‘Bess?’ Her voice was a dry whisper.
‘I am here, little one.’
‘Bess…’ She struggled to focus, a hand reaching out for Bess’s face. ‘You can make me better … I know you can … use your magic, Bess. Your magic.’ The child’s eyes met Bess’s now, imploring, entreating, begging, filled with fear and yet with hope. With expectation.
Bess fought back tears of grief and frustration. Her tricks were no use to her now. The small conjurings and illusions with which she had secretly so delighted Margaret all her life were powerless against the ferocity of the plague and Bess knew it. She shook her head, not wanting to admit to her beloved sister that the magic was not going to help her.
‘Later, dear one. For now you must drink some more. There, that’s good.’ Bess dipped the spoon into the bowl again. ‘Here, now. A little more. It will make you strong again.’ She continued to feed her sister, the little girl’s gaze all the while upon her until she thought she would not be able to stop herself weeping again. Once the bowl was empty, she laid Margaret down and made her comfortable. She sat on the floor next to the low bed, her arms around the child, willing her to be well. Willing her to live.
The next morning Bess woke where she had fallen beside her sister. The cockerel crowed hoarsely from the roof of the barn. A gray dawn suggested another night had been endured, another day lay ahead. Bess raised herself to her feet stiffly and moved to the fire to stoke the embers.
‘Bess.’ Her mother stood behind her.
‘Morning, Mother. Do not disturb yourself. I will see to the fire and fetch Margaret some more honey-water. She liked it, I think. I know it will help her.’
‘Bess.’ Anne stepped forward and placed a hand on Bess’s arm. ‘Your sister is dead.’
All the blood drained from Bess’s head so that she felt she might fall into the fire. She opened her mouth to scream but found she could not. She ran to Margaret and flung herself on the child’s cold body. Now Bess’s voice returned to her.
‘No! No, no, no, no! Not Margaret. Not my little Meg.’ She grabbed the lifeless girl. ‘Sit up, Meg, come on, now. You must wake up. Wake up!’ She shook her roughly, beyond knowing what she was doing.
Anne pulled her away. ‘Leave her be, Bess.’
‘I should have stayed awake! I should have saved her!’
‘There was nothing to be done.’
‘But I did it! O dear Lord, I killed her. I went in to Thomas when you told me not to, and I brought the plague to poor sweet Margaret and now she is dead! Let me die too! Let me go with them!’
Bess glimpsed her mother’s hand only briefly as she raised it and brought it with great force down upon her cheek. The power of the blow knocked Bess to the floor. Shocked, she wiped blood from her mouth with her fingers. She looked up at her mother, stunned by what had happened.
Anne’s voice was level as she spoke through closed teeth.
‘Listen to me, Bess. Listen well. You no more killed your sister than did I. She fell ill with too much speed for you to have taken the sickness to her from Thomas. Do you understand? Do you?’
Bess nodded.
‘You must be strong now. You must reach deep inside your heart and find a strength you never knew dwelled there, Bess. You must show courage. As must I.’ She helped her daughter to her feet. She held her arms firmly as she continued to speak. ‘Fetch your cloak, child, we have work to do outside.’
‘But one of us should stay with Father.’ Bess sniffed, still trying to stem the trickle of blood from her lip.
Now she felt Anne’s hands tremble, though her grip did not loosen and her eyes did not waver in their steady gaze.
‘Your father has no more need of us here,’ she said. ‘Come, we must make haste before the bearers return.’ So saying, she strode across the room, snatching up her shawl. At the door she waited. Silent tears washed the blood from Bess’s face now. She went to where her father lay motionless and cold as a slab of butter. His face looked peaceful, despite its livid color. She fancied he still wore a trace of his impish smile. She stroked his cheek with a shaking hand and then followed her mother out of the cottage.
