Three days to the feast day. Melantha was idle. Except for some minor adjusting and tuning, the work on the great organ had been completed. And so, while Pietro remained upstairs, she spent more and more of her time down below, ostensibly to check the various fittings for air leaks but actually just for something to do.
Surprisingly, Gant did not follow her down, nor did he stay upstairs to watch over Pietro. Of course, there were soldiers — down below there were at least two to guard the watercourse plus the two more who now stood at the tunnel where she had noticed the smell was strongest. But other tunnels, larger tunnels not used for the bass pipes of the organ, were open to her for exploration.
So she went into them from time to time, pacing their lengths just as Pietro had had Gant’s soldiers measure the lengths of the tunnels he’d sealed off. She mapped their turnings, their crumbling stone footings, and later, when she returned upstairs, she retraced her steps on the temple’s main floor, gaining a knowledge of how it was built and how, over the centuries, it had been expanded.
She wondered at this, the new freedom she had, until she realized that Gant could afford to allow her to wander since none of the tunnels — except for the river one — led to anything other than dead ends. Except for the river one and — one other?
Her curiosity grew about the tunnel of odd smells as she came to call it. So one afternoon when, torch in hand and her hair caked with spiders’ webs, she emerged from a winding side tunnel into the room that housed the cistern, and found it unguarded, she took just one look over her shoulder, confirming that the pipes and fittings that filled the room’s center prevented the river guards from seeing her, and crept inside.
She knew the plan of the other tunnels by heart by now, so, mapping the turnings of this one against what she knew must be upstairs, she realized it was leading her back past the temple altar and to the priest’s vestry. That, at least, did not seem puzzling to her — a priest, like any other man, might sometimes want some private place that he could retreat to. And so she wasn’t surprised at all, except for the ever increasing odor, when she came to a broad, darkened room, wider than her torchlight could fathom, with what seemed to be a staircase in its center. A broader, more comfortable one than the staircase up from the cistern.
“Would you like to climb it someday, my lady?” a voice — Gant’s voice — rang out from behind her. She whirled around, dropping her torch, just as a shuttered lantern sprang open. Then another lantern — another — soldiers surrounded her — lining the room’s walls.
Behind the staircase, under its shadow — she was pushed forward now — a wooden table with items on top of it. Her pack and Pietro’s.
“Welcome,” a new voice said, that of the temple priest who, in his robes, sat behind the table. “Tie her hands gently,” he said to the soldiers who gripped her shoulders, forcing her into a waiting chair, looping ropes around her. “See how long they are — long and slender. Hands made for grinding and mixing powders.”
“My husband will hear of this,” Melantha started. “I...”
“Silence, woman,” Gant hissed back at her. No more “my lady” now. “Lord,” he added, turning back to face the priest, “I see no need for formal procedures. I think we know what she is.”
“No,” the priest said. “There must always be a trial.” He looked up at Melantha where she sat alone now. “I understand from Gant that you may have guessed at some of our secrets. Perhaps he failed to explain to you that the room with the cistern is an echo chamber. In any event, such guesswork is dangerous. For instance, about the odor of hen’s-bane...”
Melantha glared at the priest and the others who stood about him but said nothing. She strained at her bonds — she had slender hands. Perhaps one might slip free. But even if she freed herself from the chair, the soldiers still guarded the chamber’s entrance.
“Let it be recorded,” the priest finally said, “that she refuses to give an answer. That is her will.” He turned toward his right, to where a man wrote his words down on parchment, then to his left where Gant stood, waiting.
“Now, Gant, the evidence — let her confront it.”
Gant stepped forward and took up her pack where it lay on the table. He turned out its contents, more violently now than he had before when she and Pietro had first been taken into the temple. He opened vials, spilling their powders, crushing and mixing their contents together.
“The paraphernalia of a witch. Let that be taken down as well.” The priest looked up again at Melantha.
She glared at the temple priest’s eyes. She couldn’t help herself. “I am no witch,” she finally whispered. “I am a healer.”
“Good,” the priest said. “At least the beginnings, now, of a confession. And so let us help her.”
He turned again to his left, to Gant, who produced a censer. He opened its latch and shoved it toward her, showing her the dark, powdered, incenselike substance inside.
She tried to hold her breath — tried to avoid what had come to be all too familiar a smell. “Black hen’s-bane,” she whispered.
“Ah, yes. Black hen’s-bane. Some of us learn to resist it in time. But you know it, woman?”
“Just that it’s evil. I...”
“Light it!” the priest said. He handed the censer back to Gant, who lit its powder from one of the lanterns the soldiers carried, then set it down on the stone floor directly in front of Melantha’s chair.
“Know this,” the priest said, turning back to face Melantha, “about our hen’s-bane. Its properties are that those who breathe its fumes find themselves moved to utter the truth to all questions put to them. Moreover, they find themselves moved to believe...”
The priest’s voice seemed to fade in and out as the sour-smelling incense rose around her. She heard it ask questions: “You say you’re a healer. But what do they call you? Are you a witch, really?” And she heard her own voice — she felt her mouth form the words — as if it came from a very great distance: “A white witch. A healer, yes. Sometimes a forest witch. These things they call me. But I am not evil.”
She felt the room grow hot, her body become slick with perspiration. She felt for her clothes to loosen the bodice — she couldn’t reach them. Her hands were pinned behind her.
She felt herself flying.
She felt her chair rise up. She felt herself straddle it, like the horse Pietro had bought for her when they were first married. But thin, like a broomstick. A distaff.
She screamed.
She felt — no, she saw now — a mountain of dancers. Naked. Below her. She flew to join them...
No!
She screamed again—
She heard voices again now. Gant’s. Pietro’s. As if from far away:
“Condemned for witchcraft.”
“No! Not Melantha.”
“See. In a witch’s trance. You, too, in danger. But if you obey the priest, in all he tells you...”
Darkness. She saw darkness.
Reached for Pietro.
And far in the distance...
...began to hear...
...music
She woke to the organ, felt her feet dancing. Dancing on pedals.
Her hands still tied, but in front of her this time, lashed to the wooden rail, only a few feet away from the keyboard.
She listened. Her nose caught a sudden whiff of something familiar. Something acrid. She blinked. She woke further.
Behind, in the temple, away from the organ and the altar. The benches were filled. Behind them, braziers, fuming with incense. Some had drifted up to where she stood.