Daughters of the Witching Hill (6 page)

I saw a picture, painted on the church wall, of Our Lady, clad in black, weeping at the foot of the cross, but even as she wept, she seemed swept up in a blinding vision.

What is yonder that casts a light so far-shining?
Mine own son that's nailed to the Tree.
He is nailed sore by the heart and hand.

Lastly, I saw the Angel Gabriel, all in white, holding a lily.

Gabriel laid himself down to sleep
Upon the ground of holy weep.
Our good Lord came walking by.
Sleepest thou, wakest thou, Gabriel?
No, Lord, I am stayed with stick and stake,
That I can neither sleep nor wake.
Rise up, Gabriel, and come with me,
The stick nor the stake have power to keep thee.

Inside the child was a well of deep cold. My head a-flutter, I held him fast till that ungodly chill drained out of him and into me. Held on to him and chanted till his skin no longer felt clammy, but was warm as bread fresh out of the oven. All my warmth poured into the boy. When I tucked him back into his bed, I was shivery and faint, though sunlight streamed into the close little chamber. Had to hold on to the bedstead to raise myself to my feet. Staggered to the door, then called out to the Holdens, who flew into the room to behold their boy with his new-flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes. The child grasped his mother's hand, told her he would pray to get better and that he wanted to see his father's new calves. I was so weak by then that I had to go down to the kitchen and sit a spell. Liza spoke to me, the Holdens spoke to me, but I hardly knew what they were saying. A bell knelled inside my head. Even when I closed my eyes I saw the brown dog.

When I could finally stand on my feet again and was well enough to wobble home, Liza had to carry the capon, the dressed hare, and the dozen eggs—a basket in each hand.

***

"How did you do that?" my daughter demanded. First off, she'd thought I was putting on an act like some quack at Colne Market. Now she wouldn't shut her gob about it. "You never did such a thing before."

I was too drained to speak. Took my last strength to drag myself back to Malkin Tower, where I collapsed upon my pallet. Anyone could see that the illness had left young Matthew only to enter me. Never mind the victuals the Holdens had given us—I could barely swallow a cup of broth. Couldn't rise from my pallet for a fortnight, but I sent Liza to bring the Holdens the lungwort.

Whilst she was gone, Tibb appeared and let me hold his warm hand for strength.

"Why didn't you warn me?" I asked him, tears in my eyes. "If I'd known it would be like this—"

"Would you have refused to bless a sick child? I don't believe that for a moment, my Bess."

My sight blurred. The way I shuddered and ached, I feared I would never be right again.

Tibb stroked my hair. "In future, it will be easier on you. You're new to this is all. Lie back and rest, my Bess. You've earned your sleep."

He covered my eyes with his soft palms, and then I tumbled into a shimmering fever dream. Three paths led off into the bluebell wood. One led to the right, another to the left, but some tug inside made me set off down the middle path as I called out after Tibb, begging him to show himself. Instead I saw a lady come riding upon a white horse. Rapturous lovely, she was, her red-gold hair shimmering like the sun at daylight gate. The woodland rang with the music of the gold and silver bells twined in her horse's lustrous mane. Lifting her hand in blessing, the rider smiled as though she'd known me since I was a babe.
My lady sent me to look after you.

The haunting chimes of those bells brought back my memories of the old ways. A girl again, I joined the procession round the fields to encourage the corn to grow high. We chanted blessings over the springs to make them pure. Yet when I looked round, I saw no crosses, no priests, just the young maids and the young men wandering off into the fields of waving green barley. Again the lady appeared, riding a graceful circle round me. Fresh and new as unfurling spring leaves, she was, but older even than the popish faith. She was not the Queen of Heaven, but a queen of earth, Queen of Elfhame.

When the fever broke, Liza was sat beside my pallet with a piece of lamb pie from the Holdens. I fell upon it with a hunger that made her laugh.

"Little Matthew's well better," she told me. "Today he left his sickbed. Ate at the table with the rest of the family. Stuck his head outside before his mother called him back. Then he was sat with me whilst I was winding wool."

