From a children's novel by Vance Briceland
Katherine Trotwood stared at the wet moors beyond the window while the mantel clock slowly carved second after second from the long afternoon. The indistinct voices at the other end of the room were growing impossible to ignore. Her hand absently stroked the soft fur of the cat sleeping at her side. It was the only warmth available on the chilly window seat in which she perched.
“Katherine.” Mrs. Morland looked up from the book from which she had been reading aloud. With that single word she dashed Katherine’s hopes of remaining as invisible as possible.
Her aunt composed her face into a frosty expression intended to resemble amiability. It did not. As she spoke, Mrs. Morland’s three children all turned to regard their cousin in the window alcove. “If you are prepared to apologize, do so at once and join us by the fire.” Her tone seemed to imply that she fully expected her niece by marriage to remain in exile for the rest of the afternoon.
As she looked at her aunt’s flinty eyes and her cousins’ smug faces, Katherine felt a surge of loathing. Their overtures of friendliness rang false. She returned Aunt Morland’s cold look with a stubborn stare of her own, then turned her head toward the window once more. Runnels of rain obscured the panes, only intermittently allowing a view of the dark clouds that hovered over Treclyffe. Despite the foul weather, a figure in white climbed the gentle slopes of the moors toward the horizon, heedless of the chill. Katherine knew it was not one of the manor’s servants; she recognized it to be the woman her cousins called the Witch.“I didn’t hear you,” her aunt proclaimed with meaning.
“That would be because I did not say anything,” replied Katherine without warmth. After a pause, she added, “Ma’am.”
“She’s too busy looking at her reflection in the glass. Perhaps she thinks she’s pretty,” Alice suggested. A quick retort flew quickly to Katherine’s lips, but she took a deep breath and suppressed it. She knew she could not compare to Alice and Petty in good looks. Their faces were rounded and winsome and framed with golden locks of curls. Before strangers they simpered and smiled, flirtatious and coy. Crueler faces they saved almost exclusively for their cousin. Katherine’s own face was merely small, angular, and plain. It was often covered by her lank brown hair.
“Vanity is a sin, isn’t it, mama?” asked Jack, the oldest of her cousins. While the girls’ angelic expressions were calculated, at least Jack’s face was honest. He both looked and acted like the malicious dullard he was. Red of complexion, thick of lip, he resembled to Katherine one of the squashed fig puddings that on occasion her aunt’s cook produced.
“As is gluttony,” Katherine murmured to Puss as the cat stretched beneath her hand.
“I did not quite hear your comment, girl,” Mrs. Morland snapped. “Was it an apology?”
Abandoning her observation of the Witch’s progress up the hill, Katherine turned her head and returned her aunt’s expression with one equally as cold. “No, it was not. Your children should be apologizing! I was only preventing them from killing Puss!”
At the accusation, Jack’s slitted eyes opened wide. “It’s only a cat! She hit me, mama! Hard!” Her cousin’s angry voice caused the cat to waken from his doze, frightened. She stroked it back into calm.
“Trying to set a cat on fire is abominable!” Katherine retorted. Since her arrival at Treclyffe the long-haired cat was the only member of the household who welcomed her—and she was the only person who bothered to show the poor creature attention. The narrowness of Puss’s rescue still made her tremble. Only by accident had she happened upon her cousins dousing the cat with lamp oil the night before. She kept him by her side at all times, since.
Mrs. Morland held up a hand to keep her son from saying anything further. “You attacked my beautiful children! You are little better than a savage animal.”
Petty piped up at this point. “Katherine is a wildcat!”
“They deserved more than a slapping,” Katherine growled at the window, absently petting the long-haired Puss. She was angry to have to continue the argument when it should have been clear that her cousins, and not herself, were in the wrong. “My father always said that men are caretakers of the land and all its creatures. Not torturers!”
“Your father is dead,” Mrs. Morland reminded her, none too gently. “I might remind you, impudent child, that you are under my guardianship, and that of my husband. As long as you partake of our generous hospitality—”
“Hospitality!” Katherine spat out the word as her head swung around to regard her aunt. Her face reddened as she reviewed the daily outrages against her: The leeches in her shoes. The short–sheeted bedclothes or sugar in her petticoats. Her books torn, imaginary tales told against her. How she wished she could run away from Treclyffe and return home.
