John Saturnall's Feast (3 page)

He sped across the green, arms pumping, heart pounding. As he passed the Chaffinges’ orchard, Tom Hob yelled at John's pursuers. But no one listened to Tom. Past the fruit trees, the back lane yawned, a high-hedged tunnel of shade. As John sprinted for the mouth, something cracked against his skull. Hot pain billowed from the back of his head. A missile from Abel, he thought. Buckland's champion stone-thrower.

He stumbled and a cheer rose behind. But a moment later he regained his stride. His feet hammered the ground. His pursuers began to fall back.

The first time he had tried to play they had lured him down to the Huxtables’ barn where the muck heap was waiting. How had he been so foolish as to tumble in, his mother had asked? The week after that Ephraim and Tobit tried to throw him into the brambles. Witches didn't bleed, Ephraim had declared. Their sons were made of the same stuff. He had scrambled free that time but the next Sunday they had dangled him over the old well and Ephraim had raised a bucket of the water, threatening to pour the dark red liquid down his throat. The sour smell wrapped itself around his face like a wet winding sheet.
You fancy a cup of witch's blood, John?
The witch had poisoned the ground under the green, so Warden Marpot preached. That was why the water stank. Tobit and Ephraim had tried to prise open his mouth. Only Tom Hob had saved him that day, striding forward with his wooden mug raised and driving them off with a volley of curses. Every Sunday after that, John ran.

Now his head throbbed. He felt the swelling rise as he climbed the stile into Two-acre Field. A dead rook usually hung on the scare-crow but today the gibbet was bare. He smelt freshly turned earth in the warm spring air. The lane was silent. His pursuers appeared to have given up.

The girls were always the first to abandon the chase: Meg and Maggie Riverett, the Clough sisters, Peggy Rawley, Abel Starling's sister Cassie. The boys kept going for longer, Ephraim dividing them into packs to cut him off from the safety of his mother's hut.

John trotted around the edge of the field. On the far side, he heard spring-water splash into the old stone trough. He had a secret way through the hedge. Soon he would be up the bank, in the meadow and home. Safe for another week. He looked around once more then pushed through the bushes.

‘Took your time, John.’

They were waiting for him on the other side. Ephraim Clough eyed him from the centre of the path, heavy-browed and half a head taller than John. White-haired Dando Candling and Tobit Drury flanked him. Seth Dare and Abel Starling stood back. John looked from one broad face to the next.

‘How's your rna, Witch-boy?’ Ephraim demanded. ‘Still dancing around her pot?’

Ephraim was the worst. The one who led the others in the chants of ‘Witch-boy’ and chased hardest when John fled. The one who John, in his angry fantasies, found himself punching, over and over. Now the usual sick feeling churned John's stomach. His limbs felt heavy. Ephraim swaggered closer and pushed his thick-browed face into John's. It always began like this.

‘You don't belong here,’ Ephraim told him. ‘You and your ma.’

John willed himself not to flinch. ‘Don't we?’

‘My pa says. You shouldn't never have come back.’

Puzzlement joined his fear. Come back? He had never been further than the village. Ephraim eyed him, waiting. John smelt sweat rising out of the boy's dark clothes. But a fouler smell hung in the warm air. Behind him, Tobit held a sack. Ephraim's arm flashed up. The boy's knuckles smacked the side of John's face, the sting of the blow spreading over his cheek. He felt his head jolt back and tried to throw a punch back. Ephraim swatted it aside and laughed. He was grabbed from behind and then he was fighting them all, struggling hopelessly. Just like all the other times. They wrestled him down. Ephraim gripped his wrists while Tobit forced the sack over his head.

‘New test for you, John,’ announced Ephraim.

‘Old test, more like!’ exclaimed Tobit.

He heard them laugh again. It was hot in the sack, the coarse cloth itchy on his face.

‘Go on,’ urged Ephraim. ‘Give him his Witch's Feast.’

The string was loosened. John felt something being shoved inside. Suddenly the stench of rotting meat filled his nose. Feathers rubbed against his face. The rook from the scarecrow, John realised. He gagged and tried to twist away. But they had him fast. He felt something soft smear his face.

‘Good and ripe, that one!’ he heard Seth shout. A hand pressed the carcass closer. ‘A Witch's Feast'll give you a fever,’ Ephraim declared. ‘You got a fever yet, John?’ John bucked and struggled. But there was no escape.

