‘Yes,’ she said. But still she frowned, and bit on her lip.
As Bett prepared the food basket the next morning she looked at Daniel as though she’d like to prepare him for the spit.
‘I’ll send this with the young master while you’re off to your work,’ she said. Dismissed, Father and Gabriel left.
‘You – it looks like you’re about to slice me and feed me to the pigs,’ Daniel said. Tried a laugh that came out too thin and that he regretted immediately.
She scrubbed the table so hard that her arms shook.
‘You do not like Sarah?’ he asked. A guess, for she gave him no hint of how he had offended.
‘I like her well enough.’ She wrung out the rag, dipped it back in the pail and resumed wiping the already gleaming table. ‘I didn’t know it was she you had chosen when I agreed to pass on the clothes.’
‘You would not have helped us?’
She turned, folding her wet arms across her chest. ‘I’m not sure there is any helping you.’
He shifted, swallowed. ‘Not – not so. I have spoken to Father, he is expecting a dairymaid. Sarah has a natural sense with animals. I will teach her the rest. And now she has the right clothes. For which I thank you.’
‘She is not another broken beast you can fix and house in the barn.’
‘I am well aware.’ His breath was coming fast and sharp. He had not expected this.
Bett dropped the rag into the pail and reached for her broom, yanking chairs out from the table to better reach the floor. ‘And when you cannot save her—’
‘I can.’
‘What’s to become of her? Farmer’s wife? You know that can never come about. How can you even think to bring her here, knowing what your father feels about the family? The very one that laid the curse on Gabriel.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe that?’
She batted him away as she tackled the floor by the door, shrugging. ‘I – who knows that she didn’t curse him, even with no more than cow pox? If I had the skill, I’d do it myself. Besides, he believes it and so does your father. You’ll be lucky if either of you ends the year under his roof. You’ve peddled a dream you cannot deliver, and having dreamed it she’ll be worse off without it. Poor lass. You’d have better left well alone.’
‘I could not,’ he said. His voice quieter than he intended. ‘I could not leave her alone.’
She sighed, scratched under her coif, shook her head. ‘Then you’re a bigger fool than any of us knew.’
Daniel worked with a fury, labouring until his limbs burned, until his breath scratched in his chest and a mallet of pain struck his skull. Fool, he may be. Bewitched, even. But he would not give up.
Father was expecting a milkmaid. Sarah had a natural skill. He would teach her the rest.
He allowed no other thoughts to contaminate his belief that this would come about.
Quiver Through my Blood
The whistle is loud and sharp. Unnerving, slicing through the night air. The type of which I’ve heard before from village boys, sometimes men, meant to show a woman she will not escape unnoticed.
A figure walks above me, down the hill, a solid shadow against the starry sky. I cannot see the face but no matter, I know from the way he walks, swing of shoulder and sway of step, that it’s John. Fear turns to irritation.
‘Look at this,’ he says as he nears. ‘What’re you dressed as?’
I lift my chin. ‘I’ve new clothes.’
I am not the only one. He wears a tunic I don’t recognise, too large, hanging to his knees and with a piece ripped off at the bottom. A donation from Seth, perhaps. I hope.
‘I’ll not ask what you did to earn them,’ he says.
‘I’m to have work. I’ll pay for them.’
He laughs. ‘There’s no one in this village will send work our way. No matter how your flitter-mouse dresses you up.’ He moves to walk off but I catch his arm and turn him. His expression so angry it stops my breath. ‘What?’ he asks.
‘Things will be better, John. There’ll be work for us. For you.’
He shakes himself free. ‘Aye, and we’ll wake every morning to find bread growing from an enchanted tree in the garden, and pretty village girls’ll stand in line to court me.’ He catches my eye, yearning and pain there. Looks down at the ground he scuffs with his foot. ‘Well. Until then.’ He waves and runs off down the hill.
‘Where are you going?’ I call.
He turns, running backwards as he faces me, shrugs. ‘You’ve your night amusements,’ he shouts. ‘I’ve mine.’
