The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  I must be studying the woman far too curiously, for Zillah, who is at the table binding herbs into bundles, glances at me.

  “Up the ladder, Aphra,” she says, and I obey, but no sooner have I reached my little space under the eaves than I lower myself down to my knees and put my eye to the crack in the boards.

  The young woman weeps and weeps. A few meagre coins spill onto the table. The charming begins; the air grows close and heavy with spells. I feel the spirits rise, chattering, buzzing up the ladder to draw close to me. Little Clim and Matty the Boy want to play, but tonight I shoo them quickly off. They dart away, one through the shutter and the other into the spaces in the thatch above.

  I climb onto my pallet, listening to the murmuring voices below, and watch the evening draw in until the sky deepens to mid-blue, then indigo. The planet Venus hovers low over the treetops.

  The young woman is ailing. There is something inside her withering away and she is brimful with poison. Although tonight she has made her way to us through the woods, in seven days she will be able to walk no longer, and in three days beyond the seven she will be dead. I know this because I can see the dying lights are already lifting off her skin; those tiny inside parts of the body that float away into the air, shimmering little points, as life begins to draw to its close.

  When the dying lights are gathering, so the flesh becomes more and more like thin gauze, and I can pass through it even more easily. Zillah and Damaris do not know this, and they do not know I can see the lights.

  I leave my pallet and lie close to the boards to watch the woman. I breathe in deeply, then swim lightly downwards through the air and into her skin. My own body waits behind, the eye still to the floor.

  I am sitting in the rush chair.

  A fierce pain surges up from my stomach through my limbs into my fingers and toes, which curl rigid like claws. Zillah’s hands are on my head, warm and comforting but unable to ease the pain. Damaris rubs my arms with a paste of comfrey and rue. I drop my head so they will not see my eyes, which look out of hers, but I can bear the suffering no more than a few seconds, and am glad to return to my little space under the eaves.

  Zillah calls up the ladder. “Aphra! Aphra! Up, child! Take this woman back to the wood’s edge. She has no lantern and is fearful she will be lost.”

  I know my way through the woods in the darkness, but take a lantern to light the narrow way for the young woman’s sake; wringing her hands and muttering to herself, she stumbles on the tree roots and gasps each time a low branch snatches her hair, thinking some demon has caught her. Having felt the pain she endures, I am surprised she can walk so far. She stops, whimpering at each owl’s hoot, every brushing of the undergrowth by stoat or badger. At last I am glad to leave her under the silver birches near the earth track that leads to Beesden Parva, where she dwells, though not for much longer.

  A low mist curls over the heath, but the moon is rising bright enough to light her way home.

  I turn back and immediately stop in bewilderment, gripping one of the white birch trunks to steady myself. A red glow is swelling up over the treetops, a glow spangled with showers of sparks and flaming wisps of thatch that curl and drift before twisting into flickering trails of smoke. Threading my way swiftly in and out of the trees, I hear the clamour of voices and the roar and crackle of fire, feel its heat, smell the smoke and the sweet and bitter odours of burning.

  I blow out the lantern and steal up quickly, silently, along the narrow hidden path.

  Peering through the tree trunks, my face and arms hot and burnished in the reflected light, I watch a handful of men whooping with glee, kicking up their legs, and dancing around the house in the woods. Huge, vivid, snarling flames are eating up the blazing cottage. Tongues of fire lick the blackening timbers, feast greedily on our stores of apples, flitches of bacon, herbs, potions, and unguents. I can hear our vessels — our flasks, bottles, and bowls — cracking, exploding in the furnace while the house whistles, whines, and groans.

  Even the trees behind the cottage have taken fire, their leaves darkening and crumpling.

  Two large men cross in front of my hiding place, the backs of their necks sweat-shiny, flecked with black flakes. I move back slightly into the shadows.

  “Are you certain the cunning women were inside?” says the first.

  “We heard them in there. We barred the door,” answers the other.

  “Did you be sure to watch the chimney? They didn’t fly out of it on their brooms?”

