The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  Anna reached the boy and laid a hand on his shoulder. He gave a cry of fright and spun round, striking her hip with his spade. Then it was Anna’s turn to cry, in pain. He was sorry at once and near to scritching so I had to get everything in hand.

  ‘You’re not meant to be near the water, are you?’ I said, and grabbed the spade.

  ‘You won’t tell Grandmother, will you?’

  ‘Only if you tell us what you’re looking for,’ I said.

  Peter splashed his way to the bank, that belonging to Trunkett, the squire’s neighbour, and sat down. He was pale with cold, and sat shivering, his head lowered onto his chest. I thought him to be about eight years old but I knew little of children besides them being good at lying. His hair was sandy and in need of a cut for it fell across his eyes. All the better to be tricksy, I thought.

  Anna sat on the bank beside him but I stood, not minding my feet getting colder and wetter as I perched on the last crossing stone. Standing meant I was firm with the child.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘I was looking for the grave,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Paul’s?’ I said, unsure whether to feel pity for the boy or be suspicious of him.

  He shook his head and Anna gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘The saint’s grave,’ he said. ‘Saint Nectan.’

  ‘And you think he’s buried here, in the river?’

  He frowned at me, as if I’d spoken something foolish. ‘Of course he is. This is where they put him. I just don’t know which part.’

  ‘Who buried the saint?’ I asked him.

  ‘The sisters,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to explain it to Shilly and me,’ Anna said. ‘Saint Nectan is a stranger to us.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for you, then.’ Peter shuffled his backside backwards and eyed Anna and me to be certain we were listening. Then he began.

  ELEVEN

  ‘The furrin pair came first when the saint was dying. They knew to come because they’re holy. Like he was.’

  ‘And when was this?’ Anna said.

  The boy shrugged.

  ‘A month ago? A year?’

  He crowed with laughter at her.

  ‘More like hundreds of years,’ I said. ‘It was forever ago, wasn’t it, Peter?’

  ‘Around then. That’s the time of the saints. Before everything we have now, but not before ships because he came here by ship. That’s why he thinks of sailors. Because his ship was wrecked but he survived.’

  ‘Because he’s holy,’ I said, and the boy nodded.

  ‘I see,’ Anna said, and gave a great sigh. ‘So in the days of forever ago, St Nectan came to these woods and after a little more of forever had passed, he was close to death.’

  ‘In his chapel,’ Peter said. ‘That’s where he was dying. It’s the squire’s little house now. The one he keeps empty by the falls.’

  ‘The summer house is built on Saint Nectan’s chapel?’ I said.

  Peter nodded and Anna gave a snort of laughter.

  ‘That sounds like the work of poets to me,’ she said.

  I paid her no heed, thinking of what I had seen the night before, by not seeing. By drinking.

  ‘These women that came for the saint, did they have eyes?’ I asked.

  ‘Shilly!’

  But Peter didn’t think it was a foolish question, or a fearful one.

  ‘I don’t know about their eyes. Grandmother might. She knows all the old stories. But they must have had some seeing for they put the saint in an oak casket and put that in the river bed. That’d be hard to do with no eyes at all.’

  ‘Very true,’ Anna said, looking at me.

  ‘So the women put Saint Nectan to rest,’ I said, ignoring, for a moment, the thought of them having drowned him first. ‘You digging him up is hardly a kindness.’

  ‘I have to!’ Peter shouted. ‘He said he’d come back when he was needed.’ And then, more quietly, ‘I need him. He’ll find my brother.’

  He was scritching again. I gave him back his spade to try and cheer him.

  ‘Do you know who the women are?’ Anna asked. ‘The ones in the woods now, living in the cottage this side of the river.’

  He wiped his eyes with his dirty sleeve. ‘I told you. They’re the same ones from before, the sisters that buried him. They’ve come back.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘What do they want?’

  He shrugged. ‘They won’t say. I couldn’t tell neither, though I went there most days, with Paul.’

  ‘To the cottage? Why?’

  ‘They needed things bringing, from Boscastle. And me and Paul did their snaring and skinning. They paid a ha’penny a rabbit. They ain’t got no food now, and I’m glad of it.’

