by Laure Eve
‘I took my books and studies with me to work on the rare times when I had an hour or two to myself. They were not unkind, you understand. They were practical. In their eyes, you worked to live, and you lived to work. Books were distractions. Fanciful learning was pointless. It produced nothing of value. So they could not quite grasp my frequent need to be alone and read about subjects they had never heard of and couldn’t care for at all. Most of the village was the same. The only person who interested me was the local hedgewitch.
‘I’d never encountered one before. Our family had its own doctor, of course, and hedgewitches are ten a franc in the cities, but by reputation alone they’re reserved for the poor or desperate. You know how they’re seen.
‘In the country it’s completely different, I assure you. With your local hedgewitch rests the future health of you and your family. They help new mothers give birth, and are often last call for those on their way to death. They keep the village secrets, and know more about everyone than everyone else does.
‘The Tregenna hedgewitch was called Penhallow Fern, and whenever anyone spoke of her it was with a variety of emotions, but it was also always with respect. To have such power over swathes of people naturally drew my intense curiosity. I tried very hard to find an excuse to visit her, but one does not visit a witch’s house unless one has need, and I never did.
‘Then I had a touch of luck, if you like. I was working in the cow stalls, clearing them out while they were to pasture. One was sick and wouldn’t be moved from her stall, no matter how anyone tried, so I had to work around her as best I could. She stepped on my hand as I was shovelling hay on the ground, and had sat back to rest for a moment.
‘The pain was intense. I kept screaming and brought a worker running, one of the Poltern sons. Hammet; that was his name. He was enormous – they all were, like men made out of boulders. He stood me up and forced me to walk the mile or so to her house, even though I cried and protested the whole way. I wasn’t a brave child, I must confess. Eventually we reached this small cottage set back on its own. He hammered on the door, and it opened, and there stood this boy.’
Frith paused, then. The sudden silence was startling. White realised he had been leaning forward, fascinated, and sat back.
Frith poured himself another drink, took in a deep breath of its scent, sipped, and continued.
‘This boy was about my age, I supposed, and even slighter than me. He was brown, nut brown, and had big, glittering eyes, like an animal. He looked us up and down with an amused face and asked us what was wrong. Hammet told him my hand had been crushed by a cow hoof, and the boy laughed. Have you ever been laughed at while in pain?’
Yes, thought White.
‘It’s a very humiliating experience. The boy led us inside and explained that Zelle Penhallow was not there at present, but that he could mend my hand, and what would we be offering as payment? Hammet said that the boy’s mistress could have her pick of their newest crop of hens, if she wished. The boy agreed that it was a good price and then he sat me down. I’d only been half-listening to their exchange. I couldn’t concentrate on much beyond the pain in my hand. But what I had heard made me want to strangle this cocky boy in front of me, treating my pain as if it were a childish phase I was having.
‘He mended it, though. The boy. He made some highly dubious-looking pastes and rubbed them into my hand, while I tried my hardest not to cry with the hurt. He made me want to seem braver than I was, as if I could prove to him that he had no right to laugh at me. Then he sat, my hand resting on his. He closed his eyes and said nothing. I looked at Hammet, who shook his head and told me to stay there for as long as it took and keep quiet. The whole thing was a show, of course. The paste he had applied to my hand made it grow numb after a moment, so that it appeared he was doing it himself. Tingling and stinging at first, and then nothing. It was quite impressive, and so I was affected at the time. Hammet looked as though he’d seen a ghost when he saw me sit upright and regain my colour. I told him the pain had gone and he stood, babbling to the boy his thanks, telling him to bring Zelle Penhallow over in the morning for her payment. Then he pushed me out of there as fast as he dared. On the way home and all that evening I tried to question him on the boy, but he wouldn’t talk.
