The Return of the Witch (32 page)

Inside, the shop was in chaos. There must have been nearly twenty boys and girls, all clamoring and jostling, directing their voices and their boundless energy at Erasmus, who was standing behind the high counter like the last soldier on the battlements of a stormed castle.

“Speak one at a time! You are all jabbering nonsense … Ah, Elizabeth, you have arrived not a moment too soon,” he said, flapping away two boys who were intent on climbing up onto the counter.

“Are you having a party?” I asked. My mood may have been somber, but the sight of a flustered Erasmus amid a sea of chattering children could not help but make me smile.

“I am not. At least, not intentionally.”

“But what are they all doing here?”

“As far as I can ascertain, they are here in search of you.”

“Me?”

“It seems you effected a miraculous cure on, wait a moment, where has she gone … ah yes, the little one in blue over there.” Here he pointed at Lottie, whose eye was indeed completely healed. “Others have brought their various and revolting ailments for you to look at.”

To underline his point, a girl with a gappy grin and freckles thrust her eczema-ravaged hands beneath my nose. Lottie tugged at my sleeve.

“My eye is all better, missus.” She nodded. “Mam says you worked a miracle, you did. I told the others. Can you help them, too?” she asked. “Please, missus?”

“Please, missus? Please!” chorused all the other children.

Around me grubby faces peered up in wonder. A cursory glance told me that they were mostly suffering from poverty and its allied ills: malnutrition, starvation, lack of hygiene where their food was concerned, and unsanitary living conditions. I saw rickets and scurvy and rotten teeth and stunted growth, along with possible cases of ringworm, worms, head lice, and fleas. Erasmus was already scratching at his jacket and viewing the children with a mixture of astonishment and mild panic.

I spoke to Lottie. “Take your friends outside,” I told her. “Have them stand in an orderly line and keep quiet so as not to draw attention to themselves. When we are ready I shall call you, and you may send each in, one at a time. I will tend to them in the kitchen.”

“My kitchen?” Erasmus looked doubtful.

“Which is rusting through lack of use,” I pointed out.

At that moment, Mr. and Mrs. Timms appeared through the adjoining door.

“Oh, my goodness! Whatever is happening here?” cried the housekeeper. “Where have all these children come from?” she asked, gazing about her as the boys and girls reluctantly allowed Lottie to herd them toward the door and the street.

“Urchins and ragamuffins!” Mr. Timms declared.

Erasmus raised his hands in a gesture of someone giving up an unequal struggle.

“There has been an invasion,” he said solemnly, but he did so with a smile, and I saw then that his protests were borne of surprise rather than disapproval, for he clearly found delight in the children.

Alas, Mr. Timms did not share his opinion, his expression one of faint disgust at so many grubby children in such close proximity. “That much I can see, Mr. Balmoral,” he said.

“I gave Lottie here a remedy for her sore eye,” I explained. “It seems she has been quite evangelical in her enthusiasm to tell people about it, and now her friends have come seeking my help, too. I would very much like to see what I can do.”

“Here?” Mr. Timms was appalled at the idea. “But…” he protested, “this is a respectable home, a place of business, a house of quiet study and ancient craft. Not a hospital for waifs and strays.”

His wife tutted and began to bundle him toward the stairs. “I am certain most of these children are not strays but have homes and families and, for the most part, even jobs,” she told him.

When he reached the door I said, “Mr. Timms, what these children all certainly do have is ailments, for which I can offer some relief.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Hawksmith, but you cannot cure their circumstances.”

I caught Erasmus's eye. He waited to see what I would reply to that.

“No, I cannot,” I admitted, “I can, however, in many instances rid them of the burden of their symptoms, and in all cases rid them of their infestations.”

Drawing Mr. Timms's attention to the crawling creatures and parasites that were so many and so near was sufficient inducement to impel him from the room.

I turned to apologize to Erasmus, “I am sorry for the disturbance,” I began, “but…” I left the excuse unfinished however, when I saw that he was taken up with silent laughter.

