The Blood List

by Sarah Naughton

  The knock again. A voice called his name. The voice was not Richard’s.

  He stared at the pulsating embers.

  ‘Barnaby?’

  Predictably enough Henry had turned to drink. Once or twice he had staggered round to the hut, sobbing and begging forgiveness, but after receiving no response he’d staggered off again. Frances had written him a letter. He had fed it page by page into the fire unread.

  ‘Barnaby?’

  Abel was gone. He had slipped away during all the commotion that followed the trial. No-one was quite sure where, according to Richard, but he would certainly have to stay away for a decade or two if he didn’t want to be torn apart by a mob led by Farmer Waters. The man had brought Barnaby a butchered and salted lamb the first week he’d been here, and of all the gifts this was the only one Barnaby could bear to accept. Waters said that Naomi had been ill following her own trial, which had ended in acquittal seeing as there was no-one left to give evidence against her. Barnaby had heard nothing of her since then.

  Until now.

  ‘Let me in!’ she snapped. ‘It’s freezing.’

  He stared at the embers, his fingers loose around the cup of now cold ale.

  ‘I’m just out of bed from fever, Barnaby Nightingale, and if you don’t let me in immediately you will be responsible for my death.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ His voice cracked from lack of use.

  ‘Fine. Armitage then. I don’t care. Just let me in.’

  He didn’t move. She rattled the door a few times and cursed him, but eventually she gave in.

  It was getting too cold now. He would have to go to bed. Wrapping the blanket around himself he got up and shuffled towards the cubbyhole. As he did so he caught sight of himself in the tiny window by the door. In those three months he had become a different person. He had lost weight, and his hair fell in lank curls on his bony shoulders. His eye sockets were dark and his cheekbones jutted out. The weight loss had made the bridge of his nose more prominent, like a bird of prey. How could he have ever thought himself a Nightingale? At least he didn’t look like the Lucifer of Luke’s mural any more. More like John the Baptist after years in the desert eating locusts.

  An ear-splitting thud made him jump out of his skin.

  Something hit the door with such force the thing nearly came off its hinges: a line of splintered wood now scarred it right through the centre.

  She had got the axe from the outhouse.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Coming in.’

  CRASH – the axe struck again, and this time the blade broke through.

  ‘Stop! You’re destroying my door!’

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  For a moment he stood his ground, his fists clenched at his sides, but then the axe was wrenched out and she began to count down: five . . . four . . . three . . . His shoulders slumped and he trudged to the door.

  She looked better than he did. A lot better.

  Where before she had been plump and pretty as a cat she was now lean and elegant. Her hair had started to grow and curled in glossy ringlets about her temples, framing her green eyes with their jet-black lashes. The cold had reddened her cheeks and nose, and the hands that clutched a bundle of blankets in her arms.

  The snow was still falling, speckling her hair like stars in a clear night sky. All the warmth in the room rushed out and was swallowed by the night.

  When he made no move to usher her in she pushed past him and kicked the door shut with her foot.

  They regarded each other silently for a moment.

  ‘It’s cold in here,’ she said.

  He gave no reply and went back to sit by the fire.

  ‘You have done a very good job of hiding from the world. It has almost forgotten your existence.’

  He heard her walking around the room: it didn’t take more than a few seconds.

  ‘It’s a sturdy little place,’ she said. ‘The floor is solid. And the thatch looks good from outside.’

  He stared into the greying embers. The cold air was creeping through every hole in his shirt.

  ‘Where shall I put this?’ she said, coming to stand between him and the fire.

  ‘I have enough blankets.’

  ‘It’s not just blankets,’ she said.

  He sighed and looked up at her. She regarded him steadily with those glittering eyes.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Rushes from the lake and shoots of willow,’ she said. ‘My parents helped me harvest them from the forest. I was always a better basket-weaver than I was a maid, and Juliet used to tell me what fine rabbit-skin muffs and hoods you made for her. Perhaps you have your father’s skill as a furrier.’

