Nobody knew. The story went that she had appeared one day, parting the brambles, stepping out of the green, twilit world, and from then on the farmer, who happened to be standing there, watching his sheep, could never look away from her. He picked the leaves from her hair and the snails from her skirts. He brushed the twigs and moss from her sleeves, bathed the mud from her feet. He took her into his house, fed her, clothed her, married her and, not long after, a baby girl was born to them.
At this point in the story, the tellers would usually make it clear that no woman had ever doted on a child like this one. She bound the baby to her back and carried it wherever she went, walking about the farmhouse on her bare feet, even on the coldest winter days. She would not lay the child in a cradle, even at night, but kept her close, the way an animal might. She disappeared for hours on end into the forest, with the baby, coming home after dark, with perhaps an apronful of unpeeled chestnuts, to a house with no fire, no food, nothing ready for her husband to eat. The wives in neighbouring houses began to whisper, asking each other how the man put up with it. And, knowing the new mother was herself motherless, or appeared so, those women came to the farm, to give her their wisdom on housekeeping, weaning, the avoidance of illness, the best way to stitch cloth, how the woman must wear a coif to cover her hair, now that she was married.
The woman nodded at them all, with a distant smile. She was frequently seen in the road with her hair uncovered and loose about her shoulders. She had dug a patch of ground outside the farmhouse and was growing strange plants in it – woodland ferns and clambering worts, peppery flowers and ugly, lowlying bushes. The only person she seemed to talk to was an old widow-woman who lived at the far end of the village. They could often be seen in conversation in the widow’s small walled garden, the older woman leaning on her stick as the younger, baby bound to her back, still barefoot, still with her hair on display, stooped to tend the widow’s herbs.
It wasn’t long before the woman was brought to bed again, this time giving birth to a boy, who was strong from the moment he drew breath. He was an enormous child, with wide hands and feet big enough to walk on. The woman did as before, tying the baby to her, but a day or two after he was born, she took off into the forest, the girl child toddling beside her.
When her belly was swollen for the third time, the woman’s luck ran out. She took to bed, to birth her third child, but this time, she did not rise up from it again. The village women came to wash and lay her out, prepare her for the next world. They wept as they did so, not because they had been fond of the woman, who had appeared out of the forest and married one of their own, who went by the name of a tree, who had so little to say to them, who had rebuffed their attempts at companionship, but because her death reminded them of the possibility of their own. They cried together as they cleaned and combed her hair, as they peeled the dirt from under her fingernails, as they pulled a white shift over her head, as they wrapped up the tiny pod of the stillborn child and placed it in the corpse’s arms.
The little girl sat watching, her back to the wall, legs crossed under her, not uttering a sound. She did not sob, she did not weep; she said not a word. Her gaze did not waver from the body of her mother. In her lap, she held her little brother, who sobbed and snivelled and wiped his eyes on her dress. If any of those well-meaning neighbours approached, the girl would spit and claw, like a cat. She would not let go of her brother, no matter how many people tried to prise him from her. Hard to help a child like that, they said, hard to feel anything for her.
The only person she would let near her was the widow-woman, who had been a particular friend of her mother’s. The widow sat on a chair near the children, quite motionless, a bowl of meal in her lap. Every now and again, the girl would permit the woman to spoon some pap into the boy’s mouth.
One of the neighbours remembered her unmarried sister, Joan, who was young but had had care of many smaller siblings, as well as pigs, and was used to hard work. Why not engage her at the farmer’s place? Someone would have to keep house, to mind the children, to tend the fire and stir the pot. Who knew what might ensue? The farmer was, everyone knew, a man of means, with a fine hall and acres of land; the children could be brought to heel, with the right handling.
Now, it may or may not be true that before Joan had passed a month at the farm she was complaining about the girl to anyone who would listen. The child was driving her to distraction. She had twice woken in the night to find the girl standing above her, gripping her hand. She had caught her sliding into her pocket something which, on inspection, appeared to be twigs bound up with a chicken’s feather. She had discovered ivy leaves under her pillow, and who else would have put them there?