The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘The visitor, Mrs Teague, what did he look like?’

  ‘He was in working clothes, that I do remember. Big chap, and he had an eyepatch.’

  ‘An eyepatch?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am! You don’t see them every day, do you?’

  ‘No, you don’t. Which eye—’

  ‘Did you hear any of the conversation?’ Anna said.

  ‘Are you suggesting I would eavesdrop on my guests?’ Mrs Teague huffed and puffed and made out she was truly hurt by such accusing.

  We waited until she’d finished being affronted, and then she admitted that she had lingered by the door.

  ‘The door of my parlour that Miss Franks had shut! I was waiting to give her a piece of my mind, as I had every right to do.’

  ‘And did you hear anything?’ I said.

  ‘Only that they weren’t getting on. It sounded like an argument.’

  ‘Which language were they speaking?’ Anna asked. ‘English or German?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. The door … Well, it’s too thick.’ Even for a nosey crow like Mrs Teague with her ear pressed against it. ‘Miss Franks was apologetic once he’d gone, well, as apologetic as that woman is ever likely to be. Miss Wolffs was quite upset. I didn’t see her drawing again, and they left the next day, owing me for some unpaid suppers, I might add.’

  ‘When we find them we’ll let them know,’ Anna said. ‘I’m sure they’ll send you what’s due.’

  I almost laughed, thinking of Mathilda and Miss Franks eating snails in the woods.

  We took our leave of Mrs Teague, who had been more helpful than she could have known.

  ‘Why didn’t the squire tell us he had met the women before they came to the woods?’ I said as we made our way back down to the harbour.

  My words made Anna stop and her mouth fall open.

  ‘That’s who you think their visitor was? The squire?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ I said. ‘Mrs Teague said he was a big man, that he’d covered one eye. The patch was to hide his lazy one.’

  ‘“Big” could mean anything, and as for the eyepatch, many people have blindness. You keep telling me about these women without eyes stalking the woods.’ She started walking again. ‘It’s not enough, Shilly. That man could have been anyone.’

  ‘It’s the reward, isn’t it? You won’t admit we can’t trust the squire because it could mean we won’t get paid and that’s all you care about.’

  ‘I’m not the mercenary you think I am, Shilly. But on an unrelated point, you must see that we can’t keep taking unpaid work or we’ll be the ones surviving on snails.’

  ‘Never mind snails. What about the squire? We have to ask him why he met them here. We’ll go straight to the manor house.’

  I hurried past her but she grabbed my arm.

  ‘No! If the squire does know more about Miss Wolffs and Miss Franks than he has so far stated – and I say that only to humour you, Shilly – then we must use caution. Fortunately, I know someone who can help us find out one way or the other. Someone you know quite well, Shilly.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Williams.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  I wasn’t pleased to hear of Mr Williams again. He was the first of all Anna’s people I had met, and I had found him to be stern – forever saying I was slow or late or something worse, saying I was drunk, even when I wasn’t. Once Anna had shown herself to be the yellow-haired woman hiding beneath Mr Williams’s disguise, I hadn’t minded him so much. His faults were those of Anna’s and those I had learnt to forgive, but the mention of his name made me remember a time when I hadn’t liked her, and I didn’t wish for that again.

  Anna seemed pleased to be speaking of Mr Williams again, and chattered of him all the way back to Trethevy, as if Mr Williams was a welcome visitor soon to call. When Mr Williams had first taken himself apart before me, Anna told me she carried on in such a manner because she had to. Passing as a man let her find out things a woman wouldn’t be able to, for solving crimes. And I had believed her then, because I didn’t think anyone would do such a thing unless they had to.

  But seeing Anna quicken her step now as she talked of Mr Williams’s arrival, seeing the flush in her cheeks, I knew better. Anna liked to dress in men’s clothes. It caused her excitement. The same excitement I felt when she passed as her true self – the yellow-haired woman with the scrawny hips. Her claiming she had to pass as a man was only an excuse to hide what she wanted most.

