Weyward(63)

‘What is it?’

‘Take a look,’ says Emily, beaming at her. ‘You can keep what’s inside, of course. Yours by right, really.’

At first, Kate thinks she has misread the label, scrawled hastily over the top of the box in pen. She checks again, but there is no mistaking it.

Orton Hall.





31


ALTHA


Outside the castle, it was a bright day. The light seared my eyes so that the streets and buildings of Lancaster looked white as pearls. For a moment I wondered whether they had actually hanged me, whether this was Heaven. Or Hell.

I staggered towards the road out of the town, keeping my head bent in case anyone should recognise me. Everywhere, I jostled through crowds, the warm press of bodies making me sweat and panic.

‘Have you heard the news?’ One woman said to another. ‘Queen Anne has died!’

A man shouted; another woman uttered a prayer for the queen’s soul. The babble of voices rose in pitch, and the crowd pushed and heaved. My thoughts swam. In a wild moment, I had the thought that it should have been me who died, that there had been some great error, my life saved instead of hers.

My heart froze at the feel of a rough hand on my shoulder. I turned, fearing it was someone from the gallery, come to right the jury’s wrongs, to set me back on the path to death. But it was one of the jurors. The square-jawed man with the pitying eyes.

I saw for the first time the richness of his clothing: both his cape and doublet were embroidered with silver thread. Standing in front of him in my crude gown, I felt every bit the pauper I was.

For a while, neither of us spoke as the crowd flowed around us.

‘My wife,’ he said eventually, slowly, as if it pained him to speak the words. ‘She nearly died in childbed, delivering our son. A wise woman in our village saved both their lives. Beatrice, she was called. I said nothing, when they accused her. She was hanged.’

He took a velvet pouch from his breeches and pressed it into my hands, before melting away into the throng.

I looked inside the pouch and saw gold coins. I understood, then, that I had this man – or the woman who saved his family – to thank for my life.

On the road, I found a pedlar travelling by donkey and cart. He would take me back to my village, he said, for one of the gold coins. I should have been wary of him, a strange man in the dark, but I reasoned that even if he killed me it would be a quick death compared to the long one I faced on the road, without food or shelter.

The pedlar gave me some ale and a sweetmeat. Then he put me in his cart, amongst his wares, which were soft shawls and blankets. Nestled among them, I felt almost as if I too were an exotic ware from some distant land, spun from foreign cloth. I tried to stay awake but the blankets were warm and comfortable and the motion of the cart gentle and rocking, as I imagined the ocean to be.

When I woke next, we were half a mile from Crows Beck.

I knew when I saw the gate swinging on its hinges that the villagers had been at the cottage. Those who broke bread with William Metcalfe, who mourned John Milburn.

The shutters had been torn from the window, and lay in a splintered, ruined heap.

The front door was dented, the lock broken. Inside, shards of glass sparkled on the floor like fallen stars, and I had to be careful where I stepped. The smell of herbs and fruit hung rotten in the air and I realised they had broken my precious jars of salves and tinctures.

I lay down on my pallet, which was slashed so that tufts of straw poked through. I slept. When I woke at dawn it was to a sea of broken things.

It took me the better part of two days to put the cottage to rights. Mercifully, they had left my dear goat unharmed, though my absence meant that her ribs now showed clearly through her hide and, when I put my hand to her, she bleated in fear. ‘All will be well,’ I murmured as I led her inside, though I was not at all sure that it would.

One of the chickens had died, but the other had lived. I could still have eggs for my breakfast, and milk from the goat. I made nettle soup and dandelion tea from the plants in the garden. They hadn’t got to the vegetable plot, either, so I pulled beets and carrots from the earth and ate and pickled them. They were small, misshapen things, hard with frost and forced from the soil before their time.

I broke up one of the chairs and used this for firewood. The cottage was very cold, with the shutters gone from the windows, and I ripped one of Mother’s old gowns in two and used it to block the draught from getting in.

When I had done all this, I was ready.

I took down the parchment, quill and inkhorn from the hiding place in the attic, thankful that it had not been discovered.

Then I sat at the table and began to write.

I have been writing for three days and three nights now, pausing only to make fires and food, and to check on the animals. I do not want to sleep until I have finished.

They could come back, you see. The villagers. They could drag me through the village square, in protest against the verdict, and hang me themselves. Or they could find another crime to accuse me of.

So I must write what has happened while I still breathe. Perhaps I will go away from here, when I have finished. I do not yet know. The thought of travelling on the open road frightens me. And I cannot bear to leave the cottage behind. I wish I were a snail, and the cottage my shell that I carried with me everywhere. Then I would be safe.

It is hard to write the next part of my story. So hard that, even though it happened first – before I was arrested, tried and acquitted – I come to write it last. My heart has shrunk away from it until now.