“Mrs. Timms!” he declared. “We shall require hot water, soap, lemonade, and shortbread.”

“We shall?”

“Indeed. These youngsters are in need of our assistance, and we shall give it. Are you with us, Mrs. Timms?”

“But, of course! And, oh! What darling little things they are,” she beamed, ruffling the hair of the nearest boy.

“I advise caution!” Mr. Timms called back from the stairway.

“I fear he believes we weren't quick enough with the drawbridge,” I whispered to his wife, causing her to mutter in exasperation at her husband as she bustled off to fetch what was needed.

It did not take long to set up the kitchen to best serve our purposes. Soon I was examining children as they stood on a chair by the window to gain the best of the daylight. Mrs. Timms produced quantities of lemonade and a secret supply of barley sugars, which she gave to each child as they left. I thought briefly of how the modern world I had inhabited only a short time ago would have shrunk in horror at the idea of unaccompanied children accepting sweets from strangers, let alone submitting to medical treatment from someone who was not a doctor, and without their parents' permission. But these patients were not of the modern world. There was no health provision for those without the funds to purchase it, and ignorance would finish the job depravation had started if no treatment was given. I chose two of the more able and articulate—not to say presentable—boys, to run back and forth to the chemist's shop to buy what I needed. At least the era gave me the advantage of being able to find herbs and old remedies side by side on the pharmacist's shelves, so that soon I had a good stock of such vital basics as lavender oil, an effective antiseptic; almond butter and chamomile, to help with skin problems; iodine and carbolic, for more serious infections or infestations. I also sent a runner to the market to fetch fresh mint and broad beans. The last aroused Erasmus's curiosity. He had, to my surprise, proved to be a passable nurse and assisted me with the same swiftness and energy he approached all tasks that mattered to him. It gladdened my heart to see him working with the children. He had a natural, if unusual, way with them, and they were quickly at ease in his company. The truth was, we made a fine team. As he waited for yet another kettle to boil to make a peppermint infusion with ground charcoal to combat the effects of diarrhea, he asked me what affliction I expected to treat with the beans.

Both he and my patient—a wide-eyed boy of about seven, with hair the color of a marigold—watched in amazement as I podded the pale green beans and set them to one side. I was reminded of Pythagoras's belief that the things were never to be consumed. I recalled he had claimed they were made of the same substance as the human soul, so that to eat them would be an act of cannibalism, but I suspected he merely detested the taste and was making sure he never had to suffer them at the dinner table. It was not, however, the beans that interested me, but their blankety beds. The furry linings of the pods contain a powerful remedy for warts. As I gently rubbed the soft, wet, fluffiness onto the boy's knuckles I felt vividly the presence of my mother, for it was she who had taught me this and so many other valuable secrets which any good hedge witch should know. I gave the child three more unopened pods and told him to repeat the treatment every day, twice a day, for a week.

There was an older boy with a broken finger. He appeared near the end of the day, when my supplies of bandages and such like were all but exhausted. I took the cotton from around my neck and tore it into strips. It was the one I had brought with me from Willow Cottage. What a long time ago that seemed! I used a piece of kindling for a splint and advised him to keep the fingers bound for at least a week.

For the rest of the day Erasmus, Mrs. Timms, and I washed hair, bathed faces and hands, cleaned and dressed wounds, and administered remedies for a dozen different ills and pestilences. When I could do so discreetly I summoned the help of the Goddess and said a healing prayer, or cast a spell of protection or strength to assist the process of recovery. When the last child was tended and sent away, we bolted the shop door and retreated to the kitchen for a much needed cup of tea.

Mrs. Timms sank into the nearest chair with a sigh, the wooden seat creaking loudly in protest as she landed. “Well, I declare,” she said, taking out an embroidered handkerchief with which to dab at her somewhat shiny face. “Such a collection of urchins and misfortunates as you ever did see.”

“It is the same wherever one goes,” I said, rubbing my lower back and stretching to ease the ache in it. “Wherever and whenever.”

