Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  Emz laughed.

  The group walked uphill along Keep Rows to the high banking until Anna halted. Above them the wall rose up and at the base of its perimeter was something resembling a doorway.

  “This is an exit?” Charlie looked up. Anna was already starting to push her way through the thicket of brambles and buddleia.

  “Yes. Don’t you remember getting trapped in the turnstile when you were six?” her voice trailed into the undergrowth as Charlie struggled to recall the incident.

  “Er. No. Clearly traumatised.”

  After a few moments the flora flexed and bent, twigs snapped, and Anna hauled herself back up into view, balancing on the thin path along the perimeter wall. The group watched from below as she disappeared into the ivy choked rectangle cut into the thickness of the wall. There was a creaking and squeaking sound and then a deep metallic groan that seemed to echo from the houses opposite. A light switched on at the end of the driveway to Whyre House and Major, the Great Dane, could be heard barking.

  “It’s a process of elimination,” Anna persuaded them when she rejoined them, picking thorns out of her hands. “Let’s do a circuit and see what we can find. There was that little wooden door in the north wall, remember?”

  Charlie grimaced again and shook her head and the party followed Anna further along the road, turning sharply into The Bend, a small and nondescript lane. Their progress was hampered by a high wire fence circling the partially demolished cottage which went by the name of Old Bend Hide. There were signs of renovation, a pile of breeze blocks, a stack of wooden joists, and the carefully recovered original stones, marked and set in piles. There was no way they could get through the small building site.

  “Plus, the door’s blocked off… look,” Emz pointed upwards to where the small wooden door had been bolted over with a heavy and slightly rusted-in metal one.

  They returned to the front of the castle and there was a grim silence lasting several minutes until Emz, who had been deep in thought, said, “How did the fox get in?”

  * * *

  Clearly, the fox did not get in over the curtain wall but, with a beech tree for an accomplice, the Ways and Ailith managed to clamber into branches and transfer themselves onto stones. There was a chill breeze blowing as they mustered at the top of the wall leading into the North Tower.

  “Where’s the basket?” Emz asked and the sisters turned this way and that in an effort to locate the precious burden before Ailith lifted herself back into the tree branches once more. The Ways leaned over the wall to assist and watch as she skinned back down the tree with some agility and lifted the basket from the slightly hummocky patch of ground where she had left it. There was just a moment’s pause in the inner heart of the boughs as a lone dog walker strolled past, the dog running ahead and sniffing at the base of the tree. It jumped up, resting its paws on the trunk, and began barking.

  “Shush. Wilfred, shush up,” the owner hissed before hooking the dog back onto a leash and strolling off up the dark and empty street.

  The church clock tolled the half hour and Anna became anxious.

  “It’s half eleven,” she whispered.

  “So?” Charlie shrugged. “What does that signify?”

  “We’ve only got half an hour until midnight,” Emz pointed out. Charlie gave a quick groan.

  One of the many things that their Grandma Hettie had taught them was the importance of midnight. Many had been the nights at Cob Cottage when the sisters had been staying and had been allowed, in fact, encouraged, to stay up until midnight and very often beyond.

  “Are you thinking of the midnight picnic?” Charlie asked her sisters. They looked at her and nodded. Charlie was beginning to think that there was more method than madness in their Grandma’s teaching methods. She had, by some strange process of love and curiosity, managed to imprint a lot of things into her granddaughters.

  “Get a feel for the small hours,” Grandma Hettie had whispered as they sat at a clearing in Thinthrough with a basket recently emptied of its cargo of scones, jam, and cream. “They’re the longest and darkest sometimes.”

  As one they remembered this snippet of conversation and saw it anew: it was advice. They all took heart.

  “We’ve got time. We’ve timed it just right.” Anna tried to sound reassuring and then they realised that the Bone Resting might be hampered by the fact that they had not brought even a trowel with them.

  Charlie headed towards the kiosk and the small potting shed wedged into a dark meeting place between barbican and curtain wall. This shed was not locked and it was a simple matter to find the necessary tools.

