She marched through the village at a swift pace, offering only the slightest of nods to the neighbours who greeted her and ignoring Jocelyn and her daughter Brigit altogether when they said hello. Since she had resolved that she was going to leave the village, Madeleine had stopped bothering with niceties to those who she felt didn't deserve it.
When she arrived at the shack, she was surprised to see that Ondine wasn't already sat outside, given that it was such a nice day. She went to knock on the door, but before she could do so Ondine's voice drifted out from within the cottage.
“Come in, Maude.”
Madeleine frowned. She must have made more noise than she thought. She reluctantly stooped down into Ondine's home, and set her basket delicately down on a small patch of bare surface in the kitchen.
She found it difficult, the way Ondine chose to live. The organised chaos, the amassed rubbish that Ondine insisted on treating as treasure, the sense that she was being watched the whole time she was inside. She jumped as a pigeon rustled out from beneath a woodpile and fluttered past her ear. It settled on a rack where rags had been left to dry out, and cooed reproachfully at her. Madeleine decided that perhaps she shouldn't leave her basket of food out here after all, and picked it up again. Clutching it to her more closely, and keeping her eyes trained on the pigeon, she slipped through to the next room, where Ondine was slouched in a wicker chair. She was working on the same strange knitting on her fingers that she always did.
“Hello, Ondine,” Madeleine said brightly. “I've brought you a basket.” She placed it carefully on a nearby stool, and then sat herself down on a similar chair the other side of the room. She took a deep breath, and considered how she should start. But Ondine didn't give her a chance.
“So, Maude,” Ondine said quietly, her fingers moving more deftly on her knitting than Madeleine thought an old woman's hands should be able to. “I take it that you've finally come to talk to me about your visit to Faerie?”
Madeleine froze. She felt the blood draining from her face, her mind swirling.
“Don't look like that,” Ondine said sharply. “Oh, come now.”
She put the knitting aside and rose from her chair, disappearing off for a moment before returning with a bottle of something that Madeleine smelled long before it was forced to her lips. There was no resisting Ondine's insistent hand and so Madeleine took a long draught. Although the strength of the liquor made her cough, it did also make her feel better.
“There,” Ondine said, as though she could also feel the warmth that was spreading through Madeleine after taking the drink.
Madeleine's mind was still reeling.
“You knew,” she said finally. “The minute you found me.”
“I suspected,” Ondine corrected her.
“How?” Madeleine asked weakly.
“That stone you wear around your neck.” Ondine picked up her knitting again, but looked at the lump in the middle of Madeleine's chest where her jumper pulled across the stone beneath. “The hagstone. There have been stories about it in these parts for generations.”
“Does anyone else here know about it?” Madeleine tried to sound neutral as the panic rose in her mind.
Ondine shook her head. “Not many. And definitely not anyone in this village. And besides, far as most people are concerned it disappeared a very long time ago.”
Madeleine slumped back in relief.
“So tell me,” Ondine said. “How did you come across it?”
Madeleine hesitated. She hadn't decided how much she was going to confess to; but then it seemed like there wasn't much left that Ondine didn't know about, anyway.
“The hagstone is what brought me here in the first place,” she said carefully. “I was looking for it when I met Fraser. But meeting him – having Tabitha – that changed everything. It didn't seem important anymore.”
Ondine just looked at her. Why did Madeleine always get the sense that Ondine already knew everything that she was saying? She ploughed on with her story anyway.
“I was reading with Tab in the library,” Madeleine said slowly, “when I found a book which mentioned them. And I couldn't get it out of my head. So I went back to my old diary, and when I was reading through my notes I realised that I knew where it was buried.”
“It was never supposed to be dug up,” Ondine murmured, frowning.
She looked awfully sad, Madeleine thought.
“How do you know about it, anyway?” Madeleine asked sharply, but Ondine shook her head.
“There's not time to go into that,” she said. “Fraser and Tabitha will be back soon, and I feel that you have more to tell me before then.”
Madeleine hesitated again. There was so much she wanted to say; so much that she couldn't.
“I don't know how I went to Faerie,” she said shortly. “I suppose I must have used the stone, somehow, but I don't know how it became a door. I certainly haven't been able to get back again.”
Ondine still looked knowing; still looked sadly at her. Madeleine couldn't bear for her to look at her like that.
“But what I really need to talk to you about is Tabitha,” she said, steeling herself.
“She's a good girl,” Ondine said softly.
“The most brilliant in the world,” Madeleine said, feeling her heart break. She began again, speaking even more carefully than she had been a moment ago. “I told you that I came here for the hagstone,” she said, and then paused. “Well, I was sent here to find it.”
Ondine had stopped knitting, and Madeleine got the sense that what she was saying now was finally something that Ondine didn't already know.
“I work – worked – for somewhere called the Iron Court,” she said. “They are based in a place called the Iron City. That is, without a doubt, the safest place in the country; they have the strongest forces of any group of men anywhere.”
“But they let you go? When you decided not to go back?”
