No! No! No! This could not be! It would have to be reversed. The whole carefully planned sequence of events could not take place if this course of action was permitted to unfold. Why Ellen and not Agnes? What had she done wrong?
“Mother?”
Slowly, she turned to face Agnes – the older and far less attractive sister – and for a good few seconds the rage inside her boiled so explosively she couldn’t speak. Aaron should have been bound to this one and no one else. He should have seen what Jed saw in herself – a voluptuous, raven haired beauty with a sexual magnetism he could not resist, and would fight for, die for…
She looked now at her sallow-faced daughter, at the peevish expression and the hawkish nose, but mostly at the reflection of herself in those watchful eyes. If the eyes were the window to the soul then this one had one of the blackest she had ever seen. Agnes was the one who would do her bidding and not because of duty, but for pure pleasure. In short, Agnes had no lightness within. Annie’s light had long ago been extinguished and the darkness had become her friend. But Agnes had never known or wanted any light.
Tacitly they exchanged coded information, each taking in the other’s thoughts.
“There’s more ways than one to skin a cat,” she said.
Agnes raised her eyebrows.
“Would you like to be married, Agnes?”
The girl began to shake her head, to smirk.
“Not for long, don’t worry. Just long enough.”
“For what purpose?”
Annie’s stare gleamed with malevolence.
The girl nodded. It would be done.
***
Most satisfyingly, she hand-picked Agnes’s prospective husband from Aaron and Ellen’s wedding party in May. To crown the almighty insult to her the happy couple had married in the new chapel on the very day it was finished – two months and two weeks after hacking down Odin’s Tree to carrying in the altar cloth.
The Danbys had sent their own workers in order to expedite the build. And once the wedding had been announced the sound of hammering, sawing and chiselling escalated, becoming a daily rhythm from dawn through to the very last rays of sunset. Hedges were planted, a path laid, the lychgate painted. And on the eve of the marriage ceremony, in the blue-haze of a morning buzzing with the promise of a hot day, the brand new altar was carried inside. Carpenters were still at work until nearly ten o’clock that night while busy biddies bustled around with arms full of flowers. May blossom, wild violets, honeysuckle and lilac, filled the tiny chapel with heady scent, and daisies in jam jars from the children lined the window ledges.
Instead of her own flesh and blood, Ellen had chosen four young girls from the village to be bridesmaids; her bouquet a cascade of exotic hot-house blooms paid for by Clara Danby. And with each passing day the bride’s tie to her mother and sister had become a slackening rope until finally she slipped away altogether and out of the cottage door, leaving behind the brittle curtness of their comments and accusations. She became untouchable, unreachable, drifting around in an ethereal vacuum; casually informing her mother that she would no longer be working alongside Agnes at the factory, that Clara was having her measured for a dress, that the Danbys were sending a carriage for her…
It was as if, Annie thought, watching everyone spill out of the chapel following the ceremony, her daughter had stepped across an invisible threshold and entered an entirely different world, discarding like a cloak her own flesh and blood. All without so much as a backward glance.
Once or twice, Ellen looked over to where she and Agnes stood alone by the side of the lane. Her attitude, it seemed to Annie, increasingly detached and dismissive ever since the day she’d set her sights on a Danby. Standing there in the cottage she’d grown up in, haughtily declaring she was marrying Aaron for no other reason than she loved him.
“That and you’re up the spout.”
“How dare you! We’re Christians. We believe in the sanctity of marriage.”
Annie had laughed at that. Thrown her head back and let rip. The girl was never baptised but she wouldn’t be telling her that.
Of course, she couldn’t mingle with the wedding guests. Whatever had Ellen expected? And she was quite aware, thank you very much, of the condescending looks thrown over shoulders, of the whispers and the smirks; not least from those who had come begging to her not so long ago for the man of their dreams to requite them in passion. Bitches and whores the lot of them. They mattered nowhere near as much as they thought they did –full of their own importance and all exactly the same as each other and their mothers and grandmothers before that. Just look at the headstones in the churchyard – at all the other Charlottes and Janes and Margarets now dead and buried, withered to sinew and bone, just as they would be too.
