‘Simon? He’s along at the manor house,’ Bray said, sending his fire irons clattering to the floor. ‘In the stables. Been losing again, has he? Ah that boy. Vice it is.’ He let free a belch and took another swig.
‘Losing what?’ I said, but Bray was singing to his cats about the faithlessness of men who put to sea so I left him to his trilling. The air outside his cottage was the sweetest I had known.
Anna was looking for me, and as I left Bray’s cottage his roar rang out and the cats dashed past me onto the path and away, their tales fluffed fat in alarm. A magpie shot overhead.
‘I didn’t touch a drop,’ I said, seeing Anna’s mouth opening and knowing only too well what she’d likely think. I told her where we’d find Simon Proctor.
‘It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the squire were to see us making enquiries,’ Anna said as we left the cottages behind and were back beneath the trees’ gloom. ‘He’ll see then we’re working for the reward.’
Always she was thinking of money.
TWELVE
We followed a wide drive of gravel that led to the back of the house and then through an arch cut into a thick hedge of yew. There was a cobbled yard beyond, and four stable boxes in a row. A set of steps clung to the wall at one end of these, leading to a door in the roof. Only the horses watched us climb to the door, watched me open it. Behind it was a snug room built into the eaves, with a bed and a small table next to it that bore a jug and basin, both of which were chipped. Working clothes were thrown across a chair and lay on the floor.
‘Proctor’s room?’ Anna said.
‘I’d think so.’
Everything smelt of horse, and I had no doubt the person who slept in such a place would smell that way too. No matter how much they scrubbed their skin, the traces of their working life would never leave them. There would be no escape from it.
Anna was moving the clothes from the chair to the bed.
‘What are you looking for?’ I asked her.
‘I’m not sure yet. Something to tell us who Simon Proctor is.’
‘How about these?’ I knelt and picked up the playing cards beneath the bed.
Anna found another pack under the pillow.
‘Bray asked me if Proctor had been losing again,’ I said.
‘It certainly looks like he enjoys a game. See how grubby these cards are.’
A sound from below – a door opened. Murmuring. I knew it to be someone speaking to the horses for I knew the kind of soft talk people used when alone with beasts.
We crept back down the stairs to the yard. The murmuring was coming from the closest box.
He had his back to us. I put my hands on the half door, made the bolt clang, and he whipped round with a start. His lean face was struck with terror, I thought. But when he saw who we were, he let out a breath.
‘We startled you, Simon,’ Anna said. ‘You look as if you’re expecting someone. You are Simon Proctor?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his gaze flicking between us, as if we might still turn out to be those he feared. As well we might. ‘If you’re here about the reward, then you’ll need to call at the house.’
He reached over the door and undid the bolt, sliding nimbly from the box in one quick movement that put me in mind of a fox. He went into a small room filled with saddles and ropes and the smell of oiled leather. We followed him, and he looked troubled by this.
I stood in the doorway to show we weren’t going anywhere. ‘The Haskells told us you were the last person to see the boy that’s missing. Young Paul.’
Simon fiddled with a saddle flap, making out he was oiling it but I’d done plenty of that in my time and could see it was only to keep his hands busy and save him having to look at us. His cloth was filthy for a start.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said.
‘You weren’t near the cottage on the morning Paul went missing?’ Anna said. ‘The one across the river, where the strangers are living.’
‘Well I …’
‘Yes?’
‘I was there, but I didn’t stop.’
‘So you didn’t see Paul?’ I said.
Proctor’s hand on the saddle flap stilled.
‘Or you did see him,’ Anna said. ‘Going up to the door.’
‘I … I did see him. But I didn’t stop.’
‘Tuesday, wasn’t it? Around ten in the morning.’
‘It might have been. I’ve no watch so …’
‘What were you doing over that side of the river, anyway?’ I said.
‘I don’t see that’s any concern of yours.’
He began sorting some pails, which made a terrible clanging. If he thought that should stop our questions, he was wrong. I just spoke louder.
‘Did the squire know you’d left your work to cross the river that morning?’
The colour leaving his face was answer enough.
Anna changed her questioning then, grew soft with him. Like a friend. ‘The boy is still missing, Simon. You could help us find him if you’d tell us a little more. You saw Paul Haskell near the cottage on Tuesday morning, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
‘How close were you?’
‘Twenty paces, maybe. Not at the door. I never said he was at the door. Mrs Haskell, she was so upset. When people started saying the boy was missing, I went and told her I’d seen him there, but she didn’t hear me right, or maybe I gabbled a bit. I don’t know. Everyone was scritching and talking about the coal and the knife.’
I wondered if he might start scritching himself, he was getting so flustered.
‘So where was Paul when you last saw him?’ I said.
‘By the old gatepost. He was kneeling there, taking a rabbit from a snare. I don’t think he even knew I passed him.’
‘And you saw no one else? No sign of the women?’
‘No, they were …’ He fussed with the pails again.
‘They were what?’ Anna said.