Home was Somerset, two counties away from Cornwall. Too far for Katherine to run. On a day like this, Flighty would have sat Katherine in a cozy corner by the servant’s table, tucked a quilt around her, and given her a heel of toasted bread thickly spread with butter and coarse sugar. They then would have sung gypsy songs all afternoon as the loving servant prepared her stews and loaves.
Her aunt’s screeches shattered her vision of warmth. “Hospitality, girl, and mind you not forget it. When I think of the orphans out there who would gratefully accept with a gladsome heart even a portion of the generous bounty that Mr. Morland and I have lavished upon an ungrateful chit like you. . . .”
Out of Mrs. Morland’s line of sight, Alice and Petty pulled rude faces in the obvious hope of provoking their cousin. Katherine’s anger, however, was too focused upon her aunt to care. “I am not an orphan.”
“Your mother may be very much alive in body, but in mind and spirit she is as good as dead to you,” said Mrs. Morland, spittle flying from her furious lips. “She is a madwoman.” Petty and Alice exchanged smug smiles.
“She is not mad! She grieves! She loved my father,” Katherine cried. She knew there was no love between the Morlands—not of the quality her mother and father had for each other. Mrs. Morland had plainly married her husband for social standing. Her parents were poorer, but they at least had shone with happiness in each other’s presence. “If my father knew how badly you and your family have treated me—”
“Your mother is a madwoman. Unless you show more self-control, you will end up like her one day. That will be quite enough nonsense about your father. He is dead, child, and not coming back.”
Her aunt could not have loosed a sharper arrow into Katherine’s heart. “I wish it was you who was dead, Aunt Morland!” For a moment Katherine had the intense satisfaction of watching the three children mirror their mother’s shocked expression. A grave silence fell upon the room.
Mrs. Morland at last opened her broad, grim mouth. Her voice was low and angry. “Leave,” she said, raising a finger and pointing to the door. “Leave this room and bother us no more.”
Katherine did not wait for a repeat of the command. Abandoning Puss on the window seat with real regret, she hopped down and stalked from the parlor, refusing to meet anyone’s glance. Before the door closed behind her, Petty’s simpering voice was already inquiring, “Mama, is Katherine to be punished?” She did not want to hear the reply.
It was unfair! Her three cousins misbehaved constantly and were never reprimanded. Day after day, they tore her gowns, ruined her shoes and mittens, pulled her hair, pinched her, saw that her lessons were lost or ruined beyond recovery, and called her ‘mad Katherine’ or ‘lunatic Katherine.’ If she endured their tortures silently, they thought up more anew. If she dared complain to either her aunt or uncle, she received a sharp lecture on bearing tales and was called a ‘tell-tale-tit’ by her cousins for the remainder of the week.
Worst of all, on the rare occasions she answered them taunt for taunt or fought back at their bullying, they retreated to a safe distance and called for their mama to come rescue them. Mrs. Morland would oblige, rousting Katherine out by her ear and telling her that she would end up just like her mother, loved by none and left to die a madwoman.
Her father would have been appalled at the way the Morlands treated his daughter. Her mother would, as well . . . if her mother ever gained memory or sanity enough to remember Katherine again. She had completely succumbed to grief after Sheridan Trotwood’s death. Some days she spent weeping and wailing; on most she merely sat and stared out the window. So convinced was she that her husband would one day return, that she neither saw nor heard anyone around her. She ate little, and spoke less. It had been nearly a year since she recognized her daughter, her only child.
Thinking of her mother only disheartened her further. Katherine dashed down the lonely halls of Treclyffe away from the parlor as quickly as possible, hoping to banish these baleful thoughts. She wondered where she might find escape from the hateful Morland children. The nursery was a poor choice; her cousins would corner her there soon enough. Most of the adult rooms were forbidden to her, as well. If she had still lived in her own home, she might have spent the afternoon dreaming away in the kitchen, but Aunt Morland’s cook was not fond of children underfoot. There were always the gardens, but on such a raw, chilly afternoon. . . .
