The Witch of Tessingham Hall

By Sinéad Spearing

England 1657.

 

Alison, a folk- healer, stands falsely accused of murder by witchcraft, an allegation that sets in motion a powerful curse — "May your women forever wane!" — the spell haunting generations of her accuser's family, sending their women early to their graves.

 

London 2022.

Eden Flynn – an anxiety-ridden academic of Old English magic is invited for a job interview in the crypt of Southwark Cathedral, where her interviewer, the dashingly handsome geneticist Lord James Fabian, pulls her into the midst of his family secret: his sister is sick, and his daughter is showing signs of the same mental affliction.

 

Science has failed to find a cure, so with Eden's help he hopes to pursue a different methodology — magic!

 

Together they re-enact an ancient Old English healing ritual that transports Eden back through time where she meets Alison, who reveals her destiny: only Eden can break the blood curse, curing James's daughter and sending the true witch back to Hell.

 

Can Eden fulfil her part in the web which has been woven stronger and stronger over hundreds of years? Can she find the strength to break the bonds that bind her and Lord Fabian to the past? And can she live with the changes she will unleash?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
• Release date: Sep 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215490563

Book preview

Chapter 1

1657

10 days before the hanging

M

oon shadows stretch across the graveyard where tombstones glitter, rainbow-iced, as she weaves between them singing;

‘Under eagle’s claw, may your women forever wane,

Shrivelling like coal upon the hearth,

Shrinking like slime upon the wall,

Wasting away like water in a bucket.

Becoming as little as a grain of linseed,

and much smaller than a hand-worm’s hip-bone,

and so very small that they become nothing.’

Red threads trail like serpent tongues as she swishes the ground, one toe then the other tracing spirals in the snow. With each circle, the song quickens, and ruby red thorns press deeper into the little poppet held tightly in her hand.

Two owls glide to the roof of a nearby tomb and, taking them for omens, she continues her dance beneath their watchful eyes. ‘May your women forever wane,’ she chants it over and over, a mantra of intent, gaining in speed until magic hangs heavy and brooding in the moon-soaked air.

Still murmuring her spell, she stops her dance before a great stone vault and focuses her mind upon the family therein. One last time she states loudly, ‘May your women forever wane,’ and with a stone worn smooth by its journey through the ages, together with a rusted nail, secures the poppet to the vault’s lintel with one hard blow that echoes through the stone littered graveyard, scattering the owls to a nearby yew.

Chapter 2

Present Day

S

etting out from her flat on Thursday afternoon, Eden hugs the north side of the street in an attempt to avoid the sun — she wants to arrive with the just-washed-skin smell she set out with. Borough High Street is near deserted. Tourists retreat to their hotel pools and locals avoid venturing out during the height of day as the heat wave that hit two weeks earlier, continues.

When the hot weather was first forecast, she’d enjoyed the anticipation of sunny days, with evenings warm enough to wander the park wearing floaty summer tops and shorts. Yet it hit like thunder, and now heat prickles her skin like a thousand tiny needles. Anxiety heightens her discomfort and Eden feels panic rise, urging her heart faster into a breathless race against nature’s fiery torment.

Margaret’s Court Café is just to her left and she considers calling off the whole appointment and hiding inside with a cool iced tea and air conditioning. But she’s desperate — a doctorate in obscure Anglo-Saxon magical-medical practices just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Where she sees enigmatic remedies lost to the world, others see barbarian hocus-pocus that’s best forgotten and left to rot in a dusty corner of academia. Any interview, for any position, simply has to be entertained, even if it seems too good to be true, and turns her into a sweaty, trembling wreck.

She arrives at Southwark Cathedral as the bells chime five o’clock and hurries into the shadow of the walls where the acrid smell of melting tarmac gives way to the scent of herbs — someone is keeping the plants alive. Eden recognises mint and rosemary from time spent in her grandmother’s Sussex garden. The others are only half remembered, lemon-balm perhaps or marjoram. Behind the old herb garden is a small door, easily missed and usually ignored, that leads to the crypt. Scattered about are old stones that once formed part of a chapel to Our Lady when the Cathedral was first built centuries earlier. She tries the crypt door. It opens.

