The Blue Eyed Witch Read online

  “It is difficult to – explain,” Idylla said. “Perhaps I am in fact a – witch – at any rate I have a strong and inescapable – feeling of – evil round me!”

  The Marquis bent forward in his chair, his arms on his knees.

  “Explain to me exactly what you mean by that.”

  “It is difficult to put into words,” Idylla answered, “but it is there. There is evil approaching me – reaching out – towards me. It is dark – horrible and I feel it is – impossible for me to – escape.”

  “When do you feel this?”

  “Mostly at night and in the daytime if I am – alone.”

  “Do you think a cross would keep it away from you?”

  “Someone once told me so – but I cannot remember who it was. I have been trying – trying desperately hard to recall what was said – but all I know is that I-I – must have a – cross.”

  She paused and then said, “I remember my prayers – I remember all of them and I say them when the – evil is – there and sometimes it – helps.”

  “Not always?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Nearly always – and if I pray hard enough. But when I am asleep it is difficult – then I can feel it coming nearer!”

  There was a tremor in her voice and he knew she was really frightened.

  He put out his hand and laid it on hers.

  “I will find you a cross,” he promised, “but I cannot help thinking that this is just imagination.”

  “I thought – that too.”

  “You are sensible enough to realise that after having received a blow on the head causing a tremendous shock to the system, it is easy, being weak and listless, to be mentally depressed as well.”

  “I have told myself that over and over again,” Idylla said, “but the – evil is still there – almost as if it was trying to take – possession of – me.”

  Two weeks ago, the Marquis thought, he would have laughed such a suggestion to scorn. But since he had come to The Castle and had heard so much about magic and witchcraft, he could not help feeling that the whole thing could not be shrugged off merely as the superstitions of ignorant peasants.

  He had found some books in the library, as he had expected to do, which dealt with the subject.

  Among them he read the contention of Sir William Blackstone, Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford University in the Eighteenth Century.

  “To deny the possibility, nay actual existence of witchcraft, is flatly to contradict the revealed word of God and various passages both of the Old and New Testaments.”

  Sir William then went on to quote from a number of passages in the Bible, starting from Exodus, where it said,

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  From another book the Marquis learnt that in 1563 Queen Elizabeth had passed an Act against enchantments and witchcrafts, which began by saying,

  “If any person or persons after the said first day of June shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery – ”

  Until the thirteenth century, witchcraft was regarded as a Christian heresy and the Canon Episcopal was the first to present this view in writing,

  “Some wicked women, reverting to Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they can ride at night with Diana on certain beasts.”

  Again, Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, wrote in 1643,

  “For my part, I have even believed and do know that there are witches.”

  It was obvious, the Marquis deduced, that a belief in witchcraft had been common in the days of Christ and the violence with which the Catholic Church and, after the Reformation, the Protestants, persecuted witches and sorcerers was to admit that such a heresy existed.

  How, he asked himself now, could it be possible that this young girl, apart from the terrible ordeal she had gone through of which thankfully she had no memory, should be aware of evil if she had never come in contact with it before?

  Because he did not speak, Idylla looked up at him fearfully.

  “I said you would – think me – foolish,” she sighed.

  “I think nothing of the sort!” the Marquis replied. “I was merely considering what this feeling could be and what caused it.”

  “I don’t feel it now because – you are here,” Idylla said, “and never when Nanny is with me. It is when I am – alone.”

  “Would you like to have someone to sleep in your room?” the Marquis asked. “I know Nanny would agree if I suggest a bed should be put up for her beside yours.”

  “No, no!” Idylla said quickly. “All I want is a cross. I know that will keep me safe.”

  “How do you know that?” the Marquis enquired.

  He knew that to invoke the name of God and to confront the Devil with the symbol of the cross was, according to the books on magic, to confound him, but he was interested to know how Idylla was aware of it.

  “I think I must always have known,” she answered slowly, “that good can overcome evil and those who believe in God can remain unharmed by the Devil. It is just that I have never had to apply such beliefs to – myself until – now.”

  “But those beliefs were there? Something taught you the truth?” the Marquis persisted.

  “Someone must have,” she agreed, looking a little bewildered. “But – who was – it?”

  “Can you remember your mother?”

  “I am not – sure.”

  “Your father?”

  She shook her head decisively.

  “You will remember in time,” the Marquis said, his fingers tightening over hers. “Let it come naturally. I will bring you a cross and you must go on saying your prayers.”

  “I always say them. I thank God too that you saved me. If you had not come, I would have – died in the water.”

  “Don’t think about it,” the Marquis urged.

  “Perhaps it is their – hatred I still feel,” Idylla said as if she was speaking to herself.

  She looked down at her arms as she spoke – the scratches were healing, but the bruises that had been black and blue were now pale orange and yellow. They were still vivid against the whiteness of her skin.

  “I am grateful – very grateful,” she said. “And I have no right to – complain. Those people might have – broken my legs or my arms. They might have – blinded me!”

  “I told you not to think of such things,” the Marquis said with a sharp note in his voice.

