The Witch and the Woodcutter

This passage represents part of a larger novel, The Witch and the Woodcutter, available now. Please be aware this story contains reference to violence against women and children, and suicide.

***

Beorn pushed Godfrey to his limit. The forest thundered with the heavy drum of the draught horse’s hooves. Beorn and Morrigan rode pillion, much to Beorn’s guilt.

I’m sorry, old friend, Beorn silently said to Godfrey’s neck. I swear I’ll shower you in apples when next we have the chance.

Each day, the mountainous wall grew closer and closer; and each day the temperature dropped lower and lower, winter nipping at their heels. Every shadow made them jump; every twig snapping in the night became a squad of Holy Guardsmen closing in around them. They stuck to thin dirt tracks and animal paths as they journeyed east. Civilisation disappeared from view until the fifth day after their escape.

“What’s that?” Morrigan whispered as they rode Godfrey out of a dense crop of trees and into a grassy glade. At the centre of the clearing sat what had once been a squat little log cabin, not unlike Beorn’s own. The structure appeared long abandoned. Vines blanketed the walls, the stone chimney was collapsed and smokeless, and the shutters hung limply.

“We should look inside,” said Beorn.

“Why? The last thing we need is anyone seeing us.”

“I doubt there’s anyone around to see us.” But even so, Beorn hesitated to urge Godfrey forward. The glade held a strange still air, as though preserved from a dream. An unexpected oasis, obscenely far from civilisation. Who had lived here? Why? “We’ll camp here the night. It’ll be good to sleep with walls around us for once.”

Beorn tethered Godfrey in the remains of the barn, stripping him of his saddle and bags, before heading for the farmhouse. Beorn pushed the door open with the pommel of his axe, hinges wailing like banshees. The entryway opened onto the first and largest room. Two doors stood ajar in either far corner, leading to other smaller rooms. The air was thick with dust, cobwebs… and decay.

Morrigan gasped when she saw the first corpse. It was little more than a withered skeleton, skin clinging tightly to its frame. The remains of clothes hung in tatters, moth eaten and decomposing. What was most shocking, however, was that the corpse was pinned to the far wall by a pitchfork through its chest.

“What d’you think happened t’ him?”

“Likely the same thing that happened to her.”

Seated at a table in the room’s corner was another corpse. Her long hair was the colour of straw. Empty sockets stared out of her skull. A rust-coloured stain spread across the floorboards beneath her.

“What’s that in her hands?” Morrigan crept closer to the body. Clutched in her leathery hands was an equally leathery tome. The covers of the book were filled with uneven and rough-edged pages. Morrigan gingerly pried the book from between skeletal fingers. Pages parted in a cloud of dust, and she began to read.

“It is the first day of summer. The days are long and hot. Eadric spends them in the woods hunting. I spend them locked in my room. My flux is three weeks late. I fear what that means. I fear to tell him. Would it change the way he treats me? Would it stay his hand, or increase the fury of his fists? Would it stop him stumbling to our bed, reeking of beer? Would I be less tempting to his ravenous desires…?

“It has been months since Eadric brought me here; since my father sold me to him. For that’s what it was in truth - a sale, more than a match. Father parted the exchange richer one dairy cow, half a dozen hens, and a pouch full of grain. Eadric parted richer one fertile young bride. ‘You should feel lucky,’ Father told me before I left. ‘Eadric is a rich man. King Edward has granted him a parcel of land just south of Gaius’s Wall to settle. You will help him clear this land and reap its rewards. It is a better life than you could ever have hoped for with us.’ But all I could think of was the widower twenty years my senior who I had never before met, who I was expected to wed, bed, and produce heirs for.

“We departed Lasthome to the waving hands of our neighbours… and their whispers. We had all heard them before. ‘There goes another wife’, ‘ Will this one meet the same fate?’ ‘Will she bear him sons or die upon his fists like the last?’ Father didn’t come to see us off. I wasn’t his daughter anymore. I was Eadric’s wife…”

Morrigan paused, looking up from the book. “It’s her journal.” She flicked through the pages. “She wrote near daily.”

“Likely her only escape,” said Beorn, casting an eye over the skewered corpse on the wall. “I’ve changed my mind. I have no taste to stay here among these ghosts.”

The sky cracked and split asunder. Rain hammered the ground deafeningly.

“I don’t think we have much o’ a choice,” Morrigan observed.