  ‘It will be odd to have Mr and Mrs Williams together,’ she said now. ‘In the past I’ve only been able to have one roam at a time.’

  ‘We’ll be a proper married couple then.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said faintly.

  Her blushes made me bold. ‘We should do as all married couples do,’ I said.

  ‘Bicker? We’re doing a fine job of that already, Shilly.’

  We had come to the manor house. Our path back to the woods took us in sight of the little walled garden with the chair, where we had seen Lady Phoebe at the window. As we were passing now I caught sight of someone seated in a corner made shady by some branchy plant that swarmed the walls. Just their feet, their little slippered feet, and the paleness of their skirts. The rest of her was shrouded by the plant’s overhanging, but I could see enough to know who it was. Lady Phoebe.

  I pointed her out to Anna.

  ‘At least she can escape the house, then,’ Anna said.

  ‘But she’s not gone far. The squire can fetch her back easily enough.’

  ‘Quick, Shilly. Before she sees us.’

  But we were too late.

  ‘It’s Miss Drake, isn’t it?’ the soft voice called, barely reaching us in the still, baked air. She was getting to her feet.

  ‘Please – don’t let us disturb you,’ Anna said. ‘We were only passing.’

  But we were stopping now, with Lady Phoebe wanting to speak to us.

  She stepped from the shade of the trailing plant and I saw she had a book with her. She marked her place with a blue ribbon, made sure the ribbon was laid flat, then closed the book and pulled the ribbon taut, with a quick jerk, the way some women lace others into their stays. Then she set the book carefully on the little chair and eyed it, as if there was some part of it she wasn’t sure about, then she straightened it, making the book’s corners line up with those of the chair.

  Anna and I watched all this from the other side of the low wall. I’d seen such tricks before. Those who did the paying liked to make us wait, those of us being paid. It made us remember we were beholden to them. But then I chided myself for such thoughts, for wasn’t she soft-hearted, and so soft-headed too?

  Even with her expecting the child, there wasn’t much of her. Just a scrag of a thing. The baby will be little as the mother, I thought, if it lives long enough inside her to be born breathing. She was so pale, I wondered there was enough blood in her body to give life to them both.

  ‘You haven’t found poor Paul yet?’ she said now, crossing to join us. She shielded her eyes against the sun, which set her face in shadow.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Anna said. ‘But as I told your husband this morning, we’re doing—’

  ‘You came this morning? Vivian didn’t tell me.’ She clutched the wall. The earth left a brown mark on her cream dress. ‘What did you need to see him about? You’ve found something?’

  ‘He don’t want you fretting,’ I said.

  ‘Fretting? A child has been taken. Is there a greater crime in this world?’

  I had plenty of answers to that, because being taken left the chance of being returned. There was no body yet. If your throat was cut it was a different thing altogether. But Anna was speaking before I could put Lady Phoebe right.

  ‘Please, don’t upset yourself,’ Anna said. ‘We came to confirm a detail with your husband, that was all.’

  ‘About the sisters? Their part in this horror?’

  ‘About the quarry,’ Anna said. ‘Mrs
Williams and I have been considering the tunnels.’

  ‘Oh.’ She let go of the wall and there was a great sag about her, as if she were a pair of bellows and talk of tunnels had taken the air from her.

  ‘So you see, there was no reason for the squire to inform you of our visit.’

  ‘Yes …’ Still she held her hand before her face to keep the sun from her eyes. Still she was hidden. ‘But if you should find other things, you will inform me, too, I hope?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, and glanced at Anna who was looking uncertain about what to say. ‘It’s the squire paying us, and he’s wanting to save you the worry.’

  ‘That is Vivian’s way. To offer the reward, to bring people to the woods without telling me of his plans.’

  ‘It’s a kindness,’ I said. ‘I’ve known men who care more for their dogs than their wives.’

  ‘Shilly!’ Anna hissed.

  ‘It would be a greater kindness still to tell me what you find out,’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘If we could come to an—’

  Someone coughed behind her. Mrs Carne was in the doorway to the house.

