Page 45 of The Snow Witch

‘Go back to Hell!’ he shouted, ‘Back, Demon, back.’

When he saw the woman was still struggling, he placed his knee into her back to give himself more purchase and pulled again and again.

When, finally, she fell limp, he rolled her onto her back and grabbed the dagger that they had forced her to drop. Raising it to the heavens, he brought it down in her heart.

‘She shall not rise again,’ he bellowed, twisting it to make sure it was buried deep enough.

He stabbed again and again, repeating his accusations, until even his men were sickened by what they saw. Three of the men tried to wrestle the weapon away from him, and they pulled him off the woman, but the dagger remained buried in her chest up to the hilt, slippery with blood. The girl was obviously dead; she lay unnaturally twisted on the ground, blood congealing around her, matting her hair and soaking her clothing. Someone had the decency to throw a cloak over her, and they led Nicholson to the side of the Well. He was still hurling abuse at Meggie, even whilst they tried to reason with him.

* * *

John staggered away from the crowd and vomited. Robert crawled out shortly afterwards and sat beside him, his face pale. The images of what he had just witnessed replayed over and over in his mind’s eye.

John wiped his mouth and turned to speak to the older man. ‘She bled,’ he whispered. ‘She was not a witch.’

Robert shook his head. ‘No. But she is something queer. She summoned up something in there. What else could that… thing… be? We all saw it!’

‘At first, I thought it may be Alice,’ choked out John. His eyes filled with tears, and they spilled down his cheeks. He looked helplessly at Robert. ‘Coming to help Meg Noble.’

Robert shrugged. ‘I do not know. She would have called her by name, surely, if it were Alice. And it did not look like Alice.’

John dropped his head into his hands. ‘What will happen to her? Surely they cannot leave the body there?’

There was a commotion from the area where the carnage was, and Nicholson stormed past the man. He was no longer restrained by his lackeys, but they guarded him closely as he left; John thought it was for his own protection.

‘Remove it. Take it away and burn it. Reduce it to ash and bury it. It shall not rise again! Tell nobody what we witnessed here. Let it be known that she was a witch. Let anyone who defies my findings be condemned as a witch. They shall meet the same fate without the trial. Only a person who harbours a dark side would have seen anything in there, anything that happened in there. Do you understand? Do you understand?’ He leant down and screamed the last three words in John’s ear.

John flinched and nodded.

Nicholson fixed Robert with the same gimlet stare and waited for a response. Robert stared at him and inclined his head.

Apparently satisfied, Nicholson stormed off and ordered someone to begin the task immediately.

The Bell Man slung a bloodied bundle over his shoulder. John retched again and Robert looked the other way, across the field to the ruined fort. He saw a man up there on horseback. Charles Milburn.

He had clearly decided to wait and see what the outcome was.

But nobody had to wait long before the smoke began to curl upwards into the slate-grey sky. It had stopped snowing now, but the landscape was blanketed in white, and the clouds were hanging heavy with the promise of a fresh fall before evening.

Long before the new snow came, the pyre had burnt out.

29

NOW

Violet took herself back to the guest house and made a mug of tea, which she fully intended to creep back into bed and drink. The visit to the Well had thrown her off-kilter.

It was still early, but she already felt exhausted and could not get excited about the rest of the day. She was stirring the tea mindlessly, looking out of the bedroom window, when her phone rang, startling her.

She grabbed it and looked at the name. Jake.

She also spotted a missed call from him and a couple of texts. She hadn’t taken her phone with her to the Well, and had been lost in her thoughts since she came back. She cursed herself for not seeing them before now.

But, Oh, thank God, was her first thought when she realised he was calling. Jake was, absolutely, the best person to speak to. He would be able to justify why she had experienced all that, and maybe even persuade her that she’d imagined it all.

Because right now, as the images churned in her head, it felt all too real. Meg had looked at her. She had called her Coventina. She had begged her to help, and Violet had lost her somewhere in the Well and somewhere in the past.

She eagerly swiped to take Jake’s call and probably scared him with the enthusiasm she answered him with. ‘Jake! Hello! I’m so pleased you called. I was going to ring you. But it’s so damn early.’