Daughters of the Witching Hill (14 page)

L
IZA WAS WELL BESOTTED
with her baby, as was our John, who swanned about with the little lad in his arms, eager to show him off to anybody who came within five miles of Malkin Tower. Little Jamie seemed to thrive. His colour was ruddy and strong, and he'd an appetite like none I'd ever seen. Near drained his mam each time she took him to her breast. He latched on and fed till her teats were bloody and raw.

"Best wean him right fast," I said, but she wouldn't hear of it.

So Jamie grew and grew till folk teased John that Liza had cuckolded him and that the child was the seed of some ungodly giant. Such jests meant nothing to John, who doted on the boy and told all who cared to listen that his son was the picture of unblemished health. I tried to coax smiles from my grandson's lips whilst I cooed and sang, but the boy only drooled, lost in his own world. Our John whittled a bit of wood into the shape of a bird and tied it to a string to wave in front of Jamie's face, thinking to amuse him. But the babe's eyes wouldn't follow the swinging bird. He only stared straight ahead—dull, no spark in him.

"Can't the lad see right?" John fretted.

"He's not blind," Liza was quick to say. Strong sunlight made him blink, so she said, and the sight of a cat made him shriek.

By Jamie's first birthday even Liza had to admit that the lad just wasn't right. He couldn't crawl, only drag himself across the slate floor on his elbows, wriggling like a salamander. When we called his name, he was slow in turning his head, and he could not speak a single word, even to say
mam.
Whilst most little children raise an awful fuss if their mother leaves their sight, it was all the same to Jamie if his mam was sat beside him or some travelling pedlar stinking of donkey dung. If the lad showed no fear of strangers, he was plagued by night terrors.

By the time he was five, our Liza still had to dress him and he was yet in clouts, having no clue what he was supposed to do when his mother sat him on the pot. He could hardly hold a spoon to eat proper but ate with his hands as though he'd been reared by wild creatures. At least by then he was finally walking and talking, though his words made little enough sense. Once I caught him kicking over a piggin of milk he was meant to carry back to the house. When I scolded him, he said he'd done it because a hare was spitting fire at him and boxing his ears. Our Jamie wasn't wicked, nor was he a liar. He was too simple to tell truth from lie, or what was real from his own foolish fancy. Liza and I did our best to set him straight. We spoke blessings over him, drew on our charms and physick herbs, but in vain.

Not an easy future in store for our Jamie. Cruel folk took to calling him Liza's Idiot, whilst kinder souls murmured that he was touched by God. Such talk tore at my daughter's heart. She began to believe that she, a cock-eyed freak of nature herself, had passed down the stain to her son. And hadn't she gazed at the full moon whilst she was pregnant—what if her child had been moonstruck within her very womb? The thought of bearing another stricken child, passing on the curse to yet another innocent life, was enough to make Liza wish herself dead. Every new moon she brewed herself tansy and pennyroyal till her courses came.

At least our John was steadfast and loyal. He stood by Liza and flew into a rage if any dared speak ill of his son. "He might not be a clever one, but he's a good one, which is more than can be said for many round here." John laid the blame for his son's affliction on Anne and her witchery.

"It's nowt to do with Anne Whittle," I kept telling him. "Some children are born that way. Maybe God has some special purpose for him." Best we could do, as Tibb had said, was love Jamie as we would any other child and try our best to keep him out of harm's way.

"Not what I expected, any of this," I told Tibb. At daylight gate in cold February, I was sat atop Blacko Hill, not caring if the temper I was in frightened him off for good. "You promised me three grandchildren by Liza, but I'm left with one who will never be right. Liza's a broken, weeping thing; she's downed enough tansy to make herself barren; and her good man lives in terror of my oldest friend. Can you do no better for us?"

Tibb lifted his eyes to me. "Don't give up hope too soon, my Bess. It might be winter now." He waved a long arm at the naked trees, fallow fields, and the dark clouds smothering Pendle Hill. "Yet spring won't be long in coming. I promise you that."

Stepping close, he stroked my hair till I leaned against him, let him support my tired bones. Spring couldn't come soon enough for me.

