Daughters of the Witching Hill (29 page)

"Our Jamie!" I called out, sweet and gentle as I could. "Come along with me and watch me bargain!"

My words slid past him. Jerking away from me, he melted away amongst the horses, hucksters, and hawkers, whilst I threw icy stares at the men who muttered unkind things about him. Poor Jamie. When we were still children, I'd at least been able to protect him some, but now he was a man and had strayed beyond my ken.

Heavy-hearted, I shuffled through the warren of stalls in search of honey for Gran's raw throat. After scouring the marketplace, I discovered that the only one with honey to sell was Richard Baldwin.

Right torn, I was. On the one hand, honey was honey, no matter how loathsome the vendor, and it would do Gran much good. But did I truly wish to have dealings with this thin-lipped hypocrite who had driven Gran, Mam, and me off his land, calling us whores and witches?

"And what did you come to the market to sell, Alizon Device?" he asked me with a cold gleam in his eye.

For one wicked moment I fancied that I possessed the powers to bowl him over and leave him gasping and full humiliated. Then, shrugging, I made up my mind to turn tail. Before I could walk away, Baldwin did his worst.

"They say your brother's an idiot," he said, making my hands prickle with the urge to slap him. "But that's not the whole story, Alizon, is it now?"

He used his loftiest manner, as if to remind me that he was the Church Warden, a man to be reckoned with. But I saw him for what he was: the fornicator who'd left my mother with his bastard.

"My brother," I said, "is a better man than you'll ever be."

Baldwin's face darkened. "Your brother's an idiot who knows how to curse people."

My boiling rage turned to ice-cold dread. "You're an idiot yourself to believe such twaddle." But the tremor in my voice gave away my fear.

Baldwin smiled, mirthless and cruel. "Plenty of talk going round about you lot at Malkin Tower. Henry Mitton refused your grandmother a penny and now he's dead. Then John Duckworth died after refusing your brother a shirt he'd coveted."

Jamie's clay picture flashed in my mind. Had he fashioned ones for Mitton and Duckworth? That forlorn look in his eyes when I'd watched him stroking the mare proved that my brother was a lost soul. Seemed he didn't know right from wrong. If this went on, folk would call him an evil wizard and run to the Magistrate with their accusations. Unlike Chattox, Jamie wasn't old or weak or housebound but wandered wherever his wilful fancies took him.

"May God punish you for your slander," I told Baldwin.

Then, to my shame, I broke down into tears. Off strode Baldwin, leaving me to weep and hug my basket of eggs in the middle of Colne Market, and that was how Matthew Holden found me.

"Our Alizon, what happened?"

He looked at me with such concern, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him, not there in the throng with everyone eyeing us. Snow flakes fluttered down and the wind was enough to suck the warmth from a body, so Matthew gave me his arm and I clung to him as though he were my own brother, strong and canny enough to avenge me and Jamie. The good man took me to the Greyhound Inn, sat me upon a settle in the corner nearest the fire, and asked the tavern wife to bring me a mug of mulled ale and a trencher of hot mutton stew.

Took a while before the ale loosened my tongue, but finally I confessed what Baldwin had said about Jamie. Something in Matthew's face changed—I couldn't quite say what. He bided his time till I'd told him everything. Then he leaned close, his elbows on the greasy table, and talked in a low voice so only I would hear.

"Alizon, I know better than anyone that your grandmother's a blesser, not a witch." His voice shook upon that very word.
Witch.
"But you need to keep your brother on a tighter tether."

"What can I do? He's a grown man. Am I to keep him locked up?"

"There's some folk as would do just that with one such as your brother."

"Break his spirit, that would. It would be like killing him."

"You must find a way to rein him in." Never before had I heard Matthew Holden speak like this, grave as any curate. "Before tragedy strikes again."

"What do you mean?"