Oh my god, Eden thinks, as she slumps against the wall, just inside, savouring every moment of cool air and earthy, slightly damp stone. The contrast in temperature is exhilarating and goosebumps speckle her arms as she searches lazily with her left arm for the door and pushes it closed whilst remaining in full body contact with the wall. In the sudden darkness, she chances some further skin on stone relief and raises her vest top so she can press her stomach against the ancient masonry. It’s so blissfully cool, chilly even, and Eden lifts her arm to take a sniff of her armpit — not bad, she concludes, relieved that she has managed to arrive in presentable form. Without the sultry heat, her pounding heart calms leaving only a gnawing unease.

Yet what seems dark to her is not dark to those whose eyes have already adjusted and, standing at the end of the passageway, caught by surprise, is her interviewer, James Fabian. Like two rabbits spotlighted by an oncoming vehicle each flusters,

‘I’m so sorry, I was just on my way out and ...’ he says.

‘Oh no, no, it’s fine, I just, I was really hot and so ...’ Eden grabs at her top, tugging it down.

James forces a small laugh and sways to his right, then seems to catch sight of something interesting to his left and sets off, yet after a couple of steps he stops and says, ‘Actually, I do still need to go out so ...’ He extends his arm, indicting his path to the door and Eden jumps out of the way, only then realising she has pulled her top down with such force that it now sits below her cleavage, exposing her bra. If James notices he says nothing and she folds her arms high, shuffling out of his way as he walks confidently towards the door.

‘Well, excuse me,’ he says, passing carefully by with his back to her.

‘Are you Professor Fabian?’ Eden blurts the words, just as he’s half alight with golden rays from the world beyond.

He pauses, turning his face back to the dark. ‘Oh, you’re here for the interview?’ As his eyes soften in recognition, she nods and ventures a smile. He smiles back and continues on his way, saying, ‘Go on down to the end of the corridor and wait for me, I’ll be a few minutes’.

He shuts the door to the light. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she says to the gloom and scurries up the passageway towards a glimmer of brightness. The corridor opens onto a small chamber where two lamps send out a tempered glow from a desk strewn with papers. Eden puts her hands on her hips and takes a long deep breath. So that’s the mysterious Professor Fabian, then. Shit.

Just three days previously, as Saharan sand veiled London’s streets in red tinged mist, Eden had returned from Borough Market to Clara, her best friend, who was ridiculously excited about something;

‘You’ll never guess,’ Clara exploded as Eden stepped through the door with a fluff of dusty dessert swirling behind. ‘You’ve had a call. You’re being interviewed in a crypt by Professor Fabian. James Fabian.’ Eden blinked, wondering what on earth she’d just walked into. Clara continued, ‘Professor James Fabian? Oh, for fuck’s sake Eden, you haven’t heard of him?’

‘Nope. But what I’d like to know is what the hell is this about a crypt and an interview, an interview for what exactly?’

‘It’s James Fabian,’ Clara stated again, hoping to force recognition into Eden’s mind through repetition and sheer willpower. When Eden gave no sign that willpower had worked any such magic Clara paced the room, shaking her auburn curls in dramatic disbelief. Eden sat down and watched the word ‘fresh’ wobbling across her friend’s backside — the result, she thought, of too many high temperature clothes washes combined with a diet of doughnuts. The Biophysics Department lived on pastries, a fact Eden had always found strange for a group of people with so much bodily knowledge. But hey, she reasoned, perhaps that meant that doughnuts are good for you. ‘You really haven’t heard of him?’

‘Obviously not,’ Eden said, trying to hide irritation beneath a measured tone.

‘Well.’ Clara plumped a cushion, sat, crossed her legs and fixed Eden with a good unblinking stare, as one would do if the other had failed to comprehend basic English, having been born and bred in the UK. Eden raised an eyebrow, determined not to indulge Clara, knowing that to do so would push the relevant facts further into the future. With her audience lacklustre, Clara settled into the crushed velvet and with a conspiratorial smile continued. ‘James Fabian ran the Cambridge genetics department until about three years ago, when he disappeared.’

Eden raised both eyebrows and Clara’s smile widened.