‘Next it makes you puke,’ Ephraim went on. ‘You puke till you bring up your soul.’

‘He don't like it,’ Seth called out.

‘He ain't got nothing to wash it down with,’ answered Tobit.

‘"Honey from the Hives, Grapes from the Vine,"’ Ephraim sang out. ‘Here it comes, Witch-boy, my special spiced wine . . .’

‘You look where you aim,’ John heard Tobit warn. An instant later the first hot splash hit.

John struggled harder but Tobit only pulled the sack tighter. Suddenly John got a hand free and lashed out blindly. His fist hit flesh and Tobit's grip loosened. John pulled off the bag.

Ephraim stood with his black breeches half down, his Sunday shirt pulled up, an arc of urine shooting out of him. Tobit rubbed his cheek, a scowl on his face. Abel was backing away. Run, John thought. But as he turned to rise, a dark shape filled his vision. An instant later, Dando's boot caught him under the chin.

He felt a gristly crunch. A clot seemed to swell and plug his windpipe. John dropped to his knees and clutched his neck, choking. He retched and a gout of blood spilled from his mouth. The boys fell silent.

‘I told you we shouldn't do it,’ hissed Abel. ‘Now you've killed him.’

‘You did it too,’ retorted Dando.

‘Sir William'll hang us.’ Tobit sounded scared.

‘He won't know,’ Ephraim told the others. ‘Grab the bag, Abe. Come on. Run!’

Their footsteps thudded down the path. John lay on the ground, hot shame coursing through him. Ephraim was right, he told him-self. Or his grim-faced father. They didn't belong. They should never have come back . . . He would not go to church next week, he told himself. No matter what his mother said. He would run away. Run to wherever they had come back from.

Blood trickled down his throat, tasting metallic and hot. He swallowed hard and felt the air flow thickly into his lungs. He crawled to the long stone trough and looked in.

His skin was darker than the other boys’. His hair was black and curly where theirs was red or brown or fair. His eyes were as dark as his mother's. Or his father's, he reminded himself. Whoever that was. He splashed cold water over his head and scrubbed. He spat and watched the long red filaments drip from his mouth. As he felt inside his mouth, a high clear voice sounded above.

‘Witches don't bleed.’

A girl looked down from the top of the bank, her freckled face framed by a white cotton bonnet. Startled, John looked up into the blue eyes of Abel Starling's sister Cassie.

‘I'm not a witch,’ he managed.

‘I know that.’

She was a year older than him. She sang loudly in church in a high clear voice. She attended Warden Marpot's Sunday lessons. That was all he knew. But now Cassie Starling was talking to him. To his horror, John found himself blinking back tears.

‘Come up here,’ the girl commanded.

John climbed. At the top, the meadow's rank grass stretched away. To the right a stand of beeches grew. Ahead, the terraces rose in great blunt steps. Tall weeds and bushes choked the lower slopes. Dense scrub and furze barricaded those above. At the top, bramble thickets formed a thick cordon before Buccla's Wood. The girl regarded John.

‘Grass is how the wicked spring up. Old Holy said, remember?’

John nodded. It was one of the priest's favourite texts. The girl pursed her lips and regarded John. A strand of her hair had come loose.

‘Can you count?’

She wound the stray blonde strand around her finger. John nodded again.

‘Good,’ the girl said and pointed to a tussock. ‘Sit there.’

A minute later, John reached out a tentative hand to Cassie's face. ‘One,’ he said.

‘Go on.’

‘Two, three, four . . .’

He could smell Cassie's hair and the wool of her dress. Her breath smelt of strawberries. His heart thudded as the girl wound and unwound the long blonde strand. The nail was bruised black, he saw.

‘. . . twenty-nine, thirty . . .’

He was counting her freckles. He worked up one cheek, across her forehead and down the other. Cassie giggled then blinked as he dabbed around her eyes. The scents from the meadow-grasses laced the air between them. When he reached her white cotton bonnet, she pulled out the long pin and shook out her hair. He continued around her mouth.

‘. . . forty-eight, forty-nine . . .’

As he approached her lips, she caught hold of his finger, her hand quicker than he would have guessed. Her grip stronger. The bruise under her fingernail darkened.

‘You know what freckles are?’

He shook his head.

‘They're sins.’

Cassie was half-touched, Abel said once. Had been ever since their little sister died. That was Mary Starling. Above the trees, a curl of smoke rose into the cloudless sky. His mother would be waiting, he remembered.

