Kissed by Chaos
Chapter 5 - Betrayal
There was a moment of complete silence during which even the animals realized that something was amiss, falling silent. My father stared at the door, as if just staring at it would make whoever was behind it go away. "Open it," I murmured quietly, my voice just above a whisper. "We have no other choice."
After another moment of consideration, Elisabeth took a deep breath through her nose and tip-toed over to the door as if she was walking on glass. She hesitated and turned back around to give me one more pleading glance. "Please, let's just run," her eyes begged me. I shook my head in reply to her silent request, telling her that I would keep her safe whatever the situation, but we still had to face whoever it was on the other side of the door.
It was safe to say that none of us had expected what was on the other side of the door. As soon as Elisabeth timidly pulled open the door, a man who did not look like a witch hunter at all tumbled gracelessly through the door.
"Nicholas!" Elisabeth and I exclaimed in unison. We were shocked but relieved beyond measure that we had been granted a few more moments to live. The fair haired man shivering in our doorway in front of a backdrop of sudden, thunderous rain was our cousin, snivelling, trembling mess of a cousin. His tear streaked face was also covered in mud and dirt. Nicholas wrung his hands nervously, whimpering like an injured mutt.
Throwing a confused glance at me, Elisabeth hurriedly ushered our cousin into the cottage.
"What the devil have you been up to, boy?" muttered Father, eyeing at Nicholas as if he was severely ill and was now contaminating our house.
"M-m-m-m..." Nicholas stammered in an incoherent reply.
"It's okay, Nicholas," I supplied uselessly as I draped a blanket around his birdlike shoulders. He had been mocked and jeered at all his life for his sickly, weak body. A coward, most called him. "What happened?"
He looked up at me with startled, horrified grey blue eyes. "M-m-mother..."
"Aunt Louise? Did something happen to Aunt Louise?" I asked warily. Aunt Louise, our mother's sister, was a witch. What if the hunters had taken her away?
"They... they..."
"Who's 'they'? What did 'they' do?"
"The hunters... they... took her away," Nicholas said, his voice hoarse as he confirmed that what we dreaded.
Cold silence lingered in the cottage as Nicholas's words burnt in our minds. Even my father had run out of his snarky little comments and was forced into sobriety by the dire situation. The silence, however, was abruptly broken by Nicholas's furious voice. "How dare they!" he shrieked with surprising force. "She didn't do anything wrong! Mother wasn't a witch!"
Father looked at me pointedly, trying to intimidate me into revealing the truth to Nicholas. How could I, though? Nicholas was like all the other ignorant villagers who believed witches were synonymous with Satan. How would he take it if I were to suddenly blurt out that his mother, the woman who had given him life, was that very monster he despised?
Thankfully, it was Elisabeth, the level headed, calm sister who spoke. "Nicholas..."
He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. "What...?"
"Your mother is... she... um..."
"Your mother is a witch." Seeing Nicholas's stunned, horrified gaze I added, "Yes, you heard me right."
He stood up, his eyes clouded with black anger. He advanced on me with a clenched fist raised, straight on its path to make contact with my face. But Father was suddenly up on his feet and stood between Nicholas and me. "Don't you touch her," he warned in a dangerously low voice.
"How... how dare she!" Nicholas hissed. "How dare she call my mother a witch!"
Elisabeth tugged at Nicholas's shoulders in alarm, trying to pull him back. "Leave her, Nicholas. Stop this madness!"
He turned on Elisabeth furiously, fixing her with a glare. She was the soft, gentle one and tended to avoid confrontations, unlike me. She withered under his glower and I could see that she wanted the earth to just swallow her up. She was tall, much taller than me, but Nicholas still had more than a head on her. Elisabeth looked like a child standing in front of him.
"How do you know my mother is a witch?" he demanded.
It was not safe to tell Nicholas that we knew his mother was a witch because she was the woman who had taught us to control our powers. Nicholas, however frail and cowardly, was smart enough.
His eyes growing wider by the second, he whispered, "You're witches, aren't you?"
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," Elisabeth replied weakly.
"You and Claire! You're witches!" he said, this revelation catching him off guard. "That's how... that's how you come up with your 'remedies'... that's how you know things that... oh Lord, you're witches!"
Elisabeth jumped at the chance to prove to him that witches were not as diabolic as he thought and as he had been taught by the church. She had given up any hope that she'd be able to climb out of the whole she had dug for herself and instead tried to convince him that witches were not Satan worshippers. "You see! Witches are not the monsters they say we are! How is healing people bad? Why would the worshippers of Satan try to save people's lives?"
"You're lying. Witches... they can only be bad! But my mother wasn't... she was good... she was kind. She can't be a witch!"
"Do you need me to spell it out for you, Nicholas!" I said with an irritated sigh. "Your mother was a witch. She taught us all she knew - how to treat the ill, how to protect our home. She was indeed a good and kind woman, but she was still a witch! Witches are good people!"
Nicholas was visibly dumbstruck. The proof before him was undeniable. He had known Elisabeth and me all our lives and had never seen us trying to hurt anyone. He had never caught us in some Satanic ritual. His mother had taken care of him and loved him unconditionally. She had always taught him that a man's life was precious and that it was important to forgive one's enemies. I could see the confusion in his eyes.
His legs folded under him as he wordlessly collapsed onto the floor, burying his head in his hands. He was no longer trembling, but his body was being racked by animal like sobs. Images suddenly flashed in my mind as I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Nicholas and see my own mother dragged away. Screams of terror... whispered promises that she'd be back... heartless men treating her like she was an animal.
I knelt on the floor beside him, afraid to touch him.
"I'm sorry, Nicholas." He lifted his head to look up at me as I whispered the words. "I'm truly sorry. It must have been horrible for you to see your mother being taken away."
