Weyward — Chapter 27: Kate

27

KATE

Two hundred pounds.

Kate counts again, just to be sure. Her bank account is empty, so she’s down to her last clump of notes, still hidden in the lining of her handbag.

She needs to make this last, until she finds a job. Several times, now, she has walked past Kirkby’s Books and Gifts in the village. But she couldn’t bring herself to go in.

But she has to do something … there is food to buy, and utility bills to pay – fat brown envelopes have begun to appear through Aunt Violet’s letterbox, the most recent marked ‘URGENT’ in angry red letters.

Later, a book in Aunt Violet’s collection catches her eye: The British Gardener.

Looking out of the kitchen window at the garden, she feels a twinge of doubt. It is so overgrown, and filled with the oddest of plants: great green trumpets reach skyward, vying for space with hairy stems, purple buds nodding on their leaves. She’s not sure she’s up to this. But a baby needs nutrients, vitamins. From vegetables, green things, like the ones that crowd

Aunt Violet’s garden.

And so she has to try.

It is a hot day, almost midsummer. In the bedroom, she peels off her jeans and top – both of which are starting to become uncomfortably tight – in favour of a pair of canvas dungarees she finds in the wardrobe. She dons one of Aunt Violet’s hats – a straw behemoth with a tawny feather tucked into the band. In the cupboard under the sink there are gardening gloves, and leaning against the back of the house, a spade.

With The British Gardener tucked under her arm, she takes a deep breath and ventures outside.

She touches the smooth shape of the brooch in her pocket, reflecting that she’s breaking the only rule she’s ever set for herself. But it’s hard to feel threatened by the plants and flowers golden with the sun; the clean gurgle of the beck. She even enjoys listening to the birds – wishes she could identify each species from its song, the way she used to when she was a child.

A caw, throaty and almost human, sends a cold needle down her spine.

She looks up. Her heart beats a little faster when she sees the crow, observing her from the highest branch of the sycamore. For a moment she is still, fearing that sudden movements will bring a rain of claws and feathers.

But the bird just shifts on the branch, the sun coating its wings with an oil- slick sheen.

Blinking away the memories, she resists the urge to touch the brooch in her pocket. Focus. She must focus on the task at hand.

Guided by the pictures in Aunt Violet’s gardening book, she learns that the green trumpets are rhubarb; the hairy-stemmed plant wild carrot. These, she digs from the ground, marvelling at the delicate stems of the rhubarb, the pale, gnarled carrots. She can make soups, salads. Hunger gnaws at her; the craving for food borne from the earth so intense she is almost giddy with it. She looks down at the carrot she grips in her hand. Part of her wants to eat it now – to suck the soil from it, feel the freshness burst into her mouth as she crunches down, hard. She needs this, she realises. The baby needs this.

She breathes deeply, places the carrot into her basket.

There are herbs, too, she sees: sage, rosemary, mint. These she also collects. She leaves behind other strange plants that don’t seem to feature in the book: under the sycamore tree she finds a long-stemmed bush with yellow buds, like clusters of tiny stars.

After a while, she has an urge to remove the gloves, to feel the soil against her skin. She pushes her fingers deep into the earth, relishing its softness. The smell of it is intoxicating: its mineral tang reminds her of the taste that still coats her tongue when she wakes every morning.

She feels something brush against the scar on her forearm. Turning, she sees it is a damselfly: the same insect she saw down by the beck, when she

first arrived. It trembles there for a moment; then, as she watches, it flutters to her stomach.

There is a surge inside her – a fizzing warmth in her gut, her veins.

Rising into her oesophagus.

For a moment she thinks it’s morning sickness; worries she might vomit, faint. She bends over, on her hands and knees in the dirt, lets the blood rush to her head.

She feels a tickling sensation against her hand, different to the silky touch of soil. Looking down, she sees the pink glimmer of a worm – and then another, and another. As she watches, spellbound, other insects emerge from the earth, glowing like jewels in the summer sun. The copper glint of a beetle’s shell. The pale, segmented bodies of larvae. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she’s not sure if it’s from the roar of her pulse or the bees that have begun to circle nearby.

