The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  The path bent to the left, away from the river, and after we had climbed a slight slope the space around us opened and the trees weren’t so tight together. A moor stone pillar, four feet high, stood a little way off. I left the path and went over to it, the ground around it ferny, and in the ferns, blind nettles.

  ‘Presumably this is the gatepost Simon Proctor mentioned,’ Anna said, coming up behind me. ‘This is where he saw Paul Haskell.’ She ran a hand over the moss that clung to the pillar’s top. ‘Whatever gate was once attached is long gone.’

  A little way beyond the pillar was a bank of earth and stones beset by the roots of trees growing from the bank’s top. The stones were wedged this way and that, some all but forced out by the roots and so teetering. I thought of Anna’s false teeth.

  I made out the dark eyes of holes between the stones, and knelt to better see them and judge for creatures living there. In doing so I put my hand into the ferns. Something stabbed me.

  As I cursed my hurt palm, Anna rootled amongst the ferns and after a moment held up a short length of wood about the thickness of my wrist. At one end was a loop of wire and it was the sharpness of this that caught my hand.

  ‘The boys’ snare,’ I said. ‘See the way the wood’s cut to a stake at one end, for driving into the ground? It must have fallen over.’

  ‘Or Paul had pulled it out ready to set somewhere else.’

  ‘Then why is it still here?’ I said as Anna helped me to my feet. ‘Paul would want to set it again or take it home with him, surely? He was earning money from it.’

  ‘Simon Proctor said he passed Paul without the boy even knowing he was there.’

  ‘So someone else could have crept up on Paul once Simon had gone. That would be a reason for the snare being left.’

  ‘That theory works if you believe Proctor had nothing to do with Paul going missing,’ Anna said.

  I wrapped the wire loop around the wood so that there was no more sharpness sticking out, and then tucked the snare into one of the many pockets in Mrs Williams’s dress. Peter should have the snare back, at least.

  ‘Simon Proctor’s reluctance to admit what he was doing here doesn’t cast him in the best light,’ Anna said.

  ‘He could be in league with them, the women.’

  We went back to the path, walking deeper into the trees, and hadn’t gone far when we heard shouts. A woman’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words. A few steps more and we found the cottage.

  Black smoke drifted from the squat chimney and gave the air the smell of burning. The shouting was loud and though we were close now, close enough to look through the narrow windows either side the door, I still couldn’t understand the words.

  I grabbed Anna’s hand. ‘They are speaking to the Devil!’

  I tried to drag her back the way we’d come and so away, out of these fiendish woods, but she wouldn’t move, just cocked her head and listened. I was afeared she’d be turned into a lump of coal if we stayed there much longer.

  ‘Anna, please!’

  She laughed. She laughed!

  ‘Ah, Shilly. If that’s them talking to the Devil then the Devil is fluent in German.’

  FOURTEEN

  Anna knocked on the door. All at once the shouting stopped. In its place were hurrying feet, mutters, the sound of furniture being pushed about. A moment of silence, and then the door was opening. I held my breath, held myself steady for what might come for us – the blinded sisters who had drowned the saint.

  And then my breath came back to me, for the woman before us could see as well as Anna or me. Her eyes were where they did belong to be.

  She had opened the door with her face set haughty – her pointy nose raised, her lips pressed together, not quite smiling. But on seeing us her manner changed. Her shoulders slumped and her mouth fell open into ugliness. We were not who she hoped for. And who was that, I wondered?

  ‘Yes?’ she snapped. ‘What is it that you want?’

  These words I could understand, but her way of saying them was strange, as if her throat was closing. She glared, put out by us and our unexpectedness.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion,’ Anna said. ‘We’re staying across the river and thought to make your acquaintance. I am Miss Drake, and this is Mrs Williams.’

  I bobbed my head and smiled, all polite, which Shilly would never do, but other women might. I must have done it wrong, though, for this woman on the doorstep recoiled as if I’d spat on her boots. And I felt like spitting, truth be told, for there was no friendliness from her as she looked me up and down.

  ‘You have come to … call on us?’ she said, as if this idea was the most foolish thing she’d ever heard, and at that moment I shared her feeling. This woman was never going to answer our questions.

