Weyward — Chapter 40: Altha

40

ALTHA

Grace did not come to the cottage again. I saw her only from a distance, at church, where her husband sat close to her, afterwards holding her arm tight as if he had her on a yoke. Her face was empty under her cap, and if she felt my eyes on her, she did not look up. At least I knew she was alive.

Winter softened into spring, and I counted the days to May Day Eve, when I thought I might have a chance to speak to Grace.

When my mother was alive, we kept our own May Day Eve custom rather than attending the village bonfire. We spent the last days of April gathering moss from the banks of the beck and making a soft, green bed on our doorstep, for the faeries to dance on. Then we lit our own small bonfire and burned offerings of bread and cheese to bless the fields.

When I was a child, I asked my mother why we could not attend the celebrations in the village, where I knew there was music, dancing and feasting around a towering bonfire on the green. ‘May Day Eve is a pagan festival,’ she said. ‘It is un-Christian.’ ‘But everyone else from the village attends,’ I said. ‘And they are all Christian, are they not?’ ‘They do not need to be careful like we do,’ she said. ‘Why do we need to be careful?’ I asked. ‘We are not like the others.’ Since my mother’s death, I had kept up our tradition. But this was to be the first big village festival since the end of winter, and I wondered if Grace would be there. I needed to know if she was safe and well.

I could smell the smoke from the bonfire as I set off from the cottage. I could see it, too, an orange glow in the distance. When I got to the green,

the villagers were dancing in rings around the flame, which threw sparks high into the air with each offering. The night was loud with song and the hiss of burning wood.

The heady smell of ale hung in the air, and many of the villagers looked drunk, their eyes sliding over me as I approached. I looked for Grace but couldn’t see her, or her husband. Adam Bainbridge, the butcher’s son, grabbed my hands and pulled me into the fray. Around and around we went, until everything became a blur of orange and black. I was beginning to melt into it, to enjoy the crush and heat of other bodies around mine, the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself.

And then I saw her. A girl, standing alone on the green, shadows dancing over her body. Dressed only in a shift, thighs black with blood. In the dark I could not make out her face, nor the colour of her hair, but it was Grace – I was sure of it.

I pushed through the ring of bodies to reach her.

‘Grace?’ I called.

I was too late. She was gone.

I turned back to the dancing villagers. None of them had seen her, I could tell.

I felt my eyes water, whether from the smoke or tears I did not know. I wanted to go home. I set off towards the cottage when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see it was Adam Bainbridge, who had danced with

me around the bonfire. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘Home,’ I said. ‘I am not much one for festivals. Good night.’ ‘Not all of us believe it, Altha,’ he said softly. ‘You do not need to hide

yourself away.’ ‘Believe what?’ I asked. ‘What they say about you and your mother.’ Shame crept up my throat, and I hurried away. I felt relieved as I turned from the light of the bonfire, as the darkness cloaked me from the eyes of the villagers. As I walked on, I listened to the night sounds – the hoot of an owl, the scratching of mice and voles – and felt my breathing slow. I could see well enough – it was a full moon, like it had been the night that Grace had stayed at the cottage.

Grace. She had not really been there, at the bonfire, I knew.

‘Sight is a funny thing,’ my mother used to say. ‘Sometimes it shows us what is before our eyes. But sometimes it shows us what has already happened, or will yet come to pass.’

I barely slept all night, and I rose and dressed as soon as the sky lightened. I made my way to the Milburn farm, and by the time I got there, dawn was breaking over the valley, turning the hills a soft pink.

I kept my distance, lingering under the oak trees on the boundary of the farm – the same place where my mother had released her pet crow, all those years before – so that I would not be seen. I could see the farmhouse now, but not well: there was a slight slope to the earth which hid some of it away.

I needed to be higher.

I bunched my skirts around my waist and began to climb the largest oak – a great, twisted thing that stretched high into the sky as though seeking God. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was a child with Grace, but my hands and feet remembered how to find holds in the curves and knots of the branches. I climbed so high that I could see the sleek forms of crows in the branches, then went no further. I wondered if one of them was the same bird that my mother had cast out. I searched their dark feathers for the sign but could not see it.

Now, I could see the farmhouse well, and the cow byre next to it. I watched John leave the farmhouse and open the byre, so that the cows spilled out onto the field. I counted a score of them, far more than any other farm in the area, as far as I knew. No doubt some had been Metcalfe cows, and had come with Grace as her dowry. I wondered if John would ever beat one of his cows the way he beat his wife.

After a while, I saw Grace come out from the farmhouse, carrying a pail of water and laundry. I felt relief course through me. She was alive. I watched her squat on the ground and scrub the laundry, and, when she was done, hang it on the rope that stretched between the farmhouse and the byre.

