Wit and Witchery

By Geraldine Burrows

"A Jane Austen-esque romance skillfully injected with a magical twist." --Kirkus Reviews

"... WIT AND WITCHERY lives up to the promise of its title. There's both wit and witchery aplenty, as well as drama, danger, and a steamy romance..." --IndieReader 

An IndieReader Best Reviewed Book of the Month

Can a country hedge witch outwit a rakehell lord and out-witch the Red Queen of blood magic in London?

Annis Fulton is a wellborn young widow and a descendant of one of England's oldest hereditary witch families. Trained in her secret heritage by her elderly nurse, Annis's hedge witchery can't save her from marriage to a cruel, much-older man in order to reclaim her family's estate.

Now happily widowed, she travels to London, where she matches wits with Lord Nicholas Ryder with whom she has a long-standing quarrel. Ryder is determined to seduce her, for no other woman has aroused his ire and desire the way she has. Annis is equally determined to thwart his desire, and the two of them wage their private duel against the glittering backdrop of the London Season.

However, they soon must unite against a common foe—Belle Barlow, proprietress of London's most decadent brothel and secretly the Red Queen of blood magic in London. She and Annis are born enemies who are destined to meet and clash, for white magic must always contend against the blood-fed red.

But Annis is weakened in London, where she is cut off from the natural forces of hedge witchery and where her growing love for Ryder could prove her undoing. And now the Red Queen is plotting to ensnare them both in a fiendish deathtrap from which there is no escape.

89,000 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenarvon Press
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223279389

Geraldine Burrows

Geraldine Burrows is the author of nine novels, including the Chloe Crandall YA adventure series.  She lives with her husband in a coastal village in Rhode Island.

Book preview

Prologue

Twist ye, twine ye! even so,

Mingle shades of joy and woe,

Hope and fear and peace and strife

Is the thread of human life.

While the mystic twist in spinning,

And the infant’s life beginning,

Dimly seen through twilight bending,

Lo, what varied shapes attending!

–Sir Walter Scott, Spindle Spell from Guy Mannering

When one is a girl of twelve, it is woefully hard to watch your father don his scarlet regimentals and ride away to fight the Corsican Ogre. There can be no tears, of course, for you are a brave daughter of England and a well-bred one. You curtsy politely to your father’s fellow officers and wave your handkerchief in the most approved manner as they canter away.

But then your wicce awakes in your mind, and you sense carrion wings circling about your father’s head, white bones rattling at his feet.

Don’t go, Papa! Please don’t go!

But he does not listen, and then one day you find your mother weeping over a black-bordered letter that has the sad duty to inform her that Captain Hugh Robson has fallen in battle and will never come home again.

More adversity follows.

Your grandfather is soon forced to sell off part of the family estate. The buyer is a rich, plumpish gentleman in beau’s clothes. He stares at you in the queerest, crawliest way, as if you had mud on your pantalet ruffle or a jam spot on your bodice.

To leave the manor house and remove to the steward’s lodge is as bitter as gall, for there have been Robsons at Robson Major since time out of mind. But your grandfather puts on a brave face and says in his droll way that he will christen your new residence Robson Minor.

But there is worse to come.

Your grandfather must take out a mortgage on what remains of the family land. You soon realize that a mortgage note, like the Minotaur of Greek myth, periodically demands a blood sacrifice.

Every quarter when the payment comes due, you watch your mother agonizing over the household accounts, debating whether to turn off a servant, or slaughter a sheep, or sell a family heirloom. And you clench your fists in a most unladylike manner and swear by the wicce blood in your veins and the witch sight in your mind that you will get your family’s land back for them, no matter what the cost.

Part One

THE WITCHLING WIDOW

One

Druids and their open profession of magic were suppressed in the provinces.

–Edward Davies, Mythology and Rites of the British Druids

One of the most discommoding things about living at Robson Minor was that it had no library. This was particularly vexing because Annis’s grandfather, Sir Cedric Robson, Bart., was a renowned antiquarian who owned a prodigious number of books.

Sir Cedric also owned a collection of odd objects that he called antiquities, but which Annis’s mother privately denounced as dust-catching, heathen bric-a-brac. Upon the family’s removal to Robson Minor, the books and heathen bric-a-brac had been stuffed with difficulty into the parlour, which now also served as Sir Cedric’s study.

It was here that Sir Cedric gave his oldest two grandchildren, Annis and Hal, their evening lessons, after which they were permitted to escape his erudition and retire to their beds. But tonight Annis lingered to talk to her mother about a subject far more interesting than mathematics.