‘I didn’t see anyone,’ Simon said. ‘Just Paul Haskell and his rabbit. Now, I … I must get on.’ And he nipped past me, out into the yard, looking over his shoulder as he went. He was no fox now. He was Paul’s rabbit running.
We made our way back through the yew hedge and so to the house, for that was the way back to the woods, but Anna said we should go round the other side of the house this time, on a narrow path that ran close to the house itself. For people this was, not for carts and carriages like the gravelly drive, and I guessed she was still hoping to be seen earning her fee.
‘Proctor was keen to tell us he didn’t stop at the women’s cottage, wasn’t he?’ she said. And I heard the tapping noise I knew to mean she was thinking. It was her false teeth that sat in her jaw as if they were her own. Her tongue fidgeted with them. She never knew she was doing it, but I liked the sound. It was part of the finding out of things.
‘Twice he told us he didn’t stop at the cottage,’ I said.
‘Now, why wouldn’t he want people to know he’d been near there, I wonder?’
Climbing plants trailed the walls, heavy with white and pink blossoms. I brushed them with my fingertips as we passed, and the soft petals fell on me like warm snow, but then my fingers caught the brick beneath.
‘This part of the house is newer,’ I said, more to myself than to Anna walking ahead of me.
‘Hm?’
‘This is brick. The front part is made of moor stone. These plants would never get a foothold in that.’
Anna came back to where I stood and looked where I was looking. ‘So? Many people make additions to their houses.’
‘And Sir Vivian has the quarrying to pay for it,’ I said. ‘It’s like another house stuck on the end of the old one, and with its own garden too, look.’ I nodded at the little square of green bound by low walls that sat in the crook where the old house joined the new. A chair was set in the shade of the overhanging plants, next to the door. ‘A fine spot for doing nothing when you’ve others labouring for you.’
‘We need to get on with our own labours,’ Anna said, moving away.
I put my hand on her arm. ‘Look.’
Lady Phoebe was at an upstairs window of the brick part. Her hand against the glass. But as soon as she saw us looking she was gone in a rush of her many white layers.
‘This must be the east wing,’ Anna said, ‘where the squire said no one else was to go, in case she was disturbed.’
‘Do you think he lets her out?’ I said.
‘I hope so. Making her a prisoner won’t help her health, even if she is a delicate thing. And besides, I don’t want to add rescuing a damsel in distress to this quest, Shilly. We haven’t got time for that.’
The woods were one reason we were short of time. It took us hours to find our way back to the summer house, even though we had walked the same journey the night before, when we had arrived. Now as we chased our own tails Anna claimed she had purposefully chosen the long way round. But I knew it was the woods’ creeping and shifting that kept us from where we did want to be.
When at last we came upon the monks’ wall Anna gave a cry of joy, making it plain to me she’d been anxious, even if she kept saying there wasn’t anything strange about the woods.
‘I’ll make a map,’ she said. ‘That’ll help us get about more quickly.’
I laughed. As if those woods would be stilled by setting them on a piece of paper! Mrs Haskell had said that hate had stirred them, and I wondered – was it these strangers coming, these sisters? Had they brought hate with them, unpacked it from a travelling case and stowed it in their cottage from where it had spread to the trees, to their roots and so to the earth, the water? Peter said they’d come first to bury the saint in the river. I’d seen them drown him in his holy well. But that was what stories were like. They changed. Some parts stayed the same – the saint, the pair of women, the water. But others were different. The difference between natural dying and life being taken.
At least the last part of our journey was staying fixed. We climbed the slippery rocks that ran next to the waterfall, as we expected to. The black and white of the summer house came in sight above, the saint’s chapel, the place where he had died. Of old age or from drowning? I had no drink with me, and that lack was a bad business. But I took comfort from the fact that, without it, I might keep myself from such a sight again.
As we drew closer to the summer house there came a terrible noise – a squabbling squawking ruin of a sound. We hurried the last of the way and then beheld magpies fighting on the summer house steps. I ran at them, flapping my arms and squawking, as if I was a bird too. They took to the air, but only after I’d colped them round their heads. It was then I saw the cloths and the basket scattered across the steps, and within these the pasties and bread, some apples. The birds had only managed to unfold one of the cloths so most of the food was still unpecked.
‘Those birds are braver than most are wont to be,’ I said. ‘And bigger, too, than magpies should be.’
‘If they often enjoy Mrs Haskell’s pasties then it’s no wonder,’ Anna said as we collected up our feast. ‘James Haskell is as good as his word. He can’t leave food out though, not with these birds.’
She eyed the magpies who had settled in a tree nearby, a lone tree in the clearing where the summer house had been built. The tree wasn’t tall but it was finely shaped – slender branches that made me think of arms reaching out, not in anger, not to strike, but to hold me in kindness. The tree made me think of my mother. I shook such a sad thought away.
‘The Haskells will be glad of you paying them for food,’ I said to Anna. ‘They won’t be earning any more from the pair across the river.’
‘True.’
