by Mary Stewart
William had not misled me. The place was a mass of brambles, and the fruit was big and glinting-ripe. I got to work.
I had almost filled my basket when I slowly became conscious that the bleating of the sheep had not dwindled with the flock’s disappearance. One voice remained, steadily complaining. Only faintly curious, but glad of a respite, I straightened up and looked around. No sign. The short turf by the water was inhabited only by a pied wagtail, making its darting runs after the insects brought out by the warm sunshine. The robin flew down to a bush nearby, and whispered its musical undersong. From somewhere deep among the banked brambles, the sheep complained.
And now that I was listening, there was more in the cry than idle grumbling. There was fear. I set my basket down and went to look.
She was caught, like Abraham’s ram, in a thicket of thorns. In trying to push through, she had brought a dozen hooked boughs down to fix themselves in her fleece, and when she had tried to pull herself out backwards, others had gaffed and netted her like a fish. She was immovable.
She saw me, gave one last cry, and fell silent. I picked my way carefully in past the first barbed branches, and started to try and unravel her.
It was an appalling job. I had no gloves, and to do the job without injury one would have needed heavy gauntlets of leather. And secateurs, or even wire cutters, with them, for as I tore each bough away from the sheep’s wool – which took all my strength but did not appear to hurt the sheep at all – the bough tended to spring straight back and catch hold before I had reached for the next one. And each movement brought lacerations of hands and arms. I was scratched and bleeding freely before I gave up and began to scour the quarry, sure that somewhere, some picnicker careless of the countryside would have thrown away a bottle or sharp-edged tin. I soon found one. Beside the remains of a camp-fire near the pool was a broken whisky bottle. I started to hack the brambles through with that, and haul them away, and in another ten minutes or so it began to look as if the sheep could be moved, but I was afraid that, once she found she could move, she might struggle away from me, and trap herself all over again.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ queried a startled voice, just behind me. I jumped and turned. A man had approached, his footsteps soundless on the mossy turf of the quarry’s floor. He was slightly above middle height, with darkish hair showing a hint of grey, and dark brows over grey eyes. His skin was weathered to a healthy red-brown, and his clothes were workman’s clothes, but his voice was educated. He carried a pair of binoculars slung over one shoulder, and in his hand was a crook.
He must be the shepherd, or the farmer. Relieved, I had just opened my mouth to speak when he repeated sharply: ‘What the devil have you been doing to that ewe?’
I gaped. Caught in my work of mercy, I had expected the shepherd to spring to my help, but he looked both startled and angry.
‘What the devil do you think I’m doing?’ I answered tartly. Then, following his look, I saw what he had seen. My hands were bleeding freely, and blood had dripped and smeared over the animal’s fleece. And in one bloody hand I held that most horrible of weapons, a broken bottle.
I said, rather feebly: ‘It’s my own blood. Did you think I was cutting her up for a stew?’
‘Oh, my God,’ he said. ‘I see. But when you catch someone with a broken bottle in their hands and blood all over the place … I’m terribly sorry. Are you badly hurt?’
‘Not really. They’re not glass cuts; I was using the bottle to hack these beastly brambles away. She was stuck fast, but she’s almost out now, and I’m scratched to death. Can you help?’
‘Well, of course. You come out of that and let me.’
He produced a clasp-knife from a pocket, and then, with the crook, started to haul back the remaining bramble stems that trapped the ewe. Some of them he cut, then he handed the stem of the crook to me.
‘Hold them back with this, will you, please, while I haul her out? If I cut them all at once she’ll probably bolt straight back into the thick of it.’
I took the stick, and held back the bundle of thorns. He waded in among the remaining strands, then laid hold of the thick fleece with both hands, and threw his weight back. She came, and as she came, she started to struggle wildly, but he held her, and finally yanked her clear of the thorns. In her terror, she fought to bolt back into cover, but he managed to turn her round and give her a shove, till, calling dismally, she bolted, safe and sound, up the track where her sisters had gone. Apart from the bloodstains, and a very ragged fleece, she seemed none the worse.
