The Witch from the Sea (60 page)

As I stood there in that room and I could feel the toad moving in the kerchief, I had an impulse to drop it and run. I thought to myself: Suppose she is truly a witch. She bewitched Bastian. Suppose the toad
is
her familiar! Suppose it is a devil in toad form! But I had found him—a perfectly harmless toad—by the pond in the garden and it was I who had placed him in her bed.

It was just a feeling that eyes were watching me. Why? I went swiftly to the door between the two rooms. I looked inside. No one was there. Then I ran from the room, out into the corridor. I could hear Mab’s voice as she explained what she had seen.

In the corridor I could hear Ginny’s voice: ‘’Tis nothing. You dreamed it. ’Twas because we was talking of toads.’

And Mab: ‘I can’t go in there. I’d die rather.’

I waited in one of the rooms while they went up to Carlotta’s room, then I came swiftly along the gallery and down the stairs, praying I should meet no one. I went out through a side door and across a courtyard to the gardens.

I sped across to the pool and laid down the kerchief. The toad remained still for several seconds. I watched him fearfully, half expecting him to turn into some horrible shape, but seeming to realize that he was free and on his home ground he made his cautious way to the edge of the pool and hid himself under a large stone.

I picked up the kerchief and went into the house.

On the way I met several of the maids, who were chattering wildly together.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

‘Oh, ’twas Mab, Miss Bersaba. Her be well nigh in hysterics.’

‘Why?’

‘’Tis what her have seen in the lady Carlotta’s bed.’

‘In her bed?’

Ginny said: ‘Mab could have fancied it. There were no toad there when I went up.’

The maids were silent, their eyes on my face.

‘Whatever made Mab imagine such a thing?’ I asked.

‘’Tis talk, Miss Bersaba,’ said Ginny.

‘I did see it,’ Mab insisted. ‘It were there … on her pillow. The way it looked at me … ’twere terrible. It was like no other toad I seen.’

‘Well, where is it now?’ I asked with a hint of impatience.

‘It have clean disappeared,’ said Ginny.

‘Well, that’s a blessing,’ I answered, infusing scepticism into my voice.

And I passed on.

I knew that that night the great topic of conversation among the servants would be the toad Mab had seen in Carlotta’s bed. I knew too that the story of the toad would not be confined to the Priory. It would spread to the village. I wondered what Thomas Gast would say when he heard it. The habits of witches would be great sin in his eyes.

I dreamed of him that night standing by his furnace with his wild eyes gloating on the flames.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 1975 by Philippa Carr

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1480403697

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.