The first day I swallowed a lot of dirty water and was sick. But subsequently Arkwright joined me in the canal, and with him by my side in case I got into trouble, my confidence steadily grew and I soon managed my first strokes unaided. On the whole things were a lot better, and Arkwright seemed to be making an effort with his drinking. He only reached for the bottle after supper, and that was my cue to get myself off to bed.
By the end of the week I could manage five widths of the canal, turning quickly each time by kicking against the bank with my feet. I could also do the “dog paddle”; it didn’t seem as effective as the other stroke but it enabled me to float in the same spot without sinking—something really useful for someone who’d been as nervous about swimming as me!
“Well, Master Ward,” Arkwright told me, “you’re starting to make progress. But tomorrow it’s back to hunting with the dogs, and this time we’ll try something different. It’s about time you learned to cope with the marsh.”
CHAPTER XI
The Witch’s Finger
AFTER breakfast my new master made me clear the table and wash up while he went upstairs for an hour. When he came down, he was carrying a small hand-drawn map, which he placed on the table.
“We’re going to repeat the hunting practice, but this time the terrain is far more difficult. Water witches love marshland and sometimes we have to go in there and flush ’em out!
“Here are the canal and the mill,” he said, pointing with his finger, “and here’s the marsh to the southwest. The most treacherous area, which could swallow you up in the blink of an eye, is the mere, so keep away. Little Mere, they call it. It’s not a big lake, but a dangerous bog extends for some way around it—particularly to the south and east. The rest might prove difficult going but you’d probably survive.
“Now, there are lots of paths through the marsh, three of them marked on this map. It’s up to you to work out the best routes. One of ’em might even allow you to outrun the dogs. . . .”
When my jaw dropped, Arkwright smiled, showing a lot of teeth. “This is where you’re heading for,” he said, pointing to the map again. “It’s the ruin of a small monastery on Monks’ Hill. Not much left of it now but a couple of walls and some foundations. Reach there before the dogs get you and you’ve won. That means you won’t have to do it again tomorrow! And remember, this is for your own good. Familiarizing yourself with tracts of bog like this is an important part of your training. Right. You’ve got a couple of minutes to study that map and then we’ll get started.”
I spent a nervous few moments peering at Arkwright’s map. The most northerly path was the most direct and would allow the least time for the dogs to run me down. It passed close to the Little Mere, with its treacherous, dangerous bogland, but I thought it was worth taking a chance. So, my route chosen, I went out into the garden, ready to get it over with.
Arkwright was sitting on the porch step, the two dogs at his feet. “Well, Master Ward, know what you’re doing?”
I smiled and nodded.
“We could leave it until tomorrow if you like,” he offered. “The mist’s starting to close in again.”
I looked beyond the garden. The mist was creeping in from the west, drifting across the marsh in tendrils to form a gray curtain. But I still felt confident about the path I’d chosen. Might as well get it over with.
“No, I’ll do it now. How much start do I get?” I asked with a smile. The hunting and swimming had made me a lot fitter, I thought. It would be nice to win and I wondered if I could.
“Five minutes!” Arkwright growled. “And I’ve already started counting . . .”
I spun away and started to sprint toward the salt moat.
“Oi!” Arkwright shouted. “You won’t be needing your staff!”
Without even looking back, I threw it from me and splashed through the moat. I’d show him! Those dogs were fast and fierce, but with a five-minute start they’d never catch me.
Moments later I was sprinting along my chosen path, the mist closing in on either side. I’d been running for only a couple of minutes when I heard the dogs barking. Arkwright hadn’t kept his word! He’d released them already! He was doing his best to give me the training I needed, but despite that he always liked to win. Annoyed, I drove myself even harder, my feet fairly flying along the path.
But the visibility quickly shrank to a few feet and I was forced to slow right down. Relying on scent, the dogs wouldn’t have the same handicap, and it slowly began to dawn on me that I wouldn’t outrun them after all. Why hadn’t I accepted his offer to wait until tomorrow? As I ran, my feet started splashing, and I realized that I’d reached the more dangerous part of my journey: the point closest to the mere.
I could still hear the muffled barks of the dogs behind me. The mist distorted the sound and made it difficult to tell how close they were. By now I was reduced to a steady jog—far too slow.
It was then that I heard a strange, plaintive cry from somewhere above. What was it? Some sort of bird? If so, it was one I’d not heard before. A few moments later it was repeated, and for some reason that eerie sound unnerved me. There was something quite unnatural about it. But I carried on, aware that the dogs must be gaining on me.
After another three or four minutes I saw a shape on the path ahead. Slowly I came to a halt, the dogs momentarily forgotten.
What was it? I peered into the mist and saw a woman walking ahead of me, shiny dark hair down to her shoulders. She was dressed in a green shawl and a long brown skirt that brushed the ground. I strode on quickly. Once beyond her, I could start running again. Even better, her presence might put the dogs off my trail.
I didn’t want to scare the poor woman by coming up behind her and taking her unawares, so when I was about ten paces away, I called out in a friendly voice, “Hello! Would you mind if I came past? I know the path’s really narrow but if you keep still, I’ll be able to squeeze by—”
I expected the woman to step to one side or look round to see who’d spoken. But she just stopped on the path with her back to me. The dogs sounded really close now. I just had to get past her or they’d be upon me and Arkwright would have won.
