Weyward, p.27
Weyward, page 27
All we needed was to be returned to the wild.
This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.
For it has always been a gift, she said. Until now.
She told me of other women, across the land – like those the couple from Clitheroe had spoken of, the Devices and the Whittles – who had died for having such gifts. Or for simply being suspected of having them. The Weyward women had lived safely in Crows Beck these last hundred years, and in that time had healed its people. We had brought them into the world and held their hands as they left it. We could use our ability to heal without attracting too much suspicion. The people were grateful for this gift.
But our other gift – the bond we have with all creatures – is far more dangerous, she told me. Women had perished – in flames, or at the rope – for keeping close company with animals, whom jealous men labelled ‘familiars’. This was why she had to banish her crow, the bird that had shared our home for so many years. Her voice cracked as she spoke of it.
And so she made me promise: I was not to use this gift, this wildness inside. I could use my healing skills to put food in my belly, but I must stay away from living creatures, from moths and spiders and crows. Doing otherwise would risk my life.
Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live. But until then I should keep my gift hidden, move through only the darkest corners of the world, like a beetle through soil.
And if I did this, I may survive. Long enough to carry on the line, to take a man’s seed from him and no more. Not his name, nor his love, which could put me at risk of discovery.
I had not known, then, what she meant by seed: I had thought a seed was something to be put in the ground, rather than inside a woman. I imagined the next Weyward girl, who would one day grow inside me, blooming into life.
When my mother lay dying three years later, on that awful night when our few candles were no match for the darkness that stole into the room, she reminded me of my promise with her last breath.
I had heeded her words for so long. But after speaking to Grace that day after the market, I felt the first desire to disobey them. The first desire to break my promise.
46
VIOLET
‘Violet!’ said the voice again. It really did sound like a human voice. Violet wondered if she were hallucinating: surely it was dangerous to lose so much blood. There was a tapping sound. She looked up. She saw – or at least, she thought she saw – a face at the window. Pale and moonlike, with a shock of ginger hair.
She opened the back door, and Graham was silhouetted against the garden. Behind him the helleborine rippled in the wind, a dark red sea.
‘Christ,’ Graham was saying. He was looking down at her nightgown, at the black stain that bloomed between her legs. Violet wanted to scuttle away from him and hide, as if she were an animal in its death throes. Graham kept talking but she had a hard time understanding the words. She could see his mouth moving and knew that sounds were coming out of it, but they seemed to float away before she could catch them, like the downy husk of a dandelion.
Graham was inside the cottage.
‘For the love of God, Violet,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
He picked up a candle from the table and walked towards the bedroom, his face grim in the flickering light.
‘Don’t,’ she said weakly, but it was too late.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she heard him say again.
There was a rustling sound, and Graham reappeared, holding the bundle of bloodied sheets away from him. His white face looked guilty, as though he were carrying something dead. He was carrying something dead, Violet remembered.
‘I don’t want to look at it,’ she said.
‘We’ll have to bury it,’ said Graham. He stood for a moment, watching her. ‘I found your note,’ he said. ‘I was in your room, looking for my biology book. It was poking out of that book of fairy tales you used to love.’
‘The Brothers Grimm,’ she said softly.
Graham nodded. ‘Then Father told me that you and Frederick were engaged. After reading about … after I read the note, I knew that you didn’t want to marry him. I was going to visit you in Windermere – in the sanatorium – to check if you were all right. But then I heard Father on the telephone in his study last night … he was talking to Doctor Radcliffe about you. Then … he gave him this address, so this afternoon I told Father I was going for a walk … and I came here instead.’
He looked around as he spoke, taking in the dim, low-ceilinged room. ‘God knows what this place is,’ he said.
Violet said nothing, but there was a twist of dread in her stomach. Father speaking to Doctor Radcliffe … giving him this address … she knew that wasn’t good, but she couldn’t think why it was so bad, exactly. Her brain felt thick, slug-like, the same way it had felt that afternoon in the woods with Frederick, after all that brandy. Before he—
‘What happened to the baby, Violet?’ Graham’s voice was low. ‘Did you take something? Something to make the baby go away?’
‘Bring on the menses,’ Violet said.
‘Violet, are you listening to me? You have to tell me if you took something. Doctor Radcliffe is coming here, today. He’s meeting Father here. They could arrive any minute. If you did take something … you need to tell me. We’ve got to get rid of the evidence. It’s a crime, Violet. They could put you away for life.’
The dread in her stomach again.
‘Tansy petals,’ she said. ‘Steep in water for five days before administration …’
‘Right,’ said Graham. He put the bundled bedsheets down on the floor and went back into the bedroom. The door burst open and the wind roared through it, unfurling the bundle to reveal a gleam of pale flesh. Violet was gripped by the awful fear that the spore would reanimate and slither up inside her again. She couldn’t bear it. She turned around to face the wall.
