The Honey Witch

Chapter XI





I found Ana Lagori sitting on the front porch cot, as though waiting patiently for someone to arrive. She watched my approach in immovable silence and when I handed her the greenhouse pot, she not only appeared surprised, but graciously pleased.

“No one has ever given me the likes of a white lilac before,” she said, admiring the virgin green leaves as she might the fragrant blooms, themselves. “It is beautiful, Ethan Broughton, it is beautiful.”

“I’m afraid it won’t blossom again for another year,” I told her a little apologetically, “but I thought you might wish to have one of your own, just the same.”

Ana nodded, her pleasure not diminished. She set the container reverently on the front step and took my hand. “Come in,” she said, “the evening grows damp.”

She lit the table lantern, filling the darkening room with a soft, amber glow and covered her shoulders with a long knitted shawl. She pulled a sturdy captain’s chair from the head of the oak table, which was otherwise equipped with long wooden benches. “Sit,” she offered.

I observed her movements, without further word, as she set about doing things that a woman often does when a man sits at her table: slicing bread and cheese, setting out a bowl of fresh wild strawberries and measuring dried leaves for the teapot. She set an enameled water kettle over the flame on top of the massive iron range.

Her home held a singular charm for all that appeared to be her simple living needs, but it was the ancient art of the apothecary that captivated the imagination. I observed the jars and stems, the hanging bundles and powdered roots all before, but now, at closer inspection, I could see it went far deeper than mastery; it was a way of life.

As a man of science, I felt the heightened anticipation of an observer about to learn something heretofore unknown. That she was transforming from a woman of knowledge and skill, during our brief acquaintance, to a woman intriguing to the intellect and hypnotic to the senses, was something I would allow to pass. I was not cavalier enough to begin something that could not be pursued.

“I need you to talk to me, Ana,” I finally spoke.

With an almost ethereal grace, Ana walked passed the table and stood before a heavy mahogany wood chest, carved with an impressive Gothic motif. The leaf friezes on the panel appeared so intricate that I could assess, even under shadow of lamplight, that the furnishing was an accomplished work of art. Ana caressed the faded threads of an embroidered tapestry draped over the lid.

“The memory is in the blood,” she murmured so softly as to barely be audible. “The blood is in the memory.”

Before an inquiry into her sentiments could formulate itself in my mind, the water in the kettle began to boil. She poured the steaming water into the teapot filled with the dried leaf blend and sat at the table bench, warming her hands around the belly of the earthenware container.

“Tell me how you knew about…” I began, but then finished more thoughtfully: “Jemmy Isaak.”

Ana tensed, but then, just as suddenly, appeared more reflective. “The boy is full of life, but frail,” she said. “I opened his body to breathe.”

“Yes, you told me you did that,” I reminded her, “but how, Ana? How did you know what to do and more than this, how to do it?”

I leaned my elbow against the table and watched her intently for a moment. She clearly had no intention of telling me anything beyond her familiar and private confidence.

“During the evening of the dance,” I ventured, “you became upset with me over my use of the term Inquisition. Why was that?”

She looked at me sharply. “Blink your eye once and a thousand years have passed. Blink twice, two thousand.” She turned her attention again to the warmth of the teapot. “The earth consumes, but does not forget.”.

Had she not engaged my senses earlier, I’d have dismissed her as poetically insane. And if she played a farce with me, she was very consistent.

“So, tell me about this Reverend Fitch,” I said, examining a single and perfect strawberry between my fingertips.

“Touched,” she replied.

“Yes, I know, but why is he focused on you?" I asked. "In particular? It must make you uneasy, being here by yourself.”

She shrugged. “He won’t come here.”

“Can you be so sure of this?”

She nodded. “I am.”

I tasted the strawberry and it melted like a sweet butter against my tongue.

“Because of the white dog,” I questioned, “which generally appears to be nowhere in sight? Is this why?”

She nodded. “That, and his own.”

“What?” I inquired with some humor. “Old Dulcy?”

She hummed an affirmative reply.

“Why his dog?” I asked.

“Protects him from doing something stupid,” she said sternly.

“So, Dulcy protects him from harming you,” I surmised.

She smiled, pleased, perhaps, that I understood.

But I didn’t understand. I only understood that the people here lived and breathed their own peculiar ideas, and to try to grasp even the smallest riddle simply resulted in another.

“How long has your family been here in these mountains?” I then asked.

“Since before the Rebellion,” she replied.

“That’s a long time,” I remarked.

“Not so very long,” she said quietly.

“Do you always speak in riddles?” I wanted to know.

In reply, she took hold of my wrist and turned my hand over as she had done on our first meeting. She traced the lines on my palm, my wrist: the very tips of my fingers.

“Your hands do not tremble this night,” she said. “You took the white opiates before you came.”

I tensed. I could hear the first sound of distant thunder over the hills.

“I can blend you a tea,” she offered, “and you will never need the bottled poisons again.”

“You’ve been talking with Aaron,” I accused irritably.

Ana tightened her grip when she sensed my withdrawal. She peered into the palm of my hand through narrowed, searching eyes.

“You think Aaron Westmore betrayed your secret,” she responded plainly.

“He told you something,” I replied, “or you wouldn’t have made the statement.”

She shook her head slowly. “St. Michael’s…”

I pulled my hand. She held firm. “A beautiful boy with angelic curls and innocent brown eyes…”

I snatched my hand away. I could feel the rise of an insistent trembling in my limbs, despite sufficient absorption of sedation.

Ana gathered her shawl closer to her breast. “Drink your tea, Ethan Broughton, else it will cool.”

“How in the name of God…” I started, staring at the palm of my hand. For a moment, I feared I would fall into some sort of convulsive heap on her floor. There are some things that will bring the most assured of men to their knees.

