Cunning Women Page 2
‘L-leave that creature be. Leave it at—’ His voice escaped him.
Daniel was staring into the filthy, angry face of the Devil-boy from the old plague hill. All thought left him. He stepped back, reaching a hand to steady himself against the prickly hedge as the world tipped then righted itself, all the while unable to look away.
The boy smiled slowly and, without dropping his gaze from Daniel’s face, lifted the lamb and drew a knife across its neck. Blood poured from the wound and the animal kicked and shuddered. A small sound escaped Daniel, an expression of fear and pity that prompted mocking laughter from the boy.
He leaned over the hedge. ‘Dust know me?’
Daniel nodded. Heart clattering, mouth dry. Terrified now of what curse this boy would lay on him.
‘Bring hell on you if you spake a word,’ the boy said. He swung the lamb over his narrow shoulder and strolled down the track.
Daniel watched the lamb’s blood spreading down the boy’s back. He felt the warm, sticky liquid on his own skin, smelled metal, tasted salt. Blinking, he saw everything through a sheet of red.
The beat of his heart ran faster, the rhythm jarring and irregular. He tried to breathe deeply, steadily, but no matter how he gasped no air would come. Falling to his knees he felt a dread that his father would discover him in this most humiliating position, as he pitched face forward and the redness before his eyes became darkness.
Daniel grew aware, slowly, of the scent and chafe of grass. It pressed into his eyelids, bristled between his lips. He licked and spat, rolled on to his back, opened his eyes. Staring into the clear wash of sky, he could not at first remember how he came to be lying there.
The bleat of lambs brought it back to him, the slice of knife and rush of blood. Black smile of the Haworth boy.
He lurched upwards, staggering to his feet and lifting the bucket, focusing on the sting as the skin on his knuckles cracked and bled, and listening to Father’s sharp calls to the oxen. Milk threatened to slop over the side as Daniel walked, pail pulling on his arm. He wanted to hold it with both hands out in front of him, but he had been caught doing that once by Gabriel, the farmhand.
‘Shall I call my little sister for you, Danny?’ Gabriel had said. ‘She could carry that pail with her fingers, she’s used to women’s work. But there, so’s you.’
He had walked away, laughing and shaking his head, and Daniel had sworn he would never again endure such ridicule. His arm might rip from his shoulder, but he would carry the bucket with one hand.
Daniel strove to keep his mind empty, but could think only of the boy’s twisted lips as he spoke. There were stories of the Haworth hag and her warped brood; that the youngest brat was found stealing teeth from the graveyard, that Tobias Barton’s three children died one after another when he chased the eldest girl off his land for begging, that the boy had demons in his power.
He had never seen one of them up close before, and the experience had been every bit as foul and wretched as he had feared. They knew of him now, he had tried to thwart the boy, and sure as night would fall there would be a price to pay. Daniel could not imagine what witchcraft would be done with the flesh and blood and bones of a month-old lamb.
The words still whispered in his ear.
‘Hell on you.’ And Daniel shivered.
Wet Boots and Fresh Fish
Mam clasps a poppet in her hands, sewn from a piece of cloth that was once part of my father’s tunic. Made in his image, some strands of his hair attached.
The doll is ragged now, scorched where she has burned it, scarred where she’s sliced then stitched it. Her weapon tonight is thorns, pulled from the brambles that clog Matt Taylor’s hedgerows, and stained with her own blood.
I crouch beside her, against the wall of the house, but she doesn’t falter. She presses a thorn, slowly so that I hear the material tear, into the leg of the doll. ‘For sailing out into a storm,’ she says. Tears run down her face into her mouth and the words are wet, slippery and bitter.
The next thorn goes into his cheek. ‘For letting the sea swallow you.’
Another and another and another into his chest, his back, wherever she can fit them. ‘For leaving us, for leaving me to become this, for abandoning the childer to a life of hunger and cold …’
I reach out, put my hand over hers, stop her. No good ever comes of this, the poppet only feeds her pain, and I cannot bear to see her with it again. She hesitates, fingers still hovering above the doll, then looks up into the distance, past my shoulder, and rubs her face. A smear is left on her cheek.
