by Syd Moore
The chill is not so bad on my feet. I cannot feel them beneath me. Though I did not guess I would live to walk across snow again, see the naked trees, the silver leaves, the sparkling stars.
Oh what a heaven is this.
Free.
He must have seen that Roger was not straight, that the Francks had their fingers right in him. William’s wife has never suffered us since Margaret did roll with him two years since. She is a lewd woman indeed, my sister Margaret, but so fair of face that none can resist her charms. In a way it is bewitchment, I suppose. Perhaps they were right – she did enchant those gentlemen. And yet it is I they accuse with more hate. I, who was dealt with by the lord so harshly – condemned to death after I birthed my child. They would not hang me with unborn life in my belly. Though once birthed, they did say I would be soon upon the gallows. Me! When Margaret is saucier by far. She was inside but for a half year in the end. Six times in the stocks to follow.
But then, I must wager, her reprieve did help. She took in my Edmund from Goodwife Foster and looked after him as if he were her own. Then when I had birthed lovely Christabel in the dungeon low, it was my sister who came to me, who fetched my dearling to nurse and love, so she would not rot down there with me. With the rats and the lice and the . . . no . . . no. Not to think on it. Not to think on it now that I am out here, with the stars in my hair and the spire of Haven in near sight.
Mother would have taken them, cared for Christabel and Edmund. But they led her out from the Assize and put a rope around her neck, then strung her up to the gallows tree. They swung her back and forth till she was dead. Just an old lady. Ladies, to be fair: Mother and Johanna Upney and Joan Prentice. The Three Joans, they did call them. All the land did hear of their false witchery. Bitter, bitter now. Though my relations to them did bestow a certain notoriety. The gaoler did beat me less, and not for pity.
A beast, perhaps a wolf cries in the distance and I am pulled back into the fields. In the moonlight they gleam, though I cannot see the beast on them. He may be near, or he may be far. The blanket of snow does muffle the howl, so I cannot tell. But, peculiar now, I have no fear. Not of the beast. No. Though there is a beginning in my soul. Something uncertain and movable fast, like a moth caught in a jar, who knows it should be free.
No, do not think on it.
Put one foot in front of the other. Then follow on with the next.
For how long, I wonder, have I walked like this – barefoot over snow? I cannot recall it. Nor how I came to be in my finest robe, clean and bright, and not clad in the soiled prison shift. There are holes in my remembering, deep like warrens, where nothing grows but a vast emptiness, dark, as if a candle had just been snuffed out. For a moment the hollows threaten to take me. And at once dread creeps forward, like a hunter, ready to snare, and I feel my heart quicken. But I harden myself against it and shake my head and skip and look up and that is when I sight it. On the hill, Three Tree Wood. I can see the outline of the distant yews that give the rise its name. And I remember it a landmark. Yes, a marker to Margaret’s village. And instead of letting the brute, Fear, into my breast I realise I am . . . happy.
For Haven is near.
My feet quicken at the notion and very soon I am past the hill. In the near distance the cottages cluster. I pass the Glasscocks’ house, with its tall chimneys and its paddock. They were rich. They did not have to accuse Joan Prentice so. I am sorry for their loss, but Joan did only mutter a curse, and I do not believe a muttering can kill a child. But I muttered too. Curses a plenty. And they say that I did lame Jeremiah Browne.
I did not wish him well, it is true. That spiteful old man had a sharp tongue and was wont to use it whenever he could. He never approved of Margaret and I unwed so. With our children. But the men that should be husbands would not be. So how may that be our fault? Or that of the children? They should not be blamed for the sin of their fathers. But Jeremiah Browne did not care. And he did turn out our bastards when they came knocking on his door for bread. And he did raise his stick and take it to them with vigour. Margaret’s Thomas and my poor Edmund could not walk for a week. And so I said, I wished that Jeremiah would be visited by the same pain and languish such as that he inflicted on our sons.
I did not know it would come true.
’Tis God that did it. For I have never seen the Devil in my cottage. Never.
