Thornyhold

by Mary Stewart

  ‘What’s that?’ Quick, almost defensive.

  ‘There isn’t a recipe for bramble jelly in the book.’

  ‘You been through it all, then?’ Sharply.

  ‘Not really. I just glanced through for that one, because you’d told me it was special. It’s definitely not there.’

  I saw the spark of laughter jump to her eyes. She sat down beside me on the tree-trunk, a yard or so away. ‘Oh, well, there, I must ’a seen it somewhere else. But there’s others I remember I’d be glad to have.’

  ‘Then that’s all right.’ I smoothed a hand along the stripped tree-trunk. The feel of the warm wood was real and somehow reassuring. ‘Any time. Just let me know.’

  ‘Today? After supper?’

  ‘If you like. I’m going home soon.’

  A pause. I saw her eyeing me with some curiosity, but, I thought, totally without suspicion or enmity. ‘Did you only come here after the flowers?’ she asked.

  It was my opening. ‘Yes, and to look at the old church. But now that I’ve seen it, I’m a bit puzzled. I feel as if I’d been here before, but I know that’s not true.’

  Her smile broadened, and she gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘I thought you’d feel that way.’

  ‘Why? Agnes, why did you drug me that night, when you left the pie for my supper?’

  If she was startled, it was for no more than a second. Then she nodded again, triumphantly. ‘I knew it! As soon as I laid eyes on you I said to the others, “She’s all right,” I said. “She’s likely. She’ll be one of us, give her time.” And I was right. There was no fooling you, was there? You knew straight away.’

  ‘Not straight away. But soon enough. What was in that pie?’

  ‘Nothing to harm, nothing to harm. Just to let you know we were here, and you were welcome.’

  I was silent for a moment. ‘So that’s what it’s all been about? You did say once that you’d like to take me along to your meetings. I gather that they’re held here?’

  She was looking at me with a new expression, in which I thought I could see a touch of awe. ‘Do you tell me that you saw this—’ she waved a hand – ‘these? That first time, without even getting out of your bed?’

  ‘Something very like this place.’ I added, slowly: ‘And one or two people I’d know again.’

  ‘Then you have got the power! You’ve got it already! You’re one of us, Miss Geillis Ramsey!’

  ‘No, I’m not. You drugged me, and I had a dream, and it was something like this churchyard, that’s all.’ That was what I started to say, but, as if that gentle hand had stopped my lips again, I paused, and said, instead: ‘My cousin was here, too. Miss Saxon. She helped me to leave. And next morning a pigeon came in with a message from her, wishing me well.’

  The ground was mine now. She went white. ‘But that–that cannat be true, miss, it cannat! She wasn’t here. She’s dead.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She never was here. She never would come.’ She took a gulp of air. ‘And like I told you, the pigeons all went over Eddy Masson’s way.’

  ‘So?’ I said again. Whether or not I had what Agnes called ‘the power’, such power as I had found I would exploit while I could. ‘You’re not suggesting that Mr Masson sent me the message? I’ll show it to you when you come to Thornyhold this evening. You know Miss Saxon’s writing, I suppose?’ I settled myself more comfortably on the log. ‘Tell me this, please. When I woke first after that drugged dream, I thought that you and Jessamy were in my bedroom, and I found later that you could have got into the house by the scullery window. Well?’

  She was looking down at the grass at her feet. She nodded. ‘We didn’t do no harm. Jessamy got in that little window and let me in. We came to see if you was all right after the medicine, that’s all. You don’t always know, the first time.’

  Gran. Yes. It fitted.

  ‘And to shut the window up.’

  ‘Ah. That was you.’

  A nod. ‘You went flying, am I right?’

  I said nothing, but she took it for an answer.

  ‘Well, to stop you really going through the window. There’s some as do.’

  No great shakes as a witch. Poor Gran with her overdose. It seemed I had been lucky. I kept my voice level and hard. ‘Did you look through the house while I was asleep?’