Into her third eye came the image of a dark, foul hag – one she recognised of old: a faceless creature with a large owl perched on her shoulder. And she beckoned her forth. An evil crone hanging from the skirts of Hecate she had appeared for the second time in her life on the night of the curse, and would bind and torture the mind of her youngest child. Did she want that?
Beside her, Agnes reached for her hand with the tips of her fingers and a spark of ice shot through the thin fabric of her glove. And even before the bride had settled inside the carriage amid a shower of confetti, she and Agnes swiftly took their leave, vanishing into the dusk unnoticed by the cheering, waving crowd.
It had been a profitable day and she’d done what she came here to do. Chosen the boy. A laughing fool who held his handsome face up to the sun, ran his hands through glistening brill-creamed hair and flashed those emerald eyes at the girls. A vain poppet who spent his evenings in The Quarryman, who played poker and worked as a hewer in the mine. Sam Holland’s mother had once told her all she needed to know about her family, and yes, with a squirrel sized brain in his head he would be perfect.
A half-smile lurked around her lips. A change of plan, that was all. It had been given to her for the asking and silently she thanked the old hag. Come to me… What a sweet joy it was to know the dark ones walked with her once more. There would be a payment expected, of course, but that would be later. Much later. For now the two women walked home in silence, the only sound on the evening air that of their own breath.
“First night of the full moon,” said Agnes. “A red sky too.”
She nodded. “And on the third it will be done. This way will be better. More slowly savoured, more drawn-out.”
“Yes, I think it will.”
The dark side had ways of working you sometimes didn’t foresee, Annie thought. But now she had…And it would be so very much more gratifying than anything she could have conjured herself.
***
Chapter Twenty-six
February, 1951
Harry Whistler
On the day of Ellen Danby’s funeral, rainwater dripped from trees, slush lined the lanes and muddy streams gurgled into drains. Cowpats of white lay strewn across the moors with the melting snow emptying thousands of gallons into brooks that rushed down to the River Danby, swelling its banks to bursting point. The bare landscape was wet, boggy and cold; and everyone complained of constantly sweeping away filthy water from front doors and yards. It spattered clothes, horses and cars; and a raw wind laced with sleet added to the misery. Would winter never end?
Today, though, Harry thought, it seemed fitting.
The thaw, once it started, had set in quickly; and as soon as the roads were passable he’d made a start on the backlog. A total of twelve old folk had passed away in this sparsely populated village in less than a month.
The first funeral had been for Violet. He’d kept her body in the basement after the family had viewed her; not only because the parlour was getting overcrowded but because despite the embalming process, her corpse had continued to disintegrate at an alarming rate.
“I don’t believe that,” said Vivien when he told her. But one peek under the coffin lid a couple of days later, and with a ha
nd over her mouth she let it slam on its hinges and nodded her agreement.
It really was most bizarre and neither had an explanation. Violet’s eyes had caved into the depths of the sockets; her hands had desiccated to knotted claws tipped with long, talon nails; and her skin emanated a green-tinged mustard hue that festered over the sheen of bone. And on each occasion Harry had entered the basement room where he kept caskets and tools, he’d noticed the distinct and overpowering aroma of Lily of the Valley mingled with the stench of human decay. As far as he was concerned, the sooner she was off the premises and six feet under, the better. Even no-nonsense Vivien seemed spooked. Having gone down there alone prior to an embalming she’d come back up looking quite pale. Violet used to wear Lily of the Valley, she said. It was the only scent she ever used.
