Daughters of the Witching Hill Page 15

  Of the three of us, Jamie showed the least fear. Sometimes it was a blessing to be simple of mind. My brother scooped up the skull as if it were no eerier than a cabbage and tossed it back into the sack.

  Whilst I clambered upon the gate to watch for my parents, who were due back from market any moment, Gran gave orders to Jamie, who dug fast and furious behind the manure heap. After he'd buried the skull, Gran had my brother rake fresh manure over the filled-in hole so that Father would never notice it, or so we hoped.

  In spite of the pains we'd taken, my father returned home ashen-faced, for he and Mam had passed Betty on the road. My parents could tell just from her smirk that she'd been by Malkin Tower.

  "What does Chattox's daughter want from us?" Father asked Gran.

  Before Gran could get a word in, Mam spoke up, saying it was bad blood. Though Chattox sought to earn her bread as a cunning woman, folk favoured Gran over her and why wouldn't they, seeing how Gran had kept her name clean whilst there were rumours about Chattox that were too dark to even name. That was why Chattox's family struggled whilst ours prospered.

  When Mam reached the end of her tirade, Gran's face clouded as though something needled her, and she said we should pray for Chattox and her daughters. A hard time they were having with Tom Redfearn dead and Annie's new baby to feed. Our gran was a soft one, always making excuses for folk.

  Father was soft, too, but he knew danger when he saw it. To ward us from evil, he stirred up the embers in the hearth and cast in salt till the flames leapt and hissed.

  This I'll confess: Of my two parents, I loved Father best. I loved him more than the sun and moon, almost more than I loved Gran. Such a gentle soul he was, ever mild with Jamie and me, even when Mam's temper flared. Once, whilst we were out walking along the beck, he showed me a nesting mother duck. Together we watched how she spread her wings to shield her little ducklings. So it was with Father. If he bridled each time he crossed paths with Chattox or her kin, it was only because he wanted to protect us. I prayed that his love and Gran's magic would be strong enough to keep harm at bay. Yet after Betty's unwelcome visit, I saw that skull whenever I closed my eyes. Though we'd buried it, that thing haunted me and filled my nightmares.

  In church I only dared peek at Chattox sideways whilst hidden behind my mother's skirts. Every inch the witch she looked. As old as Gran was Chattox, but with none of Gran's warmth. Her wrinkled skin, thin and speckled with age, barely masked the skull beneath, and when she drew back her lips in what passed for a smile, yellow wolf teeth winked from her gums. Sometimes she was bold enough to grin at Gran, fixing her with her green serpent's eyes, and then I'd see my Gran blink back tears. Even as a little girl I sensed that Gran was sore tormented by secrets from her past and that they'd everything to do with Chattox, her former friend who had turned against her.

  A few weeks on, we came home from church to find that the rusty old lock on our door had been forced. Gran's herbs, torn down from the beam where they had hung, lay scattered and trampled. In the place where Betty had left the skull last time were our emptied barrels of oats and meal. My mam began cursing like a bailiff, never mind that it was Sabbath Day. She pointed to the gaping box that had held our linen clothes: our spare smocks and the good collar bands and coifs we wore only at Christmas, Easter, and weddings. Our precious finery earned by my father's hard work, our only possessions that set us apart from ordinary poor folk—all of it was gone. The oats, meal, and linen together were worth a good twenty shillings, so my parents reckoned, more than my father could earn in five years.

  "I'll see her hang for this," said my mam. "She'll feed the crows."

  "And what would her mother do to us then?" Father asked. If Mam's face was red as slaughter day, his was white as wax. "Chattox would strike back even harder."

  "He's right," Gran said, heaving herself off her stool where she'd sat, silent and brooding through the storm of my mam's rage. "I'll sort this."

  Without another word, she trudged out the door, no doubt on her way to Chattox's cottage, leaving us to gawp after her.

  Not till daylight gate did she return, limping and footsore, but she shouldered our bag of meal and our good linen clothes. Mam went over the collars and coifs, piece by piece, inspecting them for tears and stains.