  ‘Nay. What was the use? I’d looked already.’ She hesitated, then the blue eyes came up, guileless. ‘I won’t say I didn’t look for the key, but I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘The still-room key?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the soup, which I may tell you I didn’t drink—’

  ‘You didn’t drink that?’ She said it, I thought, admiringly. ‘How did you know not to drink that?’ Then, with a spark of her old self: ‘Did another bird come and tell you?’

  I laughed, and that disconcerted her, too. ‘No. Not that night.’ Not to give Jessamy away, I moved back on to half-truths. ‘I was awake when that dog cried out, and I saw Jessamy running past the house. Did the dog bite him?’

  ‘Aye. Wouldn’t take the food, but broke its rope and bit him—’

  ‘Don’t bother, Agnes.’ This time I let the anger show. ‘I know what happened. Do you think I can’t see? I went to the big house in the morning and found where you’d kept the dog. And I called it to me, and it came.’

  ‘That dog? Came? To you?’

  ‘And it will stay with me. Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was straying. Gipsies, likely.’ She sounded surly and subdued, and I had no reason to doubt her. ‘Would ’a got shot otherwise, a collie straying in sheep land.’

  ‘Well, it’s mine now, so you’ll let it alone. I won’t ask what you were doing with it, because I know that, too. But you’ll not touch it again, neither you nor Jessamy. Understand?’

  Another nod. She shuffled her feet in the grass.

  ‘Was Jessamy badly bitten? Dog bites can be dangerous.’

  ‘Not bad, and I put the bruisewort on, and the salve your aunty made.’

  ‘Was that the recipe that you wanted from Lady Sibyl’s book?’

  A look upward at that, slanted and sly. I saw a dimple, and the pretty mouth pursed as if to stop a smile. ‘No, miss.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘There’s one for a cordial from the plums, and I saw some for sweets that your aunty used to make for Gran. She has a real sweet tooth—’

  ‘For sweets?’

  Unguarded, the syllable was totally disbelieving. She flashed me a look, then smiled, and dipping into the pocket of her coat, brought out a small round box made of wood-shavings, the sort that used to hold Turkish delight at Christmas time. She opened it. Inside, nestling in a white lace paper doily, were small squares of fudge.

  ‘I make a lot,’ said Agnes. ‘Not just for Mother, for all the sales. Try some. ’Tis my own recipe, this one, and got a prize last time I put it into Arnside Show. Help yourself, miss, do.’

  Try some.

  Try tackling a known witch on her own ground, and end up sitting with her on a log eating home-made fudge. Try not eating it. I looked at the box, then, helplessly, at Agnes.

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t really – I mean, it looks lovely, but I don’t care terribly for sweets—’

  She laughed merrily. ‘So you think it’s got something in it that’ll set you flying again? Nay, nay, there’s nothing here to hurt. Look, I’ll eat it myself, to show you.’

  She took a piece, popped it into her mouth, crunched, chewed and swallowed. ‘There!’ She got to her feet and stood in front of me, all at once solemn. ‘Miss Ramsey, if I done wrong I’m sorry. We all have our own ways, and I thought the world of your aunty, but I knew, we all knew, that she would never come along with us here. All right. But ’tis no manner of harm we do, just a little fun and a few secrets and something to look forward to come the right times … Well, I thought when I saw you, she might be different, I thought, and she’s likely, so I gave it a try, nothing to hurt nor harm. Neve
r hurt nor harmed yet, except my own mother, and you wouldn’t call that harm if you’d ’a known her before …’

  ‘Agnes—’

  ‘No, let be a minute. I’ve not done yet.’ She nodded, still solemn, and went on. ‘All right, so maybe you don’t like what Jess did to the dog, but you know he’s not clever, and he knows no better.’

  ‘Would you really have drowned Hodge?’

  She stopped, disconcerted. ‘Drowned Hodge?’

  ‘Did you try? You couldn’t have done it in the well, not after that bird fell in and she put the grating over, but what did you do to him to make him hate you so?’

  ‘There, now, you see!’ It was triumph. ‘You knew that, too! But you’re wrong about Hodge. He was her cat, and a cat’s tricky to mell with. I never did nothing to Hodge. He went, that’s all, after she went. Oh, Miss Geillis, Miss Geillis, won’t you come with me, just the once, and see?’