  The embers stopped hissing, the mice in the thatch stopped rustling.

  ‘Go home,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Please, Barnaby. It’s all over, now. The things that are lost can’t be brought back. All we can do is go on, as best we can.’

  ‘I killed my own mother,’ he said.

  ‘You saved my life,’ she said. ‘You saved my family from a lifetime of fear and shame. You saved Beltane Ridge from turning on its daughters and mothers and grandmothers.’

  ‘That wasn’t me, that was Luke Nightingale.’

  She said nothing to this but a moment later placed four willow stalks and a paring knife onto his lap.

  He stared at them for a moment. The knife was a stubby thing, only three or four inches long, but strong and sharp. He picked it up and pressed it to the pad of his thumb. A ball of blood swelled up around the tip. It was too sharp to hurt.

  Naomi breathed quietly beside him.

  The willow stalks were deep conker brown, with gentle swellings, like knuckles, along their length. He picked one up and bent it almost in half. It did not break, although when he allowed it to spring straight again there were wrinkles in the papery bark.

  The fire guttered. Still it clung on though there was nothing left to feed on. Even at the very last it would fight for its life, like a coney in a snare, like a man on the gallows clutching the rope above his head to try and lift himself from the pit. Like the blanket on the bed he slept in: so patched and darned that there was barely anything of the original left. In the Nightingale house it would have been thrown away with the vegetable peelings, but here it had been preserved and cherished.

  How had she felt, lying on that blanket, with another woman’s child slumbering beside her, and her own gone forever? Was life so precious that it should be preserved at any cost?

  Barnaby closed his eyes and a single tear whispered down through the dirt on his cheek. When he opened them again the flames were bright flares in his blurred vision: a last dance at the very point of death.

  Death was so easy to come by, life so hard to cling to.

  What would Juliet think of him simply throwing it away?

  He picked up the knife again and, with one swift movement, plunged it into the heart of the willow stalk.

  Naomi had brought cinnamon biscuits and salt beef and he attacked them ravenously, while she lit rushlights and fed the fire with some of the willow stalks. It sprang up at once, crackling and dancing, stretching its fingers up the chimney.

  Her father’s ale tasted ten times better than he remembered and next time he met Farmer Waters he would ask again about the yeast and this time pay attention to his explanation. Perhaps the farmer might even lend him a little to get his own batch started.

  ‘You will need more straw for your bed,’ she said. ‘This stuff is mouldy. It will hurt your chest.’

  He grunted, his mouth packed with salt beef.

  ‘You can have some of ours,’ she went on. ‘But you ought not to sleep here another night, especially in your weakened condition.’

  ‘I’m not weak,’ he said, through his mouthful.

  ‘No,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘Perhaps, after all, you are not. Have you finished?’

  ‘Well, the food is finished, if that’
s what you mean, but I could eat the same again.’

  ‘Oh, and I suppose you would like me to go and fetch it for you, Master Barnaby?’

  He smiled. ‘If you like.’

  ‘I have a better idea. Come and dine with us, then sleep with Benjamin this night, and tomorrow I will help you bring some fresh straw and maybe something a little sweeter for your fire than cattle dung.’

  ‘I have nothing to pay you with,’ he said quietly.

  Already the rushlights were burning low and the last of the willow stalks spat and hissed on the fire as they died. It would be a cold night here all alone.

  ‘You have already paid us,’ she said, pulling on her cloak. ‘But if you set the price of my life so low then you may assist me in making some basket chairs for children, like the one I made for Benjamin. Henry Nightingale believes they may fetch some money in Grimston market.’

  He flinched at the name and his face hardened, but she held his gaze with her clear cool eyes.

  ‘Pride is expensive, Barnaby, and remember, you are a pauper now.’

