As we set off, one of the men gave me a sip of water and a heel of stale bread. I crumbled it into my mouth with my fingers, before leaning over the side of the cart to vomit it up. The shorter man laughed, his breath rancid in my face. I lay back against the seat and tilted my head so that I could look out at the passing countryside.
We were on the road that runs alongside the beck. My eyes were still weak, and the beck was just a blur of sunlight and water. But I could hear its music and smell its clean, iron scent.
The same beck that curves bright around my cottage. Where my mother had pointed out the minnows shooting out from under pebbles, the tight buds of angelica growing along the banks.
A dark shadow passed over me, and I thought I heard the beat of wings. The sound reminded me of my mother’s crow. Of that night, under the oak tree.
The memory turned in me like a knife.
My last thought before I drifted into darkness was that I was glad Jennet Weyward did not live to see her daughter thus.
I lost count of the number of times the sun rose and fell in the sky before we reached Lancaster. I had never been to such a place; had never even left the valley. The smell of a thousand people and animals was so strong that I narrowed my eyes to squint, in case I could see it hanging in the air. And the sound. Loud enough that I couldn’t hear a single note of birdsong.
I sat up in the cart to look around. There were so many people: men, women and children thronged the streets, the women hitching up their skirts as they stepped over mounds of horse dung. A man cooked chestnuts over a fire; the smell of their golden flesh made me dizzy. It was a bright afternoon but I was shivering. I looked down at my fingernails: they were blue.
We stopped outside a great stone building. I knew without needing to ask that it was the castle, where they held the assizes. It had the look of a place where lives were weighed up.
They pulled me from the cart and took me in, shutting the doors behind me so that I was swallowed whole.
The courtroom was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The sun flared through the windows, lighting on stone pillars that reminded me of trees curving towards the sky. But such beauty did nowt to quell my fear.
The two judges were seated on a high bench, as if they were heavenly beings, rather than meat and bone like the rest of us. They put me in mind of two fat beetles, with their black gowns, fur-trimmed mantles and curious dark caps. To the side sat the jury. Twelve men. They did not look me in the eye – none bar a square-jawed man, with a kink in his nose. His eyes were soft – with pity, perhaps. I could not bear the sight of it. I turned my face away.
The prosecuting magistrate entered the room. He was a tall man, and above his sober gown, his face had the raw, pitted sign of the pox. I gripped the wooden seat of the dock to steady myself as he took his place across from me. His eyes were pale blue, like a jackdaw’s, but cold.
One of the judges looked at me.
‘Altha Weyward,’ he began, frowning as though my name might sully his mouth. ‘You stand accused of practising the wicked and devilish arts called witchcraft, and by said witchcraft, feloniously causing the death of John Milburn. How do you plead?’
I wet my lips. My tongue seemed to have swollen and I worried that I would choke on the words before I got them out. But when I spoke, my voice was clear.
‘Not guilty,’ I said.
4
KATE
Kate’s stomach is still oily with fear, even though she’s on the A66 now, near enough to Crows Beck. Just over 200 miles from London. 200 miles from him.
She’s driven through the night. She’s used to getting by without much sleep, but even so, she’s surprised at how alert she is, the fatigue only beginning to show itself now in a cottony feeling behind her eyeballs, a thudding at her temples. She switches on the radio, for voices, company.
A jaunty pop song fills the silence, and she grimaces before switching it off.
She winds down the car window. The dawn air floods in, clean and grassy, with a tang of dung. So different to the damp, sulphuric smell of the city. Unfamiliar.
It’s been over twenty years since she was last in Crows Beck, where her great-aunt lived. Her grandfather’s sister – Kate barely remembers her – died last August, leaving her entire estate to Kate. Though estate seems the wrong word for the small cottage. Barely bigger than two rooms, if she remembers correctly.
Outside, the rising sun turns the hills pink. Her phone tells her that she’s five minutes away from Crows Beck. Five minutes away from sleep, she thinks. Five minutes away from safety.
She turns off the main road down a lane thick with trees. In the distance, she sees turrets gleam in the morning light. Could this be the Hall, she wonders, where her family once had their seat? Her grandfather and his sister grew up there – but then they were disinherited. She doesn’t know why. And now, there’s no one left to ask.
The turrets disappear, and then she glimpses something else. Something that makes her heart thud sharply in her chest.
A row of animals – rats, she thinks, or maybe moles – strung up on a fence, tied by their tails. The car rolls on and they slip mercifully from view. Just some harmless Cumbrian custom. She shudders and shakes her head, but she can’t forget the image. The little bodies, twisting in the breeze.
The cottage is slung low to the ground, like an anxious animal. The stone walls are blurred with age, ivy-covered. Ornate letters carved into the lintel spell its name: Weyward. A strange name for a house. The familiar word with the odd spelling, as if it’s been twisted away from itself.
The front door looks done-in, the dark green paint peeling from the bottom in ribbons. The old-fashioned lock is large and cobwebbed. She fumbles for the keys in her handbag. The jangling sound cuts through the morning quiet and something rustles in the shrubbery next to the house, making her jump. Kate hasn’t set foot inside since she was a child – way back, when her father was still alive. Her memories of the cottage – and her great-aunt – are dim, shadowy. Still, she’s surprised by the fear in her gut. It’s just a house, after all. And she’s got nowhere else to go.
She takes a breath, goes inside.
The hallway is narrow and low-ceilinged. A cloud of dust rises from the floor with each step, as if in greeting. The walls are lined with pale green wallpaper, almost hidden by framed sketches of insects and animals. She flinches at a particularly lifelike rendition of a giant hornet. Her great-aunt had been an entomologist. Kate can’t quite see the appeal, herself – she’s not exactly fond of insects, or anything that flies. Not anymore.
She finds, at the back of the house, a threadbare living room, a wall of which comprises the kitchen. Blackened copper pots and twists of dried herbs hang above a range that looks centuries old. The furniture is handsome but weathered: a buckling green sofa, an oak table surrounded by a motley of mismatched chairs. Above a crumbling fireplace, the mantelpiece is littered with strange artefacts: a withered husk of honeycomb; the jewelled wings of a butterfly, preserved in glass. One corner of the ceiling is shrouded in cobwebs so thick they look intentionally cultivated.
She fills the rusted kettle with water and puts it on the hob while she searches through the cupboards for supplies. Behind tinned beans and jars of pale, pickled mysteries, she finds some teabags and an unopened packet of chocolate bourbons. She eats over the sink, looking out of the window to the bottom of the garden, where the beck glints gold in the dawn. The kettle sings. Clutching her mug of tea, she tracks back up the corridor to the bedroom, floorboards creaking underfoot.