‘The first witch was Eve,’ Cassie said. ‘God sent her to test Adam. When she gave him the apple. He sent us a witch too.’

John thought of the wood, the air drifting out smelling of fruit blossom. ‘But there ain't no witch, is there?’ he said. ‘Saint Clod saw to her, didn't he?’

‘A witch don't look any different from you or me,’ Cassie answered. ‘Not on the outside.’

‘Then how d'you see her?’

‘God'll open your eyes. If you're chosen. The witch can't fool God. Don't matter where she hides.’ Suddenly she leaned closer. He felt her warm breath in his ear. ‘You go up there, don't you?’

She glanced up and John followed her gaze. Together they looked up the slope, all the way to the dark line of trees at the top.

‘You can't,’ he said. ‘It's all brambles.’

‘Thorns don't bother a witch,’ Cassie answered. ‘They don't bleed, remember?’

This was Marpot's preaching, he knew. When she wasn't singing psalms, Cassie knelt in the Warden's house with the Lessoners.

‘I was praying up here,’ she said. She looked over at the beech trees then smiled at John. ‘I knew you'd come.’

John stared back. ‘Me? How?’

‘God told me.’

Cassie smiled then rose to her feet and hitched up her dress, poised for the run down the bank. John looked up at her bruised knees and bare white legs.

‘You're staring.’

He felt his cheeks redden.

‘You want to know?’ she asked. ‘Want to know what God said?’

He looked up hopefully.

‘Next week,’ Cassie told him. ‘You wait for me after church.’

The scents of wilting leaves drifted in the hut's warm fug. John's mother looked up as he slipped through the doorway, her face red in the glow from the smouldering fire. Hung on its chain in the hearth, the blackened cauldron steamed.

‘Took the long way home, did you?’ she asked.

John nodded and scurried past. The bump on his head had not hurt while he sat before Cassie. Now it throbbed painfully and his throat felt raw. He took his place across from the fire and gazed about the hut. In the far corner their chest sat beside the straw palliasse where they slept. On the other side his mother's bottles were arrayed. Pots and pans hung around the hearth. On the shelf above, a large leather-bound book was propped open.

John knew the pages from stolen glimpses: the drawings of fruits, trees, flowers, roots and leaves, the blocks of forbidding-looking writing. That was as close as he was permitted. She put it away when the women came calling. Now, at John's glance, she reached to close the covers.

She had been up the slope, he knew. Her bulging collecting bag leaned against the wall. He breathed in carefully and smelled the fruits of her latest labours: fresh elder, henbane, dead-nettle and redwort . . . All familiar. But another smell filtered through the coarse mesh of the sacking, teasing him with a flowery scent. Absent-mindedly, he reached back to touch the bump on his head.

‘They beat you again, didn't they?’

She always knew. He looked up to find her staring then shook his head mutely, bracing himself for the interrogation. But as he squirmed under her gaze, a fat plume of smoke billowed up and his mother began to cough. She covered her mouth to protect the liquor in the cauldron and leaned with one arm braced against the hearth while the spasms racked her frame. John snatched up the jug and hurried outside.

She was past thirty years. ‘Mother Susan’ was how the night-time callers at the hut called her. Or ‘Goodwoman Susan’ when the rear-pew women roused her from sleep. They had used to call in the daytime, handing over their penny loaves for her remedies, offering measures of barley if she would dispense her advice or a grimy coin if she threw on her cloak and followed them. She took promises if they had nothing better. Now they crept up the path after dusk with their offerings and tapped softly on the door. He watched the anxious faces enter. Then the hushed talk began: of aches and bleedings and crampings, waters breaking or not, babies turning or twisting, cauls too thin or too thick, or torn, or lost in the women's labyrinthine bodies.

They blessed her when her potions eased their labour-pangs. Or when her hands held up a wailing infant. They sent her back with collops of dried bacon or lengths of dimity from which his mother made his clothes. But they crossed themselves too, John knew. Behind her back they called her different names. She roamed the village at night with her covered basket, they told their children. She'd tie a noose round their guts with her stringy black hair. Mother Susan brought them into life, they said. But Ridder Sue could make them disappear. Like a witch.

John dipped the jug in the trough behind the hut and hurried back. His mother drank. When the coughing fit calmed, she reached for her bag. John watched her pull out a handful of thick green stems and snap them with a twist of her wrists. The tang of fresh elder sap cut through the smoke.