Weyward(82)

I saw John cross the field to approach her. She turned her head to him and then looked away, and there was something in the set of her body that made me think of a dog waiting for a kick from its master. I saw him speak to her and they went inside together, she with her head bowed.

I remained for a while, in the tree, watching the farmhouse, but neither of them came out again. The day was growing warmer and brighter. I climbed down, in case someone from the village happened to be passing and looked up to see me.

As I walked home, I wondered what my vision at the bonfire had meant. There had been so much blood, the darkness an open maw between her legs. Had Grace been pregnant again, and miscarried? Or was she pregnant still? I remembered what she had said to me: ‘If this baby were dead like the others, he might kill me.’

May became June, and the days lengthened. The sun lit up the sky for hours, so that I slept and woke in daylight. While I went about my daily tasks, and when I laid my head to rest at night, I thought of Grace. She and John still came to church, and after the sermon, while John spoke to the other villagers, she kept her eyes on the ground. I wondered what she was thinking, if she was well.

I couldn’t send a message, for Grace did not know her letters and would not be able to read it. I had thought about walking to the Milburn farm again – to do what, exactly, I did not know – but I was too worried about being seen, now that the nights were so brief. I dared not ask the villagers, who came to my door seeking fixes for hay fever and midge bites, what news they had of John Milburn’s wife. The rift between us was well known in Crows Beck. It would raise many an eyebrow for me to ask after her now. They might guess that she had sought my help. I did not dare give her husband another reason to hurt her.

Her husband. I had not known it was possible to hate another person so much. My mother had taught me that each person deserves love, but I will not deny that I would have happily seen Grace a widow, even then.

I remembered with shame how I had thought Grace and John looked well together on their wedding day. How little I understood of anything then.

I had thought that I knew a great deal of people, just because I knew how to dress their wounds and cool their fevers. But I knew nothing of what went on between a husband and wife, the act that made a woman swell with child. I knew nothing of men, other than what my mother had told me. I was always shocked, as a girl, when a man came and sought my mother’s treatment. By his size, his deep voice, his meaty hands. The smell that hung about him. Sweat and power.

The leaves darkened and began to fall. A chill returned to the air. One day, I had gone to the market square for meat and bread, when I saw a woman stooped over a table of pig hearts, a red curl escaping from her cap. Grace.

I could not approach her there, in the village square, in front of everyone. I hung back as she had Adam Bainbridge wrap up two pig hearts in cloth, then put them in a woven bag that she slung from her shoulder. I myself bought some bread, watching her from the corner of my eye. Then I followed her, a few paces behind, as she set off down the road to Milburn Farm. The trees either side of the road looked stark without their leaves, which glistened red underfoot, wet from weeks of rain. I watched as Grace drew her woollen shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

I was beginning to wonder if she could not hear my footsteps behind her, for she did not turn around. But once we could see the Milburn farmhouse ahead through the trees, she turned.

‘Why are you following me?’ she asked. More of her red hair had escaped from her cap, and beneath it her face was pale as milk.

‘I have not seen you, other than from a distance, for six moons,’ I said. ‘I saw you in the village square and … I wanted to make sure that you are well. There is no one else on the road, you can speak freely.’

At my last words she laughed, but her eyes were blank.

‘I am well,’ she said.

‘Are you – have there been …’

‘I have not been with child again, if that is what you want to know. Not for John’s lack of trying.’

Her eyes darkened. I took a step closer, to see if there were bruises on her face, like before.

‘You will not see any marks on me,’ she said, as if she had read my thoughts. ‘Since the last time … Mary Dinsdale asked about my lip, after church. Now he takes care to spare my face.’

‘Have you thought any more on what I said that night?’ I asked. She was silent for a while. When she spoke, she looked not at me but up at the sky.

‘A man of John’s age and health does not just fall down and die, Altha,’ she said. ‘Doctor Smythson will know poison when he sees it. Hemlock, nightshade – they will know you had a part in it. There’s no one else in the village who understands plants the way you do. They will hang you. They will hang us both. I do not much care whether I live or die, but I cannot have another death on my conscience. Not even yours.’

With these last words, she turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Please. I cannot bear to know that you are suffering … I could think of something, a way that we would not be discovered …’

‘I shall speak no more of it,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Go home, Altha. And stay away from me.’

I did not go home right away, as she had asked. I watched as her small frame disappeared into the trees. Some time later, a plume of smoke rose from the Milburn farmhouse. I shivered. The day was growing colder, and icy drops of rain began to fall on my face and neck. I walked on, until I reached the oak tree I had climbed to watch the farmhouse. I would not climb it today. The crows sat like watchmen in the upper branches of the tree, and their sharp cries of pain could have been my own.