  It was not such a simple matter to work out where the head needed to be bone-rested.

  “Should it be in the chapel bit?” Charlie theorised. The sisters looked at Ailith.

  “Was he a Christian, Ailith?”

  “No. We stayed with the old gods.” Ailith looked wary.

  “There’s got to be some significance to the resting place,” Emz said. “So how are we going to work that out?”

  “Bran was like a security guard, guarding a gate. Should we be nearer to the gate?” Anna suggested. They looked at Ailith. She was standing to one side, the basket held tight in her hands. She looked distracted, a glazed look over her face, and she was staring up at the velvet blue sky, heavy with rain clouds.

  “Eh?” She was aware she was being looked at.

  “You got any ideas about where exactly we need to dig?” Charlie asked with not much hope. Ailith began to shrug and then halted; her glazed look intensified a little and her mouth made a concentrated line, the teeth behind pinching it tight as if to stop the thoughts from being lost.

  Charlie, ever impatient, was about to chivvy her but Anna held her back with a shake of the head. Ailith was tensing by the second, searching for the thought. Something important, something far back, at journey’s beginning.

  “Rest me,” she began the phrase, halted, her mouth pinched tighter, her gaze intent on the basket. “Rest me…” She put the basket down of a sudden and knelt beside it, folded back the tea cloth.

  The Ways were surprised at the condition of the head, that the skin looked pale and waxen, that there was no livid blueness or deathly dryness. His hair had been combed and he looked very much as if he was sleeping. Anna felt tears prickle in her eyes and Charlie let out a small gasp.

  So did Emz as his eyes opened only for her and he looked directly into her face, his gaze soft and intent.

  “Rest me...” Ailith struggled for the phrasing. Emz did not, reciting it to them as the warrior recited it in her mind.

  “Rest me by herepath and ridgewayed rampart… Make me at last the watchman of the western gate.”

  His smile was wistful as he turned his real face to the earth and his eyes closed.

  The first logistical problem was the cutting into turf.

  “If we do this it’s going to show. Mrs Bentley will spot it through the oak door at one hundred paces with her eyes shut…” Charlie warned as she balanced her foot on the spade.

  “What if we cut a square of turf to recover it?” Anna suggested. Charlie considered and shook her head.

  “She’ll notice,” Emz agreed. As they were staring at the blade of the spade Charlie spotted the large square stones wedged into the ground slightly to the left of where she was about to dig.

  They levered up the middle stone and Charlie dug quickly into the soft earth beneath. With the small hollow readied, Ailith stepped forward. She handed the basket to Anna. Anna wouldn’t take it.

  “No. It’s your task,” she smiled. There was something off kilter about Ailith tonight. She seemed thinner, slighter, more ghostly. It occurred to Anna then to wonder what might happen to Ailith after this task was done.

  “No. My task was to bring him. Your task is to rest him.” Ailith’s small thin face was etched with seriousness and, with some small ceremony, Anna took the basket from her. Ailith took one step back, her hands coming to rest in front
of her, ceremonial and solemn.

  Anna lifted the head from the wrappings. It was not the unpleasant experience she had anticipated but she was swift now to lay it in the hollow they’d made. She could almost hear the church clock ticking down the seconds.

  “Wait…” Emz hissed as Anna leaned downwards. Emz scooted to one side, and, in the darkness, there was the sound of tearing plants before Emz scuttled back bringing a scent of sap and leaf and dropped a handful of dandelion leaves and the desiccated heads and stems of cow parsley and feverfew from the rough edge by the wall. “It’s a resting, isn’t it? Got to give him something to rest on.”

  With the vegetation in place Anna settled the head, at first on the back of the skull so that he was looking upwards, and then, remembering the words that Emz had spoken, tilting it vertical so that the raggedy, dried up meat of the spine and severed vertebrae were downmost, the head, for all intents, looking out towards the gate instead of up towards the sky.

  “We should say a few words,” Charlie reminded them. She looked at Emz. “What was the phrase you said?”