  ‘Did you and Paul always go to the cottage together?’ Anna said.

  Peter nodded. ‘But then I was ill and Mother said I was to stay in bed. Paul wasn’t meant to go to the sisters’ cottage without me, but we’d set a new snare and he didn’t want it to go to waste, not when that pair would pay for fresh rabbits.’ Peter pushed himself off the bank and into the water again. ‘Mother was raging when she found he’d gone alone. Then when he didn’t come home …’ He dug his spade into the small stones of the river bed and turfed them into the water with a scattering splash, his actions quicker than before. Desperate.

  ‘Poor soul,’ Anna murmured. Then with deliberate loudness she said, ‘Well, Shilly, we must be on our way. If only we had a guide to take us to the cottages where we met Mrs Haskell yesterday. All I have is this ha’penny—’

  Peter stopped his work and we set off.

  The boy didn’t say much, though Anna tried to learn his secrets, as she had worked to learn mine when we had met on the moor. She was good at that. It was her talent.

  The cottages came in sight and I was pleased to see the dusty quarry workers sitting outside amongst the piss bottles, for it meant we’d arrived at dinner time and there might be something spare, if Anna had more ha’pennies about her.

  But she didn’t need to spend them for Mrs Haskell saw us coming down the path with Peter and seemed to think we’d brought him to her, rather than the other way around. After she’d told him off again for going in the river, she bade us sit on the stone bench by her front door and pressed warm pasties into our hands. I noticed again that the Haskells’ cottage was without the clutter of things that the others had, the things to keep witches away. Instead of piss bottles and hag stones, the Haskells had flowers in pots either side of the door, red and sweet-smelling.

  I didn’t ask why they didn’t do the same as their neighbours, for I was eating and that was the better job then. No use knowing the questions to ask if you’d nothing inside you to keep standing. There was no meat in the pasties, for there was no money for it. I could see that, looking about me. Squire Vivian wasn’t generous with his wages. But the pasties were filling and it was a kindness of Mrs Haskell to ask us to eat with her, and to feel the sun on my face. If it wasn’t for the fact we were only there because a child was missing, I might have said it was pleasant.

  Mrs Haskell wore the huge black shawl, same as the day before. It was made of wool and wrapped around her tightly, snug at the neck so that no skin showed below her chin. I said to her I wondered that she kept it on, such was the sun’s fierceness.

  ‘I can’t be taking it off, my bird. Not with my flesh the way it is.’

  ‘Have you sores?’ I said, and Anna ceased chewing her mouthful of pasty.

  ‘Scars,’ Mrs Haskell said. ‘From the fire. One of the mills went up, you see, years ago now. There’s not many still living will remember it. I was stuck inside when the roof came down and the flames caught my dress. Took half my flesh with it when they pulled it off me.’

  Anna marvelled that the flames hadn’t touched Mrs Haskell’s face, and the woman agreed.

  ‘It was the saint, my sweet. He looks after us.’

  ‘But not enough to stop the fire from happeni
ng in the first place,’ Anna said quietly.

  If Mrs Haskell heard this, she gave no sign, and asked if we’d like a drink. I wondered if they brewed much in those parts and was thinking how to ask that when a man came round the side of the cottage.

  Mrs Haskell told us this was her son, James. He was lanky, and had the same sandy hair as Peter, though his was tidier than the boy’s. Slate dust lay at his temples and on one side of his chin where he’d failed to wash it off. Anna told him we’d met his wife in the woods earlier, looking for Paul.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear what’s happened,’ she said, and the care in her voice made me believe she meant it, that she wasn’t only thinking of the reward. I liked her best when she showed this side of herself. It wasn’t often.

  James Haskell could only nod, his gaze on the ground.

  ‘Maria’s out there still,’ Mrs Haskell said, patting her son’s hand. ‘And the others. We’ll find him yet.’

  James grasped her hand and squeezed it, and he seemed to draw comfort enough from this to work his tongue.

  ‘You’re staying in the summer house, Mother tells me,’ he said.

  ‘We are,’ Anna said. ‘It gives a fine view of the falls.’

