But one door opened.
The door of the largest hut, almost a house in fact, burst open and a figure strode into the centre of the clearing. She threw back her head and howled like a vixen in mortal agony, a long, booming shriek of limitless rage and pain. It was Nur, witch-chieftain of this women’s village, the queen of the damned, in all her ragged majesty.
Her hair, long since turned ash-grey, had been shorn and spiked with dried mud so that it stood proud of her head and resembled the spines of a hedge-pig; her skeletal body was draped in a filthy, ripped grey chemise that fell only to her thighs and exposed round swollen knee joints above spindly shanks; the nails on the ends of her long, knuckly fingers were overgrown and twisted into yellow curls; she held a tall polished staff in her right hand, its head a knot of roots encasing a rounded piece of granite in which thin seams of sparkling quartz glinted and shone; a necklace of tiny animal skulls bounced on her bony chest – weasel, shrew and mice heads, painted a rusty brown and strangely marked in black and white with chalk and charcoal; around her waist was a belt of half-cured snakeskin supporting a big furry pouch, the papery heads of two serpents, dangling from the knot in the front where it was secured; her mottled yellowing skin, wherever it showed, was crisscrossed with fresh tiny red scratches and older healed and half-healed scars as if she rolled in a bed of thorns each night … But it was her face, her poor mutilated face that drew the eye. When I had first known and loved Nur, she had been a shining beauty to shame the sun and the moon – but my enemies had taken her and had cut that transcendent loveliness from her, slicing off her nose, her lips and her ears. Her once wondrous face now resembled a living skull, the dark-burning eyes the only hint of humanity above the gaping red holes of her nose and the eternally grinning teeth. A smear of charcoal beneath each eye socket and along the cheekbone gave her an unearthly look, while the chalk paste that covered her lower jaw enhanced the skull-like illusion. In truth, she was terrifying to behold, and I heard the men-at-arms behind me curse and gasp, and begin to make the sign of the cross and mumble desperate prayers for their Salvation.
Nur advanced across the clearing towards me, leaning on her staff, one clawed hand held up in front of her, a hailing gesture, or a benediction, or a curse. I could hear that she was muttering words under her breath in a chanting rhythm, in a language that I recognized as Arabic; but my slight knowledge of that tongue had faded with time. I knew, though, that it was not a blessing. She stopped less than two paces from me, and said, in English: ‘Alan, my love, the light of my life, my darling man; welcome to Al Mara Madina. You have come at last to fulfil your promise, that can be the only reason for this intrusion.’
I stared at her, speechless with mingled apprehension and disgust; her lipless mouth opened and I realized that she was trying to smile coquettishly at me. I finally managed to stammer: ‘Wh-what promise?’ But I knew how she would reply.
‘You have doubtless abandoned your milky whore and come to me to beg my forgiveness – and to make good your promise to love me for ever and never leave me. The spirits of the wildwood have at last granted my request.’
The poor, deformed, broken women of the camp were creeping out of their hovels by now, curiosity overcoming their fear, and groups of them were hovering, half-visible, at the tree line, reassured by Nur’s calm conversation with me and my men. I was unmanned by the mutilated witch’s words, and for a brief moment I remembered the beauty she had once been and the passion of our lovemaking, the wonder and the joy that we had made between ourselves; I had indeed promised many things in the first flush of young love that Mediterranean summer, foolish things, the poured-out promises of a pleasure-drunk boy, and I had indeed broken my word. Looking at her now, I understood the pity that Goody said she felt for her; this monstrous creature before me, daubed with chalk and coal-black, gathering her half-baked, childish pretence of magic around her like an invisible cloak: substanceless and pathetic, with only the power to cause a little nervousness in the feeble-minded; this was a poor woman made miserable by a cruel fate and unlucky circumstances, she was no enchantress, she was no true witch. She had no power beyond that of any ordinary human soul to hurt with words or deeds.
Staring at her in bright daylight, examining her tawdry rags and emaciated, crudely painted face, I found my courage returning like a river in spate, a rushing of hot blood through my arms and legs.
‘Come now, Nur,’ I said briskly, ‘you know very well that I have not come here for that. Let us put aside these foolish games. I came here because you have trespassed into my home and hearth, and have frightened the good woman that I love with your silly tricks and ugly threats. And I tell you now that you must stop this attempt at intimidation. I will not allow you to continue to harass my wife-to-be. Do you understand? This foolishness must stop. Now. Else I shall be very angry.’