The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  At last I neared the top of the climb, the roof of the summer house coming into view, and beyond it, the top of the magpie tree. The birds were at home, the branches heavy with their black and white tumbling, for the birds were all a-scurry in the bell’s noise, making a clitter to beat it, so that as I came level with the summer house I walked into a great terror of sound. The saint was ringing his bell for all he was worth. So loud it made me want to shut my eyes, as if that would ease it, but the saint wanted me to see. He stopped my eyes from closing. My lids were fluttering like I was having fits and before me was the black and white of the birds in the saint’s tree.

  The black and white of the summer house’s wood, and beneath it, Peter Haskell.

  Peter Haskell being dragged by a black cloak.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The boy looked to be screaming as he fought but there was no sound save the bell and the birds. I shouted but my words didn’t leave me, only thrummed through my body. I was struck dumb.

  Peter saw me. He slackened his fight and called, silent as I was, and then the figure saw me too. They were next to the summer house, at least thirty paces from me. If the cloaked figure should drag the boy into the changeling trees on the other side of the clearing I might never find him. The boy would be lost as his brother had been lost. I couldn’t let that happen. I unbuttoned my skirt and reached beneath it. My fingers closed on the coarseness of the rope. I set about the knot the man at Boscastle had tied, my fingers fumbling, useless.

  The figure was dragging the boy again, Peter weakening in the fight, I could see it, but the knot was loose. I nearly had it.

  As the knot came free the rope jerked in my hand, as if someone was pulling it. I threw it to the ground where it writhed like a grass snake. I stepped away, and found myself on the edge of the drop I’d just climbed, but better that than to be near such strangeness. As I stared at it, the writhing rope blackened, then crumbled, became ash. I braced myself for what must surely come now.

  But nothing happened. Nothing.

  The cloaked figure struck at Peter’s face and he went limp.

  And then I felt it.

  A great breath rose from the ground, scattering the ash of the rope to nothing. The wind lifted my skirt, made my sleeves flap and for a heartbeat the power of it hung over me, sent my hair swirling across my face and my body near blown over.

  The figure stopped. Head cocked, as if listening. Then it turned, slowly, to look at me. I caught a glimpse of a face beneath the hood and my breath stilled.

  The creature had no eyes.

  A snap and the wind shot across the clearing, whisking through the saint’s tree as it passed. It sent the magpies into the air in a tumble – upside down and furious. The gust struck the cloaked figure and it went down, Peter too.

  The bell stopped. The wind dropped. As sudden as candles snuffed, both were gone.

  In the silence I forgot that I could speak, that there was noise other than bells and breezes. It was Peter that reminded me. He was running towards me, gabbling and scritching, his shirt torn and a red mark across his cheek. I reached out for him.

  But he didn’t want me. He wanted to be away, ran past me, all but hurled himself over the ledge and down the path that would take him home.

  ‘Peter – wait!’

  But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. Some devil fired his limbs to run.

  I turned back to the clearing. The cloaked figure had gone. A single magpie had returned to the tree, but it had no care for me. It was eying the spot where the figure had been, next to the summer house. I heard voices below. Many voices. Crying out. But for once in that place of sadness and fear, the crying was that of relief.

  I peered over the ledge. Anna had managed to stand somehow, awkward and with pain clear on her face, but she held tight to Peter Haskell as if she feared he’d take off again. They were next to the riverbank. The waterfall roared above them, but louder than the water were the calls of Maria and James Haskell running to their boy. Anna let him go to them, and I scuttled down the slippery steps to her.

  As she sagged in my arms I told her what had happened, of the figure with no eyes, how the rope had leapt and burnt, how it had brought the wind, just as the man in Boscastle had said it would. Her doubt was clear on her face, but there was no time for rowing for Peter was loudly gabbling to his parents.

  ‘That one,’ he said, and pointed at me, ‘the one always muttering, she saved me. It would have had me else, I know it.’

  ‘Why did you run away from Jenna?’ his mother asked between kissing his sandy hair and pressing him to her.