  The rushlights guttered and started to go out one by one. As they did so the reflections in the black windows melted away to be replaced by the deep blue of the night sky. Suddenly he wanted to be out in it: walking through silver pastures beneath the cold moon: up the path that led to the lake, the farm, and beyond it, the forest. It held no fear for him now. Juliet had been right, the spirit of the forest never forgot him. She watched over him with love, and perhaps a little shame: a little disappointment. The Son of the Morning had fallen into darkness. Now he must climb back up into the light.

  He stood up and gave a little bow. ‘Mistress Waters, I am at your service.’

  The night air was bitterly cold, like a rush of lake water down his throat. He remembered the day he had fought her off as she tried to rescue him from drowning. He remembered the Widow Moone.

  He took her hand as they climbed over the ditch that divided the Nightingale lands from the common land. The ploughing and muck-spreading had already begun and the rich smell of cold earth and manure rose up as they tramped through the mud. Bats flew overhead and from somewhere in the distance came the churring call of a nightjar. The forest was just visible on the brow of the hill.

  She stopped abruptly beside him and her hand slipped from his grasp.

  ‘There’s a light in the forest,’ she whispered.

  She was right. A cool glow radiated from the trees, pulsing silently.

  ‘It’s only marsh gas,’ he said.

  ‘The Widow Moone said the devil had promised her eternal life,’ Naomi murmured. ‘I hope he kept to it. I hope that light is the devil’s fire and they are there now, dancing infernal jigs with him and his imps, drinking wine and making spells to give boils to the mayor and gout to the aldermen. The Widow Moone, and Juliet and all of them.’ Her voice cracked.

  The light wavered and shifted, as if there were shadows passing in front of it. The nightjar’s call was like distant laughter.

  ‘So do I,’ he said. Then he took her hand.

  They regarded one another silently. Two peasants just beginning their lives. No doubt these lives would be filled with hardship. Hardship and pain and the loss of those they loved. But at least they would know love: the expression in her eyes told him so, and love was as hard to come by as life itself.

  ‘Come on,’ she said finally.

  The witch tree was silent as they passed beneath its branches and on up the slope towards the glimmering lights of the Waters’ farm.

  Matthew Hopkins, self-styled ‘Witchfinder General’, died of tuberculosis in 1647, aged 27.

  He had been responsible for the deaths of over 200 women.

  In 1895 Irishwoman Bridget Cleary was murdered by her husband who believed she was a changeling left by the fairies in place of his true wife.

  Acknowledgements

  As usual deep thanks to my brilliant, supportive, encouraging, stiletto-banning, migraine-scorning agent, Eve White, and her assistant and possessor of the coolest name in publishing, Jack Ramm.

  To my lovely editor, Jane Griffiths, to Paul Coomey for his wicked cover designs, to Catherine Ward, Laura Hough and the rest of the team at Simon and Schuster. Thanks for working so hard for this book and for being such a pleasure to work with.

  Thanks to Shelley Instone, partly for the excellent writing advice, but mostly for the cackling gossip.

  To my dad for offering the occasional reluctant and extremely guarded opinion.

  To Mum for telling EVERYONE.

  Thanks to my friends: Laura Wilder for the ace workshop ideas, Sarah Baker for the book-chat and nut-free cakes, and both of them for listening to me complain.

  To the original golden boy, Barney Shanks, (and equally bling siblings, Gabriel and Echo) whose goblin mother didn’t do such a bad job of raising after all.

  Thanks to Bert and Bill for letting me write in the evenings (in between putting Bakugans back together and admiring homemade zombie-pirate masks).

  And finally, thanks to my husband for his scandalously unappreciated cooking. Sorry, Vince: this one’s even longer.

  1

  The boy sat on the end of the jetty, skimming oyster shells across the water. It was too choppy to get many bounces but occasionally a shell would strike the dredger, moored further out, with a satisfying clang. He didn’t even bother to prise open the next one before he threw it. The thought of slurping out its slick grey innards, still quivering, made him queasy. A person could get heartily sick of oysters, and Sammy often wished his father had been a cattle drover or a cheesemonger. Anything but an oyster farmer.