‘Well, thank you,’ I said.
‘Well, thank you,’ said the shepherd. ‘But for you, she might well have died there.’
‘You’d have found her yourself.’
‘As it happens, yes, but it was the purest chance that brought me this way.’
‘And thank goodness for that. Even if I could have got her free, I doubt if I could have turned her. They’re incredibly strong, aren’t they? Here’s your crook.’
He took it. ‘Now, your hands. How bad are they?’
I held them out. ‘Scratches, but they’ll heal. They’ve been bleeding so much that I suppose they’ll be clean. Do you think the water’s all right? I’d like to wash.’
I knelt down by the pool and washed the bloodstains off. The scratches were many and sore, but only one of them was deep. This was still bleeding quite freely. He stood without speaking till I had finished, then handed me a clean handkerchief. I protested, groping for my own, only to find that I had none.
‘Take it,’ he insisted. ‘Look, returning it is no problem. I live just over the hill there. Come up now and we’ll put something on those cuts, and I’m sure we can find some sticking-plaster. Anyway, you’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well—’ I said, weakly.
‘Did you get all the brambles you wanted?’
‘Just about. I can easily come back another time, anyway.’ I regarded my hands. ‘I hardly feel like picking any more just this minute. Is this your land, by the way? Was I trespassing?’
‘No, no. It’s a public path, and in any case the quarry would be common land. Before it filled up, I believe the gipsies used to camp here. Let me take the basket. Oh, I see, you’ve got a bicycle.’
‘Will it be safe here if I come back the same way?’
‘I think so, but we won’t chance it. I’ll take it for you. We go this way, and it’s pretty steep, but much the quickest.’
Wheeling the bicycle, he started off up the track the sheep had used. I followed. Once at the head of the quarry, I could see a low, grey farmhouse, set in its own shaw of beeches, with a sprawl of outbuildings to one side. Rooks were loud in the trees, and cattle were gathering near a gate where a farm road curled past the buildings and out of sight.
‘You can go back that way,’ he said, pointing. ‘The track you were on joins it just over that brow. You live hereabouts, I take it? Or are you on holiday? You can’t have been here long, or we’d surely have met, and I wouldn’t have forgotten that.’
His glance made it a compliment, and I laughed.
‘I haven’t been here a month yet, but I think you probably know a fair amount about me, all the same.’
‘What do you mean?’
I nodded towards the gate. A small figure slid through it and came running towards us.
‘Dad! Miss Geillis!’
‘It was William who told me about the quarry and the brambles,’ I said.
William’s father scooped his son up under one arm and dumped him on the saddle of my bicycle. He regarded me across the handlebars.
‘So you’re our new witch,’ he said, smiling.
15
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m Geillis Ramsey and I do seem to be taking over my cousin’s reputation. That’s almost the first thing William said to me, too. Has he been telling tales to you?’
‘Inevitably. His flair for fiction is even better than mine. I’m supposed to be the one who d
oes the inventing round here, and at least I get paid for my efforts, but William’s well on the way to outstripping me. However, he does seem to have introduced us, which is a good mark for him. How do you do, Miss Ramsey? I’m Christopher Dryden.’ As we reached the gate he tipped his son off the bicycle. ‘Run along in, will you, and put the kettle on.’ Then to me: ‘How are you enjoying Thornyhold?’
‘I love it.’
He propped the bicycle against the wall. ‘Not too lonely there?’
‘Not at all. The Trapps have been very helpful, and William, too. I meant to come and see you soon anyway, to ask if it was all right for William to come over so often. Oh, and to thank you myself for the eggs you sent. It was terribly good of you.’
‘They were nothing. Eggs and milk are no problem here. We’re still part of the farm, and the Yellands are very good to us.’
‘And it’s all right about William? I love having him, and he’s a great help, but perhaps you would rather he stayed at home?’
‘Not a bit of it. I’m busy most of the time, and don’t pay enough attention to him, I’m afraid. And he loves Thornyhold. I think he misses your cousin quite a lot.’
