Chapter Eight #5
Aubrey veiled his eyes behind curls. Murmuring a response Dermot couldn’t hear, he wrapped his arms around himself and said nothing more.
‘And does your memory corroborate with your brother’s? That the boy deliberately spooked your horses, spitting curses at you with his aunt?’ Corrin said, simplifying the matter completely. It was as if a mythos was created in less than a minute.
Aubrey stuttered, setting his black eyes on Dermot. Even this was too much, making Dermot flinch back as his insides lit in searing agony.
‘I do not know,’ Aubrey said.
The crowd gasped, some holding on to companions as their bodies thrilled at the drama.
‘How can that be? Were you not there, did the events not transpire as Lord Robert said?’ Corrin blustered, becoming more agitated with each word. ‘Do you challenge his account?’
‘Whatever is the matter with you, have you taken ill?’ Amy whispered, tapping at Dermot’s shoulder as he shuddered.
‘I do not know!’ Aubrey shouted, raking fingers over skin as if to ruin himself. White tore into red as he clawed, blood beading at the surface. ‘For God’s sake, stop this!’
While to Dermot this was an unexpected protest, Thorne would see it through glass, distorted and grotesque. It would be decried as hysteria won through possession or witchcraft.
‘My word,’ Weston whispered. ‘Did Lord Robert not say his brother was prone to such behaviour? Whyever is he at trial, should he not be locked away?’
‘Under lock and key, certainly, but then…’ Thorne said, tilting his head so his curls swept against Dermot’s shoulder. Immediately the scent of lilies hit, heady like a rainy day in the garden. Dermot closed his eyes, suffocated by it.
Corrin, evidently not having expected to depart from the script he’d gone over with Robert, signalled to the judge. ‘Your Honour, something is amiss with Lord Aubrey.’
The crowd tittered amongst themselves, each one vying for the more intriguing tale. Whispers became debates, which soon devolved into shouting. Each cry rang harder than the last, that of liar, traitor, lunatic, witch.
‘Quiet,’ hissed a voice from above. Dermot did not see the judge move his lips.
‘My brothers beat the boy, the woman only cursed in her agony. They are not witches!’ Aubrey cried. With each passing moment, he became more like a desperate, yowling animal, utterly unlike Robert, who had come to them like a prince.
‘Silence!’ the prosecuting magistrate shouted, evidently none too interested in any dissenting accounts.
‘Your Honour,’ Thorne said, standing with a flourish. ‘If I may?’
‘What?’ Weston said, forgoing all politeness. ‘No, you mustn’t, sit down,’ he pleaded, though everyone would have heard.
The judge said nothing as Thorne strode out into the courtroom.
‘God spare us,’ Weston said. Such was the consequence of desire, that two young men like Thorne and Corrin could climb to the highest echelons of society through appearance alone.
‘I have participated in many witch trials,’ Thorne said, drawing a finger across the witness box.
It being like a caress, Dermot’s blood simmered.
‘I have seen many a witch,’ he went on, speaking with great fervour but softness of voice.
‘This, the raking of hands across the face, the sudden stuttering, are symptoms of maleficarum. That is, to be clear, unequivocal evidence that great evil has reached in and sought to harm the family most grievously.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ Corrin said. Far from the boyish confidence of before, he stood dumbfounded. The placid smile he’d worn as he played interrogator with Robert was nowhere to be found. He looked about for help but no one came to his aid.
‘He is bewitched,’ Thorne declared. With one flick of those luxurious, impossible curls, he walked to the judge, teasing his fingers across the man’s desk.
‘Lord Aubrey must be restrained, locked away. The hysteria renders him little better than an invalid. Down to his very veins, he is nothing more than a witch.’
‘Dear God!’ Amy said.
The crowd broke into raucous cries, startling even Robert. They were not the frightened little noises lords fantasied about, but exulting and powerful, young women screaming that witches had come to hex them all.
‘Mr Thorne,’ the judge managed, head going insensibly to the side. ‘Men, restrain that boy.’
‘No!’ Aubrey cried. ‘I do not lie. Please, good people, they are not witches!’
This impassioned display served only to turn the crowd further against him. What could it be, they murmured to one another, but witchcraft. The nobility did not shout so, they appeared like statues to the people, idols to be worshipped, showing their anger only in private.
Men who had so far done nothing but stand by the door rushed forward, pushing Aubrey to his knees.
Dermot’s vision blackened, eyes stinging, but he could not avert them fast enough to miss one bastard hauling Aubrey over his shoulder.
The crowd cheered as their lord was carried to the edge of the courtroom and again thrown to his knees, a rope securing his hands with a sharp tug.
‘No,’ Dermot murmured, agonising as he imagined even a mere bruise on that skin. He fixed his head firmly into his hands, pulling back when he realised that these fools might take him for a witch.
Robert hit Tristan hard on the leg when he stumbled forward to intervene, forcing him back down.
Dermot watched in disbelief as Tristan shivered, lips tremulous, as if natural affection for his youngest brother momentarily broke the spell.
And while Robert sat smiling beside him, Tristan’s hands clutched the side of his chair in obvious pain.
Thorne’s golden eyes swept the courtroom.
‘Witch,’ Dermot muttered, much disturbed by this growing suspicion.
‘How can it be?’ Amy asked, ignorant. ‘Aubrey is the sweetest boy. He’s never troubled anyone. A witch!’
Aubrey was not the witch. Pulling his hair back, Thorne abandoned the old fool he’d been playing with in favour of the centre of the courtroom.
