Weyward, p.14
Weyward, page 14
No. It was not a word we ever used.
I did not know, for a long time, what my mother thought of our gifts. But I knew what was expected of me, from a young child. She named me Altha, after all. Not Alice, meaning noble woman, nor Agnes, lamb of God. Altha. Healer.
She taught me how to heal. And she taught me other things, too.
‘They say that the first woman was born of man, Altha,’ she said to me once when I was a child, for this was what we had heard the rector say in church that Sunday. ‘That she came from his rib. But you must remember, my girl, that this is a lie.’
It was not that long after we’d attended Daniel Kirkby’s birth that she told me this. ‘Now you know the truth. Man is born of woman. Not the other way round.’ I asked her why Reverend Goode would lie about something like that.
‘It comes from the Bible,’ she told me. ‘So the rector isn’t the first to tell that lie. As for the reason: it is my belief that people lie when they are afraid.’
I was confused.
‘But what could Reverend Goode be afraid of?’
My mother smiled. ‘Us,’ she said. ‘Women.’
But she was wrong. We were the ones who should have been afraid.
I sensed it in my marrow, much as my mother tried to shield me from it. There were strange happenings, in the years before she died. Long days and nights when she would be gone, having begged a horse from whichever family was in debt for our services. She would leave under cover of darkness, her crow flying ahead, its feathers stippled by moonlight. She would not tell me where she was going, only that if anyone were to ask, I was to say she was visiting relatives in Lancashire.
I knew that was not the truth, though. For we had no other relatives. Only each other.
One night, the autumn Grace’s mother died, a couple came to our door. The air was chill with the threat of winter and I remember that the woman held a babe to her breast; though it was swaddled in many layers, its tiny fist was blue.
My mother set her face tight, and I had the impression she did not want to admit them to the cottage. But she could not leave them out in such conditions, especially with the babe in such a state. She bade me put a pot on the fire, and spoke to them in hushed tones, but even so there was no escaping their conversation in our little cottage.
The couple had travelled from a place called Clitheroe, in the south, and had walked for many days and nights. It was no wonder they looked as they did: their faces haggard, and the babe half starved when out of his swaddling clothes, for his mother’s milk had dried up. They were heading to Scotland, they said, and thence across the seas to Ireland, where no one would know them.
The woman was a healer – though not in the way my mother was. She made the occasional poultice, that was all. But they feared this would not matter: two families had been rounded up, they said, near Pendle Hill, and tried for witchcraft. Nearly all of them had been hanged.
What names, my mother asked.
The Devices, they said. And the Whittles. More besides.
These names were unfamiliar to me, but my mother’s face blanched at their mention.
Things changed, after that.
The prosecutor called a second witness that day.
Reverend Goode himself. His black cassock flowed behind him as he walked towards the stand. It made me think of a bat’s wings, and without thinking I smiled. Then, I heard the hum of voices rise in the gallery and remembered I was being watched. I kept my face still. I looked for the spider, but it was gone. Only its web remained, glinting and delicate. I wondered if it was an omen, if the spider could sense what was to come.
The rector took the oath. A thin man, his face was pale and pinched from years of sermons.
‘Reverend,’ said the prosecutor, ‘would you be so good as to tell the court where you preach?’
‘Certainly,’ said Reverend Goode. ‘I am the rector of St Mary’s church, Crows Beck.’
‘And how long have you held this post?’
‘It will be thirty years this August.’
‘And in that time, have you been familiar with the Weyward family?’
‘Yes – though I am not sure that “family” is the proper term.’
‘What do you mean, Reverend?’
‘While I’ve been there, it has been just the two of them. The accused and her mother. Now only Altha remains, since Jennet passed some years ago.’
‘Has there never been a male member of the household?’
‘None that I have been acquainted with. It appears that the girl was born out of wedlock.’
‘And did the Weywards attend services, Reverend?’
