My mother. Her death weighed heavily upon me still, for she was another one of my failings.
Not long after the couple from Clitheroe came to see us, my mother began to change. One night, as the moon rose outside – it was a young moon, I remember, just a pale scratch in the sky – she told me to put on my cloak. Then she took the crow, placing her gently in a covered basket. I asked her what she was doing, for we had raised the bird from a hatchling, just as we had its mother, both of whom carried the sign. She did not answer me, only had me follow her into the night. She did not speak until we came upon the oak trees that bordered one of the farms – the Milburn farm, where one day Grace would live, though I did not know this then. I was thinking of her that night, of how we used to climb those trees together, their gnarled branches cradling us. The memory sat heavily in my heart.
My mother knelt before the largest oak tree and coaxed the crow from its basket. No sooner was it on the ground than it took to the air, the moon catching on its feathers. It flew back to its usual spot on my mother’s shoulder, but she pressed her cheek against its beak and shut her eyes, murmuring something that I could not hear. The crow gave an anguished cry, but it flew away to the upper branches of the oak, which were thronged black with its kind.
We walked back to the cottage. In the darkness, I could not see my mother’s face, but from the sharp, shuddering sounds of her breath I knew that she wept.
She bade me stay indoors, after that, only leaving the cottage for church and for walks when darkness fell over the land. I began to prefer the winter months to the endless summer days, though I was hungry by this time. We had less coin, now, and would have gone without meat if not for the kindness of the Bainbridges. My mother refused to take on new work; she would only see to those she trusted.
‘It isn’t safe,’ she said, her eyes shining large and frightened in her skull.
As the months went on, turning into years, she looked less and less like my mother. She grew thinner. Curled into herself, like a plant missing the sun. Her cheeks lost their bloom and her skin was tight on her bones. Still, we only left the cottage for church services. The villagers stared at us as we crossed the nave, my mother leaning against me, the two of us hobbling like some monstrous creature.
Some of them said we were cursed. For what we had done to Anna Metcalfe.
‘We should go outside,’ I said, when my mother did not rise from her pallet for five days. ‘You need to feel the air, to listen to the wind in the trees. To hear birdsong.’
For I had begun to suspect that nature, to us, was as much a life force as the very air we breathed. Without it, I feared my mother would die.
Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I wonder if she herself knew this – if she had decided that she would rather face that great, yawning unknown than continue our existence in the shadows.
‘No,’ she said that day, her eyes blacker than I had ever seen them. She gripped my arm, her nails sharp on my flesh. ‘It isn’t safe.’
It was the sweating sickness that took her, in the end. Three years after my first blood. She had directed her treatment from her own sickbed, telling me which roots to crush, which herbs to apply, even when she could barely lift her head from the pallet. I did everything she asked of me, but soon she was more asleep than awake, the bedclothes damp around her as she murmured my name. I was frightened of her, her yellow face in the candlelight.
‘Remember your promise,’ she said, her body arching with pain. ‘You cannot break it.’
One morning, as dawn split the sky, she grew still. Then I knew she was gone. I thought of how she had named me. Altha. Healer. I had let her down.
I thought a lot of Grace, after my mother passed. She was the only other person I had ever loved. Now I had lost both of them.
Grace was married by then. William Metcalfe had arranged for his daughter to marry another yeoman – a dairy farmer, like himself. Grace had already played the role of farmer’s wife since her mother passed, no doubt. I imagine she thought herself ready for marriage.
John Milburn was well thought of in the village. And handsome, too. They looked well together, at the wedding: she pale and pretty, and he with his dark hair shot with gold.
I wasn’t invited, of course. But I found a place to watch, in a shaded lane where I could see the entrance of the church while remaining in shadow. It was a summer morning. The villagers threw wildflower petals over the couple as they crossed the nave. Grace had hawthorn flowers woven into her red hair. Pain closed my throat as I remembered the flower chains we’d made as girls. She’d loved to pretend at marriage, then – describing the face of her future husband as though she could conjure him with speech alone. I had been quiet in those moments. If I hoped for a future with anyone, it was with her.
She looked happy, hand in hand with her husband. Perhaps she was, then. Or perhaps I was standing too far away. A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.
I would explain all of this to my mother when I saw her in the life that follows this one, I decided in the dungeon that night. I would tell her the ugliness. The truth.
The next day, the prosecutor called William Metcalfe. The years had not been kind to the man who walked down the aisle to take the box. Time and grief had made deep crags in his face. His hair hung in strings over his forehead. I felt his eyes on me when he took the oath, the hatred in his gaze like a brand on my skin.
The prosecutor smoothed his robes before he began the questioning. I wondered if this was the last witness. His last chance to prove my guilt.
‘Master Metcalfe,’ he said. ‘Could you tell the court who first made this charge of witchcraft against the accused?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she killed my son-in-law, sir.’
‘Were you a witness to your son-in-law’s death, Master Metcalfe?’
‘No.’
‘Then how can you be so sure of the accused’s guilt?’
‘Because of what happened before.’
‘What happened before?’
‘She killed my wife.’
I looked for Grace in the gallery. I wished the white cap would turn so that I could see her face. So that I could see some small sign that she didn’t still believe her father, after all these years. After everything.
‘Master Metcalfe, are you able to tell the court about your wife’s death, and the accused’s involvement in it?’
When Metcalfe spoke again, his voice had changed. The fire had gone out of it, the words cracking with pain.
‘My wife – Anna – she fell ill with scarlatina. It were eight years ago. Grace were only thirteen. Doctor Smythson came out and applied some leeches. But my Anna didn’t get better. I would have sent for the doctor again, but one night Grace slipped away. She returned with the accused and her mother. She was … friendly with the accused, at that age.’
He stopped. I didn’t want to look at him. I looked about the courtroom for something else to focus on. Nothing remained of the spider’s web in the dock. I wondered if someone had brushed it away.
A fly hovered above the gallery. I kept my eyes on it as William Metcalfe continued.
‘Altha’s mother – Jennet – she was known around Crows Beck for her healing skills, at that time. And seeing as the girls were close … well, you can see why Grace saw fit to fetch them. She were only trying to save her mother. The first thing Jennet did when she arrived was pull the leeches off my Anna. Then she promised me she could save her. But she gave her something, some noxious draught, and then my Anna …’