Without his cloak, his clothes clung to him attractively, near causing Dermot to forget the idea he’d had but moments before.
That Weston, so-called witchfinder, had hanged dozens of women and made the true sorcerer his pet.
‘It does not please me to apprehend Lord Aubrey. But let this be a lesson, no one is safe from a witch’s wiles,’ Thorne said, banishing Corrin to the periphery. Again he fixed his golden, unnatural eyes on everyone in attendance before finally coming to the little bench. ‘Dermot. Come here.’
Dermot edged backwards. Even as the crowd tittered, he did not move until Amy slapped his arm.
‘Do you not know you have been called?’ Amy said, hitting him again.
Gritting his teeth, Dermot stood and walked as steadily as he was able.
The shame of the ordeal turned his face hot, heating it so thoroughly as to leave the rest of him dissonant in cold.
It was worse knowing all could see his shame, face red and body white, a veritable monster.
He fixed himself into that tight box with his head down, humiliated and unable to look at Thorne.
‘State your full name,’ Thorne said.
‘Dermot Hatfield,’ Dermot said, his father’s surname jarring on his tongue. He heard someone laugh.
‘What is your profession?’ Thorne asked.
Cheeks burning, Dermot said, ‘I work in the kitchen.’ It was ridiculous that a man’s profession should be so tied to his soul as to warrant mention in court, blackening his testimony.
‘Yes? And what is your exact title?’ Thorne needled.
‘I am a scullion,’ Dermot said finally. He heard a few women giggle and closed his eyes. They, of course, would be forced into employment soon enough. There was nothing a man in power wouldn’t do to secure more tax.
‘And what duties do you perform?’ Thorne said.
‘I assist Chef Béchard in the preparation of meals. I clean and do a number of other small tasks, whatever is required at the time,’ Dermot said.
‘And what is your understanding of the events as they transpired? Did the boy leap out with the intention of startling the horses, his aunt cursing Lord Robert, the two of them performing some evil maleficarum?’ Thorne said.
Startled at their shifting from kitchen work to the matter at hand, Dermot shuddered, his hands clutching the wood of the witness box. He cast his eyes between Robert and Aubrey, one staring as to bore holes into his head and the other blind as justice herself.
‘I…’ Dermot stuttered, looking everywhere but Thorne. He gulped as Robert’s lip quirked, raising one dark brow in his direction. Shrinking back, Dermot stood defeated, having lost the fight at birth. ‘It is all right. That is exactly what happened.’
‘Fie!’ a woman screamed.
Dermot’s back caught against the wood, its jagged edge piercing his skin.
He’d thought it to be the aunt but, turning his gaze to the crowd, he found his own mother.
She stood with her black hair in a great frizz, dressed haphazardly in some kitchen frock, appearing like a wraith.
He hadn’t seen her since starting employment, not having secured any time off excepting religious days.
‘Evil lies! Nasty ingrate!’ she called out.
Hardly able to be heard over the chorus of curses, she said, ‘Never did I think I’d see the day.
I come from a village near to this woman’s cottage, and we all trade with each other, vegetables and the like and other goods.
Her nephew, a wilful boy, true, has played many a time with village children.
They’re a good family, not witches, and you’re all demons and liars! ’
‘And who is this?’ Thorne said, forgoing their interrogation so he could set his blazing eyes onto another. Released at last, Dermot breathed freely, recoiling from his hold on him.
‘A better woman than the lot of you!’ she howled.
This, coming from a woman in her late forties about the size of two ladies threaded together, was cause for much merriment.
Young women murmured to one another, prouder than any emperor as they contrived to be heard above the spectacle despite their pretence of modesty.
They quickly fell to derision of her looks while the men looked on, perturbed.
Thorne stood playing with his hair, vainer than any of the women. No wonder he hanged the old and ugly first. ‘Your Honour, if you would.’
The judge’s head stuttered between the crowd and Thorne. ‘Remove the woman,’ he intoned.
Two of the men who’d so eagerly grabbed Aubrey barrelled across the courtroom, apprehending Breesha in an instant. As she cried out in protest, not pain, the crowd laughed as if attending a pantomime. When she passed Dermot, she shouted, ‘Shame on you!’
At least she did not name him as her own son. That would’ve ended with the two of them on the scaffold. Of course, unbeknownst to his mother, the aunt had already named her as a witch.
‘You see the great evil that takes hold in a town after but one witch has been found!’ Thorne said. His gentle voice faltered, unused to such commotion. He stood leaning against the stand clutching his chest, blood trickling down his chin.
Weston stood and, in a great show of stupidity, called out Thorne’s true name in error.
This small revelation set the crowd ablaze.
They began hollering and jumping, incredulous that such an important foreigner would come to their island.
The judge’s face was impassive, and Dermot realised he must’ve known.
‘I…’ Thorne murmured, scarcely able to hold himself up. ‘They are witches. I know it to be…’
The crowd exulted at their own kind being condemned. Witch, they all cried out, a cacophony so strong Dermot’s hands instinctually went to his ears.
‘Witches,’ the judge echoed.
Thorne’s body came to life like the deaths of two innocents restored him. ‘As my partner and I have done before, I feel we must do again. If witchcraft is an evil done through holy law, rather than natural law, it is right that instead of hanging on the noose, they should be burnt at the stake.’
As the crowd howled their approval, Dermot took his hands from his ears and pressed them to his face, already wet with tears.