I picked up a stone jar of tea that had rolled on its side. The stopper had held, thank goodness. ‘Those women will be hungry now, I should think.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Shilly.’
‘We should take them something. We can use the food to make them answer our questions.’
Anna ceased her stooping and looked at me. ‘You’d use their hunger as a means of interrogating them, Shilly? The gangs of the East End would have nothing on you.’
I shrugged. If you didn’t have food, you had nothing. You’d die. Anna had never faced being without it. I had.
We went inside and I locked the door against the woods and the trees. And blinded women too, if they were abroad that night.
When I was close to falling asleep I heard water dripping inside the walls again. Such was the damp of the summer house, I didn’t think it’d be long before it softened and slumped into the pool beneath the falls and then washed out to sea.
Would that we were gone before then, and Paul Haskell safe, back with his family.
THIRTEEN
I was woken by a man’s voice, then Anna’s, then a great thump of something heavy and the sound of the door being closed. I opened my eyes and there was her travelling case, taking up most of the small summer house.
Anna laid her hand on the battered leather, as if it was some special friend she had missed. All her other selves were stowed inside it. And mine too, if I should choose to put them on.
I unfolded myself from the blankets, shielding my eyes from the bright sun streaming in the window.
‘Good, you’re awake. Well, Shilly.’ She clapped her hands. ‘It’s high time we crossed the river.’
We set off to the cottage where the pair of women lived, taking a basket of food to force their secrets from them. Anna was dressed in something orange and shiny, the colour close to rust. She had kept the wig of dark knotted hair she’d worn since leaving Jamaica Inn, and looked fine enough. But not as fine as Mrs Williams who went with her. Of course, the mud did nothing for such finery and I soon gave up trying to keep the bottom of my dress from getting dirty. I was glad I’d kept my own boots, rather than give Mrs Williams shoes from the case.
We came to the monks’ wall, which had kept itself where it should be, and the crossing stones in the water beside it. I looked out for Peter Haskell but he wasn’t there. Was he digging for Saint Nectan’s grave in another part of the river today? I hoped his grandmother had found a way to keep him from that grim task.
We reached the other side and were now on Mr Trunkett’s land. Though the mud and the ferns and all the rest of it were the same as on the bank we’d just come from, that which belonged to the squire, the going was harder here. My boots felt heavier, each step took greater will. I couldn’t catch my breath so well.
Something made me look back across the water. A movement there. Some bird?
There was a woman on the opposite bank.
Her back was to me. She was wearing my old working dress, the one Anna had told me she’d got rid of. The woman’s hair was my hair. The paleness of her arms, my own. I was looking at myself across the river, my sister self. I called to this sister on the other side, and after a moment she turned, and then I saw her eyes were gone.
I heard screaming, and then came the hot slap of Anna’s hand across my cheek. She was right to hit me. It made my sister vanish.
‘Again!’ I shouted, wanting to keep her gone, and when Anna didn’t do as I asked I grabbed her hand and held it hard against my cheek to show her that I meant it. And so she slapped me.
Then there was only Mrs Williams and Anna Drake facing each other, one of them shaking, one of them confused, upset. And then they were stumbling from the water, into the trees. Holding hands.
A drink, I thought. My god, a drink.
Once the river was out of sight Anna sat me down on a large flat stone. She didn’t ask me what was wrong, but like as not she knew.
When I could speak again I said we should talk of the boy, of Paul, for that was what would keep me in the woods and keep me with her. Keep me from myself.
We set to walking again, and talked of what we’d learnt yesterday from Mrs Haskell and her son. Reviewing the evidence, Anna called it, and I was grateful for the words to fix on.
‘The
re’s the bloodied knife,’ she said. ‘Paul could have been killed on the spot and we’re looking for a body rather than a living boy.’
‘Or the blood’s from rabbiting. Peter said they’d set that snare, that Paul was certain they’d catch something.’
‘And Paul did the skinning then and there, hence the blood?’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘He was going to sell the meat to the women. Makes sense he’d ready it for them while he was so close. Why go home to do it, only to have to bring it back again?’
We were following a path, not as well trodden as the one on the squire’s side of the river but a path all the same. I kept my gaze on my feet, putting one in front of the other, and was glad again of my own boots. They made me believe I was looking at my own feet. Not those of some other woman.
‘There’s the drawing charcoal, too,’ Anna said.
‘Found with the knife, James Haskell said, didn’t he? That looks bad for the women.’
‘It would certainly seem to incriminate them, given that everyone in the woods knows they’re here to draw.’
‘But they think that of us, too,’ I said, ‘and that’s a lie.’
‘Well, let’s see what truths we find at the cottage, shall we?’
As we went on our way I realised something, that the weighed-down feeling that had beset me since coming to the woods was eased here. It wasn’t that there were fewer trees, or that there was more light between them on this side of the river. Those parts were the same. The place looked the same. But the air was different. The hatred Mrs Haskell had spoken of, that I had felt so badly, it wasn’t with me now.
The Magpie Tree Page 7