The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Haskell,’ Anna said, which I knew to be a sign she was going to say something these people would find rude, ‘but how can Paul be sure it was the saint speaking to him?’

  ‘Because this was in his pocket.’

  We all turned to where the voice had come from. Peter was on the stairs. How long he’d been there, I didn’t know. He came down, into the room, and held out his hand to Anna. She hesitated, then took what he was offering – some tiny, shining thing, so small it was almost lost between her fingers. The girls crowded round her, catching hold of her hand and trying to look at what it held.

  ‘What is it?’ their grandmother asked.

  Tamsin, the middle girl, turned and grinned. ‘A bell. Smaller than a thimble.’

  Her elder sister snatched it from Anna and there was a faint ring, as if a church was calling its flock from fields away. We all heard it.

  Anna, caught in the nest of children, looked like she might not be able to keep her scorn silent much longer. I said we would leave the Haskells to themselves. James saw us to the door.

  Anna spoke to him in a low voice. ‘If Paul should remember anything more about how he came to be under the summer house—’

  ‘You heard Mother,’ he said. ‘The witch is dead. Throw her over the waterfall and let the sea have her.’ He was smiling as he shut the door.

  THIRTY-ONE

  We found ourselves in the rain. Proper rain now. The kind that surprised the dry summer earth and turned it swiftly to mud. I caught sight of Jenna’s face at the window and moved away from the shelter of the cottage walls, back under the trees and for once I was glad of their thickety ways. Anna followed me, slowly. Her thoughts were far from her feet.

  Over the sound of rain dripping from the branches I heard the tap tap of Anna’s tongue against her false teeth and knew that I should help her in her thinking.

  ‘The bell in Paul’s pocket—’

  ‘Signifies nothing, Shilly. A trinket the boy found before he ended up in the summer house. He could have stolen it from Miss Franks and Mathilda.’

  ‘Oh yes? And how do you explain the voice that told the boy he’d keep him safe?’

  ‘A delusion brought on by the blow to the head. You saw the bruise. Whoever took Paul made sure he was insensible.’

  ‘But they didn’t kill him,’ I said. ‘They just left him in the summer house and then the saint kept him alive.’

  ‘The water kept him alive. It’s remarkable how long the body can go without food if water is in supply.’

  ‘And if your head is stuck in it? Paul was face down in the well water, Anna. Drowned, and yet he lives. His face has no swelling. His flesh is firm. If not the saint’s doing, how do you explain it?’

  ‘Easily enough. Paul half-woke from thirst, moments before we found him, and drank from the well. While doing so he passed out again and fell into the water. It was him moving that alerted the birds.’

  ‘And the reason for the birds doing as they did? Killing themselves like that to show us where Paul was? The birds who keep near the saint’s tree?’

  ‘Perhaps there is some poison in the tree, something that affects the birds’ natural instincts to survive. Perhaps …’

  I let her run out of certainty. I had learnt that was the best way. On the moor, in the woods, wherever we were in Cornwall, there were things she couldn’t make sense of. Things she needed me for. She just didn’t like to admit it.

  ‘If the saint did ring the bell to warn of danger, if he kept Paul Haskell safe, if his birds were his way of showing us where the boy was hidden, then the sisters might be here too. The ones who buried the saint beneath the river. Who drowned him first.’

  ‘Not this again, Shilly!’ She stepped away from me, liking to be out in the rain rather than close to someone who countered her. ‘Miss Franks and Mathilda are as sighted as you and me.’ She saw my pained look, and added hastily, ‘Yes all right. Miss Franks has been blinded in one eye, but they both have eyes. What you saw that first night we were here, the two women drowning the old man … It was just a dream. A nightmare.’

  ‘You can believe that if you want, Anna. I believe different.’

  ‘That they’re back – the sisters who drowned the saint? On a sketching holiday, are they? Difficult when you can’t see what you’re meant to be drawing.’

  ‘The woods aren’t at peace,’ I said. ‘You’ve admitted you feel it. What if – and I’m not saying I know for sure.’