  He paused and then said, “I am going to prescribe a remedy of my own to sweep away the depression which I am sure comes merely from loneliness.”

  “What is – that?” Idylla asked.

  “I am inviting you to dine with me tonight,” the Marquis said. “I am sure Nanny will not allow you to go downstairs, so we shall have dinner in the boudoir which opens off your bedroom. Have you seen it yet?”

  “I peeped inside,” Idylla confessed. “It is a very lovely room!”

  “Then that is where we will dine and perhaps you will wear one of the pretty gowns that came from London.”

  “Some more arrived this morning and I have not yet thanked you for them. How could I be so remiss?”

  She looked so conscience-stricken that the Marquis smiled. “You may thank me by looking particularly pretty tonight,” he said. “Like you, I am finding it rather lonely at The Castle, at least at meal times, so it will be a treat for both of us.”

  “Am I keeping you – here when you should be in London with your – friends?” Idylla asked in a low voice.

  “You are one of the reasons for my staying,” the Marquis agreed. “But I assure you it is no hardship. I am trying to solve a mystery – your mystery, Idylla, and I am finding it extremely intriguing.”

  *

  He thought the same when later in the afternoon he drew the stallion he was riding to a standstill beside the druid stones.

  Standing well above the river on a piece of high ground, they were, the Marquis thoug
ht, quite obviously a landmark and he was in fact convinced in his own mind that they had no religious significance of any sort.

  It was, however, difficult to imagine how they got there.

  Even if they had been brought up the Blackwater River by boat, it would have required an army of men to drag them over the sand and up the crumbling side of the riverbank to the ground above it.

  Granted the river might have altered its course and it would have been easier at high tide, but even so the stones were enormous and of a type of granite the Marquis did not recognise.

  There were only three of them, which again made him think they were unlikely to have been used by the druids.

  Two of them stood over six feet high and the one between them was horizontal, which made the local inhabitants sure it had been used as an altar.

  There were still bloodstains on the side of this stone, which the Marquis knew had come from the cock that had been left on Idylla’s unconscious body.

  ‘Who could have put her there?’ he asked himself again, ‘and why, having murdered her, as he thought, should have bothered to kill a cock and place it on her?”

  There seemed to be no possible answers to his questions.

  He was staring at the stones with such concentration that he started when he heard a voice beside him say, “Excuse me, my Lord.”

  He looked down and saw a middle-aged man whose face was definitely familiar.

  He was dressed roughly, but not in the smock of a farm labourer. His coat had the deep side-pockets of those usually worn by gamekeepers.

  “Pulsey!” the Marquis exclaimed. “I thought I recognised you!”

  “That’s right, my Lord. I used to take you and Mr. John shootin’ in the old days when you was livin’ up at The Castle.”

  “You heard I was back?” the Marquis asked. “Everyone knows that, my Lord, and I ’opes for a chance of a word with your Lordship.”

  “What can I do for you, Pulsey?”

  “I wondered if there be any sort of job at The Castle, my Lord. I’d do anythin’. I’m not proud.”

  “You are no longer employed by Sir Caspar?” “No, my Lord! He sacked me three years ago.” “And why was that?”

  “’Twas after ’is accident, my Lord. ’E’d no use for a gamekeeper when that ’ad ’appened.”

  “I had not heard of any accident,” the Marquis queried.

  “Well, ’twere not exactly an accident, my Lord, but Sir Caspar lost the first finger of his right ’and. It were amputated up to the third joint.”

  “Why was that?” the Marquis enquired.

  “He fell off ’is ’orse onto a bit of broken glass. He thought ’twas only a cut, but some poison got into it and the doctors in Chelmsford said that amputation was the only way to save ’is arm.”

  “That was unfortunate.”

  “Of course, my Lord, there be them who said it be witchcraft!”

  “Witchcraft?” the Marquis repeated sharply. “How was that?”

  “I shouldn’t be repeatin’ local gossip, my Lord.” “I am interested. Tell me what was said.”

  The Marquis had a feeling that indirectly Pulsey was warning him as he said, “Sir Caspar were interested, as you might put it, my Lord, in a girl livin’ in Latchington who’d come from the Witch Country.”

  The Marquis could not help thinking that every conversation he held seemed to come back by some way or another to witchcraft.

  “Go on!”

  “’Er were a decent girl, although there be stories about her aunt she be stayin’ with and some people sayin’ ’er be a witch.”

  “What happened?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Mr. Caspar, for Sir Harold was alive in those days, went after ’er, and ’er aunt turned ’im out of the ’ouse. ‘Lay one finger on my niece,’ the neighbours heard her say, ‘and your arm’ll wither away and you’ll have no more use in it!’ Very ferocious ’er were, by all accounts.”

  “And it was shortly after this that Sir Caspar lost his finger?” the Marquis asked.

  “A week later, my Lord! The people in these parts took it as a warnin’ and from all accounts Mr. Caspar took it as a warnin’ as well!”

  “You mean he did not go near the girl again?”