  ‘Doctor’s here, ma’am.’

  Lady Phoebe clutched her belly. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

  ‘Sir Vivian’s with him,’ the housekeeper said, and there was something in her voice, just a touch of a push, that meant the men weren’t wanting to wait.

  ‘We won’t detain you any longer,’ Anna said.

  She nodded and turned away, with great sadness, I thought. Then she was lost inside the house, her book left so neatly on the chair, forgotten. Mrs Carne shut the door with force.

  ‘It would be a kindness to tell Lady Phoebe,’ I said. ‘As it is, she’s left to fear the worst.’

  We began walking again, taking up the path we’d followed before coming across Lady Phoebe.

  ‘The greater kindness was my lying to her,’ Anna said, ‘telling her we’d come to ask the squire about the quarry rather than the movements of Miss Wolffs and Miss Franks.’

  ‘But we don’t yet know if that pair have done anything wrong, apart from staring at the house. That is strange doings, I’ll grant you.’

  ‘I don’t think we can risk the truth with Lady Phoebe. Belief can be a powerful thing, Shilly, especially for an already anxious mind. You keep telling me these woods are bewitched, and no amount of reassurance from me is convincing you otherwise.’

  And there they were, before us again, those wretched trees. There was no escaping them.

  Anna slipped into the gloom without a backward glance, left me. I had my knotted rope around my neck and clutched at it now, thinking of untying it to blow our way clear of the tightness of the place and crowding birds and the like. But as I followed Anna into the woods I stilled my hand. The place was going to get worse before it got better. I should wait until things got very bad indeed before I unknotted my rope.

  That things had worsened since we’d gone to Boscastle I soon knew, for the path had narrowed to almost no path. Before, it had let me and Anna walk side by side almost as far as the quarry, but now it was hardly wide enough for us to pass at all. The brambles snaked their way across it. Lumps of moor stone had rolled in and taken root. There was a cry above me, then the sound of washing being shaken out. The birds were back.

  They shuffled on the branches, barely room for them to perch and stare at me with their eyes that gleamed even though there was so little light. Most of them magpies. They began to jump up and down so that the trees shook like they were having fits. I feared the creatures would fly at me if I moved so I tried to stand as still as I could. There was no sign of Anna.

  It was then I saw something else moving. The trunk of a tree twisting, turning, as if – as if undoing itself. A shadow opening, reaching.

  A shadow that spoke.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘You got the basket all right, my bird?’

  She had been sitting on a fallen tree, her black shawl making her a part of the woods until she chose to reveal herself. To let me see.

  ‘My sweet?’ she said. ‘Not ill, are you?’

  ‘No, I … You frightened me, Mrs Haskell.’

  ‘Not me you should be frightened of, my sweet. Not me.’

  She moved a little, resettled herself, and I saw her scarred hands. All the rest of her scarred too, she’d said, from the fire, aside from her face which was marked only with age. Her face tilted now to look at me, her eyes bright as the magpies’. I had the feeling that everything around me at that moment was leaning in, trying to get close to me. Close enough to hear my heart stuttering.

  ‘The food, now,’ she said. ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Though the magpies, they got to it first.’

  She chuckled and shook her head. ‘Ah, yes, with the ash tree there, by the summer house. I should have thought to remind the girls.’

  ‘The squire should chop the tree down,’ I said. ‘He can’t be liking the birds crowding so close to the summer house. They make a terrible clitter on the roof.’

  ‘That would be a mistake. The magpie tree is sacred, my bird. Saint Nectan planted it himself.’

  I was glad, then, that Anna had gone on without me. She’d have called such a tale fanciful and stopped the telling. She had no heart for the ways of the people in my country.

  ‘Someone has done it once before,’ Mrs Haskell said. ‘Cut down the magpie tree and suffered the consequences.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘His legs went.’

