Page 24 of The Snow Witch

He did not let her finish. ‘If you do not leave here now, we will make you leave,’ he threatened. ‘Snow Witch.’ He spat the words out, making it sound like a curse.

His companions must have heard him, because within moments, there was a rumble of unrest and a group of men began to leave the pews, standing up and surrounding Meg where she sat. She shrank back, her fingernails digging into the wood.

‘Please – let me be. I shall go…’

‘You damn well will,’ growled one of the men. He grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the pew. Meggie gasped, shaking her arm, trying to free herself, but then another man took her other arm, and between the pair of them, they began to manhandle her out of the building.

She opened her mouth to speak, to protest, to plead her innocence, and one of them tried to clamp his hand over her mouth.

‘You will not curse me,’ he snarled. ‘I heard how you tried to hex those women when you killed Alice— Ouch, you bitch!’ he yelled as she bit him. ‘You have assaulted me in a church!’ Angrily, he threw a punch at her, cracking her right across the cheekbone, which made her see stars, while the other man pinned her arms against her side, digging into her flesh with his fingers as they forced her to the door.

By now the whole congregation had turned to see what the commotion was. Meggie was aware of the priest shouting at her, saying something about Pagan ungodly wretches darkening His door, and Cecily was wailing, being comforted by the women beside her, clearly still blaming Meg for Alice’s death.

Two more men pushed and shoved Meggie outside, slamming the heavy wooden door on her as they threw her to the ground and left her crying and shaking in the snow. Her ankle had twisted painfully beneath her and she had landed heavily on her side, pain shooting up her body and jarring her hip, making her gasp with pain and clutch her stomach, praying desperately that the babe would stay safe. She used the gravestones and the walls to lean on for support as she tried to get to her feet, but then she had to try to get home across the empty fields. It took all of her strength and willpower to stand up.

Meggie was a small woman, slender in build; it did not need four men to force her out of the church. Yet the men had seemed to enjoy it; to enjoy touching her and hurting her and abusing her.

She could smell them on her skin for hours; feel their fingers gripping into her flesh and taste the hand that had covered her mouth.

And there was Ellen, three rows from the front, piously putting her head down and clasping her hands together in prayer as she, Meggie, looked helplessly around, her muffled screams begging for someone to stop the thugs. Ellen was presumably thanking God it wasn’t her body at the front of the church, lying in the simple pine coffin by the altar.

Once outside the stone boundary wall of the church, Meggie’s ankle gave way again, and she slid to the ground howling uncontrollably, cradling her belly and praying again for the child within her. She realised again, through her own pain, that it wasn’t one life that had been taken with Alice’s death; it was two.

And Charles Milburn was living in blissful denial of this. He knew Alice was dead, of course he did. But Meggie was certain he didn’t care one way or another.

16

NOW

It was almost as if they’d swapped places. While Violet had decided to go to Newbrough, Ollie had decided to go to Coventina’s Well.

He had lain awake most of the night thinking about the cottage at Newbrough and the atmosphere that hung there. The air was heavy; there was no other way to describe it. In fact, every time he closed his eyes, he relived the feeling.

Ollie was a practical Yorkshireman. He had a sensible job in IT and worked with logic and formulae. And spreadsheets. He was good with a spreadsheet. He was not imaginative in the slightest, so why even he felt sensitive to that place was beyond him.

He ran through the conversation with Violet again, and remembered what she had told him about the Well. He hadn’t been down there. As far as he was aware, Coventina’s Well was just some sort of giant bog-puddle, and he hadn’t taken much notice of it, because it seemed to bear no relation to his family history.

But the more he thought about it, the more he felt the need to go there. Surely, it couldn’t be as bad as that cottage, could it? And if he went – bearing in mind not to get too close to it, as he didn’t think someone would come to his rescue as fortuitously as Violet’s partner had come to hers – and if he sensed anything like what Violet had, then at least he could go back to her and tell her that the Well was a bit of a weird place, and yes, he got it. He understood the draw of sacred spaces – it was only natural that the residue of those beliefs lingered at Coventina’s Well centuries later, especially in the winter if Coventina was a goddess who welcomed spring and made the snow melt.

Ollie didn’t bother with breakfast; he made a strong coffee in his room, and drank it while he looked out across the snow-covered landscape. Being on the top of the hill, he could see for miles, but everything he saw for those miles looked exactly the same. Undulating white hills, shadowy dips and piles of grey stonework running east to west. Clumps of trees huddled together, their branches bare and bowed down with the snow and the sky was grey.

Ollie shivered. Maybe, down the dip where the Well was, it would be a bit milder.

However, once he eventually got there, he realised it wasn’t.

After he’d parked up, he walked down the hill, by the edge of the old fort. The snow crunched underfoot and there wasn’t another living soul nearby. The Mithraic Temple looked eerie, and he paused, thinking about the men who had worshipped there so many years ago.

Then he picked his way past the ruins of the Mithraic Temple and crossed the stream, looking across the field at the area where he understood Coventina’s Well to be…

But once he reached it, he found it extremely unimpressive.

‘Is this it, then?’ he asked the snow-covered landscape. ‘It really is a massive bog-puddle?’

He took a few steps closer to it, so his toes were almost on the edge, just where the snow began to melt into the water, and he peered into the icy-looking depths. His reflection stared back, complete with a furrowed brow and a scowl on his face.

Ripples scattered across the surface from a breeze that crept into the valley and Ollie shivered. But when the ripples cleared, he felt his stomach lurch.

He expected to see himself reflected in the water again – but what he saw was not him.