  “Rest me by herepath and ridgewayed rampart, make me at last the watchman of the western gate,” Emz said in respectful tones.

  “Rest me by… Okay… got it?” Anna looked at Charlie and Emz.

  “Rest me by herepath…” Charlie intoned and reached for her sisters’ hands; the three joined together, making their triangle, and as they did each felt the burst of energy, a crackle of static between them and their voices raised slightly.

  “Rest me by herepath and ridgewayed rampart. Make me at last the watchman of the western gate.” They repeated it together and then each dropped to the ground to scuffle the earth back over the head. Anna, ever the gardener, made certain the hollow was backfilled, just as Grandma Hettie had taught them, slicing her hand down in front of the face, the nose catching against her palm as she filled in the earth.

  With the hole filled, Charlie slid the stone back into place and they did their level best to push back the weeds and wildflowers that skirted its edge. By the light of Anna’s torch, it seemed like a passable job.

  “Yep. Seamless. Mrs Bentley won’t notice,” Charlie concluded, wiping her hands on her jeans. She touched the stone.

  “Rest your bones beneath this stone,” she said. There was a moment then, when the breeze blew up a little and the leaves left on the branches of the beech tree that had assisted in the Bone Resting rattled wildly, anticipating that it would now be an accomplice in their escape.

  * * *

  There were some twigs and leaves to be picked out of hair and necklines back at Cob Cottage along with several scuffs and scratches and a comparison of bruises. Anna made a pot of tea because, in spite of the evening’s exertions, no one was particularly tired, indeed there was a crackling of energy in the air in the kitchen.

  “Ow,” Charlie said as the wooden chairback spat static at her. She looked at her hand, her face a crumpled puzzle. “Can you get static off a wooden chair?” she asked but no one was really listening. Anna was humming and bustling about the kitchen, managing to hunt in every drawer and cupboard for something that she couldn’t remember she was looking for. Jam? Tea? Stock cubes?

  Ailith stood in the living area and watched the activity. Her heart was a titmouse caught in a box, battering itself to death, waiting for the moment, and finally the moment arrived.

  “Ailith,” Anna Way smiled. Charlie Way pulled out a chair and made an ushering gesture before she put down a plate and a silver knife and a crisp white napkin.

  “Come and sit down.” Charlie said. The Way sisters began taking up their triangle of places at the table, set now with tea and mugs and the hearty cake for the condemned. Ailith’s throat was closing up with the effort of trying to breathe, of trying not to think. Her face, try as she might, would not pull on the mask of her smile, all that was gone from her now. She did not make a move. She watched the sisters pour tea, milk, Charlie licking jam from her finger.

  “So, Ailith, where will you go now?” Emz asked.

  The simple question unmade her at last and, after all her journeying, after all her adventure and bravery, inside Ailith snapped, like a winter twig.

  20

  Finding a Way

  “It’s wrong,” Ailith’s voice was like a wild high wind, piercing to listen to. “I shouldn’t be here.” The Ways watched her struggle with her breath, with her composure, they saw the way she drew up the last little dregs of the strength that had got her here. “And now on a cause of that I have no place. There is nowhere for me.” The Ways could see how tensely she held herself.

  Charlie, in licking the jam from her finger, had glanced up at Ailith and seen something like a distress flare go off in her face. A reminder pinked in Charlie’s head, her mind flashing up the moment when Ailith had confessed about the head being a possible weapon, when she had thought that there was another layer to what Ailith said. Now, she understood what Ailith had hidden. For the first time since her arrival Charlie felt, not afraid of Ailith and her motives, but afraid for her. She glanced at her sisters to be sure that they had clocked this change. Ailith was shaking and her eyes were very wide and bright.

  “Ailith…” Anna stepped forward, her voice soft and comforting. “Why don’t you sit…” but before she could finish the distress was white hot in Ailith’s face. Anna wanted to back away. It was Charlie who stepped forward.

  “But you are here,” Charlie said. “There’s something in that, Ailith.”

  Ailith was shaking her head.