  ‘They disappeared!’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘No, my sweet. I mean they stopped working. He was crippled. His arms too – no strength in them. He knew, this man, that it was his own fault, and he bade his daughter plant a new ash tree on the same spot. The tree grew and the birds returned, and the man’s weakness was taken from him.’

  ‘So all was well?’

  ‘For a little while. The tree grew tall and there were many strong branches. Another man—’

  ‘It’s always men in these stories, Mrs Haskell.’

  ‘And what does that tell you?’

  ‘That men cut things down,’ I said, ‘destroy things. It’s daughters do the planting.’

  ‘You’re wiser than your years, Shilly. But some daughters cut down trees, too. Some set fire to whole forests. Don’t forget that.’

  How could I forget? I’d been thinking it. To burn the place, to be rid of the closeness. The hatred. And she knew.

  ‘But the second man,’ I said. ‘What did he do to the tree?’

  ‘He cut a branch to make a wooden nail.’

  ‘And he was afflicted?’

  ‘Of course. He lost an eye.’

  ‘Did the nail go through it?’ I felt my stomach heave as the words escaped, but I couldn’t keep from asking, nasty beast that I was.

  Mrs Haskell shrugged. ‘The story doesn’t say. But I’d imagine so. He deserved nothing less.’

  A cripple and a blind man. The woods weren’t kind to bodies. And to mine – what might they do to my flesh and my bones? To Anna’s, too?

  I asked Mrs Haskell if Anna had passed that way.

  ‘She did, my sweet. Passed right by me but she didn’t see me.’

  ‘Anna doesn’t know how to look,’ I said.

  ‘Not like you, my bird. Your eyes are wide open.’ Mrs Haskell patted my arm. ‘On you go, then, fly away home. You don’t want to be too long out here, things being the way they are.’ She sat down on the fallen tree again and pulled her black shawl more tightly around her – so tight she might crush her throat, I feared.

  ‘But what about you?’ I said. ‘Will you be all right out here, on your own?’

  Her back was to me. She seemed to sink into the tree beneath her, to find the place she slipped into shadow.

  ‘Me? I’ll be right enough, my sweet. And I shan’t be on my own, don’t you worry. He is here.’

  ‘Who … who is with you?’

  ‘Why, the saint, of course.
He’s with us in the woods.’ Her voice was growing fainter, even as she sat a few feet from me. I reached out to touch her, to prove to myself that she was there.

  The birds took to the air.

  I ran.

  I found Anna at the cottages. She was talking with a young woman I didn’t recognise – a pretty thing with red hair and the bones of her cheeks sharp enough to draw blood, but her face was grey with slate’s dust, which I knew Anna wouldn’t like. Anna was all for washing. But I hastened over all the same. Anna was mine. No one else’s.

  I needn’t have worried. The talk was thieving, not kissing. Two more things had vanished since that morning – a brooch belonging to this young woman, and a christening spoon of Richard Bray’s.

  ‘Both silver!’ the young woman said. ‘And precious too. Poor Richard’s in a bad way because of it. Weeping, he is!’

  ‘Where did you keep your brooch?’ Anna said.

  ‘In a box beneath the bed, but I’d had it out this morning, hadn’t I? To show the baby. She was fretting. And the shininess of the brooch, she likes that. Takes her mind off whatever it is that’s giving her pain. I left it on the bed to fetch something from the other room, and when I came back – this!’

  She held out a small lump of coal.

  ‘And your bed,’ Anna said, ‘it was near the window?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘And the window was open?’

  ‘Course it was! ’Tis hot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did you see anyone nearby before the brooch was taken?’ Anna said.

  ‘Well, people were passing, like always, but none of them strangers. I didn’t see the sisters from across the river. But the Devil helps them cast spells, don’t he? So they can hide. That’s how they took Paul.’

  A man was hurrying towards her, carrying a bawling child, which he thrust at the young woman as if ridding himself of a violent animal.

  ‘Oh my dear, my dear!’ she said, taking the baby. ‘They’ll come for you next and how shall we stop them turning you into a lump of coal?’