Weyward(56)

A memory hovers, clouded and uncertain, like something seen from a distance. Early childhood. Sun on her face, the brush of wings on her palm, that feeling in her chest … She squeezes her eyes shut, tries to pull it closer, but she can’t bring it into focus. Somehow, though, she is left with the odd sense that this has happened before.

The villagers’ gossip echoes in her mind. One word, ringing louder than the rest.

Witch.

She has to know the truth.

About the Weywards. About herself.

The next day, Kate sets off to Lancaster. The drive reminds her of the night she left London. The road snaking through the hills, stretching endlessly out before her. She feels the familiar rise of fear in her gullet as she speeds along with the other cars. Her blood beats hard in her veins. Her blood, but the baby’s blood too – the Weyward blood – and the thought makes her feel stronger, grip the steering wheel hard, determined. She can do this.

She’s never been to Lancaster before. It’s quaint and pretty, with its neat white buildings and cobblestones. But something about the throng of crowds – she is almost swallowed up by a gaggle of tourists – unsettles her. There’s a sharp taste in her mouth, a sour coating that she recognises as the precursor to an anxiety attack. She’s surprised to feel relief when she catches sight of the River Lune flashing silver in the distance, the hazy mountains beyond.

She finds the council office easily enough: a large, imposing building hulking on the city’s main street.

Inside, the air is crisp and still, and Kate gathers herself together, joins a winding queue to speak to the man at the desk. Her appointment is at 2 p.m. She’d thought the Cumbria County Council Archives might hold some information, but the curt woman she’d spoken to on the phone explained that Lancashire Council holds the records of local witch trials, given the trials took place at Lancaster Castle.

Eventually, she is ushered to another waiting room, and then summoned to a cubicle, where she takes a seat opposite a thin, middle-aged man, shoulders dusted with dandruff.

A manila folder rests on the desk in front of him. Nerves flicker at the thought of what might be inside. She shuts her eyes briefly, thinking of how much she spent on petrol to get here … Please, let it be worth it. Let him have found something.

The man offers a perfunctory greeting before detailing the results. She watches as his tongue flicks out to moisten his lips before he talks, like a frog catching flies.

‘I’ve only found four records about a Weyward,’ he explains. ‘Three of them I had to pull from the Cumbrian archives. Let’s start with those, shall we?’

He opens the file, takes out two documents.

‘Both of these records concern an Elizabeth Ayres, nee Weyward.’

Kate nods.

‘Yes – my great-grandmother, I think.’

‘We have a record here of her marriage to a Rupert Ayres in August 1925.’

Kate nods again. She knows this already.

‘And a death certificate. From September 1927.’

She leans across the table, heart pounding.

‘What does it say? How did she die?’

‘The cause of death is quite vague – “shock and blood loss”, it says. Childbirth, perhaps? Quite common in those days, of course, though unusual that it hasn’t been explicitly referenced. The certificate was made out by a Doctor Radcliffe, place of death listed as Orton Hall, near Crows Beck.’

‘I think my grandfather was born that year. Maybe she died giving birth to him?’

Something else the man said snags in her brain.

Doctor Radcliffe.

With a start, she thinks of the doctor in the village, who performed her first ultrasound. His liver-flecked hands, cold on her skin. He’d mentioned inheriting the practice from his father, hadn’t he?

How strange, to think that his father might have been present for Elizabeth’s death. For her own grandfather’s birth. Though she supposes that is the way of small villages – of rural life. She remembers the weathered headstones in the graveyard. The same names, again and again. And yet not a single Weyward. If it weren’t for the cottage, it would be easy to imagine they’d never existed; that they were merely the stuff of local legend.

She turns her attention back to the man across from her. How is it that he has only found four records? Can that really be all there is?

‘Next, we have a death certificate for an Elinor Weyward. Died aged sixty-three, in 1938. Liver cancer. Given a pauper’s funeral.’

‘A pauper’s funeral? What does that mean?’

The man frowned. ‘It means that there was no one to cover funeral expenses. She would have been buried in an unmarked grave.’

Kate feels a throb of pain that this woman – her relative – had been so neglected in death. And yet she’d had family living just a few miles away, at Orton Hall.

The man takes the last sheet of paper from his file. She notices that the skin of his hands is moist, with a pearlescent webbing between the fingers. Again, she thinks of frogs.

‘This last one is much older,’ he explains. ‘One result for the surname Weyward in the records of the assizes for the Northern Circuit, from 1619. An Altha Weyward, aged twenty-one, indicted for witchcraft and tried at Lancaster Castle.’

Her heart jumps. Prickles sweep her skin, like the tracings of phantom insects.