The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

I looked at the way the shoe prints were angled, and saw that there was a faint path that crossed the clearing, running from the summer house, past the magpie tree and into the woods. Anna and I walked it as far as the treeline.

  ‘Where does this path go?’ I said.

  Anna squinted into the murk. ‘The road. That’s how the carrier brought my travelling case from Jamaica Inn. It takes longer than the way we’ve been going, down past the waterfall, but it’s not so steep.’

  I stood. ‘If it leads to the road then it leads to the manor house, too.’

  ‘And I’d hazard a guess that the squire visits the summer house by this route. I can’t imagine he and Lady Phoebe climb up the path.’

  ‘That’s more suspicion on him, then, if whoever tried to take Peter came by this path from the manor house. And I’m certain it was the squire visiting Miss Franks and Mathilda in Boscastle. We still don’t know why he went to see them.’

  ‘Or if he did at all. Miss Franks didn’t confirm it before throwing us out of the cottage, remember.’

  ‘She’s not likely to tell us any more now,’ I said, unable to keep the gloom from my voice.

  ‘What’s that there?’ Anna said. She went a few steps into the trees. Caught on a fern’s soft coil was a scrag of white. She pulled it free and twisted it between her fingers. ‘Silk.’

  ‘From a dress?’ I said.

  ‘Or a shawl. Or a cravat. It’s too little to be sure.’ She tucked it into her pocket. ‘But I wonder.’

  I heard the tapping of her tongue against her teeth.

  ‘You said the figure you saw was one of those things without eyes.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with great certainty for Anna was about to nonsense me again. I could see it coming clear as the rain.

  ‘Well, I fancy this was how it was done. A stocking – a fine one, stretched across the face. The wearer’s features would be hidden, including their eyes, but they would still be able to see.’

  ‘So you don’t believe me, then, about the blinded creatures?’

  ‘I believe there are ways to achieve such an effect, Shilly. Ways of this world.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You still think they’re here, in these woods – the sisters who drowned Saint Nectan, who buried him beneath the river?’

  I didn’t need to look about me. I could feel, still, the hatred that stirred the trees, that made the very ground they grew from change its being.

  ‘It’s like an echo,’ I said, and Anna frowned. ‘You know, if you shout—’

  ‘I know what an echo is, Shilly. What I don’t know is why that sound phenomenon is relevant.’

  ‘The sisters might not be here proper, flesh and blood as we are, as Miss Franks and Mathilda are. Or Miss Franks was. It’s the hate that has come back, found bodies to carry it. To repeat their old work.’

  ‘To grab children?’

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, until such time as you do know the physical capabilities of these spirits, I suggest we concentrate on what we can see. Here. Now.’

  ‘All right. I can see that magpie in the saint’s tree.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was here yesterday, too.’ I went over to the tree and Anna followed. ‘There was a great gaggle of them at first, but when the cloaked figure had gone, when it was over, there was only one bird. And it was looking at the summer house. I wonder—’

  ‘Well, it’s got its eye on you now, Shilly.’

  She was right. The bird hopped from foot to foot, threw its head from side to side. If it had been a person I would have said it was having fits. The blue-green of its tail flicked up and down. The orange of its beak poked the air. I drew closer to the tree. My foot clunked something tucked between the roots. Before I could stop her, Anna was bending down.

  ‘Ah! The figure left something else behind. I—wait.’ Her hand closed on the bottle.

  She held it out to me. A third left, sloshing brown and joyful wet. My knees went soft and I put my hand on the tree’s damp trunk to keep myself steady. To keep myself from snatching the bottle and running into the trees.

  ‘If it wasn’t for Peter’s testimony,’ Anna said, holding the bottle by the neck and letting it swing this way and that, ‘I might doubt there had even been a figure in a cloak, but all that nonsense about the rope blowing it away – you were insensible, admit it!’

  ‘Anna, you don’t understand. Without it I can’t see such things, and they need to be seen, to know what’s happening here.’

  ‘I don’t think you want to be without it, to get better.’

