Weyward — Chapter 34: Altha

34

ALTHA

Grace and I stood looking at each other for a long time before she spoke. It was the first time she had looked at me directly in seven years. Since we were thirteen, I had only ever seen her from afar: in church, or shopping on market day. She had always passed her eyes over me as if I were not there. ‘Will you not invite me in?’ she asked. ‘Prithee, wait,’ I said, before shutting the door. Hurrying, I herded the goat into the garden, my mother’s warning ringing in my ears.

When this was done, I opened the door and moved aside to let Grace through. I noticed she walked slowly, as if she were a much older woman.

She sat heavily at the table. She kept her cloak on, even though it was soaked from the gale outside. ‘Would you care for some food?’ I asked.

She nodded, so I cut a slice of bread for her, and some cheese, and sat down opposite her. As she ate, her cap shifted, and I saw a dark shadow on her cheek. I thought perhaps it was cast by the flicker of the candle on the table. Still she did not say anything until she finished eating. ‘I heard about your mother,’ she said. ‘Now we are both orphans.’ ‘You have your father,’ I said. ‘My father’, she said, ‘hasn’t looked at me properly since I was thirteen years old, though I kept house for him and brought up my brothers and

sisters until I left home.’ ‘Well, you have your husband.’ She laughed. It was a dry sound, like the crackling of flames. She did not laugh like this before, when we were children, I remember thinking. She’d

had a sweet laugh then, sweeter than the hymns we sang in church, sweeter even than birdsong. ‘You will have to tell me what it’s like, sometime,’ I said. ‘Being a wife.’ ‘I haven’t come here for idle talk,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m here on business. To purchase something from you.’ One small white hand went to the pocket of her kirtle, and I heard the clink of coins. ‘Oh,’ I said. My face flushed, and a tide of pain rose in my throat. I had been stupid to think she had wanted things to be as they were before, after all these years. After everything that had happened. ‘I am with child,’ she said, turning her head away. Her voice was very quiet; her face hidden by the cap. ‘What joyful tidings,’ I said. I remembered how much she had spoken of wanting to grow up and have a babe of her own when we were children.

When I was very young, I had told her, horrified, of Daniel Kirkby’s birth: his mother grunting and glistening all over with sweat, the child sliding out of her in a rush of slime and blood. Grace, who had seen her brothers and sisters born, laughed at my ignorance. ‘That is just the way of things,’ she had said. ‘You’ll learn yourself one day.’ There had been rumours of a pregnancy around the village in the months after she married, and when I saw her in church, I had noticed a swell beneath her dress, a plumpness to her face. But no child ever came. I did not know if she had lost the baby, or if there had never been one. Either way, she must be very happy now, I thought, to be so blessed.

She did not say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, I was sure I must have misheard her. ‘I need something’, she said slowly, as if she were reluctant for the words to leave her mouth, ‘that will make it go away.’ ‘Go away? Morning sickness, you mean? I can see to that. I can make a tonic with balm, to settle the stomach—’ ‘You misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I meant the child. I need … I need something to make the child go away.’ Her words hung heavy in the air. Neither of us spoke for a moment. I heard the pop and hiss of the fire, the drum of rain on the roof. These sounds swelled in my ears, as if they could take away what she had said.

‘Has the baby quickened?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’

‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Are you quite sure? What you are asking of me … it is a sin. And a crime. If anyone were to discover it …’ ‘It will die anyway.’ She said this as coolly as if she were commenting on the yield of the harvest or the turn of the weather. ‘You would be doing it a