  "I told them to keep the oats," Gran said. "They're down to skin and bone. Old Anne lies ill and Annie's baby has the colic. Our John," she said to my father, "I gave my word that we'd give them a dole of oats every year and Betty promised not to trouble us again."

  Mam was having none of it. "How could you be so witless? Betty robs us and you want to reward them!"

  "We won't go hungry," said Gran. "Anthony Holden's a good master. He won't let us starve."

  Father remained uncertain. "Oats or no oats, Chattox won't rest till she sees us rot."

  In 1601, the year I turned six, summer never came. We'd cold, overcast days, the heavens pelting down rain that flooded the fields and caused black mould to blight the wheat. Pastures turned to quagmires. Our cattle began to suffer afflictions. One cow died, another sickened, a third fell lame, a fourth stopped giving milk. Of the young stock born that year, one was born with the mule foot and another had the waterhead. A third was a weaver calf, pacing ever back and forth till at last it dropped dead.

  Worse were the August hailstorms, casting down stones big as robins' eggs. Two of our laying hens we lost to the hail, and Anthony Holden of Bull Hole Farm lost a foal. Crops of barley, oats, and wheat lay wasted in the fields. God was trying us, so the Curate said, punishing us for our sins.

  As we could barely feed everyone at Malkin Tower, our payment of oats to Chattox came to an end. Weren't we living on nettle soup ourselves? That winter Death's hand closed round our throats. Though Father himself admitted we could not sacrifice the dole of oats to Chattox, he could not stop looking over his shoulder, near crazed for fear of her wrath. If she so much as glanced his way in church with that look of bitterness, full of wounding power, my poor father staggered. Before Christmas he took to his pallet with a fearsome ague. Already wasted with hunger, he'd no strength left in him to fight it off. Gran brewed her herbs, laid poultices on him to draw out the fever, blessed him, and prayed over him till she fair lost her voice. But no ordinary physick could mend him. Father fell into strange fits, his limbs lashing out, his eyes rolling. What ailed him could only be witchcraft. Most wrenching was his horror as he swore that this was Chattox's revenge on him for denying her the oats.

  Gran worked her counterspells. She threw what salt we could spare into the fire, blessed horseshoes, rowan crosses, and crooked nails, and hung them over every door and window. She stoned a magpie and strung it up on the elder tree out back, yet still the fever and fits would not loosen their grip on my father. Meanwhile, my mother grew frantic.

  "You're stronger than she is," Mam pleaded to Gran. "I can't lose him. Please, there must be something more you can do."

  Gran took our last living hen, pure black and full mettlesome, stuck her full of pins, then burned her alive whilst chanting her countermagic against Chattox. The bird seemed to shriek out in agony just as an old woman would do. An almighty stink filled the air as first the feathers burned, then the quills, and finally the flesh, bearing the aroma of a good supper till stink erupted from the unclean bowels. The flames raged like hellfire, charring the fowl's bones black. Next Gran took a handful of our precious store of oats, mixed it with my father's piss, made a cake of it, and, having named the cake Chattox, burned that, too.

  Wind brewed up in a tempest, battering the shutters and bolted door. It howled down the chimney like the Gabriel Hounds baying for blood. Sparks of fire flew in a whirlwind and skittered across the floor, setting fire to the rushes. Jamie and I lunged round, stamping them out.

  When the storm was at its wildest, there came such a bang upon the door, loud enough to rouse Father from his stupor. I ran headlong to Mam, burying my face in her apron, whilst she cradled my head with trembling hands.
This was my gran's terrible magic. Every part of me froze and I thought I would crack apart. Who was stood outside our door? Another knock sounded, causing my father to moan and thrash. Even Jamie spooked. Loud and fast came the pounding. Mam edged to Father's pallet and reached for his hand. I wrapped my arms round his neck and put my ear to his chest to listen to his wild-thudding heart. All the while Gran was stood before the door, holding the bolt firm in place. Each one of us thought it was Chattox on the other side, trying to claw her way in. The spell had summoned the witch to show herself at the house of her victim. But if Gran were soft and showed Chattox mercy, allowing her to step in out of the storm, the spell would be broken and with it any hope of re-leasing my father from that witch's grip. Up to Chattox, it was, to end this thing. Tears streaming down her face, Gran braced herself against the door as the pounding dragged on and on. A shambling old woman locked out in such weather was certain to die, leaving Father to live.

