‘Molly did come to my house, she chose me after being crowned May Queen but I – I said no.’
Sarah watched him with an expression that showed nothing of her feelings. His responding smile was too much, too happy he knew, but he could not contain it.
‘And Sarah, I’ve never refused anyone anything they have asked of me in my life before, but this time I did. Because of you.’
He stepped closer to her, took both her hands in his, shook them to show the importance, the joy of what he was trying to tell her. Still her face betrayed nothing.
‘And last time Father hit me, I don’t even know how, I stood up and told him to stop and he did. And that’s never happened before. All these years I’ve been afraid and now you’re here and you showed me how to be strong and to be myself, but a me that I could never have been before, and that’s what I want. This. That happens when we’re together. And you don’t – is this making any sense to you at all?’
He stopped, desperately searching her face for any indication that she understood.
‘So, you’re not courting the blacksmith lass?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘No.’
Her expression did not change. He would need to work harder than this. ‘I – how could I? There wouldn’t be room.’
She frowned. ‘Room? For what?’
‘For anything but you.’
Her smile unfurled a little. ‘All right.’
‘Is that why you didn’t come? Molly?’
‘Aye. And because you and I, we’re of different kinds. And – home.’
The anger rising in him again. ‘Does she often hit you?’
‘Never. This was the first time.’
‘Why? Not because of this?’ To be the direct cause of her suffering was more than he could bear.
‘No. Because I’m starting to remember.’
He did not understand and did not feel he could ask. He had not earned knowledge of family secrets. Instead he tightened his hold on her hands. ‘Don’t let her do that again. Please.’
‘Why not?’ she asked, but this time with a slight smile. ‘Because you care that I’m hurt?’
‘Yes, I care that you’re hurt, care that you’re happy.’ There was a tiny tremor that could not be hidden from her because they stood so close, hands still clasped together. ‘I care for you.’ Words he had said to no other, that his lips would barely form. That rang more true than any other he had spoken. ‘And can I ask? Do you care for me?’
He felt the shudder in her breath, saw the darkening of her eyes. Feared for a moment that he had startled her so she would flee. Stepping away, he let his arms fall from her waist. He had been mistaken after all.
She reached out and clasped his doublet, pulling him in until his lips almost brushed hers. Silence then, just her intake of breath, the warmth of her hand on his arm, the blue of her eyes. Too close to see.
Picked Out in Starlight
As the sun rises I run, stumbling over the uneven ground, tripping over roots. My legs are weak still from the potion and shake beneath me, but I force myself to move quickly. The joy I carry will fill our whole house, chasing away our daily struggles, our fears of the new magistrate. I feel only a whisper of the dog I conjured, for now at least. There’s no shadow in me today where it may hide, for I think only of Daniel and what he spoke.
‘We will make our own life,’ he said. ‘No fists thrown.’
He pulled me to him, wrapped me in his arms, spinning a tale, a beautiful scene picked out in starlight and with as much substance, but I liked to look upon it. I did not let myself think of the battle there would be with my family, the disgust from his. Or worse, the sense I have of the ever-present master I’ve just pledged myself to, watching and waiting to put me to his bidding. The many warnings Mam’s given of what happens to those who resist him, of what becomes of those we love. How he commanded the sea to swallow my father.
Just for that moment, I let myself believe in his stories.
‘And you’ll be a farmer,’ I said.
‘Yes, and you my wife and you shall milk the cows and bake the village bread in our oven.’
‘And on May Day we’ll dance together. And eat flawn.’
He said nothing, but kissed the top of my head.
This is how we stayed, until the birds broke their slumber and the sky spilled with rosy sunlight.
I yank the door open, feel rather than see my way to Annie’s mat, shake the soft mound of bedding that hides my sister.
‘Up,’ I say. ‘Up, get up, wake up.’
She wails in reply and burrows down like a mouse in hay. I laugh, kiss her cheek.
‘Sleepy,’ she says.
‘Come on. We’ve to search.’
