Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

12

There it was again, the tradition of using a child's testimony to convict a witch. Angry heat travelled through my veins as I tried to make sense of the absurd conventions of coven life.

It was perverse to place the weight of an execution on such fragile shoulders. That coven laws continued to promote such practice was beyond hypocritical. If youthful innocence was the fitting detector of a witch's wrongdoing, did they see witchcraft as the antithesis of childish purity?

I'd been doing some studying myself recently. Ever since finding out about Thomas's role in the Pendle Witch Trials, I'd been making an effort to put myself in his mind-set, to try and understand the thought processes that led to the tragedy of eleven witches dead. One in the gaol and ten by hanging.

Back then all witchcraft was considered a crime punishable by death, irrespective of good or bad intent. Worshipping the devil was seen as the abandonment of God's representative, the monarch. It was treason.

But times had changed. Surely the covens didn't respect the methods of the seventeenth-century witch hunters? 

I was suddenly far clearer on why the Gray family had stayed out of coven life since Evelyn Gray's loss of the leadership of the Northern Coven. The covens were stuck in the dark ages.

What remained murky was why there was no mention of Evelyn's trial in the Gray family histories. There was certainly nothing about blood magic.

I didn't even know what that was. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

What I did know was that Evelyn Gray, my mother's namesake, had not been executed, so she could not have been guilty.

The histories had told me that she had given birth to twin daughters in her forties, ten years before the trial. She had also been the coven leader for twenty years before being replaced after the trial by a member of the coven's only other powerful family, the Device clan.

After this, Evelyn retired from coven life, and lived in peace at the cottage with her daughters for another thirty five years. This was long enough to witness the birth of her grandchildren, one to each of her own daughters, and even her great grandchild, Anne. She was still alive when I was born, but my mother never brought me back to the family home.

The reason for this was a problem that gnawed at my brain. Maybe I'd find answers in London, something to silence the ghosts of the dead Grays back at the cottage. The ancestors were a pain in my ass.

That Stephen's family was connected to my own in such a way was unexpected, but what I had learnt so far did not explain Mary's problems with dementia.

"Stephen, you're going to need to give me something more to go on. I can't connect the dots," I said, when it was obvious that I couldn't reason my way through this myself.

Stephen took his glasses off. Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose before trying to massage the stress out of his pale forehead.

When he looked up, there was a determination in his face that started a flutter in my belly that was impossible to douse. I shifted in my seat, settling in for the lecture that I knew was on the way.

"Emily and I have long believed it was the events of this trial that stripped the witch life-force from my family."

"How long have you known?" I asked, my voice coming out small and quiet.

"We didn't. Not for sure, not until you confirmed that you could see Mary's life-force."

Stephen and Emily had meticulously gathered fragments of information concerning the trial. From these, they pieced together a loose understanding of the case and its aftermath. It was by no means conclusive but it was the best that anyone could do without direct access to the coven records.

As a twelve-year-old girl, Mary was said to have witnessed Evelyn Gray performing a blood ritual that involved the murder of two humans. Her enemies in the Northern Coven snatched up this rumour, and lacking the power to challenge Evelyn themselves, they petitioned the Southern Coven to hold their leader accountable for her crime.

Mary was a witch child under the jurisdiction of the Southern Coven, who felt it was their responsibility to support her claims. Mary displayed incredible promise in the premonitory arts. The coven was already heralding her as a witch of great power.

Under examination it became clear that Mary had not physically witnessed Evelyn perform the blood magic rite, but instead experienced a premonition of the event. It transpired that Evelyn's accusers were not able to produce any physical evidence at all in support of her guilt.

Despite having great confidence in Mary's power, the Southern Coven had no choice but to punish the young accuser according to the regulations to which all witches must adhere. The coven laws. Mary was stripped of her power and all memory of the paranormal world.  

Recently there had been some shift in the power ratios within the paranormal community. Power had emerged where it should not, and been lacking where it could usually be relied upon.

The life-force that I had recognised on Mary was her original power breaking through the seal that had been placed on it all those years before.

For Mary this was not the lucky event it would initially seem. Along with her power, Mary's memories of the coven and other paranormal entities had been removed as part of her punishment. She had been placed in an orphanage, set adrift in the world, and destined to live her life as a human.

Now, her re-emerging powers were bringing with them memories that Mary could not process. The strain on her brain was causing the symptoms of dementia.

"Is there a way to break the block on Mary's powers? It might bring her memories back and resolve the mental conflict causing the dementia," I said, when Stephen had finished filling me in on Mary's history with the Gray family.

My grubby exterior matched the feeling on the inside now that I knew that my family was involved in Mary's condition.

She was a child for God's sake. She shouldn't have been held accountable even if her accusations were false.

I felt a responsibility in this.

My great-grandmother didn't help Mary.

But I would.

Will Alice be able to right the wrongs of the past?
Only one way to find out...
Thanks for reading.