Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-four

The feelings I’d had for Hans over the past few days were nothing compared to the longing that screamed inside me as I looked upon my vampire lover through long-lost eyes.

I was a trembling wreck when he held me tight in his arms. The memories were still coming through strongly enough to have my insides twisting.

I saw a younger Hans as a Templar at Garway church, sitting next to me by the spring as we talked about life and love and our faith.

Hans had been such a pure soul, so devout and full of strong, powerful hope, and I’d been Mary, a sweet simple girl from Orcop village. Two people who loved each other’s smiles, and laughs, and friendship. And so many hints of the passion that was to come between them…

But then the world around us took it away.

The darkness kept coming for me. Memories whipping like a hurricane on a stormy sea.

“Let them flow,” Hans whispered. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not going to let you go. Not again.”

Not again.

My body lurched at the next slam of pain, but this one wasn’t of me fighting for breath as I was drowned in the lake for witchcraft. This one was all about Hans, the man I loved.

I saw the men with swords and burning torches descending on Garway church when Hans and his friends were in prayer. They’d rounded up the men of the Church like beasts, trying to force confessions of heinous sins, and my sweet love had been amongst them. I’d been dragged back to the village, wracked with sobs, praying that God would have mercy, and I’d see my love again.

I did see him again. Once.

I’d found him hanging limp from a cross a few days later, beaten, broken and destroyed. He was dead, his head bent forward and lifeless. Gone from me for ever.

Or so I thought.

But Edwin had saved him.

“I hid in the tombs under the chapel for a long, long time,” Hans told me. “Edwin told me I should run, but I wouldn’t leave Garway. Instead, he showed me the path to the vault under the chapel and told me to stay away from the world until the torture had passed. So that’s what I did. I stayed hidden in the vault, venturing out in the still of the night and spending the days in silent prayer. Edwin was the only person I spoke to for decades.”

I struggled to comprehend Hans being there so close to me, hiding under the chapel.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were still alive?” I sobbed. “You could have told me you were a vampire, and I’d have been there. Hans, I’d have been there!”

“I know.” He rocked me in his arms at the breakfast counter. “But I didn’t want to take your life from you, to pull you into the pit of my own. I didn’t want to drag you away from your family and your heritage to live in darkness with a vampire, condemned by the Church.”

I couldn’t hold the pain back. My voice was wracked with hurt.

“I WOULDN’T HAVE CARED, HANS! I’D HAVE BEEN WITH YOU!”

“I know, sweetheart, and believe me, if I could’ve known what was coming for you, I’d have pulled you into the Garway vault alongside me and protected you from the torture.” He paused. “But then you wouldn’t have had Lillian…”

Lillian.

The memories kept on flowing, as real as life.

I was Mary in my visions, kneeling at the altar at Garway, crying for the man I’d lost. How could I have ever known he’d been underneath me, living out his undead existence while I carried on, oblivious?

It made me tremble as I realised he must have been under there while I married Mark a few years later – my beautiful Lillian’s father. Hans must have been under there as I had Lillian christened, looking at my baby and her bright blue eyes.

Then more…

He must have been lying in a coffin under the floor during the funeral procession, when Mark passed away from sickness. Lillian was just eight years old when she lost her father. And just a few months older when she lost me.

A fresh rush of whispers coursed through my mind…

Mary the witch, from a line of witches. Evil sinners of witchcraft. In league with the devil.

She killed him! She killed her husband with her evil magic!

What?!

No!

NO!

“Yes,” Hans whispered. “It’s painful, little one, but you have to let the past come back.”

I wanted to block out the memories, but they wouldn’t stop.

People had blamed my witchcraft for Mark’s death, convinced that such a strong local farmer, a man in his prime had been taken because of my deals with demons. But I hadn’t, of course. I loved Mark. I always loved Mark. I always would love Mark.

Just not as much as I’d loved Hans…

My world was shaking all around me. There had been so much pain for all of us. So much hurt left unhealed.

“I know,” Hans whispered. “Believe me, the hurt sent me into a turmoil of broken faith for lifetimes. I’m still amazed I ever came through it.”

My emotions were nothing but a jumbled mass of panic, pain and revelation as the spirit of Mary in me came to life in the present. I felt her rising in me, like a phoenix from the ashes, hurt but strong. Delicate but fierce.

She’d have died for anyone she loved. Fought for anyone she loved. Sacrificed everything she had for anyone she loved.

SHE.

But SHE was I.

SHE was ME.

My mind came alive with rational questions. Why, what, how, when, where…

I knew what Hans was going to say before he said it.

“Feelings not thoughts, remember?”

I tried to heed his words as the memories slowed. I felt the years of love for Hans, and my darling Lillian and for Mark, the devout man who loved me after Hans was gone.

I was a widow twice over, even though the Church only ever formally recognised me as the wife of Mark. I’d been the emotional widow of Hans Weyer, too. And maybe on some weird level, that was why my grandmother had been so vicious with her dismissal of everything my soul had remembered. If she felt her own calling deep within, maybe her deeper self was protecting me from the pain she knew herself. She’d watched my grandfather die in an accident. She was a widow herself.

“Yes, there are many layers to people’s pasts and soul memories,” Hans said.

“And so many choices make along the way. Maybe not all conscious ones, I guess.”

“Indeed.” Hans squeezed me tighter, and then he smiled. “You never knew this, but I was going to relinquish my knighthood and vow of celibacy for you. I was going to ask you to be my bride, but I didn’t get the chance. I was captured on the day I spoke with the priest.”

I got a fresh rush of pain in my heart.

“I’d have said yes!”

“I know you would.”

I looked up at my beautiful Hans’ face through my tears, sobbing fresh at the recognition of the eyes I knew so well. They were greener now, yes, but they still had the same love in them. Love for ME.

