A quiet reminder

It started with an advert in the back of the Tibley Chapter, the abundantly disappointing local newspaper for the small communities of Tibley, Wrenton and Barkley St Bennett’s. At the time nobody really paid a great deal of attention to it. It was small (at a cost of 25p per word there was a need for economy of communication) and unsurprising but ultimately it was so forgettable everybody did. For the reader’s benefit it is included here:

I’m sorry Maureen but they only had white peonies this year.

Of the few hundred people who may have read the Chapter that week it is probable that less than 1% will have seen it, read it or even cared. The truth was its desired recipient could not have read it. Maureen was dead. Not just dead, but very, very, profoundly dead. The residents of Wrenton had made sure of that four hundred years before by drowning her, hanging her and then for good measure they threw her onto a giant pyre. Just to ensure there was no doubt that they were not particularly fond of the poor woman, her neighbours had her charred corpse buried on the north side of the churchyard, standing upright with a large rock over her to stop her escaping. Maureen Dubblen was an outcast in life and in death and the stone was largely unknown to most people in the local area. It was therefore easy to miss that on 27th of November every year a small posy of moonflowers would be placed on top of the stone. Indeed due to its distance from the church entrance which sat on the south side it was rare that anyone would find themselves near it or the twisted old yew tree it was so close to.

Had anyone seen the advert and then happened to wander past the compost pile of old flowers and grass cuttings they would have seen a stone with a small posy of white peonies sitting atop. It might have raised an eyebrow but as it was nobody did and so its mystery remained.

It was a shame that nobody took the time or the effort as the truth was decidedly interesting. Young Walter Dubblen had only been eleven when his mother had been taken from him. The poor lad witnessed it all, while it was truly a traumatic experience it was not wholly unexpected. In fact his mother, who among her many gifts was a talented prophet, had predicted this outcome some time before and had not only prepared herself but had also steeled her son against the inevitable pain of the loss he would endure. While she denied it publicly the truth was that Maureen Dubblen was a witch, she was in league with satan and it was probable that young Walter was the product of one of her many encounters with her dark overlord. That or the handsome blacksmith who lived at the far end of the lane and was very simple to persuade to consume a very potent elixir. Either way her son was her world and her every act was in some way for him.

It was her final act that showed the greatest devotion. She knew that there had been rumours that her income from spinning flax was by no means her sole source of financial support and that she must be making money somewhere else. The truth was that she had been selling potions and poultices to all and sundry for years. She had been selling them to much of the village and in good times this was a service that was gratefully accepted. However two bad harvests were two too many and a scapegoat was identified, tried and summarily convicted.

She did not fight or protest. She simply declared that this was a mistake and one that in time they would recognise as such before willingly walking with the mob to her fate. What the mob did not realise was she was absolutely correct in her statement that this was a mistake. Not in their identification that she was a witch because she absolutely was. It was a mistake as the consequences for the village were grave and not only had it no effect on the harvests but secretly and quietly over five generations each and every family involved in her death were extinguished, their bloodlines run dry, their family name made a relic in the church records, now unused.

What they may have benefited from knowing was that eleven year old boy they left sobbing in his home as they pulled him away from his doomed mother had been clutching a note and a pouch. The note was the final words from a devoted mother to a son, it also contained the instructions for a potion which offered the one to consume it immortality and the words.

“Avenge me.”

The pouch she had left contained all but one of the ingredients which she had diligently collected for him. The final requirement the locals unsuspectedly had prepared for him and it only needed a late night trip and partial exhumation to achieve. With the addition of the “burned heart of an unblessed minion of satan, ten years in a hated grave” the now 21 year old warlock Walter Dubblen began his campaign.

Each and every family suffered tragedy and trauma. Not one escaped his simmering ire. Few noticed him moving between the three villages every few years to disguise his lack of aging and generation by generation Maureen Dubblen’s revenge was gained and her popular memory lost to time, though not to her son.

So now it remains that as an annual act of devotion, the reclusive church organist at Wrenton Parish Church lays a small posy of moonflowers on the stone that marks his mother’s grave. This year he could not find the blooms she had once tied in her hair before the mob came and so he had apologised through that advert. The advert that nobody saw about the flowers, the flowers that only he knew about.