He dreamed that they were at their wedding. Dorothy, in a long silk wedding dress, floated above him as they proceeded down the aisle. The way her black hair snaked around her head was disturbingly pagan. He could see himself walking beside her, two feet below, clutching at her hand, which hovered tantalizingly above his own. The stone church looked medieval: wooden beams crossed the ceiling while colored light filtered in from the oval stained-glass windows.
Stanley glanced sideways at the congregation. He was shocked to see that it consisted of farm animals. A pig sat in the front row wearing a cassock. It seemed to be laughing at him. Behind the pig sat a donkey, sober in a doublet and hose, while beside him a goat in a jerkin was doubled over in amusement. Absorbed in the dream, Stanley failed to hear the bedroom door creak open.
The floating bride and now fearful bridegroom continued moving down the aisle. The preacher, standing at the altar, had his back to them so Stanley couldn’t see his face. Inexplicably panicked about the protocol of arriving at the altar with a floating bride, Stanley tried to pull Dorothy down but she remained out of reach. A great sense of failure at not being a proper bridegroom filled him. He wanted to run but found that his feet were strangely frozen to the floor.
Just at that moment, outside the dream, he felt what must be Dorothy’s hand gently stroking his arm, trying to wake him up. Struggling in sleep he couldn’t respond. The caresses continued, the touch felt velvety and oddly familiar. He wasn’t sure whether it was her fingers or the heel of her hand. The massage traveled farther up his chest, toward his neck and face. Stanley desperately wanted to reach out, to wake up and touch her, but he just couldn’t shake off his drowsiness.
In the dream he started to run toward the altar, yelling, “Preacher!,” but the sound kept coming out as “Peach!” Stanley felt increasingly inadequate. It was a very unpleasant sensation. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he wasn’t worthy to be Dorothy’s husband. He peered up at the roof; to his horror Dorothy had disappeared. Terrified he swung back to the altar.
The preacher slow
ly turned around. From under the hood the craggy face of an old man peered blindly at him with goat’s eyes. Stanley screamed, waking himself from the nightmare. At that point the penis, which had been stealthily and silently working its way up his body, leaped into Stanley’s open mouth.
The academic’s eyes widened in absolute horror as he recognized the shape and taste of the disembodied organ. Gagging, he tried to grasp the member that was writhing and pounding its vengeful way deeper into his throat. Now blue in the face, Stanley desperately pulled at the testicles bouncing against his chin. The organ would not budge.
The last thing Stanley felt was the contraction of his lungs as he struggled to catch a last gasp of air. Still Dorothy snored on. Even the flailing of Stanley’s arms in his death throes failed to wake her.
It was a glorious morning. Dorothy felt the sun on her face before she even opened her eyes. Images from last night’s lovemaking flooded her body so sweetly that for one moment she feared she had imagined the whole thing.
She reached out and felt for Stanley. Her hand hit the top of a cold and clammy thigh.
Stanley’s body lay across the sheets. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets. White foam and spittle covered the lower half of his face. His jaw was stretched open in a hideous grimace and his lips were wrapped around a gnarled old root, most of which was plunged down into his throat. Dorothy recognized the mandrake immediately.
“Miss Owen, you have a visitor.”
The prison officer, a stout cheerful woman in her late fifties, waited patiently as the penitentiary’s newest inmate tidied herself up. She was a demure spinster-type, the officer had noted, polite and well spoken. Not your usual murderess. She looked more closely at the inmate: midthirties, not exactly a beauty but she had something enchanting about her. Never mind that there were rumors about her being a witch. As far as the officer was concerned, if all witches were this nice she’d trade in the rest of the nasty-minded inmates and start a coven.
Dorothy allowed herself to be led to the visitors’ reception area. Prison food and lack of exercise had made her simultaneously both thin and flabby, yet she still carried herself with resolve. She saw herself as having surrendered to fate but not resigned to it. She found this an oddly comforting thought, but it had still been a horrific six months since Stanley’s death.
