Weyward(81)

Winter softened into spring, and I counted the days to May Day Eve, when I thought I might have a chance to speak to Grace.

When my mother was alive, we kept our own May Day Eve custom rather than attending the village bonfire. We spent the last days of April gathering moss from the banks of the beck and making a soft, green bed on our doorstep, for the faeries to dance on. Then we lit our own small bonfire and burned offerings of bread and cheese to bless the fields.

When I was a child, I asked my mother why we could not attend the celebrations in the village, where I knew there was music, dancing and feasting around a towering bonfire on the green.

‘May Day Eve is a pagan festival,’ she said. ‘It is un-Christian.’

‘But everyone else from the village attends,’ I said. ‘And they are all Christian, are they not?’

‘They do not need to be careful like we do,’ she said.

‘Why do we need to be careful?’ I asked.

‘We are not like the others.’

Since my mother’s death, I had kept up our tradition. But this was to be the first big village festival since the end of winter, and I wondered if Grace would be there. I needed to know if she was safe and well.

I could smell the smoke from the bonfire as I set off from the cottage. I could see it, too, an orange glow in the distance. When I got to the green, the villagers were dancing in rings around the flame, which threw sparks high into the air with each offering. The night was loud with song and the hiss of burning wood.

The heady smell of ale hung in the air, and many of the villagers looked drunk, their eyes sliding over me as I approached. I looked for Grace but couldn’t see her, or her husband. Adam Bainbridge, the butcher’s son, grabbed my hands and pulled me into the fray. Around and around we went, until everything became a blur of orange and black. I was beginning to melt into it, to enjoy the crush and heat of other bodies around mine, the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself.

And then I saw her. A girl, standing alone on the green, shadows dancing over her body. Dressed only in a shift, thighs black with blood. In the dark I could not make out her face, nor the colour of her hair, but it was Grace – I was sure of it.

I pushed through the ring of bodies to reach her.

‘Grace?’ I called.

I was too late. She was gone.

I turned back to the dancing villagers. None of them had seen her, I could tell.

I felt my eyes water, whether from the smoke or tears I did not know. I wanted to go home. I set off towards the cottage when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see it was Adam Bainbridge, who had danced with me around the bonfire.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Home,’ I said. ‘I am not much one for festivals. Good night.’

‘Not all of us believe it, Altha,’ he said softly. ‘You do not need to hide yourself away.’

‘Believe what?’ I asked.

‘What they say about you and your mother.’

Shame crept up my throat, and I hurried away. I felt relieved as I turned from the light of the bonfire, as the darkness cloaked me from the eyes of the villagers. As I walked on, I listened to the night sounds – the hoot of an owl, the scratching of mice and voles – and felt my breathing slow. I could see well enough – it was a full moon, like it had been the night that Grace had stayed at the cottage.

Grace. She had not really been there, at the bonfire, I knew.

‘Sight is a funny thing,’ my mother used to say. ‘Sometimes it shows us what is before our eyes. But sometimes it shows us what has already happened, or will yet come to pass.’

I barely slept all night, and I rose and dressed as soon as the sky lightened. I made my way to the Milburn farm, and by the time I got there, dawn was breaking over the valley, turning the hills a soft pink.

I kept my distance, lingering under the oak trees on the boundary of the farm – the same place where my mother had released her pet crow, all those years before – so that I would not be seen. I could see the farmhouse now, but not well: there was a slight slope to the earth which hid some of it away. I needed to be higher.

I bunched my skirts around my waist and began to climb the largest oak – a great, twisted thing that stretched high into the sky as though seeking God. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was a child with Grace, but my hands and feet remembered how to find holds in the curves and knots of the branches. I climbed so high that I could see the sleek forms of crows in the branches, then went no further. I wondered if one of them was the same bird that my mother had cast out. I searched their dark feathers for the sign but could not see it.

Now, I could see the farmhouse well, and the cow byre next to it. I watched John leave the farmhouse and open the byre, so that the cows spilled out onto the field. I counted a score of them, far more than any other farm in the area, as far as I knew. No doubt some had been Metcalfe cows, and had come with Grace as her dowry. I wondered if John would ever beat one of his cows the way he beat his wife.

After a while, I saw Grace come out from the farmhouse, carrying a pail of water and laundry. I felt relief course through me. She was alive. I watched her squat on the ground and scrub the laundry, and, when she was done, hang it on the rope that stretched between the farmhouse and the byre. The white small-clothes shone gold in the early sun. I wondered if she had been washing blood from them.