  ‘I needed to find the saint and Jenna wouldn’t let—’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ James said. ‘You’re safe, that’s the main thing. And we have you to thank, Mrs Williams.’

  It took me longer than it should have to remember that was who I was in the woods. That was my name.

  ‘Did you recognise it, Peter?’ Anna said quickly, limping over to the Haskells. She took me with her for she was leaning on my arm.

  ‘It had something wrong with its face.’

  ‘A mask of some kind?’ Anna said, stealing a glance at me.

  ‘I don’t know … It could see me but I couldn’t see its eyes.’

  ‘Nothing of this world would look like that,’ James said. ‘This proves the furrin women took Paul.’

  ‘I’m not sure it does,’ I said.

  ‘It don’t matter,’ a voice said. A crackly voice. One I knew.

  Anna flinched into my side. She’d seen something in the trees, and then I saw it too. A trunk stirring, turning. Mrs Haskell was there.

  ‘You’ve left the girls!’ Maria shouted. ‘It got away – it could be taking them even as you stand here!’

  The old woman shook her head, shook away the telling-off. ‘One wasn’t enough for them. They’ll take them all. All my birds.’

  ‘You go on home, Mother,’ James said. ‘We’ll bring Peter. Go on home to the girls.’

  Mrs Haskell turned back into the trees, but not because her son told her to. She was a woman who wouldn’t be told. Far overhead, a magpie crossed, flying towards the cottages. I wondered if it was the one from the saint’s tree, giving up its watch.

  Anna was still searching for answers where easy answers didn’t lie.

  ‘Did the figure speak to you?’ she asked Peter.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It just grabbed me and then kept yanking my arm.’ He rubbed his shoulder, as if only just remembering the pain he no doubt felt.

  ‘Was there anything else you noticed? Anything about its clothes, its hands? The way it smelt, even?’ Anna sounded desperate, and her ferreting for scraps only upset the boy. He pressed his face into his mother’s hip.

  ‘Did you at least see where it came from?’ Anna said.

  James Haskell gently set the boy to look at Anna who in that moment had no warmth or care about her. She could only speak in questions.

  I knelt by Peter, and without my holding her Anna sagged on her bad foot, but I let her sag. There were others who needed kindness.

  ‘You must tell us what you can,’ I said to the boy, ‘and then we can find Paul. This creature, it might be the one that took him.’

  A trembly sound from his mother, but I carried on.

  ‘Now, what did you do after the girls left the food?’

  ‘I walked slower and slower, so they wouldn’t notice they were leaving me behind. I let them get far ahead and then I climbed back up to the summer house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To get on the boards that look over the waterfall. Grandmother says the summer house was the saint’s chapel so he might be buried close. A waterfall’s a good place for a holy burial. It’s like blessings on your head all the time.’

  ‘You weren’t going to climb down there?’ his mother said. ‘Under the waterfall? Peter – what have I told you!’

  ‘I’m not soft, Mother. I knew I needed a rope.’

  ‘Lord preserve us,’
James muttered. ‘If the sisters hadn’t taken you, you might have been your own end.’

  ‘I thought there could be something in the summer house that I could use,’ Peter went on, ‘so I was trying the door. I heard water, like it was raining inside, but then the bell rang. I turned round and it was there.’ His voice trailed into a whimper. ‘My … my spade fell over the edge.’

  He looked to the river as if he might see the lost spade floating there, offered up as a gift. But I knew the river to be a force so careless it ran on, ran on, drowning and saving as it saw fit. I saw the boy there, face down. Bobbing past on the current, bobbing as if he was laughing. Mouthfuls of water. Throatfuls. Bellyfuls. Until he was more water than he was anything else. Known only by his sandy hair and a knife in his pocket for skinning rabbits. Was that his brother’s fate?

  ‘We’ll get you another spade,’ James Haskell said.

  ‘No we won’t!’ Maria said. ‘No more digging. You can’t be trusted in the woods, and your sisters are no help. Neither is your grandmother.’

