Into the Water(24)

She wonders, will he be there to watch her, and what will he think? He thought her beautiful once, but now her teeth are rotting, and her skin is mottled blue and purple as though she were half dead already.

They take her to Beckford, where the river turns sharp around the cliff and then runs slow, slow and deep. This is where she’ll swim.

It is autumn, a cold wind blowing, but the sun is bright and so she feels ashamed, stripped there in the bright light before all the men and women of the village. She thinks she can hear them gasp, in horror or surprise, at what’s become of lovely Libby Seeton.

She’s bound with ropes thick and rough enough to bring bright, fresh blood to her wrists. Just her arms. Legs left free. Then they tie a rope around her waist, so that should she sink, they can bring her back again.

When they take her to the river’s edge, she turns and looks for him. The children scream then, thinking she’s turning the curse on them, and the men push her into the water. The cold takes all of her breath. One of the men has a pole and he shoves it at her back, pressing her on and on and on until she cannot stand. She slips down, into the water.

She sinks.

The cold is so shocking that she forgets where she is. She opens her mouth to gasp and sucks in black water, she starts to choke, she struggles, she kicks with her legs, but she’s disoriented, no longer feels the riverbed beneath her feet.

The rope pulls hard at her, biting into her waist, ripping her skin.

When they drag her to the bank, she is crying.

‘Again!’

Someone is calling for a second ordeal.

‘She sank!’ a woman’s voice cries. ‘She’s no witch, she’s just a child.’

‘Again! Again!’

The men bind her again for the second ordeal. Different this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left. The rope around her waist. This time, they carry her into the water.

‘Please,’ she starts to beg, because she’s not sure that she can face it again, the blackness and the cold. She wants to go back to a home that no longer exists, to a time when she and her aunt sat in front of the fire and told stories to one another. She wants to be in her bed in their cottage, she wants to be little again, to breathe in woodsmoke and rose and the sweet warmth of her aunt’s skin.

‘Please.’

She sinks. By the time they drag her out the second time, her lips are the blue of a bruise, and her breath is gone for good.





MONDAY, 17 AUGUST





Nickie


NICKIE SAT IN her chair by the window, watching the sun rise and burn the morning mist off the hills. She’d hardly slept at all, what with this heat and her sister prattling in her ear all night long. Nickie didn’t like the heat. She was a creature built for cold weather: her father’s family came from the Hebrides. Viking stock. On her mother’s side they came from the east of Scotland, driven down south hundreds of years ago by witch hunters. The folk around Beckford might not believe it, they might scoff and scorn, but Nickie knew she was descended from the witches. She could draw a direct line all the way back, from Sage to Seeton.

Showered and fed and dressed in respectful black, Nickie went first to the pool. A long, slow shuffle along the path. She was grateful for the shade offered by oak and beech. Even so, sweat prickled in her eyes, it collected at the base of her spine. When she reached the little beach on the south side, she took off her sandals and went in up to her ankles. She reached down and scooped up handfuls of water, splashing it over her face and her neck and her upper arms. Time was, she would have climbed up to the clifftop to pay her respects to those who had fallen and those who had jumped and those who were pushed, but her legs just weren’t up to it any longer, so whatever she had to say to the swimmers, she would have to say it from down here.

Nickie had been standing on pretty much exactly this spot the first time she ever laid eyes on Nel Abbott. It was a couple of years back and she’d been doing just this – having a bit of a paddle, cooling off – when she’d spotted a woman up on the cliff. She watched her walk back and forth, once and then twice, and by the third time there was a tingle over Nickie’s palms. Something wicked, she thought. She watched the woman crouch down, lower herself to her knees and then, like a snake slithering on its belly, manoeuvre herself to the very edge of the cliff, her arms dangling over the edge. Heart in mouth, Nickie cried out, ‘Oi!’ The woman looked down, and, to Nickie’s surprise, she smiled and waved.

Nickie saw her around quite a bit after that. She was at the pool a lot, taking pictures, making sketches, writing things down. Up there at all times of night and day, in all weathers. From her window, Nickie had watched Nel walk through the village towards the pool in the dead of night, in a snow storm, or when bitter rain lashed down hard enough to strip skin from flesh.

Sometimes, Nickie would pass her on the path and Nel wouldn’t flinch, she didn’t even notice she had company, so absorbed was she by the task at hand. Nickie liked that, she admired the focus of the woman, the way her work consumed her. She liked Nel’s devotion to the river, too. Time was, Nickie liked a dip in the water of a warm summer’s morning, although those days were behind her now. But Nel! She swam at dawn and dusk, in winter as in summer. Though now she thought of it, Nickie hadn’t seen her swim in the river for some time, not for a couple of weeks. Longer, maybe? She tried to remember the last time she’d actually seen her in the water, but she couldn’t, thanks to her sister chattering in her ear again, clouding her mind’s eye.