  Whispers behind her. The woman made to stop whoever it was coming to the door, saying something sharply in what I guessed must be the German talking of theirs. But she wasn’t quick enough. A younger woman appeared beside her, sixteen years of age or so. She thrust out her hand to me and was all smiles, eager.

  ‘I am Miss Wolffs.’

  ‘Shilly,’ I said, forgetting Mrs Williams.

  She caught sight of the basket Anna carried and her eyes widened, for Anna had made sure the cloth was pulled back to show the food. She turned to the older woman and some silent conversation was had between them. Both looked in a bad way. Their faces were sallow, pinched, and there were shadows round their eyes that didn’t come from tiredness. They came from hunger. So did the bitterness on their breath. I knew such signs. Had lived them, not so long ago.

  ‘My apologies, we’ve called at an inconvenient time,’ Anna said.

  We turned to go, but of course they stopped us, as we had known they would, and the younger one, the one called Miss Wolffs, all but dragged us into the cottage, her eyes never leaving the basket. I caught sight of something as we crossed the threshold – a heap of little brown shells dumped by the door. For witching?

  It was gloomy inside, and more so once the older woman shut the door. She stayed close by it as if ready to turn us out. I wouldn’t have minded that, for the cottage was airless as well as gloomy. The fire smoked badly and made me cough.

  ‘I am Miss Franks,’ the older woman said, like this was a grand thing to tell us.

  Not sisters, then, as the people of Trethevy called them, but then they were thinking of another pair, an older pair. These two shared no likeness in looks. Miss Franks was slight, with narrowed shoulders and a narrow waist. Her face was likewise narrow. Her hair was brown, and caught up behind her head, not like when we had seen them the day before. But it was badly done, falling more to one side than the other and with strands escaping. More like gorse, which grew any old way it wanted to. There was slate’s greyness in her hair in places. She wasn’t old, though. Perhaps thirty.

  Miss Wolffs was squarely built, with a wide face. Her hair was brown too but darker, richer in colour, and just as badly pinned. She wore the grey dress I had seen the day before. There was a pattern on it, some flowery thing. The cloth was very fine, but the dress had foolishly wide sleeves. They would be forever catching in milk or on door handles. Miss Wolffs must have likely found that for one of her sleeves was stained dark with something or other.

  What were they to each other, these women in the woods? If not sisters then they must be friends, and I wondered if they were very close friends, as Anna and I might be again, one day. But if these women were friends then the friendship was sore at that moment. The older one, the Miss Franks, was saying something German at Miss Wolffs, something angry, for Miss Wolffs clutched her skirts and flapped her hands, which only sent the smoke coursing around the room even worse.

  ‘We cannot make it go up. Up up!’ she said, waving at the chimney breast.

  I raised my arm across my face and peered into the hearth. There were thick logs in the hearth. Smoke poured between them but there was no sign of a flame.

  ‘You haven’t laid it right,’ I said. ‘H
ave you no one to help you?’ Meaning someone like me, of course. A servant.

  Miss Wolffs shook her head. ‘Gertrud and I, we—’

  ‘It is made badly,’ Miss Franks – Gertrud – said. ‘The chimney.’

  She had folded her arms across her chest and was glaring at Miss Wolffs. I guessed the fire was the cause of the shouting we’d heard as we came upon the cottage.

  ‘You’ve paper here, look,’ I said. ‘Let me get that between the wood and it’ll help the fire take.’ I grabbed some of the sheets lying on a chair and was about to scrunch them when Miss Wolffs grabbed them back again.

  ‘That is my drawings!’ she said, and I saw that the pages did bear something, some lines and colour, but I had no chance to look closely for she was smoothing out the sheets. One of her hands was all ashake. And only the one.

  ‘You do not need them all,’ Miss Franks said. ‘We must have the fire. Here.’ She thrust a handful of pages at me. ‘Do it. Make the flames to come.’

  ‘But I have not so many papers left,’ Miss Wolffs said, before another glare from Miss Franks silenced her. Her shaking hand grew worse and she tucked it behind her.