Reverend Goode paused.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They came every Sunday, even in winter.’
‘And has the accused kept up her attendance, since her mother’s death?’
‘Yes,’ said Reverend Goode. ‘For this, at least, I cannot fault her.’
I hated slinking into the back of the church, feeling the other villages shrink away if I took the same pew. But I knew I had to go, as my mother and I had always done, to avoid being dragged before the church courts.
At Reverend Goode’s last words, the prosecutor looked like a cat who’d been handed a dish of cream.
‘“For this at least”, Reverend? What can you fault her on?’
‘One hears things, in a small village,’ he said. ‘Like her mother, Altha tends the sick. Sometimes she has favourable results. She’s nursed quite a few villagers back to health in her time.’
‘“Sometimes” she has good results? What of the other times?’
‘Sometimes the patient has died.’
I remembered the last death I’d witnessed, before John’s. Ben Bainbridge’s father, Jeremiah. He’d passed ninety winters: had been the oldest person in Crows Beck for two score years. His mind had died long before, leaving only his body behind. His eyes were blue and clouded, and I remember looking into them as I sat by his deathbed, wondering what he was seeing in the world beyond this life. He had said his wife’s name with his last breath, his body shuddering like leaves in the wind. Old age, it was. And nothing more. There was nowt I could do but ease the pain of his lingering.
They could not pin that death on me. Not that one.
There had been others, too. Times when the patient’s skin was so blanched with approaching death that I knew I could do little. The Merrywether woman, who’d died in childbed, her blood lapping at my wrists, the babe a mere knot of still flesh. These ones had been past my help.
I expected the rector to produce a litany of these deaths. But he did not. After all, he had stood at their gravesides and told their families that their loved one’s passing was part of God’s plan. It would not do well for him to say, now, having taken his sacred oath, that God had planned for them to be murdered by a witch.
‘They did die, sometimes,’ he went on. ‘Though death awaits us all, along with reunification with our Father in Heaven, if we have lived well.’
I felt the gallery grow restless. They were not here for a sermon. Someone coughed, another giggled. I saw one judge lean close to another, to murmur something.
The rector had the prosecutor in a bind, now. But he needed the church to stand with him, on the matter of witchcraft.
He paced.
‘Thank you, Reverend. And thank you for the great service you have done to your country and king, in coming forward to report this crime. For it was you, was it not, who wrote to me, informing me there was suspicion of a witch in Crows Beck? And that it was suspected that this witch had had a hand in the death of John Milburn?’
‘Yes,’ said the rector slowly. ‘It was.’
‘Reverend,’ said the prosecutor. ‘Did you see the body of John Milburn?’
‘I did. He was injured most grievously.’
‘And did you bring the accused to his corpse, to see if it bled anew at her touch?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But, Reverend, would this not have been conclusive proof of murder? Why was this not done?’
‘Master Milburn had already been buried, sir, by the time suspicion fell upon the accused. It was his widow’s wish that he be laid to rest quickly, the sooner he could be reunited with his maker.’
‘Thank you for that explanation. And could you tell the court how it was that suspicion did fall on the accused? What caused you to make the report?’
‘Someone in the parish spoke to me of their concerns. They were certain that an innocent life had been taken, through a wicked contract with the devil. They wanted to do their duty, by their Lord and maker.’
‘And who was that person?’
Reverend Goode took his time in telling the court who had brought suspicion on my name. Who had consigned me to sit on the cold, hard seat of the dock by day and dream of death by night.
‘It was the deceased’s father-in-law,’ he said finally. ‘William Metcalfe.’
The courtroom grew loud, the whispers from the gallery like the drone of a hundred insects.
The prosecutor was finished with Reverend Goode. He climbed down from the stand slowly, and I saw his age in his faltering movements. The intimidating figure I remembered from childhood was diminished. Soon he too would start his journey from this world to the next. I wondered what he would find there.
I was taken back to the dungeons. Night had already fallen for me.