Did he, of all people, suspect that Jamie was responsible for Mistress Towneley's death? Or, worse yet, did he hold us to blame for what had happened to Nancy? I sickened to remember what little Jennet had said the day she'd caught me unearthing Jamie's clay picture.
You're a witch. You made Nancy sick.
My lost friend's face loomed before me, shivering in terror as she pointed to the black dog wriggling at my feet. Would she still have been my friend had she known it was not Chattox's familiar but mine?

Tears filled my eyes, blinding me to Matthew's face, and he laid a consoling hand over mine. My skin burned to think of everybody in that inn staring at the pair of us. No doubt the story would soon be warped into some lurid tale.

"Best keep yourself out of Baldwin's way," he told me.

"Not so easy avoiding folk of a market day," I said, wiping my eyes. "Everybody's in Colne today. I even saw Roger Nowell—"

"You'd no need to come to market." He smiled at me the way I thought he would have smiled at Nancy when giving her brotherly advice. "If you'd need for anything, you could have asked my mother."

Though I glowed under the light of his kindness, I still had my pride. "Matthew Holden, I'll have you know I'm no beggar to be always banging on your door when I lack something. I've eggs to sell." Then I remembered that our very hens were a gift from Matthew's family.

"So you do. Come, Alizon. Let's get those eggs of yours sold off before market closes. I'll bring some honey round to your gran tomorrow."

I walked through the market with Matthew now at my side, and none dared to slight me. With him haggling on my behalf, I traded my eggs for some smoked bacon and a great loaf of wheaten bread. Then, after searching for Jamie and not finding him, Matthew drove me home in his wagon. Soon he had me laughing, the way his sister used to do. Yet still I worried, for I'd no clue where Jamie had wandered.

Matthew drew his horses to a halt outside our gate.

"If you've need of anything, promise me you'll turn to us, Alizon. We mean to help."

As I gave him my promise, I traced the ghost of Nancy in the curve of his jaw and the depth of his brown eyes.

"Will you make me another promise?" he asked, looking at me so close that I blushed.

"Course I will, Matthew."

"Our Alizon, if you can't put an end to Jamie's mischief, then surely your grandmother can do something. Promise me you'll ask her."

So I gave him my word, for I could hardly deny it after all he'd done for me and mine. But I was red-faced and miserable as I clambered down from the wagon. Now I was bound to tell Gran the truth of what our Jamie had been playing at.

Gran dozed beside the dwindling fire in the darkening room. To her blind eyes night and day, murk and brightness, were the same. Yet when I stepped in the door, her eyes opened and a knowing shone upon her face.

"Our Alizon," she said, her brow creasing. "What's wrong, love? What happened to you?"

"Oh, Gran."

Just the two of us at home. Mam and Jennet had not yet returned from working at the Sellars' and Jamie was off with the fairies for all I knew. Setting down my basket with the bread and bacon, I knelt at Gran's feet and repeated every last despicable word of Baldwin's. Breaking down, I spilled how I'd lied about the clay picture: that it was Jamie's, not Chattox's, handiwork. Said how I'd dug it up and tried to hide it, only Jamie had found it again and I'd never seen it since.

"I don't know how to stop him, Gran." My head rested in her lap. "Do you think he did it? Does he have the powers to kill folk by magic?"

She crumpled. For a spell we cried together, my arms round her.

"Should have seen it coming," she said. "Tibb tried to warn me."

I longed to be in the Holdens' warm kitchen, safe and well-ordered, where nobody spoke of spirits or clay pictures. But then Gran left off weeping and drew herself upright. Before me I saw the cunning woman folk held in awe, my own grandmother whose mere words could send Baldwin wobbling away like a milk-faced coward. My gran whom Baldwin called witch. A steely look flashed in her blind eyes. Her powers seemed to charge the very air I breathed.

"Alizon, before your brother gets home, look about the ground for any loose earth where he might have buried a clay picture."

"Gran, it's well dark. If I go out there now, I'll not see my hand in front of my face."

Defeated, Gran nodded. She looked like an old woman again, knit with worry that the others were out so late.

A while later Mam and Jennet stumbled in.

