Aria Remains

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William arrived back in the village invigorated, now certain that the fates of all who lived there, who had come to believe in Easthope and make it their home, would be secured. Although he had not yet finalised in his mind the plan for ensuring this protection, the way he would harness the old woman and her scurrilous schemes, he had decided upon elements of it. He knew that Chatwyn, a traveling vendor who dealt primarily in the distribution of books and other printed matter, was due to make his next monthly visit in the following two or three days, and William would ask him then to source any literature he could find that might help him further understand witchcraft, and what he might do to curtail such sorcery. He had previously heard talk of ‘The Hammer of Witches’, a German treatise published eighty years earlier and only recently translated by a poor Russian farmer who found he had little to do after his brothers had been lost to a circus without a ringmaster and so, learning English with previously unrecognised capabilities, he embarked upon a career of adaptation and publication. This work was, as William understood it, a handbook for dealing with occultists, combating and truncating their powers. He hoped he would find direction within it, and anything else Chatwyn might find for him.

He would also, he decided, walking through the fields as the morning developed into a warm, cloudy day, starlings and sparrows accompanying him with their chatter and playfulness as he went, enlist the help of one or two others so they could apply protective marks to as many places as they could find. It would have to be done quietly, as surreptitiously as possible so as to not unsettle or frighten the other villagers and, having already idly discussed such matters with other travellers and merchants over the years, William did have an idea of what needed to be done. Each home, each building and structure would be marked and, to answer the questions that would undoubtedly arise, he would call a meeting and tell everyone that it was merely a precaution and that there was nothing afoot that should be of any concern. It was simply that, he would say, there had been news of a French party who had encountered what they had thought to be sorceresses as they attempted to navigate previously unchartered swampland in southern Mexico and had found, to their great reassurance, that placing such marks upon their vessels brought them not only safe passage but also good fortune of a measure and variety they had not hitherto experienced.

In addition he had been considering if there was a way to construct some manner of trap, something they might build that would, should it be necessary, somehow imprison the old woman if she were to enter the village. Despite having no real idea what materials he might need, nor how he might go about its creation, he was of the mind that using similar protective symbols, housed within some form of cage or prison, might possibly constrain her. That would be somewhat more difficult to explain to everyone, would seem to imply that there was more than just a very distant and unlikely chance of something evil approaching but, he knew, it was something that needed to be done. What they would do with her afterwards, should she find herself incarcerated, he did not know, hoping Chatwyn would be able to provide a solution.

Such was the flood of thoughts and ideas rushing through his mind, William had almost forgotten the cross words he had shared with Bridgette the day before. As he came close to his house he saw her bidding farewell to Elinor Avery. Becoming aware of his approach she looked over to him, her expression tightening as he reached the boundary.

‘I am aware,’ William said, wanting to speak before she, ‘of the low esteem in which thou holdest me, that I have been nothing more than a doddypoll, a dulbert, but I beseech thee to please hear what it is I must say before thee sees me away once more.’

William was sure she stifled a smile, that her eyes had softened, and he hoped she had reconsidered her thoughts, that perhaps she could understand, could envision what he had done from his point of view. He had, after all, only been trying to do something good, something worthy.

‘Go on,’ she said, taking a step towards him.

‘I know I hath acted without due caution, that I galloped towards my ideas without consideration of their consequence but, spending the night just passed attempting to reach a solution, I hath now garnered enough of a scheme that, I believe, will prove an answer to the problems we may, in due course, be forced to confront.’

‘And wouldst thee,’ Bridgette said, frowning, ‘surely and truthfully be able to vow we shall all prevail within the arms of safety, that no harm shall come to our daughter?’

‘I swear, with all I hath within this feeble body, within this clodpate of a brain and, yet, lion of a heart, that never wouldst I allow any harm to come to our beautiful girl.’

Bridgette looked at him closely for a few seconds and then, at last, did unfurl a smile. She came to William and wrapped an arm around his back, resting her head upon his shoulder.

‘I hate it so when discord cometh betwixt thee and I,’ she said, ‘and shall never become accustomed to spending my nights alone, without thee.’

‘I be very much of the same mind,’ William agreed, putting his arm around her. ‘All shall be well, my dear. Myself and a few others shall put into place a number of protections, as a precaution only, for I doubt we shall be troubled any longer by the haggard hellrune from yonder.’

And so, later that evening, having met with Nicholas Froste, the stone mason, and two of his other most trusted friends, William led them around the village, from house to house, barn to workshop, armed with knives and tapers.

