Finally, my mother emerged, and although she looked surprised to see him, as though he’d just caught her in the middle of something, I knew her well enough to understand that it was all an act, that she was scared.
She gave Duncan a tight smile. “What brings you here so late?”
He closed the door behind him. “Oh, you know. I reckoned I’d check up on you, see what’s been ailing you of late. You’ve not been around. I’ve been dropping off supplies to your boys. We’ve never discussed payment so I thought, now’s as good a time as any.”
Her smile widened, grew more false, and there was fear in her eyes. “Oh, how very thoughtful. I’m fine, thank you. Just fine.”
“Are you sure?” he said, stepping closer.
She pressed a hand to her pregnant belly, protective. “And my husband should be back soon. He’s always tired, and he’ll be expecting supper. So perhaps you could arrange to return in the morning when he’s refreshed, and happy to discuss any payment you desire.”
He lowered his eyes, gave a heavy sigh. “Send the boy to bed.”
She turned her head stiffly toward me. “Patrick. Bed.”
I nodded and scampered, fast as my legs could carry me. In my room I slammed the door, then slid beneath my bed and stuffed my fist in my mouth.
I don’t know what happened that night. I can guess, but I don’t know.
When I woke, it was light again and I was still under the bed. I raced to the kitchen and found my mother preparing breakfast. I studied her carefully. I was relieved to see her there, and I could tell that Duncan was gone. She seemed unharmed, but there was a cloud in the air and something on the wind that only I could read. She was different. Whatever had happened had changed her, in a different way to how my sister’s death had changed her. The look in her eyes was different.
I said nothing, and she said nothing. I held her gaze as I walked across the kitchen floor, then wrapped my arms around her waist and bawled like into her belly. The baby moved against my cheek, and I was so glad that it was still alive because I’d feared Duncan had harmed it, and if the baby died my mother would collapse into sadness again. I felt her hand cup my head, her arm around my shoulders. We held each other like that for a very long time.
She went to see Finwell, Amy’s mother. I played with Amy in the barn while she visited, and when she emerged she seemed better. Finwell had done a fine job of healing her, she said.
About a week thereafter, Duncan fell ill with some kind of pox that no healer could cure. It was the talk of the village. I heard old Mrs. Dunbar telling a neighbor about it, describing boils the size of sparrows’ eggs filled with smelly green pus, and how his body was absolutely covered in them. Not an inch of flesh to be seen. The boils were inside his body, too, and he vomited hot black fluid day and night. His wife and sons kept vigil by his bed, and he whispered to them that he’d been cursed by witches.
My mother hadn’t told a soul what had happened that night. But it turned out that someone had heard or seen, because within a few weeks it was whispered throughout the village.
Amy told me. I went to her house and she was plucking pheasants, ripping the feathers out and laying them in a bowl for her mum to make pillows.
“Are you OK?” she asked me when I sat down.
“I’m well,” I said. She glanced around to check that her brothers and sisters were out of earshot before signaling me to come closer. I didn’t want to. I had always been squeamish, and the bloodless creature on the table turned my stomach. It made me think of my mother, and what Duncan had done to her.
“Look,” Amy said finally. “I’m not sorry for what I did to Duncan. But I’m sorry about what they’re saying about your mum. I’m working on making it stop, OK?”
I screwed up my eyes and tried to process what she’d just said. There seemed to be whole chapters in those three sentences that I’d missed.