At that moment I felt a sudden chill, a warning that something from the dark was near. But it came far too late. . . .
When I was just a couple of paces behind her, the woman suddenly spun round to look at me, and my heart lurched up into my mouth at the nightmare that confronted me. Her mouth opened to reveal two rows of yellow-green teeth, but instead of normal canines she had four immense fangs. I retched as her foul breath washed over me. Her left eye was closed, the right one open—a vertical slit like the cold eye of a snake or lizard—and her nose was a beak of sharp bone without any covering of flesh or even skin. Her hands looked human but for her fingernails, which were sharp, curved talons.
Her hair shone because it was saturated with water, and what I’d taken for a shawl was a smock covered in green scum, while on the lower half of her body she wore a ragged skirt caked with brown marsh slime. Her feet, which now protruded from beneath her hem, were bare and streaked with mud but they weren’t human: The toes were webbed, each ending in a sharp talon.
I was about to turn, ready to flee back the way I’d come, when suddenly she touched two fingers to the upper lid of her left eye and it opened very wide.
The eye was red—and I don’t just mean the iris! The whole eye looked as if it was completely filled with blood. I was petrified in both senses of the word: filled with terror and rendered immobile where I was standing, as if turned to stone. I began to sweat with fear as her red eye seemed to grow bigger and brighter.
I didn’t even seem to be breathing; a constricting, choking sensation gripped my throat and upper chest. Neither could I tear my eyes away from the witch. If only I could look away, perhaps her power over me would be broken? I strained every muscle in my body but to no avail. I just couldn’t move.
Like a serpent, her left hand struck out toward my face
. Her taloned forefinger went straight into my left ear, and I felt a stab of pain as it curved and pierced it right through.
She stepped off the path into the marsh, dragging me after her. Two more paces and my feet began to sink into the bog. I flailed my arms at her, but I was in agony from the talon that impaled my ear and could do nothing but follow in her wake as we sank deeper and deeper into the marsh.
How I wished I’d brought my staff. But even that couldn’t have helped because I was under the spell of the blood-filled eye, unable to move. What was she, some sort of water witch? I tried to shout for help, but all that escaped my lips was an animal moan of terror and pain.
The next moment there was a growl from the path behind and something black launched itself at my captor. I had a glimpse of Claw’s bared fangs, then the witch’s talon was ripped from my ear and I fell backward. For a moment the marsh closed over my head. Instinctively I closed my mouth and held my breath, but even so the slime oozed up my nose, and I felt myself sinking. Being able to swim was of little help. I was floundering, trying to get my head clear, when I felt hands grip me by the shoulders and start to drag me backward.
Within moments I was lying on my back on the path and Arkwright was kneeling beside me, staring down with something approaching concern on his face. Then he put his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, and the dogs came back, stinking of the marsh, steam rising from their bodies. Claw was whimpering with pain but she had something in her mouth.
“Give it here!” Arkwright commanded. “Drop it! Drop it now!”
With a growl, Claw allowed something to drop from her jaws into his open hand.
“Good dog! Good dog! What a wonderful girl you are! Finally, after all these years!” Arkwright shouted, his voice filled with triumph. “We’ll find her now! She won’t get away this time.”
I looked at what he was holding in his hand, hardly able to believe what I was seeing.
It was a finger. A long forefinger with a green hue to the skin. And instead of a fingernail, it had a curved talon. Claw had bitten off the witch’s finger.
CHAPTER XII
Morwena
AFTER we returned to the mill, Arkwright rushed out for the local doctor to attend to my ear. Despite his reluctance to allow a stranger into his home, he must have thought the injury serious enough to make an exception. The truth was, I didn’t think it was that bad. It certainly wasn’t hurting much. If anything worried me, it was the possibility of it becoming infected.
Arkwright watched critically as the doctor dressed my wound. He was a tall man with an athletic build and a healthy outdoor complexion, but he was as nervous as most people are in the presence of a spook and asked no questions about how I’d got the wound.
“I’ve cleaned it as well as I can but there’s still some risk of infection,” he warned, looking anxiously down at the dogs, which growled threateningly at him. “Still, you’re young and youth has resilience. It’ll leave a bit of a scar, though.”
Once I’d been attended to, the doctor set to work on the wounded dog, who whined with pain while Arkwright held her down. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening, but there were deep gouges in her chest and back where they had been raked by talons. The doctor cleaned these, then smeared them liberally with ointment.
As he picked up his bag to leave, he nodded at Arkwright. “I’ll call back the day after tomorrow to see how both my patients are doing.”
“I wouldn’t waste your time, Doctor,” Arkwright growled, handing him a coin for his trouble. “The boy’s strong and I’m sure he’ll be fine. As for the bitch, she’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. But if it does prove necessary, I’ll contact you.”
With those words, the doctor was dismissed and Arkwright escorted him across the moat.