  ‘Well that makes a refreshing change.’

  ‘What if the woods have brought back the blinded women? Brought them back from the dead. Set them wandering here and causing pain.’

  She laughed. ‘I think you’ve been lying to me, Shilly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you can read, and you have been reading. The work of the poets. That’s where these fanciful notions come from. Ghosts of the long-dead attendants of a saint. I ask you!’

  ‘I …’ Now it was my turn to run out of certainty.

  Anna took her chance and was back to known things. ‘There are two real women who need our attention. Miss Franks’ body is still in the cottage.’

  ‘And Mathilda is tied to the bedpost.’

  ‘We must inform the authorities of the death. Fortunately, there’s a magistrate within walking distance.’

  She set out but I grabbed her back.

  ‘You surely don’t mean going to see the squire?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘He’ll want to know that Paul has been found, too.’

  ‘But we still don’t know why the squire went to see Miss Franks and Mathilda in Boscastle.’

  ‘You mean, Shilly, that we still don’t know if he even did go and see them.’

  ‘Why does he want rid of them so badly, then? We can’t trust him!’

  Anna unshackled herself from me. ‘You must think practically for once, forget these ill-founded fears. Even if we went further afield to report Miss Franks’ death, to Boscastle, say, Squire Orton would still become involved because of his proximity to the place where she died. It’s likely to be in his jurisdiction.’

  ‘You’re thinking about the reward, aren’t you? Admit it, Anna! We’ve found Paul so now we can go and collect. Except there’s a problem, isn’t there? One of the people the squire was so certain was guilty, it’s them who’s dead.’

  ‘I am not thinking of the reward. I’m thinking of the stench of a body kept too long from the grave. One of us must be mindful of practical considerations, or would you rather do as James Haskell suggested, tip Miss Franks over the waterfall?’

  ‘Of course not, it’s just … I’m afraid, Anna.’

  ‘Well, try and think of this as an opportunity to ease your fears. In reporting the death, we have a legitimate reason for calling on the squire. We can use this to ascertain what he knew of Miss Franks and Mathilda.’

  ‘And if we should find out something bad, some reason for him wanting them dead, what then? To say a magistrate is guilty of a crime – who would believe us?’

  Anna looked at me as if I was talking of the blinded sisters again, or some other thing she thought a kind of madness. ‘Why, the law would believe us, Shilly.’

  ‘Constables? They wouldn’t help us, from what I know of them, and neither would other magistrates. They don’t know what truth is.’

  ‘We will know the truth when we find it. At the very least we can tell the squire that Paul is safe. What the squire tells us … Well. We shall see what happens.’

  We set off.

  Now that Paul was safely home, I had time to think about the way we’d found him. The birds wrecking themselves – that I was sure was the saint’s doing, for all Anna’s talk of poisons. But if she wouldn’t – couldn’t – make sense of that yet, then it was better to talk of firm, touchable things. Things like boards and nails.

  ‘When you went back to the summer house,’ I said, ‘you were checking the boards that the birds broke through, weren’t you
?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s no access to the cave, the cellar, whatever you want to call it, from the summer house’s upper floor – our floor. Whoever took Paul had to have another means of getting in there.’

  ‘And did you find it?’ I said.

  ‘I think so. Between the birds’ efforts and our own we’d done a good job of ruining the boards, but I found a piece of wood that looked to have some kind of catch fitted. As best I could tell it was fitted on the underside – the side that faced the well. Nothing would be visible from the outside but if the board was pressed in just the right place, the catch would release and the board would pop free.’

  ‘That’s why his hands were bound,’ I said, ‘to stop him pushing out the boards himself. But he had his voice. I heard the water from the floor above. I would have heard him too if he’d shouted.’

  ‘It is strange to put him in a place that risked discovery. It suggests that whoever took the boy might not have worried about him being found. It was the taking that mattered.’

  ‘To cause pain to the Haskells?’ I said.