“True enough, indeed.” Erasmus agreed, leaning against the kitchen door, arms folded. “The poor somehow find their way to go on as they must, managing as best they can, and it is the children who suffer most from the inequalities of this life. Heaven knows they find precious little pity, so it is not surprising in the least that they should flock to your door.” He looked at me steadily then. “You are a good woman, Elizabeth Hawksmith,” he said.

I gave a light laugh but still I felt myself blush under the compliment and the intensity of his gaze. “I am a healer,” I told him at last. “What else can I do but try to heal?”

A little later, when he had returned to his books to continue his quest for answers regarding Gideon and Tegan, Mrs. Timms put her hand on my arm.

“You did something special for those children today, Mrs. Hawksmith. I can see why our dear Erasmus chose to bring you to his home.”

Her remark surprised me. I had not heard her refer to Erasmus with such affection, though of course I knew she and her husband held him in high regard. More than that, it was the notion that he had chosen to bring me to his home that struck me as singular. We had come to the time and place we needed to be. This was where he had his own home, so it made perfect sense to use it. I had seen nothing more to it than that.

“Has he not brought anyone here before in the course of his work?” I asked.

“To his beloved house, among his precious books?” Mrs. Timms laughed heartily. “Dear me, no! This has always been his refuge. His place of quiet retreat.” She smiled, sipped some lemonade, and then added, “He brought you here because he wants you here.”

She offered no further explanation, and my chance to question her was lost when I heard Erasmus thundering back down the stairs. He appeared in the doorway, eyes bright, hair awry.

“I think I may be onto something,” he told me. “Come and see!”

I followed him upstairs and found the drawing room in even more of a muddle than usual. Everywhere books lay open, weighted down with whatever came to hand, among them, over them, on tables and shelves and other parts of the floor, were pieces of paper bearing scribbled notes or sometimes simply single words underlined boldly. Erasmus marched through the center of it all, snatching up this volume or that page of notations, all the while talking, telling me details of his ideas, facts, dates, aspects of theories, fragments of thoughts, without once making it clear what he had discovered. At last I raised my hands.

“Please, Erasmus, for both our sakes, slow down.” I cleared a pile of Greek dictionaries from a chair and sat. “Now, tell me with as few words as you can, what is it you have found that you think might be of help?”

“Yes, yes, you are right, of course. I must be clear. There is so much which must be seen through, seen beyond. To muddle, to conjecture off the point and take tangents that lead too far from the salient point to allow one to return to one's original thoughts.…”

Seeing my raised eyebrows, he stopped. He cleared his throat, and considered for a few seconds before acting. Having chosen his direction, he picked up a large astrological chart, which he laid on the floor directly in front of me.

“I may have discerned a pattern. There is, I believe, a connection, albeit a tenuous one, between significant points in Gideon's actions. If we take the date he departed the Summerlands, the date he chose to revisit Batchcombe, the date to which we have now followed him … see here”—he indicated the points on the chart—“and … here. At first I thought maybe the phases of the moon were important, but it wasn't that.”

“Gideon was never an adherent to the lunar calendar,” I said.

“No, but he knows you to be, and I considered this as an influencing factor. Alas, I could not make a durable link there. Although as I searched I did happen upon a fact regarding the weather…”

“The weather?”

“Yes. Where is it, where is it, where…? He dug deep into a pile of papers and unrolled a scroll, running his eyes and then his thumb down the information. “Indeed, yes, here it is. The summer he elected to take Tegan to Batchcombe was, despite the early days of sunshine we experienced, the wettest experienced for many years. Local records state that many harvests were ruined, and that the failed crops resulted in much starvation and hardship.”

“Coming on top of a lengthy civil war that must have been calamitous for many families.”

“Ah, the war, yes, there is something there, too, of course.”

“It's true Gideon is attracted to the dark energy generated in times of war. He is able to make use of it, I know. I saw that in Ypres in 1917. But would that influence his choice so much? And how would he arrive at that precise date if that was the case? The war continued for a number of years.”