I met Mr. Fulton again today while I was exercising Dulcie. He said I rode like a veritable Boadicea.

A pretty compliment indeed, said Mrs. Robson, who was rather vague about exactly who Boadicea was.

But Annis knew. Her nurse, Devona, had already taught her the legend of the great warrior queen—of how she had been cruelly scourged by the Roman invaders, of how she led an army of Celtic warriors against them, of how she took her own life rather than be captured.

To be compared to such a heroine was prodigiously flattering. But then, Mr. Fulton was always flattering. Whenever she encountered him on her daily rides (which was often), he would pay her the most extravagant compliments complete with poetical allusions to nymphs and sylphs. What fourteen-year-old girl wouldn’t be flattered? Still, it would take more than fine words and an artfully tied cravat to make her warm to the man who had bought much of her family’s land out from under them.

Her mother’s thoughts were running similarly. I suppose we must be grateful that the house passed into the hands of a gentleman of fashion like Mr. Fulton. And it was good of him to keep the servants on. Of course, if your father had lived— Her eyes glistened with sudden tears. Oh, Annis, what’s to become of us? How will you and Clare marry without a dowry? If my cousin could marry an earl, surely you girls could look as high—but not if you’re penniless. And what of your brothers now that their inheritance is gone?

Annis threw her arms around her mother’s shaking shoulders. Things must be worse than she knew. Her mother usually saved her tears for late at night in her widow’s bed when she thought her children couldn’t hear.

Don’t cry, Mama, we’ll make out somehow. I know we will.

Her mother summoned up a wan smile. I daresay we will. But it’s time you were off to bed. She nodded to where Devona stood waiting to light the way upstairs. Now bid your grandfather goodnight and run along.

Annis kissed her mother’s damp cheek and went to stand by her grandfather’s chair. Leaning close to the old gentleman’s ear, she said loudly and distinctly, Goodnight, Grandfather.

Sir Cedric looked up from his book and said apropos of nothing whatever, Davies’ theories need further elucidation. I believe I shall write a monograph.... His voice sank to a ruminative mumble, distinguishable only to himself.

Long accustomed to such scholarly effusions, Annis and her mother exchanged fond, forbearing looks over the top of the learned gentleman’s graying head. Then Annis stepped into the circle of Devona’s candlelight and was taken off to bed.

Annis’s bedchamber was tucked away under the attic beams of Robson Minor. In a more prosperous and commodious establishment, the room would have been called a garret and given over to a servant. But Robson Minor was neither prosperous nor commodious. The two youngest children, Claresta and Owen, shared an alcove for a nursery. Hal, a year and a half younger than Annis, had a narrow bed set up in their grandfather’s dressing room. So Annis was grateful to have even a chilly garret to call her own.

Donning her nightgown, she sat before the mirror so that Devona could brush her hair until the blue fairy sparks crackled at the ends of her honey-colored curls. As she brushed, the old woman chanted softly and rhythmically. The words she chanted were ancient words passed down in secret. Women had been burnt alive for daring to whisper such words.

Cast the bright stones, thirteen in number,

The destinies of men crystallized within.

Cast ye the beryl: The sea stone, sign of the sailor.

Cast ye the jasper: Green as new corn, sign of the husbandman.

Cast ye the amber: Tempered lifeblood of the blessed trees, sign of the priestess, wielder of wicce...

There were few among the gentry who knew what the word wicce meant. But the lowly folk who lived by harrow and plow knew very well what wicce was. It was part of the Old Magic that had come down to them as rural lore and legend. The yeoman farmers of Devon still had the memory of such things buried deep in their bones, and they esteemed Devona for her secret knowledge of it.

It was wicce that made Devona’s salves so soothing, her potions so efficacious, her talismans so powerful. It was out of respect for Devona’s wicce that the farming folk would ask her to charm their flocks against disease or say a Prayer of Increase over their fields at planting time. And the farming folk whispered among themselves what the Robson family did not know—that little Miss Annis Robson, despite her gentle birth, was Devona’s apprentice in the art of healing and the ways of wicce.

But knowledge of the Old Magic could also be a heavy burden as Annis had good reason to know. She remembered all too well how she had wept her heart out of her breast for her father long before he had drawn his last breath. That, too, was wicce. Shivering, she ran to the comforting warmth of her bed.

What story would you like to hear tonight? Devona asked as she tucked in the covers.

Devona was always a willing storyteller, for storytelling was the oldest form of teaching. And Annis was an eager listener, for Devona’s stories bore no resemblance to the usual namby-pamby nursery tale fare.

