The Black Oak

Prologue

England, Autumn 1575

She was naked, shivering in the pre-dawn cold that seeped into bone and marrow alike. Eleanor knew this would be the last sunrise she’d ever see—in this life, at least.

The iron cage was a crude, brutal thing, all thick bars and rust-eaten joints, suspended from a heavy timber scaffold in the centre of the village square. It swayed with her slightest movement, the creaking a slow, melancholic rhythm marking the passing of her final hours. The bars bit into her skin wherever she pressed against them—rough, cold, unforgiving.

Below, the ground was hard-packed earth, frozen and dark, stained black from the many previous acts of ‘justice’ performed there.

Eleanor lifted her head, defying the cold and the shame they meant her to feel, and surveyed the distant hills. The trees were ablaze with autumn’s fury, their leaves a tapestry of gold and scarlet and deep brown. A thin mist curled up from the river, spectral fingers creeping towards the village to claim the living.

The beauty of it was immense and heartbreaking, made all the more cruel by the knowledge that she had lived in intimate harmony with this land, and now it would watch her die.

She closed her eyes and let herself remember yesterday. It was impossible that only a single day had passed.

***

The morning had begun with her river swim, the cold water shocking and glorious against her skin. She’d returned to her shack, dressed, and made tea—rose petal and hibiscus with fresh nettles. The day had promised warmth.

Later, a soft, familiar rustle came from behind her river-side shack. She smiled knowingly, slowly bending down to take a handful of dried berries.

She turned. Standing beyond the clearing were a doe and her fawn. The young deer had indeed grown, looking healthy and strong. Eleanor held out her hand. Without any hesitation, both the mother and the young deer stalked towards her. The younger deer took some of the berries, chewing and swallowing quickly, its expression bright, nose shining.

As the mother deer gently lowered her head to take the remaining berries, she stopped, her head snapping towards the dark woods, ears pricked. At that same instant, the sickening twang of an arrow shot from the undergrowth. It pierced the fawn through its side, hitting with a blunt thud that knocked the deer over. Eleanor shooed the mother away before kneeling beside the young deer, which was writhing in silent agony. She held the fawn’s head gently in her lap, whispering words of soothing energy. She could still see traces of pink residue from the berry juices on the fawn’s innocent mouth, its life force ebbing away in shuddering gasps. Slowly, the terrified eyes closed, and the young life was gone.

Rage had consumed her. She’d begun to channel her power—a shimmering, deadly heat building in her chest—when twenty men emerged from the undergrowth. They carried pitchforks, billhooks, farming implements crude and capable of terrible harm.

“There she is! There’s the witch!”

They swarmed her before she could rise. Rough hands grabbed her hair, pushing her face-first into the cold earth. They bound her wrists with thick rope and hauled her to her feet.

The march to the village took an hour. From there, they dragged her to the big house—the only dwelling made from solid red brick, built at the peak of the hill so Michael Simmons could survey all his holdings. He owned everything as far as the eye could see. It was whispered that much of what transpired in London had originated with him, and literally nobody got in his way.

Eleanor was thrown to the ground in the manor’s courtyard. Michael Simmons stood motionless on the steps of his grand house, radiating cold, vile amusement. The twenty men stepped back in deep deference. Villagers crept out to watch, intrigued and terrified in equal measure.

Simmons paced slowly down the steps.

“So,” he said, his voice hard and resonant, carrying across the courtyard, “you are the Devil’s whore who’s drunk my earth dry. You have cursed my fields and brought this blight upon my bounty.” He paused. “Now. Rise.”

Eleanor didn’t move. Her heart hammered with fierce defiance.

“Stand up!”

Still, she didn’t move.

“Get her up.”

One of the men yanked her to her feet by her hair.

“What is your name?” Simmons demanded.

Silence.

His arm swept back and the heavy back of his hand connected hard with Eleanor’s mouth. Her head rocked back with the force, blood welling up, but she refused to show any sign of pain. She simply stood there, her body rigid with defiance.