They’re getting closer. It’s as if something – as if Kate – is drawing them.

A beetle climbs her wrist, a worm brushes against the bare skin of her knee, a bee lands on her earlobe. She is gasping, now, overwhelmed by the heat that blooms in her chest, surges up her throat. Her vision blurs like snow, then goes dark.

When she wakes, the day is cooler, the sun hidden behind clouds. Her mouth tastes of earth, and her body, sprawled on the ground, feels heavy, wrung out. Hazily, she watches the crow take flight from the sycamore, wings blotting out the sun. Blades of grass itch against her skin, and she flinches, remembering the insects. She scrambles to her feet, brushing the dirt from her clothes, fingers searching for the creatures that surely crawl

over her neck, in her hair.

But there is nothing.

Looking down, she sees that the earth is still: just an empty, velvet mound where she has dug up the soil. No worms, no beetles, no larvae. She

can’t even hear any bees.

Did she imagine it? Hallucinate?

But something catches at the edge of her vision – a glitter of wings. The damselfly she saw earlier, before she blacked out. She watches as it flits towards the sycamore, dancing over the gnarled trunk, the little wooden cross, before disappearing from view.

Then she knows. She didn’t imagine it. It was real.

A memory hovers, clouded and uncertain, like something seen from a distance. Early childhood. Sun on her face, the brush of wings on her palm, that feeling in her chest … She squeezes her eyes shut, tries to pull it closer, but she can’t bring it into focus. Somehow, though, she is left with the odd sense that this has happened before.

The villagers’ gossip echoes in her mind. One word, ringing louder than

the rest.

Witch.

She has to know the truth.

About the Weywards. About herself.

The next day, Kate sets off to Lancaster. The drive reminds her of the night she left London. The road snaking through the hills, stretching endlessly out before her. She feels the familiar rise of fear in her gullet as she speeds along with the other cars. Her blood beats hard in her veins. Her blood, but the baby’s blood too – the Weyward blood – and the thought makes her feel stronger, grip the steering wheel hard, determined. She can do this.

She’s never been to Lancaster before. It’s quaint and pretty, with its neat white buildings and cobblestones. But something about the throng of crowds – she is almost swallowed up by a gaggle of tourists – unsettles her.

There’s a sharp taste in her mouth, a sour coating that she recognises as the precursor to an anxiety attack. She’s surprised to feel relief when she catches sight of the River Lune flashing silver in the distance, the hazy mountains beyond.

She finds the council office easily enough: a large, imposing building hulking on the city’s main street.

Inside, the air is crisp and still, and Kate gathers herself together, joins a winding queue to speak to the man at the desk. Her appointment is at 2 p.m.

She’d thought the Cumbria County Council Archives might hold some information, but the curt woman she’d spoken to on the phone explained that Lancashire Council holds the records of local witch trials, given the trials took place at Lancaster Castle.

Eventually, she is ushered to another waiting room, and then summoned to a cubicle, where she takes a seat opposite a thin, middle-aged man, shoulders dusted with dandruff.

A manila folder rests on the desk in front of him. Nerves flicker at the thought of what might be inside. She shuts her eyes briefly, thinking of how

much she spent on petrol to get here … Please, let it be worth it. Let him have found something.

The man offers a perfunctory greeting before detailing the results. She watches as his tongue flicks out to moisten his lips before he talks, like a frog catching flies. ‘I’ve only found four records about a Weyward,’ he explains. ‘Three of them I had to pull from the Cumbrian archives. Let’s start with those, shall we?’ He opens the file, takes out two documents. ‘Both of these records concern an Elizabeth Ayres, nee Weyward.’

Kate nods. ‘Yes – my great-grandmother, I think.’ ‘We have a record here of her marriage to a Rupert Ayres in August 1925.’ Kate nods again. She knows this already. ‘And a death certificate. From September 1927.’ She leans across the table, heart pounding. ‘What does it say? How did she die?’ ‘The cause of death is quite vague – “shock and blood loss”, it says.