  “It’s wrong. It’s wrong.”

  “No, Ailith, it’s not wrong.” Charlie was certain. “Havoc let you through.”

  The others looked at her. Ailith looked startled.

  “But… It wasn’t meant to be me that did it. It was Tiercel who was meant. He was gifted the task.”

  “Why didn’t he do it?” Emz asked.

  “They killed him too.” Charlie could feel Emz and Anna bristle beside her. Ailith seemed to thin out, it was almost possible to see the lake outside through her skin. The skinny weed of her hair crackled with static. As Emz looked into her real face, she could see the sea storming in her eyes. Anna stepped forward and took Ailith’s shaking hand. At once the flickerbook began, this time the images more forceful and clear. Anna almost backed off, afraid of intruding into this woman’s mind, but as the pictures flowed she understood they carried something else with them. The despair and fear flooded out of Ailith, dragging with it homesickness, a sense of loss. Faster and faster the flickerbook moved, blurring into one last image, of Ailith coming over the stile at Top Hundred.

  “You’ve come far, Ailith, all the way here to Havoc. You took on the task. We can help you find your way.”

  Ailith opened her mouth and began to speak and this time the words flowed like the sea, unstoppable.

  * * *

  Ailith was never out of a pinny; a leather one for the outdoors work, for the fetching and carrying across the courtyard, for the horse work, for the waggon work, for the hauling of firewood; a linen one almost waxed with the fat from a thousand dishes she’d sloshed the scraps from.

  She raised the bucket from well and sinkhole dependent upon what the water was required for. And while they all thought she was good only for the scullery, Ailith learnt fast. She could cook the dinner for the Feast Hall when the cook was too pissed on spirit. No one knew. She could doctor and heal the horses after Lordship took umbrage against Mother Whitmore. She could doctor and heal the castle inhabitants too. She moved invisible through every room and walkway. Look twice and learn, that was what Grandam Orla had always said. No one looked twice or cared once for Ailith.

  Not even Ladyship. And yet there was only one reason for the fact that she was sitting sewing in the solar, one sole reason she had that boy at her feet playing with his wooded soldiers, because Mother Whitmore took her dislike and put the word down and when that boy was struggling out into the world none would venture. None would go
against Mother Whitmore.

  Except Ailith. She had been there every time. Every birth. Mother Whitmore ordering her about and not caring what she saw, and she had seen the lot. Every time. Legs and heads and twisted cords and Ailith sharpening the knife and fetching fire and scissors.

  She understood. Ailith did not grudge it. She knew that Ladyship was out of her sort, and besides that, Ailith didn’t want thanks, didn’t need it. She just wanted to do the stuff. To feel useful, as practical a thing in that castle as the machinery that drew up the drawbridge.

  That time, with Ladyship, she’d used all the knowledge she’d ever stolen. She kept Death on the other side of the drawbridge the night of that boy’s birth and so, she knew, she understood, she owed him twice, a debt in her left-hand pocket and her right.

  Lordship was not away at war. This time the war come up the beach below instead. Climbed the cliffs. Dropped out of the pine trees at the wall. The war come for him and him alone and down in the kitchen they bolted the doors.

  Only Ailith was not there. Ailith was straining and stretching herself up the blackwood ladder in the smokehouse hooking up the fish she’d filleted. And she heard the racket and stayed up the ladder, moving higher, up and up into the rafters like a fillet, melting herself into that smoke and it was choking her, snaking into her, and she saw them then as she aimed to breathe, pushed her nose against the slat in the roof where the turf had dried loose.

  “The time is here, Tiercel, your task is at hand.” Lordship was sweated out, his skin shiny as armour, patches seeped out on his jerkin, more sweat to cure the leather of it over time. “When they lop it off, you must take my head and run,” Lordship instructed.

  “I know it Lordship.” Tiercel was cooled and calmed as still water even though they could hear the slicing swords and there was smoke curling up in towers and Ailith thought of that boy in the solar. That boy, she would learn later, that boy, they carved up for meat.