Witch Child by Celia Rees Read Free Book Online

of the vision which held him in its grip. Some cried out that they could see it too, still others stood as if rooted and were taken by a kind of ecstasy, shivering and shaking like Quakers.
    The captain viewed all this with growing alarm. A good proportion of his passengers seemed to have been seized by sudden madness and so many rushing to one side threatened to capsize the vessel. He ordered his sailors to their stations and the passengers below decks. For a moment it seemed that all were set to ignore him, but the sailors jumped to and those not moved by the spirit persuaded the others to go below before the captain ordered force to be used.
    Entry 19
    All the talk is of what we have seen, and what it could mean. Elias saw the Celestial City, but even for those not blessed with his vision the lights are a clear omen: of war, of disaster, of plague and pestilence. But for whom? To Martha the interpretation is obvious. We left a country torn by war from top to bottom, a country where, each summer, plague threatens one place after another. It is plain enough.
    To her.
    Not to me.
    My grandmother taught me to read auguries and to me the sign is not so clear. The lights spanned the whole of the sky, from east to west, west to east. Where would the death and destruction fall? On the world we have left, or the one we sail towards?
    Jonah Morse has no truck with omen and visions. He has seen the lights many times on his travels. He names them Aurora Borealis, Lights of the North, and as such well-known to travellers and seafarers and dwellers in northern countries, as natural a part of the heavens as the sun and the moon and the stars.
    He is not slow to tell others his opinion, and they listen politely, but I can tell by their eyes that they do not believe him. He is fast losing any friends he might have made with his potions. They think Master Morse too clever for his own good and do not like being classed as credulous fools.
    The talk was set to go on into the night but, all of a sudden, conversation stopped. A wind had sprung up. Above us canvas snapped, cracking like gunshot. Sailors’ feet drummed the deck and the air was filled with shouted orders. The ship heeled and turned and we heard again the steady hiss against the side as the vessel cut through the water. Master Morse lost his audience. Voices rose all around him, giving thanks for this deliverance. Are we not the Chosen Ones? Did not Elias Cornwell see the destination promised? Hands clasped in confirmation. Many believe the wind to be the very breath of God.
    Entry 20
    Too much wind is as bad as too little. The wind strengthens until it screams in the rigging, howling like a live thing. It has strengthened beyond any blessing sent by God. We are lifted up by mountainous seas, thrown down into valleys so deep they seem to stretch to the ocean’s depths. The Annabel lurches and judders as one huge wave after another thuds against the forward bow, jarring the length of the ship. Icy water cascades through every crack and crevice. Above our heads the sailors’ feet race from one side of the deck to the other, their cries and shouts all but lost in the roar of the wind. People huddle together in the fearful darkness, shivering in terror and dread that, at any moment, we will be overwhelmed and swallowed up. The floor cants at angles which make it impossible to walk and everything that is not secured is thrown about. We are turned and turned like butter in a churn, at the mercy of the sea, as helpless as a leaf in a mill-race.
    The whole world reels and we have no way of knowing how the ship fares or what is going on above decks. We listen, trying to hear what the sailors are doing, but the hatches are secured and the voices coming down to us are snatched by the screaming wind, thinned to a sequence of cries as meaningless as the call of seabirds. The cabin is filled with the groaning of timber and the crash and boom of water on the hull.
    At the height of the storm, a