by Helen Slavin
“Feeling okay?” Charlie asked. Michael was quiet, he gave her a long look and then nodded.
“You’ll need a nap. Maybe not out here though.” Charlie smiled. “I’ll see you later,” and without further farewell she headed back around the side of the cottage.
Michael felt the Ferment smooth and zing over his tongue, heightening and strengthening the taste of Charlie Way. He sat down on the lounger and hunched into the warmth of the blanket for a minute to try to gather his thoughts.
* * *
They were satisfied that the Blackberry Ferment was the key. Thus, the Way sisters raided the Drawbridge van for the stack of plastic shot glasses that Charlie had left over from Apple Day and headed into Woodcastle, three women with a definite plan.
A group of pensioners had gathered with shopping trolleys stocked with paint-filled balloons. As the Ways watched, an old gentleman bowled a balloon towards a passing car. Cheers and whistles went up at the pop and splatter of the white paint as it obliterated the windscreen.
Those who had partaken of the Apple Day delights were coming in from other parts of town to take part and to join in the general mood of road rage that was building. Voices were raised, swear words sparked in the air. Spittle gathered claggy and white in the corners of angry mouths.
The first bomb splattered onto Charlie’s windscreen as the Way sisters rolled the car to the roadside, Charlie manhandling the flagon of Ferment out of the passenger seat and Emz and Anna dividing the stack of plastic shot glasses. It was no small matter to dodge the barrage of flying water balloons as they approached the group.
“Hey,” Charlie challenged. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A balding gentleman with a tartan trolley gave her the finger as another bent slowly to the trolley bag to pull out a missile. Emz deflected it as it lobbed towards Anna.
“Letting loose!” one old woman yelled and with a small crouching movement let rip a vast and trumpeting fart. Some laughed raucously, others were infuriated, little sparks and crackles of anger filtered into the air like a storm.
“Hey. Who wants a drink?” Charlie offered as she filled a shot glass with the Ferment. There were no takers. The pensioners jeered and as the woman in the brown cardigan and jeans started to punch a tall moustachioed gentleman in a garish golf jumper all attention filtered away from the Way sisters and their flagon of Ferment. The pensioners began a raucous chant of “Bring it on. Bring it on!” and headed off down High Market Place to menace some depressed looking teenagers.
A couple bickered past. Charlie blocked their progress.
“Free sample?” she said, the shot glass sloshing slightly onto the man’s trainers. His face was at once a snarl, shoving at Charlie so that the shot glass fell, gave a flimsy crack on the paving stone, the liquid draining away making a stain on the paving slab.
“Hey.” Anna stepped in between the man and her sister. “Back off.” Her voice took on that deep timbre that Emz and Charlie recognised from the crematorium on the day of their Grandmother’s funeral. The man backed off with an unintelligible string of swear words and he and his partner resumed their bickering.
“I want a baby and I’m going to have one.” She was jabbing at his shoulder; he shrugged her off.
Charlie sat for a moment on the edge of the pavement.
“Well. No one said it was going to be easy.” She looked at the Blackberry Ferment, sticky on her hand, and licked it off, felt better. “Okay.” Charlie’s confidence drained out into the paving stones. “Plan B anyone?”
“Yes.” Anna was staring at the stain on the paving stone, the rich velvet berry red of it. Charlie and Emz looked at her. “Plan B, for Ball.”
* * *
The Crimson Ball was Lella’s brainchild and the Moot Hall had been booked out. Tickets had been available for the last few weeks, but sales were disappointingly low.
“Thirteen.” Lella looked despondent as she tapped at her tablet. “That’s all. Not even a round number. An unlucky number! I should cancel. No one is interested.” Charlie, standing behind Lella, Anna, standing at her side, and Emz, standing without thinking at the other side, looked across their triangle at each other.
“We’re going to make them interested,” Charlie said.
“How?” Lella looked unimpressed.
* * *
Three hours later the Way sisters were spread through town handing out the crimson flyers declaring that the Crimson Ball was ‘Tonight’. Prominent black letters informed all takers that there was a ‘FREE BAR’.
