A searing story of forbidden love and the curtailing of female wildness set amongst the long shadows cast by the Pendle Witch Trials is the bewitching debut from a magnetic new voice in historical fiction.
Lancashire, 1620
“ANNIE SLEEPS CURLED UP ON THE BED we share, wet thumb fallen from her mouth. I kneel, calling and shaking her. She frowns and mutters.
‘Wake up,’ I say.
She pushes me off and turns her back.
‘Get up. Time to search.’
Her eyes open and she sits forward, clutching my arm. ‘Has he come?’
‘We rang the bell, didn’t we? And the ash is untouched.’
She looks to see that the thin ring around the bed shows no trace of his hoof print.
‘I’m safe, then,’ she says, lying back down.
‘No.’ I pull her to her feet. Have to know she’s free for another day. Too late for me, I’m doomed to a future I cannot escape, but she may yet be saved. She’s so scrawny I could carry her with one hand. Ignoring her complaints, I drag her over to the weak light of the slit in the wall, standing in the narrow space between our mat and Mam’s, and begin the daily ritual. I pull the clothes over her head and she stands, naked and shivering, as I search every part of her skin.
I start with her side, where my mark lies, the rounded shape of his mouth berry-red. Her side is clear, white goose-pimpled skin stretched tight over jagged bone. I lift and turn her arms, spread her fingers to inspect the flesh between them, look behind her knees and on the underside of each foot. The flea bites she has picked are rough but the mark I pray I will never find would be flat and dark. A stain that no washing can remove, though God knows I have tried. As she bows her head I hold her hair and search the back of her neck.
She is not his yet.
I pull her into my arms and cradle her. ‘Nowt.’ Let out my breath at last. Every day I begin by reassuring her. Every day I begin with foreboding.
She springs from our mat through the doorway to John’s empty one and back, clapping her grimy hands. ‘He doesn’t want me.’ She smiles, wipes her nose and licks off the slime trail it leaves.
“She glances at her familiar, a hare, harmless to us but a willing carrier of curses, she says.”
I laugh and pull the clothes on over her head before she skips away into the other room to stand in the spilled ashes from the fire and take what warmth she may.
Mam has risen from bed, blanket pulled around her as she stands in the doorway.
‘No visit?’ she asks, words sliding through the gaps in her teeth.
I shake my head.
‘He’ll come. None of your tricks can stop him.’ She glances at her familiar, a hare, harmless to us but a willing carrier of curses, she says. It appears only to her, but we know its presence by her whispered words of love and plans of ruin.
‘We know it, do we not, Dew-Springer?’ I stare, trying to see its footprints in the ash or glimpse it shifting around her feet. Nothing.
Squeezing past John’s mat and the table to reach the fire, she waves Annie away, and pokes the lifeless ashes, dust rising and coating the mould on the wall. The blanket falls from her shoulders, showing the ridge of her backbone, and her own mark.
‘Firewood,’ she says.
‘I’ll go to the shore, fetch some driftwood. Perhaps find some clams.’
‘Help me wipe her first?’
I dip a rag into the bucket and Mam catches Annie before she can run. She cries out and struggles as I scrub her dirty face and hands, but hasn’t the strength to escape. We gave her the last of the bread two days ago.
‘Dolts,’ she shouts, fists clenched and teeth bared. Mam and I try to control our laughter at her angry face, damp hair sprouting out. ‘Gormless.’
The door bangs against the wall and we stare at John as he stands with legs apart, hands behind his back and elbows out, trying to bulk his thin frame.
‘You’ll never guess what I got,’ he says.
‘A bird,’ Annie says. ‘A spadger, a little brown one?’
John rolls his eyes. ‘Why would I bring a bird, squirrel?’
‘Be more use than you,’ I say.
Annie wipes her nose on her sleeve and shrugs. ‘No matter, there’s spadgers in the woods. I’ll get my own.’
‘No, guess properly. Guess what I got.’
‘A clout is what you’ll get if you don’t tell us,’ Mam says.
A toothless threat. She has never raised a hand to us. Only once I’ve seen her driven to violence. A swift and deep fury, rising to protect her own.
John swings a fist round from behind his back, puffing up as though he has a chest of gold. Mam gasps.
From his hand dangles the body of a lamb. Blood drips on to the floor, a steady pat, pat, pat.
Mam staggers over and gathers him into her arms, lamb and all. The back of his tunic is stained red. ‘Oh, John. You’re quite the man. We’re saved.’
“Without this we have nothing but scraps from shore and hedgerow to eat.”
She is right. Without this we have nothing but scraps from shore and hedgerow to eat. The steady drip is mesmerising, beat of it against the floor, spreading puddle at his feet. A trail up the hill, and through the abandoned shell of a hamlet surrounding us, that will lead straight to our house.
John flushes and shakes her off. ‘It’s only a little ’un.’
She takes it from him, turning and examining its limp body, holding a bowl to catch the precious blood. ‘Makes the meat all the sweeter. Plenty here for us.’
‘And I know where there’s turnips.’
‘Then go, lad. We’ll have a feast. Annie wipe the table, Sarah fetch my knife.’
John runs out of the door and I bring the knife, but Annie stays where she is.
‘It’s so small,’ she says.
‘Big enough to feed us all,’ I reply.
‘It’s a babby.’
I stop and look at her. She is watching Mam split and strip the skin, the white wool now stained crimson. Tears stand in her eyes. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth, lips wet.
I kneel in front of her, take her bony shoulders in my hands. ‘He killed it quickly. It didn’t feel a thing.’
She stares past me at the lamb, now no more than a lump of meat on our table.
‘Come with me, little cub,’ I say. ‘We’ll collect seaweed to have with it and wood to build the fire.’
I take her hand and walk her out of the door.
WE EAT LONG BEFORE THE SUN HAS REACHED ITS PEAK. A feast the like of which we can’t remember, one that should be saved for evening but we cannot wait. John fetches turnips, Annie and I find a little seaweed, and they are cooked in the pot together with the lamb. A meal richer than we are used to, meat full of flavour as it falls apart in the mouth.
Once the food is in front of him John digs in with his fingers, shoving turnips into his mouth so that pieces fall and stick to his chin, tearing into the meat with his teeth.
Mam, Annie and I are only a little more controlled, eating without pause. We neither speak nor look up from the bowls until they’re bare.
I lean back in my seat, sigh, clutch my tight belly. There is an unfamiliar pain there. The pain of greed. John looks around at us, a king who has fed his people.
‘You did well, son. There’ll be more to come too. Broth from the bones. The blood I can use for curses and the money will buy us more food.’
John lets out a long, loud belch. Annie laughs and even Mam smiles.”
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by Elizabeth Lee
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