***

The pair sat around a small fire in the centre of the room. The hearth was beyond use; the chimney crumbled. Rain had settled into a steady thumping atop the thatch. Beorn had done what he could to fix the shutters closed, but the room still suffered from a chilling draught.

Morrigan sat crossed-legged on the floorboards, the journal balanced atop her knees, thumbing through its pages, reading aloud.

“I can no longer hide my pregnancy. My stomach has swelled too much to escape Eadric’s notice. He appeared happy when I told him, though more-so for what it meant for the land than our family. ‘More hands to tend the farm,’ he declared. It hasn’t stopped his desire, nor has it tempered his anger. He uses his fists as freely as before, though always away from my womb now.

“I fear what life this child will have. I fear the fate of a daughter with Eadric as her father. I fear what would become of a son, whose only role model is a drunkard and batterer. But - shamefully - I fear for myself most of all. What will become of me, now that he knows I can bear his seed? How many ‘farm hands’ will he force me to produce? Is this what my life is to be? A brood mare? I wanted to be a dancer…”

Morrigan trailed off, pinching the pages between her fingers. “This ink is old. Old by the time she died. She’d been here for years. With that… man.”

Eadric’s corpse stared down at them from the wall.

“Why didn’t she leave?” asked Beorn. “If she was so miserable, so tormented, why not flee?”

Morrigan scoffed. “To where? With what supplies?”

Beorn shrugged. “I don’t know, but surely it would be better for her to take her chances than continue to endure?”

Morrigan’s eyes grew hooded, descending into memories. “In our travels, my mistress and I stitched up many a wife who’d tried t’ flee her husband. Each one told us they thought he would kill them. ‘I’d never seen him in such a rage,’ they would say.”

“They feared losing their wives.”

“They feared losing their control. Men cannae stand anything outside their control. Part o’ why they fear witches so. These are women who are isolated from the world around them. Look at this farm, as far from civilisation as you can get without stepping through the veil o’ death. Then there are the wee ‘uns t’ think of. Do these fleeing wives take their babes with them? Or leave them behind? Each choice comes with its own risks. Often the only place a mother can ensure her child’s safety is by their side, despite the risk it puts her in.” Morrigan returned her gaze to the journal.

“I have given Eadric a daughter. The whole ordeal was terrifying. He would not send for a physician, and he refused to return to Lasthome so my sisters could midwife for me. He insisted on delivering the babe himself. When I questioned if he knew what he was doing, he caught me with that look he gets before he raises his fist. ‘I’ve delivered calves before,’ he informed me, as though t’were the same. I dared not argue further.

“The pain was unending, the feeling of my insides tearing themselves apart. I tore from front to rear, and the blood was unending. But finally Eadric drew forth our perfect baby girl and placed her in my arms. When I asked if he was pleased, he grunted; ‘Two arms, two legs - all a farm hand needs.’

“The recovery has been the hardest. Eadric made an attempt at stitching me; somehow it felt more humiliating - him staring at my secret place so closely, candle held to light his work - than when he stumbles into bed, bearing down atop me. The stitches were not neat, and the bleeding has not ceased completely. Yet Eadric demands we continue the work. Fields need clearing if we are to plant crops before the season is out. So I must continue to labour, in the field as well as the birthing bed. The only joy to my day is our little Emma. I wear her strapped to my chest as we work, so I may sniff the crest of her head. Let it be worth it, for her…”

Morrigan was looking around. Beorn knew what she was looking for. “Don’t,” he told her.

“Don’t what?”

“Just don’t.” They sat in silence, the fire crackling between them. Beorn was holding a stick of dried beef, but could not bring himself to eat. It looked far too close to the gaunt, dried skin pulled across the corpses’ frames. He threw it down in a huff. “Read on.”

Morrigan flicked through the pages to the end of the journal, desperate to know how the story ended. She stopped at a page towards the end of the book. “This is the last entry. Judging from the dates, it’s eight years after she birthed the girl. The ink is… red?” She brought the book to her nose and sniffed, then cast her eyes to the red-brown stain beneath the woman’s feet. “It’s not ink.”

“In your own time.”

Morrigan took a breath.

“Eadric is dead. I killed him.

“I came inside from my chores and found him seated at the table. My journal was before him. I felt my whole body go cold in that moment. I don’t know how he found it. I’ve always kept it hidden. In the barn, under the floorboards, in the rafters, always moving it so he’d never find it. But he had; and he’d read it. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. That scared me the most.

