‘Yours is an unexpected response to tragic news, and yet one that has greeted me wherever I have shared it,’ the magistrate said. ‘No shock or grief. Hardly surprise, even.’
Gabriel shook out his shoulders. ‘Not much to surprise us, living as we do with that family of heathens up the hill.’
The magistrate stopped, looked down at the tips of his gleaming shoes, nodded slowly. ‘Interesting you should say so, given the location of the body and the, ah – position. I would have expected such an act to be brought to my attention much sooner. Hard to believe no one knew.’
Daniel closed his eyes and willed the image of Parson Walsh away. Breathed slow and deep. He could not hear the magistrate’s words over the beating of his own blood.
‘We do not,’ Father was saying, rising to his feet and indicating the door. ‘But if any of us hears anything we’ll be sure and tell you.’
The magistrate touched his hat and allowed himself to be ushered out. Father collapsed back into his seat, shaking, head in hands. Blood seeping from his nose and dripping on to the table.
‘Oh, this is a bad business, the worst I’ve known in all my years,’ he said.
‘We should tell him it was the witch family, we know it sure as day, and he’ll be wanting to put the law to work,’ Gabriel said.
‘Has your thirst for blood not been quenched, Gabriel?’ Bett asked. ‘You’ve had revenge on the lad.’ She swallowed, steadied her voice. ‘He has paid, if he was indeed the black soul and commander of demons we feared. But the mother and sisters, what do we really know of sorcery in them? The conjuring of enchantments and cures and giving you the cow pox is far from murdering the parson.’
Daniel glanced at Bett. Even now, as she defended Sarah and her family, she confirmed his fear that Sarah did indeed possess powers of witchcraft, and had used them to create a phantom love. He blinked back the sting of tears. Bett was free to believe in the innocent version of Sarah she had known. But he had seen her cursing Molly, the fury and power rushing through her, and the memory sat in him like a chip of ice, numbing him to all that was once good. He knew what Bett did not.
‘She’s right,’ Father said. ‘Enough done there. The sight of his mother in such grief – it were almost enough to persuade she feels it like any other. To make me think she perhaps did all she could to save your mother, as she claimed.’
Bett pushed her chair back and walked out. The men glanced at each other. There were no words with the power to express what had been done, and the feelings of each at the role he had played.
Gabriel shrugged. ‘I can hold my tongue. He’ll know soon enough, anyway.’
Father ran his hands over his face, again and again. Fingers shaking, tears in his eyes.
‘Work,’ he said. Voice strangled, as though shame squeezed around his throat. ‘Farm cannot wait, tasks to be done and we have been delayed by events too much.’ He rose and walked to the door. ‘About it, lads.’
Daniel made to follow, but Gabriel stood and blocked his path, a great mass darkening the doorway.
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said. ‘She had me fooled awhile there too.’
Daniel shifted. Gabriel reached his arm to the doorframe.
‘I – I don’t grasp your—’
‘Did you think your courting was stealthy? She did not hide it from me. There must have been some spell upon us to see a beauty in her that was not there. Even I, that’s laid with so many girls, when she pushed herself against me I was taken in, so how were you, with only our Betts to compare with, supposed to see the trickery?’
‘Pushed against you?’ The smile upon Gabriel’s lips surely, Daniel hoped, showed there was no truth to his words.
The smile lifted on one side. ‘Aye, a time or two, though soon enough I saw through her sorcery and was disgusted by her. Ugly, underneath the spell, she is.’ He bent his head low to reach Daniel’s, eyes level. Voice lowered. ‘Did you see how ugly she was?’
Daniel saw the turbulent blue eyes, soft curved lips and smooth river of skin. Remembered laughter strung through the air like stars in the night. Longed with every part of himself to believe in their love, yearned for it to be true.
He saw her pressed against Gabriel.
A wash of heat ran through him. Foolish, he had been. Weak in his need to be seen for his true self, loved. Nothing about her had been as it appeared – her innocence of spirit, her loyalty to him. All conjured.