4
It was not until two days after they had buried John and Margaret that the merciless rain stopped. Bess went to the edge of Batchombe Woods and gathered what few wildflowers there were to be had. The air was still heavy with water, but the sun shone boldly down. From the woodland came the scent of damp moss and fungus spores. Bess stared into the gloom between the close trees and found herself thinking of Gideon Masters. Had he escaped the plague? His cottage was well apart from any other, and his solitary habits meant he may well have not come into contact with a person carrying the sickness. It would be terrible, she thought, to be so alone. She imagined falling ill with no one to notice. But then, if Gideon had no one to love, that meant he had no one to lose. Not for him the dull ache that haunted the empty chambers of Bess’s heart now or the brutal clutch of pain that assailed her in unguarded moments, such as when she came upon Thomas’s walking stick or spied her father’s pipe or caught herself muttering Margaret’s favorite nursery rhyme. At those times she would be brought to her knees by grief, the breath knocked from her body as if by a physical blow. She saw her mother suffering in the same way, and both of them knew that no remedy existed. Nothing would ever make them whole again. Bess walked back to the cottage and took the flowers to the graves. The mounds of earth were still wet and would not grass over for many months. There was no money for headstones. Instead, Bess and her mother would fashion something from wood on a distant day in the future, when they could risk doing so without fear of collapse. Bess felt Anne’s presence beside her.
‘Come inside, Bess. It does you no good to stand here so long.’
‘Have I stood a while? I didn’t know it. Look, I fetched flowers.’
‘They are very pretty. Margaret would like them.’
‘She should be here to see them.’
‘I do believe she is still here, Bess. Do you not?’
‘I mean here.’ Bess wrapped her arms around herself as if still hugging her little sister. ‘Warm and alive and full of joy and sweetness, so that I might hold her … not cold and quiet in her muddy grave.’
‘We have to keep her alive in our hearts, Bess. That is where she truly dwells now, not in the earth, in our hearts. In us.’ Anne’s gaze fell upon John’s grave. ‘They are all safe in our hearts.’
‘I thought they were supposed to be with God.’ Bess could not keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘In his loving arms—isn’t that what we are taught to believe? Do you believe it, Mother? Do you?’
‘Bess…’
‘Do you?’ Bess began to weep.
‘Hush, child. No more tears. No more.’ Anne reached out and wiped her daughter’s cheek with her finger. Her expression changed to one of alarm. ‘Bess…’
‘You don’t believe it any more than I. Where was the Good Shepherd when Thomas’s face swelled up like the belly of a dead sheep? Where was our Lord when Father cursed us all from his deathbed?’
‘Bess! You are hot.’
‘Where was our loving God when Meg clawed the air for breath?’
‘Bess!’ Anne took hold of Bess by the shoulders and spoke earnestly. ‘You are not well—you must come inside.’
‘What?’ Bess tried to take in her mother’s words. ‘Not well?’
Time froze in that moment. The two women stood leaning against each other, fear and grief threatening to overwhelm them. Somewhere in the orchard a magpie fought with a crow. A thin wind began to tug at the flowers Bess had laid at the graves.
Anne drew in a deep breath and turned her only living daughter toward the cottage. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let us go in.’
Fever quickly robbed Bess of all sense of time or knowledge of reality. She was aware of her mother’s presence, of being washed with rose water and stroked with fragrant oils. She registered a spoon being held to her lips or a cup tipping liquid into
her mouth. Beyond that, the world did not exist for her. All that she knew was pain and delirium. She felt at once such heat that she imagined the thatch of the cottage had caught fire, and yet such cold that she believed she must be already dead. Her body became somehow separate from herself, as if she had neither control over it nor use for it. It was a conduit of agony, nothing more. She heard a ragged rasping sound. Was it wind down the chimney? Or wood being sawn. No, she came to realize it was the sound of her own breathing. The air was dragged in and out of her body as if from a worn set of blacksmith’s bellows fanning the flames of her fever. At moments she felt a calmness, an acceptance that she was going to die. It was right that she should. Why should she be the one to live on? Hadn’t she hastened poor Margaret’s death? She would be with the others soon. Once, in the darkness, she heard her mother’s voice. She fancied she spoke of living, not dying, though her words made little sense. Then, strangely, Anne was gone. Bess had no real way of knowing she was not in the house, but she was quite certain she was alone. Not alone for ten minutes while her mother fetched wood or water, but alone for a great, empty, silent stretch of time.