‘Remember?’ she says, still looking past me.
‘Father?’
‘Life as it was.’
I search for an answer that will not hurt her. ‘Sometimes.’
I’ve tried to hold my memories, keep them like the moth caught in the bubble of hard yellow sap that clings to the ash trunk, but they will not stay. There have been more years since he passed than we ever had together.
Once in a while a picture comes, a scent brings him back. The lift of his brows and creases in the corners of his eyes as he smiled down at me past the great stretch of his legs and body, the rush of air as he swung me high on to his shoulders. Those are real, I’m sure. The smell of wet boots and fresh fish. His hands, hard-skinned yet gentle, as they softly pinched the plump bed of my thumb. Mam’s laughter, soft and sweet, like the sounds of shells shaken in a small fist. That woman was taken too.
‘It all went with him,’ she says. ‘The food on the table, the cloth in the windows, the wood in the fire. You used to play in the fields with that farm lad, they even let you feed a lamb once. We went to dances. I used to call Alice Turner a friend, now she’ll spit as soon as look at me.’
Her tears have dried, leaving clear tracks through the grime on her face. She sighs, pulls the thorns out gently, laying them aside for next time.
‘Jonathon,’ she whispers, stroking the strands of hair that remain. ‘Come back to me, in any form, I’ll not fear you. Just come back.’
She cradles the doll in her palm, holds it against her cheek, presses it to her nose. I put my arms around her and she looks at me for the first time, shakes her head.
She grabs my hand. ‘Should you choose a life with another, that life will be shattered and the one you love will suffer most cruel. Keep true to the one that’s chose you.’
I ease my hand from her grip. This warning has fallen from her lips so often that I can’t remember a time when I ever thought a life of love and happiness with another would be mine. It does not stop me dreaming of it, though. I lick my lip, glance past her shoulder.
‘Who is this?’
The man is almost upon us before we see him, his feet scattering pebbles as he walks up the path to where we sit by the house. Black cloth billowing, soft hat held to his head in defiance of the wind that beats in from the sea. We wait, still crouched against the wall, watching him.
He could have remained hidden, walking through the woods that run up our hill at the edge of what once was the hamlet from the river below. But night is enough cover, and he has chosen the quicker route of the path. Picking his way through the tumbling silhouettes of the handful of dwellings surrounding ours, once homes to those long ago taken by plague, many still furnished with fallen and broken chairs or shattered plates, now slowly succumbing to the invasion of root and branch. Annie scours them, untroubled by the spirits of those still bound there, returning with pieces plucked from the leavings. Some of those doors still attached show the remains of the cross they were marked with, though most have fallen and rot into the ground with their owners.
The moon is bright, sky speckled with stars that gleam like flecks of ice, lighting the trail of dark splashes of lamb’s blood up the path. I notice them for the first time, distracted as I was by Mam. We need rain to wash away our guilt, but there’ll be none tonight.
Mam wipes her face and stands. ‘Inside,’ she says, and I’m happy to obey. He is a regular visitor, not
one I fear, with a changeable countenance but never angry. Tonight he’s slowed by melancholy so that I give him a smile, since it’s all I have to offer. He returns it and hands me two radishes, still grainy with mud.
‘Thank you.’
‘Next time I will bring you bread.’ His voice strains to shed the weight of his misery.
‘You are in need of a potion,’ Mam says as I turn away.
His voice lowers and I linger in the doorway to hear. ‘If only I could resist, a man of my position should be stronger. But I fear without it I—’
‘A man of any sort needs comfort, Seth,’ Mam says.
The door closes and I am in the murk, feeling for the table to lay the radishes on, taking a few steps with a hand along the wall until my foot knocks against the pile of findings Annie keeps by our mat: stones, and her favourite shell from the beach, flat and smooth. The pieces she has brought from the deserted dwellings that surround us: parts of bowls, usually, broken into jagged, muddy shards. I crawl in next to her, refusing to let myself think of what they once contained, of the hands that held them.