Through the rippled panes of the windows in the front hall she once again saw the now-distant white figure of the woman they called the Witch. She was not, presumably, an actual witch. She was the cousins’ great-aunt Hester, a recluse who lived in an old gamekeeper’s cottage near the bluffs. In the four months Katherine had lived with the Morlands, she had never come face to face with the woman. When Petty contracted a swollen throat two weeks before, her great-aunt sent to the house a self-brewed tincture. It was plain that no matter what her talents, she knew something of doctoring as well.
Her cousins hated the Witch. No, Katherine considered. Their emotion was something more akin to fear. They were so frightened of their great-aunt that they had invented a cruel nickname for her, and invoked her to threaten others. The girls told Katherine that the Witch crept at night through upstairs windows of wicked children in Hartscove to steal their hair and smother them—just as Jack had frequently taunted his sisters with the same story. It occurred to Katherine suddenly that if her appalling cousins disliked the Witch, she might not be so terrible a person, after all.
It was but the work of a moment to gather her rain bonnet and her cape and to run out of doors. Although the wind cut straight through her merino dress, at least the rain had ceased. The moors of this section of Cornwall were particularly rocky, though generations of Morland servants had gradually cleared the stones from the grounds immediately surrounding the house. Running after the Witch became an easier task once off the upward slopes and on the deeply rutted dirt road. The white-haired woman walked on with a brisk pace in the direction of the small village of Hartscove.
The closer her approach to the Witch, the odder the woman seemed. She carried something of considerable bulk in a burlap satchel, and from time to time she stopped walking altogether in order to transfer its weight. Moreover, she was dressed in extraordinarily plain clothes—a bleached shift of a simple and quite unfashionable style. Save for thick hair as free from color as her dress, her appearance was that of a woman well beyond her youth, yet not old. As she turned to regard the girl running up the path behind her, her eyes glittered like obsidian.
“Good day,” said Katherine a bit timidly. Her flight from Treclyffe had been a headstrong impulse; with the Witch’s attention full upon her, she wondered if her cousins might not be correct about the woman’s alleged supernatural powers.
“It is not,” said the Witch dismissively, shifting the bulky burlap bag to her other arm, “an afternoon for little girls.”
Katherine blinked. “I’m sorry, Miss. . . . Miss Morland.”
The Witch pursed her lips at the sound of her proper name and regarded the girl for a moment. The wind blew loose a strand of her shock white hair. “Can you carry things?” she asked at last.
“I suppose. . . .”
“Yes or no, child. Heavens. Have you the ability and coordination to carry things?” Katherine nodded meekly, and the Witch commanded, “Hold out your arms, then. I am unaccustomed to dawdlers.”
Surprised at her officious tone but curious to continue in the woman’s company, Katherine obeyed her instructions. She found herself rewarded with the burlap satchel. Bulky it was, and seemed to be composed of all sharp corners yet very little to hold onto. It was light enough to manage, however, and Miss Morland was already journeying on in the direction of the village.
She doubled her pace to keep up with the woman’s swift steps. Katherine quickly found that the width of her parcel made it impossible to see her feet. She had to trust Miss Morland to pick a path for the both of them. After some considerable time and much unsteadiness, she felt brave enough to inquire, “Where are we going?”
“I am going adventuring,” was the short reply.
“May I come too?”
“Are you a brave girl?”
Katherine thought for a moment. “No more brave than most, I think.”
The Witch stopped short in her determined trek, as if reminded of something. She turned to regard Katherine with interest. “You’re Sheridan Trotwood’s get, aren’t you? The natural scientist?”
“He is my father. Was. He . . . he died a year ago.”
“Rather suddenly, I heard.”
Having to speak of her father’s death always caused Katherine’s chest to tighten. Clutching the satchel tightly, she breathed deeply and fought against the emotion welling from the unhealed places deep inside. “In a rock slide,” she said.
She had been with her father the afternoon he had died. “Don’t wander,” he’d warned her with his always-cheerful smile. Then he had disappeared down the hole that led to the caverns he had been exploring. She hadn’t wandered; she’d slept under a tree instead. When she awoke from her doze in the shade, the hole simply wasn’t there anymore—all that remained was a depression in the ground where the weight of the earth and rock had caved in, trapping her father underneath.