Childbirth, perhaps? Quite common in those days, of course, though unusual that it hasn’t been explicitly referenced. The certificate was made out by a Doctor Radcliffe, place of death listed as Orton Hall, near Crows Beck.’ ‘I think my grandfather was born that year. Maybe she died giving birth to him?’ Something else the man said snags in her brain.

Doctor Radcliffe.

With a start, she thinks of the doctor in the village, who performed her first ultrasound. His liver-flecked hands, cold on her skin. He’d mentioned inheriting the practice from his father, hadn’t he?

How strange, to think that his father might have been present for Elizabeth’s death. For her own grandfather’s birth. Though she supposes that is the way of small villages – of rural life. She remembers the weathered headstones in the graveyard. The same names, again and again.

And yet not a single Weyward. If it weren’t for the cottage, it would be easy to imagine they’d never existed; that they were merely the stuff of local legend.

She turns her attention back to the man across from her. How is it that he has only found four records? Can that really be all there is? ‘Next, we have a death certificate for an Elinor Weyward. Died aged sixty-three, in 1938. Liver cancer. Given a pauper’s funeral.’ ‘A pauper’s funeral? What does that mean?’ The man frowned. ‘It means that there was no one to cover funeral expenses. She would have been buried in an unmarked grave.’ Kate feels a throb of pain that this woman – her relative – had been so neglected in death. And yet she’d had family living just a few miles away, at Orton Hall.

The man takes the last sheet of paper from his file. She notices that the skin of his hands is moist, with a pearlescent webbing between the fingers.

Again, she thinks of frogs. ‘This last one is much older,’ he explains. ‘One result for the surname Weyward in the records of the assizes for the Northern Circuit, from 1619.

An Altha Weyward, aged twenty-one, indicted for witchcraft and tried at Lancaster Castle.’ Her heart jumps. Prickles sweep her skin, like the tracings of phantom

insects.

So the rumours are true. ‘Was she found guilty?’ she asks, her mouth dry. ‘Executed?’ The man frowns. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have that information,’ he says. ‘We only have the record of the indictment – not the outcome of the trial. Sorry not to be of more help.’ ‘Do you know’, Kate begins, thinking of the cross under the sycamore tree, ‘where she would have been buried? If … if she had been executed, I mean.’ ‘Again … that’s not something we know. There aren’t records. At least, not anymore.’ ‘And – there’s really nothing else? No other records of the Weywards between 1619 and 1925? For three hundred years?’ The man shakes his head. ‘Nothing I could find. But official registration of births, deaths and marriages only began in 1837. And a lot of parish records haven’t survived. So it was quite easy to fall through the cracks – especially if you were from a poorer family.’

Kate thanks him, trying to ward off the disappointment that spreads through her. She’s not sure what she expected, really. That it would be easy to draw her family’s history from the murk of the past, the way she’d somehow drawn insects from the soil. That doing so would help her understand herself.

But at least she isn’t leaving empty-handed.

On her way out of the building, she turns the fragment over and over in her mind, as if it is some precious heirloom.

Altha Weyward. Aged 21. 1619. Tried for witchcraft.

Altha. A strange name. Soft and yet powerful. Like an incantation.

On the drive home, the afternoon sun settles pink on the hills. The landscape is so ancient – the sweeping meadows, the rocky crags. The slate- coloured tarns. Altha Weyward – whoever she was – would have looked out at these same hills, once.

Kate has an image of a young woman, wan-faced in the dawn, dragged to a pyre, or gallows … She shudders, pushes it from her mind.

Twenty-one. Almost ten years younger than she is now. She remembers herself at that age – tense and watchful, the spark of her childhood long snuffed out. But she’d been free, really, in comparison to the women who had come before her. She thinks of Elizabeth, her great-grandmother, dying in childbirth, and one hand goes automatically to her stomach. The twenty- first century afforded a degree of protection. But it hadn’t protected her from Simon. She remembers his face; his expressions fluid, mercurial. How he’d look at her sometimes, as tenderly as he had in those early days, when she’d believed in their love. When the slightest touch of his hand on hers was enough to set her pulse thrumming. But then she’d do something – say something – he didn’t like, and the look would sour into disgust. The scar on her arm throbs.