“He asked me why I’d written such lies. Something about having the book out in the open, my secrets laid bare… it made me brave. I told him these were no lies. These were the actions of a cowardly, small, insignificant man. Too weak, too pitiful to be anything else. These were the accounts of the hell he’d put me through. And I told him I wouldn’t take it any longer. I told him I was leaving. That I was taking Emma with me. That we were fleeing to God-knows-where and he would never find us again. And that the next time I saw him would be with me on the banks of the River of Penance, and he in its icy water. I told him I would wait for him to reach up a hand, begging me for help as those icy daggers cut his sallow flesh to ribbons, and I would push his head down with my boot until the bubbles stopped…

“I waited for him to yell. I waited for him to hit me. But he simply stood. ‘You are free to leave,’ he told me. ‘But you will never see Emma again.’ He was at her door before I realised what he’d said, locking it behind him. I heard her scream, and I pounded my fists bloody, trying to open that damned door. I ran outside and grabbed the pitchfork, thinking to leverage the door off its hinges. But when I returned, the door was open… I can’t write what I saw. I can’t…

“Eadric came up behind me, foul breath in my ear. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, hands on my shoulders. ‘We can always make more.’

“I care not if I spend the rest of eternity floating down the River for what I did next. I should have done it years ago. I drove that pitchfork through his belly and skewered him to the wall. I stared into his eyes as he died and I said her name: ‘For Emma.’

“Now I sit alone at our table. The remnants of my life around me. Everything is getting darker… the lights are going out… I have run out of ink, but I have blood aplenty. It is currently pooling beneath me, from the wounds I have cut upon mine wrists. Soon I will be with you, Emma. Soon.. mummy is coming…”

The words died on Morrigan’s lips. With tender grace, she closed the journal, fingers tracing the cracks in the leather. Beorn stood, walking to the door in the far corner of the room. It creaked open under his palm. A simple room. A wooden wardrobe in the corner, a shallow basin for washing, a lone straw mattress, and upon it…

Slowly, Beorn shut the door and returned to the fire.

“Why?” he swore through gritted teeth. “Why fathers? Why must they all be so…”

“Monstrous?” Morrigan offered. She made no attempt to ask about the room’s contents.

Beorn gave a slow nod. “Do they not realise what they have to lose? How grateful they should be?”

Beorn could not take his eyes off the fire. The heat was making them water. He told himself it was the heat. Nothing else.

The shuffle of skirts signalled Morrigan’s move to Beorn’s side. A tender hand came to rest atop his own, curled tightly into a fist he hadn’t realised he’d been making. “I know it’s no consolation, Beorn. But ye daughter… she was spared the pain o’ growing t’ womanhood in this accursed world.”

“I could have protected her.” He paused. “I should have… Why is the world like this?”

“Some men wish t’ see all women treated so brutishly. Whether they be kin or witch.”

“I was a soldier,” Beorn stammered. “I saw death. I saw violence. But that was war. This… all of this… it’s just so… senseless.” Was he referring to the dead family in this farmhouse? The gibbets and crucifixes along the roadside? The women executed in the town square? The corpses hanging from the message tree?

“Violence is violence,” Morrigan muttered. “It never makes any sense.”

They fell asleep to the thunderous pummel of rain. Beorn’s sleep was as tormented as ever, phantom pains torturing his soul. Grief, regret, sorrow, shame; each taking equal turns. Save her, Beorn. He woke in the early hours of the morning. The rain had ebbed to a light sprinkle. Morrigan slept soundly on the other side of the cold fire. Careful to not wake her, Beorn set to work.

Morrigan awoke several hours later, sunlight dispelling the remaining storm clouds and cutting through the broken shutters. She found Beorn outside, shovelling the remaining soil on to the two graves. “You didnae need t’ do that,” she told him.

“No, I did.” Beorn buried the blade of the shovel in the earth and turned back to the farmhouse. “Come. The day has begun, and we still have a long way to go.”

Morrigan nodded. As they collected their belongings inside, Morrigan slid the leather-bound journal into her satchel.

“You’re taking that?” Beorn asked.

“Aye. This is her story; she deserves t’ see it endures. Perhaps I’ll use the blackthorn ink I’ve brewed t’ make some copies. People deserve to have their stories told.”

They set off atop Godfrey’s back, strutting past the two fresh graves for mother and daughter. They turned east and continued on their journey, leaving the farmhouse behind, Eadric’s corpse still nailed to the wall.