Grumbling, Annie stands, fists clenched at sides, teeth bared, trying to growl, but I laugh and then so does she.
‘Stop that, little cub. You don’t scare me.’ I search, as always, peering into her ears, lifting her hair and examining the white gleam of skin below. She is unmarked. Of course. A light has entered our lives that changes everything. She will be there too, by the fireside Daniel and I will share.
I pull her warm, bony body to me, breathe in the woods from her hair, kiss her mud-crusted cheek.
‘Why do you keep smiling like that?’ she asks.
From First Light
The day had begun with Sarah in his arms and whispers of a life together. Daniel had worn a smile all day, unable to shake himself free of it as a heavy heat gathered under the grey sky and exhaustion dogged his steps, slowing him as he went about his tasks.
His fingers lost their grip on the plough, prompting curses and jeers from Gabriel. Daniel did not care. His feet slid from under him as he let out the horses and Bett was unimpressed with the grass stains left on his breeches.
‘You know I hate the stench when I’ve to soak the linen,’ she said.
‘You’re the heart of this family,’ he said, taking her in his arms and prancing around the kitchen until she screeched and laughed. ‘We’re nothing without you, Betts.’
‘Be off with you,’ she said, freeing herself and adjusting her petticoats. ‘Quick, before I remember those stains.’ She shook her head. ‘Too cheerful by far.’
‘Nathaniel’s a lucky man,’ he called, dodging the cloth she whacked him with.
An unfamiliar, twitchy vitality coursed through him. He was dead tired and yet he could not have slept, thinking only of the night before. Every beautiful detail of the world was magnified: the sweetness of birdsong, the softness of the calf’s eyes. Fresh leaves against weighty clouds in the sky. All was well, from first light to the evening meal.
At the dinner table Daniel gathered courage and announced to Father that he had refused Molly.
‘Can’t say I’m not pleased,’ Father said. ‘She’s a pretty lass, no doubt, and you have your fun if you will, but a blacksmith’s daughter? For courting?’ He laughed. ‘You, my only son, and her? They’d gain a whole farm, what would come to us? A new horseshoe each week? Eh?’ He laughed harder, an unease spilling out, raising his eyebrows and pointing at Daniel. Pleased with this joke that Daniel did not share. ‘A horseshoe, eh? For this whole farm?’
Father wiped his eyes, still chuckling. ‘I’d have had to forbid it. You did right, son.’
Daniel placed his spoon on the table, the bowl of rich herring pottage untouched. A blacksmith’s family would not do. What then his chance of presenting the ragged-haired daughter of a cunning woman? The daughter of a woman who had been present at his birth, his mother’s death, and had been held responsible by Father all the intervening years?
Bees
Mam has sent us down to the harbour to knock on doors and sell our wares. A task I do not relish, but I was not inclined to argue, my mood still sweetened by Daniel’s words.
‘Get away,’ the woman says, already closing her door on us. Behind her the house is small and dark, scented with fish and woodsmoke. ‘I need no enchanted flowers from you.’
/> ‘Nay, it’s – white heather,’ I say. ‘They carry their own luck.’
Annie holds up the bunch of dried flowers.
‘Place them on the step so they may look out over your husband while he’s at sea,’ I say. ‘Or by the nets to bring a full catch.’
‘We are protected in this house.’ She points to a pattern scratched on to the wall, petal shapes in a circle. A witch mark. The first I’ve seen in many a year. My belly tightens. ‘I need none of your spells. Your clan do nothing but harm, Gabriel has told all of what you laid upon him.’
It’s all I can do to stop myself covering Annie’s ears. There is a shifting in the corner of my eye. I blink it away. Now more than ever we must not be accused. She looks up at me, curious.
‘It’s just a lucky flower,’ I say. ‘We’ve put nowt—’
Briefly, the woman opens the door a little wider to thrust out her head. ‘The new magistrate will protect we God-fearing folk and the likes of you shall be chased away. I know what you did to those poor Barton babbies, you slave of the Devil, and if you darken my step again, I shall tell Magistrate Wright every tale I’ve heard, you hear? Be gone.’
