Chapter 26
Sasha doesn’t want to go back into court.
It isn’t easier now she’s started – it’s even harder than she’d thought it would be.
The advocate depute is being nice but he clearly thinks she’s barking mad.
The rest of the court, too. It’s full of sceptics – she can tell from the vibes even with her eyes shut.
She’s pushing against the tide of them, every step heavier than the last.
‘Tell the court what happened next,’ Mr Alexander says.
Deep breath. Now it gets really dark. She looks round the courtroom but there’s no escape.
Other than her mum, smiling at her in what’s meant to be a reassuring way.
Sasha can read the panic behind the smile, though, the fear rendering it a grimace.
Her mum knows what happens next. She knows what Sasha doesn’t want to say.
‘We went to Christian’s house that October half-term. Well, I say house. I mean her country estate.’
The advocate depute nods, encouraging her to go on.
‘It’s like a stately home. Not like a normal house at all. Loads and loads of land. They do grouse shooting there. It’s up in the north of Scotland, right up in the Highlands.’
‘How long were you staying there?’
‘The whole week. My mum was away, Isobel and Eliza both wanted us to hang out as well.’
Sasha remembers what it was like to arrive.
Christian hadn’t warned them that this was what it would be like, that they would have to drive for half an hour to get to her house even after they’d turned into her gate.
Even Isobel was quiet in the car, her normal arrogance subdued by the scale of it all.
The road got rougher, narrower, the trees surrounding it denser and denser, pine trees in serried ranks.
They’d just finished doing Macbeth and Sasha couldn’t help shivering thinking of the threat of the woods of Great Dunsinane.
These trees could do some damage if they decided to gang up on you.
It was even worse when they got to the house.
Gothic, looming turrets, the front door huge, wooden and heavy.
The hall was full of dead animals, stags’ heads, a stuffed eagle hanging from the rafters.
Glass cases of dead game birds lined the walls, their bright plumage deceptively cheerful. Still dead.
A man in a black suit had opened the door silently to them, ignoring Christian when she said hello. Sasha had felt that he’d sneered at the sight of her, though she might have been imagining it. Everything about the environment was setting her teeth on edge.
‘Why are there so many dead animals?’ Eliza said. She didn’t look unhappy about it, though. There was a glee to her. Her nerves were clearly subsiding.
‘They came with the house,’ Christian said. ‘It used to belong to these people back in Edwardian times. They liked to go to Africa and shoot things. Wait till you see their museum.’
‘Does your family shoot things?’ Eliza asked. Sasha knew it was said with hope, not disapproval.
‘They try. I succeed. Had some luck earlier – that’s dinner next week sorted,’ a man said from behind them. He’d walked into the hall while they were looking at a display of stuffed pheasants. Sasha turned to face him – dark, handsome, wearing an Aran jumper and a kilt. ‘Hello, Christian.’
Christian had blushed. She mumbled something incoherently. Isobel and Eliza stood on either side of her, eyes beady as hawks.
‘Take your friends to the museum – it’s not locked. Your parents will be back soon so it’ll fill the time nicely until you see them. And I’ll take you all out shooting in the morning if you like.’
‘Not birds!’ Christian said, the words finally coming out clear.
‘Clay pigeons, you half-wit. I’m not wasting pheasants on this lot.’
They followed Christian out of the main house and down a path to a smaller building to the side of the lawn that stretched out in front.
‘Is he your gamekeeper, Christian?’ Isobel said.
‘Are you fucking him, Christian?’ Eliza said.
‘Does he take little flowers and weave them into your pubes while calling you my lady, Christian?’ Isobel said. Both girls collapsed into fits of laughter.
Sasha said nothing. They went into the museum and all laughter stopped.
‘What the fuck?’ Isobel.
It was a temple of death. Hundreds of stuffed animals. From tiny hummingbirds to a baby elephant standing proud in the middle of the room, surrounded by antelopes, there wasn’t an inch of space left uncovered.
‘Think of all the spells we could cast with these,’ Eliza said.
‘I don’t know,’ Isobel said. ‘They might be a bit too dead, if you know what I mean.’ She turned to Christian.
‘Is there any way of getting anything a bit more recently dead? I mean, like something that’s been shot?
I’ve been looking out for dead cats on the roads round school but that would be way better. ’
‘Why do you want a dead cat?’ Sasha said.
‘It would be useful,’ Isobel said. ‘This whole place will be perfect for it.’
‘After everyone was asleep, we sneaked down to the game larder. That’s what they called the room where they put anything that they’d hunted.
It needed to be hung, or something,’ Sasha says.
‘Anyway, Isobel wanted to see. She was practically slavering at the thought of getting her hands on something dead. Eliza was almost as bad. It was really creepy.’
‘Did they say what they wanted to do with it?’ the advocate depute says.
‘No. Isobel and Eliza were the ones planning it all. They kept looking at each other and giggling, going off into corners and whispering. They were barely sharing anything with Christian, absolutely not with me.’