‘And here he is,’ Clara said. ‘Calling you, here, and, oh well, you’ll see. Are you sure you’ve never heard of him?’

‘Definitely. But why should I have? I’ve never even been to Cambridge.’

‘Because it was such the mystery! I thought he was probably dead. Others said he ran off with a postgrad.’

‘Well, that’s all very interesting, Clara, but what about this interview and what’s this about a crypt?’

‘I know, right, you’re being interviewed in a crypt. I accepted for you, babes. It’s for a research position, just what you want. It’s on Thursday at five o’clock in the crypt of the cathedral.’ Seeing disbelief settle on Eden’s face, she added, ‘Really, babes, no joke. You got a call from his secretary, someone called Elizabeth and I knew you’d want to go. And, you, my dear,’ Clara paused and did a small animated bounce ‘you could fuckin’ stay here after all. You wouldn’t have to move.’

For a moment Eden allowed the thought to buoy her into laughter, and joined her friend in an odd, spontaneous dance — Clara spider-like, Eden the introverted crab.

‘A crypt,’ Eden whispered to herself, and shook her head as if moths had suddenly claimed residence in her skull, while she tried to process how life could spin upside-down within the space of one phone call.

Having functioned on autopilot for weeks — applying for tons of jobs that brought an equal volume of mostly polite rejections — the interview could be the break she’d been dreaming of. Yet fear refused to loosen its clawing grip upon her stomach.

Boxes stood tomblike behind the sofa, taunting her with old nightmares. Sensing her mood, Clara stopped laughing and gave a reassuring smile. ‘Hey, if anyone’s gonna land their dream job from a crypt, it’s you.’

Eden forced a laugh, willing her heart to quieten its dance. ‘But nothing’s confirmed, you know. I might not get it.’

‘But they called you, babes. That’s gotta be a good sign. You’ve been headhunted.’

Eden sighed deeply, trying to catch her friend’s positivity to quell the knot of anxiety gurgling darkly against the tiny morsel of hope.

In the crypt, awaiting her interview, Eden feels that same gurgle of anxiety as she smooths her vest top and turns slowly on the spot, taking in the space; the ceiling is a swathe of golden stars that although dulled by centuries, would have sparkled in the Middle Ages from the azure blue. A coal black Virgin and baby Jesus sit on an altar of worn stone, a line of small votive candles alight before them dancing shadows across the room.

Eden wonders whether the professor is perhaps a raving Catholic. A wild story suddenly washes through her mind where James, pioneering new genetic breakthroughs from his Cambridge lab, had become disillusioned with science following a visionary encounter with the Virgin Mary. Eden smiles and taps Mary’s face to see if she is wooden or plaster. Wood, she thinks.

Her attention turns to the desk with its sprawling documents and books piled high on one end. She notices a red bound volume sitting on top with an engraved title that reads ‘Harleian MS 585’ and freezes. A bead of sweat traces a lazy path between her breasts. She watches as her hand moves forward, and gasps as her fingertips touch the cool leather, sketching invisible spirals across the pockmarked surface. A thought happens, and her heart takes flight in her chest, hammering its warning as her hands close around the book, picking it up just as the crypt door squeaks open accompanied by an unwelcome rush of warm air. Turning, she meets his eyes with hers. Her mouth gapes and her shoulders, just moments earlier held straight are now sagging forwards. She holds the book up as if in offering to him.

‘This is the original,’ she says. ‘No one has the original. No one’s allowed.’

He moves towards her and gently takes the priceless, vulnerable manuscript from her shaking hands. ‘I’m allowed,’ he says.

Chapter 3

1657

2 months before the hanging

N

ightshade and wormwood grow wild in my garden. Borage and chamomile pop up in strange places — chamomile in particular forms clumps around the cellar door, rooting into the sandstone, unearthing secrets. Mother discovered faery-stones buried here, to protect the house from evil. Further talismans mark the house, carved into beams around the fireplace to ward off witches. That the evil threatening us today is from an altogether different source is something we dare not utter. Not yet at least. But I worry the wolves are stalking and will soon be at our door.