Annis’s mother would have disapproved of Devona’s stories most heartily, for they were all about corn kings and spring queens, stag lords and white-robed Druids with golden sickles, and Avalon, the island paradise beyond the mists.

Devona also told fascinating tales about the Robson family’s more unseemly ancestors—Devona’s ancestors, too, on the wrong side of the blanket—and these stories would not have pleased Annis’s mother either, had she known about them. But Devona had been in the family’s service for over fifty years, and she went in very little terror of the current mistress of the house.

I believe, Annis said in a considering tone, I should like to hear the story of my Birth Blessing.

Devona laughed. "As if you’ve not heard that one twenty times before. Wouldn’t you rather read one of Miss Edgeworth’s Moral Tales for Young People instead?"

Ugh, said Annis, making a face.

Such unladylike manners would have earned a gentle reproof from her mother, but Devona merely chuckled and began to tell her tale.

"On the night you were born, I cast the Bright Stones for you, and how my heart lifted to see that your destiny was the amber. I knew then that Robin’s blood ran strong in you and that you had the Second Sight and could be trained in the Old Knowledge. But how could it be otherwise when your parents gave you a name of ancient power, though they knew not what they did?

"So before ever the rector poured his water on your head, I traced a crescent upon your brow and implored the All-Mother to protect you and guide your path. For how could I let you be raised in the rector’s religion only? His religion that says it was a woman who brought evil into the world, and so all women must suffer for it to the world’s end.

Before you saw your first sunrise, I held you at the window so the moon could shine upon you. I lit a candle and passed it over you, that the Goddess would ever warm you with her light, and in that candle flame I burned protective herbs that the Goddess would ever bless you with her breath. Devona’s old, wise eyes clouded with sorrow. I doubt there are a hundred people living today who have been birth-blessed as you have been. The Old Ways are gone, all gone, lost from memory, forgotten by the world.

Annis clasped her nurse’s work-worn hand in mute sympathy. The Old Religion was very real to Devona, and she never ceased to grieve over its passing. She grieved as if she had witnessed with her own two eyes the coming of the Roman legions that had conquered Celtic Britain and destroyed the native religion. She grieved as if she herself had seen the burning of the Druid College at Glastonbury and the slaughter of the priestesses in the sacred groves.

Silence fell over the attic nook as Annis drifted into the half-drowsing state that was most conducive to rote memorization and recitation. And so once again Devona began to chant in the low, hypnotic voice that she used to communicate her secret knowledge, just as that same knowledge had been communicated to her sixty years before.

We speak of True Knowledge, of True Knowledge we speak, and may all you learn come easily from between your lips. Now recite to me how the Old Ones reckoned the months of the year.

And so the catechism was begun again, a catechism of litanies and rituals once chanted by the priestesses and Druids and bards of a hundred proud tribes from Gaul to Eire, but which were now only whispered in the dark by those who clung to the Old Religion.

Forcing her mind away from the enticement of slumber, Annis recited in a slow, sleepy voice:

The first month is Birch, its wood a charm against evil spirits.

The second month is Rowan, its wood a charm against lightning.

The third month is Ash, its wood a charm against drowning...

The candle flame danced and the voices murmured on, the old woman’s husky with age, the young girl’s faltering with weariness. Finally, Devona permitted her drowsy witchling to drift into sleep.

My sorrow that I must tax you so, she murmured as she tucked the bedclothes around the slumbering girl. But you are still green in power. I have much to teach you, and so little time left before I am summoned into Death’s Cauldron.

Two

Lord Death is abroad in the world and none knows where next he will strike.

–Old Devonshire Proverb

Devona was dying.

Like the barleycorn that had given over all its good bounty and was now cut down at the harvest, that was the quick, clean way of her going out of the world.

Annis’s younger brothers and sister sensed, in the way children sense such things, that this was the end for their beloved nurse. But Annis knew it with awful certainty because her Sight had told her so. Fighting back tears, she made an elderflower compress and carried it to the old woman’s bedside.

Devona stirred under her touch. Welcome to my dying bed, she said with a faint smile that was heartbreakingly reminiscent of her old vital self. I’ll not see another day dawn in this world. Tomorrow I sleep in the bosom of the Goddess.

Please don’t talk so, Annis said miserably, despite knowing it was true.

’Tis the time for such talk. And the time for making bequests. She raised a palsied hand and pointed to the oak chest at the foot of the bed. My legacy to you. The chest and all it holds—the scrying bowl, the spindle of ash, the pouch of Bright Stones, the knotting twine, the Tell Stones, and all the rest. All go to you, for you are the daughter of my spirit. You are the White Annis who will come after me. My sorrow that I have no amulet of amber to give you, for a priestess should have something fine of amber to mark her calling. Her withered fingers reached up to stroke Annis’s cheek. But you were born with something fine made of amber. You carry the priestess color in your eyes. Remember that, if ever you doubt your calling.