And in that time Bess dreamed. It was a dream as real as any living memory. She found herself back in Thomas’s empty grave, rain washing down the steep sides so that a pool of liquid mud rose up to her knees. She clawed at the slippery soil, struggling to pull herself out but never able to gain a sure foothold. She slithered down, falling onto her back in the mire, submerged for an instant. She sat up choking, spitting out mud, rubbing the gritty water from her eyes. When she did so, she saw Thomas, as he had been during the worst ravages of the plague, sitting up opposite her. He stared at her with his grotesquely bulging eyes and blackened face. She screamed and started climbing again, but this time she was knocked down by Margaret’s body as it was thrown into the pit. The child turned an angry face to Bess, shouting at her, ‘You did this to me, Bess! You killed me!’ Bess shook her head, scrambling backward, screaming until she had no voice left. Beaten, she cowered in the corner, her arms over her head, and awaited death.
The first indication Bess had that she was in fact alive was the sound of singing. It was such a curious and unlikely noise that it took some time for her to believe she was awake and listening to a real sound, not a product of her fevered mind. She opened her eyes. It was day. The fire in the hearth burned quietly. Winter sun fell through the unshuttered window. She glimpsed the shadows of movement and found she was able to turn her head a little. She saw then that the song came from her mother. Anne had her back to Bess and wore her shawl up over her head as she stood at the kitchen table. She was entirely focused on a solitary candle burning in front of her. There were unfamiliar objects positioned around the candle. Her arms were raised as if in supplication, and her body rocked slightly from side to side as she continued to sing the low monotonous notes over and over again. Bess could not discern the words. They seemed strange, as if of some foreign tongue. It was certainly not a song she had ever heard her mother sing before. The melody, if such it could be called, was eerie and discordant yet strangely hypnotic. Suddenly, as if sensing she was being observed, her mother dropped her arms to her sides and was silent. She stood still for a moment longer, then blew out the candle and turned around.
Bess gasped as she saw now that her mother’s hair had turned completely white. Not a strand of gold remained. The effect was to make Anne appear a decade older than she had only days before. Bess struggled to raise herself onto an elbow, but her mother hurried forward.
‘Bess! There, be still, my little one. All is well,’ she said, kneeling by the low bed. She touched Bess’s cheek and smiled, the first smile Bess had seen on her mother’s face since the day of the apple harvest.
‘Mother, what has happened to you? Your hair…’
‘It is of no importance. What matters is that you are well, Bess. You are well.’ She squeezed her daughter’s hand.
‘But how?’ Bess sat up, examining her arms and hands, feeling her face for lumps or swellings, for signs of the disfigurement the rest of her family had borne. There were none.
‘Be assured,’ her mother said, ‘you are just as you were. The plague has left no mark upon you.’
‘Oh, Mother!’ Bess flung herself into Anne’s arms and wept tears of relief and of grief. For a short time she had felt close to Margaret and been convinced she would see her again soon. Now the news that she was to live was tainted by the pain of being torn away from her sister anew.
Anne dried her daughter’s tears. ‘Come now, this is not a moment for weeping. I will make you some pottage. You will be strong once more very soon. You will see.’
As Bess watched her mother moving about the room, preparing the food, she struggled to make sense of what had happened. She had been afflicted by the plague, yet she and she alone had survived. Had her mother effected the cure? What had she tried with Bess that she had not given to the others? What powerful remedy had she concocted, and if it were so efficacious, why had she not used it sooner? She saw now that her mother’s hair was not the only thing to have altered so dramatically. She seemed to move differently, to inhabit the room in an entirely new way. A way that was strange and unsettling. Something profound had changed in her mother while Bess had lain on her sickbed. Some transformation had occurred at the root of her being, Bess believed, something had changed forever in her very soul.
* * *
That winter was the bleakest Bess had ever endured. The chill of grief in her heart was matched by the icy winds and cruel frosts that assailed the farm. She and her mother battled to tend the land and the livestock, but it was an impossible task. The smallholding had been stocked and planted to require the labors of four adults, not two. It quickly became clear that they could not manage the acreage alone, and as there was no money to hire help, they were forced to part with some of their beasts. And fewer beasts meant less food. Together, they slaughtered the old sow, laying the meat down in salt. The remaining pig wandered the yard morosely for days and threatened to pine away to nothing before their eyes. The youngest cow they sold to a neighbor. The oldest proved to be barren, which meant there was only one left to give milk. Such a low yield meant an end to their cheese-making at least until the following autumn.