23
VIOLET
Frederick didn’t come down for breakfast the next morning.
Violet was beginning to feel quite worried about him, until he emerged at luncheon, looking pale and green. He barely touched his food, taking only a delicate bite of Mrs Kirkby’s leftover rabbit pie before crossing his knife and fork on his plate.
‘They finished off that whole bottle of port last night,’ Graham whispered to her, as they filed out of the dining room. A rough note in Graham’s voice told Violet he was jealous. ‘Actually, I think he had more of it than Father did.’
‘Don’t be so quick to judge,’ Violet hissed. ‘He’s fighting a war. I imagine it’s been utterly exhausting. I should think he’s earned a glass or two of port.’
They hung back and watched Father and Frederick go on ahead. Father had his hand resting on Frederick’s shoulder (‘Good thing too, or he’d fall over,’ said Graham) and was pointing out various items of furniture in the entrance hall, as if he were some sort of sales merchant.
‘That’, said Father, motioning to a rather hulking side table, ‘is an original Jacobean. ‘Worth at least a thousand pounds. It was commissioned by our ancestor, the Third Viscount, in 1619. James I was on the throne then – though you knew that already, I expect, with your interest in history.’ Father beamed, and Graham rolled his eyes.
‘Strange fellow, King James,’ said Frederick. ‘Rather fancied himself a bit of a witch-hunter. He wrote a book about it, did you know?’
Father’s face darkened, and he moved away from Frederick before continuing the tour as if he hadn’t heard.
‘This clock’, he said, gesturing to an ornate gold carriage clock carved with cherubs, ‘was my mother’s, given to her by her aunt, the Duchess of Kent, for her twenty-first birthday …’
‘Never told me any of that,’ Graham muttered. ‘Anyone would think he was the son and heir.’
Later, as they played bowls on the lawn outside, Violet thought that Frederick must have forgotten his suggestion that they take a walk that evening. He had barely looked at her all day. Perhaps he had forgotten about the kiss, too. Or perhaps – worse – he regretted it. Maybe it hadn’t been a very good kiss; maybe she’d done it wrong.
She was doing a terrible job of the lawn bowls. It was very warm, and her hairline was damp with sweat. Though she wasn’t the only one – dark stains had appeared on Father’s shirt, and Graham’s face had flushed to match his hair. Even Cecil was subdued: curled up beneath the rhododendrons, pink tongue lolling from his mouth. He looked almost sweet.
Only Frederick seemed unbothered by the heat – she supposed he had got used to it, in Libya – and had perked up considerably since luncheon. He rolled his ball so that it hit the jack with a plink and grinned, white teeth flashing in his tanned face. She would have thought he looked perfectly at ease, if she hadn’t noticed that his hand kept straying to the pocket of his trousers and patting something hidden there, as if it were a talisman.
‘I’m going to go and ask Mrs Kirkby for some lemonade,’ she said.
‘Rather you than me,’ said Graham, watching his ball veer away from the jack and into a rose bush. Graham was afraid of all the servants, but especially Mrs Kirkby, who had recently caught him divesting a roast chicken of its legs. She had ardently vowed to box his ears if he ever set foot inside her kitchen again.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Frederick. ‘You might need help carrying the glasses.’
Violet’s stomach lurched.
‘Thank you,’ she said, barely pausing to wait for him as she made her way to the house. Conscious of his eyes on her, Violet moved stiffly, as if she had forgotten the correct way of walking.
He caught up with her as they entered the cool of the house. She thought how quiet it was, in the entrance hall. Although the doors had been flung open to let in the summer air, she couldn’t even hear the bees buzzing outside. Frederick took a step closer to her. Blood rushed in her ears.
‘I’m looking forward to our walk later,’ he said softly.
So he had remembered. Her pulse flared as he moved closer. Why was there this awful thrumming sensation in her veins? Sweat prickled in her armpits. She was merely excited at the prospect of asking him more questions about her mother, she told herself. That was why her heart was thudding. Suddenly, she worried that he would kiss her again. Did she – should she – want him to?