  ‘It’s not their fault I—’

  ‘You’ll come to the quarry with me and your father, where we can keep an eye on you. You’ll be safer in the cutting shed than you are out here.’

  ‘But the saint!’

  ‘I don’t think you need worry about him,’ I said. ‘Saint Nectan’s doing just what he should from his grave. He rang the bell today, didn’t he? That’s how I found you.’

  I caught a scornful look from Anna.

  ‘Yes …’ Peter said, ‘but the saint needs to come for them, for the sisters. Otherwise we’ll never find Paul, will we?’

  No one spoke then. The boy looked at each of us, and none of us could meet his eye.

  ‘Come on, my sweet,’ his father said, pushing the boy gently in the direction of home, away from the river.

  Maria took my hand in both of hers and pressed it, as a chapel preacher might. Her face bore all that she had felt today – the exhaustion of fear, the softening of relief. But still there, the grief she’d borne for days now. One son found, one still missing. She had no words for me and I had none for her.

  She followed James and Peter. The light was fading and they were soon lost to us.

  ‘So my four pence were well spent,’ Anna said at last.

  ‘That knotted rope is the only reason Peter’s going to sleep in his bed tonight.’

  ‘Not a loose stone that tripped them, this cloaked figure? Not a stray root? I’ve fallen foul of one myself today.’ And as if I needed proof, she limped towards a lump of moor stone and leant against it. ‘It’s not too much of a leap to believe the same was the reason the figure failed.’

  ‘The rope turned to ash, Anna! With no burning, no light of any kind. You still doubt me. Doubt the things I’ve shown you to be true.’

  ‘You haven’t shown me anything today, Shilly.’ She rubbed her ankle. ‘Other than that you were prepared to leave me, injured.’

  ‘Well, you showed me something, Anna Drake.’

  ‘Did I indeed? And what was that – an example of effective questioning? Because that’s what we’re here to do, after all. Or have you forgotten that with all this talk of witching?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen that often enough, how you hound people to get what you want. No, what you showed me was that you do feel the strangeness of this place, however much you tell me there’s no such thing. You feel the hatred in the woods. You were afraid when I left you. Admit it!’

  ‘I was afraid you were going for drink, and that you’d be the one going over the waterfall. That I’ll admit to.’

  ‘So you do care for me, then.’

  She turned away, and after a moment she said, ‘I didn’t want to spend the night out here if I couldn’t climb up to the summer house without help. That was all.’

  ‘Oh Anna, when will you stop lying to yourself?’

  ‘When you do the same,’ she said.

  Her back was to me. The sharp lines of it clear even with the light going. I went to her, ready to hold her, but my steps stopped.

  The bell rang.

  Anna whirled round, frantic as a cat startled from sleep. She looked up, towards the summer house. ‘What now?’

  ‘It’s not coming from there.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  ‘Across the river.’

  ‘Miss Franks and Mathilda,’ she said.

  We were slow getting to the crossing stones, with Anna’s hurt foot. I thought about leaving her again but I couldn’t bring myself to do it twice in the same day. Not if that figure without eyes waited for us at the cottage. I had no more knotted ropes.

  Anna did her best to run but hobbling was all she could manage, and that pained her. I grabbed a sapling’s branch fallen near the path and made her lean on it. The bell’s din grew louder as we neared the cottage of Mathilda and Miss Franks, and my heart pounded worse and worse with every ring, every step.

  We’d reached the old gatepost, where Paul was last seen, when the bell stopped. The silence was worse than the noise.

  ‘Does that mean the threat’s gone?’ Anna said.

  ‘Or we’re too late. Look.’

  The door to the cottage was open.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I peered round the door. The room was all but lost in the gloom of dusk for the only light was the fire and that had burnt down.

  ‘Hello?’ Anna said, still on the doorstep. ‘Miss Franks?’

  If something should be crouching in a corner, waiting—

  Anna pushed the door wide open, letting in the last of the day’s light. I made out two figures seated by the fire. Their backs to us. Skirted and shawled. Neither stirred. There was no sound.