‘The next morning, they came together, the boy and his mistress. The witch herself was a pleasant-looking woman, plump and motherly. I could see why people would trust her with their secrets. I couldn’t see why so many people were afraid of her, although I understood that people in a position of power always attract such feeling. She inspected my hand before choosing her hen; I suppose to satisfy herself that the boy had done a good job with it. As she went off to the yard with Mussyer Poltern I hung back, hoping the boy would speak to me. I asked him his name. He said it was Oaker. I made some passing snobbish reference to country families always choosing such simple names, with rarely any deep meaning or finesse. But instead of becoming angry the boy smiled and said that my name sounded very much like I’d inserted my head into my own backside. We instantly became friends.
‘From then on, I wanted to spend every second I had with Oaker. When I wasn’t with him I thought of him; each moment I could devote to him I did. He could not bore me, nor turn me away from him. I’d never met someone so fascinating. He spoke to animals as if they were his friends, and they in turn treated him with affection and respect. He commanded the other young of the village simply with his presence. Everyone wanted to be his friend. He was by turns charming or cruel to all of us, randomly doling out his affection as if he thought we weren’t worth distinguishing between. Naturally everyone wanted to be the one to capture his special attention, so we spent our time fawning around him like dogs. Anything he asked me to do, I did. Some of those things were not things I’d have liked anyone to know I was responsible for, and I’m sure it was the same for many of his other friends. He had a way of persuasion. There was something about him, something mysterious, like a secret he kept that made him feel superior to everyone around him. He was afraid of nothing, and it intrigued me; I wanted to know why. What was this secret ingredient that made him so sure in every situation? Of course, I found out soon enough.
‘Oaker had been favouring me of late, and we had spent some time together alone. I was in a constant state of nervous happiness, ready to do anything he asked of me. One particularly hot day he suggested we go to the river together for an hour or two. I met him at a secluded spot along the bank, an area I hadn’t been before. I could see why it wasn’t popular with anyone else. The grass was scrubby and there wasn’t a lot of shade.
‘After a time, when we had been swimming and eaten all the food we found, I asked him why he’d wanted to come here, hoping his response would be that it was to guarantee that we’d be alone. He just smiled and said he wanted to show me something. I must have looked wary, because he laughed at my face. After much teasing and playing, the end result was that he told me to sit still and watch him. And at first nothing happened. I watched, then started to grow bored and somewhat irritated by his behaviour. My eyes never left him, not once.
‘He was there. And then he was not there.’
Suddenly, White understood. He understood, finally, how Frith had known about the Talent if he was not himself Talented, a question that had nagged at him ever since they had first met.
Frith had not looked up.
‘It really was extraordinary,’ he said, his tone brittle with forced calm. ‘He was there. Then he was not. You’re used to it, I suppose. For me, I confess, it still surprises me every time I’ve seen it. There was no apparent transition. His face was collected, still, as if he concentrated very hard. His bare arms were stiff, I could see the hairs on them raised, gold in the sunlight. He was there. Then he was not. My first reaction was to assume that I’d somehow become confused – that I had hallucinated him, perhaps, or that I had looked away, fallen asleep, lost time, and he’d left me there. I looked about, as if to see him walking away from me, fu
rther down the riverbank or back amongst the trees. And then I realised that I had felt the air shift when he had disappeared – I had felt it move into the space he had left behind, I had heard it rush inwards. My confusion turned to wonder, and then to amazement and delight. I waited for him to return – it was an incredible trick. He would explain it to me. He would appear back in front of me, laughing.
‘I waited there for hours. I waited until the sun had started to turn red in the sky, and the Poltern boy Hammet had been sent all over the village, looking for me. But I had no patience for that. Instead of returning to them and allaying their fears, I got up from where I’d been sitting, unmoving and alone. I walked to the Penhallow house, knocked on the door. Kept knocking until the mistress herself answered it. Instead of looking at me astonished, as I’d expected, she sighed and let me in.
‘‘‘Where is he?” I asked her.