“What is your name?”

Silence.

“Untie her wrists.”

The rope fell away. Her arms dropped to her sides, muscles aching.

Simmons took a large knife from his belt, pressed the tip to the neck of Eleanor’s gown, and ripped it downwards in a single tearing motion. The fabric fell to the dirt, exposing her nakedness to the jeering, whistling crowd.

Eleanor stood tall and unashamed, refusing to cower.

Tall and statuesque, she stood with effortless grace, her long legs and slender figure belonging to another world entirely. Her pale, almost ghostly face was framed by a cascade of jet-black hair that tumbled past her waist. And there was something about her presence—a stillness, a weight to the air around her—that made every man in that courtyard feel smaller; diminished and stripped bare.

The weight of her attention bore down on Michael Simmons, a physical pressure that squeezed the air from his lungs. His breath grew shallow. His skin prickled. It wasn’t her stare that undid him—it was the absolute certainty that radiated from her, the knowledge that she could see every lie, every cruelty, every dark corruption, and into the rotten core of his soul.

Hot sweat broke out on Michael Simmons’s forehead, his breath growing shallow. From somewhere in the courtyard, one of his men called out anxiously: “Are you well, my lord?”

The spell broke. His breath stuttered back to normal. He spun around sharply, desperate to escape that weight of presence. “Yes, of course I’m well, you fool!”

He stepped behind her, gathering his composure. Taking a fistful of her long hair in his left hand, he yanked her head back and punched her hard in the side of her belly.

She didn’t make a sound.

He punched her again, harder, driving his fist deep into her ribs. Still nothing.

The men watching grew confused. This woman should have been writhing on the ground in agony, yet she hadn’t betrayed a single sound. In fact, they realised they hadn’t heard her speak at all since they’d taken her from the forest. Their laughter and jeers died in their throats. Their master was hitting her again and again, but no sound passed her lips. Eleanor’s face remained composed, her body absorbing the punishment with an otherworldly stillness.

Simmons turned her to face him and punched her as hard as he could on the jaw. Down she went, her body sprawling onto the dusty ground.

He contemplated her naked body, magnificent even sprawled in the dirt.

“Witch!” He spat on her. “Take her and put her in the cage. String her up until tomorrow. We’ll deal with her then.”

His men shuffled nervously, looking afraid to go near her.

“You can see she’s a witch! Look! Where are the marks on her body where I hit her?”

It was horribly true. Not a single bruise or blemish marred her pale skin.

“We’ve had no rain now for five months!” Simmons roared. “Your crops are ruined! Your families will starve this winter! All because of this harlot of Satan!”

That hysterical command, coupled with their fear of starvation, got the men moving. One by one, they spat on Eleanor’s body.

“Now take her as I commanded.”

Simmons turned and stumbled back into his house, slamming the door shut.

***

Eleanor had woken during the night when an owl landed heavily on her cage, setting it swaying with a grating creak. If anyone had been watching, they would have sworn the owl and Eleanor were having a low, intimate conversation, though no words were spoken.

Now here she was, watching the sunrise for the last time.

Was she afraid? Not truly. Disappointed? Yes. She would miss her morning swims, the deep quiet life she’d carved out in nature. She thought of the poor mother deer, betrayed and grieving, and felt the sudden, hot prick of a tear.

Angry? Absolutely.

And then she thought of Jane. Her baby. She concentrated, feeling with absolute certainty that Jane was safe with Eleanor’s mother across the sea, a long way from this tainted land. She would be protected. And someday, a long time from now, Eleanor would take vengeance.

Almost at once, she heard a fluttering, a dark shadow passing overhead, and the harsh caw of a crow. It landed on the rusted bars of her cage, observed her for a moment—its beady stare, two gleaming chips of polished stone—and then dropped something from its beak.

Eleanor caught it deftly. An acorn.