  ‘It was only their boys taken. A personal grievance?’ Anna pulled her sleeve free of a bramble.

  ‘The others, they only had belongings stolen – Richard Bray’s spoon, Sarah’s mirror.’

  ‘Things of no importance.’

  ‘Important to the people who own them, Anna. If you haven’t much then—’

  ‘What you do have is worth more. I understand that. You may not think it, but I do.’

  We’d come to the small break in the trees that gave a glimpse of the quarry and the great open heart of it took my words from me. There we stopped and looked across the pit to the other side where a pony and cart stood waiting in the rain. The wheel atop the wooden struts, the poppet head, was still, was silent. No blocks hauled out today, and I shared the quarry’s quiet. The rushing I’d felt since we’d first come to Trethevy, the hurrying to find Paul while there was still a chance to save him, this had left me. In its place I felt the weight of my own bones.

  I turned to go, then grabbed Anna.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Shh. Look.’

  Someone was coming through the trees. Softly. Not crashing through as we so often did. Someone who knew how to slip by. They were coming from the direction of the road, and making for the manor house, just as we were.

  We stepped back, using the ferns to hide. He didn’t see us. Crossed our path ten paces ahead.

  Simon Proctor. Him of the horses, him of the card-playing. His hands—I gasped.

  They were bruised blue with dye.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘Considering a change of career, Mr Proctor?’

  He spun round at Anna’s words. His lean face was beset by lines he wasn’t old enough to have. Stubble darkened his chin and patches of his cheeks. Some need was pulling him away. His thin body, clad in muddied working clothes, was all but leaning in the direction of the manor house.

  ‘Forgive me, I—’

  ‘I’d have thought seeing to horses would be better work than dyeing cloth for David Tonkin,’ I said. ‘Them dye smells’ll have you coughing day and night, and it stains, doesn’t it? Hard to get yourself clean.’

  Slowly, as if to make it seem like a very ordinary thing, he tucked his bluish hands behind his back. This made him stand like a gentleman, but he wasn’t that. I had seen men like him before. Men pinched by worry. Eaten out by it.

  ‘You’re confusing me with someone else, miss,’ he said, his voice harder now. He wore no coat and his shirt was sticking to his flesh in the rain. There was a blue stain near the collar.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you come and sit on this bit of moor stone here and we’ll have a little talk.’

  Anna smiled at him, water dripping from her wig. ‘Unless you’d rather take shelter in the cottages? Richard Bray will be glad to hear the fate of his christening spoon, I’m sure.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He started walking away.

  ‘I think Simon would like us to go with him to the manor house,’ I said loudly.

  ‘An excellent idea, Shilly. We can tell the squire he has a magpie in his midst.’

  Simon’s shoulders slumped. Without turning round, he said, ‘If it’s money you want, I’ve nothing. Nothing but the shirt on my back and that mightn’t be with me much longer.’

  ‘We only want the truth,’ Anna said. ‘That shouldn’t cost you anything. Come, sit.’

  He did as she said, perching on a slab overlooking the quarry and looking very miserable and cold. Sold his coat for debts, I thought. I felt pity for him. I wasn’t the only one in the woods with a weakness.

  ‘You stole from Miss Franks and Miss Wolffs, didn’t you?’ Anna said. ‘And from the cottages this side of the river.’

  ‘Tried to get taken on down there,’ he said, nodding towards the quarry pit. ‘Better pay, but I don’t know how to work slate. You can’t tell the squire about my … about this.’ He looked at his blue palms as if they were hateful to him.

  ‘You should burn your cards,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it for you, if you like.’

  ‘Cards?’

  ‘Isn’t that why you took to stealing?’ Anna said. ‘You’ve run up debts?’

  He laughed, which was not what I thought such a poor man would do at that moment.

  ‘If it was only that,’ he said. ‘You have a debt, you pay it. Problem goes away, long as you don’t pick up the cards again. But when someone’s ill and the doctor says you must keep paying …’

  Anna took a step back. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  And in that moment I knew I’d been right to wonder about the smaller parts of the lives around us.