kindness.’ ‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Even if I knew how …’ ‘You must know,’ she said. ‘Your mother would have known. Look through her things. There’s certain to have been a village girl or two who came to her for help after some indiscretion or other. Besides …’ She paused. ‘She was good at taking life, wasn’t she?’ The memory of that terrible night swam before me. Anna, still and lifeless while Grace sobbed. ‘Grace. Your mother would have died anyway, had we not come. She was too ill by then … the fever was so strong. And the leeches …’ Her head turned sharply back towards me. In the candlelight, her eyes were bright – with tears or fury, I did not know. ‘I do not wish to speak of it,’ she said. ‘Just tell me if you can help me or not. If you ever loved me as your friend … then you will do this thing for me. And you will ask me no more questions.’ All the moisture had gone from my mouth. I felt giddy, as though the room had lurched to one side and taken me with it. ‘I will try,’ I said softly. ‘But I cannot promise that it will work.’ ‘Aye, then. I will return in one week. Will that give you enough time?’ ‘Yes.’ She rose from the table. ‘I must be going. I have left John asleep. He does not normally wake until dawn, after so much ale. But I cannot risk him rousing to see that I am gone.’ I myself slept a poor night after she left. I thought for a long time, wondering what I had agreed to. All for the love of someone who – and I knew in my heart that this was true – still blamed me for her mother’s death. Still hated me.

How it pained me, to hear that hate in her voice. My mind ran over her speech, remembering the coldness of it, and my eyes burned with tears. As children, we had learned each other before we could speak. I had once known the meaning of her raised brow, the curve of her mouth, as though they were words in a book. Now she was a stranger.

The following morning was calm and sunny, and, as I listened to the robins sing, I wondered if I hadn’t dreamed up Grace’s visit. Then I went into the other room and I saw the second mug and plate and knew it had been real.

Grace really had come. She really had asked this terrible thing of me. She wanted me to atone for one wrong by committing another.

I would look through my mother’s papers as she had suggested, I decided. If there was no recipe for the kind of draught that Grace wanted, then I could tell her that I could not do it, did not know how.

I opened the bureau that had been my grandmother’s – the handle inscribed with a W, much finer than anything else we owned. She had been given it by the First Viscount Kendall for nursing his son through milk fever. It was where my mother and I stored all our notes and recipes, our cures and remedies, for relieving ailments and suffering. My mother always kept the drawers locked and wore the key around her neck. She gave it to me when she died, bade me do the same. ‘To save things getting into the wrong hands,’ she said.

I rifled through handwritten recipes for all manner of salves and tinctures: elderflower for fever, belladonna for gout, agrimony for back pain and headache. And then I saw it, in my mother’s fine hand.

For bringing on the menses Crush together three handfuls tansy petals Steep in water for five days before administration My heart sank. I had no excuse, now.

I could not be sure that it would work if the baby had quickened. Perhaps I could strengthen the dose of tansy, I thought. Just slightly, so that it would still be safe.

I caught myself. Did I even want it to work? Why would Grace want to harm an innocent babe, which had not yet had its chance at life?

I remembered her eyes, glittering and hard with fury and pain. ‘You would be doing it a kindness,’ she had said.

Perhaps I was too quick to judge. I had never felt a child grow in my womb, only to lose it in childbed. I remembered the Merrywether woman I had attended to and the small, dead coil of flesh she had laboured over for hours. Had given her life for.

What if Grace carried the baby to term and bringing it forth killed her?

What if Grace were to die for the sake of a child that would never open its eyes, never take its first breath?

I couldn’t lose her. She may still hate me, blame me. But it didn’t change the love I felt for my friend then, and always would. I had to keep her safe.

I waited until nightfall to gather the tight yellow buds of the tansy from the garden. It was still a time when villagers came to my door frequently enough in the daylight, to seek treatment for some complaint or other. I did not want anyone to know what I was doing.

I liked being in the garden. It was where I felt my mother’s presence most strongly: in the furred leaves of the plants she had tended; the strong, tall sycamore she had loved; the creatures that rustled in the undergrowth. I felt as if she were still there, watching over me. I wondered what my mother would make of Grace’s visit.

I knew my mother had felt a great deal of guilt over Anna Metcalfe’s death. She never liked to speak of it afterwards. I could see that the end of my friendship with Grace pained her. She was afraid to leave me, friendless and alone in the world, I think. As I write this and think of everything that has happened, I know she was right to be afraid.

When I had got enough tansy, I went inside and crushed it with our old mortar and pestle. I added the water and put the mixture in a covered bowl to steep. I hid it in the attic in case I had visitors over the next five days.

Its scent was so strong – like fouled mint – that I could still smell it when I laid my head on my pallet for sleep.

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