She acknowledged the crow with a solemn incline of her head—a silent exchange of understanding—and the bird flew away. She closed her fingers tightly round the seed, feeling its potential thrumming against her palm.

They came for her not long afterwards.

The whole village had poured out for the event. Someone lowered the cage, and immediately she was surrounded by hordes of angry, desperate men and women, shouting, spitting, kicking the iron bars. Hands reached in, grabbing at her, trying to pull her hair and scratch her body.

“Witch, witch, witch!” they chanted, the word becoming a rhythm, a drumbeat.

“Enough!” Simmons’s shout came from further back.

The crowd pulled back as he strode up to the cage and scowled at Eleanor, a cruel, triumphant smile on his lips. He unlocked the heavy padlock.

“Get her out and take her to Wick Hill.”

Two of his men wrenched the cage open and pulled Eleanor out, forcing her to walk. Wick Hill lay outside the village, and they reached it within ten minutes.

Simmons was already there, as was a huge, silent man wearing a black leather hood. He leant on the biggest, most brutal axe Eleanor had ever seen. She still gripped the acorn the crow had brought, knowing exactly what she must do.

The men marched her to the execution block and turned her to face the crowd, which was now practically frothing at the mouth to see this witch die. Beheadings were rare; even more so of witches.

Simmons raised his hands for silence. The crowd hushed.

He turned to Eleanor.

“You have been charged on this day, the thirty-first day of the tenth month in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and seventy-five, with witchcraft. For blighting the harvest, for consorting with unclean spirits, and for spreading your vile corruption upon this Christian land.” He paused. “And so, by God’s righteous will, you shall die.”

He waited for her to break down, to wail and beg forgiveness.

But Eleanor wasn’t interested. Instead, her focus was fixed on the crowd until, finally, she saw him. At the edge of the crowd, his hood drawn low, was her brother, John. He gave a ghost of a nod, but it was the silent promise she needed—the assurance that her daughter’s lineage would be protected, that Jane would know who she was and what had been done here.

Eleanor smiled, a look of transcendent, final peace.

Enraged by her silence, Simmons screeched that she was evil, a harlot, an ungodly abomination. The onlookers could see black clouds racing fast across the sky, darkening the land, and the wind howled, whipping at their clothes and hair.

“Put her head on the block!”

Calloused hands pushed her down to her knees and forced her head across the rough oak block. It was stained dark with the ghosts of those who had come before, the wood grain almost black with old blood. As they released her arms, she slumped them forwards, her fists resting on the dry ground, covered by the heavy curtain of her black hair.

She released the acorn from her grasp so it rested level with her vision. Upon it, she concentrated every last scrap of her power and her righteous rage. She poured everything into it—her love for Jane, her fury at the injustice, her absolute certainty that this wrong would be answered.

She heard Simmons call the executioner forward. Heard the man shuffle into position. Heard the crowd draw a collective breath. Heard the executioner grunt as he lifted the great axe.

Then Eleanor screamed.

It was not a human sound. It was something raw, something primal—the sound of an ancient oath being sealed forever. It ripped through the morning air, setting bones on edge, sending birds shrieking from the trees in a black, panicked cloud. The sky darkened instantly as storm clouds churned overhead, blotting out the rising sun. A sudden torrent of rain lashed down, cold and violent.

Simmons grabbed the executioner’s arm. “Cut her fucking head off, now!”

The huge man raised his axe and let it fall with all his strength across Eleanor’s neck.

Her body crumpled. Her head rolled onto the wet earth, her blood pumping out in thick, dark pulses, soaking into the ground.

The rain stopped. The wind died. An unnerving silence shrouded the hill, cold and final.

One by one, the villagers turned away, deeply uneasy. Something was horribly wrong. The air hummed, charged and waiting.

Simmons kicked her lifeless body. He lifted her severed head by her hair, sneering down at her face.

The piercing blue eyes were open, and the lips were still curved in that faint, haunting smile.