Before despair could totally embrace her she broke from her slight trance and reminded herself once again with resignation of the two things of which she was certain: There was nothing she could have done to save him. And there was no way she could bring him back.
The Witch nodded, not seeming to notice Katherine’s brief reverie. “So I’d heard. A pity. The men who called court upon the Morland sisters were not known for their intellects. Your father was the sole exception. He talked of his studies with me, once. Tell me, did he raise his daughter to think for herself? Or are you a soft-headed poppet, like my great-nieces?”
“I should hope not to be like them,” Katherine said, unable to disguise the bitter quality of her voice.
The Witch rewarded her with a shrewd look. “Your father educated you, then?”
Katherine considered. Thanks to her father she was well versed in sums and elementary algebra and geometry, and in the laws of the principal sciences. She could identify most rocks and minerals, draw passable diagrams of insects and sedimentary strata, and identify most of the constellations. She could read almost anything she chose, and had frequently taken notes for her father as he picked through the local quarries.
Yet her relations considered her rude and uncouth. In the last four months Aunt Morland had declared Katherine’s French and embroidery skills so weak as to be non-existent and decreed her hands too small to play the spinet. Katherine considered her achievements more worthy of notice. “Yes he did,” she said after careful consideration. “I often assisted him in his studies.”
The winds shifted across the moors, prompting the grasses to flop wetly toward them as they walked on. The Witch was silent for a while, until she at last inquired, “Why are you at Treclyffe? Any person of logic would deduce you cannot be happy.”
“My father’s death was unexpected, Miss Morland,” Katherine murmured, preparing to say what was expected of her but reminding herself not to believe a word of it. “Mr. and Mrs. Morland were charitable enough to become my guardians.”
“Well do I know the charity dispensed by her hand,” said the Witch, a sneer crossing her handsome face. “A harridan, she. But what of your mother, girl? Surely my niece could care for you better than these relatives?”
Katherine flushed. “No.” Under the sideways stare of the Witch, she reddened even more. “After my father . . . after my father died, her grief was so deep that. . . .” Her words dissolved into a stammer.
“That. . . .” That she lost touch with reality. That she could not recognize, much less talk to, her own daughter. They called her mother a madwoman, though Katherine refused to believe it. She grieved.
For months Katherine had tried to care for her, captive in a small cottage on grounds outside what was once her own home. Hard as she had tried, she could not shake her from her unnaturally deep grief. Mr. Morland, in a futile gesture made too long after the fact, hired a minimally-trained physician who applied leeches to her mother’s back and gravely concluded she would never regain her senses. Her husband’s untimely death had permanently unsettled her.
There ought to have been something she could have done to bring her mother back. For months she missed nights of sleep to help Flighty—it was like caring for a sleeping woman, even when she was clearly awake. At last Uncle Morland came to collect her and take her away from what ruins were left of her home and family.
Katherine’s life had once been happy. Now it was only something she endured from day to gray day. A home was not a house, she now knew after four months with the Morlands. A home was a place where she was wanted and needed, where people were glad to have her. Treclyffe was not her home, nor would it ever be.
The Witch seemed to sense her uneasiness, for she briskly changed the subject. “That is a pity as well. Lucy was never a strong girl. Now tell me, Miss Trotwood, what you’ve heard of me at the house.”
Katherine was grateful for the reprieve. She cleared her throat and blinked away the moisture that had begun to spring in her eyes. “Well. . . .”
“Speak your mind.”
They were just approaching the moor’s crest above the village. A quarter mile below, the road widened as it passed the churchyard. A half mile beyond that, it curved into the tiny hardscrabble collection of thatched cottages that made up the village of Hartscove. “They say you’re a witch,” Katherine said, glad for once to have someone interested in what she had to say. “And that you steal the hair of children.”
The Witch laughed in obvious good humor, even stopping in her tracks to enjoy the joke. “Trust my nephew’s wife to teach them such a thing. A ridiculous notion based in superstition and folklore, yet it suits my purposes. I crave privacy for my work. Do you fear me?”