A fortnight later I walked home from the Bulcocks at Moss End where I'd blessed a lame horse. At daylight gate, as I made my way along Pendle Water, I felt a flimmer in my belly. Something big was to come. "Tibb?"

I heard his voice inside my head.
Hurry home, Bess. Your daughter has need of you.
Out of nowhere the brown dog flew out to harry me, nipping at my ankles if I lagged. He wouldn't leave my side till I was ten paces from my door.

I found Liza sobbing over my store of dried herbs. At this ragged end of winter, we were clean out of tansy, pennyroyal, and rue. She crossed her hands over her womb and near doubled over in her desperation. It was the dark of the moon and she'd no bloody clouts to wash. That meant she was bearing. Again I felt the tingling inside me. Sinking down on my knees, I took her hands.

"Welcome her," I said.

"Her?" My daughter was thirty now, still skinny to the bone, but the trouble and care over Jamie had left its mark on her. Wrinkles etched the skin round her mouth and crooked eyes. Her hair had gone thin and lost its sheen.

"Welcome your daughter." My right hand cupped her belly and sensed the life within, stirring and quickening beneath my palm. I closed my eyes to see a golden shimmer, sun spilling through shifting green leaves. I saw a lantern in a dark night, a beacon in a tower. A light far-shining. The beautiful girl Tibb had promised me those many years ago.

Liza shoved my hand away. "I'll have it out. Midwife down in Colne must have some remedy for me."

"Not this one," I begged her.

"What if it's another—" She choked on the word she could not say. "Maybe our John was right all along."

Over the years John's talk of curses and sorcery had worn down Liza to the point where she was too frightened to call upon her own powers. She herself couldn't say the last time Ball had appeared to her.

"My womb's forespoken," she said. "But not by Anne Whittle. I'll not grant her that much talent. Devil himself did this."

"Stop talking foolishness."

"Kit's Elsie—she has five children, each of them healthy and perfect." Liza rubbed her swollen eyes. "That's because she never meddled in the magic. Soon as you became a blesser, she dragged Kit off to Sabden. If I'd known the price I'd have to pay—"

"Hush."

I held her tight, seeking to give comfort, though her words gutted me. Was she saying that she wished she, too, had forsaken me when I'd come into my powers? Did she wish she could be just like her sister-in-law, an ordinary wife and mother and nothing more? I
had
tried to warn her away from this path. Pushing away my own hurt feelings, I rubbed her hair.

"This child you're bearing now will be beautiful, our Liza. She'll be as canny as our Jamie is slow."

"How do you know that?"

"How do you think I know?"

My own daughter gawped at me, loose-jawed to hear me foretell the unborn child's future.

"She'll be your pride. Your John will melt at the sight of her. She'll be fierce and loyal and true."

Liza wept and shook her head. "Can't you see, Mam? I've fair lost hope. I daren't trust this."

"You must bear her for Jamie's sake. The lad will never be able to earn his own living. What will happen to him when we're all dead? He needs a sister, a canny sister, to look after him. If you rid yourself of this girl, he'll be alone in the world. Elsie won't allow Kit to take him. Stupid goose thinks he's the Devil's seed."

Liza's tears fell, drenching our clasped hands.

"It will be an easy birth this time," I promised her.

I brewed Liza a tonic to strengthen her womb. I blessed her in the names of St. Mary and St. Margaret. With John saving the richest milk and cream for her, the haggard, haunted look left her and she began to smile again. And so I dared hope that our luck would turn.

B
Y TIBB'S ENCHANTMENT,
I found myself transported to a narrow cart track. A flowery tunnel, it was, hedges rising high on both sides, hawthorn buds swelling, soon to burst into lacy-white bloom. The ground underfoot was slick from good spring rain. Blackbirds trilled till a woman's scream rent their song. A man's curses I heard. Frantic feet dashing through the mud. From round the bend, young Annie Redfearn careened, tearing along like a runaway horse, her golden hair flying loose. Somebody had ripped the coif off her head and slashed open the front of her kirtle. She slid to a stop before me, her eyes huge and beseeching. The left side of her face was red and swelling with a mark that would soon darken to a bruise. Cowered behind me, did Annie, as though I had the might to defend her from the terror that chased her. Seconds later I saw him hurtling toward us. More boy than man, he was, but his face purpled in fury.