There was the sound of a door opening and closing and Frederick sprang back. They looked up to see Miss Poole at the top of the stairs, carrying a stack of French textbooks that Violet supposed she would have the joy of wading through at some point in the future.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Miss Poole, curtseying as though Frederick were King George rather than her employer’s nephew.
‘How do you do,’ he said.
‘We’re just off to the kitchens for some lemonade,’ Violet said, but Miss Poole merely nodded, her eyes still trained on Frederick.
‘I hope you enjoy your stay,’ she said to Frederick.
‘I’m sure I will,’ he said, looking at Violet.
The lemonade was watery and sour from lack of sugar (‘Anyone would think there wasn’t a war on,’ Mrs Kirkby had hissed, once Frederick was out of earshot).
When Father wasn’t looking (Graham’s lawn bowl technique required significant refinement), Frederick produced a golden flask from his pocket. Without asking, he unscrewed the cap and poured a generous amount of amber liquid into her glass.
‘Is that—?’
‘Brandy. Have you never had it? How innocent you are,’ he said. Something in his smile reminded her of the hungry way he had looked at the dining-room furnishings the night before.
‘Drink up, quick,’ he said. ‘Before your father sees. I don’t want him thinking I’m a bad influence.’
The brandy was like fire going down her throat. She coughed, and Frederick roared with laughter.
Father made his way over to them, having given up his attempts to tell Graham how to aim his ball so that it hit the jack rather than Dinsdale’s roses.
‘What’s so funny, Freddie?’ he asked. It stung to hear the nickname on her father’s lips. Father never called Violet and Graham anything other than – well, Violet and Graham.
‘Your daughter is a very amusing young woman,’ said Frederick.
After a while, Father seemed to tire of lawn bowls, and instead had Mrs Kirkby – who looked very disgruntled to have been torn away from the dinner preparations yet again – set folding chairs up on the lawn.
‘The cheek of ’em,’ she could be heard muttering as she walked away. ‘Where they think their meals come from, I don’t know … magicked up by fairies …’
‘I’m afraid we’re rather short on the ground with staff,’ Father told Frederick apologetically. ‘My butler went down on the HMS Barham.’
‘Poor old Rainham,’ said Violet, who had always liked the butler, a whiskery man with a penchant for colourful waistcoats. She’d once seen him carry a mouse – which had narrowly escaped Cecil’s grasp – out into the garden, as delicately as if it were made of glass. It was very strange to think that he would never return to Orton Hall. His coat still hung on the hook at the servants’ entrance as if he had merely gone for a stroll around the grounds.
Violet watched as Frederick drained the rest of his lemonade, before looking down into the empty glass. She saw his hand brush the pocket of his trousers and wished that Father hadn’t mentioned the war.
The canvas of the chair creaked as she settled back into it. She considered fetching a book to read, but the brandy had made her mind heavy and slow. The sun was lovely and warm on her face and the world was a pleasant, green-gold blur. Both Graham and Father had fallen asleep and were snoring almost in unison. Violet thought she might just close her eyes for a moment. She heard the rasp of Frederick dragging his chair closer to hers. She shifted onto her side and opened one eye to see him watching her with that same hungry look. There was a hot, liquid feeling in her stomach.
She could hear a faint buzzing sound – a mayfly, she thought, or perhaps a midge.
‘Ow.’ Violet sat up straight in her chair, her cheek throbbing with a sudden pain. Graham muttered in his sleep, but Father snored on, undisturbed. She pressed her fingers to her face: she could already feel the skin growing hot. Alarm flickered in her gut.
‘Are you all right?’ Frederick asked, leaning closer to her.
‘Yes – thanks. Something bit me. A midge, I think.’
‘Ah. Damned things. I expect you’re used to that, around here.’