Her father had taught her to consider with care any question, no matter how ordinary, before she spoke an answer. The Witch was certainly a striking woman, and her manner was abrupt. But Katherine did not fear her. “No. You’re not a witch, then?” she inquired, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
“I am most certainly not a witch. I am,” she said, with great dignity, as she drew her neck and head erect, “a lady scientist.”
“Really!” Katherine was fascinated by the declaration. Her father had been a man of science, and taught his daughter to respect the rational approach to natural phenomenon. Although she had never heard of a lady scientist before, it occurred to her now that there were no reasons a lady could not take up serious study. This was, after all, the modern era—the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria, a woman herself, ruled England. Katherine’s own mind was as strong and rational as any boy’s. Stronger than Jack’s, especially. Perhaps she, too, could be a lady scientist.
“Yes, really,” replied her companion.
“Where are we going, then?” she asked, suddenly moved by curiosity. She would also be glad to rid herself of the bulky burden she had carried for nearly an entire mile.
“Somewhere private,” the Witch replied shortly. Then, curiously, she added, “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.” When the woman did not immediately reply, she added, “I kept them for my father. I often assisted him, when he was alive.”
The Witch gave her another sparkling sideways stare. “Would you care to be my assistant?”
Katherine’s heart leapt. “Oh, yes,” she said, remembering summer afternoons spent recording measurements of ancient silt in quarry walls. The fond memories vanished as she recalled her present circumstances. It would be difficult to escape the constant scrutiny of Mrs. Morland to consort with a woman her aunt disliked.
As if reading her mind, the Witch continued. “I shall be gone, of course, on my adventuring. You could perform your duties by yourself quite readily once or twice a week, in less than an afternoon.”
“What would I have to do?”
“You shall see,” said the Witch. “I have decided to rely upon your discretion.” They had reached the lichgate of the old church she attended with the Morlands every week. The Witch suddenly turned and entered. Katherine, who had assumed they were walking on toward the town, nearly failed to notice her disappearance. She quickened her pace and doubled back to follow.
As with most country churches, the older memorials were closer to the church building and the newer at the perimeter. The Witch strode purposefully across the churchyard through the stone markers as Katherine struggled to catch up with her. Keeping pace was difficult, as the graves here were crowded close together. With clumsy footsteps she stumbled through the Treagles and Hockings and Pascoes of a more recent generation. Eventually she caught up with the Witch among a section of weather-worn crosses carved with antique letters declaiming names like Dobbs and Collect, and Gribble and Spinks.
“Where. . . ?” Katherine’s question vanished from her lips as the Witch began to melt into the ground. No, it was only an illusion. Katherine’s sight had been fooled for a moment when the Witch descended a stone stair nearly hidden in the ground. In but a few seconds she was gone completely, and Katherine distantly heard her command. “Down here, child.”
The interior of the crypt was not as gloomy as Katherine feared. Shafts had been carved into the rock ceiling to provide some light from above. Faded chalk markings on the walls close to the ground bore the names of various deceased members of the Godolphin family. Otherwise the space was curiously empty. “Set the box down, if you please,” said the Witch. Katherine obeyed. “They won’t disturb us here, I imagine! The less visited a spot, the better.”
“Who won’t disturb you?”
The question went unanswered. The Witch instead put both hands on her hips and surveyed the enclosure as if searching for fault. Then, with a small grunt of satisfaction, she began to draw the string binding the mouth of the burlap bag. She even knelt on the ground; Aunt Morland would have found it most unladylike. If she had any doubts before, that action alone helped Katherine decide the Witch was trustworthy.
“How might I help?” Katherine asked, eager to make herself useful. Soon she was performing several tasks for the lady scientist. She cleared a section of the floor of rocks and debris; she cleaned a strange mirror-like disk with her petticoat. Finally she helped take from the sack the box she had carried for so long.
It was a most curious container constructed of a wonderfully light-weight wood stained a dark brown. The box stood on four simple wooden squares for legs and was otherwise unadorned save for the lid’s gold hinges. When the Witch opened the top and peered within, she asked Katherine to hold the mirror while she worked. Katherine took the opportunity to look inside the box, for she was curious to see its odd mechanics.