Madeleine shook her head. “They don't know where I am now.” She paused again, fidgeting with her skirts. “Ondine, if anything… strange starts to happen here – if anything dangerous, or out of the ordinary, were to happen – the Iron City would be the safest place for anyone to be. If anything – anything strange were to happen, that's where I would want Tab to go.”
Ondine remained quiet.
“I just wanted to tell you, Ondine,” Madeleine said in a rush, “because I can't be the only one who knows it. Anything could happen to me. And if it did, and one day something was to threaten the village, I would want to know that there was someone here who could tell Tabitha where to go – to send her to the Iron City. Could you do that for me, Ondine?”
Ondine stared at her hands, and then put her knitting aside and rubbed her brow. “Yes, Maude,” she said slowly. “I would tell Tabitha to go to your Iron City.”
Madeleine suddenly felt very guilty. She wondered again whether there wasn't something a bit witchlike about her mother-in-law, who she was sure had seen straight through her excuses; but then perhaps that might be for the best, to have a witch looking out for Tabitha.
“Thank you, Ondine,” she said, and suddenly it was an effort for her to keep from trembling. She truly had nothing to keep her from leaving, now.
“Maude,” Ondine said, thoughtfully. “When you went to Faerie. Was it a nice place, there? Were you safe?”
Madeleine flushed. “For a while I felt the safest I had ever been,” she said quietly.
Ondine nodded, but then added mildly, “I don't believe that all of it's quite like that.”
Madeleine frowned.
“I'm glad you came back to us, Maude,” Ondine said, returning to her knitting once more. “Tabitha would have been devastated otherwise.”
Madeleine wasn't sure if this was intended as a warning, but she was prevented the need to defend herself when Tabitha herself came bowling into the room.
“Mama!” She cried, rushing straight to Madeleine. “I caught three fish, and Papa says that
even you didn't catch that many to begin with!”
“Clever, talented thing,” Madeleine said fondly, tucking a strand of hair behind Tabitha's ear. “You will be the best fisherman in the village before long.”
Tabitha tugged away from the fussing at her hair, and raced to her grandmother. “Papa is just coming,” she said. “He said I could run ahead.”
“How lovely that you did,” Ondine said. “Why don't you get the tarts out of that basket your Mama has brought me? We can all have one.”
Delighted that she was allowed a treat, Tabitha began rummaging through the basket and selected the four most perfect tarts, choosing carefully which one went to Madeleine and which one went to Ondine. Madeleine watched her beautiful, thoughtful daughter, and knew that if she didn't leave soon, then she never would.
12
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a very hot afternoon, and everything was very still. Fraser was working in the garden, humming to himself as he plucked the ripe fruits from the trees. They had come early this year and the wasps were already moving in on the windfall produce, so there was a bit of a rush to get them in. Or at least, as much of a rush as anyone could bother with on such a baking hot day.
Madeleine watched her partner from the window, trying to memorise the lines of his body, the way that he moved between the trees. She had loved him once, and he had been good to her, a doting father. He had given her a home and a daughter and peaceful years that she had never imagined for herself. She wanted to remember him fondly. Madeleine exhaled, and silently wished Fraser a happy life. He deserved better than she had given him in the end. She got quietly to her feet, and padded through to the other room.
Tabitha was fast asleep, spreadeagled across her bed in a tangle of sheets and limbs. She was exhausted from a morning swimming with her mother in the river, and she didn't stir when Madeleine came in. Asleep, with her usual serious expression wiped from her face, Madeleine was struck by how closely her daughter resembled her. She hovered in the doorway, and stared hungrily at her tiny, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl. She would never be able to look at her for long enough. Heaving a heavy sigh, Madeleine finally slipped into the room and perched on the edge of Tabitha's bed, shaking her gently into semi-consciousness. Tabitha stirred, but her eyes remained closed. She moaned softly, unwilling to be woken up from such a deep sleep.
“Here, darling,” Madeleine whispered, “I want you to wear Mama’s necklace.”
She tenderly but firmly manoeuvred Tabitha into a seated position, and tied the thong around her neck. She was desperate to take her daughter in her arms, to engulf her in one last, giant hug before she had to leave, but she was too afraid of waking her up properly and being unable to find the strength to go. And so she just gently lowered her daughter back down to her nap, and kissed her softly on the forehead.
Tears streaming silently down her face now, Madeleine withdrew. She didn't know what to say, what she could ever say to her daughter to make up for her leaving her. On top of her own anguish, Madeleine also felt tremendously guilty for leaving her daughter to this life while she returned to the Iron City. But she couldn’t see any other way of keeping both Tabitha and the hagstone safe. She knew that, realistically, her daughter was heading for a life in which she would never leave this tucked-away corner of Bretan, and that she wouldn't want to leave her home or her father. It was better for Tabitha, Madeleine reasoned, if she grew up never wanting anything more than to settle down with a nice young man who she loved, to have a contented life here in the village. And that would mean that the stone would remain here, in safe hands, but in so remote and uneventful a location that it couldn't possibly pose any threat to anyone. She was sure it wouldn't – she still didn't even really know whether it could open a doorway again.