All those years. Caught in a brutal dance, with steps she never knew how to follow.

Perhaps things haven’t changed so much, after all.

It was quite easy to fall through the cracks, the man at the archives had said. But wasn’t it also possible that Kate’s ancestors – the Weywards – had wanted to hide, given what had happened to Altha? After all, it was Elizabeth’s marriage to Rupert that had earned her a place in the record books. A relationship with a man.

I must have you.

Kate knows better than anyone how dangerous men can be.

The thought sparks fury in her. She’s not sure if it’s a new feeling, or if it was always there, smothered by fear. But now it burns bright in her blood.

Fury. For herself. And for the women that came before.

Things will be different for her daughter. She’ll make sure of it.

And that means she has to be brave.

It is 3 p.m. Kate doesn’t have long until Kirkby’s Books and Gifts closes for the day.

She stands in Aunt Violet’s chilly bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. Sunlight falls across her body, washed green by the creeping ivy on the outside of the cottage.

It’s been a long time since she looked at herself properly. For years, she hasn’t been able to bear the sight of her own nakedness. All of those evenings, moulding her flesh into whichever lingerie Simon wanted her to wear. Lying back and letting him arrange her limbs how he liked. She had become a vessel. Nothing more.

Perhaps this was why she had hated the idea of being pregnant before, when she still lived with him. She already felt like a means to an end.

But. She hadn’t known it would be like this.

Now, in the mirror, Kate assesses herself. The strong lines of her limbs, the new spread of her hips. Her belly, with its growing curve. Her breasts amaze her – the darkening of the nipples, the veins that glow blue and bright beneath her skin. The mole on her breastbone has darkened, too: ruby deepening to crimson.

Even her skin is different – it is smoother, thicker. As if she is armoured.

Armoured and ready, to protect her daughter.

The force of it – this love that surges in her veins – shocks her. As does the searing clarity that she will do anything, whatever is necessary, to keep her child safe.

Unbidden, the day of the accident flashes in her mind. Her father’s hand on her shoulder, rough and desperate, pushing her out of the way of the oncoming car. Had he felt this way, too?

She blinks the memory away, refocuses her gaze on the woman in the mirror. A woman she can barely recognise as herself.

She looks – and feels – powerful.

There’s only one thing she wants to change.

Aunt Violet’s kitchen scissors are next to the sink. Kate lifts them to her head and begins to snip, smiling as coils of bleached, brassy hair fall to the ground. By the time she is finished, only the roots remain, bristling from her scalp like a dark halo.

She dresses before she leaves.

Not in her old clothes, the things that Simon chose for her. Those, she leaves behind.

Instead, she dons a pair of Violet’s linen trousers, and a loose tunic of green silk, embroidered with a delicate pattern of leaves. Last, the straw hat with the feather. The walk to the village is peaceful, and she tests her growing knowledge of the local plant life – there, by the side of the road curl green fronds of stinging nettle; from the hedgerows peer creamy spouts of meadowsweet. Silver flashes amongst the green: the silky strands of old man’s beard. She breathes deeply, inhaling the scent.

She is passing under the oaks when she feels a dark shape fall across her body, hears a guttural cry. But there is no needle of ice, this time. Instead, a whisper of the feeling she’d had in the garden, when the insects had brushed against her skin, returns. Movement in her chest, like the unfurling of wings.

Come on, she tells herself. You can do this.

She keeps walking.

Emily slumps forward over the counter, flanked by stacks of books. Her greying curls quiver as she scribbles in a ledger. A ceiling fan putters, ruffling the pages of the books. ‘Hello,’ Emily looks up at the sound of the door chime. ‘How can I—’ For a moment, she looks a little pale, before she recovers herself and smiles. ‘Kate! Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s just that – I didn’t realise before, how much you look like her. Like Violet. How are you getting on?’ ‘I’m good, thank you. Actually, I was wondering’, says Kate, the confidence of her tone surprising her, ‘if you needed an assistant.’

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