I’ll remember. I promise.

Devona shifted among her pillows as if gathering herself up for one final exertion. Fetch my scrying basin, and bring me your candle, your heartsblood candle.

Annis caught her breath in sudden apprehension. Devona was going to scry by ceromancy. She was going to divine the future through the medium of melting wax on water.

Annis had seen her do this before, but always for someone else. Always before, it was some other young maiden who sought a glimpse of the husband and lovers that fate would send her way.

And now Devona meant to do the same for her. But what if her heartsblood candle showed her things she did not want to see?

Make haste, child! Devona’s voice was strained with effort. I’ll not rest easy until this is done. I have brought you up from a suckling babe to almost a woman grown, and this one last thing I must do for you before I go out of the world.

Smothering her unease, Annis opened the chest and lifted out the scrying basin. It was old and cauldron-black, with oghams, the sacred writing of the Druids, inscribed in silver on the rim.

It is for you to fill the basin, Devona reminded her, and Annis did so, pouring the water from the drinking pitcher and then carefully balancing the basin on the old woman’s lap.

Annis’s heartsblood candle had also been stored in the trunk for safekeeping. The candle was cunningly wrought in a slender female shape, for Devona was a skilled crafter of beeswax and wick. The color of the candle was white, the unblemished white of a maiden’s soul. The only fleck of color was a tiny spot of red on the breast. There, the wax had been tinted with blood—Annis’s blood from a finger prick, the welling drops caught in a silver thimble.

The heartsblood candle was the only one of Devona’s spells that was empowered by blood, and that was because love was the lifeblood of the human soul. And like love, the blood used in the heartsblood candle spell must be freely given or the spell would come to naught.

Devona whispered with effort, It is for you to light the candle.

Annis took the bedside candle and put the flame to her maiden’s white image. As the wick flared to life, Devona recited the accompanying incantation.

Fire and water, wax and blood,

Burning image of maidenhood.

Will you burn with joy or pain?

Show me who doth light the flame.

The girl-candle began to melt, weeping itself away in falling white tears. As the drops of wax fell into the water, they formed themselves into the shapes of things to come.

Devona stared into the basin, studying the portents of Annis’s future that had been captured in the wax on water. Suddenly, her frail body stiffened and the scrying basin fell, splashing water at Annis’s feet.

Devona sat upright and rigid in her dying bed, her eyes fixed on some far sight, her voice coming from some distant place.

Beware the capon that struts his feathers on Robson land. Beware of him, I tell you! And there is another to watch for, a lord of war, a master of horse, a black knight with the blood of forty innocents on his hands. He will cost you everything if you let him. I see him now, riding toward Robson land...

Devona’s voice rose to a shriek that froze Annis’s blood. Do you hear me, child? Do you hear me?

Yes, yes, Annis soothed as she eased the old woman back onto the pillows. But please calm yourself or Mama will make me go away.

Devona’s agitation soon faded into an exhausted slumber.

Annis mopped up the water and wax, trying to reason out the meaning of her nurse’s words. A capon, she knew, was a rooster that had been gelded and fattened for fine dining. But how that related to gentlemen callers, she could not imagine.

And what of the black knight with the blood of forty innocents on his hands? It did not seem likely that such a fearsome personage would find his way to this placid corner of County Devon. And even if he did, she doubted her mother would receive him.

It was all very puzzling, and there was no way she could reason it out on her own. Devona had often warned her that a witch who tried to prognosticate the desires of her own heart was as foolish as a lawyer who took himself on as a client. Even the canniest witch could have her Sight clouded by love, and that was why no witch should divine her own heartsblood candle. Only Devona’s wisdom could help her now.

But there was no more wisdom to be gotten out of Devona, now or ever. As the night deepened, she lapsed into unconsciousness and died before the rising of the sun.

Mrs. Robson had thought to have her family’s faithful servant buried in the churchyard. But the rector, the Reverend Cornelius Penhurst, quickly disabused her of this notion. He decreed that since Devona was rumored to have been a witch, she could not be buried in hallowed ground.

Annis was not unduly surprised. Devona had warned her that the rector had the aura of a witchfinder about him, and she should be wary of him.

Sir Cedric had no such fears. He arose from his dusty tomes in wrath and rode to the rectory, where he proceeded to give Cornelius Penhurst a royal set-down in English, Latin, and Greek. Fortunately, he happened to be addressing the only other gentleman in the neighborhood learned enough to get the gist of this trilingual trimming.