  ‘No, I won’t. Whatever I know, or have, it’s going to stay right inside Thornyhold, and my animals are staying there with me, and nothing of the other sort is to come near us again.’

  There was a silence, while we measured one another, eye to eye. My heart was thumping, and my hand, flat on the tree-trunk, was damp. But it was Agnes’s gaze that fell.

  ‘Well,’ she said at length, on a long breath, as if relinquishing something. ‘You mean it, I see that. All right. I promise. Neither hurt nor harm, you and yours.’ She took another sweet, and held out the box again. ‘So take a piece, miss, and we’ll say no more, except that I’m main sorry if there’s been any upset.’

  What could I do? She was already swallowing. I took a piece of the fudge, and put it in my mouth. It was coffee-flavoured, and very good.

  I stood up. ‘Well, I’ll get home now, I think. I – I’m glad we’ve had this talk, Agnes, and got things straight. I’ll expect you this evening, shall I? Are you going back now?’

  ‘No,’ said Agnes. She was standing very straight. The sparkle was a glitter. Her eyes were brilliant, her face rosy. She looked very pretty. ‘I’m off to Taggs Farm. Boscobel he calls it. I left some of the sweets there yesterday, while you and he was out sweethearting, and now I’m going over to see them working.’

  I stared at her. The barely swallowed sweet stuff made me feel sick.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ It was a frightened croak. Some of her wretched drugs … sweets … see them working. Then, sweets, he doesn’t eat them, he’ll give them to William. Too violent. Half the dose for a child. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing you won’t get over! But it’s my turn now! I was going to wait till I’d seen the one in her book, the love drink, but after yesterday and the way he looked at you I wasn’t waiting any more, and that drink wasn’t the only one I knew! So I made the sweets and took them over, and the minute he lays eyes on me, Miss Geillis Ramsey, it’s me he’ll want, me! And don’t you think he’ll ever have cause to regret it, neither!’

  She shoved the box of sweets back in her pocket and laughed in my face. I said nothing, I must have been staring at her, mouth open, like an idiot, but it was not distress that struck me dumb. She was still talking, flushed and exultant, but I did not hear a word of it.

  What she had told me was crazy, it was shocking, but the very shock tore clean through the whirling clouds of the morning’s misery, and blew them to shreds. My thoughts settled, clear and still. Christopher John. If Agnes was telling the truth, and I thought she was, then nothing I had said or done had alienated or alarmed him. In the sane and daylight world he loved me, and had made it plain. All that had happened this morning was that he had succumbed to some filthy drug of Agnes’s concocting, and I knew from my own experience what effect her efforts could have.

  So if she had something of witchcraft at her fingertips, then how much more could I, Geillis of Thornyhold—?

  I stopped short. That way, no. It didn’t need the sudden chill of a cloud across the sun, as tangible as that touch from the air, to turn me back from something that I, and Cousin Geillis with her greater powers, had rejected. But the new self-confidence remained. ‘In the sane and daylight world.’ My own phrase came back to me. It was still that. He and I belonged there, not to the sad and silly world of drugs and nightmare dreams, and in the real world he loved me. He was highly intelligent and articulate; he knew about Agnes; surely, then, all I had to do was tell him all that had happened, and we could talk it out?

  Her voice rose, shrill and triumphant. ‘Yes, you may well stand there, my lady! So you won’t join in with us, oh no! Then you can just stay outside and see what we can do when we want to! And now I’ll be on my way!’

  ‘Agnes! Are you out of your mind? Agnes! No, wait, Listen—’

  I was shouting at the air. She was already through the gateway, had grabbed her bicycle and mounted. By the time I reached the gateway she was fifty yards away, pedalling furiously. The dappled shadows swallowed her pounding form, and she was gone.

  I seized my own machine and yanked it out on to the metal. I swear I had no thought of beating her to the encounter, the fairytale meeting that her shaky magic had planned. It was William I was afraid for, with the image of Gran, the echo of Christopher John: no great shakes as a witch …

  But she was pretty competent with a bicycle. As I whirled mine round on the road and made to mount, I saw that both tyres were flat to the ground. And the pump, surprise, surprise, was nowhere to be seen.