  Malkin Tower seemed to twist round and round, and I fell into a swoon, my arms still clinging to my father's neck.

  In dawn's grey light, I awoke to unearthly stillness. In the night Mam had carried me to my pallet. Gran had collapsed in a heap, her head against the bolted door. I watched Mam help her to her stool.

  "Is Father better?" I asked.

  Neither Mam nor Gran said a word.

  The storm had died. Full determined, Mam unbolted the door. The terror of what lay outside made me fly straight into Gran's lap. She caught me in her arms as though I were her last comfort.

  What did Mam expect to find when she opened that door—Chattox's rain-sodden corpse? She found nothing. Not a single footprint.

  "It can't be," she said. "We heard that knocking."

  I just sobbed whilst Gran kept her silence.

  "Could it have been the tapping of a branch, do you think? Could she have sent her imp to plague us?" Mam crumbled to her knees beside Gran. "You said it would work."

  Wrenching her head away, Gran pushed me out of her arms and into my mam's. Then she hoisted herself off her stool and headed for my father's pallet. Struggling loose from my mother's embrace, I flew past Gran to be the first one to see how he fared.

  Father's face was grey as gravedust. His eyes bulged wide, fixed on some almighty terror, his mouth frozen open in a mute cry. His skin was cold as the chill creeping up my back. With a scream, I tore out of the tower as though an army of demons were chasing me. Racing to the top of Blacko Hill, I howled till I was hoarse.

  When hunger finally drove me down, I found Gran crouched near her herb garden. Weeping bitter, she hacked the frost-hard earth with her spade, digging dandelion root to boil in a broth that would be our only food now that she'd burned our last chicken. Even after raising the most horrendous magic she could muster, Gran hadn't been able to defeat Chattox but was left to grub in the dirt like the lowliest of creatures.

  Seeing me through her tears, she reached for my hand. "Our Alizon, sometimes God is cruel. I'd have given my own life gladly if only he would have let your poor father live."

  ***

  A part of me died the day that Uncle Kit and Matthew Holden lowered my father's coffin into the black earth. I fair longed to pitch myself down that dank hole and let myself be buried with him. I shook in my desolation and fury. Chattox had murdered my father and not even Gran had been able to save him. The final insult was that the witch was going to get away with it. Gran had forbidden Mam to breathe a word of it to anyone. If we go round crying witch, what do you think folk will say about us? On this Gran was well stubborn. The Constable would take one look at Chattox and one look at Gran and see two old women who meddled in spellcraft and sorcery. Our hands were tied. No justice for my father, only this bottomless loss. A lucky thing for Chattox that she was ill in bed that day, or claimed to be, for if she had dared to show her face at Father's funeral, I would have sprung at her like a wildcat and raked her flesh raw with my fingernails.

  I sobbed like an abandoned child, not allowing Gran or Mam to give me any comfort. I wouldn't let anyone so much as lay a finger on me till Alice Nutter, graceful in her dark widow's gown, took my chin in her gloved hand. With her lace-trimmed handkerchief, she wiped my eyes and snotty nose as though I were her own little girl.

  Putting her lips to my ear, she whispered words I would never forget. "Your father's bound for heaven, sweetheart. When you miss him, you can pray for him. God will listen and your father will know that you keep his memory alive in your heart."

  After kissing my forehead, Mistress Nutter went to Mam and Gran, not saying a word, but clasping their hands and standing with them in silence a spell, her head bowed with theirs.

  I turned to my father's grave, now piled high with holly, pine boughs, and ivy. It being the dead of winter, there were no flowers to be had. Mistress Nutter's words rang inside me like a promise: I could pray for Father and he would look down from heaven and know how much I loved him.

  A small, thin hand reached out to offer me a bough of sweet-smelling juniper. I found myself staring into the wide brown eyes of Nancy, the Holdens' youngest daughter, one year older than I was. She gave me a shy hug, patting my back till I hugged her in return.