  Anna leant her walking stick against the wall and took out her knife, so I took up her stick to use as a club. I picked my way towards the chairs, all but blind in the near-dark, stepping on the unwashed dishes and sheaves of paper that were scattered about just as before.

  As we drew closer, I saw an arm hanging over the side of a chair. Closer still we crept, and I saw the pattern of the dress. It was Miss Franks. Her hand was reaching for a handkerchief on the floor beneath it. But the hand was still.

  A noise made me turn – a scratch scratch coming from the other chair.

  ‘Mathilda?’ I whispered. ‘It’s Shilly. Are you all right?’

  Something was moving in her lap. Her hand, jerking back and forth. She didn’t look up at my speaking, gave no sign she even knew we were there.

  Anna touched Miss Franks’ shoulder and muttered words I didn’t catch. Then there was a metal clunk – Anna had dropped her knife.

  ‘A light – quick, Shilly!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I think … I can’t see a wretched thing.’

  There was the sound of her bumping into the table, trinkets falling and chinking into one another. Anna’s curses.

  ‘Mathilda,’ I said, ‘do you have spills, for the candles?’

  She didn’t answer, so I grabbed from the floor one of the bits of paper lying there and made a spill myself. I plunged it into the fire’s embers and after a moment the twist of paper caught.

  ‘Anna – here.’

  She snatched the spill and held it close to Miss Franks’ face. I lit a second.

  I stumbled back, nearly falling in the embers.

  Miss Franks was glaring at me. Only one side of her face was clear and the clearest thing about it was the eye fixed on me. It was huge. Unnaturally so. It bulged in her face. Dark and glassy.

  ‘Miss Franks …’

  Anna lit the candle ends she found amongst the table’s muddle and set them close by. In their light Miss Franks’ cheeks looked very red. I made myself go closer. The redness was blood, and raw flesh. Her skin had been torn. Raked. Deep slashes made her forehead, nose and cheeks a ploughed field of themselves. Her other eye, the one not glaring at me, was burst and lay like a bad egg in the broken shell of the socket. Her lips were torn. Amongst the blood w
as the white of dried spittle.

  I choked back bile. ‘Dear God. What … Mathilda!’ I spun round and held my light close to the girl to see if she was harmed. Her hand jerking so strange was her doing some drawing. In the near dark? With a dead woman beside her? There were marks across her knuckles. Scratches. They were bleeding.

  ‘She’s hurt too!’ I said. ‘Anna – Mathilda’s been cut.’

  ‘But she’s alive, at least. Hold this.’ Anna gave me her candle. She pulled away Miss Franks’ shawl and undid her collar, then peered at her neck.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘I’m not a coroner,’ Anna said.

  ‘But you can guess?’

  ‘There are no marks of strangulation, but that eye protruding, the strain in her cheeks. I’d say she’s been smothered.’ Anna touched Miss Franks’ throat. ‘Still warm. Whatever happened, it happened very recently. And yet the girl sits here as if nothing is untoward.’

  It was true. Mathilda had remained in her chair, moving the charcoal over the paper but without looking at what she was doing. Her gaze was fixed on the fire’s remains.

  Anna bent down and when she straightened she held her little knife again. ‘Mathilda,’ Anna said firmly, as if speaking to a child, ‘can you tell us what happened?’

  No reply. Still the charcoal moved across the paper.

  ‘Did you quarrel?’ Anna said.

  Scratch scratch across the paper.

  Anna and I were like doorposts flanking the girl. The black lines she’d drawn were ragged and wiry, without neatness. But within the tangle was something firm that Mathilda kept drawing over and over. A shape. Curved at the bottom, like the underside of a bowl, the sides reaching into peaks, and between these peaks other lines were scratched to join them. The quarter-moon, set on its back.

  I put my hand gently on Mathilda’s, the one that held the charcoal, trying not to press the cuts in her flesh.

  Anna raised her knife and it hovered now not far from Mathilda’s face. ‘Be careful, Shilly.’

  Still Mathilda gave no reaction. Her hand moved beneath mine, as if I was drawing. I felt the tautness of it.