He runs on, leaving me to wonder. I pull the coif from my head, shake out my hair, trudge back to the house.
Morning comes and Annie, sleepy and tousle-headed, picks over the remains of the food, poking her grimy fingers into the butter and licking it off. Her skin is unmarked, her belly full and so I can sit easy. She swings her legs, plays with the clay figure of the netter, walking it up and down the table, stroking the strands of hair and whispering to it. There is a scrap of cloth on it now, though I don’t care to think how it came to be here. Grotesque. This is the closest she has to a plaything.
‘I miss the real Sarah, when’s she coming back?’ she asks. ‘You smile too much. And you sing, she doesn’t sing.’
‘I’m the same Sarah. They’re just clothes.’ I take the coif from where it lies on the table, pull it on to her head. Too big, it falls almost to her nose. She tilts her chin back and peers at me. ‘See?’ I say. ‘You’re still you with it on.’
Yet the sight of her in it sends a quiver through my blood. In the coif I see how she would look as a village girl. As another Annie. I pull it off her.
Mam returns from wetting down the ash pile, shaking out her petticoat and brushing mud off her feet. So far she hasn’t commented on the clothes, but her gaze slides to the coif as she passes. She stabs at the fire.
‘Where’s John?’ I ask. His mat still empty on the floor.
Mam busies herself adding wood to embers. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
Annie quietly places the clay man down on the table, clambers from her stool and stands as if petrified, eyes on Mam’s back.
‘On an errand for you?’ I ask.
‘Finding diversion. He’s as much right as you.’
No more comfort than John himself gave me. Annie tiptoes to the door, lifting her feet high, holding her wide-spread fingers out in front of her. I cover my mouth to smother laughter.
‘Where dust think you’re going, little lass?’ Mam asks, without even moving from the fire to look at us.
Annie stops, slumps and sighs. Face a picture of tragedy. ‘To the woods,’ she says, voice slack with defeat. ‘There’s a tiny babby fox, it hasn’t growed like the others, it’s too small, I want to feed it.’
Mam turns, hands on hips. ‘Feed it what? We’ve nowt to spare for foxes, however stunted.’
Annie reaches into her sleeve and pulls out a desiccated shrew. We watch it swing from the tail she grips in her grubby fingers, and Mam stifles a smile.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘We’ll afford your fox that. But later, we all have work to do first.’
I cannot help but protest. ‘But Mam, we’ve food, let’s keep away from the village awhile. They look upon us with only spite now, and it’s not safe to—’
‘We cannot live on the crumbs from your honey-sop’s table, and we mustn’t come to rely on them, for who knows when that well will dry. You and Annie can go beg a coin or two, for as you say, without protection from old Thompson we cannot be selling cures and curses. Can we?’
She pauses as we shake our heads.
‘Change into your own clothes, where did this get-up come from anyway?’ she says.
At last the acknowledgement I’ve been waiting for. ‘They came from a friend in the village.’
Mam snorts. ‘There is no friend to us in the village.’
‘They’re for the other sister,’ Annie says.
Mam’s skin becomes
pale and thin as a shell. She glances around the room, fearful. ‘What?’ she asks, running over to Annie, crouching before her and grasping her arms, shaking her. ‘What other sister do you speak of? What do you see?’
Annie wipes her nose and glances at me in confusion.
‘She means me,’ I say. ‘She thinks I’m changed.’
‘She looks like Sarah but she isn’t,’ Annie says. ‘Dust see, Mammy?’
Mam slumps to her knees, head bowed, and Annie bends down, stroking her hair and peering at her with worried little eyes.
‘What did you think?’ I ask. I can hardly speak now. ‘That she sees the spirits of her dead sisters? That past deeds stalk these rooms in a form only Annie can see?’
Mam covers her face with her hands, shoulders beginning to shudder. Her grief is silent for the sake of Annie, perhaps for me too, and I wish I could snag my words from the air and swallow them again.
‘Are you sick, Mammy?’ Annie whispers. ‘Did you have greed with the buttermilk too?’
I gather my own clothes, step towards the other room. As I pass her, Mam shoots out a hand and grasps my ankle. A burst of fear in me.