Mother still tends the herbs, shaping and nurturing them into neat clumps — controlling the ramblers and taking a firm hand with the marjoram that invades beyond the walled garden at every opportunity. I prefer to let them wander and find their own place. Freedom is potent. Seeking the sun, they grow untamed, finding their own pulse of life.

This morning a note arrived to say that little Roger Fuller in Larkin’s Lane had taken a turn for the worse. His parents used Doctor Williams’s tonic, but still his cough persisted, growing coarser with each day. When I arrived, his face was pinched with the effort of drawing breath. When listening close, his chest gave fluttering, crackling sounds like a colony of beetles were hatching within his lungs, trapped in the moist darkness, panicking. I made a brew against lung sickness. I boiled in butter cropleek and added radish, elecampane and barley with lots of salt. I gave it to him to eat hot, just as Mother taught.

Sarah in Back Lane felt pain in her head, so I took rue and pennyroyal and beet roots and woodruff, as much of each as I could pick up with my forefinger and thumb. I pounded them small and melted butter, then took off the scum and put it into a clean pan and boiled the plants well. Then I wrung them through a cloth, added oil, and smeared her head where it thrummed.

I gave no comment to the yellowing patches of skin which days earlier must have glowered in deep purple hues. Unfortunately, her aches and pains will only cease when either she or her husband dies. I worry sometimes, that it will mark me to hope it is he. Yet how much more must be Sarah’s desire? I see the question behind her eyes; ‘You could do it, couldn’t you?’ she asks wordlessly, each time I visit. My heart is heavy for her, but I do not have the passion required to kill another, no matter how monstrous and deserving they may be.

I was approaching the bridge when a boy came running, a note waving about in his hand. ‘Mistress,’ he shouted as his feet turned the mud and he slid to a halt just feet from my skirts. ‘‘Scuse me, Miss, but I’ve been told to give you this.’

I unrolled the small note to find neatly scripted writing requesting my presence at Holworth Manor. It was signed, ‘Yours, Katherine’, as if Lady Fabian and I were well acquainted, friends, even, which we were not. Neighbours, yes. Family, yes. But acquainted, never.

‘What’s it say?’ the boy asked, eyes wide, licking his lips, hungry for gossip to take as a prize to the new scullery maid who’d taken his fancy.

‘Never you mind,’ I replied, knowing better than to encourage any tittle-tattle when it came to Old Man Fabian. Home was a field or so away. Mother was expecting me for dinner and Father, well, he would be beside himself to learn that I’d visited Holworth.

The boy rubbed his head and shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I’ll get an earful if don’t get back soon.’

‘Be on your way, then. Please convey my apologies to Lady Katherine. I am unable to assist her.’ I handed the note back to him and prepared to continue my journey, hoping the lad had not noticed the quiver to my voice.

‘’Course,’ he said, his conviction as reassuring as a leaking bucket. ‘But Miss, I was told to say if you were to say what you’ve said, that it’s a matter of life and death and you wouldn’t have been called if there was another way. Doc’s away, you see, so you’re the only hope. M’Lady said to say that you’d realise she’d never call for you unless she was desperate.’

I doubted Katherine would ever admit to being in desperation and assumed — foolishly as time would reveal — that the boy was improvising, building the story into proportions that I could not refuse. Yet the note was real enough and spoke to a certain need that, with the doctor away, was difficult for me, in good conscience, to ignore.

‘Very well, then,’ I said with a heavy sigh, feeling unease creep between my shoulders and prickle the fine hairs at my neck.

We set off down the track that stretched towards Holworth, which lay just two large fields away from home. Its red tiled roof sets the horizon ablaze when I look out from my bedchamber during the height of summer. Sometimes I fancy the Fabians look back from the top windows. Father says they do.

The boy smuggled me through the scullery door like bootleg French Brandy, my presence at the house as unwelcome as an outbreak of plague. We crept through the labyrinth of basement rooms where servants scurried with dinner preparations. I caught fleeting glimpses of flustered women mixing spiced fruit puddings and pulling hot bread from ovens large as tombs. Spiced orange made my mouth water and what looked to be a roasted pheasant caused my stomach a rumble.

We soon began the climb towards the main quarters, three flights up the narrow stairs hidden behind dark oak panels invisible to all except the servants. We emerged into an antechamber where, with the countenance of a full-bellied toad, stood Lady Fabian.

