The Essex Serpent(22)
5
Joanna Ransome, not quite thirteen, tall as her father and wrapped in his newest coat, held her hand over flames. She brought her palm as near the flicker as she could, then withdrew it slow enough to preserve her pride. Her brother John watched solemnly, and would’ve liked to have thrust his own hands into his pockets, but had been instructed to leave them to grow as cold as he could bear. ‘We are making a sacrifice,’ she’d said, leading him to the stretch of land just beyond World’s End, where the marshes gave way to the Blackwater estuary, and beyond that, the sea: ‘And for there to be a sacrifice, we must suffer.’
Earlier that day she’d explained to him, whispering in cold corners, that something was rotten in the village of Aldwinter. There was the drowned man, for one thing (naked, they said, and with five deep scratches on his thigh!), and the sickness at Fettlewell, and the way they all woke from dreams of wet black wings. And there was more: the nights should’ve grown lighter by now – there should be snowdrops in the garden – their mother should not still have a cough that woke her at night. There should be birdsong in the mornings. They should not still shiver in their beds. It was all because of something they’d done and forgotten and never repented, or was because the Essex earthquake had let something loose in the Blackwater, or perhaps it was because their father had lied (‘He said he’s not afraid, and there’s nothing there – but why won’t he go down to the sea after dark anymore? Why won’t he let us play out on the boats? Why does he look tired?’). Whatever the cause and wherever the blame, they were going to do something about it. Long ago in other lands they’d cut out hearts to bring the sun up: surely it wasn’t too much to ask that they try out a little spell for the sake of the village? ‘I have it all worked out,’ she’d said: ‘You trust me, don’t you?’
They stood between the ribs of a clipper which had pitched up there a decade ago and never shifted from the shore. In the harshness of the weather it had worn down to little more than a dozen black curved posts that looked so much like the opened chest cavity of a drowned beast that visitors took to calling it Leviathan. It was near enough to the village for the children to reach it without censure, and far enough out of sight for no-one to notice what they did there. In summer they hung their clothes from its bones, and in winter they lit small fires in its shelter, always afraid the hulk would burn, and dismayed when it didn’t. Love notes and curses were cut in the wood with penknives; pennies were stacked on the posts and were never spent. Joanna’s little fire was set some distance away from the wreck in a circle of stones, and had taken hold nicely. She’d looped it with lengths of bladderwrack, which gave off a clean scent, and pressed into the coarse sand seven of her best shells.
‘I’m hungry.’ John looked up at his sister and immediately regretted his lack of resolve. He’d turn seven before summer, and felt firmly that it was high time he matched his increasing years with increasing courage. ‘I don’t mind though,’ he said, and capered twice around the fire.
‘We have to be hungry because tonight’s the night of the Hunger Moon, isn’t that right, Jo?’ Red-haired Naomi Banks crouched with her back to Leviathan and looked beseechingly at her friend. As far as she was concerned, Reverend Ransome’s daughter had the Queen’s authority and God’s wisdom, and she’d cheerfully have stepped barefoot in the flames if the other girl had commanded it.
‘That’s right: the Hunger Moon, and the last full moon before spring.’ Conscious of the need to be both stern and benevolent, Joanna imagined her father in his pulpit, and mimicked his stance. In the absence of a lectern, she raised both her arms and said in a chanting voice which had taken some weeks to perfect: ‘We are gathered here on the day of the Hunger Moon to beseech Persephone to break the chains of Hades and bring spring to our beloved land.’ Wondering if she’d struck quite the right note, and a little concerned that she was playing fast and loose with the education her father insisted upon, she glanced quickly at Naomi. Her friend’s cheek was flushed, and her eyes were bright: she pressed a hand to her throat and Joanna, bolstered, went on: ‘Too long have we suffered winter winds! Too long have the dark nights concealed the river’s terrors!’ John, whose determination to be brave was unequal to his dread of the beast probably lurking not a hundred yards away in the water, squealed. His sister frowned, and raised her voice a little. ‘Goddess Persephone, hear us!’ She nodded briskly at her companions, who chorused: ‘Goddess Persephone, hear us!’ They made their supplications to numerous gods, genuflecting deeply at each name; Naomi, whose mother had been of the old religion, crossed herself fervently. ‘And now,’ said Joanna, ‘we have to make a sacrifice,’ and John – who’d never forgotten the story of how Abraham had tethered his son to an altar and got out his carving knife – squealed again, and bolted twice round the fire.
‘Come back, stupid boy,’ said Joanna. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you.’
‘The Essex Serpent might,’ said Naomi, coming at the child with claws, and receiving a look of such censure in return that she flushed, and took John’s hand in hers.
‘We give you the sacrifice of our hunger,’ said Joanna, whose stomach burbled shamefully (she’d concealed breakfast in a napkin and fed it later to the dog, and pleading a headache avoided lunch). ‘We give you the sacrifice of our cold.’ Theatrical, Naomi shivered. ‘We give you the sacrifice of our burning. We give you the sacrifice of our names.’ Joanna paused, forgetting for a moment the ritual she’d prepared, then putting her hand in her pocket took out three pieces of paper. Earlier that day she’d dipped the corner of each sheet in the font of her father’s church, alert to the possibility he’d find her there, and with several lies prepared in her defence. The damp corners had dried in ripples, and as she handed them to her fellow celebrants they crackled audibly. ‘It is necessary for us to commit to the spells,’ she said, sombrely, ‘to give a part of our own nature. We must write our names, and in writing them vow to whichever gods hear us that we give of our own being, in the hope that winter will be gone from the village.’ She examined her words as she said them, and pleased with her phrasing, was struck by a new thought. Stooping to pick up a broken twig, she put it in the fire and let it burn a while, then blowing out the flame scrawled her name on the paper with the charcoal. It was not quite extinguished, and the paper scorched and tore, and the goddesses would need celestial vision to make out more than her initials from so great a distance, but the effect was gratifying. She handed the stick to Naomi, who scored her paper with a capital N, and helped James make his mark. The boy was proud of his handwriting, and scuffled and elbowed at the girl, determined to manage on his own.