‘The boy’s name,’ I said, to help. ‘Him that’s lost.’
‘Ah. It’s Haskell. One of the Haskell boys. Now, we must discuss terms. Find the boy and rid me of the women, if they’re the ones – and I don’t doubt they are! Do this and the reward of thirty pounds will be yours.’
I thought we should slip from the room to decide the bargain between us, but Anna told the squire we would take what he offered. My voice was not to be heard. She’d lied when she said we’d be equals.
‘Splendid!’ Sir Vivian said. ‘As to your accommodation, I cannot offer you lodgings here as Lady Phoebe must not be disturbed on any account. I am only following medical advice, you understand. The doctor says that as long as my wife enjoys undisturbed rest, our prayers will be answered.’
‘We shall be covert in our investigations, Sir Vivian,’ Anna said. ‘I propose to pass as an artist visiting Trethevy’s famous waterfall.’
And me? Her bag-carrier, no doubt.
Sir Vivian waggled a finger at Anna. ‘You’re a clever little thing, Miss Drake. I have a summer house I can put at your disposal. Haven’t had much chance to use it since it was built last year. I had hoped my wife and I would spend some afternoons there this summer. It gives very dramatic views over the waterfall.’
‘Too dramatic for Lady Phoebe?’ I said.
‘One tries not to blunder, Mrs Williams. One tries. It will be good to have someone in there, keep out damp and itinerants, though I’m afraid you’ll find it sparsely equipped for staying overnight. I shall ask Mrs Carne to provide you with such things as you might need.’
He charged to the door, wrenched it open as if the house were on fire and bellowed for this Mrs Carne, who I guessed to be the sour-face who’d shown us in. Anna and I followed the squire into the passage and then to the hall, where another voice sounded, a soft voice, but it brought him up short as though he’d been struck.
‘Vivian …’ the voice called.
I gasped. There was a ghost at the top of the stairs.
FOUR
Her skin was milk-pale, her hair whitish yellow, like scalded cream. She was wrapped in layers of white ruffling cloth and lace and shawls, as if to better nest the swell at her middle. At her feet sat Pigeon, licking what might have been the squire’s blood from his claws.
‘My dear!’ Sir Vivian called up. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’
‘The noise …’
‘I instructed Mrs Carne that no one was to disturb you in the east wing. If my own servants won’t—’
‘Do we have visitors?’
‘Oh, my dear, you are troubled, I can see it. It’s the women. These women, I should say.’ He pushed Anna and me closer to the stairs. ‘Miss Drake and Mrs Williams are going to rid us of that which has so sorely troubled us and I’m afraid my excitement got the better of me. They are investigators!’
The pale woman put a pale hand to her breast. ‘Investigators?’
‘You see how she fears them?’ Sir Vivian said to us quietly. ‘I couldn’t tell her of my offering a reward. Just the mention of the wretches weakens her so, and she is already the most fragile of souls. You haven’t come a moment too soon. Now, if you will wait here for Mrs Carne, I must see to my dear wife.’
He bounded up the stairs, making certain to avoid the fiendish Pigeon, and gathered up Lady Phoebe as gently as if he worried her middle would stave in, like she was made of eggshell.
‘For all his noise, the squire is a fearful soul,’ I said to Anna, once they were out of sight.
‘Isn’t he? Ah, our cheerful housekeeper has returned.’
Mrs Carne’s scowl was coming for us. In her arms were blankets, with candle ends perched on top. Anna and I relieved her of her burden – that she felt it was a burden to aid us was clear, for when I asked her the way to the summer house she gave us no help.
‘Ask the Haskells. They ought to be doing more for their living.’
‘They’ve lost a child,’ I said, quite stunned by the cruelty of Mrs Carne’s words.
‘Well, they should’ve taken better care of him, shouldn’t they? And I’ll thank you not to go upsetting her ladyship about it. All this talk that her child will be taken and coal left in her belly in its place, it’s enough to bring things on early again. Lord knows we none of us wish for that.’
‘Have there been many losses?’ Anna said, stuffing the candle ends into the large black bag she carried everywhere.
