‘That horse had better make a full recovery,’ she heard him say. Kerry cracked his face with a semblance of confidence and uttered an assurance. His master dug his hands into his coat pockets, his lower lip clapped firmly over the upper and stared intently at an indeterminate point in the sky. ‘Mark my word, Kerry,’ he growled, ‘I shall check your story with this ...’
‘Marsden,’ swallowed the groom.
‘Yes,’ pondered Grafton, ‘Marsden.’
Kate waited for the master of Apescross to move away, then slipped into the stable after Kerry. She was pleased to find the Prince up on his feet, limping around.
Kerry held the door shut against unwelcome visitors and snapped, ‘Where were you this morning, eh?’
Kate had coaxed the Prince into giving her his injured foot. Ignoring the tetchy question, she uncorked the bottle and poured the soothing yellow infusion over the swollen hoof, then sealed it with another layer of green ointment and bandaged up to the fetlock. Kerry held the horse while she eased an open-ended horn in between the Prince’s side teeth and poured the rest of the infusion into his mouth.
The horse showered her with disdainful splutters. ‘Tastes like mouldering mangel-wurzel, don’t it lad?’ she laughed. The groom smelled the empty bottle and scowled.
‘Filthy stuff ,’ he said, spitting into the straw. ‘How a gentleman like Marsden came to mix with the likes of‒’
‘Half a crown, you said,’ Kate cut in coldly.
Kerry tilted his head insolently. ‘Worth a half-crown of any man’s money?’ he mimicked, with a suggestive glance towards the far corner.
‘I don’t suppose Master Grafton would favour witch medicine,’ she said, her eyes narrowing, ‘’specially where his favourite hunter’s concerned.’ She held out her hand. Kerry stared at it for a moment, then ruefully dug into the pocket of his breeches.
‘What I want to know,’ he grunted, flicking the coin into her upturned palm, ‘is how that spike came to be in there. These eyes are as keen as the next man’s.’
Kate closed her fingers over the coin and gave him a knowing smile. ‘You know well enough, William Kerry.’
‘Ah‒’ he began, but an uproar outside in the stableyard cut him short. There had been a piercing squeal – a child’s cry of alarm – then a surge of angry voices and a yelping, barking dog. A dog.
Kate spun round. The stable door was ajar and Jack was gone from beside the brick pillar where she had left him. She flew outside, just in time to see Jack’s black and white body weave through a knot of shouting children towards the wrought-iron gate. She screamed his name but he was too intent on escape to hear.
Behind him rushed a mob. The Grafton children had been joined by stable lads and some of the fitter grooms. Clenched fists, stones, brooms, even a hay-fork converged on the fleeing dog.
Kate attempted to reach the partially open gate before the others but was overtaken and shoved aside. She screamed at Jack to get through. He heard her voice and turned. Then an unseen hand slammed the gate shut from the outside.
And he was trapped.
With the first pained yelp, Kate’s panic turned to fury. She burrowed into his assailants, throwing the smaller ones aside, wrestling with the men until they too were behind her, She found Jack, pinned against the iron scrolls of the gate, a huddled, slavering mass of bared teeth and hurt.
‘Get away from him!’ she shouted, turning on the startled faces behind her. The furore had drawn many more servants from the house. They pressed around her, demanding to know what was happening.
‘That cur,’ exclaimed the footman, quitting his vigil by the kitchen door, ‘savaged Miss Caroline! See‒’ He lifted one of the Grafton children into his arms and moved into the space between Kate and the indignant crowd. At a whispered cue from the footman, seven-year-old Caroline pulled back the sleeve of her travelling coat. Across the chubby arm were three raised weals. There were murmurs of, ‘Shame!’ and the girl promptly burst into pitiful sobs. The footman rested his case. He stepped aside. The others pressed in on Kate. Behind her, Jack growled protectively.
She winced as a small foot kicked out viciously at her ankle, and shook herself free of hands that would have pulled her clear of Jack.
‘You dare lay another finger on me or my dog,’ she hissed. ‘I’m sorry the little girl was hurt. But you can all see it’s no more than a playful scratch!’