‘It be the five-pointed star,’ William reminded them as they set about their work, ‘that offers the greatest protective powers. As thee knowest well, the demon shall be confused by such an endless line, shall forever be trapped, spinning in its search to find out where the line doth lead.’

‘And the chequerboard,’ Froste said, ‘and the patterns of mesh, the pelta and the circle, all may be inscribed upon the wooden frames of each home, at the windows and the doorways.’

‘We must protect each portal,’ William continued, beginning to carve his first pentangle. ’No evil spirit shall find ingress upon any draught, through any open door.’

The men worked for several hours, leaving their marks, warding against malignancy. For a time, deciding they should rest their arms from their toil with the knives, they used their tapers to burn tear-shaped marks onto the timber.

‘This, too,’ William told them, ‘shall ensure the safety of all.’

They left the largest building until last. Each taking a wall inside the barn, where they had previously sheltered on the night of the Great Storm and had come to consider it a significant place of good fortune and fortification, they carved and burned every piece of exposed wood they could manage until they felt ready to declare that they had done more than enough to keep the devil at bay.

The following night William oversaw the construction of his witch trap, enlisting James Thorne, the woodworker, to fasten the wooden bars and slats together, while Cordell brought across the chains and padlock he had been forging for the preceding two days. As they worked, William and Cordell assigned a small area some fifty feet from the barn, clearing the land and marking it with protections and then, when the trap was complete, they placed it upon the consecrated land and attached it into the earth with solid iron spikes.

‘Thou thinks that shall do it?’ Cordell asked, as the four men stood back to view their creation. ’Whatever it may be?’

‘I think,’ William replied, ‘that if we were to suffer visitation from any creature we may not wish to be visited by, then this should be good enough to hold it.’

‘And how shall we get such a creature into it?’ Froste asked.

‘I shall speak with Chatwyn, the book vendor,’ William said, ‘and soon shall have all the answers we shall require.’

Satisfied with William’s explanation and the work they had done, the men bade him goodnight, hoping to manage at least a few hours’ sleep before the sun rose again. William stretched, looked once more at the structure, then began making his way through the village. As he drew close to home he saw what he immediately knew to be the candescent outline of Travet, returned as he promised he would, standing a few yards from the house.

‘Travet,’ William said in greeting, sounding weary.

‘William,’ came the figure’s whispered, scratched reply. ‘I see thou hast been busy.’

William looked behind him, in the direction of the barn.

‘Although I fear it may not be quite enough,’ Travet went on, ‘’tis good to know thou hast been doing all thee can.’

‘It may not be enough?’

‘Not all things canst be caught, not all canst be tamed.’ Travet paused, thoughtful, then said, ’Thou hast done well with thy markings. ’Tis just the pen, I fear, may not suffice should the time come for its requirement. But then, it shall not be put to work for many years yet.’

William wanted to know how Travet could be sure but, before he could speak, the spirit raised a hand. It looked as though his light was already starting to dim, just as it had the night before.

‘I cannot, yet, force myself to stay for long,’ Travet explained, ‘although I hope, in time, my longevity and stamina shall improve. Thou must knowest, whilst I be able to tell thee, that the immortal shall come, but in a different guise, with a divergent agenda. There shall be trickery, there shall be forgery and, whilst thou shall be thrust into a most deep despair for a time, trust that thou shall prevail, and that it shall be to a good end when the closing chapters are revealed. Thou must know that even the coldest, most frostbitten heart can, should circumstance align unerringly, be warmed.’

William, frowning, told him he did not understand, that he wanted Travet to be more explicit.

‘It is,’ he replied, ‘the best I can offer thee for now. Although what is to come appears clear to me, we are forbidden, we are impeded from passing too much to those who remain. If all were to be seen before it be due to be seen there would be chaos, there would be devastation. Time must give the sense that it be passing, it be flowing, even if the end is already written and is already in occurrence. We, none of us, must interfere. Just be aware, just be at ease in knowing that what seems to be the end is, indeed, just a step along the pathway towards another beginning.’

Much more abruptly than the night before, as though he had depleted too much of his energy too quickly, Travet vanished instantly into the night. William blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked all around and then stood for several minutes, staring at the space Travet had occupied, trying to decipher what he had been trying to say. What trickery did he speak of? What despair would he face? What cold heart would be warmed?

His head starting to throb, not only from the lack of sleep he had encountered throughout the foregoing nights but, now, from his attempts to understand what Travet had told him, it was all William could do to enter the house, quietly ascend the wooden stairs and slip into bed without disturbing neither Bridgette nor their daughter.

