Margaret knew quite a bit about love and its dangers, but that hadn’t stopped her from falling for the wrong man. Such things happen even to the wisest women, especially when they’re young. Ian’s father was a man named Jimmy Poole, a distant cousin of the fellow who ran the taxi service. Jimmy Poole traded in horses and belonged to the Society of the Horseman’s Grip and Word, a secret society, whose members had to walk an actual crooked path, made of stones and bricks and sometimes, for a laugh, horse manure, in imitation and appreciation of left-handed magic, undergoing an initiation that included being beaten and made to drink horse urine, before being hanged with a rope from a hayloft that was meant to break at the last moment. All of this was done to test a man’s courage; if he passed and didn’t beg to be let free of his initiation, he was taken into a brotherhood in which he was granted the secrets that allowed him to speak to horses so that they would bend to his command. There was magic in this, the real stuff, knowledge that had filtered down from the bloodline witches who lived in the fens when this was a hideaway for ragged outliers, some of whom lived in the trees with the herons.
Jimmy Poole was a handsome man, too handsome, and Ian resembled him, in form and in temperament, perhaps too much so, at least in his youth. Ian’s father had never meant to stay in Essex or continue on with Margaret Wright. He asked her to make certain no baby would come of the nights they spent together. He was very clear about that, ready to walk away if she protested, for though he wanted her, there were plenty of other women in town, many of them more attractive. Margaret promised no child of his would come of their nights, but her mouth was scalded when she told this lie. She wanted a child more than anything, more than truth, more than any man. She mixed the cure she’d seen her grandmother give to women who wanted a baby and could have none, a secret recipe begun by Cora Wilkie long ago, one used only in their county, made of myrrh, juniper berries, licorice, pennyroyal, hemlock, and black and white hellebore. Some of the ingredients were so poisonous, a person must wear gloves simply to handle them, but Margaret was well trained, and she wasn’t afraid to partake of the potion that would bring her heart’s desire. Nine months later she took one look at Ian and knew that he was trouble and that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And now here he was at her door at such an ungodly hour, a man of fifty, but still her child, the one person for whom she would have given up her life. She’d made him supper; all the dishes he liked best were waiting, covered by dishcloths, still warm.
Margaret opened the door and said, “You’re late,” as a greeting, and Ian laughed and bent to kiss her cheek.
“I’ve brought some chaos with me,” he said, which surprised neither of them. On the train, he’d silently recited an ancient incantation that scholars in Alexandria had relied upon when they wished to concentrate on their studies, blocking out the outside world. But it hadn’t worked. “Ma, I think I might be in love.”
“That would serve you right,” Margaret said, delighted despite her son’s look of worry. The news didn’t stop them from sitting down together at the old pine table. Ian had been so deep in thought walking home, that he’d become lost in the woods for the best part of an hour, even though he knew the place as well as he knew the back of his hand, and he was indeed late, and there was supper to attend to.
* * *
Gillian sat perched on the edge of her lumpy mattress in her room at the inn. Most people were asleep by now, but her internal clock was off, and besides, she felt she wasn’t alone in the small chamber at the top of the stairs. The wallpaper was decorated with large purple flowers, and the rugs had been hand stitched by village women years ago when a sewing circle met in the lobby on Thursday nights. Gillian wore a flimsy blue nightgown, her tawny hair pulled back; for some reason, she felt young again, ready to take a risk. If the room was haunted, so be it. Perhaps she had something to learn from the other world. She was the selfish sister, the one who couldn’t pass a mirror without stopping to gaze at herself, the one who’d dated men who were nothing but trouble. Long ago, a man had nearly destroyed her. She’d thought his sort of love could withstand the curse and now, whenever she heard about women who were caught up in a relationship that was tied to violence, women who stayed for years, sometimes for a lifetime, she understood. Gillian had been that woman, unable to walk out the door, reduced to nothing. She’d changed her life, but the wild girl she’d once been still lived inside her heart.