She had understood his frailty and appeared to him that day, with Bonny, made him see in her everything he yearned for. Entranced him to give himself and turn away from all he knew. And all the while her mother worked fatal magic on Sam and the brother commanded his demon to slaughter the parson. Her own acts of vile magic, the cursing of Gabriel and the moving of the branch to trip Molly, were even seen by his own eyes. Some part of him had known all along that she was not as he thought, that there was truth to the stories about her. The only time in his life he did not listen to the voice of doubt was the one time he should have.
None of it was true. The strength she saw in him. The bond between them, the life they planned.
Wild, beautiful witch. She had devised all.
Gabriel laughed, slapped Daniel on the shoulder. ‘You should revel in the turn of events, Danny. You’ve been saved a fate as witch-husband.’
The laughter weakened his stance, and Daniel was able to push him aside and pass into the bright outdoors. Only from Gabriel’s mouth could fall the suggestion that he revel in these, the worst of times. Through the cloth of his breeches he felt the stone that he still carried in his pocket. Unable, yet, to let it go.
Daniel worked as never before, until his hands bled and his tunic was soaked through and melded to his back. He watched young rabbits capering at the edge of the field, a sight that would once have soothed him. Still he could not quiet his mind.
He had crashed through the past months, destroying all he touched and leaving a trail of devastation. Planning to abandon his family and inheritance, involving the parson in a scheme that left him murdered, turning his back on Phyllis and then Molly, leaving her prey to Gabriel’s appetites and moral destitution. Taken in by the worst evil, willingly.
He scythed and weeded and ploughed and sowed. Still his boisterous mind persisted.
At the end of the day, faint with exhaustion, he had decided upon a path that would ease his conscience.
With Bett and Gabriel at last gone to their own homes the kitchen was quiet.
‘I must speak with you,’ Daniel said.
Father raised an eyebrow and drank from his flagon. Daniel sat. No anticipation this time, no fear, just a flat determination to say what he had to. To put right the one thing it was in his power to.
Now. Before he was once again seduced by Sarah’s bewitchment.
‘I must confess that, though you forbade my courting Molly Matthews, I have continued.’
The flagon stopped on its way to Father’s lips. ‘I thought you refused her?’
‘I – yes, I did but then she persisted and I was—’
Father nodded. ‘I see.’
‘I have lain with her.’
‘Oh.’
‘And she is—’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Yes.’
Daniel waited in the silence as Father took in the news. Once he would have feared an explosion of anger, a beating even. No longer. The fire crackled behind him.
‘I gather there are remedies for such a—’
‘They have been tried,’ Daniel said.
‘Oh. And no success?’
Daniel shook his head. Father swallowed the last of his ale, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sighed. Stretched out a leg, brought it in again.
‘You have disappointed me, son.’
Daniel focused on the groove of the wooden table. ‘Myself also.’
‘You know where your mother’s ring is kept.’
‘Yes.’
‘’Tis not as I had hoped,’ F
ather said.
‘Nor I.’
‘But you love her? Son? To put you both at risk of this? You care for her as I cared for your mother, the ring will find its rightful place?’
Daniel hesitated. Molly was sweet, and silly, and manipulative, and frail.
The feelings he had known and called love were not real. Were not even his own. He knew nothing of it.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Sarah’s room was as she left it. Blankets pulled neatly over the bed, clothes folded in a corner. Beneath them, he knew, the ring. Hidden, until the day they escaped and she could wear it freely. Never now to be.
Deceived into giving it, he was free to take it back.
Still the scent of her suspended in the air.
Within a Curse’s Reach
Bett has brought food, wrapped in a cloth just as I used to on Sundays. Bread, butter, cheese, collops, salad leaves and a pail of milk.
‘Eat,’ she says, taking my shoulders and guiding me to the table. She glances at Annie, standing in the doorway, one foot tucked behind her knee. ‘And you,’ Bett says.