His eyes gleamed expressionlessly up at me as if he was separated from his body.
"Stay with us." The words were unexpected to both of us as I blurted them out. He looked startled, as if my words had brought him back to life. "It might not be safe for you at home. Stay with us tonight or however long it takes you to get back on your feet."
"I'm sorry Claire... I should not have acted the way I did. I was just caught by surprise..." his voice cracked with the apology. "Uncle Thomas, Elisabeth, I'm sorry."
"It's alright. Claire's right. Ye'll be going nowhere tonight. You're staying right here, at home with us," my father said with grudging kindness in his voice.
A small smile, the first since he had staggered through the door, broke free across his face. "Thank you for your kindness. If you don't mind, I would very much like to take you up on your offer. First, though, I need to go back home and retrieve some of my belongings."
Father nodded. "Of course. Get back before it's too late."
As Nicholas walked out the door, the three of us glanced warily at each other. We were all equally shell shocked. One of our own had already been taken away. Which one of us was going to be next?
As if Father could read my mind he whispered, "I won't let them monsters take you away, you hear me?" he said to Elisabeth and me, his voice husky with unexpected affection. "You're safe here." Without another word, he pulled Elisabeth and me into his arms. I looked up to see his hardened face taut with the tremendous effort of keeping his fears and tears locked up inside.
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Nicholas had been gone longer than I had expected but finally, more than an hour later, there was a soft knocking at the door. Elisabeth was preparing a late dinner for Nicholas. Father had been dozing on his rough bed but, being the light sleeper he was, awakened at the sound of the knock. "Get the door, Claire," he grumbled.
I had been reading one of the forgotten spell books Aunt Louise had given me when I had first figured out what I was. I had been reminded of it by the news of her capture and felt guilty that I had not taken more care of the now tattered book. I reluctantly tucked the book away under my sheets and walked over to the door. It was not Nicholas, but Aaron.
"Oh, hello!" I exclaimed, surprise making my voice high pitched. I noticed that he looked unusually pale. His hair was disheveled, as if he had just woken up from sleep. Well, he probably he had - judging from the darkness of the night sky outside, the hour was much later than I had expected.
My surprised happiness at seeing him was toned down by confusion as I realized that Aaron looked forlorn, at a loss somehow, and his eyes did not hold the usual mischievous spark. "What brings you here?" I asked.
He stood motionlessly in the doorway, just watching me with clouded eyes. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost.
"Aaron? Are you alright?"
His eyes remained trained directly on mine as he spoke, his voice a flat, expressionless monotone. "I loved you."
My heart fluttered at the thought of Aaron loving me, but I was not naïve and besotted enough to not realize that something was not right.
"I was going to ask you to marry me." Despite the weight and significance of the words he spoke, Aaron's face remained blank. "But I should have known."
"Should have known what?" I asked, suddenly frightened by his emotionless demeanour as he spoke the words that should have been filled with joy. Everything was in past tense, I realized with mounting dread. I was going to ask you to marry me. I loved you.
"You bewitched me, Claire. How could you?" Finally, some emotion showed on his face. Raw pain seeped through his voice as he choked the words out, as if speaking them sent daggers into his heart.
"What? I don't understand..."
"Was any of it real?"
"Was any of what real?" I exclaimed, exasperated that I could not make any sense of what he was saying and the way he was acting. I wished this was one of his jokes.
"You made me love you. You never really loved me. I was just a game to you. You cast a spell on me!"
Oh no. I felt myself go numb and fought to keep my body upright and not just collapse onto the floor, much like Nicholas had. My head throbbed with pain, my heart throbbed with pain.
"I truly loved you, Aaron. I still truly love you. It was all real... I never put a spell on you!" I said, looking up at his hurt expression with desperation. Suddenly, though, that hurt expression turned enraged. His anger was turning him into something that I did not know. Fury masked his features, darkening his eyes.
"Love? Witches are not capable of love! You're a monster, Claire! Why do you make me feel such things?"
My father was now fully awake, thanks to my shrieking. "What's wrong?" he muttered, but I paid no attention to him. All my attention was fixed on Aaron. Somehow he would understand. I would make him understand that I loved him, that whatever we had was real and not created by the evil mind he thought belonged to me.
"Aaron, you don't understand. I'm not evil. I'm not what the church says I am. Yes, I'm a witch, but I would never try to hurt anyone, and certainly not you!" How many people would I have to give the same speech to tonight?
He sneered at my words. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you?"
"Yes, I do! I have known you all my life. Have you ever seen me trying to hurt even an animal? If anything, I've been healing people! The church wants to eradicate and persecute witches because they don't understand what we are. Please don't fall prey to that ignorance, I'm begging you!"
A moment of silence fell like a veil over us, encapsulating us in a world where only Aaron and I existed. Nothing else mattered, I realized. If only I could get Aaron to believe me, to love me even knowing what I was, I would be able to deal with whatever trials God threw in my path.
Our world was crushed by the sound of a familiar voice. "Sir Aaron, what's taking so long?" asked Nicholas as he stepped into view, crowding the doorway as he stood defiantly behind Aaron. He only smirked at me as I stared at him with wide eyes, wondering how he could have done such a thing. My skin itched with utter loathing and I felt like vomiting. I realised that he had rightly been called a coward all his life. My skin itched at the memory of the kindness I had shown him.
After gazing at me for just a moment longer, Aaron said. "Claire Browne, you and your sister, Elisabeth Browne, by command of His Majesty King Peter, are under arrest for practicing witchcraft and for treason against the Kingdom of Thornton." He turned to adress the two soldiers standing behind him, hidden by the veil of darkness of the night. "Take them away."