The Mocker shook his head furiously and tears welled up in his eyes. ‘The people here found out she was a witch. They said she consorted with the Devil-’ His voice caught in a juddering sob.
‘She doesn’t even believe in the Devil,’ Church exclaimed. ‘It’s madness. This whole country is insane.’
‘The whole world, brother,’ Will said quietly. ‘Europe is gripped with a fear of witches and the priests fan the flames. I fear where it will end.’ The strain of the journey finally told on his face.
Jerzy said to Church, A stranger drove them to this. A man who speaks like you … a tattooed man …’
Church bowed his head. He was overwhelmed by the sheer pointlessness of everything that he did. His fears crystallised into one clear certainty: things were only going to get worse.
16
They cut down Lucia’s body in the bitter cold, beneath hard grey clouds that promised more snow. Church tried to keep in his head the image of Lucia sitting amongst the standing stones after they had left Rome, telling him not to mourn for her when she died. But faced with the harsh reality of her limp body and cold skin, and the unnecessary circumstances of her death, it was difficult not to turn towards dark thoughts.
Will remained cold-faced, all emotions locked tightly within. Church knew the spy had started to feel deeply for Lucia, and there was nothing Church could say to ease his pain. He couldn’t even sustain anger for the ignorant villagers, manipulated into a brutal, false reading of their religion.
‘We should bury her,’ Church said.
‘The ground will be like iron,’ Will said. ‘Besides, these illiterate, superstitious peasants would never let her rest in peace if they knew the location of her grave.’
‘What, then? Cremation?’
They were interrupted by a woman’s cry from a nearby house. Tom investigated, and after a moment beckoned Church to follow while Will stood guard over Lucia’s body, though all the villagers had long since hidden themselves away.
The house smelled of woodsmoke and dried herbs. Tom led Church upstairs to a bedroom where a woman sobbed quietly. On the bed, her skin as white as the snow outside, was a girl of around seventeen. She was heavily pregnant and appeared to be sleeping though her breath was thready.
‘She’s dying,’ Tom whispered to Church. ‘She hasn’t woken for days. She had a fever, then slipped into unconsciousness. The birth has started and the mother knows the baby will die, too.’ Tom indicated the woman in the corner who was trying to compose herself.
‘What am I supposed to do about it?’ Church said sharply, but his bitterness at Lucia’s death drained away when he looked at the girl. Life was harsh, and in the absence of proper medical care, death remained close to every community. All the love and hope and dreams and art and music counted for nothing in the face of it. Where was the meaning in that, any rhyme or reason to Existence?
‘My Alice suffers because we allowed the witch into our village. God is punishing us,’ the woman said.
‘No,’ Church said. ‘That “witch” was a woman like you, like your daughter, with the same feelings, the same thoughts. What kind of God would want to bring pain or death into her life?’
Tom caught Church’s arm, but the woman was already crying. Church knew she needed some way to make sense of her impending loss; everyone did. It was so senseless.
As he watched over the pale girl, his thoughts flashed back to Carn Euny and the dawn celebration for Ailidh’s stillborn child. Eighteen hundred years separated the two girls, yet their concerns were the same. Hope and sadness; humanity in essence.
Before Church could say something to ease the woman’s grief, a powerful wind crashed against the tiny window and they all jumped. A snowstorm had come out of nowhere with an unnatural ferocity. Through the window, Myddle was gone. There was only a wall of white, as if the house was floating in a non-place. Flakes were already compacting to blanket the glass.
Church and Tom exchanged a brief look of unease before hurrying outside. So intense was the storm it was near-impossible to pick the right direction. Everywhere was white, and they were blinded by the snow driven into their faces by the bitter wind. For five minutes, they wandered around calling for Will, though they had left him only a stone’s throw from the door.
And then the snowstorm abated as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun. The wind dropped in the blink of an eye; the final flakes drifted to the ground.
A snow-covered mound lay where Will and Lucia’s body had been. Church and Tom brushed the snow away and dragged Will to his feet. He was dazed, barely conscious, frozen to the bone and shivering. Lucia’s body was nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened to her, Will?’ Church asked.
Will tried to reclaim his thoughts. ‘I saw … dark eyes …’ was all he could manage.
Tom indicated a set of cloven hoofprints leading away from them.
‘An animal?’ Church said.
‘That walks on two legs?’
Church and Tom helped Will back to the house to recover in front of the fire. Before they could talk further, the woman stumbled down the stairs, wailing hysterically. ‘My Alice! My Alice!’ When they had finally calmed her, they learned that the pregnant girl had disappeared from her bed. The woman had looked to the window, and when she looked back the girl was gone.
‘I’m going after Lucia and the girl,’ Church said as he pulled his cloak tightly around him.
‘Is that wise?’ Tom said. ‘The suddenness of the snowstorm, the hoofprints — it speaks to me of wild, dark magic.’
‘I can’t abandon them, Tom.’
The Rhymer nodded. ‘Then take care. I fear what awaits you.’
The hoofprints led Church to the main street and then out of the village. Beyond the houses, they left the road and crossed the fields. Shivering, Church struggled through the thick snow until he came to Myddlewood, where Lucia had spent a night of wonder and mystery only hours earlier. The hoofprints continued straight into the heart of the wood.
Church hesitated on the boundary and stared into the desolate trees. Nothing moved. There was no breeze, no sound. He drew his sword and entered the dark world.
The strange, still atmosphere blanketed the edge of the wood, swollen with anticipation, like the moment before someone speaks. Church was ready for an attack from any direction, but he could not sense any impending threat.
As he progressed further into the wood, the claustrophobic atmosphere slowly dissipated, and with it went the snow as the temperature gradually increased. Eventually it felt like a balmy spring day. Snowdrops and then bluebells carpeted the floor of the wood, illuminated by shafts of sunlight, and birdsong filled the air. Words from an uplifting song sprang to mind: ‘The day is full of birds’. Soon he stood amidst summer in the heart of winter.
Cautiously, he sheathed his sword. A rabbit hopped out from behind a tree and approached him without fear. It sniffed his boots and then looked up at him. He felt a frisson as he stared into its eyes: an unnerving intelligence lay there. As it lazily hopped away, the wood gradually came alive: a fox slipped amongst green ferns, mice and voles, more rabbits, birds landing so close it was as if he was not there. The same gleam of consciousness lay in all their eyes.
An abiding sense of peace came over Church, and then a sense of wonder that made him feel as if he was on the brink of something profound. The sound of a child’s voice startled him and he broke into a run.
In a grotto formed by the gnarled roots of ancient trees and filled with woodland flowers sat Alice, now pink with life, her blonde hair gleaming. She was laughing in amazement, and her eyes sparkled when she saw Church.
‘Look,’ she said with delight. ‘I have a baby now.’