I smiled. At least my sufferings weren't for nothing. "You brewed the lungwort for him?"

"Aye." She looked me over, her eyes strange. "Tell me, Mam. Did you have the powers always? Or did they come to you all sudden-like?"

I stared up at the thatch and told her I needed my rest, but she wouldn't stop pestering me.

"You've always sown them herbs," she said. "If we'd nowt else, there were them weeds of yours."

"And a good thing for you," I said, thinking of the tansy.

"But when you blessed Matty Holden, you'd no wort with you. Could you not teach me, Mam?"

"It's not something you want to be meddling with. Look at the state it's left me in."

"Teach me the charms, Mam, please! I've a good memory."

"Child, there's more to it than just words."

"Folk think my squint is enough to curdle butter," Liza said. "If my eyes can curse, sure I could bless if I set my mind to it."

The notion had lodged itself in my daughter's skull, and there was nowt more I could say.

When I was well enough to show my face in the New Church again, I was stood at the back with the other poor folk, whilst the yeomen and gentry sat in their pews. I tried to put on a good face, keep my thoughts on the hymns and scriptures, ignore how the Curate stared at me, how everyone looked my way. Word had certainly gone round.

My old friend Anne Whittle couldn't take her eyes off me. Of all the people in that church, she knew me best, for we'd been best friends during our girlhood, always sharing the other's company back in the days of the processions, our loose-flowing hair crowned with the garlands we'd woven for each other. Such a beauty my Anne had been with her green eyes and her tresses the colour of flax. In secret I used to fancy that she was some highborn lady left by mistake in a labourer's cottage. Full of herself even as a little lass. Burst her spleen if any dared to belittle her. Her temper was fierce enough to make a grown man whimper. Anne forged her own way in life. If one door was locked to her, she'd find another, ever resourceful, never one to give up when she had her mind set on something.

Catching her eye, I smiled. Her hair, like mine, was grey now, yet her eyes were as keen as they'd ever been. Like me, she'd been luckless in marriage, at least in the beginning. Wed her sweetheart, she had, the best-looking man in Pendle, so she swore, only he'd a wandering eye, and a few years down the line, after her girl Betty was born and the son who didn't live, our Anne found her good man lying in a haystack with Meg Pearson. So what did my friend do but sneak up with a bucket of cold ditchwater and drench them both. In a voice loud enough to be heard from Trawden to Clitheroe, she told her husband that he could have his trollop, for he'd not be welcome in their marriage bed ever again.

When he died not long afterward, Anne shocked everyone by taking another husband, ten years younger than herself. Though folk had surmised she was too old for bearing by then, she birthed her youngest girl, Anne, a golden-haired child pretty as her mother had been in her youth. Now that my friend's second husband was dead, people had taken to calling her Chattox, her maiden name having been Chadwick, in order to tell her apart from little Annie, her daughter.

Anne had stood by me in my hour of deepest humiliation, when, twenty-two years ago, the Constable pilloried me for adultery. Pregnant with Kit, the pedlar's bastard, I shrank inside myself, my head and hands locked into the stocks, my face blackened from the sheep dung the crowd lobbed at me. Not caring what anybody thought, my Anne barged her way through the throng to take her place before me. Though I trembled and sobbed, full sorry for myself, she chatted with me as though we were market wives sat over cups of strong October ale.

"My first husband was an adulterer, as you well know," she'd told me, her face so close to mine that our noses touched, never mind that I was spattered with filth. "Nobody put him in the stocks, but when I threw that cold bucket on him, his member did shrink. God's foot, our Bess! You should have seen it."

Full blasphemous, she teased that she'd pray to Saint Uncumba, the patroness of women who wished to be rid of their husbands, and with God's grace the saint would help me get shot of Ned Southerns one way or other. So Anne jibed and told bawdy jokes till I roiled with laughter and could no longer pity myself or even feel shame for what I'd done.