Annie looks at me. ‘Aye,’ I say, and she sidles to me, settles on a stool and nibbles on a piece of bread.
Bett looks at Mam, curled in John’s bed, stroking his blanket and whispering. Says nothing.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘About what happened, Sarah, so sorry I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to go to the magistrate but Nathaniel said it would be worse for you.’
‘Nathaniel’s right.’
She sighs, pleats her apron. ‘You could leave, you’re a dairymaid, go to the next mop and find a new place.’
‘What of Annie and Mam? I cannot go to a mop with them. If three women such as we arrived in any village, you know what everyone would think.’
Bett hangs her head, nods.
‘There’s nowhere to go, the three of us, that will not end the same way as here.’
Bett puffs out an angry breath. ‘It cannot be so. I will not have it. There must be something to be done, something I can do.’
I think, briefly, of the small pile of belongings I left at the farm and dare not go back to retrieve. My clothes. Bracelet. The ring Daniel gave me. ‘Thank you for the food,’ I say.
‘Something more than food.’
The words come out, unbidden, each ripping a piece of me away as I speak it. ‘You can take Annie.’
They both start. Bett stares at Annie, Annie stares at me, stops chewing, though her mouth bulges with food.
Bett gives a thin laugh. ‘I – no, you’ve lost all—’
Annie spits her mouthful on to the table, clenches her fists, glares at Bett and growls.
‘Take her, keep her safe. You yearn to mother, and she is in need.’ I wipe her mouth with my hand, frowning. ‘And she is usually much more appealing than this,’ I say.
‘No, she – they all know her anyway, it would not work.’ Her eyes burn bright as she looks at Annie. She pictures being her mother, I know.
I lift Annie, carry her around the table and try to put her into Bett’s arms. ‘Take her,’ I say.
Annie wails and clings to me, gnashes her teeth at Bett. All this while Mam whispers, so overwhelmed by the loss of one child she doesn’t note the losing of another.
‘Take her,’ I say, pushing Annie towards her. ‘Keep her safe.’
Annie screams and weeps. ‘No,’ she shouts. ‘Sarah, no.’ Her arms are tight round my neck, legs clamped around my waist, gripping with fingers and toes. I feel the sobs shudder through her body, the tears warm on my neck and can’t hold back my own.
Bett steps away, shakes her head. Tears in her eyes too.
‘I cannot. She needs you.’
As Annie holds on to me I know I can’t part from her, even to save her. I sink on to a stool, press my face against her shoulder.
‘All right,’ I whisper. ‘It’s all right. You stay with me.’
Bett clears her throat, gives a sharp nod. Bats her hand across her eyes. ‘Good, then. I shall bring food. But, Sarah, think of leaving. The magistrate goes from house to house, asking about Parson Walsh’s – asking about Satan and witchcraft. I fear for you.’
She reaches into her petticoat and takes out her purse. Pulls from it a comb, made of bone. One I’ve seen many times before.
I press my hand to my mouth. ‘How did you …?’
Her voice is soft. ‘I saw him sneak out of the house with it that day. Saw it in your room later. I thought you might—’
I take it from her. Can say nothing in response, my throat too full to speak.
When she’s gone, Annie slides from my lap, stands with fists clenched, glaring through a pile of hair. ‘You gived me away,’ she shouts, and runs to flop on to her mat.
I sit at the table, turning the comb in my hand. Remembering. I had been at the beck. After he’d shown us the moon fish. Before May Day. Before he’d ever been to this house. Air laced with the scent of mud.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ he had said. ‘Not that I was looking for you. I like the river, I’m here very often. Well, not very often but—’
I watched the blush spread over his cheeks, smothering the freckles. Couldn’t make sense of him. He puffed out a long, slow breath, rocked back on his heels and looked up at the sky.
‘No sister with you today?’ he asked. He sounded as though someone squeezed the air from him.
