by Nunn, Kayte
She made her way to the far end of the room, where the walls sloped together to form a point and where she could only just stand up without hitting her head. There was another door, which she opened to discover a tiny bathroom. The floor creaked in complaint as she walked on it, groaning like a geriatric levering themselves out of a chair. It was also far from level, and in fact seemed to be skewed on an incline that made her feel as if she were in a ship’s cabin rather than on solid ground. She shrugged. It was an old house; it was to be expected. As a historian it thrilled her to be staying there, for the building appeared to date from at least the eighteenth century, judging by the exterior and the off-kilter floors.
Thea set down her sports bag, unzipping a side pocket and retrieving a somewhat worse for wear apple and the chocolate bar. She had noticed one more door at the end of the corridor, which she assumed was her study, but she would get to that later. For now, she kicked off her boots and flopped back on the bed, taking a large bite of the apple and chewing thoughtfully.
Every muscle in her body ached, the combined effect of a long plane journey followed by two days’ sightseeing in London scoping out museums for potential excursions for her classes, and her normally level spirits had dipped along with her blood sugar. It was probably this that made her suddenly wonder if she had made a mistake in coming. This school, with its ghosts; the privileged boys – and now girls – who attended it; the other teachers who were doubtless cut from the same cloth as Mr Battle – what would she have in common with any of them?
Sometimes she really didn’t understand herself.
Restless, she finished the apple and threw the core in a wastepaper bin on the far side of the room, the slam-dunk bringing a brief smile to her lips. She got to her feet, tossed her glasses on the bed, and went to wash her hands and face in the sink, standing on tiptoes to peer short-sightedly at herself in the mirror. Deep purple circles ringed her eyes and her long, straight brown hair had separated into lank strands. As she stared, she saw a shadow flit behind her, and she whirled around but it disappeared before she could make out what it was.
Nothing but the rattle of the windows in the wind.
Tiredness and the lukewarm welcome were making her paranoid. Get a grip, Rust.
She dried her hands, replaced her glasses and went back into the corridor and to the room next door. It was small, scarcely more than a box room, though there was a window that looked out over the back of the house. She opened the curtains and peered out, though in the darkness she could see very little. A smear caught her eye, which on closer inspection turned out to be a handprint, the finger marks widely spread. She rubbed at it with her sleeve, but it didn’t budge. It must be on the outside of the glass, though how anyone could have got that high up she had no idea, for the top floor – the attic, she supposed – of the house was too tall for even the longest ladder.
She turned back to the room, seeing a wooden desk, chair and a wastepaper basket. A multicoloured rug took up half of the tiny floor space, and there were hooks on the wall that must have been newly drilled, for there were small piles of dust on the floor beneath them.
A stack of buff-coloured folders sat on the desk, and she shuffled through them, curious. Each was marked with the name of a girl – the new Oxleigh students. She took them back to her bedroom, placing them on the bedside table to look at later. Her first priority was to unpack, and it didn’t take long to stow her clothes in the dresser and organise her toiletries in the bathroom. Reaching the bottom of her bag, she pulled out a cylindrical tin, a small photo in a wooden frame and a couple of books, all of which she placed on the small bookshelf at the end of the room. She opened the top book and looked at the faded ink script on the flyleaf, reading the inscription she knew by heart: HAR, September 1965, Mill House, Oxleigh College.
HAR: Henry Adam Rust. The reason she had been looking at the college website in the first place, and the deciding factor in impulsively applying for the job.
A sudden memory of her father rose, unbidden. She was sitting with him on the back verandah of their suburban house in Melbourne as he patiently applied whitener to his Dunlop Volleys in anticipation of his regular Sunday afternoon knockabout (which he nevertheless played with the commitment of a Wimbledon wildcard). There was always a cigarette burning, its ash growing ever longer, and a bottle of beer beaded with condensation next to it. She frowned as she recalled his competitiveness, never letting Thea or her younger sister, Pip, get the better of him. ‘Take no prisoners!’ was his favourite cry whenever they faced each other across the net. Desperate for his approval and his attention, they submitted to countless drubbings. She didn’t think either of them ever managed to best him, at tennis or cards or chess or anything else, for that matter. Just as well, for he hated losing; it would put him in a temper for days.