He shuddered, then strode away, his boots squelching in the blood-soaked mud.

He hadn’t noticed the acorn nestled in the earth, soaked and drinking deeply of Eleanor’s blood. He had no idea of the spell of vengeance she had poured into it, or the patience with which it would wait.

***

No one was ever beheaded, hanged, or burnt at the stake on Wick Hill again.

The only thing that remains there is a giant oak tree.

Its dark, impossibly thick trunk bears deep grooves and weeping fissures, the scars of a thing that has suffered, bled, and healed over the centuries. Its branches are skeletal arms twisting outward, reaching to ensnare something—or someone.

In the moonlight, the leaves take on an almost black sheen, a shifting mass that seems to murmur when the wind passes through. Villagers swear the tree moans at dusk, that its voice carries across the fields when the light fails.

Its roots spread far and wide, coiling and slithering beneath the ground, the powerful, pulsing veins of the hill itself. They say there is a great barren circle surrounding the tree. They say that on certain nights, when the moon is dark, you can see a woman standing beneath its branches. Though her face remains a void, her long black hair moves with a wind that isn’t there.

The tree has sat there for four hundred and fifty years. Never flowering. Never dying.

Watching.

Waiting.

For the Vow to take vengeance.

Chapter 1

He could hear music from somewhere far off, drifting in from another room like a ghost he couldn’t quite exorcise. It was grating against his skull, needle-sharp and persistent, because his head was currently a construction site for a pounding headache.

Don’t lie to yourself, Jack, he thought; it’s another bloody hangover. It was the same as yesterday, the day before, and the stretch of forgotten days before that. In fact, it was the rhythm of his life.

His mouth was dry as cigarette ash, the stale, copper tang of whiskey was a second skin on his tongue, one he couldn’t shed.

Did I leave the radio on last night? Why would I put the radio on? I don’t even have a bloody radio.

He was adrift in the fog, but the bed beneath him was a comfortable lie. He didn’t care for the truth; he only wanted the darkness of sleep. He pulled the quilt more tightly around him, trying to drift back into the grey. A feminine moan protested beside him, and the quilt was roughly yanked away, exposing him to the cold air.

Jack opened his eyes. Unfamiliar room. Unfamiliar bed.

He traced the cracks in the ceiling. They spread across the plaster, an ancient, withered map of thin, spidery veins that splintered into jagged, lightning-bolt fractures.

Just like me, Jack thought. Withered and fractured. Bloody hell.

In one fluid, mechanical movement, Jack sat up and swung his legs to the floor. In the dim light of the morning, he could see tendrils of blonde hair spilled across the pillow and a careless hand with long, black-painted fingernails dangled off the far side of the double bed.

The mirror on the wardrobe showed him a ghost—haggard, pale, used up. A man who had spent his soul and was now living on credit.

He stood, surveying the wreckage of the room. It stank of sweat, perfume, cigarette smoke, and the sour ghost of stale booze. Tangled clothes littered the floor, the discarded husks of a night he couldn’t remember, alongside a half-eaten pizza and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s lying on its side, drained of its fire.

Carefully, avoiding the betrayal of noise, he retrieved his clothes and started dressing. He unconsciously scanned the walls. They were a shrine to the dark—covered in gothic art and posters of heavy metal bands. A sharp, cold pang of recognition shot through him when he caught sight of his own face staring back from one of the posters. SATAN’S ORCHARD it screamed in bold, aggressive letters above four scowling young men, all dressed in black with hair as dark and heavy as an oil slick.

His small, cynical smile faded when he saw Mikey, Seb, and Rob. He remembered that shoot—over twenty years ago now—in a wooded area somewhere in Surrey that had smelled of damp earth and impending rain.

He picked up his old leather jacket from the floor and realised he was wearing the exact same one from the poster. The jacket had survived; the man inside it was another story. He shook his head sadly and tiptoed out of the room, leaving the stranger to her dreams.