Fortunately, the family had only requested to see her that once, and despite the delay she was now, at long last, safely interred deep inside the family plot. There were few mourners for the old lady, just her daughter and grandchildren, and a cluster of lifelong neighbours, which had made the appearance of Agnes and Grace Holland surprising and not a little incongruous. Both dressed in black, mother and daughter had stood under the yews at the far end of the churchyard just as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and disappeared shortly afterwards.
It was a blessing, he’d thought at the time, that these women wore veils because Agnes had a stare every bit as unnerving as her mother’s – if not more so. He’d thought Annie might be there, but at ninety-one and in this weather, highly understandable that she wasn’t. Grace, though, ah, Grace. She’d still managed to knock him silly. Dressed in a short black swing coat, seamed stockings and stilettoes, her funeral outfit was more Kings Road than pit village, and it seemed to him her effort was wasted with so few to appreciate her. She’d given him the glad eye, though and smiled from under her eyelashes so maybe not. He shook his head. He really shouldn’t feel stirrings like that when he had a wife at home, but by Christ that woman could raise a man from the dead for one last go. Strange how his thoughts had strayed to Grace yet again. And thoughts like that too – on the day of his mother-in-law’s funeral. Oh, the shame. The disgrace. He should give himself a sharp talking-to.
While the Service was being concluded he stood outside the chapel smoking a cigarette, holding it as was his wont, between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Beside him, Crocker Bill took out another Silver Service and cupped a match against the wind. Beyond the chapel roof, high on the moors, clods of snow still clung to tufts of grass, the sky a grumbling grey. Damp seemed to crawl under the layers of their clothes, sinking into bones.
“Thanks for coming down, Bill. I don’t know what I’d ’ave done.”
Bill nodded. He seemed particularly morose today, his rheumy eyes bloodshot.
“Nice lady, if a bit away with the fairies,” Harry added. “She was always nice to me, any road.”
He took another drag of his cigarette. There had been such a difference between Ellen and her mother and sister. You wouldn’t credit her to the same family. And not just in looks – Ellen being tall with light brown hair and hazel eyes, the other two small and swarthy – but in temperament too. Ellen had been a kind and gentle soul, ladylike and gracious, if a little vacant. She didn’t always focus, but would turn her head to the sound of your voice and murmur what she thought you wanted to hear. You got the feeling, he thought, that she was living a very full life somewhere else and this one was just something on the periphery she occasionally tuned into.
He thought about her father, Jed Bailey, and the gossip surrounding his marriage to Annie all those years ago. Maybe Ellen had taken after him? Mostly his understanding had come from Vivien, who had never seen her grandfather, but also from his own family. Mostly though, it had come from Crocker Bill.
Harry was the only person Bill ever confided in. Bill talked to no one apart from some of the blokes he played snooker with, and even then only with nods and grunts. They said he was illiterate. And backward. Some went further and said subnormal or worse. Maybe he talked to Harry because of all the time they spent silently digging graves together, breaking for a cigarette, then back to shovelling dirt, hour after hour before going to The Quarryman? Maybe because he’d worked with his father? Whatever it was, he’d opened up to him a fair bit.
The strains of Ellen’s favourite hymn, He Who Would Valiant Be, carried on the air. In a few minutes the Service would finish and they would need to carry out the coffin.
“How come as they’re so different?” he said now, almost to himself. “Ellen and Agnes? Makes you think. Same mother - same upbringing–”
Bill had one elbow on the wall, his face a pock-marked mass of weather-beaten wrinkles. “Different fathers. Me and Ellen – we had th’ same one.”
“Aye, and it were all th’ talk at th’ time, weren’t it? Like as how Annie ’ad come ready knocked-up? Beats me how your dad took ’er on? Good-looking an’ all, weren’t ’e, your dad?”
Bill nodded, ground his cigarette stub into the dirt and buried it with his built-up shoe. “Handsome bugger, aye. Big bones - a gentle giant ’e were. Mind you, I remember ’er on th’ first day he brought ’er ’ome. Me dad ’ad such a daft look on ’is face. Like ’e coudna believe his luck. I were about six, maybe seven…and I looked at ’er, like, and thought, thee’s a bloody witch. Thee’s bloody tricked ’im. I just bloody knew it, like. She were up th’ duff then, an’ all.”