“Crimson Ball tonight at the Moot Hall.” Charlie’s voice was commanding people taking her flyers “Be there, or miss out you losers,” so that people snatched them from her.
Down at the bottom of Barbican Steep Anna was being more polite.
“Would you like to come to the Crimson Ball this evening?”
“No, I wouldn’t. Crimson Ball off,” said a skinny old lady in a polka dot dress. Anna, who had been drilled by Charlie before they left the Castle Inn, smiled and said,
“There’s a free bar.” At that news another woman grabbed the flyer from her.
“I look good in red,” she said, with a sneer at the lady in polka dots: “Spotty.”
The polka dot lady gave an outraged roar and a small scuffle broke out.
“What are they fighting about?”
Anna felt a jab in the back; she turned to see an old man poking his walking stick at her. “You a troublemaker?”
“They’re fighting about the Crimson Ball. It’s on tonight. Free bar and fisticuffs for anyone that wants to bring it.” Anna was channelling her sister. “Come on to the Moot Hall if you think you’re hard enough, Creaky.” Anna kicked at his walking stick. The man gave a shout, his face reddening in fury. Anna walked off without handing him a flyer.
“Hoi. Gimme one. Come back here you effing bitch.” He was waving the stick, attracting considerable attention. Anna could see where others were being drawn to the energy of the confrontation. What had Grandma Hettie always said about kindling a fire? Stack it, let the air breathe through it, breathe out flame.
“Can’t have one.”
She walked, not fast enough to lose him, just fast enough to annoy him. With each wave of his stick more people came, more people took the flyers.
“Oi, I know you, you’re that effing cook at the effing pub!” As the Crimson Ball flyers flew from her hands, Anna felt like the Pied Piper.
Emz pinned the flyers on school noticeboards and put them onto seats in assembly. They were stuffed in pigeonholes in the staff room and slid through the doors of lockers.
At Prickles late in the afternoon she offered one to Winn.
“Come to the Crimson Ball?” Emz offered. She was looking at Winn; her eyes were their usual twinkling brown, a relief to Emz.
“Oh. Er. No thanks. Not my kind of thing.”
“It’s free and there’s a free bar.” Emz watched Winn, her eyes were definitely alright and the way she had been bustling about suggested that she was her own curmudgeonly self.
“You didn’t go to Apple Day then?” Emz asked as they began the task of tagging the Canada geese at Cooper’s Pond.
“Lord no. I did go once. When I was quite small and they still had the whole burning the effigy of the Apple Daughter thing.”
“Apple Daughter?” Emz did not recognise this bit of local folklore. Grandma Hettie had never mentioned it. Winn winced a little and grimaced.
“Yes. Bit of a fiasco really. No one could find the matches and then it started raining. What you might call a damp squib.” Winn gave a short barking laugh, “Ha, which is why they started calling a bad apple harvest, a damp squib. When the apples are all wizened.”
Emz felt a little fizz of nervous energy at the idea of apples, wizened.
* * *
The Witch Ways met back at Cob Cottage to make final preparations. Charlie had been troubled by the quantities of Blackberry Ferment and, since the latest batch had no chance at all
to ferment and was therefore more of a strong cordial, she was now filling baskets of even more blackberries with Anna to take to the Crimson Ball sprinkled with sugar from Grandma Hettie’s pantry. The kitchen smelt of earth and sunlight and sweetness.
Lella was already at the Moot Hall and Anna had said they would be no later than six o’clock.
“We can ship this lot down to the kitchen at the Moot Hall and you can make the crumble top. I can skim down to Drawbridge, pick up the Ferment. We need to not leave that unattended. Mrs Fyfe managed to drive the Drawbridge wedding beer into a hidden corner at the Hillman wedding. I’m sure she’ll be looking to stop us getting the Ferment down everyone’s necks.”
“Remember to bring some of the new Ferment, I can reduce it to syrup, pop it in the crumbles,” Anna said, looking flushed and edgy “A top up? Yeah?” Charlie nodded.