‘Are you all right?’
He had laughed. ‘Good question.’
I turned back to the water. Felt him move from foot to foot, lift his cap and run his hand through his hair, clear his throat.
‘Have you been in?’ I asked. ‘Properly – over your head?’
‘Oh yes. It’s lovely on a hot day. But I know you don’t like the water.’
He turned to me and smiled, too much. Spreading. My own face did the same, I didn’t know why. I felt the warmth of him next to me, breathed in his scent of hay and horses.
‘Oh,’ he said, a note of surprise in his tone that didn’t convince. ‘I have something for you.’ He held out the comb, a thing of beauty such as I’d hardly seen, and certainly never owned. ‘It was my mother’s. I thought – for your sister. To help with the, er—’
He had waved his hand over his head to indicate Annie’s lops.
I studied his gift, running my fingers over the curved edges, the points of the teeth. When I looked up he was walking away, already disappearing into the cluster of trees.
Holding the comb now, that day feels so far away. Part of another life, that happened to another lass. I hold it in both hands, press it to me, just once. Place it on the table. Sigh, pour milk into a cup and lift it to Mam’s lips. She does not look at me.
At first I think dawn is peeking through the gaps in wall and roof. The light is not constant, nor gradually growing stronger as it should, but laps against the house.
Something has come, and I don’t know what. I stand in front of the door, watching the brightness slip and pulse through the spaces between planks of wood.
There’s a cough outside.
Before I can waver, I yank the door open. No man will hold me imprisoned by terror in my home.
Were it not a threat, the sight would be beautiful.
A splash of yellow lights in the night, in a half-circle around the front of the house, seeming to float, though I know they’re held by unseen hands. A few steps away, for those carrying them are too feared to come within a curse’s reach of us. There are so many. Every person in the village must be here. I wonder which light is held by Daniel.
I stand in the doorway while Annie sleeps, while Mam whispers and weeps, watching the fearful, flickering beauty in the darkness.
The Stars Above
It was a mistake to come to the river. Like pressing a finger into an open wound.
He touched the places they had been. Here, they had searched for wood, here lit the fire. Lain together for the first time. There, they had s
wum. Here, he had given her the ring. He longed for all that he had believed to be truth, fumed at his own frailty in falling prey to her. Took the stone she had given him from his pocket, thought perhaps to hang it on the tree and see if she might come.
This was his farewell. He would not return.
At last, the moon clear above him and knowing he would begin work in but a few hours, he pocketed the stone and turned back towards home. Walked fast, until the bodily pain of trying to catch and keep breath was almost enough to distract from all else.
He had refused to join the witch walk of the previous night, his reputation for cowardice serving him well. Instead he had taken the ring, sought out Molly while the men lit candles and made their way up the cursed hill.
‘What brings you here so late?’ she had asked, stepping into the night.
‘Marry me.’
Even in the darkness he could see the black blot of her open mouth.
‘Were I free to refuse, I would,’ she had said. ‘Not because I do not wish to be your wife, but because you ask out of kindness and not love.’
‘Kindness is as strong a beginning for marriage as any. And perhaps there is a form of love.’
She had looked out across the quiet sea. ‘If there was love, you would know it.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
They stood side by side, watching the black lilting waves.
‘Thank you,’ she said, kissing his cheek.
Her footsteps were soft behind him. The ring still warm in his palm. He had not been able to part with it, in the end. Could conceive of it resting on no other finger but Sarah’s, even now.
So today he and Molly had stood, awkward in their Sunday best, in Magistrate Wright’s sparse room, an unlit fire laid in the grate, a Bible and a copy of the King’s Demonology on the desk.
The magistrate held steepled fingers to his lips. ‘The replacement minister is on his way and should be arriving any day. Once he has settled I’m sure a wedding can be arranged. In the meantime, I have other pressing matters to attend to. I would be grateful if such frivolities as weddings could be dealt with elsewhere.’
Cunning Women Page 27