The houses in Haven are grander than my humble home. Though there are some like the cottage I brought up my Edmund in, you can see that this village has more coin in it. The walls are whitewashed so fine. Some have lanterns fastened there. Some are even alight! How can they frame wasting that oil? There are folk who have more coin than reason. Or perhaps it is the dwelling of a watchman not yet returned home, seeking the light to guide him safe.
But it is so hushed. Everyone be inside, at this hour, tucked into their beds, warm and sleepful.
Even the tavern is quiet. And that do make a surprise.
The lights are out inside. The windows dark so I cannot see in. But I see the sign and I waver uncertain if this be the inn Margaret did speak of. True ’tis in Haven, of that I am sure. True this is an ale house. But I did hear Margaret call it ‘The Pilgrim’ and this sign shows pipers. I think, at first, there many of them pictured upon it, but then I see there be only one. The rest are children playing pipes and who are following him. Perhaps he is ‘the pilgrim’.
As I stumble towards the door I do sigh out. For a cottage joins onto it. Just as she told me. This must be the right place. This is her house. Right next door. It will be her downfall I reckon. Too easy to sell the ale, drink the ale and then step next door to bed. With a customer for warmth if she desires. Or if they do and have coin.
I cannot complain, I think, as I descend the steps and go through the heavy door. She has helped me in my darkest time and I will thank her.
But there is no one here. The parlour is bare.
No children.
No Margaret.
Only barrels. Pushed up on tables or fixed into the wall.
But my children should be here.
Where have they gone?
For a moment my heart hurts with a pain. Then a door opens and a young woman comes into the room. She exhales and her breath mists the air.
‘Ohfuckinghell.’ She speaks a language I do not understand. ‘Heating’s clapped out again.’ She does not see me standing there but shivers, then wraps her arms around her and hurries over, head down, to the barrels.
I regard her with curiosity as she begins to move the cask. I have never heard such a racket as the gurgling that comes out of it. The girl takes large rivets in her nimble fingers, turns them and yawns. As she stretches I see she is wearing breeches. And a child’s chemise that exposes the tops of her breasts. A foreigner indeed. Or else the world has turned upside down while I have been prisoned so long.
‘Greetings,’ I venture, in as clear a voice as I can. ‘I am Margaret’s sister, Avice.’
The girl does not hear me. I draw closer and rest beside a large vat that comes up to my chest. There are letters upon it with a strange patterning I have not seen before.
I try again. ‘I am come to collect my dearlings? My babies – Christabel and Edmund.’
Again she does not hear me, or pretends not to. Instead she bends over and turns another toggle on the next barrel. Her breeches stretch and reveal undergarments beneath, thin like ribbons, with no warmth. And they call Margaret and me lewd! We would not perform like this one.
The thought angers me. As does her refusal to see me here, so now I raise my voice, ‘Do you know where my children can be found?’ This time I say it with such force that my breath ruffles the papers on the vat and one of them falls to the floor. The girl rounds quickly like a spinning wheel. Her eyes dart from side to side.
I raise my arm and wave to her. But still she does not see.
Why does she not hearken to me?
She sees the letter, that is true. For she picks it up and puts i
t back atop the vat.
So I step out from behind it, and call, ‘Hoi, hoi.’ But she turns her back and returns to her barrel. And now I find within me a fury has begun to boil. Does she do this to keep me from my children? When I have walked barefoot through the snow for them? Yet I have been through worse, you see. Oh I have been through more than callous disregard and spite. One foreign peasant girl in thinning hosiery will not come between me and my childs.
‘I asked you!’ I say and move towards her.
Nothing. She does not even turn.
I draw myself up, and I breathe in the sharp air then I take her by the shoulder and with a stab of my hand, do quickly turn her round.
‘Where are my children? Edmund and Christabel? Where are my babes?’ I do bawl at her face.
And this time she does hear me.
For her face contorts: her eyes grow wide, lips pulling open, within them the tongue begins to loll. The girl gives up a bellow, loud and fierce, like a rutting bull.
The sound undoes me. I was not expecting that. And I step back and find myself screaming too.