  A car slid to a stop beside me.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ asked Christopher John.

  25

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  Before I could even speak he was out of the car and I was in his arms. The bicycle went clanging to the ground. Even if I had wanted to I could not have spoken through the kiss. Centuries later, coming to through the things he was saying – ‘My dearest girl, my dear, what is it? You look shocked, awful. Have you had an accident on that damned bike of yours?’ – I managed to take breath and say, shakily:

  ‘No. No, I’m all right, Christopher John, where’s William? Was he to be home for lunch?’

  ‘No. I had to go to St Thorn, but I left him at the farm. Why?’

  ‘Did you get a package this morning, a box of fudge?’

  He looked down, surprised. ‘Yes. How did you know? Why? What is all this?’ Then, quick as if lightning had run between us: ‘Oh, my God. Agnes?’

  ‘Yes. You told me, no, William said you hardly ever ate sweets, so I thought you might have given them to him.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I gave the box to Eddy Masson. He was working with the sheep at Black Cocks, and he’d eat sweets all day if he could get them. For heaven’s sake, what’s in them?’

  I do not know what trailing vestige of loyalty, woman to woman, kept me from telling him. But I would not have exposed even a real enemy to the man she longed for and could not have. (Most certainly, now, could not have.) And Agnes, in spite of this last crazy push, was not really an enemy. Standing there in the road, in Christopher John’s arms, I could allow myself to see the funny side of it all.

  ‘What are you laughing like that for? A moment ago I thought you were in tears.’

  ‘Nothing. I’m happy. You were saying?’

  ‘I was saying I love you. And what’s in those sweets that makes it so urgent … and now so funny?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s something. She told me so. She was here, you see, and we had a bit of a scene, and then she dashed off on her bike and I was going after her to warn you and William because I don’t trust her recipes, and then I found that.’ I gestured towards the fallen bicycle.

  ‘Yes, I saw your tyres. I take it she did that? That’s not quite so funny, then. I think we’d better be getting up to Boscobel as quickly as we can.’

  A furious hooting drove us apart. He had left his car right in the middle of the road, with a door open and the engine still running. Behind it, pulling up with another flurry of hooting and a squeal of brakes, was the taxi from
St Thorn, that knew the way.

  Mr Hannaker’s face came, grinning, out of the window.

  ‘Look, mate, I don’t want to spoil the fun, but I’ve got a fare to pick up and – oh, it’s you, miss. Nice to see you again.’

  ‘And you,’ I said weakly. ‘How do you do, Mr Hannaker?’

  ‘You settling in all right, then? Getting to know a few folks?’ He spoke quite gravely, but I laughed as I went to pick my bicycle up and move it out of his way.

  ‘As you see. You were afraid I’d be lonely.’

  The grin came back, broad and cheerful. ‘Well, miss, good for you. See you around.’

  And as Christopher John moved his car the taxi crawled round it, pipped the horn twice for ‘thank you’, and vanished round a curve in the road. I pushed my machine in through the gateway and hid it behind the hedge. Then we were away, fast, in the taxi’s wake.

  Past the lodge gates, and round another bend or two, and the road stretched ahead of us straight and empty, save for the taxi half a mile or so ahead.

  ‘No sign of her,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll have turned off at the lodge – the short cut through the woods. Can she get there before we do?’

  ‘On that track? Not a hope. But what’s the hurry?’

  ‘I suppose there isn’t any, really, now. Only I was worrying about William. If Mr Masson gave him some—’

  The car surged forward. After a minute he said: ‘The stuff was addressed to me. She didn’t say why? No hint at all as to what was in it?’

  ‘None at all.’ That, at least, was truthful. ‘But she – she seems to like experimenting with these silly spells or whatever they are, and she makes mistakes. You know that; you told me. And – well she tried something on me, once, and I gathered from what she just told me that she wasn’t too sure of the result. She did say the sweets were harmless, but William’s only a child, so whatever’s in them would be far too strong for him anyway.’

  ‘Yes. Well, we’re nearly there.’

  The car turned, a shade too fast, into the side road, whipped along between the hedges, and at last into the track that climbed towards the beeches of Boscobel.