She closed the book and was about to go over to the bed when she was suddenly plunged into darkness. A heavy silence descended and the hairs on the back of Thea’s neck stood on end. Then, from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house, came a spine-chilling screech.
FOUR
September 1768, Oxleigh
In contrast to the rest of the almost silent, dim house, the kitchen was ablaze, and a not inconsiderable amount of smoke billowed from the wide fireplace, where a haunch of meat turned slowly on a spit. It was by far the warmest and most welcoming of all the rooms Rowan’s new master had led her through.
‘Lawd save us, what have we got here?’
A short woman stood in front of the fire, almost as wide as she was tall, her arms the size of Wiltshire hams and generous hips bound by a greasy apron. Wisps of hair the colour of a new penny escaped a mob cap and her cheeks were veined and russetted, like autumn windfalls. She appeared to Rowan very much like a ruddy, slightly wizened pippin.
‘Prudence, this is the new maid-of-all-work,’ said Patrick. ‘She will be seeing to me from now on, while Alice will serve Mistress Hollander.’
‘Very good, sir.’ The cook wiped her arm across a forehead beaded with sweat as she scrutinised Rowan. ‘She’s skinny enough. Looks strong all right, though. Whatever happened to your eye, girl?’
‘Caught it on a meat hook, mistress,’ Rowan said shyly. The truth was more obscure than that, for Rowan had been born with the injury. She never knew if it had been inflicted as she emerged from her mother (a difficult birth by her account), or if she had simply grown like that, misshapen and warped. She’d learned that it was better to offer the easier explanation, for those born with deformity were often regarded with suspicion. There was enough reason for people to view her as different, without that too.
The cook winced.
‘Mistress Hollander has requested that she bathe. After supper will be perfectly acceptable,’ Patrick said as he left.
‘Sit down then, girl,’ Prudence said, indicating a seat at the large table that took up most of the kitchen. ‘Did they not feed you at your last place? Even an urchin would have more meat on her bones.’ She placed a bowl of barley studded with carrots and dark with shreds of meat in front of Rowan and passed her a slice of bread from a loaf on the sideboard.
Rowan did not wait to tuck in. ‘Is there nothing I can do to help you?’ she asked, mumbling through a mouthful of food, wanting to prove her usefulness straightaway.
‘You’ll be busy here soon enough, girl. I’ve managed on my own in the kitchen for near seven years now, another day won’t harm me. First with the master when he was in London and now here.’
‘He lived in London?’ Rowan swallowed. She had heard cautionary stories about the capital, a city of thieves and cutpurses, strumpets and beggars, press gangs and bodysnatchers, thrilling tales of loose morals and avarice. She regarded the place with a mix of outright terror and fascination. Oxleigh was a bustling town that fair exhausted a quiet soul; she could scarce imagine another twenty times larger.
‘Aye, before he was married.’ Her voice turned brusque. ‘Now, enough idle chatter, for it profits none of
us.’
Rowan took another spoonful of barley porridge, scraping every last morsel of food from the bowl. For the first time since she could remember, the fullness of her stomach pressed against the coarse fabric of her dress.
When she had finished, she watched, fascinated, as Prudence busied herself about the kitchen, hauling pans, draining steaming water and setting out serving dishes with impressive alacrity. Rowan had never seen so much food as the feast that was assembled. And all that for two people. She counted herself most fortunate to have found a wealthy employer.
The warmth of the kitchen and the nourishing food made her drowsy, and she laid her head and arms on the table, thinking to rest for just a moment.