The following weeks passed peacefully. William called his meeting and explained to everyone that the markings they had found around their windows and doors, and the strange structure at the edge of the village, were nothing more than precautions, just in case they were ever needed, that such symbols had served the French swamp men well. There was no need for any concern, he told them. No need for them to worry about something that had not happened and, in all likelihood, wouldn’t ever happen. ‘We have already been through more than enough,’ he had said, ‘and there are no signs whatever of any further disruption.’

Content with his explanation the villagers continued with their lives and, for the next eight years, they enjoyed a carefree time. Easthope delighted in six weddings and eleven more births, their days untroubled, their nights restful. There was no hint that the old witch maintained any interest in them; it was as though they were returned to those early years, when their lives could not have been more idyllic.

As summer began to fade, the air developing more of a chill, the light subtly changing its hue and the leaves drying and becoming glorious shades of orange and red, there was a brief but unpleasant wave of illness that worked its way through the village. People developed rasping coughs, their heads and lungs became thick and painful with mucus, their bodies ached and appetites waned. Although it was all over within a week, everyone needed at least two days complete rest in order to help with their recovery and, for a short time, William did allow himself to worry that it might be the work of the old woman, that it was the manifestation of a curse with which she was tormenting them. But, since the disorder passed without loss nor lingering, he assumed it had been nothing nefarious, nothing preternatural, and his mind settled once more.

It would be on the last day of September of that year that he was to experience real pain.

Always a hectic time, the majority of the villagers had been in the fields since dawn, busy with the last of the harvest, some tying the wheat into sheaves before taking it to the barns for drying while others were winnowing, separating the grain from the chaff. As usual they curtailed their exertions for the midday meal, sitting on the benches outside the Traveller’s Tavern, the miller Richard Penhallick providing them with a delicious selection of his freshly baked breads.

’So sweet a smell hath been tempting us as it came across the fields,’ William told him, smiling and shaking his hand, ‘that for a time I almost threw down my tools and came straight to thee, such was my desire for thy scrumptious creations.’

‘It hath been a good year, I think,’ Penhallick said, handing him a considerable chunk of bread. ‘Good enough that we shall be well-stocked through the entire winter.’

As William prepared to take his first bite, his stomach growling, mouth watering, he was disturbed by the shrieking voice of his wife as she ran towards him. Everyone else, crowding onto the benches or sitting on the grass, stopped what they were doing, ceased their conversation and looked over to the commotion. Even though not one of them noticed, not one was aware, there had come a vast and fateful shimmer that reached through the galaxy, through the entirety of the universe, as the great sheet, the transcendent membrane that contained all time and all existence was shaken and ruffled, stretched flat and then folded into itself.

‘What’s wrong?’ William asked, dropping his bread as he prepared to catch her in his arms.

‘She’s gone,’ Bridgette cried, collapsing into him.

‘What doth thee mean? Gone where?’

‘I was turned just for a moment, placing linens onto the table and, when I looked again, I found her disappeared. It is as though someone hath been and taken her away, since nothing more be disturbed.’

William thought for a few moments, then turned to the rest of the villagers, now watching him in concerned silence.

‘Pray, join me,’ he said, ‘and let us spread apart and search for our child.’

Immediately they cleared the area, scattering in different directions, calling out for her. As William and Bridgette headed north, towards the open fields that would, should they continue for several hours more, eventually lead to the old woman’s hut, he did allow himself to wonder whether she might be involved. His mouth became dry at the notion, his entire body stiffening with unease, his mind struggling to focus. No, he told himself, looking behind every tree, every bush, every fencepost, she has wandered away, has taken herself off to explore and cannot have gone too far. After all, what business would the old crone have with a young, innocent girl?

‘We shall find her,’ he said repeatedly to Bridgette. ’She cannot be too far away.’

In the deserted village, the area as peaceful now as it had been for the many thousands of years it lingered at the edge of things, absent and undiscovered, the child who had been older but was now returned to springtime laughed happily.

‘My name be Alice,’ the pretty young woman who sat with her on the grass was saying. ‘And I be very, very old.’

‘Thee looketh not old. Thee be the same as mama.’

‘This be just for thee,’ Alice told her. ‘I look this way for thee.’

‘Where be mama? Daddy?’

‘They shall return soon,’ Alice told her, her voice soft. ‘They hath interests to pursue and so, for now, it be but thee and me. I just wanted to see thee for a while.’