She was answered with snorts of derision. Then the cry went up, ‘Do you hear that? The Gurney woman threatened us!’
‘Witch’s bastard!’ screamed another.
‘Her dog did this,’ added the footman.
Kate knew they were beyond reason. That she had to make her move now. She turned to scoop Jack into her arms and came face to face with Barbara Canard, smiling at her through the iron railings. She knew at once whose hand had closed the gate, barring Jack’s escape. Who, even now, stood between her and the open fields.
‘You are no more his kinswoman than I am,’ Grafton’s niece taunted. She clamped her hand down on the gate-latch and raised an eyebrow towards the house. ‘He is up there, watching all this.’
Kate resisted the urge to turn and look towards the house. She forced the latch through Barbara’s tenacious fingers and with Jack drooping under her left arm, threw herself through the gate. Sharp nails raked her free arm as Barbara attempted to stop her. Kate swung the arm at her opponent. Barbara gave a startled cry and staggered backwards into a bush of overblown yellow roses. Kate ran.
Skirting the slower cobbles, she burst through a gap in the shrubbery lining the path and fled towards the open grazing land beyond the next hedge.
For a moment the only sound was her own rasping breath. Then came the angry shouts of pursuers. She forced her aching legs across the open pasture, jolting Jack as she leapt thistles and dung. When, at last, she reached the cover of Kingeswood, the pursuers had thinned to a single panting voice.
Too winded to go on, she set Jack down. As the dog limped smartly on ahead, she snatched up a stout stick and waited in the shadow of a twisted oak.
The footman did not see what hit him in the shady wood. He remembered chasing the woman and her dog. After that, nothing, until he found himself face down on a carpet of damp oak leaves.
That evening....
William Kerry woke to find himself lying in the crook of a sycamore tree. Above, the sky – clustered with flickering stars – clung to a bright harvest moon.
With a shiver, he rolled himself out of the tree and winced as his bare feet collapsed the sharp wheat stubble underfoot.
A few pots of ale with Marsden, that much he did recall. Then a shot of rum – or two. He clutched his aching, wondering head and stared through the tree cleft, across the shorn field dotted with stooks. Then he saw the Gurney woman.
He shook his head in disbelief.
She was wandering through the stubble, completely naked. Her feet seemed to glide through the sharp stalks as if it were a carpet of down. The white glow of her skin emphasized the darkness of nipples and vaginal hair. And she was surrounded by a fiery aura, from bare feet to her long hair.
Kerry clung to the tree, and swallowed hard as she stopped by the bundles of sheaves closest to him. He heard her murmur as though to an unseen companion. Watched as she first stooped, then stretched herself out in the close-cropped straw.
Kerry’s head tightened lightheadedly. His eyes blurred. Then as his focus returned, he saw her reclined body rise a foot above the stubble. He drew breath sharply.
‘You want her don’t you?’ said a low voice, over his shoulder. Kerry jerked round, wide-eyed with terror.
Marsden clapped a hand over his open mouth, and coaxed him back round. ‘Don’t you?’
Kerry stared at the figure by the stook. She was back on the stubble again, her hips moving gently towards him and away. He watched, mesmerized by the swollen breasts and slightly parted thighs more than wanting.
He felt a dull moan at the base of his skull and t
hrough the pain in his head, a voice that urged, ‘Take her.’
William Kerry emerged from the shelter of the tree, unaware of the sharp stubble under his bare feet.
Part 2: Aer
Gifts...
‘T’is more than a body can fathom, Grafton suffering her to stay on up there, what with that creature of hers savaging his little one.’
‘Cured his horse, they say.’
‘Some witchery, to be sure.’
‘They say Marsden took her part – has the master’s ear that one.’
‘A gentleman of good intent, no doubt. Easy pickings for one such as her.’
‘Claims kinship, she does, distant cos or some such.’
‘Her sins will find her out.’
‘They will.’
‘T’is that feckless lad I fret for; alone up there with her.’
‘May the Lord keep him from taint.’
... whispered the tongues.