  “We looked most careful, and we heard them screaming. Can you not smell them? Like swine flesh.”

  “What of the maid?”

  “Don’t know, John. We hoped she might be in there also. We’ll know when the fire dies down.”

  “She’s only a child.”

  “Makes no difference.”

  I slip away. I do not believe Zillah and Damaris are burned in the house. They would not have screamed like the man said they did. Zillah would have bade Damaris be quiet as she bade me when I was burned in the Balefire.

  For days afterwards I wander the woods, calling for my mothers, seeking them in our familiar places. I sleep under bushes, wrapped close in my apron, eating mushrooms, roots, herbs, digging up chestnuts and beechnuts from the little winter stores the squirrels have forgotten, each morning hurrying back along the secret trails, the serpent’s path and old Brock’s track, to the house in the woods. Every day I expect to find it still, its whitewashed walls bowed under the low, curving thatch, woodsmoke trailing out of the chimney into the crown of the oak above. And every day I shudder at the sight of the heap of hot, burned timbers under a layer of whitening ash.

  The men come, waiting for the embers to cool, but in the first days, the heat drives them away. Each day they return, and I am there hidden, watching as they poke among the smouldering ruins with long branches, turning over the scorched wood, searching, I know, for the remains of Zillah and Damaris. But so long as they do not find them, I seek them still, calling, waiting, and calling.

  One morning, weary and aching through sleeping yet one more night in a damp hollow, I smell burning pitch, wood, and smoke and stumble back to the clearing. Even hidden in the trees, I feel the heat on my cheeks as another fire leaps and dances in the ruins of the burned cottage, consuming once more, and forever, the uncovered, blackened corpses of my two mothers.

  “That’s it, then, John. Gone for good now,” says one of the men, who had been there on that other night. “No trouble from them two no more. Well burned twice — or they’ll come back.”

  “That’s right, you got to make sure,” says another. “He’s crafty, that devil, Old Nick. Knows all kinds of ways to bring them back to do his wickedness. Man over Medford way said a hanged witch came back in his wife’s body. Made no end of mischief. They hanged her again and that was an end of it.”

  Another man approaches with a long branch to poke the flames.

  “I heard of that one,” he says. “Didn’t pin her down proper the first time they buried her. Rushed it ’cause it got dark. It’s like with these two here. We’ll have to keep going over this lot. Only takes a bit of skelton left unburned — then them Bonesmen can call up the spirit on their bone flutes.”

  “Or grind ’em down for magic potions.”

  “Devil take ’em, them Bonesmen. I’d like to see them strung up, I would, digging up the dead.”

  “Didn’t find no child here, though, John.”

  “No matter. She’ll die soon enough without no vittles, and even if she lasts until the winter, no Christian soul will take that one in.”

  But I am not afeared of ice nor snow. I am a creature of the cold. I was found by lantern light, on the eve of Candlemas Day in the heart of the winter, and had not perished in that bitter place by the edge of the water. The frost suits my flesh. The season that brings death to others enlivens me, and I breathe in the north wind as the breath of life.

  When the evening draws in and the men depart, I creep out a
nd stand as close as I dare. While the hot smoke curls around me, I cannot stop tears, spitting as they fall one by one onto the seared black earth around my feet.

  Somewhere in that heap of burning wood and bone is my bloodstone.

  Then I turn my back on the remnants of all I have known, keep my eyes and ears open, and learn how to stay alive.

  Even as the summer passes and the days begin to shorten, the earth feeds me.

  A turnip field, nuts, berries, and roots, a stream rippling with trout, a skylark baked over a fire in its own little clay oven, split the clay open and the feathers come away. Rabbits last a week, hares even longer if you can catch them, and the fur makes warm mittens. Hedgehogs are slow moving and cook up tender. Wrap a hedgehog in clay like the skylark, and the prickles are no trouble. Zillah showed me how to trap, Damaris to bake.