“Claw saved your life,” he said on his return. “But it wasn’t for love of you. You’re going to have to work hard with these dogs. We’ll see if they’ll let you feed them, but now we need to talk. How did it happen? How did the witch manage to get so close to you?”
“She was walking on the path ahead. I was running hard, trying to stay ahead of the dogs, and just wanted to pass her. When she turned round, it was too late. She hooked her talon through my ear before I could move.”
“Not many have survived being hooked, Master Ward, so you can count yourself lucky. Very lucky indeed. That method of seizing prey is practiced by all water witches. Sometimes they thrust their finger into the mouth and spear the inside of the cheek,” he said, and pointed to the scar on his own left cheek.
“Aye, that’s her mark on me. I was lucky to get away. The same witch did it! It happened about seven weeks ago. Afterward poison set in and I took to my bed for three weeks and almost died. Occasionally she stabs her victim through the hand, usually the left. Sometimes she even hooks upward into the lower jaw and wraps her finger around the teeth. Had she done that, she’d have had a much better grip. As it was, she couldn’t pull too hard or your ear might have ripped. But with a grip on your jaw, she’d have dragged you away into the marsh long before the bitch bit off her finger.”
“Who is she?” I asked. It seemed to me that Arkwright knew a lot about her.
“She’s an old enemy of mine, Master Ward. One that I’ve hunted for a long time—the oldest and most dangerous of all the water witches.”
“Where has she come from?” I asked.
“She’s very old,” he began. “Some say a thousand years or more. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that myself, but she’s roamed this land for a very long time, in other counties as well as this. Stories about her go back for centuries. Marshes and fens are her favorite haunts but she likes lakes and canals, too. I don’t dignify common water witches with a name because they aren’t like land-based witches. Most have lost the power of speech and are little better than animals. But this one’s special: She’s got two names. Morwena is her true name, but Bloodeye is the name some folk call her in the County. She’s crafty. Very crafty. She often goes for easy prey such as young children but can easily pull a grown man into the water, draining him of blood while she slowly drowns him. However, as you know to your cost, her left eye is her most potent weapon. A single glance from that bloodeye can paralyze her prey.”
“How can we manage to get close to her?” I asked. “One glance and we’ll be rooted to the spot.”
Arkwright shook his head. “It’s not quite as bad as it seems, Master Ward. Some, like you, have been close and still survived to tell the tale. You see, she must conserve her power for when it’s most needed. That left eye is often closed, the lids bound together with a sharp piece of bone, and it has a further limitation: It can bind only one person at a time.”
“You seem to know a good deal about her,” I said.
“I’ve been hunting her for ten years, but never has she come here, so close to my home. Never before has she ventured onto the paths of Monastery Marsh. So what brings her here? That’s the question we must ask. It was you she waited for on the marsh path, so I think that Mr. Gregory’s warning might prove correct.”
“You mean . . .”
“Aye, lad, it might well be that the Fiend has sent her against you. And that’s going to cost her dear. Because now I have her finger and we’ll be able to use that to track her back to her lair. After all those fruitless years, now at last I’ll have her!”
“Can the dogs follow a trail across water?” I asked in amazement.
Arkwright shook his head and gave me a rare grin. “They’re good but not that skilled, Master Ward! If something comes out of the water and goes overland, even across a deep bog, they can track it. But not through water. No, we’ll find Morwena’s lair by another method. But only when we’re at full strength. We’ll leave it a few days until Claw’s and your own wounds have healed.”
I nodded in agreement because my ear was beginning to throb.
“In the meantime,” said Arkwright, “I’ve got a book about her. I suggest you sit by
the stove and read it so you know exactly what we’re up against.”
So saying, he went up the stairs and came down a few moments later carrying a leather-bound book, which he handed to me. The title on the spine was Morwena.
He left me alone and went out with the dogs. Immediately I noticed that the book was written in Arkwright’s own hand. He was the author! I began to read.
There are many legends and accounts describing the genesis of Morwena. Some consider her to be the offspring of another witch. Others believe that she was somehow born of the soft earth, spawned from bog and slime, gestated within the very depths of Mother Earth, the deepest chasms her womb. The first seems more likely, but if so, who was the mother? Neither in legends, folktales, nor the many dubious histories I have researched is she named.
However, all agree on one thing: the identity of Morwena’s father. Her progenitor was the Fiend, also known as “the Devil,” “Old Nick,” “the Father of Lies” or “the Lord of Darkness”.
I paused there, shocked by those words. The Fiend had sent his own daughter to kill me! I realized how lucky I’d been to survive that encounter with her on the marsh. But for Claw, I’d be dead. I read on, now starting to skip passages that were difficult or unclear in any way. Soon it was apparent that although Arkwright had taught me some things about Morwena, there was much more to learn.
Morwena is by far the most notorious of all water witches, her killings too numerous to document. She feeds upon blood, and that is the source of her dark, magical power.
Historically, human sacrifices were usually made to her as the moon waxed toward fullness, when blood was most able to augment her strength. Newborn babes best fed her cruel needs, but when children could not be found, adults of all ages were welcome. The young were cast into the Blood Pool; older offerings were chained in a subterranean chamber until the propitious moment.