with a shrill scream, which merged back into the chanting again. With a definite flick of her wrist the droplets of the blood slithering across the blade dripped into the pot swirling and sparking in to the dark mixture.
The song to Satan grew and grew, fire raging, lights dancing wind howling. Then of a sudden it all fell as my mistress flung her body to the ground hunched and curled in the bow of homage to the darkness in the bowl. Her gown was askew, exposing more than the soft curve of her shoulder. Her usually glossy and sleek hair was matted and wild from the wind and the dance and the blood from the cut to her breast seeped into the cotton of her shift, there congealing with the sweat and grime of the spell’s exertion.
She was completely still, the atmosphere as still and chill as the calm of a lake in the moonlight of a still winter’s night. I couldn’t move. All was frozen including my own muscles. All I could do was stare helplessly as my mistress gently gathered into the palm of her soft hand the small figure made of wood and straw. Within a state of absolute serenity she held the knife in a delicate balance on the chest of the figure pointing directly down into the heart.
She knelt in such a position for what felt like an eternity. Silence surrounded the scene, not even a crack from the fire broke the spell.
Then it plunged, deep and directly to the heart, the little blood soaked dagger pierced the small figure. Then with an almost loving reverence she lowered the doll into the darkness of the pot. I could see it first floating on the surface and gradually, with a sickening glug, it sunk beneath the darkness of the brew.
In a final climactic burst she flew to her feet screaming desperately to the sky, the wind whipping her hair and her light shift, the fire raging and the centre piece to Satan roaring its power too.
Then all went back. She fell with exhaustion to her knees and crumpled into a heap, her body heaving with the heat and sweat of someone who has reached her climax. She lay there for what seemed like hours, in a sleep that had taken her to a dream world of pleasure and satisfaction from what I could gather from her moans of pleasure. The room was thawing as the fire continued to crackle normally, bringing heat back to the previously freezing room.
As my muscles gradually thawed I timidly stepped from my hiding place and moved to her. Her face was shining with sweat and sated satisfaction. Waking softly from her light sleep she smiled at me and reached out a languorous hand to my head, rubbing my ears with a now heavy hand.
She was happy but I was frightened by what I had just witnessed. The room was still recovering from the power it had just encapsulated. She did not seem the slightest bit concerned, which worried me the most.
I pawed her unhappily and she just smiled and pulled me to her. She recognised my distress and tried to calm me.
It was those soft calming hands that I loved well, stroking my hair and caressing behind my ears that I would always hold of this beautiful woman. There I lay, comforted and loved, those hands performing the magic that comes easily with a heart as kind as hers.
***
All were watching me. If they could only believe. They thought they did but the reality was they could not. What this crowd was capable of was persecuting and condemning an innocent woman to an excruciating death because of jealousy and ignorance.
Even if I could tell them no one would truly believe the reality of the event in question.
All I could think of was of her soft comforting embrace, and those loving hands that had caressed me every day from the moment she found me in the damp bag that had washed up on the side of the river containing myself, half drowned, and my dead brothers and sisters.
No matter what I did I could not save her.
Cat eyes met cat eyes and the desperate meow that left my throat ignited the fury of the crowd and the depths of endless torment for the soul of my Lady.