  Wait for the goodwife to leave her cottage, then lift a shawl, a blanket, a piece of bread, some slippers, move on quickly. Move on. Stay in the shadows, be a shadow, round the edges, in the woods, under the thick trees when it rains, in the sheds and barns when the wind blows and the snow comes. Move on quick. Eat when you can, take when you can, sleep when you can.

  I learned my craft, listening and watching.

  I sought out the Bonesman, Micah, and his apprentice, Absalom, on the old pedlars’ ways, but they found me first, on the hollow path beneath the arching trees at High Missingham on the northern washes. They gave me a draught of bone ash and ale. Micah played his flute and I saw visions of the otherworld. Human bones make strong magic. It is said the Bonesmen can resurrect the dead and make them dance on their own graves.

  Desperate women know where to find me, tell each other in whispers behind trembling fingers when I am about — a cake for a charm, a coin for a spell. They search for me, wait for me in the groves of ash, never rowan, elder, or holly, for to be near to the wood of those hallowed trees is a torment to me — the merest brush of their bark and my skin erupts into sores.

  It gives me more pleasure to settle a debt or a quarrel by taking revenge, blowing an ill wind, raising boils, rashes, and consumptions, or worse, than ever it does to cure or bless. I know how to heal, but it is the dark and dirty work I am paid for, and relish.

  Move on quick, behind the hedges, off the byways, through weeks, then months, then years.

  On a yellow-hot day, they catch me for a vagrant over Hunsham way. In an unguarded moment, drinking from a stream in the evening sunshine, I am set upon by gleaners, returning home with the spoils of their day in the fields. They take hold of me roughly, keep me close in a barn, and at daylight stand me up before the Justice.

  His Lordship looks down at me. I avoid his stare and remain steady on my worn, stolen slippers.

  “We have no name for you. What is your family? Which is your parish?”

  I do not wish to speak with him, and close my eyes to shut him out.

  “We will keep you confined until you tell us your name.”

  I cannot bear to be locked in.

  “Aphra. I am Aphra.”

  “And your family?”

  “None.”

  “Your age?”

  I am not certain.

  “Your age?”

  “Sixteen years, I believe, give or take.”

  “Your parish?”

  “My parish is the reeds and the rushes.”

  “Aphra of the rushes, then — the law is plain,” says the Justice. “You must be marked for your vagrancy, so others will not seek to follow your example.”

  He turns away quickly to address the two burly men holding my arms. “Do what has to be done.”

  They drag me outside and take me down through the village towards the smithy. A crowd is gathering. Some cross themselves as I pass by. A young woman spits at me, and many of the others begin chewing their cheeks to make spittle to do the same, but as my gaze falls on each of them in turn, they swallow it down and look away.

  The larger of the two men, Slater, pushes me down in the dirt beside a broad tree stump, its flat top smeared with old dried blood. The other, Deeks, catches tight hold of my hands. I struggle, but the man is stronger than he looks.

  “You ready, Jaggers?” shouts Slater. He grabs my hair and winds it round his thick fingers, takes my head tight in his two chapped hands, and forces it down onto the top of the stump and holds it there. Splinters graze my cheek. Slater smells of ale and bad meat.

  “Hurry, Jaggers! She’s a squirmer, this one.”

  Through my squashed eyes, I see a large man come out of the smithy. He wears a grimy leather apron. Huge veined muscles strain against the sleeves of his smock. In one hand he holds a foot-long iron rod, pointed sharp at one end, and in the other swings a heavy metal mallet.

  I know him. I have come across him before, over Shersted way. He will not touch me.

  “Which ear?” Slater calls.

  “Don’t matter which one,” shouts Jaggers. “Stretch it out so there’s enough skin to get me spike in. Hurry up! I’ve got a job waiting.”

  I let Slater fumble for my left ear. He pinches it tight and pulls the lobe flat against the top of the stump, pushing my face in the other direction.

  I feel Jaggers’s bulk close to me, smell burned wood, iron, sweat, feel the point of the spike on my skin, his face leaning in.

  I force my head sideways, open my eyes, and look into his.