‘My only wish,’ she says, looking up through the straggled hair that sticks to her wet face, ‘is that you will never suffer to know what makes a woman act as I did.’
The rap on the door is loud, even; three slow knocks. A man clears his throat on the other side. Not a voice I recognise. Mam rises to her feet, finger to her lips and eyes weighted with warning, indicates that Annie and I should go.
I guide Annie into the shadows of the room we sleep in. As an afterthought I take the clay figure from the table and hide it in the cloth of my petticoat. Annie looks up at me, opens her mouth but I stop her words with my hand.
The knock comes again, louder, faster this time. Mam glances over her shoulder to check we’re out of sight, straightens her hair as best she can and pulls the door open.
I point to the mat but Annie shakes her head, remaining clasped to my waist, huddled by the wall, peering through the doorway. From here I can just see Mam’s back and the tip of a hat and toe of a polished shoe, now sprinkled with dust. A blast of fresh air dashes in from the open door, reaching my face. Annie buries her head into my clothes.
The hat moves as our visitor eyes Mam up and down. I hear the voice, clipped and sharp as though each word is a separate stone laid out without touching the next. Mam tries to close the door and a gloved hand pushes it back, the gleaming shoes step in. He strides around the room, hat tilted as he regards the pocked beams and rotting roof.
Annie tightens her grip on my petticoat, lifts her face to look at me. A pale smudge in the gloom. I point again to the mat and this time she creeps over and climbs in, pulling the covers over her head.
He lifts the coif I left on the table, holding it as he turns to Mam, fingering the edge. ‘Who owns this property?’ he asks.
Mam hesitates for a moment. ‘It’s – unwanted,’ she says.
‘But not unowned.’
‘We’d a dwelling in the village before, my husband was a fisherman, but when he died we moved here.’ There is a tremble in Mam’s voice that makes me want to weep. Or sink my teeth into the no-doubt soft flesh this man hides under his rich clothing.
‘No one objects,’ Mam says. ‘There was plague here, they say it’s cursed, no one wanted—’
‘Cursed?’ He places the coif carefully back on the table, using both hands. ‘By whom?’
‘I – it’s just what they say.’
He walks slowly around the room. Stops to inspect the shoes I’ve left by the wall. ‘And how do you make your living?’
‘I do what I can. People come to me if they’re sick.’
Reaching the doorway to our room, he steps in and looks around. Says nothing when he sees me huddled against the wall, just touches his hat. Turns his back, strides to the door and stops.
‘One of the cunning folk, are you?’ he asks.
Mam does not reply. He casts a look around the room again. ‘I see no evidence of faith here. You attend church?’
Mam hangs her head. Nods. My heart quickens and I will it to quiet for fear he will hear.
‘These cunning practices, there can be – evil in them. Can there not?’
His gaze lands sharp on Mam. ‘’Tis just the use of plants, knowing which ones heal,’ she says. ‘Nowt more.’
‘I have heard otherwise. There is a bleeding through, from cunning folk to witch folk. From plants to potions, from cures to curses. A calling on the evil spirits that lurk, and using them for your own devices.’
‘Oh nay, sir,’ Mam says. Her voice earnest and soft. ‘I’d never use such – practices, as you say. I know only of herbs and healing.’
His arm remains outstretched, holding the door ajar. He makes no move to leave. ‘A godless knowledge, nevertheless. I am sure even so simple parts as these have heard tell of the King’s concerns over such things? What happens to those that are found practising?’
There is silence as his words fall. We know of what he speaks.
‘There’s no such thing here,’ Mam says. I hear her voice strain. ‘You’ve nowt to fear.’
‘Indeed, no,’ he says. ‘For my conscience is clear.’ He touches his hat again. ‘Wright is the name. I shall return.’
At last he steps through and the door closes with a dull thud. Mam sinks on to a stool. Annie throws the covers back, leaps from the mat and runs to her. Mam holds her tight, raising a finger to her lips to warn us to keep quiet. We wait, silent, until we are sure he’s gone.
