Weyward(86)

I had nodded, hungry at the thought of sharing a secret with my mother. At the thought of understanding at last the pull I felt inside me, the golden thread that seemed to connect me to the spiders that climbed the walls of our cottage, the moths and damselflies that fluttered in the garden. To the crows that my mother had raised for as long as I could remember, the gleam of their eyes in the dark chasing away my childhood nightmares.

I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us – the Weyward women – that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants – they let us in, recognising us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows – the ones who carry the sign – watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief. Our ancestors – the women who walked these paths before us, before there were words for who they were – did not lie in the barren soil of the churchyard, encased in rotting wood. Instead, the Weyward bones rested in the woods, in the fells, where our flesh fed plants and flowers, where trees wrapped their roots around our skeletons. We did not need stonemasons to carve our names into rock as proof we had existed.

All we needed was to be returned to the wild.

This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.

For it has always been a gift, she said. Until now.

She told me of other women, across the land – like those the couple from Clitheroe had spoken of, the Devices and the Whittles – who had died for having such gifts. Or for simply being suspected of having them. The Weyward women had lived safely in Crows Beck these last hundred years, and in that time had healed its people. We had brought them into the world and held their hands as they left it. We could use our ability to heal without attracting too much suspicion. The people were grateful for this gift.

But our other gift – the bond we have with all creatures – is far more dangerous, she told me. Women had perished – in flames, or at the rope – for keeping close company with animals, whom jealous men labelled ‘familiars’. This was why she had to banish her crow, the bird that had shared our home for so many years. Her voice cracked as she spoke of it.

And so she made me promise: I was not to use this gift, this wildness inside. I could use my healing skills to put food in my belly, but I must stay away from living creatures, from moths and spiders and crows. Doing otherwise would risk my life.

Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live. But until then I should keep my gift hidden, move through only the darkest corners of the world, like a beetle through soil.

And if I did this, I may survive. Long enough to carry on the line, to take a man’s seed from him and no more. Not his name, nor his love, which could put me at risk of discovery.

I had not known, then, what she meant by seed: I had thought a seed was something to be put in the ground, rather than inside a woman. I imagined the next Weyward girl, who would one day grow inside me, blooming into life.

When my mother lay dying three years later, on that awful night when our few candles were no match for the darkness that stole into the room, she reminded me of my promise with her last breath.

I had heeded her words for so long. But after speaking to Grace that day after the market, I felt the first desire to disobey them. The first desire to break my promise.





46


VIOLET


‘Violet!’ said the voice again. It really did sound like a human voice. Violet wondered if she were hallucinating: surely it was dangerous to lose so much blood. There was a tapping sound. She looked up. She saw – or at least, she thought she saw – a face at the window. Pale and moonlike, with a shock of ginger hair.

She opened the back door, and Graham was silhouetted against the garden. Behind him the helleborine rippled in the wind, a dark red sea.

‘Christ,’ Graham was saying. He was looking down at her nightgown, at the black stain that bloomed between her legs. Violet wanted to scuttle away from him and hide, as if she were an animal in its death throes. Graham kept talking but she had a hard time understanding the words. She could see his mouth moving and knew that sounds were coming out of it, but they seemed to float away before she could catch them, like the downy husk of a dandelion.

Graham was inside the cottage.

‘For the love of God, Violet,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

He picked up a candle from the table and walked towards the bedroom, his face grim in the flickering light.

‘Don’t,’ she said weakly, but it was too late.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she heard him say again.

There was a rustling sound, and Graham reappeared, holding the bundle of bloodied sheets away from him. His white face looked guilty, as though he were carrying something dead. He was carrying something dead, Violet remembered.

‘I don’t want to look at it,’ she said.

‘We’ll have to bury it,’ said Graham. He stood for a moment, watching her. ‘I found your note,’ he said. ‘I was in your room, looking for my biology book. It was poking out of that book of fairy tales you used to love.’