‘‘‘He came by not long ago, but now he’s down in the village with his friends,” she said. She saw the incensed look on my face and told me to sit down, but I wouldn’t.
‘‘‘Let me guess. He disappeared on you and didn’t come back?”’ said the witch, a strange, sad sort of smile on her face. My anger deflated and I sat.
‘‘‘He does this trick a lot, then,” I said.
‘‘‘Tis no trick, I’m sorry to say,” said the witch.
‘‘‘Am I supposed to believe that it’s magic?”
‘‘‘If the inexplicable is magic, then yes, it is. Others might claim him to be a demon or god of some sort. But he’s just a boy, same as you.”
‘‘‘He’s not the same as me,” I said. “I would not play such a stupid joke on someone simply to make them worship me.”
‘She was looking at me with a depth of knowledge I hadn’t felt from anyone in quite some time, and it made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to being understood, not even then. But I was in a high temper, and when you allow emotions to control you, you lose control of everything else. In her face she showed me that she understood her son exactly, that she understood why I was so angry with him, why I had used the word ‘“worship”.
‘‘‘Don’t punish him,” she said to me. “He’s not as clever as you.”
‘‘‘Does everyone know about this?”’ I said.
‘‘‘Not at all. I take great pains to keep it secret, and he takes great pains to have it out there for all to see, silly cock. Those who do know are in debt to me. I keep their troubles and they keep mine; on such a backbone the life of a village turns. But he’s convinced he’s special and will have none of this secretive business.”
“‘‘He is special,” I said. “Are you trying to tell me that there are many people who can do what he does?”
‘‘‘He’s not the only one I’ve met, if that’s what you mean,”’ was her obtuse reply. “But he’s the only one round here for miles.”
‘And there, you have it – the seed that was planted in my head with her innocuous sentence that would grow over some years into something of a preoccupation of mine. She was very clever, that woman, perhaps one of the cleverest I’ve met. She could read me and I feared it.
‘She told me that I’d be wise to put it out of my mind and make nothing more of it than what it was – a rarity that meant little. She could see what it could mean, and had done from the beginning of it, I presume. For her own reasons she wished it not to be used in such a way. She also took great pains to play Oaker down. I suppose it was obvious the impression he’d made on me; that he made on everyone young and impressionable. I was angered by her interference, by her accurate assessment of me, and wouldn’t listen. She was correct on every point, however.
‘When I found Oaker it was in the square, surrounded by his admirers. He saw me and a smile broke across his face as if we had that afternoon shared the most glorious joke. He called my name and I went to him, but stood my ground in front. He asked me what was wrong in a most patronising tone.
‘‘‘You left me on the riverbank,” I said.
‘‘‘Grad take me, have you been sitting there all this time?” he exclaimed in his knowing fashion. “I thought you cleverer than that, you know it.”
‘I was going to tell everyone what he could do. I was so angry at him. I wanted to ruin his smug little life. He wouldn’t see it that way at first. He would celebrate the awe it would inspire, but the awe would eventually turn to fear and mistrust. People would see him for what he really was.
‘People would see the truth of him.
‘I hoped that he might still be able to care about me. But of course everything his mother had said about him was right. He’d done his trick to bask in my heightened adoration, and couldn’t understand why I was angry. So to defend himself, he mocked me in front of everyone. Called me names. When I thought of all the things I’d done for him, things that would irreparably damage my reputation, it was as if he could see them on my face and seized on them, speaking them out loud. His friends looked at me with shock, loathing, and pity. The pity scratched at me like a knife, as he knew it would. It was a fight, only with words. He’d scored the first wound, and if I let him, would deliver the killing stroke.
