The Witch's Daughter

The Witch's Daughter

Batchcombe, Wessex, 1628

Bess ran. The clear night sky and fat moon gave ample illumination for her flight. She feared the dawn, for with it would come the discovery of her absence, and then the hunt would begin. The fetters still fastened around her legs rattled against her anklebones with every stride, a single
broken link on each all that remained of her chains. Metal rubbed through young skin until a thin slick of blood trailed in her wake. Her bare feet slapped through the shallow mud, retracing a route that was so familiar as to be imprinted on her mind, clearly mapped, allowing no false turns as she fled beyond the village boundary and ran toward the woodland. Still the short journey felt longer than it ever had, the trees seeming to recede before her, recoiling from her boiling panic, never coming nearer however hard she ran.
An illusion. Merely a trick of the moon shadows. I must not falter.
Her breath sounded loud in her ears, loud enough to wake a light sleeper in an outlying cottage, her heartbeat surely too thunderous to go unheard. She pressed on, at last reaching the cover of the first slender trees. The darkness in the copse was of a different nature. The early spring foliage
admitted only fractured moonbeams, and roots and rambles clutched at her from both sides of the path. On she ran. She gasped as stones scraped her soles. She splashed through a brook, the chill water momentarily numbing her wounds before gritty earth from the forest floor forced its way deeper into the lacerations with every footfall. An owl screeched his disapproval of her presence. A badger drew his snout back into his sett, waiting for the disturbance to pass.
The freshness of the night air stung Bess’s throat. Even as it made her cough and fight for breath, she did not slow her pace; nor did she think to care, after so many hours in the stifling confines of her prison cell. Here at least was air to breathe. She crested a small hill and paused, steadying
herself against the trunk of a great ash. She could taste the woodland on her tongue: the moss, the silver lichen, the rising sap of the trees. Beyond that, two more things clearly described themselves: her own fear and the sea. Both saltinesses spoke of terror and of freedom. She peered forward along the path and into the heart of the forest. That way lay escape from her captors. That way he would be waiting for her, horses ready, provisions, a plan, a destination to ride for. She pushed herself from the tree, summoning what strength she had left, but something held her back. Something inside her made her wait. Consider, it said, consider the cost of that freedom.

From THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER by Paula Brackston, copyright © 2010 by the author, and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.