‘To be a Pilgrim…’
“Tricked him? How come?”
“Like as ’e saw summat different to th’ rest on us. Kept saying, like, as ’ow beautiful ’ou were – skinny and yellow-skinned with a ruddy great hook of a nose? And it weren’t ’er personality that ’ad ’im neither.” Bill flicked a glance out of the corner of his eye and a rare glimmer of humour passed between them. “Anyhow, I really knew it were tricks because of th’ way ’er looked at me – just a lad – like she knew I saw right through ’er. I knew I’d ’ad it right from th’ start.”
“Who was the father?”
“On our Agnes?” He shrugged. “Aye up, they want us back in.”
Harry quickly stubbed out his cigarette and like Bill, scuffed it into the mud with his shoe before ambling back up the path to the chapel. While he walked alongside the clomp-clomp-scrape of Bill’s footsteps he kept his voice low, “And did she? Have it in for you, like?”
“Polio and then smallpox? What do you think? Still ’ere though, as long as I keep me distance. Mind you—”
“Bloody hell, I didna realise! I thought you’d got th’ polio afore ’er showed up, like?”
“Took me up to th’ lake. Swimming on a roasting day.”
“Singing Sally?”
The two men drew level outside the porch, waiting for the vicar to finish.
Bill edged closer, keeping his voice low. He looked every bit as wild and unkempt as you’d expect, Harry thought, wondering how on earth he’d managed to extract his own teeth because there were only three or four left.
“Aye. I reckon ’er were determined t’ finish me off. After me dad died I were only about six, but it weren’t long before I got sick. ’Ou left me in th’ back bedroom and locked th’ door. It were one of th’ teachers who sent for old Fergusson. And I were lucky – ’e ’d got th’ flu and the one that came sent me down to th’ ’ospital in Danby or I wouldna of made it, Harry.”
“So Annie wanted you out of th’ road altogether, like? You’ve to wonder why, though, I mean you were only a nipper. What harm—?”
“Aye, well… thing is, Harry, I’m beginning t’ suss it out now—”
Cut short by the necessity of entering the hushed chapel it was to be another forty-eight hours before Harry would find out what Bill had been referring to.
***
The shock of Ellen’s death resonated around the village. While not unusual for those in their sixties to perish in a hard winter, they were usually ex-mining or factory workers already struggling
with lung disease, malnourishment and exhaustion. But for a lady in Ellen’s situation it was a sobering event. And to the villagers Ellen was almost gentry, having been a Danby for over thirty years. She lived in a very comfortable house, her daughters had all been to Danby Grammar, and two of them still looked after her. Ellen never did her own baking, cleaning or laundry – not for her steaming suet puddings, scrubbing floors or pulling washing through a mangle, because a local woman did all that for her. No, as far as they knew she’d spent her days flower arranging, helping with Chapel duties, and generally floating around.
‘Of course, she’d never been the same since the accident.’ Many shook their heads here, muttered what a terrible thing it had been, leaning close to whisper over the pews. ‘And wasn’t there a granddaughter who wasn’t quite buttoned up right? Marion looked after her. Oh, did she? And that was something else as had never rung true, either…
‘Ellen Danby, though! I know – and she could only have been sixty-two? Slipped outside apparently, and no one found her until the next day. So where were the daughters? Got lost in the snow, apparently! What - in the woods they know inside out? Aye… and with poor Ellen lying out on the lane all that time. It was how she’d caught pneumonia, must have… What about the nephew next door? Aye well, you’d have thought…’
Every head in the congregation turned to watch her coffin being carried down the aisle and out to the Victorian funeral carriage, from where she would be taken to the Danby plot at Ludsmoor Church and interred next to her late husband, Aaron.
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