  I didn’t want to burn the drawings but I didn’t think I had a choice now, with this Miss Franks standing over me. I scrunched the paper and knelt by the fire, coughing and spluttering as I poked the scrunches between the logs. When I stood up I was rewarded for my efforts by Miss Franks looking me up and down again, for I had muddled her with my fine dress and my willingness to kneel on the floor. I was not as good at disguise as Anna.

  Anna herself had taken up the drawings that had survived the burning. ‘These are some fine sketches. Can I ask where they were made?’

  Miss Wolffs smiled shyly. ‘That one, it is Boscastle. It has the harbour with the fish boats. The sea there, it is very beautiful. We stayed for some weeks before—’

  ‘You will sit down, yes?’ Miss Franks said loudly, and shoved a chair at Anna. ‘Miss Wolffs – the tea.’

  Miss Wolffs looked afeared at this, her shaking hand shaking worse as she picked up a dented cooking pan and peered at it.

  There was only one other chair. Miss Franks pointed at it so I sat. Miss Franks herself perched on the edge of a large wooden box upended on the floor. She arranged her dress so the folds hung neatly. It was as fine a dress as Miss Wolffs wore, though plainer, and very grubby about the collar and the cuffs. She was an odd sight and no mistake, sitting haughty and dirty on a box.

  Miss Wolffs was shilly-shallying about the tea, all jittery, looking to Miss Franks for help.

  ‘I get water,’ Miss Wolffs said, ‘and then I get … I get …’ She turned to the fire as if the answer to making tea lay somewhere in the smoke.

  I felt sorry for this poor girl and thought it best to help her or we’d die of thirst.

  ‘Here now,’ I said, ‘here’s your kettle, look, with water in still. Enough for us all. I’ll set it on the trivet to boil and you show me where the cups are, and the tea.’

  The smile she gave me spoke her relief, such great relief that I felt ashamed for all I’d done was set the kettle boiling. I followed her into a small scullery where the smoke wasn’t so thick but there were flies in its place. They buzzed about the unwashed plates and cutlery piled up. The plates and such looked very fine beneath the crusted food – china, I thought. But much good that was doing this strange pair, stuck in a poor cottage in the woods.

  Miss Wolffs began hauling cups out of the piles of dishes with such carelessness I worried she’d scat the whole lot on the floor and then Miss Franks would be shouting again and we’d have no luck with our questions. I told Miss Wolffs to let me get the cups if she’d find the tea. While her back was turned, I grabbed a cloth that was nearly clean and gave the cups a wipe.

  ‘Is here,’ Miss Wolffs said, handing me a fancy tin that had drawings on it, of girls, I thought. Girls, dancing, drawn in gold. The tin was light, and when I opened it there was barely a spoonful of tea at the bottom.

  ‘Have you no more?’ I said.

  Miss Wolffs shook her head.

  ‘We’d best not have any, then.’ I gave her back the tin. ‘We won’t take your last leaves.’

  She gripped my arm with her shaking hand and the tremor ran through me. ‘She will be angry.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘All right, then. No need to fret over weak tea, is there? We’ll soon have a pot made.’

  She smiled. ‘Your name, you say it Shill-lee?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I am Mathilda, but Gertrud – Miss Franks – she makes us be proper so you must call me Miss Wolffs if she hears. Is good, though, to know true names for friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but I couldn’t meet her bright, sweet eye for there was a lie between us. The lie of Shilly.

  I followed her back into the main room. Anna was talking.

  ‘I believe we saw you out walking yesterday, Miss Franks.’

  Miss Franks sat silent and rigid on her box.

  ‘I had hoped to make your acquaintance,’ Anna said, ‘but we weren’t able to catch up with you.’

  After a long pause Miss Franks said, ‘We were engaged.’ She didn’t look at Anna. Her gaze was fixed on the basket of food we had brought.

  ‘Of course.’

  I knelt by the fire to see to the tea, and Miss Franks made no effort to stop me doing so. The floor was flagged with slate, and cold, despite the warmth of the day outside. A dead mouse was curled in the corner. The fire was at last drawing better, which meant the smoke had eased and I was able to see the many things the room held, besides the dead mouse.