The white small-clothes shone gold in the early sun. I wondered if she had been washing blood from them.

I saw John cross the field to approach her. She turned her head to him and then looked away, and there was something in the set of her body that made me think of a dog waiting for a kick from its master. I saw him speak to her and they went inside together, she with her head bowed.

I remained for a while, in the tree, watching the farmhouse, but neither of them came out again. The day was growing warmer and brighter. I climbed down, in case someone from the village happened to be passing and looked up to see me.

As I walked home, I wondered what my vision at the bonfire had meant.

There had been so much blood, the darkness an open maw between her legs. Had Grace been pregnant again, and miscarried? Or was she pregnant still? I remembered what she had said to me: ‘If this baby were dead like the others, he might kill me.’

May became June, and the days lengthened. The sun lit up the sky for hours, so that I slept and woke in daylight. While I went about my daily tasks, and when I laid my head to rest at night, I thought of Grace. She and John still came to church, and after the sermon, while John spoke to the other villagers, she kept her eyes on the ground. I wondered what she was thinking, if she was well.

I couldn’t send a message, for Grace did not know her letters and would not be able to read it. I had thought about walking to the Milburn farm again – to do what, exactly, I did not know – but I was too worried about being seen, now that the nights were so brief. I dared not ask the villagers, who came to my door seeking fixes for hay fever and midge bites, what news they had of John Milburn’s wife. The rift between us was well known in Crows Beck. It would raise many an eyebrow for me to ask after her now. They might guess that she had sought my help. I did not dare give her husband another reason to hurt her.

Her husband. I had not known it was possible to hate another person so much. My mother had taught me that each person deserves love, but I will not deny that I would have happily seen Grace a widow, even then.

I remembered with shame how I had thought Grace and John looked well together on their wedding day. How little I understood of anything then.

I had thought that I knew a great deal of people, just because I knew how to dress their wounds and cool their fevers. But I knew nothing of what went on between a husband and wife, the act that made a woman swell with child. I knew nothing of men, other than what my mother had told me. I was always shocked, as a girl, when a man came and sought my mother’s treatment. By his size, his deep voice, his meaty hands. The smell that hung about him. Sweat and power.

The leaves darkened and began to fall. A chill returned to the air. One day, I had gone to the market square for meat and bread, when I saw a woman stooped over a table of pig hearts, a red curl escaping from her cap. Grace.

I could not approach her there, in the village square, in front of everyone.

I hung back as she had Adam Bainbridge wrap up two pig hearts in cloth, then put them in a woven bag that she slung from her shoulder. I myself bought some bread, watching her from the corner of my eye. Then I followed her, a few paces behind, as she set off down the road to Milburn Farm. The trees either side of the road looked stark without their leaves, which glistened red underfoot, wet from weeks of rain. I watched as Grace drew her woollen shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

I was beginning to wonder if she could not hear my footsteps behind her, for she did not turn around. But once we could see the Milburn farmhouse ahead through the trees, she turned. ‘Why are you following me?’ she asked. More of her red hair had escaped from her cap, and beneath it her face was pale as milk. ‘I have not seen you, other than from a distance, for six moons,’ I said. ‘I saw you in the village square and … I wanted to make sure that you are well. There is no one else on the road, you can speak freely.’ At my last words she laughed, but her eyes were blank.

‘I am well,’ she said. ‘Are you – have there been …’ ‘I have not been with child again, if that is what you want to know. Not for John’s lack of trying.’ Her eyes darkened. I took a step closer, to see if there were bruises on her face, like before. ‘You will not see any marks on me,’ she said, as if she had read my thoughts. ‘Since the last time … Mary Dinsdale asked about my lip, after church. Now he takes care to spare my face.’ ‘Have you thought any more on what I said that night?’ I asked. She was silent for a while. When she spoke, she looked not at me but up at the sky. ‘A man of John’s age and health does not just fall down and die, Altha,’ she said. ‘Doctor Smythson will know poison when he sees it. Hemlock, nightshade – they will know you had a part in it. There’s no one else in the village who understands plants the way you do. They will hang you. They will hang us both. I do not much care whether I live or die, but I cannot have another death on my conscience. Not even yours.’

With these last words, she turned to leave. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Please. I cannot bear to know that you are suffering … I could think of something, a way that we would not be discovered …’ ‘I shall speak no more of it,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Go home, Altha. And stay away from me.’ I did not go home right away, as she had asked. I watched as her small frame disappeared into the trees. Some time later, a plume of smoke rose from the Milburn farmhouse. I shivered. The day was growing colder, and icy drops of rain began to fall on my face and neck. I walked on, until I reached the oak tree I had climbed to watch the farmhouse. I would not climb it today. The crows sat like watchmen in the upper branches of the tree, and their sharp cries of pain could have been my own.

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