  ‘It’s not him that’s ill,’ I said. ‘It’s Lucy.’

  ‘The scullery maid?’ Anna said.

  I sat next to Simon on the moor stone. The deep cold crept into my flesh. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re courting.’

  ‘Known her all my life. Played together in the woods, the old mill. I been waiting years for her to … Well. It’d all come good at last, I thought.’

  ‘But now she’s ill.’

  Simon was gazing at the quarry again. ‘She don’t want anyone to know. If the squire should learn of it he’ll turn her out. It’s the child coming. He’s that worried about Lady Phoebe.’ Simon scored the wet ground with the toe of his boot. A wide slash, with the rain’s softening.

  ‘If it’s catching, then the squire has a right to be concerned,’ Anna said.

  ‘It’s not catching. Not in that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  He hesitated.

  ‘We could ask Lucy ourselves,’ I said, standing. ‘I’m sure she’d be delighted at that.’

  ‘It’s in the blood,’ Simon said. ‘You either have it or you don’t. Her mother did, and she kept it secret. Lucy thought she’d been spared, getting to her age and none of the marks. But then she found one. They came fast after that.’

  ‘Cattle worms?’ I said, knowing the red rings from the farm and thinking of Lucy scratching.

  Simon shook his head. ‘She knew what it was, her mother having had it. The marks come first, before the tips break the skin. They’re coming now, that’s why she’s had to go to bed. The pain of the tips pushing.’

  ‘Tips?’ Anna said.

  He looked at us both in turn, took a deep breath. ‘The tips of the feathers.’

  We none of us said anything for a moment. Anna couldn’t speak for disbelief, and I thought best to let her find her voice in her own time. She did find it, of course, as she always did when she was scornful.

  ‘You’re telling us, Mr Proctor, that Lucy, the scullery maid at the manor house, has feathers growing from her skin.’

  ‘You can’t tell the squire. Please!’

  ‘Oh, I won’t, you’ve no cause to worry on that score. I have
no wish to appear as if I’ve lost my wits.’

  ‘Feathers?’ I said, making sure I looked him in the eye, gave him faith that I believed him.

  ‘That’s what she says, and she would know. Paining her something terrible and I’ve got to help her, I’ve got to.’

  ‘And what does the doctor make of this?’ Anna said.

  ‘He believes her pain and he’s offering the salve—’

  ‘You mean he’s a quack, taking your money to treat flea bites caused by that wretched cat.’

  ‘Anna!’

  ‘If I had to suffer Mrs Carne I might try a similar ploy to evade work, but there have been consequences to Lucy’s games, Simon. Serious ones. You’ve been stealing to pay the quack, haven’t you?’

  Simon hung his head. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘That’s questionable,’ Anna said, ‘and so is the fact you took advantage of the suspicion already held against Miss Franks and Miss Wolffs to hide your own guilt. You left the coal to put the blame on them.’

  ‘What harm could it do if people thought it just more of their tricks?’

  ‘A great deal of harm,’ I said. ‘One of them is dead. Murdered.’

  Simon’s eyes widened and I thought of Miss Franks’ staring eye, and the other one raked to water.

  ‘Murdered? By who?’

  ‘That is still to be determined,’ Anna said. ‘We were on our way to inform the squire in his capacity as magistrate when you appeared, a marked man.’ She nodded at his blue hands.

  ‘That’s what you were doing at the cottage on the day Paul went missing,’ I said. ‘Stealing.’

  ‘They could spare it,’ he said. ‘Just like the squire and Lady Phoebe. She keeps to her bed all day in the east wing when there’s nothing wrong with her, no one to disturb her, while others are scrubbing and hauling pots and fighting spoilt pets from dawn ’til dusk.’

  ‘Were you lying about not knowing who took Paul?’ Anna said.

  ‘All I saw was the boy by the gatepost on my way to the cottage. He’s been found – did you hear? They’re saying the saint kept him alive.’