  She smashed the bottle against the tree. The magpie shrieked and took to the air. The spirit stained the trunk, was trickling into the grass. So few drops. Not enough to be worth a quarrel.

  ‘If I make you so angry, Anna, why don’t you do without me? Go back to solving crimes by yourself, try to join the detective men when they don’t want you.’

  Her thin face had reddened with fury. The bottle’s neck, broken off, was still in her hand. It shook in time with her panting breath. She could cut my throat if she wished.

  ‘I have the answer for you, Anna. You don’t turn me loose because you need me. And oh, the reasons.’ I ran my fingers across the sticky, dripping tree trunk and then sucked them. Loudly.

  As best her limp allowed her, she marched over to the summer house steps, climbed them, then leant over the shelf and threw the broken bottleneck into the river. It made no sound over the roar of the waterfall. She waited a moment to turn round, smoothing the stray hairs of her wig that were almost shining with the thin rain’s gleam. This was to calm herself. She hated to give in to anger, I knew. To give in to her feelings for me.

  A burst of black and white. The fat magpie was back, this time on the roof.

  ‘To get back to the matter at hand,’ Anna said. ‘The cloaked figure surprised Peter while he was trying the summer house door.’ She put her hand to it and pressed gently, as if to test it somehow.

  The bird began to jump up and down, making the roof creak something terrible. Anna was speaking but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t stop watching the magpie, because it was watching me, waggling its head and opening its wings and—

  Coming for me.

  I ducked, but not low enough. The talons grazed my scalp. I wheeled round, couldn’t see where it had gone for my wig had fallen in front of my eyes and I was reeling as if I’d licked all the spirits from the tree. Would that I had.

  A hand under my arm, Anna beside me, and I was steady. I pawed the hair from my face and saw that the bird was hovering in the air, not five feet from us, meeting our gaze.

  ‘Whatever do you suppose …’ Anna murmured.

  Another magpie joined it, and another. Three of them, then more. Far more than I could count. They whirled in from the trees on all sides of the clearing, streaming across the river. All manner of birds, a blur of beating wings, of cries. I didn’t dare move in case they should come at us. Who knew what drew them in such numbers? Who knew their desires? The air hummed with their held flight, beating the mizzle into our eyes.

  Then they were leaving, flying away from us. But not far.

  ‘The summer house,’ I shouted over the noise. ‘Look – they’re trying to get in!’

  But the foolish beasts hadn’t chosen the weak point of the door. The birds were throwing themselves at the opposite side. One after another the birds flew straight into the slats just above where they met the stony outcrop on which the summer house was built. Flew into the same spot, fighting each other for their turn. The sound of their bodies hitting the wood was a dull crump, and most then fell to the ground where a heap of dead birds was building. Those who weren’t killed outright, just stunned, flew again until they were broken in the attempt.

  ‘Something has sent them mad,’ Anna said.

  ‘They’re not mad – they’re showing us.’

  I picked my way between the bodies scattered across the clearing, some of them tw
itching. There were few left living now, but those that were still hurled themselves at the same spot on the summer house. A patch of the white wood was stained with blood, a rough circle, the edges of which ran into spatters. Two of the boards were splintered, thanks to the birds’ efforts. I had to push aside the heap of bodies to get close. They were so soft I thought I’d be sick with the horror of touching their breasts, their wings. The breaking of their little bones as I knelt in the ruin of them. There were too many, sliding in my hands now the rain fell heavier, fell cold dripping down the back of my collar.

  ‘Help me, Anna!’

  She dropped to her knees beside me, in that pit of death, and for a moment could do nothing but gasp and then sob.

  ‘I don’t … Why …?’

  ‘These boards – help me get them out. Give me your knife.’

  I slashed at the splinters while she used her walking stick to ram the broken boards. Cooler air blew from within, and the rain was falling heavier and heavier. I could hear its dripping loud in my ears. The last bit of broken board fell inwards and then I knew that the dripping wasn’t the rain. I’d heard it before, on the edge of sleep in the summer house. Peter Haskell had heard it too. Now it was Anna’s turn.

  ‘A spring? Feeding the river?’