‘What happened when you went down to the game room?’
‘We crept in. I think we were expecting to see pheasants or something like that. Eliza wouldn’t let us put the lights on.
She just had the torch from her phone. It was quite scary.
There were these hooks hanging from the ceiling and there were two things hanging from them.
I thought they were rabbits to begin with, but as we got closer, Isobel started freaking out,’ Sasha says.
Her hands are cold. She remembers the light dancing on the ceiling, the shadows that the corpses cast, big as men.
‘Did she say why that was?’
‘She realised that the dead things were hares. The gamekeeper had shot them earlier through the head. Isobel burst into tears. She kept saying that hares were sacred, they were magic. They shouldn’t be harmed. This meant that something terrible was going to happen.’
Isobel Gowdie. Isobel Gowdie. That’s what Isobel had kept saying.
This could be Isobel Gowdie. I shall go into a hare.
Sasha didn’t want to look stupid so she said nothing at the time but she looked it up later.
One of the old Scottish witches; she’d turn herself into a hare.
Her namesake. No wonder Isobel was so upset.
‘What happened next?’ the advocate depute says. Sasha snaps back into now.
‘Isobel took one of the hares down from the hook, wrapped it in a tea towel and we went to the chapel.’
‘The chapel?’
‘The house was so big it had its own chapel. We went to look at it after we’d looked at the taxidermy museum.’
‘What did you do there?’ Mr Alexander says.
Sasha sighs. It’s getting harder and harder to speak, like something has hold of her tongue, stopping it from working.
She glances over at Eliza but the girl’s face is blank, her hair over her eyes.
Sasha shivers, turns away. ‘They said we needed to desecrate it, to punish the house for the killing of the hares. This would be the only way of righting the wrong that had been done to such a symbolic creature. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but they basically danced round making a mess, knocking the cushions off the chairs and scattering the flowers from a vase on the altar all over the floor.
Then Isobel climbed up on to the altar and took the crucifix that was hanging on the wall above it and turned it upside down. ’
‘Did you take part in this?’
‘No. I thought they were being silly. It was creepy, but it was ridiculous. Like they were just kids playing.’
‘Was there a point when it felt more serious again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell us what happened.’
The mood had switched just like that. Isobel stripped the cloth off the altar and put it on the floor at the front of the chapel.
She was carrying her black tote bag as usual, and she put it down on the ground beside the cloth, pulling out a black candle which she put on the altar and lit.
The air shifted – Sasha started to feel cold seeping into her, like she’d never be warm again.
‘Did she take anything else out of her bag?’ the advocate depute asks.
‘She took out her ritual knife. That’s what she called it, though it looked like a normal kitchen knife to me.
Not that she ever let me have a close look at it.
She wouldn’t let anyone touch it. Kept it wrapped in a black silk cloth.
Anyway, she laid the hare out on the floor.
Told us all to stand around it in a circle and hold hands.
We had to shut our eyes and she said an incantation. ’
‘What did she say?’
‘I don’t remember exactly.’ Sasha is lying.
She knows exactly what Isobel said. But she can’t bring herself to say the exact words.
‘She called on the demons, asked them if they would present themselves. That she was going to give this dead hare to them as an offering, to make its death worthwhile, and that she would gratefully accept any message that they sent.’
‘What happened next?’ Mr Alexander asks.
Sasha closes her eyes for a moment. Swallows. ‘She took her knife, and she cut into the hare.’
It was horrific. The smell that came out almost immediately had made her want to retch, something so strong and feral that Sasha had recoiled from it, covering her face with her hands.
Stay still, Isobel had barked, intent on her work, as she tugged the knife down the hare’s belly.
Blood was spurting out, so much blood – more Shakespeare, who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Isobel put down the knife, bowing her head in respect, pulled the sides of the incision apart. Reached inside.
‘Then she put her hand up. She was holding something. There was so much blood it was hard to see, especially as we only had the light from a phone. But she put her hand fully into the light and I could see what it was.’ Sasha pauses.
‘And?’
She knows the advocate depute is getting impatient. But she’s choking on it, the words refusing to come out. Finally, ‘It was a foetus. A baby hare. A leveret. All pink and slimy and covered in blood.’
‘What did Isobel do with it?’
‘She stood up, walked over to Christian and she held it right up to her face.’
‘Did she say anything?’ the advocate depute asks.
Sasha nods. ‘Yes.’ She doesn’t even need to shut her eyes to see the scene play out in front of her.
‘Using her words, can you tell us exactly what Isobel said?’ There’s an urgency to the advocate depute’s voice.
Sasha nods again. ‘This is what she said. I remember it exactly. Her voice was weird, all deep and powerful. She said: “The baby is dead. The hare’s baby is dead. Do you know what this means, Christian? Do you? It means that you’ll be next. You are going to die.”’