The door slams and Annie turns to me, frowning and still clutching the flowers. ‘What does she mean? What harm have we did?’
I think of the raw patches on the farmhand’s head, caused by my anger. The beating John gave Sam Finch and the clay poppet that Mam has made in his likeness. The curses she’s laid on the catches, harvests and children of those that have crossed her. ‘No harm,’ I say.
Whatever befell the Barton children, it was not my doing, that at least I know. It was three years past and I had not begun to grow into my powers, much less tried spinning curses or uttering spells.
I close my eyes: a bitter winter, ground stinging-cold and hard beneath my feet. Annie little more than a babby, spindly and listless; I’d lain awake all night with a headache and belly-wart from my own hunger, listening to her keening. Dazed and queasy, I ventured outside, determined to beg an apple or parsnip left from autumn, that we might boil up and feed her.
The Bartons’ place was the nearest, and all I had energy to reach. Standing wrapped in the blanket I’d taken from my mat, I begged the man for a coin, or if not then the smallest morsel of food for my babby sister, looking past him to a kitchen that held the warmth of the fire and the scent of dried fish. A girl not much younger than me sat at the table, bouncing a fat little babby Annie’s age on her knee, rolls of flesh tucked under its chin.
He chased me from his land, waving a pitchfork above his head. I, but a lass of fourteen.
Anger rises in me now at the memory, a flicker that, should I let it, will pound through me like the sea itself, filling my thoughts with ember eyes. I breathe deep, hold fast to Annie, battle with this fury, for it has nowhere to fall.
The village lost many that winter, mostly the youngest and oldest. The Barton children among them. Annie spared, though no thanks to him. They left the village not long after.
Whatever befell them, it was not my doing.
I am no more guilty than the so-called God-fearing, according to the tales John brings of those lying with others’ wives, beating their children and placing pebbles instead of coins in the collection plate. Yet they condemn us. If this is what it is to be church folk I would rather be cast out.
Growling, low and quiet, rolls through me. I could lay a curse on this woman and let her feel the cost of her cruelty, send a pestilence through her house, sink her husband to the bottom of the sea. Words sit on my tongue, never before known and perilous, tempting me. A show of my powers will turn her scorn to fear.
I teeter on the brink, caught between two lives. I can embrace he that chose me, use the gifts he gave and become, fully, my mother’s daughter. I’ve used the potion. The power is mine. But the stories Daniel spun through the night shimmer in my mind, a life of light that leaves no place for such darkness. The sound of snarling mingles with the shifting of the sea and I am suspended in the moment before choosing which world to embrace.
With the taste of ash comes the scent of smoke and I remember a fire on the riverbank, sweet pie and the warmth of a neckerchief. I close my eyes. Step back. I don’t know if I shall ever truly find a place in that world of light that others live in. But a piece of it has been offered to me, and I will take it.
‘May I have one?’ a soft voice asks from behind us. Turning, I see a girl, her eyes red-rimmed and her skin a sickly tone. I recognise her as one Mam trusts.
She crouches down, taking the flowers from Annie and burying her nose in them. ‘Though I fear luck has already failed me,’ she says, as she hands over her coin.
Annie tugs on my petticoat and I take her hand. We run from the village, happy with our success, though I cannot help but feel some disquiet. The girl Phyllis is kind and has bought our wares before. I fear something ails her.
I walk down the steep path to the shore, Annie running ahead, light and swift as a little grey cloud scudding across the sky. She has no fear. We don’t often come to the sea, and when we do must find a place not favoured by others, stony and unwelcoming.
When I reach the water Annie is already returning, with her legs wet, feet speckled with sand and a heap of clams and seaweed gathered in the dripping petticoat she’s clutched into a makeshift sack. She is nervous of water, especially the sea. We’ve seen it dip and raise itself into waves higher than houses, heard it roar like a maddened beast, seen it frozen into the sharpest teeth. Every few months it will rise and take its fill of village men. My father one of many. Even under its deceptively gentle surface today, I know there lies a great and fickle power.