For a moment, the girl gulps in and leans back against the barrel. ‘What the fuck?’ she whispers, her voice hoarse and dry. Her face has paled like that of the snow. Then she puts down her head and runs at a great speed across the cellar and out of the door.
And I think for a moment. Then I follow her out and find I am in in the road again with the hushed quiet and the frozen ground.
And I frown.
Where are my children?
Margaret told me she’d keep them.
I was sure it was here.
In Haven. Safe Haven.
She told me, she did.
Back in the prison.
Before they took me.
And then I try to place my remembering. Before they took me to . . . where?
And that hole threatens to engulf me again. That blackness in my mind.
And I try to resist.
But I cannot stop thinking on where they took me after she said . . .
But the rabbit hole draws me to it.
After Margaret took Christabel.
In the hole there is no longer nothing.
Christabel.
Bright sparks flit about like a blizzard, curling into a spiral around themselves.
In the hole there is a wind that pulls me in, sucking me down, whirling me. I cannot tell which way is which.
Above me the moon crosses the darkness, but so quickened now. The murky sky lightens. Clouds bubble and pitch in the gap. The sparks fade. I close my eyes and see inside my lids, fingers pointing, fingers pinching. And I hear a scream as I push Christabel out of me, and the arms take her, and the arms take me. And I step onto the gallows and I close my eyes and the blackness calls to me, and I step into it, falling, falling, and the darkness takes me. And I become it and it becomes me.
And for a moment there is nothing.
Warm, velvet nothingness.
And then . . .
And then . . .
Out. Free.
Into the light.
Into the night.
Barefoot in the snow.
Free.
It must be that the governor, no, not the governor – the lord. Yes. I can only but think that the lord – not he in heaven – but he in the seat who judged me so – that the lord has felt his frozen heart thaw. Even in this midwinter bitterness.
What a time for it to be so.
But nothing surprises me any longer. The worst is come and gone . . .
A CHRISTMAS CAROLE
‘Last night I dreamt I went to Mandelay again,’ said Kieron and stowed the last dry pint pot underneath the counter. Over by the door, Sharon shepherded the final few customers out and locked up.
Carole sniffed. ‘All right, all right.’ She hated it when he brought this up. ‘I told you I’d take everyone there for a slap-up, and I will. Just not now.’
‘But it’s Christmas Eve,’ said Kieron. A pronounced pout settled on his lips. ‘You said we’d go for our Christmas do.’
‘Yes,’ said Carole. ‘But not while the prices are hoicked up so high. I don’t know why people do that. I mean, we don’t put up the prices in the pub. And we could.’
‘It’s just once a year,’ sighed Kieron.
Carole pursed her lips. ‘Old Faz has stuck a fiver on everything on the Mandelay menu. I don’t know, I really don’t. Seems to me it’s just an excuse for picking people’s pockets once a year and I ain’t no muggins, am I.’
Sharon pressed her derriére against the front door to check it was firmly closed. ‘No,’ she called to her boss. ‘That’s not what we call you.’
The landlady, however, didn’t wish to know what it was they did call her, though she had an idea. To head off a possible discussion she decided to astound them with generosity. ‘All right then, who wants a drink?’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Kieron instantly. ‘I’ll have a Jack D on the rocks.’ It was, it had to be said, a highly unusual turn of events.
Sharon tossed a glance at Kieron and shrugged. Perhaps their tight-wad boss was turning a corner. ‘Mine’s a Baileys if you don’t mind, Carole.’ She waddled over and stuck her elbows on the counter.
Carole slid a tumbler full of whisky across the bar to Kieron.
‘Seasons’ greetings to you all.’ He raised the glass with a grin.
Carole nodded, ‘And you too, Kieron.’ She glanced at the barmaid, who had an incredulous grin plastered across her face, and sent her a smaller shot glass full of the milky liqueur. ‘Merry Christmas, Sharon.’ Then a thought crossed her mind and she looked at her watch. ‘Actually, it’s ten minutes away, so Merry Christmas Eve to both of yous.’