  ‘Damp, though,’ I said.

  ‘Thought it would be.’ James leant against the door frame. ‘Foolish place to build. You’d think the squire would have known that. But then he’s never up there.’

  ‘I’d imagine the cottage where the women are staying, the strangers, is less rustic?’ Anna said.

  ‘It’s bigger, I know that. Needs to be, all the trinkets they’ve got with them.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘When Paul didn’t come back. I’d not gone before. Had no need to. Oh, now then!’

  Peter appeared from behind, squeezing himself between his father and the doorpost. James wrapped his long arms round his son’s shoulders and held him close.

  ‘What have I got here then, eh? What have I got?’

  The boy made out he was keen to be away but he wasn’t. He was the cheeriest I’d seen him. James Haskell, too, had brightened.

  There were shouts from down the path – girls’ voices, squabbling. Cursing.

  ‘Here’s the peace gone,’ Mrs Haskell muttered.

  They appeared at once – three of them, each with the Haskell sandy hair but none of their father’s leanness, or his quiet. Peter curled into himself, still held tight in his father’s arms.

  Mrs Haskell took the girls in hand, shouting that they should stop their racket, and truth be told they were as loud as the magpies who jounced and made their clitter on the summer house roof. They were introduced as Esther, Tamsin and Jenna. I forgot at once which was which but the youngest was ten and the eldest thirteen and the fight was over a comb and someone being pinched. The youngest showed her grandmother a red mark on the fleshy part of her upper arm, and blamed the middle sister, for which she was rewarded with another pinch, and a kick for good measure. I liked the spirit of the pinching sister. I thought that one was Tamsin.

  Her grandmother smacked the back of the girl’s legs and said, ‘Go and see if Richard Bray has any fish. Your mother deserves a decent supper after searching all this time.’

  ‘Richard Bray is a smelly old trout himself,’ the youngest girl said. ‘He leaves the guts all over the table.’

  ‘You get going, my girl, and what’s more you’ll take your brother with you. Go on now, Peter.’ Mrs Haskell gave the boy a shove into the flurry of his sisters and they swept him away with more shouts and curses.

  James Haskell clasped his elbows, as if to hold fast the feeling of Peter there with him.

  ‘I can see why the boys are close,’ Anna said, when quiet had returned.

  ‘Pair of nestle-birds, they are, keeping each other company. It does him good to be with the girls now, while Paul …’ Mrs Haskell shook her head. ‘It stops Peter digging.’ Then she turned a sharp eye on me. ‘That’s where you found him, isn’t it? In the water.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Anna said.

  ‘He said he was looking for the grave of Saint Nectan,’ I said.

  ‘He doesn’t know what else to do,’ Mrs Haskell said.

  James went back inside the house without a word.

  She watched him go, then said, ‘We none of us do. The girls might look as if they’re free of cares but they’re weighed down by the worry of the rest of us. And Maria running herself ragged out there all hours, even in the dark when she’s more likely to go over the waterfall than she is to find Paul. Oh my dears, my dears! That pair across the river, gliding about like they’re innocent as the day they were born, when they’ve taken him! I know they’ve taken him!’

  Then James Haskell was back with us again, setting a cup of tea in his poor mother’s hand.

  ‘Calm yourself, Mother. This won’t help anyone.’

  I thought Anna and I should be away, leave the Haskells to their grief. I stood but Anna pulled me back to sitting again and I saw that she was right, for if we could help, then maybe the grief could be ended.

  When Mrs Haskell’s sobs had eased, Anna spoke, and did so gently, with careful prodding.

  ‘How do you know the women took Paul?’

  ‘That’s where he was last seen,’ James said, looking up the path, as if his words could call the boy into view. ‘At their cottage.’

  ‘When was this?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Tuesday morning.’

  ‘It was you that saw him there?’

  ‘No, it was Simon. Simon Proctor. Said Paul was going up to the door.’

  ‘And did this Mr Proctor see the women admit Paul to the cottage?’