Graham returned, holding the tin that she’d prepared the tansy mixture in. She could smell it, dank and cloying. He took the tin and the bundle outside. Violet heard the first hiss of rain on the roof, and watched it trickle down from the hole in the ceiling. She wanted to get up, to stand in the garden and let the rain wash her clean, but she was too tired to move. Her head lolled forward onto her chest. Darkness lapped at her.
When Graham came back inside, his hair was wet and mud was splattered across his clothes.
‘I’ve buried it,’ he said. ‘The child.’ He brushed the dirt from his hands as he spoke, not looking at her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, though she wished he wouldn’t refer to it as a ‘child’. He nodded.
He brought her a pan of water and a rag, along with a fresh nightgown from the suitcase in the bedroom.
‘I’ll let you clean yourself up,’ he said, walking out of the room. ‘Call me when you’re decent.’
I’ve buried the child.
Violet wondered if she would ever be decent again.
She wobbled to her feet and took off her soiled night-gown. The blood had glued it to her legs so that removing it felt like peeling away a layer of skin. Her vision slid and she gripped the back of the chair. She dabbed at her thighs with the rag and watched the blood run in watery rivulets down her legs, staining the floor. Outside, under the sound of the wind shearing through the trees, she thought she heard a crow squawk. Then, the sputter of an engine. A car.
‘Violet,’ Graham called. ‘Quick. Get dressed. They’re here.’
47
KATE
Kate has been in the attic for hours.
There have been moments of silence, when she has allowed herself to wonder if Simon has given up waiting for her and left. But then: the menacingly slow progress of his footsteps down the corridor. Of course he hasn’t given up. He is never going to let her go. Never going to let them go.
These are the worst moments, when the fear recedes only to close its cold fist around her heart again. But as Kate turns the fragile pages of Altha’s manuscript, as she reads a story that is centuries old but echoes her own life so closely, rage unfurls inside her.
The rain still falls, drumming loud on the roof, like a battle call. She has finished reading the manuscript. She knows the truth. About Altha Weyward. About Aunt Violet, too. About herself; and her child.
The truth. She can feel it spreading molten through her body, hardening her bones.
This wildness inside gives us our name.
All those years of feeling different. Separate. Now she knows why.
The rain grows heavier. There is something not quite right about the sound – rather than the rhythmic patter of water, it is erratic and heavy. Plop. Plop. Plop. As though hundreds of solid objects are landing on the roof. There’s a scraping noise, too. At first, Kate thinks it is the wind, a tree branch scraping the tiles. She focuses. Not scraping, scrabbling. Claws. The flapping of wings. Kate can feel them there, a frenzied, swelling mass. Birds.
Of course. The crow has been there, ever since she arrived. In the fireplace. Watching from the hedgerow, the sycamore tree. The same crow led her through the woods after the accident. The crow that carries the sign.
She is no longer afraid. Not of the birds and not of Simon.
She thinks of all the times he has hurt her, has used her unwilling flesh as if it were there for his pleasure. Has made her feel small and worthless.
But she isn’t.
Her blood glows warm; her nerve endings tingle. In the dark, her vision becomes clearer, sharper; sounds feel as if they are coming from inside her very skull.
The birds on the roof begin to chirrup and squawk. Kate imagines their bodies covering the house in one undulating, feathered mass.
She thanks them, welcomes them. Puts her hand on her stomach.
I am ready. We are ready.
Simon cries out downstairs and she knows that he has seen them too.
It is now, she knows. Now or never.
She opens the trapdoor.
48
ALTHA
I was busy, those last months of 1618. As the leaves turned red, so too did the sky, for a great comet appeared, chasing the stars like a streak of blood. My mother had often read the stars, and I wondered what she would say if she could see the red sky, if it would have told her what was coming.
Autumn gave way to winter, and the village was struck by fever. It seemed half of the villagers sent for the physician, and the other half – the ones who had not the coin to offer up their flesh to leeches – sent for me. In each fever-bright face – the eyes glassy with pain, the spots of fire in the cheeks – I saw Anna Metcalfe. I saw my mother.
A mistake could cost my life.
And so I stayed up working half the nights, either cooling a patient’s brow at their bedside or toiling in the cottage, preparing tonics and tinctures for the next day. My fingers smelled always of feverfew, as though it had seeped into the fabric of my skin from so much chopping and crushing. Each night I was so exhausted that I fell asleep as soon as I laid my head on the pallet. I did not even dream.
Neither Grace nor her husband fell ill, as far as I knew, but if they had, they would have sent for Doctor Smythson. They both attended church each Sunday, and though the pews were near empty that winter, with so many ill, I kept my distance and sat as far behind as I could. During the sermon I let Reverend Goode’s voice fade to a low hum, the words running into each other, and watched Grace’s red curls quiver as she bent her head in prayer.
I wondered, then, if Grace still kept the old ways, like her father. If she prayed to Mary for deliverance. Though I doubted the Virgin – who had been spared the feel of a man’s flesh on hers – could deliver Grace from her husband.