Mrs Carne sniffed loudly. ‘Not for me to say, is it?’
‘Your discretion becomes you, Mrs Carne. And what do you make of these strangers in the woods? Do you believe they’ve taken the boy?’
The housekeeper gave either a sneer or a smile, I couldn’t be sure which, her face being so worn and mean.
‘Like as not he’s hiding somewhere, not wanting to go to the quarry and do an honest day’s work.’
‘I take it the quarry belongs to Sir Vivian?’ Anna said.
‘It does. And he’s losing money with every day that passes. Captain’s been up here time and again, what with them downing tools to look for the boy. It’s my wages they’re taking if the orders aren’t filled, and all for a lazy scoundrel who’ll turn up when he’s hungry.’
‘The squire clearly thinks the matter more serious,’ Anna said.
Mrs Carne gave a low laugh. ‘That he does. No more sense than his father before him. I been here long enough to know the ways of the people in these woods. Sly, the lot of them.’
‘That key for us?’ I said.
Mrs Carne handed it to me. ‘Don’t trust them,’ she said. ‘None of them in the woods.’
Two paths led from the house. One back to the road, and so to the sea and light and room to breathe and think. The other to the trees, and so to their watching, their waiting.
A burst of white and black flashed from the roof into the air, making my heart leap. A magpie, swooping off to the trees. Anna followed as if the bird was showing the way we were to go.
‘I’d like to reach the summer house before the light goes,’ Anna called back. ‘But if you’d prefer to spend the night in the woods then by all means take your time, Shilly-shally.’
I sprang after her. Shilly-shally, the name they’d given me at the farm for all my lateness. The name that took the one my mother had given me.
We were close to the trees now, and my uneasiness was great.
‘Don’t you feel it?’ I said.
‘Feel what?’
‘The trees. There’s something not right about them.’
‘The only thing I can feel is your boots clipping my heels, Shilly. Why must you crowd me? I know it must be hard for you,’ she said, and passed beneath the branches, ‘without the drink, but if we’re to …’ Her voice grew faint. The trees swallowed her sound.
I dithered, looking back at the manor house. The roof was pinked in the last of the sun. A soft blush warmed the sky above. I took a deep breath, to hold the light inside me, and went into the trees.
All at once the bit of breeze there’d been dropped away and that was a strange thing, for on the moor it had always been windy. Even on a day that wasn’t windy proper there had always been a bit of wind drifting around, stirring the gorse. We were never without it. There was no gorse here but plenty of moss spreading damply across the tree trunks, across the rocks all tumbled about. And ferns and brambles and blind nettles. The whole world had gone green, but for Anna.
There was her red dress ahead, weaving through the trees as she followed the path that had grown muddy now we were beneath the branches. The trees’ limbs grew so thick overhead that I almost felt I was indoors, save for where the last of the day’s light found a way to break through and spot the mud with sun. A smell lay thickly on the air, but wasn’t bad. It made me think of the last of the hay store – the summer’s cutting was there, but as staleness, almost forgotten.
I heard water tumble close by but I had no sight of it yet. The river was somewhere in these woods, and across it t
he pair of women who gave Sir Vivian so much worry. If they’d taken a child, what might they do to us trying to prove their crime? There was still time to make Anna see that getting rid of these strangers was a poor notion, that we should try to find some other work, for if this dark place should be the last that I should see—
I couldn’t see Anna.
I called her, called her by the names I’d known her by before – Mr Williams, Mrs Williams. I could barely hear my voice, couldn’t be sure my tongue was making noise. I hurried along the path and stumbled on a root thrown out to catch me. A prickling thing reached out and snagged my skirt. I grazed my palm on a tree’s skin sharp as glass. A flash of something at the wall of my eye – faster than I could see but I knew there had been movement there. Something had leapt. I ran and ran.
And then there she was. She had found the light.
But the earth had broken open at her feet.
