The Silver Witch

She turns, weeping, to the mistress she professed to love. I do believe she was sincere in this, at least until the point when the princess chose not to defend her, not in any way to help her, if only to lessen the severity of her punishment.

‘My Princess,’ she trembles as she speaks, ‘have I not been a true and loyal servant to you all these years? Does it count for naught that I have tended to you, comforted you, been your helpmate and your friend through so many travails? Have I not kept your secrets safe and done everything I could for your happiness? Can you not find it in your heart to help me now? Will you not speak for me?’

The princess does not answer, only turns her head away.

Nesta cries out. ‘What manner of woman are you? Have you no pity?’

‘Enough!’ Rhodri seeks to silence her, bidding the guards replace her gag, but Nesta wriggles from their grasp long enough to say more.

‘You!’ She directs her rage at me now. ‘If you had only thought of someone other than yourself Hywel would still be alive. This need never have come to pass! None of it! It is your selfishness, Seren Arianaidd, that has been the cause of this!’

‘Be silent, woman!’ Brynach tells her. ‘Let the execution proceed.’

Nesta snarls, her face contorting. The sky darkens as a flock of rooks rise up from the woods and fly so thick and so many that they block out the sun’s rays. She raises her voice, fueled by hatred and her own fear. ‘A curse upon you! A curse upon all your children, and their children! May they never know peace. May they none of them live to see their own young grown! May they die in terror and screaming, each and every one of them!’

It is a terrible curse. Such a legacy of dread and sorrow! All around people gasp and cry out, some of the children weeping. And all of them look at me, for had she not seconds before named me as the reason for all that we stand witness to?

‘Silence her!’ Brynach shouts.

But I know the truth of it. I saw where she directed her nightmare curse, I saw whose eye she hooked with her wild stare, whose future she blighted. And the words were not meant for me, but for Wenna and her brother, and his son.

The guards, aided by a shaken Rhodri, grapple with Nesta, tying her gag so tight as she struggles that I hear the cracking of her jawbone. They spin her on her heel and push her headlong into the grave. Quickly, they turn and lift the great flat stone that lies upon the grass beside the grave. We can all hear Nesta’s muffled cries as she tries to get to her feet, but before she has time to do so, the stone is dropped into place on top of her. Mothers cover their children’s ears. Some among us cheer, letting go their grief at losing Hywel, finding a way to vent their impotent rage. Others fall silent, lowering their heads, sickened by the suffering man is able to inflict upon his own kind. The priest prays. The soldiers in the ranks behind where the prince stands bang their shields with their swords, drowning out Nesta’s pitiful cries and moans. Noises that are soon enough smothered by the soil and stones shoveled into the grave. In less than two minutes it is done. The opening is closed. The earth has swallowed two more bodies. Hywel will have made his journey a hero. Nesta will stay where she lies. And the rest of us must continue with our lives, bearing our loss and carrying our guilt. And Rhodri must live in hope that our prayers and that brutal stone are sufficient to trap the witch’s magic, else her curse will be visited upon his family, and I would not place a wager on Siōn living to see another summer.





21

TILDA

Now she begins to examine her prison. Her eyes adjust to the gloom so that she can make out a corrugated iron roof—which resounds to the beating of the relentless icy rain upon it—and wooden walls on three sides, one containing the barred door. The small window above where she sits is too narrow to pass through and too high to reach. The slimy floor on which she sits is actually a platform, an indoor jetty providing covered access to the space where a boat could be moored. But there is no boat, has not been for years. Decades. Just an empty rectangle of dark, evil-smelling water that laps at the rotting planks only a few short yards below Tilda’s feet. This entrance to the boathouse may once have let in light, but was long ago boarded up, from the ceiling to the water, so that only an uneven sliver of gray, a subtle lightening of the gloom, can be seen. The water at this point is overgrown with a tangle of reeds and rushes, so that it resembles more a swamp than a lake. With mounting horror Tilda realizes that the only possible way out is through that deep, weed-filled, treacherous water. She sits, benumbed by what has happened, stunned into motionless terror, her ears filled with the near-deafening sound of the incessant rain beating upon the old tin roof.