  Now that he was eight he’d been given more responsibilities, including this afternoon’s task of checking the size of the oysters seeded the previous week. He was taking as long as possible about it, to put off the moment he had to return to the shed to carry on de-barnacling with his brother. He’d been at it all morning and the icy water had made his hands too numb to feel when the knife slipped. It had taken this long for his fingers to warm up and now that the feeling had returned they were throbbing. He lowered them into the green water and threads of blood drifted out from them to coil around the oyster ropes. Like hair. Sammy shivered. He wished he hadn’t thought of that: not now, not while he was out here all alone. The one who was killing all the children liked to take bits of their hair as a souvenir. That’s why they called him the Wigman.

  To try and drive the thought from his mind Sammy started whistling, a cheerful music-hall tune, but the sound drifted mournfully out over the dark water and he soon stopped.

  The low sun burned crimson, glinting off the tips of the waves, and making the river appear to flow with blood. A few wisps of fog drifted in. If he waited a little longer he could say he’d got lost in it.

  He realised he’d been too long when the water turned black. The fog had become so dense he couldn’t see further than his own legs dangling over the jetty’s edge, but if the sun had gone down it must be nearly five o’clock. His father would be furious. He’d probably have taken the cart and gone home, leaving Sammy to walk all the way back to Lambeth.

  He scrambled to his feet and ran a little way along the slimy boards. Then skidded to a halt.

  His father was waiting for him further down the jetty: he could just make out his blurred shape.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sammy called, ‘I didn’t know it was so late.’

  He set off again, quicker. The fog enclosed him in a little bubble that contained only his scared breaths and the clatter of his footsteps along the boards.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll start early and—’

  He stopped. The shape had not moved, either to turn away in disgust or to raise a fist. It merely stood watching him, close now, but still veiled in smog. Perhaps it was a policeman.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said as he hurried up alongside the figure, ‘but my father is waiting for me.’

  The figure moved sharply and Sammy went sprawling.

  ‘H
ey!’ he cried as he was roughly turned over, but the cry was cut short as rags were thrust into his mouth and a cord tied around his head to keep them in place.

  Then the man was gone. Sammy lay there a moment in bewilderment, then sat up. The rags were packed so tightly he could hardly breathe. They tasted of honey.

  Too late he heard the crunch of pebbles below. The man had merely jumped off the pier onto the beach. Hands reached up and yanked him over. Throwing out his arms to save himself he landed heavily on his wrist, and it gave an audible crack. His scream was muffled by the rags.

  As pain overwhelmed him, he was dimly aware of being dragged up the beach and laid down. Then something heavy and smelling of sweat was thrown over him and he was left in darkness.

  He knew immediately what was happening. The Wigman had got him. Over the thumping of his heart he could hear the man chanting, a little way off.

  Biting his lip to suppress the cries of pain and terror, Sammy used his good hand to lift the coat off. Everything was grey. The smog would shield him from sight and muffle the sounds of his escape. He rolled onto his stomach, then pushed himself up onto all fours. The wall swung into view beside him, wet and black with algae. There were some steps fifty or so yards east of the pier. He began to crawl towards them.

  The sand beneath his knees was stinking and black, with tar and muck from the tanner’s yard and slaughterhouse.

  There was a splash some way behind him and the voice intoned, ‘Accept this gift.’ Sammy moved quicker, his left wrist flapping uselessly. A moment later another splash, more distant now. ‘Accept this gift.’ Closer and clearer were the booms of Big Ben striking a quarter past the hour. Would his father have gone home or was he on his way here now, his fists rolled and ready? Sammy hoped it was the latter, and was momentarily glad that the Wigman had taken him: at least it was an acceptable excuse.

  The wall suddenly zigzagged up away from him. He had reached the steps.

  Climbing onto the first tread he allowed himself a moment’s relief. Very few had escaped the Wigman to tell the tale, and most of those had wriggled out of his arms before he could do any tying up and chanting. But here Sammy was, nearly free, and with a story that would bathe him in adulation for years to come.