‘Oh,’ Kate falters. ‘That’s really kind. Maybe I could let you know?’
‘Of course.’
There is a pause, and she feels Emily’s eyes on her. She wishes, suddenly, that she was wearing something else: her T-shirt is cut too low, and her jeans stick uncomfortably to her thighs. Even her hair feels wrong. She lifts a self-conscious hand to the coarse, bleached strands of it.
‘Anyway, is there anything else I can help you with?’ Emily asks. ‘Book recommendations?’
‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I was wondering if you had anything on local history. Or if …’ She pauses, nerves ticking in her stomach. ‘You could tell me about the Weywards?’
‘Ah,’ Emily grins. ‘Heard the rumours already, then?’
Kate thinks of the receptionist at the doctor’s surgery, the word she had spat from her mouth as though it was something rotten.
Witch.
‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘The villagers do like to gossip. Well … the story goes that a Weyward was tried as a witch, back in the 1600s.’
She thinks of the cross under the sycamore tree. Those carved letters. RIP.
‘Really? What happened to her?’
‘I don’t know the details I’m afraid, pet. But there was a lot of that going on around here then, sadly. Women being accused left, right and centre.’
‘Did Aunt Violet ever talk about them? About the Weywards?’
Emily pauses, frowns. She fiddles with the chain of her glasses, so that the lenses blink in the light.
‘She didn’t like to talk about her family much. I got the impression it was too painful. Something to do with leaving Orton Hall.’
Kate thinks of the turrets she passed on the drive up, gilded by the dawn.
‘Anyway,’ Emily blinks and turns to look up at the clock, which is shaped like a cat’s face. One of its whiskers – the shorter one – hovers close to 5. ‘I’ll be closing up soon, I’m afraid, pet. Do come back another time, though, let me know how you get on. And the offer stands.’
Kate feels heat rising in her cheeks as she says goodbye. There is something else she wants to ask, too, but she hasn’t been able to work up the nerve. Her bank balance is dwindling rapidly – soon she’ll be down to the emergency stash of notes hidden in her handbag. She’d developed a silly fantasy, when she’d found the note in Aunt Violet’s copy of Lolly Willowes, that perhaps she could work here, in the bookshop. She’d almost convinced herself of it, that she could slip on that old professional persona the way one would a coat.
But now that she’s standing here, her skin prickles with self-doubt. She hasn’t worked for years – not since Simon made her quit, after she tried to leave him the first time. Her memories of work seem so distant that they might have happened to someone else. Even at the time, she’d known the job wouldn’t last. She didn’t deserve it.
It was a silly fantasy. Nothing more.
Not ready to face the walk back to the cottage, Kate tries the front door of the church. It’s locked. But the gate of the little graveyard is open, swinging on its hinges. She looks behind her to see if anyone is watching, and then slips inside.
The graveyard is bordered by high stone walls, green with moss and lichen. Ancient trees line the walls, their branches threatening to brush against the tops of the headstones.
She has been here before, she realises with a start. Of course. Her grandfather’s funeral. She remembers the other mourners, black as crows in their sombre raincoats, the drone of the priest. And the noise.
There is a rustle of movement. She looks up: a dark shadow flits from one tree branch to another, and her heart jolts. She runs her fingers over the reassuring shape of the brooch in her pocket as she walks through the graveyard.
The headstones are a motley of different ages: some of them are new, sparkling granite, surrounded by tiny terracotta pots of bright flowers. Others are so worn by time and weather that the inscriptions are barely readable. She sees the same names again and again: Kirkby, Metcalfe, Dinsdale, Ridgeway. As if the same cast of actors has been brought out to play each generation of villagers.
She weaves her way through the lanes of headstones in search of her family. At first, she makes towards a gloomy-looking mausoleum in the centre of the graveyard. It is ornately carved from marble; topped by a cross and a crouching bird of prey. But the marble is stained green with age, half covered by some creeping plant. The little door, set into the centre of the tomb, is padlocked shut – to keep something in or out, she isn’t sure. There is a sad bouquet of wilted lavender at the entrance. Kate, seeing a little card attached with mouldering ribbon, crouches down to get a look, but the writing is blurred, illegible.
Eventually, she finds her relatives in the far corner, protected from the elements by the heavy boughs of a large elm. Graham, her grandfather, and Violet, his sister. Side by side, beneath a starry quilt of wildflowers. She crouches down next to the headstones to read their inscriptions. Graham is described as a loving husband and father. A loyal brother. There is a quote from Proverbs 17:17 – A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
Violet’s headstone – a hunk of granite, still in its natural shape – is simpler. There is just her name, Violet Elizabeth Ayres, and the dates of her birth and death. And something else – faint, inscribed so delicately that she doesn’t notice it straight away.
The letter W.
W for Weyward? There is something familiar about the look of it. A hot breeze blows through the graveyard, rustling the leaves of the trees.
She stays like that for a while, looking at Violet’s headstone. Her great-aunt had left explicit instructions for it, according to the solicitor. She wonders who attended her funeral: she hadn’t been able to go without rousing Simon’s suspicion. Kate feels an ache of regret at not being there. She’ll come back another day, she decides, with some flowers. Violet would have liked that, she’s sure.
She gets to her feet and decides to see if she can find any Weyward graves. She wanders up and down the graveyard a few times, but sees none, though some of the headstones are blank from age. Perhaps a woman accused of witchcraft wouldn’t have been buried in a church graveyard. It is – what’s the word for it again? – hallowed ground. But surely, if the family does go back centuries, other Weywards must have lived and died in Crows Beck? If not in the graveyard, then where could they be buried?
A vague unease fills her as she thinks of the weathered cross under the sycamore tree. Could it – surely it doesn’t – mark a human burial site?
She distracts herself by taking the scenic route home, the path that follows the beck, which is the colour of burnt sugar in the afternoon light. She looks at the clumps of vegetation on the banks: ferns, nettle, a plant she doesn’t know the name of with tiny buds of white flowers.
Something makes her look up at the sky: there is a dark shape against the pink clouds. A crow.
Later, Kate opens Aunt Violet’s jewellery box.
In the dim light, she sees that the necklace is tangled. She lifts it out gently. She sits down on the bed, switching on the bedside lamp to take a closer look. She wonders how old the necklace is. It looks at least a century old, if not older: the gold is dull and tarnished. It feels cool in her palm, reassuring.