‘Either way,’ said Kieron. ‘Cheers,’ and he took a large slug.
‘That’ll be three pounds eighty please,’ said Carole.
The request made Kieron choke on his bourbon. ‘You what?’
Carole shrugged. ‘I’ve given you staff discount.’
‘You’re joking,’ he spluttered, the whisky fast souring on his tongue.
Sharon mouthed ‘Scrooge’ at Kieron, heaved a sigh and threw four gold coins onto the countertop. ‘Put the fifty pence change in the charity box,’ she said and grabbed her bag. ‘You never alter, do you?’
Kieron shook his head. ‘She certainly don’t.’
‘I know – I’m no mug, am I?’ said Carole and pocketed the silver coin.
Upstairs, half an hour later with the pub underneath locked up nice and tight, Carole kicked off her slippers and made to draw the blinds against the chill winter night. The wind was whipping up a fury out there. She could see the tops of the trees in the nearby graveyard shaking violently, as if dark unseen things had crawled from the bowels of the earth to shake the trunks and gnaw at their roots. She shivered and dismissed the thought as uncharacteristic fancy and went to sit on the heavily draped four-poster.
It wasn’t her choice of bed, but it was so large and cumbersome it had been impossible to remove from the room. No one knew who the hulking bedstead had belonged to originally. Some speculated it might have been assembled when the pub was built sometime back in the sixteenth century. Personally, it gave Carole the creeps. If it wasn’t technically the property of the brewery, she would have taken an axe to it many years ago. Or sold it. Probably the latter. But it was, and there was no way she was going to risk owing them money, not on your nelly. Not when you considered the pittance they paid her . . . No, she’d been caught out by landlords with inventories and deposits before so made sure that the big old bed was worm-free and regularly polished.
‘More’s the pity,’ she said out loud and noted a crack in her voice. It was the cold air. At least she could draw the bed curtains around her and block out the drafts. That was the only bloody thing they were good for, she thought, and prepared to swing her knees onto the duvet.
A loud ring, however, stopped her.
It was an odd noise that sounde
d like a bell. And for a moment she froze and peered into the gloom of the bedroom. All was still and silent but for the shrill of the wind clawing at the window cracks. And for a second she wondered if she had imagined the noise when, tring tring, it came again. This time, though, she was able to locate the source and saw, with some relief, the screen of her phone glowing on the bedside cabinet.
Ah, good. She registered a little icon, shaped to resemble a bell, and the symbol of an envelope, which indicated someone had sent her a text. It was Christmas now, she thought. Possibly it was her son, Ben, sending her the seasons greetings. She humphed out loud reflecting proudly that she hadn’t blessed him with her presence for a good while. Not since that business with the tunnels and the pickled knight. The feckless chancer was just like his long-lost dad and desperate to worm his way back into her fiercely protected heart. Most likely with a view to moving back in and sponging off her again. Like father like son, she snarled inwardly. But Carole was resolved against him and not having any of it. Ben needed to learn his lesson, man up and realise that if he was going to muck around then he had to deal with the consequences. He’d ended up with a mighty fine, and, secretly, she suspected he was after a loan to pay it off. But she would not do that. Not on your nelly. Carole Christmas was no mug.
She pressed the icon and the text unfolded. It wasn’t from Ben. It was from Mandelay. ‘Merry Christmas!’ it read. ‘You alone, out of many hundreds of our special customers, have been selected to enjoy a meal for two at Damebury’s premiere restaurant. Congratulations. Call 01245 3666321 to book.’ There was a photo of their menu underneath.
As she read the message she heard, in her head, the voice of Faz, the proprietor, and his erratic vocal emphasis, which betrayed the fact he was not a native speaker. Carole had an idea that if the offer was legit, she might perhaps be able to swap it up for a four-course dinner for one. She was very self-contained, not inclined to romance, which was reserved for fools and those who had money to throw away on other people. She fell into neither category, thank you very much. Nor wanted to. Other people just let you down or used you. There was no point investing in any one of ’em.