‘I would not have sent for you had the doctor not been away,’ she said, addressing the view beyond the window rather than meeting my eye. I decided her comment required no response, and so waited for her to finish whatever personal dramatics her spiteful character demanded. Her nostrils flared as if I’d passed a silent, noxious wind. The boy slowly withdrew into the dark panelling, keen to return below stairs and spread chatter to eager ears.

‘Shall we then.’ She pursed her lips, miffed that her countenance and words intended as bullets had fallen like rotten, dry petals from a long dead rose. I followed Lady Fabian into her husband’s bedchamber where thick drapes were drawn against the light. A fire quivered in the grate, as reluctant as I was to enter the room where sickness hung heavily in death-tinged air.

I’ve never become accustomed to it, death. Even good deaths tug at my heart as if true love, the type that sends the darkness reeling, is too brutal for the human heart to bear. How can the catastrophe of life ever be a miracle of equal measure? How can light ever quench the relentless fear and suffering that marks each of us? Yet for some, in those final moments, love comes for them and punches through into our dismal reality for a few precious moments.

When Mrs Stock died, Midsummer last, there was a lightness in the room. Hers was a good death. Light surrounded her and as she neared the veil her exclamation of joy for her mother caused all to gasp and grasp each other’s hands, eyes tear-brimmed with hope. No one doubted that her dead mother was indeed there, welcoming her forward. Yet here, in the gloaming of Old Man Fabian’s chamber, the spirit of death sits darkly.

‘You should await the doctor, Madam. There is nothing I can do here,’ I said, wanting to run as quickly as possible from that room and the man for whom hope held nothing.

‘What nonsense. You haven’t even looked at him. You are a healer are you not? If not a healer, then what?’ Danger coloured her voice a deep red. Something had just occurred, as if a cog had just clicked into place within a mechanism sitting just beyond my sight.

I stepped tentatively forward, as if mantraps might litter the floor, and indicated my need to listen to Lord Fabian’s chest. Lady Fabian nodded, and I peeled away the thick cotton shirt to reveal pale chicken pocked skin beneath. His heart sounded weak and fluttery, so I took rue, sage and fennel and ground ivy, betony and lily. I pounded all the herbs together; put them into one bag and steeped them with water. I then rubbed them well and let them drip out into a vat. I took the liquid and warmed it and rinsed his head. I told his man to do likewise as often as may be needful. But when death sits waiting, little acquiesces its soul hunger.

Chapter 4

E

den blinks in the muted light, her mind suddenly empty, becalmed like a boat with the wind sucked from its sails.

‘Please sit,’ he says, the flickering votives playing shadows across his face, dancing in shapes of orange and ochre. He indicates a chair, thickly stuffed and incongruously large for the space. Eden sits with a puff. ‘I apologise for the rather strange venue,’ he begins, pulling a second chair closer to hers, avoiding the austere wooden backed ones sitting either side of the desk. ‘But the crypt is cool, and quiet.’

She wants to ask how he is even allowed to use the crypt, as usually it would be open to tourists and the odd Christian ritual, but words fall silently from her mind. He reaches for a file balanced on top of a paper pile which clings to the corner of a nearby table as if suspended by magic. ‘So, Eden.’ he clears his throat, settles deeper into the old leather chair and for the first time, looks her straight in the eyes. ‘It occurs to me,’ he pauses, looking faintly amused at her wide-eyed stare, ‘that I owe you an explanation.’

Surprise rouses her thoughts from the mist, and her startled expression relaxes into mild discomfort. Yet she still forgets to speak.

‘I was interested to hear ...’ he’s filling the vacant space, tiptoeing forward, coaxing her out, ‘... that an old remedy from Bald’s Leechbook, has been discovered to be an effective antibiotic.’

‘Oh.’ Eden rediscovers her breath, draws in air, a welcome friend. ‘Yes, it has.’

‘Yes. Well, I’d like to research some more of these Old English remedies and herbals. Which is why of course, I’ve invited you here.’

Relief floods Eden’s body and mind, sending her anxiety skulking back to the gloomy