FIVE
It was a pit, fifty feet wide, I guessed, and half so deep. It was a shock to me there, in the close press of the trees, that such ground could be clawed back, but there it was, and there were the bodies working it. I couldn’t tell if they were men or women for they’d been made loose grey shapes by the dust that covered them. Slate dust, I guessed, catching sight of a huge dark block being hauled to the surface. The hauling was done by means of a rope that passed over a wheel set atop a wooden contraption. This was on the bank opposite us, where the trees had been stripped away. In their place had grown a shed with a tin roof.
‘What do you know of quarrying?’ Anna said, peering into the pit. ‘Are there likely to be tunnels?’
I got hold of her arm to make sure she didn’t fall, then looked down likewise. The pit’s sides were uneven, like a loaf with the middle ripped out. People perched on the scattered ledges and the air rang chink-chink-chink from their tools. If I hadn’t seen them I would have thought the sound a strange Trethevy bird. There might still be some such creature yet to show itself amongst the magpies.
‘Tunnels to lose a child in?’ I said.
‘Or to hide one. I wonder if they’re much like mineshafts?’
The slab being hauled to the surface rose slowly in the air, and spun a circle, just as slow, the rope creaking, creaking. The grey shapes that were people passed beneath it, never looking up. The creaking stopped, the slab hung in the air. Loud in my head was this thought – the horse causing that wheel to turn, that rope to pull, dear God let its heart keep beating. Let its breath come deep and full. Let the beast not shy and bolt, send that wheel crashing down.
I pulled Anna back onto the path.
‘I don’t know about any tunnels or mineshafts,’ I said, ‘but I do know the quarry will still be here tomorrow. We need to find where we’re staying.’
Anna seemed to notice the light going then, and quivered into the collar of her dress. ‘I hope it’s not far. Mrs Carne could hardly be described as helpful. I wonder at her reluctance to help the squire’s cause.’
‘Mrs Carne might be a witch as well,’ I said as we set to walking and the trees closed over us again. The water sounded closer now but still all I could see were trees and trees and trees.
‘I’d ask that you keep an open mind in this case, Shilly. Just because what happened on the moor was … was what it was, it doesn’t mean that every claim of witchcraft will have merit. Such cases must be very rare, and I haven’t yet heard anything that suggests the women on the other side of the river aren’t simply spinsters who—my word!’
We had come to a clearing with a dozen or so squat cottages. The one nearest us was cluttered up with stuff, the window ledge crowded with glass bottles. My spirits leapt at the sight. Anna went up to the front door, which had things hanging off it, held fast by nails. She poked them, while I took one of the bottles and sniffed it.
My curse made Anna look over.
‘Trethevy’s brewing not to your taste, Shilly?’
‘It’s piss!’
‘If you’re saying that for my benefit, then it’s not necessary. Far better to just keep away from it in the first place.’
‘You don’t understand. It really is piss in here, not drink.’ As I put the bottle back I heard a tinkly sound inside it. Holding my breath so as not to get another draught of the stench, I put my eye as close to the neck as I dared and jiggled the bottle. ‘Piss and pins.’
‘For what purpose?’
I shrugged.
‘And these?’ Anna said, running a hand over the things hanging on the door. ‘Who has need for more than one knocker on a single door?’
I went to her side, careful not to upset the other bottles that stood close to the doorway. Stones they were, on the door – all different colours and sizes. Each had a hole through it and hung from a nail by way of a bit of rope passed through the hole. I cupped a stone in my hand. It was the colour of rust and pitted with shiny white flecks, and the hole was smooth, such as water might make over time. The whole door was covered with the roped stones, top to bottom. I pulled one so that the rope was taut, then let it go. It knocked the door, and set all the other stones rattling.
No sound came from within. I looked at the other cottages, likewise cluttered with bottles and hanging stones as this one was. Some looked so thick with the clutter that I thought it would be hard to get inside at all. There was no sign of anyone about. No smoke came from the chimneys. No washing was airing. There was no one to ask the way to the summer house.
And then there was.