Her fears have lessened, though, since Daniel took us to the beck and she is happy now to search the shore as I have shown her. Sometimes I feel she grows right before my eyes, becoming more herself with each passing day. She drops her offerings in a heap at my feet and flops down next to me. The food will be covered in sand now and need rinsing at the well as we return. On any other day I would grumble at her for this; today I barely notice.
She watches the gulls screeching and scrapping. ‘I wish I was one of them,’ she says. ‘Then I could just dip my head in the water and find whatever food I want, and I could fly right high and see the whole of everything.’
‘You don’t want to be a bird, they don’t have souls.’ Though at least if they are born without one it’s not there to be stolen, as mine was. ‘You’ve done well, little cub. And you’ve been into the water too, brave lass.’ I gather her into my arms, squeeze hard, laugh as her salt-stiffened hair taffles in my mouth.
She wriggles in my grasp. ‘You’re hurting, why are you squashing me?’
‘Because you’re such a good lass,’ I say, releasing her but taking her face in my hands.
She leans back, frowning and eyeing me as though I’ve danced a jig on the table. ‘Is this – are you my other sister?’ she asks.
I laugh. ‘What other sister?’
‘That looks like Sarah but isn’t.’
I ruffle her matted hair and resist the urge to hug her again. ‘Of course not, nay, it’s just me, as I always am.’
I pull her on to my knee, wrap my arms around her taking care not to hold too tightly, and we face the sharp sea breeze together. Her words, though spoken in childish innocence I am sure, have unsettled me. I feel light, empty. My head aches. All familiar and no more than a lack of food, and yet I wonder. Have I become some other creature, and Annie senses the change? I cannot bring to mind now, fully, Daniel’s face, or the sensation of his touch, or the words he spoke. Perhaps that was all lived by some other being, and not me at all. The other Sarah.
‘We shall have a different life soon, Annie.’
She twists round to face me, picking out a hag stone and peeking through the hole. ‘What different life?’
‘Of a warm fire every night and a table full of food. With Daniel.’ I instantly regret my words. But what harm can Annie do? If she speaks of th
is they will think it just another of her stories.
‘I can’t see the fairies,’ she says, disappointed. ‘I’ve never seed them and it’s not fair, it’s they that sent me to be growed in the woods and gived to you and Mammy and John.’
‘’Tis not we that choose the seeing, but they.’
She throws the hag stone to the ground.
‘Well don’t waste it,’ I say. ‘Bring it for Mam to sell.’
She scrabbles among the pebbles to find it again.
‘Come on.’ I kiss her cheek and imagine how it will feel plumped out with rich living. ‘Do not speak of this, nor mention Daniel, to anyone. Understand?’
She frowns, nods, gathers the clams and seaweed back into her petticoat. ‘I’ll like it when my real sister comes back,’ she says.
We make our way home, confident that what we bring from our day’s work will please Mam. As we walk the path past the Taylors’ fields my heart beats quicker and I cannot help but crane my neck over the hedge. There are only lambs, rounded out now, leaping and playing unburdened by knowledge of their fate. I lift Annie to see.
As I place her back down there’s a shout behind me and hands grasp my shoulders, hard, shake them. I’m caught between fear and hope, spinning round.
John. Laughing so hard that flecks of spittle gather in the corners of his mouth.
‘Goffy,’ I yell. Angry with him mostly because he is not Daniel.
‘There you are,’ Annie says, as though we were searching for him all along. She hugs him around the waist and he ruffles her hair.
‘Hello there, little squirrel.’
‘This is our other sister. She looks like Sarah but she isn’t.’
‘That so? What were you up to, Other Sister, all night in the woods with the farmer’s lad?’
‘Not all night, just late. You were asleep when I came in. You all were.’
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