  James Haskell had talked of there being trinkets here, and I had to call these things the same, for none of them looked purposeful to me. Dishes too small to put anything in, shaped like ducks and cows, and babies, too. Little boxes of polished wood and metal, and maybe even the same stuff Anna’s false teeth were fashioned from. A fine clock, all gleaming small cog parts and a shiny, white face – stopped. And small china people – that was what there was most of. Men and women, boys and girls, dressed up in hats and ribbons and lace, fine-coated and pink-cheeked, holding flowers and birds and fruit. The room was crammed with such bits and pieces, and all of them covered in the smoke’s dirt.

  These weren’t witching tools, were they?

  They looked very ordinary, not the kind to foretell a lover or rid a girl of pox. Not the kind to ill-wish either. But the shells at the door – did they have a secret use? These women might have cursed everyone in Trethevy for all I knew. But then I asked myself, if they were witches, wouldn’t they save themselves from starving?

  ‘The woods are wonderfully picturesque,’ Anna was saying. ‘And the waterfall – such an inspiring place for the artistically minded. You take walks often, Miss Franks?’

  ‘Every day,’ Miss Franks said, still looking at the basket.

  ‘It is what we do here,’ the girl Mathilda added. ‘We walk.’

  ‘And that is why you have come to the woods, to walk and to draw?’

  Mathilda hesitated, her gaze flicking to Miss Franks who got up and went to a table wedged beneath the small window. There were so many things on it there was barely any tabletop to see. She picked up an enormous metal teapot, all tall and pointy like a church spire. This she thrust at me.

  Taking her place on her box again, she said, ‘Like you say, Miss Drake. We come for walking and to draw.’

  ‘You have come a long way,’ Anna said. ‘From Germany – yes?’

  ‘The woods, they are very famous now. In the travel guides, the poems.’

  ‘Still, you must have sights to rival these in your own country. Why come to this isolated corner?’

  ‘Travel – they say it broadens the mind, do they not? Woods here in Cornwall hold more for us than woods at home.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Ferns. The hart’s tongue, it grows here. For Miss Wolffs to draw this is a great thing.’ />
  ‘You must be quite the botanical enthusiast, Miss Wolffs.’

  Mathilda let out a shrill sound, a gulp of laughter that was all nerves, before catching hold of herself again.

  ‘You must be wanting to draw every fern here, to have all these belongings with you,’ I said. ‘You going to stay a long time?’

  ‘I … I do not know,’ Mathilda said. ‘It will depend—’

  ‘We stay as long as it takes,’ Miss Franks said quickly.

  ‘To draw the ferns?’ Anna said.

  ‘To draw the ferns,’ Miss Franks said.

  And then a tight silence fell and I was glad to make the tea so I had something to do. As I tipped the few leaves into the grand teapot I was aware of Mathilda leaning forward in her chair, her hands clasped to hide the shaking one, watching me. Delighted. Relieved. The kettle began to whistle and I looked for a rag to lift it.

  Anna cleared her throat. ‘I gather you’ve been well looked after by the people here. They’ve brought you food and such.’

  Miss Franks began to tap her foot against the floor.

  ‘Is stopped now,’ Mathilda said. ‘They stop it. They say … bad things.’

  ‘Lies!’ Miss Franks hissed, jerking her head up. ‘All of it lies! The things they say, they are mad! Paul Haskell, he come here often, yes, with his brother. They bring food and I pay them. Then his parents come and say we are wicked, that we take the boy. That we are …’ She threw up her hands and made a noise of great annoyance, something like a grunt.

  ‘Witches,’ I said.

  The word took all sound from the room. Even the fire’s crackle dropped away.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘We do not hurt Paul,’ Mathilda whispered. ‘They are sweet boys, the Haskells. I want him to be found.’

  Her hand was shaking badly now. Miss Franks took hold of it to still it, with no kindness in the touch.

  ‘It is a sad business,’ Anna said, ‘and I understand that Paul was last seen very close to here. His brother believes he was going to bring you a rabbit from his new snare. Did you see him that morning?’