A lazy January wind carried the peals of Sabbath bells up to the cottage. Kate glanced up from the lumbering ewes, heavy with lamb, at the heavy evening sky and stood up to stretch her aching back.
All the pens inside and adjoining the crumbling outbuildings were full; ewes and singles, ewes with twins, two sets of triplets and a ewe that had lost her lamb – full of redundant milk, bellowing above her sisters.
Where she stood, a handful of expectant mothers jostled around the trough for crushed nuts and hay. All except one, a shearling, which paced restlessly round the fold, pausing only to paw the damp grass. Kate noted the sagging abdomen. This one was for the lambing pen.
It was a sapping business; the fetching, the carrying, the birthing, the suckling; sleep snatched in a draughty barn; food taken on the wing – if she was lucky. Time stretched, time condensed, time meaningless, save for the anchoring chime of far-off bells. And overhead, the sky poised to throw down its blanket of snow. Kate was weary fit to drop, yet she smiled.
She had not hoped to see this lambing; had all but sold the flock the week before the Michaelmas rents fell due. And then he had come to her.
There had been no rest that night either. He had met her misery with gentle coaxing, bullied her from hopeless resignation. He had lifted her far beyond fear of mortal things to a plane of sensual euphoria that lingered for days afterwards. His coming snuffed the rankling jealousy she felt about him and Barbara Canard. He had shielded her from the wrath of Caroline’s father and at his leaving he had given her the brooch.
‘Have it valued in Bristol,’ he had instructed, as she stared at glowing emeralds worked into gold scroll. ‘Take the best price you can. What use a shepherd without sheep?’
Next morning he had sent out the boy Ned to her, to tend the ewes while she made the ten-mile trip to Bristol. She had gone to the teeming city; had wrangled with one silversmith after another and taken the best price. But not for the brooch.
In this she disobeyed him, much as she feared his anger. She could not bring herself to part with so beautiful an object; the only thing she had of him. And so, what the silversmiths pored over with their eye lenses was her only other treasure – a chased silver larum watch, the only thing left of her mother.
The enamel-faced watch was her only clue as to who, or what her father might have been. The watch ... the brooch. What was gone ... what he had liberated her from ... what was and might still be. She kept the brooch; sewed it into the hem of her shift and had only to touch the bulge of it under her clothes to feel again the keening vitality his presence brought, to quell her impatience for his next unpredictable night visit.
All her life she had been imprisoned by the need to persuade others that she was not like her mother. Parson Ellson had instilled the need. She had danced to his tune, in a vain quest for acceptance. Then Marsden had come and made her realize that the villagers’ scorn was in truth a mask for fear, for awe. The knowledge had given her the confidence to meet the stares of the people at market with amusement. She relished the quickly averted eyes, the unnerved glances, and grudging respect they now paid her. The strength he had promised her had come to pass. She was strong, and free, and more than happy to tackle the rigours of another lambing.
A chilly blast shook the folds, drowning for a moment the blaring of the ewes. Then snowflakes filled the air, stinging Kate into action. She bellowed for the boy then, with Jack’s help, separated the agitated shearling from the others and took it through to a half-covered lambing fold between the cottage and the outbuildings.
Jack coaxed the young ewe under the thatch. Kate scrambled under with them and after several bids, managed to turn the distressed ewe on to the bed of straw.
‘T’is snowing,’ grunted the boy, staggering bleary-eyed in beside her. ‘I’m chilled to the bone.’
She glanced at the blue knuckles and bloodless fingers, snatched up a hessian sack lying in a corner of the fold, cut holes for his head and arms and sent him off to fetch a lamp and more lambing oil from beside the kitchen fire.
When he came back, slopping oil over the sides of the kettle he carried, she cupped her hands around the warm vessel and said, ‘Pour some over my hands and arms, like I showed you Ned.’
‘This ‘un ready?’ asked the boy, squatting beside the panting shearling. Kate gave him a wry smile. Ned was slow-witted, in many ways much younger than his dozen years but she was glad of his young legs and his child-like interest in the work. When old Will Tunnicliffe had been struck down by palsy last harvest, she had despaired of finding a pair of willing hands.