But the Reverend Penhurst remained unmoved. So Devona was laid to rest in the family cemetery that the Robsons maintained on what remained of their estate.

In the far corner of the burial yard, there grew a hazel tree with wide-spreading boughs. Annis insisted so adamantly that Devona be buried beneath it that her mother and grandfather let her have her way. But what they didn’t know was that the hazel was the tree of white magic and healing and Devona’s birth tree, according to the way the Old Ones reckoned the months of the year.

Mrs. Slade, whose husband Devona had cured of lung fever, sewed a linen shroud to wrap the body in. Tompkins the sawyer, whose six children had all been safely midwifed by Devona, made a handsome coffin and wouldn’t take a penny for his labor. The Coggeshall brothers, two strapping moormen, came off of wild Dartmoor to dig her grave, simply appearing with their shovels as if by prearrangement.

Only the Robson family came to watch Devona’s interment.

Sir Cedric treated them to a rambling discourse about the Defna, the Celtic tribe that had settled Devon...among whom Devona would have been a wise woman and a healer, the blue-painted warriors bowing respectfully as she passed...but alas, wise women are not so well respected in these modern times...

Afterward, Mrs. Robson herded the younger children to the carriage, leaving Annis and Sir Cedric to watch the Coggeshall brothers shovel in the grave hole.

Why, Annis burst out bitterly, did the rector have to be so odious about Devona?

Sir Cedric shook his head. Penhurst is a narrow-minded fool. Every spring he blesses the farmers’ plows on Plow Sunday, but he will not believe the Druids did the same thing on the same spot on the very same day two thousand years before. Tell him that the very hill upon which his church stands was also sacred to the Defna, and he will deny it. Tell him that the strange carvings in Exeter Cathedral are of the Green Man and he will call you a heretic.

The Green Man...also called Robin of the Greenwood, who, according to Devona, was the mythical founder of the Robson family.

The pity of it is, her grandfather continued, that now the memory of a good woman will be reviled because of it.

Annis scowled. If I hear anyone reviling Devona’s memory, I’ll...do something dreadful to them.

Maleficos non patieris vivere, Sir Cedric intoned. ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’ Exodus 22, Verse 18. Did you know Devon was the site of the last legal execution for witchcraft in England? Alice Molland was hanged in Exeter Town, just down the road. Belief in the Old Ways has lingered on in Devon longer than in any other shire, and twisting those beliefs into the fear of witches has lingered on here as well.

Annis regarded her grandfather uneasily out of the corner of her eye. The older she got, the more she began to suspect that he knew more about Devona’s teachings than he let on.

The grave was filled in now, and the Coggeshall brothers had hammered a wooden marker into place before departing.

Come along, child, Sir Cedric called. Your mother is waiting.

I didn’t come with you in the carriage, Grandfather, Annis reminded him. There wasn’t room. I came on Dulcie. My pony, she added in response to his puzzled look.

Ah, yes. Well, hurry along before you take a chill.

Once her grandfather was out of sight, Annis knelt beside the mound of fresh-turned earth that covered Devona. There was one last thing to be done. She must say the Blessing of Farewell. She must say it just as Devona had taught it to her—taught it to the lisping, little girl Annis against the day when she would go to her grave with only Annis to say the true words over her. And Annis had not forgotten the words.

Farewell to thee, Devona of the Defna. May you go into the earth like a seed, to blossom forth in the spring of your returning. May you be wise and happy and fruitful in your next turning of the Wheel. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again, Devona, daughter of the Goddess. Blessed be.

The blessing finished, Annis rose with a sigh and walked to where Dulcie was tied to the wrought-iron fence. Her chilled hands were fumbling with the reins when she heard a twig snap behind her.

She spun around to behold Mr. Russell Fulton in the sartorial splendor of his many-caped greatcoat and shining top boots. But his beau’s wardrobe could not conceal his thickening middle and thinning reddish hair.

I heard of the lamentable passing of your esteemed nurse, he informed her in the well-turned phrases that had garnered him so many invitations to neighborhood assemblies. I felt it my duty to offer you solace in your hour of grief.

Why...that is most gracious of you, sir, Annis replied, surprised that such a fine gentleman would concern himself with the passing of a mere servant.

Mr. Fulton’s gloved hands toyed with the riding crop he invariably carried. I was also hoping for a private word with you, Miss Annis. I find that I can no longer hide my feelings for you.

Your feelings...for me?

"It cannot come