  ‘He didn’t need to!’ Mrs Haskell shouted, upsetting her tea all over her shawl. I worried she’d burnt herself but if she had then she was too angry to feel it, and perhaps old burns couldn’t be burnt again. ‘Paul was going to their door on Tuesday and now here we are on Friday and no sign of him. Where else could he have gone?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t for Mrs Haskell hung her head.

  ‘Shilly’s right,’ Anna said. ‘I’m sorry if that’s cruel but it’s true.’

  ‘You talk to Simon Proctor. Paul was as good as seen going into the cottage.’

  ‘It’s not only that.’ James Haskell picked some of the dead heads from the pot of flowers nearest him. ‘I found his rabbit knife not far from the door, still wet with blood.’ With the last word his voice cracked.

  Mrs Haskell produced a huge handkerchief from inside her shawl and blew her nose loudly. ‘And the other sign, James. Fetch that to show them.’

  He nodded and went inside the house, returning almost straight away with an old tea tin. Something rattled inside it.

  ‘May I?’ Anna said. She took the tin and tipped it. A small black lump fell into her palm. A lump of coal.

  ‘I found it near the knife,’ James said.

  Anna peered at it. ‘Drawing charcoal.’

  Mrs Haskell snatched it and dropped it back in the tin, snapping the lid closed. ‘One of them draws, like you do. The boys told me of her pictures.’

  ‘There’s been much talk of the coal,’ James said. ‘Here in Trethevy, and in Boscastle.’

  ‘We heard of it too,’ I said. ‘In Jamaica Inn.’

  ‘They’re talking about Paul as far away as that?’ James said.

  ‘It’s a good story,’ Anna said, ‘and good stories have legs that cross a county in an instant.’

  Mrs Haskell rattled the tea tin. ‘This! People are saying this is what those women turned Paul into. That he’s been cursed.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Of course not!’ Mrs Haskell said. ‘Paul went to their cottage as flesh and blood, and as flesh and blood he’ll be returned to us.’

  She got up and pushed past James into the house. The sound of crashing crockery followed.

  ‘Do you believe the women talk to the Devil?’ I asked him.
r />   ‘I don’t know about any of that, but the older of them shouts loud enough.’

  ‘Have you been able to search their cottage?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Maria and I did, the day Paul didn’t come home. No one else will go near the place.’

  ‘And you found no sign of the boy inside?’

  He shook his head. ‘The women say they had nothing to do with it, but they’re strangers here, aren’t they? Won’t state their purpose. What are they wanting, coming here, if not to do us harm?’

  There was a pause then, hot with discomfort, for weren’t Anna and I the same – strangers? And lying about our purpose, too. That didn’t make us likely to thieve children, though. The same could well be true for the pair across the river. We shared more than a few likenesses.

  James Haskell cleared his throat. ‘How long you staying in the summer house?’ he asked.

  ‘It depends to some extent on our access to provisions,’ Anna said. ‘We would be glad of food and drink being brought. For payment, of course.’

  She and James Haskell talked of bread and rabbits and pennies, and I left them to it, wandering onto the path that ran between the cottages. The Haskell girls were a little ahead, fighting with other children and poor Peter looking on, looking lost. To not know what had happened to someone you loved – I had felt that pain. And how it worsened, once my girl had been found, and I had learnt what had been done to her.

  A fishy stink was on the air, and I followed it to a cottage with greasy windows and cats prowling the doorstep. This must be the home of Richard Bray, I thought, the trout Mrs Haskell had sent the girls to, to seek their mother’s supper. It wasn’t fish that made me go closer. There were more bottles outside Bray’s cottage than any other and I reasoned they couldn’t all hold piss and pins.

  When I peered in the doorway I knew that I was right, for Bray himself stank of brewing. He was fat and old and shiny with fish oil and sweat. His smock bore the stains of fish gutting. Bray was singing some bold song about a woman with a liking for sailors, swaying and stumbling in what might have been a jig, the cats dodging his boots and the spillings of his beer as they fought for the fish scraps. I was going to ask him for a sup. But then I thought of poor Peter Haskell digging the river, of his mother fighting her way through the woods, and I asked instead where I would find Simon Proctor. Him that last saw Paul.