‘So I did it. I said it out loud to all of them. I told them all what he could do, and they laughed at me. But Oaker did what I hoped he would do – he backed me up. And then he went further. In front of all of them, he disappeared again. It was as incredible as it had been the first time. One boy sprang up, burst into tears, and ran straight home to his mother, who he told. It was all over the village by the morning. It took less time than you would think for people to credit it. The son of a witch would of course have such tendencies. There would be questions asked about how he did it, what he used it for, why it had been kept secret. There would be fearful looks, hateful looks, suspicious whisperings. There would be judgement and blaming him for things that went wrong. It would get worse, and worse.
‘But before it came to that, I’d written to my mother to send me a carriage home. After that evening in the square I never again sought his company or looked him out. He never approached me for reconciliation or apologies, and I knew, at last and for certain, that he’d never cared for me in the slightest, that my hopes on that score had been ridiculous, founded on my own imaginings, that he’d played on them as he did on everyone’s, that he’d known how I felt and used it to his advantage. So I felt nothing for what I’d done, because it was a just punishment.’
Frith stopped, then.
White uncovered his mouth, which he had been gripping with his hand like some imitation of a woman’s feigned gesture of horror. Frith seemed quite calm now, his earlier agitation dissipated. He looked up at White, who returned the gaze out of pride, but couldn’t hold it.
‘Why did you tell me this?’ said White, giving in.
‘The hedgewitch whose apprentice has come to my attention,’ said Frith, ‘is the same mother of Oaker I encountered all those years ago. So now you can understand my apprehension. She has no call to help me and may even do something foolish while I’m visiting there. I’m not sure. She’s unpredictable.’
‘Do I remind you of that boy?’ said White, before he could stop the stupid, stupid words coming out.
Frith only smiled, and said nothing.
‘What happened to him?’ said White, while inside his head he shouted at himself to shut up.
‘I don’t know. I actively never tried to find out. But I will, I suppose, once I get there. He’s never been recruited, even though I have a person in place down there, so I assume he either left the village a few years ago or is dead.’
Dead was such a casual word in Frith’s mouth. White felt his skin prickle and willed himself to remain neutral.
The story and the message had been clear enough, though, and White had not forgotten it; no matter how much he had tried. He knew why Frith had told him. Somewhere inside his head, in a box he never opened, he knew.
And now, between them, there was Rue.
CHAPTER 24
ANGLE TAR
Rue
‘Wake up.’
Rue ignored the voice. She had been having a very pleasant dream about being able to fly and was fairly certain the voice had nothing to do with it. In any case, it was not time to get up yet.
Or was it? She opened one eye, seized with middle-of-the-night panic that she’d somehow overslept and someone had been sent to see if she was all right.
Her clock was showing twenty past two, and there was no crack of light slicing across the floor from the gap in her curtains, so it was quite definitely the middle of the night. The delicate little filigree numbers on her clock glowed gently in the darkness.
‘You have to get up now, Rue. We don’t have much time.’
‘Who’s there?’ she croaked.
‘Who else would it be?’ said the voice. She recognised it, she was sure, but it sounded rougher than she remembered. She turned her head, peering into the gloom.
There he was, a shifting shape at the end of her bed.
‘Get up,’ he said. The sharpness in his voice stung. He didn’t usually talk like that, not to her.
‘Go away,’ she snapped. ‘I’m sleeping.’
His voice became softer. ‘I’m sorry, my sweetheart. But we only have a few hours and this has to be done tonight. It has to.’
Rue sat up, caught. ‘What has to? What’s going on?’
The silver-eyed boy would say nothing more. All he did was twirl about the room impatiently while she dressed. As soon as she had pulled on her winter coat, he had her hand.
‘What’s going on?’ she said again, trying to stall him. He was making another Jump with her, she could tell. And again so quickly, giving her no time to prepare herself. It came easily to him. It was still frightening to her. He didn’t seem to understand that.
‘Rue, my love, I’m going to show you something,’ said the silver-eyed boy. He was looking straight ahead, grasping her hand so tightly her fingertips were buzzing. ‘Something you must see for yourself. And then I’m going to tell you a story. But you must make up your own mind about what you think of it all.’