One of her troubles had been finding a lawyer who believed her account of his death and was prepared to create a plausible defense. In the end she’d settled for a retired judge who had a fascination for the occult. His defense had been rambling and practically incomprehensible. In contrast, the prosecution had selected a glamorous female lawyer who kept using catchphrases like hysteria, sexual psychosis, and projection. The alluring prosecutor caught the imagination of the jury, the press, and the public, portraying Dorothy as an obsessive determined to both seduce and destroy a man higher in status than herself, who would most likely abandon her eventually. Obsessives had been celebrated that year in popular psychology and the media leaped on the case with ill-concealed joy. Dorothy was labeled “The Root Murderess” and all kinds of lewd hypotheses on the sexual foreplay that preceded the murder appeared in the newspapers.
The prosecution won easily. Dorothy got a life sentence.
“Probably end up being twenty years if you’re a good girl, then you can sell the story, get it optioned for a movie, and become a millionairess,” her lawyer told her cheerfully, slipping her the card of his publisher as he left.
Dorothy had discovered that there was a monastic aspect to prison life that suited her. She found that by imagining she was incarcerated in some medieval castle she was able to deal with the vicious hierarchy among her fellow inmates. She even had a room with a view, a sweeping panorama of Dartmoor’s bleak landscape. It was here, sitting on the bench in her cell, that she found she had all the time in the world to contemplate her previous life.
They arrived at the screened-off visitors’ section and the prison officer sat her down. A few minutes later a tall dark-haired woman, immaculately dressed in a tailored suit, appeared. She sat down opposite with silent poise and reached toward Dorothy, picked up her hand, and began stroking it. Dorothy was too stunned to react.
“You don’t recognize me but I was at your great-aunt’s funeral.”
Her accent jolted Dorothy’s memory. She had been Winifred’s one friend, the enigmatic stranger who had claimed that her great-aunt had been one of the ancient ones, a follower of Arianrhod, the goddess of time and karma. Dorothy pulled her hand away sharply. “What do you want?” It was hard to keep the resentment out of her voice.
“The mandrake root, do you still have it?” the woman whispered conspiratorially. The prison officer, standing beside the door, pretended not to hear.
“They confiscated it as evidence, then returned it later. It’s stored in a safety deposit box at the Abbey National Bank in Tunbridge Wells.”
“Good. I think both your aunt and I owe you an explanation.” Her voice was mesmeric. Dorothy felt as if she was being hypnotized into listening.
“I am also an Owen; in fact, your second cousin once removed. Like yourself and Winifred, I have never married. Most of us don’t, preferring to take the mandrake as husband instead. This tradition has gone back for hundreds of years. It all began with the hanging of Llewelyn the Fierce.”
Dorothy shuddered, struggling with a suffocating sense of history being cyclical. “The same Llewelyn that was hanged from the walls of Shrewsbury Castle?” she ventured, finally finding enough saliva to articulate.
“The very same, executed by the vile tyrant Lord Huntington. They left Llewelyn hanging there for three nights and three days. By the time Gwen Owen came to claim his body the crows had already picked out his beautiful black eyes.”
Dorothy’s blood ran cold. “Gwen Owen? Was she—”
“Llewelyn’s mistress—yes, child, she was. An extraordinary human being and a wondrous sorceress. When she came to that cold wall and stared upon the body of her only love she did not shed one tear. Instead she swore to avenge herself on all future generations of Huntingtons, even if it took centuries. She then bent down and looked for the patch of earth where poor Llewelyn must have spilled his seed as he died. The mandrake root was already growing at the foot of the gallows. Gwen cleared the soil around it and harvested it carefully, gently pulling the root away and placing it beside her breast. From that day onward Llewelyn’s mandrake root was handed down the Owen line. So you see, your mandrake root was just carrying out its destiny, taking revenge on a Huntington. Its actions were the culmination of the very reason for his existence. Gwen finally had her revenge.”