Christmas passed unmarked in the Hawksmith household. Neither Bess nor her mother could face the cheery traditions and customs that would mark the day out as special and remind them of their lost loved ones. Had they but had the time or energy to care, they might have realized that many in the village now ceased to celebrate the yuletide festival. The fashion of the land was for quiet observance of God’s will, not for showy rituals that gave an excuse for gaiety and often drunken excess in His name. None of this mattered to Bess or Anne. They rarely ventured into the village now, save to sell or buy something. Neither of them had set foot inside the church since the plague. It had crossed Bess’s mind that this would not go unnoticed. She remembered Reverend Burdock’s words to the church warden. What a long time ago that seemed—back to a sunny, light, hopeful time. All parishioners were required to attend Sunday worship, and their absence would be recorded. For now though the inclement weather and privations inflicted on the village by the plague gave people other things to concern themselves with. For now.
For two whole weeks in the darkest days of the season, snow covered the land almost to the sea itself. Bess had never seen the cliff tops white before. The warmth of the sea had always kept such weather at bay until now. Looking out at the beautiful, frigid land, Bess felt as if the earth itself had gone into mourning. Would spring ever come again? she wondered. It seemed to her things might stay this way forever. Before Christmas, she had helped her mother press the last of the apples and set the juice to ferment. Now the cider was ready, and Anne decided they should sell some of it.
‘I want you to take those flagons to the Three Feathers. Ask for James Crabtree. Agnes will want to bargain with you herself.’ As she spoke, Anne fastened her own he
avy cloak about Bess’s shoulders. ‘Do not be drawn into dealing with that woman; she will have the lot off you for nothing. Insist on speaking with James, do you hear me?’
Bess nodded. She felt an unfamiliar sensation in the depths of her bowels and eventually recognized it as excitement. She had never been in an alehouse before, and the Feathers had a reputation as the wildest in the village. After being so long cooped up in the farmhouse, she felt a certain thrill to be going out in the world and to be charged with something so adult and important. At once Bess felt sick with guilt, as if it was wrong to feel anything akin to pleasure. Would it always be wrong? she wondered.
The snow had gone, but the ground was frozen to rock and a mean wind stung Bess’s face as she stepped outside. She pulled the hood of her cape up over her cap and tied it tightly. She fetched the old mare, who was surly and reluctant to be dragged out of her warm barn. Anne helped her sit the flasks of cider into the panniers on the horse.
‘Don’t dawdle,’ Anne said as she tightened the girth strap and handed Bess the reins of the bridle. ‘I know Whisper will go slowly on the outward journey, but you can ride her once you have delivered the cider and she will step quickly enough coming home.’
Bess took the reins. ‘Come on, old girl, I’ll find you a handful of hay when we return.’
‘And do not linger in the alehouse, Bess,’ her mother called after her. ‘Talk to no one but James Crabtree!’
The Three Feathers was a large building constructed of stout timbers and a scruffy thatch. The upper floor had small windows set into the roof. The rooms here were used for lodging, a place for passing travelers to endure a night of little comfort and much noise. Bess had heard of all manner of uses for these rooms other than sleep. She tied Whisper up to a hitching ring on the front wall of the alehouse and went inside. At once her senses were assailed. The smoke produced by the greenwood on the fire and the numerous clay pipes being puffed and pointed with fervor rendered the air thicker than a sea fog. Bess shut the door behind her, doing her best to ignore the lecherous looks thrown her way. The ground floor of the building consisted of one low-ceilinged room filled with an assortment of worn tables and benches. A large settle beside the fire was regularly occupied by elderly drinkers of indeterminate age and failing mental capacity. The seats by the windows were taken by loud women dressed in bright colors, who entertained glint-eyed men. The raucous laughter of these drunken pairings ceased only when they slipped away to one of the rooms upstairs. At the opposite end of the room from the fire, a bar was constructed roughly of salvaged wood. Barrels stood in the corner. Tankards, jars, and jugs sat waiting on grimy shelves. The barks and roars of the inebriated competed with the shouts for ale or cider directed at the increasingly bad-tempered landlady and the serving wench who spent more time batting away unwanted hands than filling beer mugs. Bess straightened her shoulders and stepped quickly toward the bar. She blushed as lewd observations regarding her long legs and full lips were lobbed at her as she made her hasty progress through the throng. More than once she felt a hand upon her, but she did not respond. On reaching the bar, she was dismayed to see no sign of the innkeeper, only his disagreeable wife. She felt a crowd of men begin to press in around her.
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