"Leave her be." I planted myself between him and my best friend's daughter.

One glance was enough to tell me that this lad was born to wealth and property. His mud-spattered boots were made of finest pigskin, his jerkin trimmed in velvet braid. But try as I might, I couldn't put a name on him.

"You're still a young one," I told him. "Go home before you bring shame upon your family, chasing down a defenceless woman. Did your people teach you no better?"

I shuddered as the young man passed right through me as though I were vapour, not flesh and blood. As though I were dead and gone, a ghost and nothing more. Then came Annie's shrieks, unstoppable as blood, till I collapsed on the muddy track that turned before my eyes into rich red clay. Scooping up a fistful of the stuff, I swung round and crammed it into the lad's hateful face till he finally loosened his grip on Annie.

Gagging upon my own spittle, I awoke. My heart rattled loose inside me. My skin had gone cold as the grave.

"Tibb, what is this?" I whispered into the dark silence. "Why would you send me such a nightmare?"

Maundy Thursday, it was. I tried to put the dream out of my head as I set off for the New Church with my family. On that April morning dew gleamed upon the hedges. The meadows were golden with buttercups and the beckside was pungent with bear's garlic and wild onion. I smiled to watch John, mindful of his wife's condition, help Liza over every stile, whilst Jamie skipped along, glad to be traipsing through the fields instead of stuck in the shippon shovelling manure. Out of the hedge leapt a hare, darting across our path. Let out a whoop, did Jamie then, and clutched my arm.

"Calm yourself. It's only a dumb animal," I lied.

The hare cocked its head and gazed at me with soft eyes. I fair expected it to disappear into the green, but it hopped in our wake a quarter mile whilst Jamie babbled fearful about the thing.

"The creature means you no harm," I said, this time speaking the truth. Tibb, taking the form of a hare, was trailing me to church upon Maundy Thursday, though I'd no clue why. Just wasn't regular, this. If he was going to appear to me, why hadn't he done so last night, after the horrible dream, when I'd cried out for him?

Of a sudden, Jamie took off like a sprite, leaping a stone wall and prancing after a yearling horse whose sleek grace struck his fancy. "Dandy!" he kept shouting, trying to grab the cantering colt by the mane. "That's my Dandy." Lucky the poor animal didn't kick his head in.

Trying to do what was best, I made up my mind to deal with the boy myself and sent his parents on without us so at least they wouldn't be late for church. The Church Warden would be less likely to whip an old woman and a simple boy. Took me a fair while to catch Jamie, who made a game of letting me chase him. When the two of us, red-faced and spattered in field dirt, finally straggled into church, the Curate was well into his sermon. Putting on a contrite face for the Church Warden, I stayed in back near the door, holding tight to Jamie's arm lest he bolt again.

Whilst Jamie wriggled his arms and jabbered to himself, Anne glanced my way with swollen eyes, as though she'd wept the whole night through. Even her daughter Betty seemed downcast and wan. Something cold crawled up my legs as I gazed over at Annie Redfearn. Though her coif was pulled well forward, anybody could see the black bruise upon her cheek. On the men's side of the church, Tom Redfearn looked as though he were watching his own funeral. How unbearable for him to be stood there, bearing the stares and the shame of everybody thinking that he had done this to his own wife. But I did not believe for a moment that he was the culprit. My dream returned, clutching and clawing at me—that strange young man tormenting Annie till I rammed cold clay in his face.

As if reading my thoughts, our Jamie juddered and twitched. Standing still and quiet for three hours was too much for the restless lad. I couldn't keep him from hopping from one foot to the other. The Curate, observing his antics, left off preaching about the Last Supper, the blessed event we were meant to celebrate this day, to speak instead of the Devil, of the Devil's long arm reaching into our lives with wicked temptation. Jamie burst out laughing and slapped both his thighs. Before the Church Warden could charge over with his switch, I hauled the boy out the door. With a whoop, our Jamie broke free of my grasp. He skittered round the churchyard, playing tag with the silent gravestones. I could only shake my head at him.