Ned had come to her raw and suspicious, but not afraid. He was as much a misfit as she, it seemed. His innkeeper master had been more than willing to rid himself of the gaupus potboy with an irritating stammer – even to the Gurney woman.
Curing the stammer had been as easy as curing a wart. She had lured it from him with subtle doses of kindness and patience. And when the boy realized that a beating did not lurk around the next corner, confidence did the work for her. In return, Ned worked willingly, was her daily companion, and her ear to the village gossip.
‘Won’t she do it by herself?’ yawned Ned. Kate murmured to the contrary, sensing the struggle the inexperienced ewe was having. There was quickening but no sign of a birth yet.
Dipping her hand into the oil again, she eased her way carefully into the uterus. She probed the tangle of shoulders and legs, until she found the heads.
‘Three,’ she gasped. ‘Ned, bring the lantern, quickly!’
She worked her hand round to the first head, down over the shoulders to a leg, lying beside the chin. She stopped as the ewe strained, murmuring reassurances until the muscles relaxed again. Then she stretched her aching shoulder and gently moved her bruised knuckles in search of the other foreleg. There was no turning back now, she knew. If she withdrew without the lamb, the ewe would swell and four lives would be lost.
‘Hold the lantern steady,’ she croaked, as Ned craned eagerly over her. The ewe kicked nervously as Jack snarled at the gusting snow. Kate snapped at the dog to get out.
She found the neck ... then hooves. The ewe pushed again. ‘Soon now girl,’ she soothed. Cupping the head in her palm, she drew on the neck and legs, easing the lamb along a curved path to birth. A moment later, the first glistening lamb slithered on to the straw. Ned lurched forward to rub the limp body with hay, then with trembling fingers and a clean wisp of straw, gently cleared the nostrils of mucus. The lamb’s first sneeze and snatched breaths were his reward. Beaming, he laid it beside the mother’s nose.
The remaining two lambs came in quick succession.
‘Not this one Ned,’ said Kate, wrapping the last in a rag and pushing it inside her coat. ‘She’ll not miss this one. See to it the teats aren’t choked, then put those two to suckle.’ She snatched on her hood, listening to Jack’s muted barks between snowy gusts.
‘Where you taking little ‘un?’ ventured Ned, but his words were drowned by the blizzard.
Keeping her head down and clutching the cryi
ng bundle, Kate ran towards the barn. Jack intercepted her, barking agitatedly and straining towards the dip. She stopped, squinted her eyes through the dense whiteness and saw a dark irregularity in the outline of the chaffinch hedge. No more than that but she knew, as Jack knew, who it was standing out there.
Skinning the dead lamb was the work of a few minutes, even with painfully cold fingers. She cut holes in the skin, unwrapped her bundle and slipped the live lamb into his new coat. The dead lamb’s mother stopped blaring and backed suspiciously away from the surrogate.
Ned rushed in, coughing noisily and showering Kate with snow. He stared wide-eyed as the ewe dropped her head and pawed the ground close to the stumbling lamb.
‘Go gentle,’ Kate whispered, as the lamb struggled towards the hanging teats. The ewe bleated indignantly and knocked the lamb aside. The little one tried again but the adamant ewe lifted a hoof threateningly. Kate held Ned back, calling Jack to her side. The dog knew what was expected. He skirted the pen, hackled raised. The ewe’s instincts took over and before Jack had completed a second circuit, the lamb was snug under the belly of its adoptive mother.
Instructing Ned to tend to their needs, before retiring to his pallet, she dropped the dead lamb’s remains in the lime pit behind the outbuildings, drove the last four expectant ewes from the snow into the shelter of the barn, and only then made for chaffinch hedge.
The snow drove straight at her, whipping back the hood a dozen times before she finally let it hang. Blowing on her hands, she began to run down into the dip, every step sending painful shudders through her swollen feet. She met the incline on her hands and knees, clawing her way past thistle and hawthorn towards level ground, growing colder every minute. An icy blast sent her staggering backwards into prickly thorns. She shouted his name, pulling herself to the top, consumed by cold.
The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1) Page 4