“We haven’t got anything red to wear,” Emz said as they began to bundle up the sugared blackberry mess into tubs and plastic cake boxes. Charlie shrugged.
“Does it matter?”
Anna stopped in her tracks, looked across at Emz.
“Yes,” they both said at once. Charlie took a frustrated step back from the blackberries, wiped the back of her juice-soaked hand across her forehead.
“Yes. Us not dressed for the ball leaves a gap, something incomplete. This is a spell. It must be right.” She slopped some blackberries across the table. As she did so there was a knock at the door. The Way sisters halted.
“Mrs Fyfe?” Charlie mouthed to her sisters, grabbing up a handful of blackberries and lifting her hand as if they were a weapon as Anna gave a panicked shrug. The door creaked open a little and Seren Lake stepped inside.
“Hello? Hey. I’m glad I caught you…” she smiled. “I’ve got something for you.”
* * *
The Ways arrived at the Moot Hall less than an hour later, Charlie last of all, bringing up the rear with her cargo of Blackberry Ferment. She looked nothing less than regal in her sweeping ball gown, the rich red velvet embellished with blood red beading. The bodice, tight laced, showed off her figure and Charlie had to admit that she liked the swish of the skirt.
Emz, in light crimson lace, the dress slim and layered so that the effect was as if Emz was walking through a burst of red autumn leaves, was helping Lella with the dishes for the apple crumble which Anna was baking in the back kitchen.
Anna, a pinny over the black blood red shot silk of her bustled dress, the neckline high, culminating in a tall lace collar, pricked with garnet coloured beads. The scent of the blackberry crumbles baking in the vast stainless steel oven was rich and enticing and Anna moved to the fold back doors that led from the kitchen into the main hall. She unhooked the panels and opened up the space: a blackberry scented cloud wafted into the Moot Hall.
Outside there was the rumble and raised voices of the citizens of Woodcastle.
“I’ll take a look…” Emz hitched her ball gown up and clattered up the wooden stairs at the side of the room that led to the minstrel’s gallery and the rows of leaded windows. She stood up on tiptoe to look out.
The street was swarmed with people, a tomato soup seethe of fighting, shoving, pushing, and singing, the protest like a round, layered over each other, chanting and wild.
“Why are we waiting…?” came a clapping chorus, feet stamping, “Wh-y are we waiting?”
“I think everyone’s here.” Emz said nervously “And I mean everyone.” She hurried down the stairs, hovered by the door. “What do you think?”
Charlie looked up from her bar preparations. Anna took off her pinny.
“Let them in,” she said to Lella.
* * *
The shot glasses glinted like stars, Charlie and Emz barely keeping up with the demand. At the kitchen trestles the crumbles were being snicked away, some people eating them straight from the bowl without bothering with a spoon. The evening wore on; the squabbles and tears began to dissipate as the antidote took effect. The music grew softer and slower, couples moving together to dance, kissing and making up. Children running about, skidding across the shiny wooden floor of the Moot Hall before everyone began to feel rather more tired than they’d felt before in their life and, taking hands, saying neighbourly farewells, making plans to meet for coffee tomorrow, to swap the Book Club latest, the people of Woodcastle headed home.
35
Bone Magic
Winn had rolled up at Hartfield in the Defender and was unwilling to leave the vehicle. She sat in it for several minutes as the rain deluged down, blurring the view she had of Hartfield Hall’s grand entrance. She had not used that entrance overmuch in her life; generally, as a child she had used the back door in the kitchen, spending much of her time with the housekeeper Mrs Walters.
Her annoying tenant, Mrs Fyfe, had telephoned again this evening, this time concerned about an intruder in the garden. Winn had listened to her talk about the stranger and the prowler and the invader though she was not personally convinced.
“Are you sure it wasn’t Leo on his round?” Winn had been determined to pursue all leads before actually having to head to Hartfield. Why hadn’t the blasted woman gone to the Crimson Ball with everyone else?