  Folk were kind in showing us their sympathy. Anthony Holden paid for the funeral and delivered a sack of meal to Malkin Tower so we wouldn't go hungry. Mistress Nutter rode by to bring us winter apples and a flask of dark-red wine. But nothing could take away the anguish of losing both Father and our livelihood in one blow.

  The omens were too powerful for Master Holden to ignore. Not only had his best cowman died, but he'd lost a quarter of his herd, and what could have caused that but blackest witchcraft. Though he made no accusations against Chattox, he'd the good sense to move his remaining cattle from the fields near Malkin Tower back to the pastures near his own home. His son Matthew, the boy Gran had once cured, was now old enough to take Father's place as cowman.

  After burying my father, we came back to an empty shippon. No more work for Mam in the dairy, no more fresh milk or cream, butter or cheese. With Jamie too simple to find good, steady work and me too young, Mam wandered from farm to farm, doing whatever was asked of her in exchange for bread.

  Though Gran carried on with her cunning craft, she was never the same after my father's death. A filmy grey caul began to creep over her eyes, clouding her sight, till after a year or so, she needed me to lead her round by the hand. Jamie held Chattox responsible for Gran's blindness, but Gran herself said that it was the price she'd paid for living so long when most folk died much younger. There was a price to be paid for everything, so Gran believed.

  With Gran losing her sight, we'd every reason to believe that God had forsaken us. If the hardship didn't finish my family off, the grieving would. Our Jamie was inconsolable. Once I found him battering the gateposts with his fists. I had to beg him to stop and I took his hands in mine before he reduced his own to bloody stumps. My brother just couldn't get it through his head that our father had left us to slumber in the sod. Gran staggered round like a ghost as though she blamed our tragedy on her misbegotten spell. As for Mam, it was as though her life had come to an end. By night she wept till the flesh round her eyes was raw and bruised.

  For the life of me, I tried to forgive my mam for what happened next. Before I was even born, she'd forsaken her own powers. What she did after Father's demise seemed like madness. If she heard Gran whispering the most harmless blessing, she'd leg it out the door as though she thought that even the most good-willed healing charm was the Devil's work. If Mam so much as heard me murmur the Ave Maria, she'd order me to leave off with the popish wickedness.

  Found religion had Mam, and not the comfort of Gran's old faith with the saints and the Mother of Mercy, either, but the new religion in all its harsh austerity. If I didn't know better I'd say she was bewitched, that she'd come under the spell of the new Church Warden, Richard Baldwin of Wheathead, who singled out Mam for his special attention. His wife being ill, he had hired my mam to he
lp in his household and there she became wise to his ways, learning his Psalms by memory since she couldn't read. Mam spent more time at his home than ours, and when she did show her face at Malkin Tower, she near did our heads in with her talk of sin and brimstone, the chosen few and the damned multitudes. Maybe she believed that if she bore this splintery cross, she could redeem herself, wash her soul clean of shame. In truth, she embraced more than religion during her first year of widowhood.

  Goodwife Baldwin was bedridden and ailing, never to recover, and full senseless most of the time. Though a Puritan, Dick Baldwin was still a man with needs he could no longer ignore, and Mam was so lonely, so willing to make any sacrifice to win a man's love again. And so it came to pass. She offered herself to that horse-faced man with a smile like vinegar. Where Father had been gentle and yielding, Dick Baldwin was stern and severe. Perhaps Mam hoped his staunchness would lend her the strength she needed to endure her loss. No doubt, in her heart of hearts, she nursed the hope that he would marry her when his wife passed on, as the woman was sure to do any day or week. Mam was already doting on Baldwin's small daughter to prove her worth as a stepmother.

  Meanwhile, she neglected Jamie and me, her own half-orphans who needed her as never before. So what did my brother and I do but learn to place our trust in Gran instead of our inconstant mother. In our loneliness, Jamie and I stuck together like two burrs. If anybody was fool enough to call my brother an idiot in my earshot, I'd lob the offender's head with a rain of earth clods and manure. By and by, folk learned not to mock Jamie when I was at hand. God knew Jamie needed every bit of succour I could give him, for his lot was never an easy one. After Master Holden moved his herd from Malkin Tower, my brother was left to wander from village to farm, begging for work and food.