‘I gathered that. Well, that’s fine, but I’m afraid poor William gets a lot of work to do when he does come over.’
‘He likes it. And I’m very grateful to you for letting him. I’m afraid that when I’m in the throes of a book I’m very bad company. I’ve tried to time my writing so that I’m free when he’s on holiday from school, but it never seems to work that way. I’ve been hard at it all summer, and haven’t had much time for him, poor chap. Shall we go in now? I’ll show you where to wash, and – William, get that box of plasters and lint and stuff down from the bathroom, will you? – by the time you’ve dealt with those hands of yours the kettle should be ready.’
William did as he was told, then vanished about some concern of his own. I rejoined my host in the farm kitchen, a big, long room with a low ceiling. The old fireplace was there, but its ovens were plainly disused, and an electric stove stood at the far end of the room. Two windows looked out over the pasture; the sills were deep in papers, which did seem to be in some sort of order. Down the centre of the room was a long, scrubbed table, with plates and cutlery set ready at the end nearest the stove; one guessed that between meals they were put straight back on the table as soon as they were washed up. The butter crock stood there, a tin of salt, a half-empty bottle of red wine and one of tomato ketchup. Bachelor living as a fine art; the kitchen was clean and workmanlike, and the clutter made sense for a busy man looking after himself.
Teapot and mugs stood ready. He made the tea and opened a round tin that held biscuits.
‘Do sit down. Milk and sugar?’
‘Milk, please, but no sugar. Thank you.’ I looked around me. ‘One thing about these old farmhouses, everyone lived in the kitchen, so it gets the sun and it really is a lovely room. Do you use that fireplace?’
‘I light a fire most evenings, except in hot weather. William does his homework here. I work in the little room behind this – I think it used to be the farmer’s office. It’s as dark as the pit and looks straight out on the old pigsties.’
‘But with all the house to choose from—’ I protested.
‘Oh, it was first choice. You get no writing done at all if you sit at a table with a view. You’d spend the whole time watching the birds or thinking about what you would like to be doing out of doors, instead of flogging yourself to work out of sheer boredom.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I assure you I’m not. It’s hard work, and doesn’t do well with distractions. Just an occasional walk to clear the fog away.’
‘Like Bunyan, writing all that in prison. Only he probably never got out for a walk at all.’
‘Actually, I believe they did let him out now and again, but he did about twelve years all told. So he really could get on with the job.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘as prisons go, you’re lucky.’
‘I know that. But you see why I’m happy that William has taken to you so well. Your cousin was terribly good to him and he was really cut to pieces when she died. She was remarkable with children.’
‘I know.’
‘Then you can imagine how pleased I was when he told me he had been over to see you, and you were smashing, too. I quote.’
‘And a witch, don’t forget.’
‘Oh, of course. I do gather that your magic touch with his ferret is every bit as powerful as Miss Saxon’s.’
‘I only used her medicine, and William told me which it was. How did you get on with the rest of the dose, by the way?’
‘Fine. Only one small nip to show for it, clean through my thick driving gloves. And a running commentary from William, comparing my technique very unfavourably with yours.’
I laughed. ‘It sounds as if Silkworm is himself again. Did my cousin do much, er, doctoring?’
‘Yes, indeed. Ever since we’ve lived here we’ve heard people speak of her as a kind of local healer. Do you know this part of the country well?’
‘Not at all. I’m only here because Cousin Geillis left Thornyhold to me.’
‘Well, in some ways, it’s – this corner of the county, anyway is – still a fairly primitive sort of place. I expect you knew that your cousin had studied herbalism professionally at one time, and in fact what she did mainly was grow and make up the medicines and so on, to supply some big firm in London. But she was always willing to help local folk who asked her to, and she did a lot of animal doctoring, so she fitted very naturally into the Thornyhold setting as a witch – a white witch, of course! The local “wise woman”. Didn’t you know that your house has a history as a witch’s house?’