Madeleine walked slowly down to the river, to the boat where she had already stashed everything that she needed. She hadn't taken much – just the knives and books she had kept stashed away in the rafters of her room for all these years, a change of clothes, and some food supplies that she had carefully gathered over the past few weeks so that nothing would be noticed missing. Madeleine slid the boat out into the water and lifted the sail. She made one final check that everything was in place. Yes; there was nothing else that needed doing now. She sailed downriver, towards the island, and then pulled ashore when she was almost at sea.
Standing ankle-deep in the shallows, Madeleine took a deep breath, and then lifted the hammer that had already helped her once and smashed in the side of the boat. It began filling with water, and she let it. This was the one thing that she hadn't been able to end tidily; the family would be without a boat until they found this one. And although she was careful not to damage anything that would be too difficult to fix, there was still the risk that the boat wouldn't be found at all. She knew the tides here, and would do her best to make sure the boat washed up where someone would spot it, but it was still possible that Fraser and Tabitha would go without a boat for some weeks or months. She regretted not having been able to come up with a better plan, but this one played into Fraser's preexisting worries about her trip out to the island, and so it had seemed the story he was most likely to believe: that she had tried to sail out there again, wrecked the boat, and drowned.
Madeleine waited until the tide flowed back into the estuary, then pushed the destroyed boat out onto the river and began running swiftly away from the village.
13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ondine was sat quietly inside her house, knitting a new jumper for Tabitha. Fraser had raged at her that she wasn't doing enough to help search for Maude, and that sitting and knitting wasn't helping anybody. But as far as Ondine was concerned, Maude would only be found if she wanted to be. And so although she could see that Fraser was frantic with worry, had barely slept since Maude's disappearance, and was outraged that his mother wasn't joining in the search tramping up and down the riverside, she continued to sit in the house and knit, and didn't mind when he grew angry with her. He never had understood the meditative powers of knitting. But Ondine had always found it an excellent activity for stilling the mind.
She wound another loop of wool around her fingers, and then paused at the click of her front door. She was hit by the wave of grief before Fraser even reached her, and she knew then that there must be news.
Fraser emerged from the shadows. He remained in the doorway with his head hung low, and Ondine prepared herself for the worst.
“We found the boat,” he whispered. His eyes were red-rimmed, violently shadowed underneath. “It was wrecked, washed ashore further downstream. It will need so much work to repair it.”
Ondine didn't comment on the fact that her son's first concern was for the boat. People grieved in different ways, after all. But she noticed it, all the same.
“She must have gone back to the island,” Fraser said, and his eyes roved frantically around the room, as if searching for something. “Why would she go back there, Ma? I can't understand it. I told her it was dangerous.” He still lingered in the doorway, his limbs all loose as though they also knew that he was utterly helpless. His voice shook. “I thought we'd got past all this strangeness when you spoke to her.”
Ondine put her knitting aside and held out her arms. Old as he was, Fraser fell trembling to a pile at her knees and allowed his mother to embrace him. But although she stroked his hair and murmured softly to him as though he were still a little boy, Ondine's mind was elsewhere.
Ondine loved her son, but she loved her granddaughter more. And so as she tried to make sure that his grief didn't wrench Fraser apart, it was Tabitha that Ondine thought of. The poor girl wouldn't cope with a broken father now that her mother was gone; she was still in shock at Maude's disappearance.
Ondine considered things very carefully. If Fraser knew what Maude had said to her, Ondine thought, then he might not recover from the knowledge of it. It was painful enough for him that he had lost Maude; it would be far worse if he thought there
was a possibility that he had lost her because she had decided to leave him. And if he went to pieces, then Tabitha would be without both parents.
Honestly, it baffled her. How could Fraser be so stupid as not to realise that, in all likelihood, Maude had left of her own accord? She had left her stone necklace with Tabitha, and that was enough to tell Ondine that she had been intending to leave. She was staggered that Fraser couldn't see it. But, with his trusting heart, it would never occur to Fraser that his partner could be anything other than dead. He had seen the boat washed up on the shore, and that would confirm it in his mind. He was too trusting. Just like his own father, Ondine thought pityingly.
As she comforted her son, Ondine finally came to a decision. She would keep her suspicions to herself. She would not tell Fraser that she suspected Maude was still alive.
“How am I going to tell Tab?” Fraser moaned from her knees.
Ondine hesitated, knowing that once she had commented one way or the other there was no coming back from it.
“We'll be honest with her,” Ondine lied, stroking her son's back. “We'll tell her what a brave woman her mother was, but that no one can win a fight with the sea.”
The gulls on the windowsill laughed at that, and she ignored them. Her son would be happier remembering Maude that way. And Tabitha would still have her father.
If anything, keeping the truth from Tabitha was going to be more complicated, Ondine thought. Not just because Ondine had never previously had to lie to the girl whose love for the river matched her own. But because Maude had left her with something that the witches had carefully hidden for millennia on a string around her neck, which Tabitha would now carefully guard as a token from her mother and would not be persuaded to part with; and which Ondine wouldn't know what else to do with if she agreed to surrender it anyway.
The Hagstone Page 7