‘He could have taken his hat off,’ she says.
‘Hardly the worst of his behaviour,’ I say.
‘But still.’ She strokes Annie’s hair, staring at the floor. ‘Ah, Dew-Springer. This is more than even you can protect us from.’
I remain in the doorway, throat so full of questions they cannot fight their way out. Still hiding the poppet in my petticoat and thankful that I had the foresight to take it. It would have been all the evidence he needed to have us sent to the assizes.
John’s singing alerts us to his return, a lilting tale of a witch turned hare that should, were it sung with any skill, melt the heart and strike the soul. A poor choice. Mangled by John’s caterwauling, his once-sweet voice now cracking and lurching from a deep rumble to a sudden screech.
He bursts through the door, banging into the table and laughing, hiccupping. Hair falling over his face and carrying a stench of ale I’ve never smelled on him before. Clutched in his arms a pile of clothes that he waves at us as he did the lamb.
Mam runs out and casts her eye over the hill, then returns and slams the door, bolts it. Annie sits at the table, chin in hand, thumb in mouth, her legs swinging. Observing, untroubled. She knows nothing of drink or its effects, and I am glad for her innocence.
‘Where did these come from?’ I ask, though there can only be one answer.
‘Stole,’ John says, proudly, as though he has achieved a great feat. Once again he has risked his neck, risked us all. Now more than ever, we are vulnerable to the anger of the villagers. The protection we once had is gone, that much is clear. Reassuring anger blocks any pity. My fingers twitch for the feel of his face.
‘Quietly, I said, lad, unseen if you must at all,’ Mam says. ‘Not to be thieving and supping in full view of the whole village, and bawling your way here with an armful of their wares. I told you of the new magistrate, of how we must go with care.’ She bends over, presses a hand to her side.
John falls on to a stool, almost missing it, beams at her as though she has poured praise on him.
Annie’s thumb pops out of her mouth and she looks from John to me, laughing. ‘He’s gone funny.’
Mam snatches the clothes, the boots flying to the ground, shakes them in his face. He tries to catch them, too slow, chuckles.
‘What is all this?’ she asks. ‘What half-thought notion are you concocting now?’
He waves an arm at me,
belches, blinks from under hair. ‘Good enough for her, why not me?’
‘You plan on wedding a farmer too?’ Mam asks.
He wags a finger at her, shakes his head. ‘No, no, no.’ He leans forward on the stool, too far, rights himself. Annie giggles. ‘Work,’ he says.
Mam sits at the table, fingering the clothes. ‘You’ve been given work?’
‘Nay, but I shall. I’ll put on the –’ he flaps his hand at the clothes ‘– those. And I’ll walk the village and I shall be given work and I’ll take it, any work, whatever they offer. Like Sarah said. There’ll be work for me.’
He sits back, triumphant, as Mam turns accusing eyes my way.
‘You filled his head with this?’ she asks.
‘Nay, I didn’t mean—’
She leans over John, shakes the clothes in his face. ‘And did you think, fool of a lad, that you could stand in their thefted clothes and be offered work? With no skill to offer?’
‘Then what’s to become of me?’ he yells. ‘That I’ll have nowt, be nowt. Thieving because there’ll never be work for me, starving and watching you all wither when I am the man, I should be providing?’
Tears pour down his face, and he squeezes his eyes with finger and thumb. Annie creeps over, solemn now, and climbs on to his knee, arms around his neck, and he clings to her as though she is driftwood and he is drowning. Sobs shudder out of him. Try as I might to hold on to my anger, pity overwhelms it. I look at him and see my little brother, in despair, nothing more.
I crouch by his side, rub his heaving shoulder. ‘It’s all right, John,’ I say. ‘It will be better. It will be better for us all. Together. Soon.’
I believe it because I must. I will live and work as dairymaid, and my wage shall protect them. We will have a better life. Together.
Mam gives him the clothes, and he holds them to his face with his free hand like a babby does a blanket. She kneels, arms around us all, stroking any head she can find. No one moves.
Cunning Women Page 17