"Our Alizon," Gran said. "Take your sister up the tower for a spell. I need to speak to your mam."

Jennet was tearing a chunk off the bread I'd brought back from market and cramming it in her mouth when I took her hand.

"Come with me, poppet."

Carrying a rush light in my free hand, I pulled her along up the stairs to the top chamber that was now mine. Setting the rush light down, I hoisted her so she could look out the window slits.

"There's a falling star! Make a wish."

Jennet was having none of it.

"You all
lie
to me," she said with a scowl fit to singe off my eyebrows. "You and Gran and Mam. Just because I'm little doesn't mean I'm an idiot like Jamie."

"Don't you dare say such hateful things about your brother."

"But he
is!
And he's been bad. I know he has."

"You know nothing about it."

She laughed, full scornful, as though she were the big sister and I the seven year old.

"That's what
you
think, our Alizon."

Down below, Mam's anger rose like a tempest, loud enough to stop my heart.

"What, bind Jamie?" she cried. "Oh aye. Some work that would be!"

Had Gran asked Mam's help, even though Mam had renounced her powers? Perhaps this fix was so great that even Gran couldn't mend it on her own. I felt so feeble then, the wind knocked out of me.

Mam started in on Baldwin. That snake, she called him. To think he dared accuse us when he refused to provide so much as a heel of bread to feed his own natural daughter. If it was down to him, our Jennet would starve.

My sister looked at me, tears shining in her eyes. She knew. How could she not? She was cannier than her years, our Jennet, and had probably picked up the gossip. Poor girl trembled from crown to toe as Mam began to curse Baldwin out, wishing every manner of woe upon him. Our mother's rage shook the very walls of the tower.

"Witches, he calls us! I'll show him the measure of his words."

Jennet let out a whimper and launched herself into my arms, hugging me tight as she'd never done before. All that night my sister huddled by my side, not letting go of me, and crying out each time she heard an owl or the wind rustling the thatch.

When I led Jennet downstairs in the morning, she seemed terrified of our mam. Shrank behind me, did Jennet, hiding herself behind my skirts, and I confess that I, too, was a sight skittish round our mother after listening to her fury the night before. But when I saw her fussing over Gran, combing through her hair and coaxing her to eat some bread, I understood that behind Mam's fearsome temper was an even fiercer love. She would stop at nothing to protect us.

After Mam and Jennet had left to work at the Sellars', I searched the ground skirting Malkin Tower for where our Jamie might have buried his clay pictures. When it came to hiding things, my brother was cannier than anyone I knew. I poked my head under every bush and was busy digging at the west side of the tower when a horse trotted up to the gate.

Matthew Holden hailed me. "Our Alizon, what are you digging?"

Must have looked right odd to him, for he'd caught me hacking away at the frost-bitten earth on a steep slope full of thistle and bulrushes. A fair maddle I was in, trying to explain my way out of this.

"These moles!" I laughed as the tale came to my tongue. "Gran asked me to dig them up in winter whilst they're sleeping."

Bemused, Matthew Holden sat back in his saddle. "A lot of labour, that. And they're harmless creatures, you know." He seemed to think it strange that folk common as us would be bothered by moles, and indeed we weren't, but I could hardly tell him the true purpose of my digging.

"I brought the honey for your grandmother," he said, springing off his horse. "My mother sent along a bottle of elderberry wine as well."

"Bless you, Matthew Holden!" Dropping my spade, I ran to open the gate for him. "My gran loves elderberry wine. Come inside and let her thank you herself."

But Matthew swung round with a start. Creeping up behind his horse came Jamie, looking half-starved, his breeches marked with wet clay. Matthew handed me the crock of honey and flask of wine before backing away, a careful hand on his horse's bridle. My mouth went dry to see him go so pale. Dear Mother of God, Matthew Holden was afraid of our Jamie.

"Come, love," I called as my brother stretched out his long arm to stroke Matthew's horse. The animal snorted and pranced sideways. "No foolishness, Jamie," I spoke up. "Come stand behind me and let Matthew be on his way."