‘I admit nothing,’ he says triumphantly.
They sit for a moment, eyeing each other. Eliza balances the heel of one shoe on the toe of the other.
‘People are saying,’ she says carefully, ‘that you’ve been seen with the girl from Hewlands.’
She doesn’t say some of the coarser or more defamatory things she has heard against her brother, who is penniless and tradeless, not to mention rather young to be courting such a woman, who is of age and would come with a large dowry. What a way out it would be for the boy, she heard a woman at the market whisper, behind her back. You can see why he’d want to marry into money and get away from that father.
She tells herself to refrain from mentioning what people say of this girl. That she is fierce and savage, that she puts curses on people, that she can cure anything but also cause anything. Those wens on the stepmother’s cheeks, she overheard someone say the other day, she gave her those when the stepmother took away her falcon. She can sour the milk just by touching it with her fingers.
When Eliza hears these claims, made in her presence by people in the street, by neighbours, by those to whom she sells gloves, she doesn’t pretend not to have heard. She stops in her tracks. She holds the eye of the gossip in question （she has an unnerving stare: this she knows – her brother has told her often enough; it is, he says, something to do with the purity of her eye-colour, the way she can open her eyes wide enough for the whole iris to be seen）。 She is only thirteen but she is tall for her age. She holds their gaze long enough for them to drop their stare, for them to shuffle off, chastised by her boldness, her silent severity. There is, she has found, great power to be had in silence. Which is something this brother of hers has never learnt.
‘I’ve heard,’ she continues, with great control, ‘that you take walks together. After the lessons. Is that true?’
He doesn’t look at her when he says, ‘And what of it?’
‘Into the woods?’
He shrugs, neither yes nor no.
‘Does her mother know?’
‘Yes,’ he replies, quickly, too quickly, then amends this to ‘I don’t know.’
‘But what if . . .?’ Eliza finds the question she would like to put to him almost too unwieldy to ask; she has only the vaguest grasp of its content, the deeds involved, the matters at stake. She tries again: ‘What if you are caught? While taking one of these walks?’
He lifts a shoulder, then lets it drop. ‘Then we are caught.’
‘Does the thought not give you pause?’
‘Why would it?’
‘The brother . . .’ she begins ‘。 . . the sheep farmer. Have you not seen him? He is a giant of a man. What if he were to—’
Eliza’s brother waves his hand. ‘You worry too much. He is always off with his sheep. I have never encountered him at Hewlands, in all the times I have been there.’
She folds her hands together, squints again at the curls of paper, but can make no sense of what is written there. ‘I don’t know if you know,’ she says, timidly, ‘what people say of her but—’
‘I know what is said of her,’ he snaps.
‘There are many who claim she is—’
He straightens, his colour suddenly high. ‘None of it is true. None of it. I’m surprised that you would attend to such idle gabble.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eliza cries, crestfallen. ‘I’m merely –’
‘It is all falsehoods,’ he continues, as if she hasn’t spoken, ‘spread by her stepmother. She is so jealous of her it twists her like a snake and—’
‘– frightened for you!’
He regards her, taken aback. ‘For me? Why?’
‘Because . . .’ Eliza tries to order her thoughts, to sift through all she has heard ‘。 . . because our father will never agree to this. You must know that. We are in debt to that family. Father will never even speak their name. And because of what is said of her. I don’t believe it,’ she adds hastily, ‘of course I don’t. But, still, it is troubling. People are saying that no good can come of this attachment of yours.’
He slumps back to the wool bales, as if defeated, shutting his eyes. His whole body is quivering, with anger or something else. Eliza doesn’t know. There is a long silence. Eliza folds the fabric of her smock into tiny tight pleats. Then she remembers something else she wanted to ask him, and leans forward.
‘Does she really have a hawk?’ she whispers, in a new voice.