All we needed was to be returned to the wild.
This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.
For it has always been a gift, she said. Until now.
She told me of other women, across the land – like those the couple from Clitheroe had spoken of, the Devices and the Whittles – who had died for having such gifts. Or for simply being suspected of having them. The Weyward women had lived safely in Crows Beck these last hundred years, and in that time had healed its people. We had brought them into the world and held their hands as they left it. We could use our ability to heal without attracting too much suspicion. The people were grateful for this gift.
But our other gift – the bond we have with all creatures – is far more dangerous, she told me. Women had perished – in flames, or at the rope – for keeping close company with animals, whom jealous men labelled ‘familiars’。 This was why she had to banish her crow, the bird that had shared our home for so many years. Her voice cracked as she spoke of it.
And so she made me promise: I was not to use this gift, this wildness inside. I could use my healing skills to put food in my belly, but I must stay away from living creatures, from moths and spiders and crows. Doing otherwise would risk my life.
Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live. But until then I should keep my gift hidden, move through only the darkest corners of the world, like a beetle through soil.
And if I did this, I may survive. Long enough to carry on the line, to take a man’s seed from him and no more. Not his name, nor his love, which could put me at risk of discovery.
I had not known, then, what she meant by seed: I had thought a seed was something to be put in the ground, rather than inside a woman. I imagined the next Weyward girl, who would one day grow inside me, blooming into life.
When my mother lay dying three years later, on that awful night when our few candles were no match for the darkness that stole into the room, she reminded me of my promise with her last breath.
I had heeded her words for so long. But after speaking to Grace that day after the market, I felt the first desire to disobey them. The first desire to break my promise.
46
VIOLET
‘Violet!’ said the voice again. It really did sound like a human voice. Violet wondered if she were hallucinating: surely it was dangerous to lose so much blood. There was a tapping sound. She looked up. She saw – or at least, she thought she saw – a face at the window. Pale and moonlike, with a shock of ginger hair.
She opened the back door, and Graham was silhouetted against the garden. Behind him the helleborine rippled in the wind, a dark red sea.
‘Christ,’ Graham was saying. He was looking down at her nightgown, at the black stain that bloomed between her legs. Violet wanted to scuttle away from him and hide, as if she were an animal in its death throes. Graham kept talking but she had a hard time understanding the words. She could see his mouth moving and knew that sounds were coming out of it, but they seemed to float away before she could catch them, like the downy husk of a dandelion.
Graham was inside the cottage.
‘For the love of God, Violet,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’
He picked up a candle from the table and walked towards the bedroom, his face grim in the flickering light.
‘Don’t,’ she said weakly, but it was too late.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she heard him say again.
There was a rustling sound, and Graham reappeared, holding the bundle of bloodied sheets away from him. His white face looked guilty, as though he were carrying something dead. He was carrying something dead, Violet remembered.
‘I don’t want to look at it,’ she said.
‘We’ll have to bury it,’ said Graham. He stood for a moment, watching her. ‘I found your note,’ he said. ‘I was in your room, looking for my biology book. It was poking out of that book of fairy tales you used to love.’
‘The Brothers Grimm,’ she said softly.
Graham nodded. ‘Then Father told me that you and Frederick were engaged. After reading about … after I read the note, I knew that you didn’t want to marry him. I was going to visit you in Windermere – in the sanatorium – to check if you were all right. But then I heard Father on the telephone in his study last night … he was talking to Doctor Radcliffe about you. Then … he gave him this address, so this afternoon I told Father I was going for a walk … and I came here instead.’
He looked around as he spoke, taking in the dim, low-ceilinged room. ‘God knows what this place is,’ he said.
Violet said nothing, but there was a twist of dread in her stomach. Father speaking to Doctor Radcliffe … giving him this address … she knew that wasn’t good, but she couldn’t think why it was so bad, exactly. Her brain felt thick, slug-like, the same way it had felt that afternoon in the woods with Frederick, after all that brandy. Before he—
‘What happened to the baby, Violet?’ Graham’s voice was low. ‘Did you take something? Something to make the baby go away?’
‘Bring on the menses,’ Violet said.
‘Violet, are you listening to me? You have to tell me if you took something. Doctor Radcliffe is coming here, today. He’s meeting Father here. They could arrive any minute. If you did take something … you need to tell me. We’ve got to get rid of the evidence. It’s a crime, Violet. They could put you away for life.’
The dread in her stomach again.
‘Tansy petals,’ she said. ‘Steep in water for five days before administration …’
‘Right,’ said Graham. He put the bundled bedsheets down on the floor and went back into the bedroom. The door burst open and the wind roared through it, unfurling the bundle to reveal a gleam of pale flesh. Violet was gripped by the awful fear that the spore would reanimate and slither up inside her again. She couldn’t bear it. She turned around to face the wall.
Graham returned, holding the tin that she’d prepared the tansy mixture in. She could smell it, dank and cloying. He took the tin and the bundle outside. Violet heard the first hiss of rain on the roof, and watched it trickle down from the hole in the ceiling. She wanted to get up, to stand in the garden and let the rain wash her clean, but she was too tired to move. Her head lolled forward onto her chest. Darkness lapped at her.
When Graham came back inside, his hair was wet and mud was splattered across his clothes.
‘I’ve buried it,’ he said. ‘The child.’ He brushed the dirt from his hands as he spoke, not looking at her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, though she wished he wouldn’t refer to it as a ‘child’。 He nodded.
He brought her a pan of water and a rag, along with a fresh nightgown from the suitcase in the bedroom.
‘I’ll let you clean yourself up,’ he said, walking out of the room. ‘Call me when you’re decent.’
I’ve buried the child.
Violet wondered if she would ever be decent again.