She saw more polished disks inside the curious container, and round wheels with toothed edges similar to the large gears inside a clock. These were smaller and more cunning by far. There were a great quantity of them, each interlocking with another and glinting even in the dusky light of the crypt. Many bars with tiny handles lined one edge of the box. The Witch manipulated several of them, muttering to herself as they released. Katherine longed to touch one herself, but she knew better than to reach out impulsively. Her father had often told her, “First observe, next draw conclusions, then act.”
At length the Witch seemed to be satisfied with the arrangement of the levers, for she took the mirror from Katherine and fitted it into place. She closed the hinged lid and adjusted the box itself so that it sat firmly on the ground.
“Now.” She turned her attention to Katherine at last. “I’ve written a letter to my nephew that I’m a-journeying to London for the year, and that he needn’t come after me. He will be relieved I’m gone, of course. A spinster is an embarrassment to any reputable family, but an educated spinster is a positive burden. I was going to leave this,” she said, rummaging in her bosom and producing a rolled sheet of paper tied with a ribbon, “with someone in the village. You take it to the dullard yourself and tell him you met me on the road. It’s not a lie, in the event you worry about that sort of thing.”
Katherine accepted the roll of paper and looked about, puzzled. “But where are you really going?” she asked. The crypt was so improbable a setting for the beginning of an adventure that she could not help but wonder if the woman was mad after all.
The Witch paused, a mysterious smile upon her face. “It’s not so much a matter of where. Say, elsewhere. Elsewhen, perhaps. Or simply else.”
“But why are we here?”
“It’s quiet here. No Godolphins have lived in Hartscove for generations. No one disturbs an old crypt. No one would expect me to depart from a point such as this.” Katherine bit her lip in frustration at the woman’s answers. For a lady scientist, she could be remarkably vague.
Then the Witch began to tick off her fingers as she gave final orders. “Now, all I ask is that you check back here from time to time to see if I’ve dropped anything off. I expect I shall, given the chance. Souvenirs. Interesting books. Things of that sort. Just take them and store them in my cottage like a good girl. If something should go wrong with the box, by no means remove it. Merely leave it here. I shall fix it, of course, as I’ll be able to see it in . . . elsewhere. Provided they have the materials. If they don’t . . . well, I can’t be much worse off there than here.” This last thought seemed more reflective than the others. Katherine wondered if the Witch even remembered she was present. “You’ll remember that? Ah. The crystal.”
From some unseen pocket, the Witch produced a perfectly clear length of mineral crystal with edges polished straight and smooth. “That’s quartz,” said Katherine knowledgeably.
The Witch gave her a surprised look. “Very good. So it is. Your father did train you well,” she said. And without a word more, she carefully placed it into a carved groove in the lid of the box, where it fit as if it had been shaped especially to hold it.
The box issued a gentle whirring sound, and then began to vibrate slightly, as if the clockworks within had been set into motion. A satisfied expression crossed the Witch’s face. “Don’t expect me to write,” she said. “I’m a poor correspondent. And mind you, make no attempt to follow. It is not an afternoon for little girls there, either.”
Katherine was too astonished to pay attention. While the Witch spoke, a doorway formed on the wall behind her. Not a true doorway; it lacked the definition of wood frame and latch. What loomed was the shadow of an open doorway, barely perceptible against the granite of the crypt wall. Had she not been looking for it, or had she entered the dark underground enclosure from the outdoors with her eyes still sun-blinded, she would not have seen it at all. Katherine gasped in wonder.
“Goodbye, then,” said the Witch. “Check here twice a week, three times if you can. I shan’t promise to return in a year, but if I don’t much care for what I find, you’ll see me again. They say home’s always best.” She approached the doorway. “But I’ve never found Treclyffe much of a home.”
The Witch’s words so closely echoed her own feelings that Katherine was taken aback; she nearly missed seeing the woman step into the dark shadow of the arch and completely disappear. Katherine gasped in astonishment to discover herself suddenly alone. Save for the faint drone of the clockwork within the box on the floor, the crypt was utterly silent.
The Witch’s head appeared out of the veil of shadow. She smiled. “I suppose I should thank you,” she said simply. She then withdrew, leaving the girl once more by herself in the damp and empty crypt.
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