  “You!” He reels back slightly, his ruddy skin draining of colour, shiny beads appearing on his forehead.

  “What you doing? Get on with it, man!” Slater shouts.

  “I’m not doing it,” says Jaggers.

  “It’s the law, man,” says Deeks. “She’s a vagrant.”

  “Do it yourself,” says Jaggers, turning back to the smithy.

  “Give us your spike, then!” Slater shouts after him.

  “You’re not doing it with my tools!” Jaggers calls back, still walking away.

  “Anyone got a spike?”

  Slater and Deeks loose their hold. I stagger to my feet, wipe the spit off my face, rub my tender ear, and, once again, sweep my gaze slowly across the crowd.

  A child begins to cry. The people study me curiously at first, then lower their eyes as mine meet theirs. One by one, they begin to move away, a few glancing back at me as they go.

  Deeks looks me up and down. Then he lifts his foot and lands a mighty kick on my calf. The shock throws me off balance for a moment, but my eyes stay on his face.

  “Get off!” he snarls. “Go away! But if you so much as come this way again …”

  I draw back my lips and smile, brush the dirt off my skirts, and turn my back.

  For a while I stand at the entrance to the smithy and stare at Jaggers as he hammers the red-hot strip of metal on his anvil, then picks it up with his tongs and plunges it into the fire.

  “I know you’re there. Leave me be,” he calls.

  “How’s your sister over in Shersted?” say I.

  “Go your ways,” he says, without looking up. “You know she’s like to die.”

  “Is dead already, I believe. Maybe they han’t told you yet.”

  “Go your ways.”

  Sometimes the weaknesses of the world catch up with me. It has rained for twenty days and my garments are sodden. The damp sits miserably in the plaid shawl I lifted from the charcoal burner’s wife in the woods beyond Boxton Green. My worn slippers let in the muddy water.

  I think of Zillah and Damaris, of the warmth of our little house, and find my way back to our old woods, thinking I will be met and welcomed there by my old life, that the dream I carry with me of the past will become real merely because I wish it so.

  But there is nothing to be seen in our clearing. Not a clump of grass nor the smallest sapling has taken root in this dark, wet, barren earth, all these twelve years on.

  I push a mush of dead leaves aside with my foot, disturb a piece of black wood which powders under my heel. The heavy raindrops spatter on the rotted crumbs, spreading them over the e
arth, uncovering and then washing clean a gleaming red pebble with a hole in its heart.

  My bloodstone.

  With disbelief, then delight, I bend down, take it out of the soil, and hold it to me like a treasure. I lift my face to the watery air, take a last look around the clearing, then turn my back.

  I wander through the trees and on to the riverbank where I once scooped out the clay for the manikin. The ground is thick with purple violets.

  I stand by the water’s edge, looking across to the south, still in a small flutter of childish fear that I should be seen by the watermen, still asking myself whether that is where I came from. I walk on by the alders and dipping willows until, in the last of the evening, I come to a ford and splash through the water to the other side.

  On the second of the three Blind Days, when no magic, no divination can be done, a fever takes hold of me on the road from Shersted to Mistleham.

  The Bonesmen cannot be called upon to mix a potion for me. They are men of the fen country and never stray so far south. The wise woman, Mother Winnery, who healed me once before, at a price, is far out of reach on the northern marshes. Wherever I go, word flies from one cunning woman to the next to be wary and not to cross my path, so there is none to conjure a charm to make me well. I have power over the life and death of others but have not the skill to cure myself.

  The rain will not cease. I stumble from one dripping copse of trees to the next. There is little shelter away from the woods, and I am shunned and moved on from byre and pound, too sick and weary to force my will.

  I keep walking as best I can, for the land is flat and marshy and there is nowhere to rest other than in the ditches. The early-spring meadows are sodden and do not yield up their nourishing plants.

  I gather my wits enough to read a palm out on Hilsey marsh for a mouthful of bread and a rest in the sheep pen. I steal up in the night, let myself into the cot, and take the goodwife’s dry shawl and shoes and leave the wet behind on the floor.