‘Really? Well, I know it’s got its own magic, but – a witch’s house? I always pictured a witch’s cottage as being small and dark and windowless, with a smoky thatch and a cauldron over the fire, but Thornyhold is so – so eighteenth-century respectable! It’s a charming house.’
‘So it is. But in the mid nineteenth century the squire’s widow from the big house retired there and took to witchcraft in a big way. She lived there for seventy years and died at the age of ninety-two, and the house has lived on old Goody Gostelow’s reputation ever since.’
‘Good heavens! At Thornyhold? Then I hope she was a white witch, too!’
‘Oh, yes. In fact the poor girl was highly religious, and had been driven out by her rake of a husband who was a pillar of some local hellfire club, and a satanist as well, it’s said. So Lady Sibyl set to work to defend herself and her Dower House against the devil’s works. Thornyhold was actually the agent’s house, but the agent had married the lady’s former nurse, and he and his wife took her in. No doubt Squire Gostelow, when he was sober enough, might have got round to turning them all out, but he died soon after and they were left in peace.’
‘Lucky for Lady Sibyl. But I thought you said she was a white witch.’
‘She had nothing to do with his death. Local chronicles have it that “his various excesses caught up with him at an early age”. He was in his thirties. The estate passed to a nephew who seems to have been away most of the time; in any case he left well alone at the Dower House. The big house was burned down, in 1912 I think it was, and the last male of the family was killed on the Somme. Which left old Lady Sibyl – “Goody Gostelow” by that time – still at Thornyhold, still defending herself against the devil’s works, and living in peace till her death in 1920. What is it?’
‘Nothing, really. Her initials, SG. There’s an old water colour, a picture of the house, in the drawing-room, and it has SG in the corner. I thought at first that the monogram was GS, but she must have done it.’
‘Probably. All young ladies were taught to sketch in those days, weren’t they? Now you’re smiling.’
‘I was taught, too, at school. I was planning to do some sketches of the house and garden as they are now.’
‘That house really does keep
its continuity, doesn’t it?’
‘You’re surely not going to tell me that Cousin Geillis drew, too? I never heard of it.’
‘Oh, no. All her time was taken up with the garden, and her herbs. That’s what took her to Thornyhold, really. She saw it when she was plant-hunting in Westermain, and the old people – the couple who lived on there after Lady Sibyl’s death – showed her round, and she found the place irresistible.’
‘She said something like that to me. No, thank you.’ This as he proffered the biscuit tin again. ‘But I’d love a little more tea, please, if there’s enough? Just half … that’s lovely. Thank you. What did you mean, the defences against the devil and so on?’
‘You won’t have noticed how the place is planned? I mean the garden?’
‘Planned? Well, the herb garden, of course, but what else? What’s so special?’
‘It’s defended against witchcraft and black magic. You’ve got yew and juniper at the south-west corner of the house, and there’s ash and rowan, and a bay tree, and then the quickthorn hedge with some of the holy thorn of Glastonbury planted amongst it. And of course elder trees. Your cousin once showed me the lot. She was highly intrigued by the story, and took care to keep it as it had been.’
‘Trefoil, John’s-wort, Vervain, Dill,
Hinder witches of their will,’ I quoted.
‘What’s that?’
‘Cousin Geillis’s pot-pourri. She guarded her still-room, too.’
‘Did she really? Well, that doesn’t surprise me. She never said anything about this to you, then?’
‘Well, no, she never told me the story of the house. She just said it “seemed made for her” and she’d “taken it on.” I see now what she meant. Actually, I didn’t know her at all well. She came to see me two or three times when I was a child, and that was all. I was rather lonely and – and a bit unhappy, and it seemed as if she just turned up when I needed her. She used to take me for walks. I loved going with her, and I think I learned a lot. I don’t mean about herbalism or anything like that, but she taught me to identify plants and flowers, and a lot about animals and birds, too. I did ask her once if she was a witch, but she just laughed. I think that, when I was a child, I thought there was some kind of magic about her.’