She looked the same as always. The face white and distant, the head bowed. No marks on her that I could see, but I remembered what she had said. That he was taking care not to harm her face. I could not bear to think what lay under her shift. I remembered my vision, at the bonfire on May Day Eve. The blood.
The fever that gripped the village burned itself out by advent, and though snow lay thick as cream on the ground, the church was full on Christmas morning. The villagers sat in the pews, with the ice on their hats and cloaks making them look like floured loaves. In my usual spot at the back, I craned my neck to see Grace. But she was not sitting next to John. I scanned the pews. She was not there at all.
All through Reverend Goode’s sermon, I wondered why she had not come. Had she caught the fever? After the service, John stood with the Dinsdales, and threw his head back and laughed at something Stephen Dinsdale said. He did not have the worried look of a man whose wife was ill, I thought. But perhaps that was to be expected. After all, from what I knew, Grace’s value to him was in her ability to bear him a child, and in this she had failed thus far. Perhaps he would be quite happy for her to wither away and die, giving him an excuse to marry a woman who could give him a son to carry on the Milburn name.
I stood as close as I dared in the churchyard, in case John said something that hinted at Grace’s condition. But I heard nothing: the villagers were merry with the promise of the festivities to come, and the churchyard was loud with chatter. After a time, people trailed off, bundling themselves more tightly in their cloaks and hats, wishing each other a happy Christmas. I felt sad, thinking of the feasts and laughter they would enjoy with their families, while I sat alone in my cottage. I watched as John turned to go and heard Mary Dinsdale ask that he pass on her best wishes to his wife.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘No doubt she’ll be on her feet by the morrow. Well, she’ll have to be, seeing as the cows need milking.’ He laughed, a harsh, cranking sound like the jaws of a plough, and bid them merry Christmas.
I walked home through white fields, under trees as bare as bones. I thought on John’s words, and the winter wind numbed my face and chilled my heart.
The next morning, I woke to such silence that I wondered if I had lost my hearing. Looking out of the window, I saw that snow had fallen so heavily in the night that the whole world was muffled by it. No birds had sung that morning and the sun, though weak and grey, was already high in the sky.
I hoped that the villagers would remain tucked up and warm inside their houses, perhaps still sleeping off the previous night’s merriment. I hoped that no one would see me as I set off into that still, white world.
As I walked through the snow, my feet cold in my boots and my hands raw in my gloves, my stomach twisted with fear. Whatever he had done to her, I thought, it must have been very grave if she was not fit to be seen in public on Christmas Day.
When I first came upon the Milburn farm, I thought that I was lost, or that it had vanished. Then, I heard the cows mooing in the byre, complaining of the cold, and I realised that a great lip of snow covered the roof of the farmhouse. I tried to climb the oak tree to get a better view, but my hands and feet could not find purchase, the trunk was so slick with ice. Then, I saw the dark figure of a man make his way from the white mound of the farmhouse. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking his long, flowing robes and the leather case he carried in his hand.
Doctor Smythson.
I spent the last days of December rising before the sun, when the valley was thick with darkness and silence. As the sky greyed around the edges, I made my way to Milburn Farm, where I climbed the oak and sat high in its branches. I might have been another of the crows, who welcomed me silently with their glittering eyes. One of them settled next to me, its feathers brushing my cloak. Together we watched the farmhouse.
I watched candlelight flicker orange through the shutters. I watched the back door open as John left the farmhouse and walked to the byre to milk the cows. I heard their low protest as his rough fingers pinched at their udders, and the fear grew in me. Milking had been Grace’s job. John took the cows to the fields, which were dark and swollen with melted snow. Some days, the Kirkby lad came. I did not see Grace. The winter sky grew light, and then pink became icy blue. Still she did not leave the farmhouse: not to wash the clothes, not to fetch water from the well or make her way to the market.
Five days passed thus. Then, as the sixth day dawned, I watched as the back door opened and Grace emerged in John’s stead. I saw her make her way to the byre for the milking, moving slowly, her body curved over itself with pain. I saw her stagger, and then sink to her knees and retch. I pressed my hand to my mouth as I saw the door open again. John came out, walking quickly towards his wife, who knelt in the frozen mud.
In spite of all I knew of the man, some innocent part of me expected him to offer his wife some kindness, to take her hand in his and tenderly raise her to her feet. Instead, I saw him tear off her cap and twist his fingers into her hair. In the dull light, her curls were the colour of old blood. John pulled her to her feet by her hair, and her sharp cry of pain sent a shiver through the morning. Around me, the crows shifted uneasily on the branches.
Tears froze on my cheeks as I watched him haul her into the byre, as if she were no better than a piece of waste. It had been one thing to hear her speak of his rough treatment of her. It was quite another to see it. Fury flowed through my blood like fire.
The next morning, New Year’s Eve, Adam Bainbridge delivered me a gift for the new year. He had wrapped a small piece of gammon in a cloth.
