Witchcraft and curses

Witchcraft and curses in the novel work both as possible supernatural forces and as explanations that reorganize human behavior. The Fry family’s card readings, claims of inherited power, and proposed counter-rituals are never separated cleanly from psychological influence or local history. Their truth remains uncertain, but their effects are not: people seek reassurance, carry old accusations forward, and act on fear.

Readings, grief, and the desire for certainty

Andrew Glasson’s account of his daughter Jane Glasson’s disappearance establishes the emotional setting in which a reading can persuade. After Jane finished her second year at Cambridge, she travelled to London with a friend. They parted at King’s Cross station; Jane said she would take the Tube to Paddington and catch a train to Cornwall. Andrew drove to Camborne to meet her, but she was not on the train. He first expected a misunderstanding or a later arrival, then held on to the hope that the family would eventually learn what had happened. The uncertainty devastated Jane’s mother.

Blake, who had spoken with Andrew about Jane, suggested that he consult a seer to ask whether his daughter was alive. Andrew considered the suggestion before agreeing: he wanted certainty, although he expected to recognize a charlatan. The woman had him shuffle an ordinary pack of playing cards, cut it, and deal twelve cards face down. When she turned them over in sequence, eleven were red—hearts or diamonds—and one was not. She interpreted red as life and told him Jane was alive. Andrew later acknowledged that he had allowed himself to believe her. His account makes the reading’s force intelligible without confirming its supernatural basis: in the absence of news, even a pattern in a deck could become something to hold on to.

The Fry family and an inherited accusation

Maris Hemsley’s encounters with Calensa Fry show how claims of witchcraft can combine performance, skepticism, and intimidation. Calensa initially told Maris that she had no supernatural powers and used psychological manipulation to maintain her reputation and business; she also suggested that people induced their own experiences. Maris suspected a double bluff, since Calensa knew that Maris had already experienced events she found difficult to dismiss. After several fruitless meetings, Calensa offered to disclose trade secrets in exchange for a particular favor.

That favor was for Maris to accuse Jack Harkness in print of responsibility for the death of Calensa’s grandson, Jory Fry. Maris refused: she could not responsibly fit an unsupported murder theory into an academic study of witchcraft. Calensa, Maris believed, wanted her conviction recorded because she regarded Maris as a writer. The accusation belonged to a feud said to reach back generations. Calensa placed the Harknesses and the Frys on opposing sides in the Cornish rising of 1648, and Maris remarked that the Fry family seemed to experience time not as something that heals but as something that congeals.

Their meetings took place at Tredarvas Farm, where Calensa had lived with her Fry cousin-husband. By then he was dead and the land had been abandoned; the farm itself was a ruin, though the couple had remained in the house for a time. Maris and Calensa always sat in the kitchen, and Maris never saw further into the house. It was there that Calensa repeatedly asserted that Jack had held Jory face down in the rock pool where he was found until he drowned. She placed the death on 1 August 1970, a date Maris remembered because Calensa mentioned it so often, and connected it to Lammas, whose significance Maris did not understand. The repeated date and accusation give the family feud a ritual calendar as well as a remembered grievance, but the account remains Calensa’s allegation, not an independently established finding.

Curses, vulnerability, and a proposed remedy

Maris’s own experiences give the idea of a curse a more personal, though still unresolved, dimension. She described becoming accident-prone and fearful after encounters with Calensa’s grandmother, with those feelings subsiding when she returned to Exeter and coming back when she returned. Later, when Maris confessed to Calensa that she had tried to deceive her, she abruptly stopped being accident-prone. Maris did not believe the change was coincidence, even while acknowledging that a rational person might find the pattern absurd. Calensa remained capable of intimidating her well into old age, and Maris saw Wynsum Fry increasingly resemble her grandmother. The narrative offers Maris’s experience and interpretation rather than an independent demonstration of supernatural causation.

A proposed countermeasure gives this belief a practical form. Blake warned Don that he might encounter Wynsum again in Cornwall and handed him a small brown paper bag as insurance or protection. She explained that a dewitcher Maris had consulted advised breaking a witch’s hold by burning something the witch had worn next to her skin at the place of her birth. Wynsum was born at Tredarvas Farm, whose ruins remained in a field off Ghost Hill. Blake did not disclose what the parcel contained; she said only that it was what the dewitcher had said Maris needed. Maris herself had never acted on the advice. The remedy therefore reaches Don as a transmitted instruction and an undisclosed object, not as a completed rite or a verified cure.

Don’s use of belief

Later, when Amos French and Zlenko questioned him about Wynsum, Don unexpectedly called her a witch and affirmed that he meant a real one, associated with spells, cures, or curses. His own explanation was that Wynsum had cursed him after he refused to do what she wanted. Don told Zlenko that this was why he should be worried. Zlenko asked whether the claim was true, became visibly alarmed, crossed himself, and demanded that the car stop. Don noticed the fear and decided to act on it.

When Zlenko remained frightened after returning to the car, Don told him there was a way to neutralize Wynsum’s power: obtain clothing she had worn next to her skin, then burn it. He said another witch had given him the method and assured Zlenko that it would free him. The explanation echoes the dewitcher’s advice Blake had passed on, but Don presents it as a means of influencing Zlenko, not as evidence that he has tested or performed the rite. In this exchange, inherited superstition becomes an instrument of immediate leverage. The novel leaves the curse’s reality unresolved while showing how a belief, once accepted, can direct attention, produce fear, and shape what people are willing to do.