‘Come on, sleepy head.’ Rowan felt a gentle tug at her sleeve and looked up stiffly. She blinked, seeing that the kitchen now bore little evidence of the cook’s earlier industry. ‘Let’s see about a wash, shall we?’ She disappeared into a passageway that ran off the back of the kitchen but was gone so long that Rowan began to wonder what had happened to her. Eventually she returned, carrying a cotton shift, a folded square of fabric, a scrubbing brush and a cake of pale brown soap. ‘There’s a trough in the scullery, down the passage to your left. I’ve filled it with water from the pump outside,’ Prudence said, giving Rowan the items. ‘I don’t hold with hot water, brings in all manner of ills.’
Rowan’s mother had felt the same way.
‘Get on with you, then; there’s no time for dawdling in this house.’
‘Yes, Prudence.’ Rowan hurried in the direction of the scullery.
After she had scrubbed every inch of her body, her teeth chattering with cold, then dried herself with the cloth, wrung out her hair and combed it through with her fingers, Rowan put on the shift. It was obviously once a fine gown, though it was darned at the wrists and dragged along the floor, the sheer fabric soft as thistledown against her skin. She gathered the extra yardage up with one hand, bundled up her soiled clothes in the other and returned to the kitchen.
‘Oh!’ Rowan nearly dropped the bundle she was carrying. Sitting at the table was the butcher’s boy she had seen in the town earlier that day. ‘Begging your pardon.’ A crimson blush rose up from her neck, and where she had once shivered she was now only uncomfortably warm. She wasn’t used to being seen by strangers, at least not in her nightwear.
The boy looked at her as if he’d seen a ghost. ‘Who are you?’ he asked when he had recovered himself.
‘Rowan Caswell. Maid-of-all-work,’ she said, liking the sound of her new position as it rolled off her tongue.
‘Tommy Dean, what are you doing here?’ Prudence had returned to the kitchen and plumped herself down at the table. In her hand was an onion-shaped bottle containing a clear liquid, some of which she sloshed into a tumbler next to her.
Even from a distance, Rowan could smell the unmistakable aroma of gin, for her aunt had also liked a glass or two.
Prudence then noticed Rowan and gasped. ‘Your hair …’
Rowan put her hand to her head. Prior to bathing, it had been hidden behind her cap. She knew what had caused Prudence’s sudden intake of breath and the boy’s reaction, for her hair was of a colour that was rarely seen: white-blonde, and as fine as gossamer. It hung over her scarred eye and fell almost to her waist. Rowan’s brothers had teased her for it: ‘Queen of the snow, nowhere to go!’ they would chant until she chased them away, laughing as they tripped over each other in their haste to escape. In the evenings, her mother would comb out the snarls and when it caught the light from the fire, even her father stared.
Prudence regarded her warily, for it was common knowledge that those with such hair often brought an ill wind – some said outright bad luck – with them. She pursed her lips but said nothing further about it. ‘You’d best be getting upstairs, and mind sure no one sees you. Here – ’ She handed Rowan a men’s dressing gown, and Rowan immediately wondered if it had once belonged to Mr Hollander; the wool was finely woven, a tiny frayed edge on the cuffs the only sign of wear. ‘Put this on first. That shift’s barely decent.’
Rowan gathered the gown about her, but stopped, curious about the boy. He seemed to be in pain. The expression on his face gave nothing away, but Rowan sensed an overwhelming hurt radiating from him as though it were heat from a fire.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had the foresight. One afternoon, the summer she turned ten, she had been out in the fields with her brothers, when she had a sudden urge to run home. She tore up the path to their cottage and arrived to see her mother’s hand stained scarlet with blood, her face a rictus of agony. ‘Fetch me a cloth,’ she hissed at her daughter. Rowan returned with a smock, the first thing she could find, and helped bind the wound. ‘Knife slipped,’ her mother explained through gritted teeth.
Afterwards she asked, ‘How did you know to come?’
Rowan shrugged. ‘I felt it, as if something had sliced right through me, and then before I knew it, my legs had carried me here.’
Her mother looked upon her, considering. ‘You have it, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘The sight?’
‘The what?’ Rowan looked at her blankly.