There are few who come to our door and Seth is the sweetest of them all, always bringing a gift of some kind, and if he is cheerful, swinging Annie round by the arms until she laughs and hiccups. Though if we see him in the village we are to treat him as a stranger, for they know him by a different name there.
I am especially glad of his arrival tonight; the company and coin he brings will lead Mam away from sorrow. He was not a perfect man, my father, and even now she knows it as well as I, telling stories of his drinking and flirting with a light in her eyes. She forgives him every time. She forgives him everything, except dying.
The lamb allows us to live as others do, as Mam, John and I once did, for two days. By the third morning we’re left with only broth, and Annie has licked the bones clean. As I finish searching her for marks, Mam turns to me.
‘We must go to the village.’ She catches Annie as she tries to run to the woods. ‘And you, lass. There’s work to be done. Come, Dew-Springer.’
Mam takes her familiar on every trip to the village or the cottages that line the seashore, for protection. She has often warned us of the need to guard our knowledge from outsiders. We must always keep a gulf between their lives and ours. I wonder what form my familiar will take, when the time comes, and whether it will bring a feeling of safety.
We walk with Mam as far as the edge of the village, the path still marked by the lamb’s blood, though we don’t speak of it. Next time I fetch water I shall try to wash it away, for we can’t afford to provoke anger. Most endure us without much complaint, for they make use of Mam’s herb-knowledge when they need, though there will always be some that suspect us of more. Of worse. And it is true that Mam, if angered, is not beyond calling upon dark forces to bring about suffering. Matt Taylor is one that does not look kindly on us, and would take little convincing of our guilt.
Mam breaks off from us towards the fishermen’s cottages that line the harbour, for John has brought tell of a woman there whose hen broods and will not lay. It is likely cursed and she’ll ask Mam to divine who this enemy is and punish them, as well as rid it of the enchantment. Mam carries the lamb’s eyes and what remains of the blood, for both might have a use here. We skirt the village and pass to the other side, and I am glad that she yet expects no more of me than begging and gathering herbs. The time comes, I know, when she will insist I learn the cunning ways, and all that means: herbs and healing but also curses and retributions. Sometimes she asks me, but always I resist, feared of the stirring within myself: the call to anger, the lust to harm. The will of he that claimed me.
It is Sunday, and the good people are on their way to church. A day with almost as much meaning for us as it has for them, for we must live by the pattern of their days if we’re to know when to catch them to our advantage. The villagers are dressed in their best to meet God, though I’ve never understood why. Surely He sees straight through the clothes to their blackened souls beneath. No pretty flower will hide the look that’s an invitation to another’s husband, no scrubbing of a hand will remove the bruise it left on a wife’s face the night before.
Annie and I are used to keeping unseen, skulking round corners and lurking in shadows. We have learned to step silently. Over the hedge we see hats and caps bob along the path. When we step on to the road they scatter as though a stone has been thrown among them. The ladies drop their eyes and move aside, the men raise their chins and glare. Mam has taught us which villagers will never show kindness and which are happy to buy from her, though none are inclined to give and get nowt in return, as we well know.
The first stone hits Annie on the back, and she cries out, a combination of pain and bewilderment. I know from the sound that she’s not badly hurt, but clutch her to me and spin around to see a lad and lass, not much older than she, laughing as they let fly some more. I’m caught on the shoulder and arm that protects Annie, a sting and spread of heat that is not strong but angers me.
‘Plague-sore,’ they call. ‘Basket-scrambler.’
I almost throw Annie to the ground. ‘Wait there,’ I say, marching towards the children.
Their expressions of amusement slip into fear as I bear down upon them, something burning through me. I’ve not thought what I shall do when I catch them. They turn and run into the arms of a woman who rushes towards them, gathers them behind her and meets my eye with a sickened look.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. They’re just babbies, they mean no harm.’
