Two

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

–Old Devonshire Proverb

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

“It cannot come as a surprise. Surely you must know how ardently your pretty, flirting ways have made me adore you.”

Annis, who had not known any such thing, could only stare in shock as Mr. Fulton sank onto one knee in the best storybook manner.

“It is my most fervent hope,” he proclaimed, “that I shall soon have the honor of making you my wife.”

“Then hear me out before you answer.” Mr. Fulton hefted himself back to his feet with a difficulty that was not at all storybook. “Not only have you won my heart, but the very walls of Robson Major cry out for a mistress of Robson blood. Every surrounding field, every beast in the pasture, every flower in the garden craves your return to your ancestral hermitage.”

Annis stared at him, transfixed. How could he know such things? It was almost as if he comprehended her mystical connection to the land.

Mr. Fulton’s gaze was close on her face. “I have hesitated to speak before now out of fear that your family might not approve of our marriage.”

The truth of this statement shook Annis out of her bemusement. “No,” she said slowly, “I am not yet sixteen. They would never countenance it.”

“Quite easily. I have bought the mortgage note from the bank. It is to me that the payments must now be made—but not if you become my wife.” He stepped closer to her, his ruddy complexion becoming even more florid. “I will burn the mortgage note, Annis. On our wedding night.”

“Then perhaps my proposal should remain our little secret for the time being.”

“Perhaps...that would be best,” Annis agreed after an instant of hesitation. She was used to keeping Important Secrets from her elders, and she needed time to consider what Mr. Fulton had said.

“My dearest Annis, you have made me a happy man. Now allow me to help you mount. We wouldn’t want anyone to come looking for you. It might give away our little secret.”

He was standing so close to her that his paunch brushed her side and she could smell the odor of his Macassar hair oil. In that brief instant, her Sight came alive within her—and took the form of a red-hot knife whittling across her spine.