“Leo? No. It was not the postman. Or a delivery man. Or a religious maniac. It was an interloper, an outlaw,” Mrs Fyfe insisted. She was getting quite heated. So, with all possibilities eliminated Winn felt duty bound to head over to her ancestral home and check it out. Winn felt she might take an opportunity to inform Mrs Fyfe that really there were very few trespassers at Hartfield and the ones that did wander in were generally just enjoying the view rather than casing the joint. Everyone knew that there was nothing to steal at Hartfield unless you were keen to expand your national collection of moulds and fungus.
Winn did not like her tenant. It wasn’t just an irritation at the being called out for every tiny inconvenience, it was the woman herself. Sitting in the Defender listening to the rain Winn understood that she was afraid of Mrs Fyfe.
She could see the front door opening and so, unable to put off the moment any longer, she gathered her coat around her and reached to let herself out of the car. As she did so the little leather pouch she always had slung around her neck was squidged into the slightly crepey skin of her chest. It gave off a small amount of bodily warmth and a delicate whiff of old leather that was, at once, comforting. Winn resolved to tackle Mrs Fyfe, see off any intruders, and head back to Prickles for a cup of tea, soon as.
It didn’t help that as soon as Winn stepped from the vehicle there was an almighty sky-rending crack of thunder.
“What dreadful weather,” Mrs Fyfe said as Winn dashed over the threshold of the hall. Despite it being only a few feet from car to door Winn was dripping sheets of storm water from her raincoat. “Here… let me take your coat.” Mrs Fyfe reached for Winn, but Winn pulled away.
“Not necessary. I’ll be off out again in a moment to hunt down your mystery guest.” Winn wiped the rain from her fringe, flicked the water onto the parquet floor. “So. Where did you see this… erm… miscreant?”
“In the grounds.” Mrs Fyfe’s eyes were particularly googly today. In fact, as Winn looked they seemed to be wandering a little, one in one direction and the other, ugh, trailing off in the opposite, like stray marbles.
“There’s fifteen or more acres including the woodland, you’re going to have to be more specific.” Winn was feeling slightly chilled; the rainwater had found its way in through the shoulder seam of her coat where it was worn through.
“It was in the wood, at the edge. They were skulking.” Mrs Fyfe relished the word. The thunder pounded once again. This time Winn thought that it sounded scared. Mrs Fyfe reached to a nearby hall chair and pulled on a black leather cape. “I can show you.” She pulled up the hood, her face disappearing at once into its darkness as the storm outside began to shut off the light inside the hall. Mrs Fyfe opened the door.
“Shall we go?”
The rain hammered, a
nd Winn was wishing she had brought the twelve-bore from the back of the Defender as they made their way across the lawns to the edge of the wood. Leap Woods simply ended where the mowing began, the trees never shifting forwards, no stray saplings ever having dared to disobey her father’s rules. The wood was the wood and this was its boundary, beyond that was horticulture and formal bedding. As she thought of her father she realised that she was leading the way and turned to Mrs Fyfe.
“You know where you saw them, shouldn’t you be leading the way?” she suggested and Mrs Fyfe, sunk deep into her leathery hood, halted.
“You know the way.” Mrs Fyfe’s voice curled out of the darkness of the hood and she didn’t move forward. Winn stood her ground. The rain was now a small tributary coursing down her neck and she was quite enjoying the feeling of it.
“But you know where you saw the trespasser.” Winn was losing the little thread of patience that had been spun by the bag of cash Mrs Fyfe had stumped up at the beginning of her tenancy. Mrs Fyfe stood her ground.
“You lead. You know the way.” Her voice was small but cold and hard and unpleasant. Winn gave a little shiver, on account of the cold rain.
“I didn’t see where the trespasser went,” Winn insisted. The rain had flattened her hair completely and was now starting to form a curtain of water down her face. She wiped at her eyes again.
“You know the way through the wood,” Mrs Fyfe pressed. Winn took in an impatient breath and was rewarded with a small shot of rainwater, cold and bright tasting. She spluttered a little and had a sudden moment of clarity.