‘They were throwing rocks. They hurt my sister.’
‘I – I know, I’m sorry. I’ll thrash them, I promise, just please don’t – please don’t curse an illness upon them.’
Tears brim in her eyes. The children hide behind her shabby petticoats, that are patched and worn. I embrace the growing fury, a throbbing of anger that draws me up tall and brings the whisper of black words to the edge of my tongue. The woman cowers before me as though I were the one throwing stones.
I lift my chin and hold out my hand. Wait. She closes her eyes, drops her head and then fumbles in her petticoat to produce her pocket. Holds it out to me, shaking so that she struggles to open it, but there’s no need. I can see the thin, soft material holds no coin.
‘Please,’ she says. ‘I’ll come to your mam and spend all that we can spare. My – my husband ails and cannot recover, she perhaps has some tonic that will …’ Her voice trails off, and I drop my arm, drop my gaze from her stricken expression. Turn away from any sympathy that rises in me for her situation, her sadness, her despair. When they treat us this way I become the very creature they fear me to be.
I walk back towards Annie and, as the woman scuttles past with her children, we approach Samuel Finch, the netter, and his wife Nelly. They are young, newly wed and without children yet. Not ones that Mam has mentioned either way, and I decide to try our chances.
Annie widens her eyes and droops her mouth. She’s filthy, face smeared with dirt, leaves caught in the clump of her hair. I pull her finger from her ear.
‘Excuse us, sir,’ I say, reaching out to touch his arm. The cloth under my hand is thick and warm.
They stop and turn towards us. He shakes me off and I know that my optimism was a mistake. Still, we must try.
I hold Annie in front of me. ‘My sister’s hungry and we’ve nowt to feed her. It’s been days and she’s just a little lass, so sweet and never marding.’
He glances around. She looks at Annie, her eyes big and gentle.
‘I wouldn’t ask but she’s weak and hungry and if we could only beg a small kindness from you good people, we’d be—’
Nelly smiles at Annie, begins to play with the folds of her petticoat, where her pocket lies. Weighted with coins for church, no doubt. Surely God would not begrudge one given to feed a hungry child, she’s thinking. I know the kind of soft, motherly woman who will respond, and today my knowledge will furnish us with a coin to take home.
‘Oh, Samuel,’ she whispers. ‘Could we not …?’
‘No. You want to consort with heathens? On the way to church?’
He turns, pushing the small of her back as they walk away so swiftly that she stumbles a little.
‘For God’s sake, Nell,’ he says. ‘Step firm.’
She looks over her shoulder at us. I offer a smile, for her kindness is rare. Though a coin would be better.
The throngs dwindle and we’ve no success. I sit with Annie at the side of the road as the familiar clawing of hunger returns, imagining the tables these church-goers will return to, laden with meats and cheeses and bread, fragrant and fresh-baked. Annie wriggles her dusty toes, legs stretched in front of her.
One last villager makes his way to church, sauntering up the path, unafraid to appear late before God. Matt Taylor’s farmhand, Gabriel. Last summer I saw him spike a squirrel with a pitchfork and leave it to die in the heat. I think of the lamb, and look away, willing him to walk past.
‘Excuse us, sir,’ Annie says.
I turn too late to stop her. She is wearing her saddest face. I swear she’s managed a tear.
‘I’m hungry and there’s nowt to feed me,’ she says. ‘I’m a good girl, never mard—’
‘And here’s me thinking you just theft what you need.’ A shadow falls over us as he looms above, blocking the sun.
I catch his eye. Shall Annie and I be made to pay for the work of our foolhardy brother, now? My mouth dries, heart thumps.
‘Are you banished from church, sinners?’ he says.
I stand up. My head barely reaches his chin and he is broad, his wide shoulders leaning in to me. ‘Are you?’ I ask.
Annie’s upturned face looks from me to him. She does not fear village men, not even this brute, but is inquisitive about them as she is with the animals in the woods, as though they’re a different breed of person. Tall and bearded, clothed in doublets. She does not see such creatures at home.