however.
“You’d best tell me ’bout it, girl.”
“What?”
“What happened.” She lumbered into the bathroom and seemed to fill it with her size, her scent, and, above all, her power. Polly tried to summon her own as a defence, but her will was weak.
She heard the
“You got no aura,” Rita said. “And you got no heat. Turn round here.”
“Rita, come on. I’m just tired. I’ve been working all day and I want to go to bed.”
“Don’t you mess me about. I said turn. I mean turn.”
Polly made the belt’s knot double. She shook her head to gain further protection from her hair. She pivoted slowly, saying, “I’m only tired. A bit sore. I slipped on the vicarage drive this morning and banged up my face. It hurts. I pulled a muscle or something in my back as well. I thought a hot soak would—”
“Raise your head. Now.”
She could feel the power behind the command. It overcame whatever feeble resistance she might have been able to muster. She lifted her chin, although she kept her eyes lowered. She was inches from the goat’s head that served as pendant on her mother’s necklace. She bent her thoughts to the goat, his head, and how it resembled the naked witch standing in the pentagram position, from which the Rites began and petitions were made.
“Move your hair off your face.”
Polly’s hand did her mother’s bidding.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes did the same.
Rita’s breath whistled between her teeth as she sucked in air, face to face with her daughter. Her pupils expanded rapidly across the surface of her irises, and then retracted to pinpricks of black. She raised her hand and moved her fingers along the welt that scythe-cut its path of angry skin from Polly’s eye to her mouth. She didn’t make actual contact, but Polly could feel the touch of her fi ngers as if she did. They hovered above the eye that was swollen. They tapped their way from her cheek to her mouth. Finally, they slid into her hair, both hands on either side of her head, this time an actual touch that seemed to vibrate through her skull.
“What else is there?” Rita asked.
Polly felt the fingers tighten and catch at her hair, but still she said, “Nothing. I fell. A bit sore,” although her voice sounded faint and lacking in conviction.
“Open that robe.”
“Rita.”
Rita’s hands pressed in, not a punishing grip but one that spread warmth outward, like circles in a pond when a pebble hits its surface. “Open the robe.”
Polly untied the first knot, but found she couldn’t manage the second. Her mother did it, picking at the tie with her long, blue fi ngernails and with hands that were as unsteady as her breath. She pushed the robe from her daughter’s body and took a step back as it fell to the fl oor.
“Great Mother,” she said and reached for the goat’s head pendant. Her chest rapidly rose and fell under her kaftan.
Polly dropped her head.
“It was him,” Rita said. “Wasn’t it him did this to you, Polly. After he was here.”
“Let it be,” Polly said.
“Let it…?” Rita’s voice was incredulous.
“I didn’t do right by him. I wasn’t pure in my wanting. I lied to the Goddess. She heard and She punished. It wasn’t him. He was in Her hands.”
Rita took her arm and swung her towards the mirror above the basin. It was still opaque from steam, and Rita vigorously ran her hand up and down it and wiped her palm on the side of her kaftan. “You look here, Polly,” she said. “You look at this right and you look at it good. Do it. Now.”
Polly saw reflected what she had already seen. The vicious impression of his teeth on her breast, the bruises, the oblong marks of the blows. She closed her eyes but felt tears still trying to seep past her lashes.
“You think this is how She punishes, girl? You think She sends some bastard with rape on his mind?”
“The wish comes back three-fold on the wisher, whatever it is. You know that. I didn’t wish pure. I wanted Colin, but he belonged to Annie.”
“No one belongs to no one!” Rita said. “And She doesn’t use sex — the very power of creation — to punish Her priestess. Your thinking’s gone off. You’re looking at yourself like those sodding Christian saints would have you do: ‘The food of worms…a vile dung-hill. She is the gate by which the devil enters…she is what the sting of the scorpion is…’ That’s how you’re seeing yourself now, isn’t it? Something to be trampled. Something no good.”
“I did wrong by Colin. I cast the circle—”
Rita turned her and grabbed her arms firmly. “And you’ll cast it again, right now, with me. To Mars. Like I said you should’ve been doing all along.”
“I cast to Mars like you said the other night. I gave the ashes to Annie. I put the ring stone with them. But I wasn’t pure.”
“Polly!” Rita shook her. “You didn’t do wrong.”
“I wanted her to die. I can’t take back that wanting.”
“An’ you think she didn’t want to die as well? Her insides were eaten with cancer, luv. It went from her ovaries to her stomach and her liver. You couldn’t have saved her. No one could have saved her.”
“The Goddess could. If I’d asked right. But I didn’t. So She punished.”
“Don’t be simple-minded. This isn’t punishment, what happened to you. This is evil,
Polly loosened her mother’s hands from her arms. “You can’t use magic against Colin. I won’t let you.”
“Believe me, girl, I don’t mean to use magic,” Rita said. “I mean to use the police.” She lurched round and headed for the door.
“No.” Polly shuddered against the pain as she bent and retrieved the robe from the fl oor. “You’ll be bringing them out on a fool’s errand. I won’t talk to them. I won’t say a word.”
Rita swung back. “You listen to me…”
“No. You listen, Mum. It doesn’t matter, what he did.”
“Doesn’t…That’s like saying you don’t matter.”
Polly tied the robe firmly until it, and her answer, were both in place. “Yes. I know that,” she said.
“So the Social Services connection made Tommy feel even more certain that, whatever her reasons might have been for being rid of the vicar, they’re probably connected to Maggie.”
“And what do you think?”
St. James opened the door of their room and locked it behind them. “I don’t know. Something still niggles.”
Deborah kicked off her shoes and sank onto the bed, drawing her legs up Indian fashion and rubbing her feet. She sighed. “My feet feel twenty years older than I do. I think women’s shoes are designed by sadists. They ought to be shot.”
“The shoes?”
“Those too.” She pulled a tortoiseshell comb from her hair and pitched it onto the chest of drawers. She was wearing a green wool dress the same colour as her eyes, and it billowed round her like a mantle.
“Your feet may feel forty-five,” St. James noted, “but you look fi fteen.”
“It’s the lighting, Simon. Nicely subdued. Get used to it, won’t you? You’ll be seeing it more and more at home in the coming years.”
He chuckled, shedding his jacket. He removed his watch and placed it on the bedside table beneath a lamp whose tasselled shade was going decidedly frizzy on the ends. He joined her on the bed, shifting his bad leg to accommodate his position of half-sit and half-slouch, resting on his elbows. “I’m glad of it,” he said.
“Why? You’ve developed a fancy for subdued lighting?”
“No. But I’ve a definite fancy for the coming years. That we’ll be having them, I mean.”