  I bent myself small and stepped sideways through the hole we’d made, having to crouch for the roof was low. I was in a cave, the floor of the summer house above, I guessed. And before me was something I had seen before. The little pool set in the ground, ringed with moor stones and moss. I had seen the saint drowned here.

  ‘It’s a well,’ I said. ‘A holy well.’

  Anna climbed in beside me and we were pressed together in that cramped space. I could barely turn my head to look about me. I took a few steps into the darkness of the cave but then my foot met something. Something soft. For a moment I thought it was another bird. A big one – a hawk. I reached down and found, not feathers, but cloth. Hair. Flesh.

  It was Paul Haskell, lying face down in the water of the holy well.

  THIRTY

  We carried him out and laid him on the ground, away from the birds’ bodies. His poor hands were bound. His sandy hair was dark with water and his cheeks were blue. We were too late.

  ‘Wait, wait.’ Anna was patting him as if trying to wake him from sleep. ‘He’s cold but … I don’t understand. No discolouration.’ She bent her ear to his mouth.

  My own breath stopped. The likeness between the boys was so great, it was as if Peter lay before me. I wondered if it was Peter. If the blinded figure had come back in the night and taken the boy from his bed. Yesterday had come again and Paul was still missing.

  Anna crowed. ‘He’s alive! Help me sit him up.’

  His little body was chilled to the touch, his face and the top of his chest soaked from being in the well water. At his temple was a bruise, large as a shilling and dark as a sloe. He looked dead, but I could see now that his chest was lifting and falling. Slowly. Too slowly.

  I ran to the summer house and fetched whatever clothing was nearest the door. It was only when I’d wrapped Paul in it that I saw it was Mrs Williams’s best travelling coat. Anna was tapping the boy’s cheeks, calling on him to wake.

  He took a deeper breath, something more like a sob, and I gave a cheer.

  Anna got hold of her walking stick again. ‘We need to get him back to his family, Shilly, and in front of a fire, quick as we can. With my foot like this—’

  ‘I’ll carry him.’

  ‘He’s a dead weight, the state he’s in. We should go upstream, see if we can find David Tonkin.’

  She was shilly-shallying, her fingers fluttering near her lips.

  ‘There’s no time,’ I said. ‘I can do it. Have some faith in me for once, Anna Drake.’

  I hefted the boy, and with Anna’s help tipped him over my shoulder. She wasn’t wrong about the weight of him, but my blood was coursing, my lungs were singing. We had found him, alive. The Haskells could stop their weeping.

  I started to walk, carrying my burden, and after a few teetering steps, green as a new lamb, I was steady. Slow, but safe. Anna darted back to the hole in the boards.

  ‘Go on, Shilly. I’ll catch you up. I need to see …’

  I heard no more. I was taking Paul Haskell home.

  I carried him as far as the first of the cottages. There we were seen and people came running. He was taken from me. I fell to the ground without him, shaking from the labour, from the relief. Anna was with me when I slipped into darkness.

  They brought me round with what was good for me, best for me. Gin. I sputtered fire and lurched into Anna’s arms, and then the magpies were before me again, swooping low, their wings outstretched, coming for me. I cried out and covered my eyes.

  ‘There now,’ a voice said.

  I forced myself to open my eyes. Mrs Haskell was offering me the cup again. Her dark shawl was as tightly wrapped around her as ever. Its cloth against my arm was coarse, but her voice held nothing but kindness.

  ‘You’re all right now, my bird.’

  I grabbed the cup to tip down my throat all it held, but Anna took it from me.

  ‘That’s plenty for her, Mrs Haskell.’

  The old woman patted my hand then moved away, chirping to the three girls clustered by the window.

  Aches rang through my arms, my shoulders. I looked about me for the birds lying in wait. They might steal down the chimney. They might burst through the floorboards. The boards splintering. The water dripping. The child with his face in the well water.

  ‘Paul. Is he—?’

  ‘He’ll be right enough soon,’ Mrs Haskell said. ‘We’ve warmed him, fed him. Bit of rest in his own bed and he’ll be out trapping rabbits soon as you like.’