If that wasn't true friendship, what was? A sad thing that we only saw each other of a Sunday now that we'd no more holidays or the leisure to do much besides stand for hours in the church on the Sabbath or toil for our bread the other days of the week. Her cottage, over in West Close, lay five miles from Malkin Tower, over an hour's journey by foot.

What I wouldn't give to turn my back on those prodding eyes in the congregation, link arms with her, and set off through the meadows as we used to do. With the strange turn my life had taken, I needed her more than ever. Full of longing, I shot her another glance. Full brazen, she winked.

After the hours of preaching were done, Anne, bless her, was first out the door with her daughters in her wake. I made to follow, hoping to catch up, but as I stumbled blinking into the sunlight, Master and Mistress Holden waylaid me. Little Matthew was stood between them. How proud and pleased the parents looked, how they beamed at me, and how glum was that little lad's face. Wager the mite half-wished he was still ill so he could spare his ears the Curate's dreary sermon. But anybody could see how Matty was thriving since I had blessed him. Whether it was by my charm or by the lungwort, only God could say. After the Holdens had thanked me again and taken their leave, I saw Anne waiting for me at the wicket gate. So I told Liza to go on without me, and Anne sent her two girls home, Betty watching over little Annie.

Mindful of eavesdroppers, my friend and I strayed from the road, finding a narrow track that cut into the green near Pendle Water. The mossy earth cushioned our bare feet as we wove our way between birch trees and felt the dance of sun and shadow upon our faces.

"Tongues are wagging about you, our Bess," Anne said. "Always had a surprise up your sleeve. Now I turn round and you're a charmer."

"I know you don't hold with such things yourself," I was quick to say.

Ever the sceptic was Anne, far too full of common sense to suffer those who claimed to work miracles.
All that chanted drivel,
I'd heard her say before.
Worse gibberish than what we had to hear from the old priests. Give me a good herbwife to lay on a poultice, but spare me the incantation.

"It's a dangerous path you're treading," she said. "Did you not hear about the conjurer over Burnley way?"

I shook my head. Living at Malkin Tower, I could not keep track of the gossip the way Anne could, living as she did between Burnley and Fence.

"He used the spell of the sieve and shears to discover the whereabouts of stolen goods. The Magistrate had him arrested. He was sentenced to be pilloried not once, but four times, Bess: in Clitheroe, Whalley, Colne, and Lancaster. And he's been warned that should he ever deal in sorcery again, he's to be hanged."

Considering how I'd barely endured the pillory that single instance, I couldn't fathom how anybody could bear to go through it four times. Perhaps hanging would be kinder. Overpowered by everything, I just wanted to hide myself away and never speak about this to anyone again. Yet I could never conceal my true face from Anne.

"Spells and spirits," she said. "It's not what I would have wished for you, love."

I gazed into her eyes, green as the moss beneath our feet.

"By Our Lady, I didn't wish this on myself either."

Struggling over my every word, I tried to describe what had come over me that day at Bull Hole Farm, how the powers I scarce understood had surged through me with a will of their own and I their mere vessel.

Anne's mouth folded upon itself. Her steady eyes blinked. Pale and quiet, she bowed her head. First time I ever saw our Anne at a loss for words. What if this drove a wedge between us? She might be half-frightened of me now that I'd passed into this murky place where she couldn't follow.

"I can't just walk away from it," I told her, fair helpless. "Can't pretend it never happened."

"No, indeed," she said at long last. "No one will let you. They'll come banging on your door at all hours, calling on you for this and that. Just be careful, love. It's a gift you've been given, but even gifts don't come for nothing. You might have to pay more than you bargained."

With a rush of heat, I remembered how Tibb had appeared to me the Sunday I'd stayed home with my baby grandson.
All I ask is one kiss.
That single kiss had been enough to turn me into a different woman, one who was marked and set apart. Was that the true price and did I rue it? The mere thought of Tibb and his beauty, of how he filled me with awe and set my head brimming with golden light, made me flush like a girl in the thrall of new love.