He stroked my hair with a pained smile.

“The torture I endured was brutal beyond all words, but it was nothing compared to the loss I felt at watching you live your life without me.”

“You could have come for me!”

He shook his head. “Selflessness is the greatest gift of all. I chose my torment over yours, hoping you’d find a new love and a sweet Orcop life to keep you happy.”

“I didn’t have a happy ending though, did I? They drowned me as my daughter watched, with Mark’s body fresh in the ground! Why didn’t you save me? Why didn’t you save me and Lillian?”

Hans tensed as though I’d stabbed him.

“I swear to God, I’d have charged out into the sunlight a thousand times over and met my own doom to forego you yours, Katherine. But I was trapped in the tomb, locked in tight by Edwin. I felt your pain, but I couldn’t get to you. That was my biggest pain, little one. That will be the worst sin I’ll ever live with. The shame will never go away. I should have known it was coming. I should have been tuned in enough to feel it.”

I tried to collect my thoughts, feeling sick to my stomach.

I was scared to ask the next question. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak it aloud, but Hans heard it anyway.

What happened to Lillian when I was gone?

“Your beautiful daughter lived a long life. She married a young man called Matthew and they had three children. Luke, George, and Elaine.”

I smiled through a fresh set of tears.

“She was very happy,” Hans told me. “She died a sweet old woman with her children and grandchildren around her. Luke and George had moved away to Wales, but they came back at word of her sickness. Elaine was at her side all through her life, with two girls of her own.”

The thought gave me a wave of sad relief.

“What were the girls called?”

“I think it’s time I showed you,” Hans said, and chanced pulling me to my feet. “Come. Let me show you the beautiful road of your past.”

He led me through a doorway at the back of the kitchen. It opened into a study with rich green decor, but there was barely any furniture in there besides one desk.

It was all about the walls. Pictures, and paintings. Framed embroidery, and pressed flowers. Hans pointed to the family tree painted in beautiful italics, framed high and proud on the wall.

It began at the top, with Mary, then showed generations of children, leading to children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren. My gaze flitted over them – so many relatives, all from me.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” Hans told me, with his arm around my waist. “You left a great legacy.”

I attempted to soak in all the names but it was pointless. There were too many. Tiny pieces of italic script, each one symbolising a soul. A whole life in one tiny scribble of text. It blew my mind to think about all those lives living out their journey. All of the people they’d known, and the love, loss and life they must have all experienced.

And then – right at the bottom – was me.

Katherine Jane Blakely.

Seven hundred years of a family tree, and there I was again, born anew.

“I don’t understand it,” I said. “With reincarnation and being in the same family line, why did it take me so long to come back?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, little one. All I can tell you is that time means both nothing and everything, so far as I’ve learnt. Souls come back when they’re ready. There are hints and whispers in the family chain, but a soul is its own beautiful thing on its own beautiful journey. I’ve been waiting for yours to come back for centuries.”

“You’ve been watching my family for all these years? Really?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Very, very closely. They just never saw me doing it. I was waiting for you, sweetheart.”

“How did you know for sure that I’d ever come back? That was quite a risk, wasn’t it?”

He kissed my head before he answered me.

“Even through all my suffering and doubt, and through the turmoil of trying to reconcile my faith with my experience of life, I still believed in destiny and the benevolence of the great unknown. I trusted you’d be back, and I trusted your soul would pick the same beautiful family line to come back into. Your chain was too strong to let go.”

My brain rattled at the thought. I felt like a tiny little speck of life in a very bright sky.

“I knew you were returning the very second it happened,” he continued, and I looked up at him, adoring his happy smile. “I felt it at the moment of your conception. It made no sense, but it awoke me from my slumber. I rushed out to find Edwin and spun him around in my arms, whooping with cheers.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I didn’t find out your mother was pregnant for certain until a few months later, but I didn’t need to. I already knew.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered.

He squeezed my waist as I turned my attention back to my vast family tree.

“You don’t need to say a word. Your soul already has the answers it needs, your mind is yet to catch up with them. But it will. Don’t worry about that. It will.”

I scanned through the names, still trying to comprehend it. There were so many girls in our family chain, mapping out a river from me back to Mary. Ruby, Georgina, Margaret. Jane, Deborah, Kerry-May. So many distant relatives, all on the path from me to her.

Were we really all witches?

“You were all good witches,” Hans said. “Some of you used your skills more than others. Some were a lot more reserved in their approaches, others dived in all the way.”

He pointed to Kerry-May.

“She was quite a character. You’d have liked her. She lived the legend with everything she had. The head of the Garway group for over forty years.”

I got a serious prickle right then.

“Wait. What group? What legend?”

He stared at me.

“What?” I said.

“You already know the answer. You just don’t know that you know it.”

I managed a laugh. “Another thing I’ll add to the pile, then.”

He took a few steps to the side and I moved with him, and there, on the wall was a framed piece of embroidery. It must have been hundreds of years old.

I recognised it from childhood. It was one of the myths and legends I’d learnt about in school. I’d written it in my school book and drawn some pictures around it, but Grandma had torn it up and told me it was rubbish. Like she had about so many things in my life.

I heard it as a whisper. The words dancing and glowing with life as I stared.

There will be nine witches from the bottom of Orcop to the end of Garway Hill as long as water flows.

I’d sung the line in the grounds of Garway church when I was dancing around the gravestones. I used to make daisy chains up by the old spring, to my own little song.

Of course. It was all making sense now.

I was one of the nine witches from the bottom of Orcop to Garway Hill. Just like the witches before me.

The question was, just who were the others?

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Hans told me. “They’re waiting for you. Just as they have been for years.”