She placed a slice of cheese on bread and pushed the plate even closer to me. “If you allow, I can take away the need for spiritless sleep.”

What I wanted, suddenly, was to run, but found myself strangely inert, despite my instinct. Ana pushed the cup of tea next to the plate in front of me. I pushed it away with an awkward hand.

I rubbed my brow and felt beads of sweat forming along the hairline. “For the love of Christ, how could you possibly…”

She knows about you. She knows all about you.

“It is written in your hand,” she said, “the places your spirit walks.”

“Bullshit, Ana.”

“And in your eyes,” she added, “where your soul begs release.”

I wanted to laugh. She was absolutely brilliant. “Another rhyme? Another riddle? Which is it, Ana?” How easy it would have been for Aaron to find out surface incidents from my past in Boston: where I lived, where I went to school, first communion, dates of graduation. These were not difficult things to discover.

“I told you,” she said succinctly, “you simply won’t hear.”

I could feel my anxiety deepening. She pushed the cup back towards me. “If you drink, you will stop those tremors.”

Whether out of defiance or simply bitter acquiescence, I took the warm mug between my hands and drank. I felt a warmth travel through my veins like an injected narcotic. The sinking tranquility coursed at such a rapid level, I suspected contents beyond an innocent blend of simple garden herbs.

The full anxiety had not abated, however, for when I took a deep breath, I could feel a spasm in the center of my chest.

Ana rose from her chair and stood behind me. She placed her hand on my forehead and took my wrist in her other hand, pressing upward at the crease. I could hear another roll of thunder high above the forest hills.

For a single, spectacular moment, I considered that this was to be the moment she would snap my neck as Fitch forewarned.

“The summer your mother and father again traveled overseas,” she began. “They took your brother with them that year and left you with the priests. Little sister stayed with the grandparents. It was the only time, as children, you were separated from each other.”

I swallowed hard, but could not summon the strength to move my limbs or deny the truth as she posed it.

“You were twelve years old, nearly thirteen,” Ana continued, “and it was Brother Jonathan who took you under his wing. You held a rare gift for one so young. The piano. It was often suggested you would one day attend a great conservatory.”

She breathed in a markedly deep breath and exhaled it very, very slowly. “But it was Brother Jonathan, handsome, studious Brother Jonathan, who expressed the greatest interest in your gift that summer. He would have you play the Chopin Nocturnes for him directly after Mass. And he fell in love with you, the beautiful boy with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes, who played the keys with magnificent perfection.

“And you read books together; the great poets and dramatists. He taught the planets through a telescope, and introduced you to the ancient, dead languages. His robes smelled of Bayberry and Holy Frankincense. The sound of his voice was clear and pleasing when he laughed suddenly, in secret jest, in your own ear.

“But then came the end of summer. Soon, your mother and father would return from across the sea with your brother and take you from the guardianship of the priests. It was then, Brother Jonathan confessed his love for you. It was then, you sensed something had gone terribly wrong.”

I struggled against the adulteration depleting the energy from my limbs, but the intent and body refused to connect. She tightened her grip with an almost preternatural strength, taking her hand from my forehead and touching the back of my neck, pressing down further on the spinal column.

“It was in Brother Jonathon’s eyes,” she continued. “You struggled against him and in the depth of your soul, you felt the terror he might even kill you by some mystery you did not wish to know. Then, he took you and extinguished the innocent flame of a summer’s lonely companionship; destroying it all in a single moment of impassioned delirium.”

I heard the crashing sound of my own cry, as it amplified a ghastly echo inside my head, only to settle at the very depth of secret wounds residing in the silence of time and space. She held my forehead in a vice grip, this agile, mighty creature of profound and unimaginable strength. The crushing sensation inside my chest prevented a full intake of air, and when I finally managed a deep enough breath, a searing rush of ice-cold spread out from my lungs to each extremity. My shirt dampened in a contrastingly heated sweat.

“And you wrapped yourself in a blanket,” she went on. “Brother Jonathan wept at the bedside, begging forgiveness, declaring the love that had gone too far, and you thought he would murder you yet.

“As he wept, you fled the room and hid where none could find you for a day and a night. The morning came and they found him strangled by his own hand; the very braid he wore around his waist, now the instrument of his own death.

“And you told no one, refusing to place your hands on the piano keys, despite the pleas of your confused teachers. You fashioned a mold with his poison and wore the talisman as though it were a sin of your own. As a man, you placed on the counter a bottle of scotch and a vial of pills and chose which one would slay the demon; which one would carry your secret faithfully to the soundless grave.”

A burning sensation, not unlike an electrical current, twisted through each disc of my spinal chord, and I bolted from the chair with a quickened release of adrenaline. I fled to the door and leaned over the porch, disgorging repeatedly a vile, cadaverous substance that, by its very matter, caused the gut to dispel even more. My intestines pulsed and my throat burned in agony. I spun around and slid back against the corner of the porch railings in a daze of unbridled grief.

Ana coaxed a sweet tasting cider down my throat. Choking, I sputtered the liquid insanely over my shirt. I found myself fully cognizant of being ensnared as the helpless patient, but too physically weakened to disengage the entrapment. Ana pressed my head against the cushioned swell of her breast and the rhythmic beating of her heart.

I wept like innocence reprieved.

The silhouette of the moon filtered between the storm darkened clouds and brought a temporary form to the shadows of the clearing, when I became somewhat coherent of my surroundings. I exhaled a final, shattered breath and grasped her arms like a defenseless child, all the while the inside of my head clanged like a tower bell: Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!

And then there was no memory. No thought. Simply, and perhaps even extravagantly, a down of peaceful darkness; a lingering spice of earth and forest filled my every existent cell like a gliding filament in the rain-splashed night.





~*~