She came hurrying towards us from the trees beyond the cottages, but her hurrying wasn’t fast at all, for she was hobbling, and as she drew closer I saw the skin of her face was papery from being old. Her old face and her hands were the only parts of her body to be seen, for she was covered by a black shawl that looked so large as to be wrapped around her many times over. It was as if she’d clothed herself in the shadows that hung between the trees.
‘You’ve news?’ she said. ‘Tell me you’ve news.’
She clutched at me and I feared it was to stop herself from falling down, such were her tremors.
‘We’re looking for the summer house belonging to Sir Vivian Orton,’ Anna said.
‘The summer house … Not Paul?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
This made the woman’s tremors worse so I set her down on a stone bench nearby, which thank goodness had no stinking bottles on it. The black shawl looked so tight about her throat that I thought it might be causing her breathlessness, but when I went to ease the tightness she quickly pushed my hand away and was at once more steady.
‘Can I fetch someone to help you?’ I said.
The woman shook her head. ‘There’s no one here, my sweet. Those the quarry can spare are looking for Paul. He’s been taken. I thought that’s why you’d come. Thought you’d been searching. I’ll be all right.’
‘The missing boy – you’re a relation?’ Anna said.
‘Paul’s my grandson.’
‘Ah,’ Anna said. ‘It’s Mrs Haskell, then.’
So raggedy the skin of her hands was, like it had been badly torn and not healed well. She caught me looking and tugged the cuffs of her dress to further cover her hands.
‘Come to see the waterfall, have you?’ she said.
‘I’ve heard it’s spectacular,’ Anna said.
‘You drawing, then, or are you poets?’
‘We’re artists, yes.’
‘That’s what the others said they was doing here. Them furriners.’ Her voice was hard now. Harder than the slate being split in the quarry. It was hard as moor stone.
‘You mean the women who’ve come?’ I said. ‘Across the river?’
But she caught sight of something behind me and struggled to her feet. ‘You been in the water again?’ she shouted.
I turned to see a boy of around eight making his slow way down the path towards us. He was dragging a spade, which left a furrow in the mud. When he drew close I could see he had been doing as Mrs Haskell fear
ed for he was shivering and dripping.
‘Peter! What have I told you!’
The boy hung his head and let his spade fall to the ground. ‘I only been in the shallows. Not deep. I han’t found him.’
He fell to scritching then and Mrs Haskell was all sorrowful. ‘Oh, my bird, my sweet. Come here.’ She wrapped him in the folds of her black shawl. Over his head she spoke quietly to us. ‘Twins they are, Peter and Paul. My nestle-birds. Their closeness makes it worse for the boy.’
‘Nestle-birds?’ Anna said.
‘Family’s youngest,’ I said.
Mrs Haskell nodded and there were tears from her then, as well as the boy, and I thought how bad it must be for them all, losing the child.
‘How long is it since you last saw Paul?’ I said.
‘Days now. I … We’ve barely slept. It’s too long. He’ll be—’
The boy with her, the brother, began to scritch again at these words and the woman tried to be more cheery.
‘Come on now, my bird. We’ll sit by the fire and have you dry before your mother comes home. How about that then, eh?’
She turned to lead him to one of the other cottages.
‘Please,’ I said, putting a hand on her arm to stop her. She flinched. ‘Can you tell us the way to the summer house?’
‘Oh, I was forgetting. Of course, my sweet. Of course. You’re not far. Go on past the cottages here, where Peter’s just come, and then at the fallen oak you must bear left. Go on a little way further and you’ll come to the monks’ wall. Keep that on your left and go a step or two more and you’ll come out on the river. Go upstream, climbing then, and you’ll see the squire’s summer house. White and black it is.’
‘The monks’ wall?’ Anna said. ‘There was a monastery here?’
‘So they say,’ the old woman said. ‘For serving Saint Nectan.’
At these words the boy began to shiver violently.
‘Now, Peter, don’t go fretting. ’Tis only the saint I’m speaking of. Not them others.’ She tucked a lock of the boy’s hair behind his ear. ‘The saint is good to us, we know that, don’t we? Go in and stir up the fire now.’ When he’d gone inside she turned to Anna and me and her face was riven with worry.
The Magpie Tree Page 3