  “No, my Lord. But he took against witches, so to speak. Encouraged the persecution of ’em and so ’tis said, and reported some of the old women round ’ere to the Magistrates so that they were taken to Chelmsford for investigation.”

  The Marquis was listening intently.

  A new idea had come into his mind, which had not been there before.

  He was silent and after a moment Pulsey said awkwardly, “I ’opes I did no wrong in a-tellin’ your Lordship these things. You lived round ’ere as a boy and you knows how they talks in villages.”

  “I do indeed,” the Marquis said slowly. “Come up to The Castle tomorrow, Pulsey. I will speak to Mr. Clarke and see if we can find you something to do.”

  The man’s eyes seemed to light up.

  “If you’d do that, my Lord, it’d be a real kindness.”

  “I don’t forget old friends, Pulsey. And you gave Mr. John and me some grand days in the past.”

  “Aye, that’s true, my Lord. Do you remember the time when you brought down two teal with one shot?”

  “I do indeed!” the Marquis laughed.

  They reminisced for a little while as sportsmen always will, each trying to cap the other’s memory.

  *

  When the Marquis rode back to The Castle, it seemed to him that a new line of thought was opening up in front of him and it led more and more directly to Caspar Trydell!

  He was, however, determined first that Idylla’s dinner party should be a success.

  He ordered the room to be decorated with flowers and chose the menu with care.

  He took the same trouble over his clothes that he would have done had he been dining at Carlton House.

  It was difficult to think that any man could look more magnificent than the Marquis in a deep blue satin coat and a white-frilled cravat that had been starched to exactly the right stiffness.

  He wore no jewellery, which was Beau Brummel’s most inexorable dictum for a gentleman, but when he entered the sitting room which had been his grandmother’s boudoir, he carried in his hand a small velvet-covered jewel-box.

  Idylla was already waiting for him, sitting on a chaise longue, her feet covered with a satin rug.

  “She may dine with you, my Lord,” Nanny had said, “but she will rest at the same time or I’ll not be responsible for her any longer. It’s too soon for her to be getting up and doing things, when her memory’s as lost as Mrs. Darwin’s husband who ran off to sea twenty years ago and has never been heard of since!”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “It will do your patient no harm to eat with me rather than alone in bed. I will not keep her up late, that I promise you.”

  He thought that Nanny was unconvinced and added in the joking tone that she always found irresistible, “Come on, Nanny! Don’t be a spoilsport! You were young yourself once and you know as well as I do that Miss Idylla with her looks should be the toast of St. James’s rather than having nothing more intoxicating than your herbal potions!”

  “They’re much better for her and would be for you too, my Lord, than those wines that you and His Royal Highness imbibe far too freely!”

  “What do you know about it, Nanny?” the Marquis enquired. “Unless of course you fly off on your broomstick to listen down the chimney to our carousing or turn yourself into a fly upon the wall!”

  “Get along with you, your Lordship!” Nanny said. “If you talk like that, you’ll have the rest of the household refusing to obey my orders. It’s bad enough now to have the young ones running away when they see me coming!”

  “Shall I tell them firmly and categorically once and for all that you are a witch?” the Marquis teased.

  “There’s no such things as witches!” Nanny said. “And as fo
r that poor child, she’s more of an angel than a witch and that’s the truth!”

  There was no doubt that Idylla did look very lovely wearing a gown that was made of gauze embroidered with silver.

  It shimmered with every movement and the Marquis thought that she might have been dressed in moonlight.

  As a concession to the significance of the occasion, Nanny had allowed her to arrange her hair but only at the back of her head and not on top of it.

  A coil, however, became her and made her face seem smaller and more spiritual than when framed by the long dark tresses.

  Her blue eyes seemed to the Marquis the colour of the Madonna’s robe and they were sparkling with excitement as he came across the room to her.

  “You do look magnificent!” she said spontaneously as he reached her side. “Do you dress like that when you go to Carlton House?”

  “At times I add a few decorations,” the Marquis replied. “Then I sparkle even more than you will when you wear what I have brought you.”

  He put the jewel-box into her hand. She took it from him and then looked up to ask, “What is it?”

  “It is what you asked me for,” the Marquis answered, “a cross.”

  She opened the jewel case and gave a little exclamation of surprise.

  Among his grandmother’s jewellery, some of which had been left in The Castle after she died, the Marquis had found a cross.

  It was set with large diamonds and could be worn as a pendant with a chain which was interspersed with small pearls.

  It was a beautiful piece of jewellery and, as he had expected, Idylla stared at it spellbound before she said in a low voice, “I cannot take – this from you! It is too – grand and far too – valuable!”

  “It is a cross, Idylla, and the only one I can find at the moment. It belonged to my grandmother and I feel sure that she would like you to wear it.”

  Idylla hesitated for a moment and then she said, “May I have it as a – loan? Then when I leave – here I can give it back to you.”

  “Shall we agree you will wear it until it is no longer necessary?” the Marquis asked. “Let me put it on for you.”

  He sat down on the edge of the chaise longue on which she was sitting and took the cross and chain from the velvet box. Undoing the clasp, he held the necklace in both his hands so that he could encircle her neck.