‘Your grandmother had it too. You will always have to be on your guard. Especially with your hair so fair. Don’t breathe a word of it, not even to your brothers or your father, do you hear me? For people will surely believe you to be a witch.’
The word struck fear into Rowan; she well knew what happened to those accused of the craft. They were shunned, blamed when the crops failed or livestock died, when ill fortune or ill health was visited upon a person. Those suspected of witchcraft, even if there was no proof of it, were driven from their homes, outcast from their villages, or worse, locked up in the nearest gaol. Whispers became gossip became fact in less than the blink of an eye.
Not so many years ago, her mother had told her, witches were drowned, or burned on a bonfire while the rest of the village looked on in terror and awe. At the very least, they were tortured, pilliwinks used to crush the bones of their thumbs until they confessed to their crimes, whether real or conjured from the faintest suspicion. Merely being outspoken meant being harnessed with a scold’s bridle, a metal bit pushed between your teeth to stop you from speaking. Everyone knew the story of the Malmesbury witches, three women who had been blamed for causing sickness, branded as ‘cunning women’ and hanged for concocting potions and casting spells. And her mother had been but a girl when the Handsel sisters – four Danish girls living in Wilton, a village not far from Inkpen – were accused of bringing pox to the village and were bludgeoned to death in Grovely Wood without so much as a hearing.
Not all the ducking stools – inflicted on harlots, scolds and witches – had been destroyed when the laws against witchcraft were repealed. Some were still hidden away in byres and sheds, attics and sculleries. Rowan had never seen one, but she shuddered as she remembered her mother telling of the thick leather straps that held a person down as they were lowered into the water, could imagine the terror they would face, unable to move, unable to breathe. She had always been fearful of water: fast-flowing rivers, streams that wound their way across pebbles and sticks, deep pools formed by storm-felled trees.
Her mother had already been instructing Rowan in simple medicines, made with herbs and plants foraged from the hedgerows and hillsides, but after the incident with the knife she began to teach her a number of enchantments, and Rowan knew without having to be told again that she was not to speak of it outside the house or to the rest of the family.
The boy shifted on the seat and Rowan felt the pain radiate from him again; there was something very wrong.
‘My sister will wonder what’s become of you,’ Prudence scolded the boy. ‘Come hoping for some supper, by chance?’ she asked.
‘No, Auntie Pru, look.’ Tommy gingerly swung his left leg out from under the table.
The cook, who had taken a swig from the beaker at her elbow, spluttered out a breath. ‘Lawd sakes!’ she cried.
‘How the devil did that happen?’
A round welt had formed on his shin and below that a deep gash was oozing blood, the skin around it already discolouring. ‘Kicked by a horse,’ he said, gritting his teeth against the pain.
As he spoke, Rowan went to where she had left her bundle of belongings and found a pot of salve she had brought with her. ‘Here,’ she said cautiously, holding it out to Prudence. ‘This might help. He’ll also need to bind that; keep it clean. Is there some cloth about?’ Surely in the house of a fabric merchant there would have to be.
‘I’ve muslin that I use for straining sauces,’ said Prudence, a note of doubt in her voice.
‘As long as it is clean, please fetch it,’ Rowan replied, surer of herself now.
‘But where’d you get that from?’ Prudence pointed to the pot in Rowan’s hand.
‘It’s mine. I mean, I made it,’ she replied. When the summer just past had been at its height, Rowan had ground comfrey, yarrow, lemon balm and calendula, adding lanolin extracted from lambswool gathered from the hedgerows. Her mother had taught her well; she could make the salve, and a number of other healing balms and poultices too, using the herbs of the wayside and field mixed with beeswax and honey, soaked bran and bread. She had not forgotten the knowledge of other, stronger remedies, though when she and her brothers had been taken in by her Aunt Win, the woman had insisted upon ‘none of that kind of magic’ under her roof. After that, she had stopped making all but the simplest remedies.
The cook raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
‘My mother taught me. She was … she knew about such things.’
Rowan looked at her as innocently as she knew how, hoping to dispel the flash of mistrust she had seen in the cook’s eyes.