  She stroked the littlest girl’s hair, Esther’s, but she was looking at me. I spoke to myself sternly. I was inside, beneath a roof. There were no birds to peer at me, to fly low with their talons out. There was glass in the window and slate on the roof. There was Anna beside me.

  ‘That’s twice in two days you’ve saved my grandsons, Mrs Williams. Whatever it was that brought you here, it has been well for us. For the woods.’

  ‘Luck, merely,’ Anna murmured, but without much heart. ‘Our sketching holiday has held some … surprises.’

  Mrs Haskell smiled and pulled her shawl tighter around her neck. ‘Fair enough, Miss Drake. Not everything needs an answer.’

  Answers … We had precious few of those. I thought of the ruined mill she’d said had burnt her, where there had been no fire. Of the thieving, and the coal left behind. Of poxed babies and scullery girls itching. Of women, without eyes, stealing children. Of Miss Franks, blinded, scratched and smothered. Of Mathilda drawing – that shape, over and over. I couldn’t fathom what it was, though some cobwebbed bit of my thinking knew it. If I could only get hold of it. And still to discover – who was it that took Paul Haskell, that tried to take Peter?

  Boards creaked overhead. The magpies jouncing. Mrs Haskell caught me looking up at the sound.

  ‘His mother and father are with him, and his brother too. Couldn’t keep Peter out! To see them side by side again, my nestle-birds.’ Her hand on Esther’s hair shook.

  The girl ducked from her grandmother’s touch. ‘Can we go out now?’

  ‘No, my sweet. We must all be here together, for your brother.’

  Jenna, the eldest, kicked her heels against the wall. The room felt very crowded, and with the rain on the window I almost felt as if I was cramped back beneath the summer house and the holy well dripping. I reached for the gin bottle but Anna set it on the window ledge. The middle sister looked at me as if I was a worm or some-such that she had scraped from the bottom of her boot.

  ‘Has he said how he came to be below the summer house?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Anna said, ‘and he might not speak for some time. He had water but no food, not for days. He’s very weak.’

  There was the sound of a door
opening above, then feet coming down the stairs. Anna got up to let Maria Haskell sit down, but Maria waved away the offer. She and James squeezed themselves next to the fireplace. They looked spent by the force of relief. They were stronger than they had been, now the boy was back, but that couldn’t undo the strain.

  ‘Peter still with him?’ Mrs Haskell asked.

  ‘Won’t leave Paul’s side,’ Maria said. ‘Couldn’t bring myself to part them.’

  ‘How is Paul?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s awake, and he knows where he is,’ James said. Maria put her arm around her husband’s shoulder and he leant his head against hers. ‘That’s enough for us for now.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you,’ Anna said, ‘has Paul spoken of what happened? It’s possible that whoever did this to him is still at large. Others might be at risk.’

  ‘You’ve no cause to worry there,’ Mrs Haskell said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The furriners,’ Mrs Haskell said. ‘Sarah was over there, saw the older one dead in her chair.’

  ‘Spying still?’ I said.

  ‘Keeping watch. That pair weren’t to be trusted. We’re all better off now. The other one will leave, if she knows what’s good for her, and then we’ll be without worry. It was them that hid Paul, left him to die.’

  ‘Is that what Paul said?’ I asked.

  James and Maria glanced at one another, then Maria said, ‘He don’t remember, but that don’t mean it weren’t the furrin pair.’

  ‘What does he remember?’ Anna said.

  ‘He was setting his snare by the old gatepost, near their cottage. Something hit him. He came to in the dark, hearing water.’

  ‘Beneath the summer house,’ I said. ‘So he remembers nothing between those places?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘A voice told Paul to go back to sleep, to wait. Said he would keep my boy safe.’

  ‘He?’ Anna said.

  ‘Saint Nectan,’ I said.

  ‘Paul didn’t see him,’ Maria said, ‘but he knows the saint was there.’

  ‘And the saint has done what he promised, hasn’t he?’ James said. ‘All that time Paul was locked in there and yet he lives. Nectan protects us from those who come to do us harm.’