‘Why?’

Alice thought about her answer for a time.

‘I thought it would be nice for us to meet,’ she said. ‘I be not entirely certain why it should be so, but thou remindeth me of someone I knew a very long time ago.’

‘A friend?’ the girl asked, now busy crumbling the piece of bread discarded by her father and scattering it in the direction of a group of bluethroats that had gathered amongst the mimosa trees.

‘I must admit I never did enjoy the blessing of friendship,’ Alice said, watching the girl with a sad smile. ‘No, thou remindeth me, in some ways, of myself, a long time hence.’

‘How long?’

‘Oh, many, many years,’ Alice said.

’Be thee as old as the sea?’

Alice chuckled. She could not recall the last time she had been happy like this, the last time she had experienced such lightness to her spirit.

‘No, my dear, not quite so old as the sea. But I once did be much like thee. A young girl, free and unencumbered.’

‘Was there something that happened?’ the girl asked, now looking up at Alice. ‘Something that caused thee hurt?’

Alice didn’t speak for several moments, instead watching the birds as they left the trees to begin their investigations of the bread on the grass, unsure at first but then growing in confidence as they followed one another, gauging their security.

‘Tell me,’ she began, ‘doth thee hold a belief in magic?’

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

‘I did not believe, when I be a girl such as thee,’ Alice said. ‘But then a dreadful thing happened, an awful thing. My mother became embroiled in an argument, a disagreement, with a very bad old woman, a woman who, I believe, loved to make other people feel as bad as she. The argument they shared became something of a personal grudge, and my mother and the woman fell into a great dislike for one another.’

‘About what was the argument?’ the young girl asked, still watching her closely.

‘Doth thee know, I cannot even recall it now,’ Alice said thoughtfully, sighing, her eyes still trained upon the bluethroats, yet now she was seeing things that had happened far in the past. ‘I dare say it be something trivial, something unimportant. But the bad old woman would not allow it to pass and so, when it became clear there would be no resolution, she cast upon my poor mother a curse, a great affliction and, not content even then, she cast the same misery upon me.’

‘That be not fair,’ the girl said, her eyes wide in wonder as though she were sitting upon William’s knee, listening to one of his stories about how the village came into being.

’No,’ Alice said sadly, shaking her head slowly. ’Not fair indeed. But that be the doing of it, that be the truth. And ever since that day, that very hour, I hath been unable to think a good thought, hath been unable to perform a good deed. All and everything I feel since then hath come to be shrouded in anger and upset, so deep and heavy doth it weigh upon me that all I can do, whether it be something I wish nor other, is to be as bad and cruel to everyone I meet as that old woman was to my dear mother. And shall I tell thee a secret?’

The girl nodded heartily.

‘Sometime it be, when I be alone, so alone, away in my awful little hut, the hut of my mother that I hath never been permitted to replace, sometimes I wish more than all the stars in the sky above that I be that young girl again, that I might be a good and decent person, that I might be worthy of having a friend.’

‘And what of thy poor mama?’

Alice closed her eyes and said, ’She be buried beyond that old hut. Took herself, she did, once I became of age. She could stand it no longer, could not bear to witness my decay, my corruption.′

‘That is a sad story,’ the young girl said. ‘But I shall be thy friend. Thou hast been very nice to me.’

Alice sighed again, her eyes now upon the child.

‘I thank thee for saying such,’ she sad quietly. ‘I know not why it should be, but somehow thou hast brought out of me the person I did once be, the person I now miss so much, that I doth recall with an ever-brightening clarity yet cannot resurrect. It hath always been so, ever since thy birth. Close, I hath been, watching over thee. Thou hast made a change in me, a change I wish to remain, if only there might be something to facilitate such a reconstruction.’

At that moment they heard the villagers returning, their loud and frightened conversations, their continuing calls for the girl. Alice bent forward and whispered to her that she should go to find more bread for the birds and that, whatever anyone asked, she should never tell a soul about their time together. The girl nodded solemnly, then said, ‘Wouldst thou come and see me again one day?’

‘One day,’ Alice promised, just before she disappeared, ‘I shall see thee again, although it might be that, by then, thee hath no memory of this time we have shared, might not call to mind my appearance as thou sees it now. And just remember, thou sweet and virtuous child, not a soul.’

The vast shimmer came again and, unnoticed as it was to all, the happy villagers ate and drank and enjoyed their lunch. William savoured the taste of Penhallick’s mesomorphic bread, smiling across to his daughter who was talking and laughing with her friends.