Weyward(94)

Yesterday, Adam Bainbridge came to the cottage, bearing a leg of mutton wrapped in muslin. I led him inside, where I asked him to give me something else. Not his name, nor his love. I remembered my mother’s lesson, in this respect, at least.

He was gentle, but I was afraid. As my body opened to take his seed, I shut my eyes and thought of Grace. Of the hot hand that had gripped mine as we ran over the fells, that last innocent summer. Of the way her red hair had spread across my pallet, of her milk and tallow scent. Of the relief that shone out of her face when I was acquitted.

When it was over, I lay curled on my side, wondering if it had taken, if a child flowered inside me already. I would name her for my friend, I decided. For my love.

I have not seen Grace since the trial. I do not know how she fares and I do not know when I will see her again. Perhaps, one day, it will be safe for her to visit me. Safe for me to take her in my arms and stroke her pretty hair, breathe in her precious smell.

Until then, all I can do is imagine her. Looking out at the same blue sky I see through my window now. Feeling the breeze on her neck and tasting the sweet air. Free.

Free as the crows that made their home in the sycamore tree, waiting for my return. The marked one eats out of my hand, now, the way she did for my mother, once.

My mother. I think she would understand what I have done. What I had to do. Perhaps she would even be proud. Proud that I am her daughter.

I am proud, too. Much as I shy away from it, the hard truth in my heart is that I am proud of what I have done.

And so I will not flee, I have decided. Not even if the villagers come, seeking justice. They cannot make me leave my home.

They do not frighten me.

After all, I am a Weyward, and wild inside.





52


VIOLET


Graham stayed until September, when he went back to Harrow. Father had written to say that he would pay for the remainder of Graham’s schooling, but after that he was on his own. The letter didn’t mention Violet. It was as if Father had decided that she had never existed.

‘I’m not sure about leaving you here,’ Graham said before he set off on the long walk to the bus station. There had been frost that morning, sparkling on the sycamore tree. The first sign of winter’s approach. ‘Will you be all right, all by yourself?’

‘I’ll be grand,’ said Violet. She planned to spend the day in the garden, sowing seeds she had been given by the village greengrocer. She had thought about asking Graham to cut down the helleborine but in the end she decided to leave it. It was a good source of pollen for the bees, she thought. There seemed to be even more insects in the garden than ever, now: their constant thrum lulled her to sleep each night, an arthropod lullaby.

‘See you at Christmas,’ Graham waved as he set off down the lane. ‘I’ll bring you some new books!’

As she shut the front door, she wondered whether anyone had found the biology textbook she had hidden under her bed back at Orton Hall, along with the bloodied clothes from the woods.

She still dreamed about Frederick. The dull weight of him on top of her, squeezing out her breath. All of that blood, seeping out of her.

She would wake up and stare at the ceiling, a line from Altha’s manuscript echoing in her head.

The first child born to a Weyward is always female.

She had killed her daughter. The next Weyward girl. Violet knew, then, that she would never have her own baby. She would never teach her daughter about insects, birds and flowers. About what it meant to be a Weyward.

‘But you weren’t supposed to be born yet,’ she would whisper into the darkness, thinking of the tiny curl of bones buried under the sycamore tree. ‘You were meant to come later, when I was ready.’

It was all because of Frederick, and what he did to her. What he made her do. That sun-spangled afternoon in the woods, the trees circling above. Blood, staining her thighs pink.

He had taken away her choice. Her future.

For that, she would never forgive him.

The problem was that she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself, either.

Another letter arrived in November. Addressed to Violet, this time. According to the back of the envelope, it had been sent from Orton Hall. She didn’t recognise the handwriting.

Violet’s heart thudded as she unfolded the letter and saw the name at the bottom. It was from Frederick.

He was on bereavement leave, he wrote. Father was dead. A heart attack while hunting. Before his death, he had declared that neither Graham nor Violet were his biological children. Father had managed to produce documents – no doubt falsified – demonstrating that he was in Southern Rhodesia at the time of Graham’s conception. Violet, he said, had been conceived before her parents’ marriage, and so could not be proved to be his daughter.

Gripping the letter in her hands, she wished that it were indeed true – that none of Father’s blood ran through her veins, that her cells weren’t ghosts of his own. Tears blurred her vision, and the rest of the letter swam before her eyes.

Father had left everything to Frederick, who was now the Tenth Viscount Kendall. Enclosed with the letter was a deed, transferring Weyward Cottage into Violet’s name. At this, her tears gave way to fury. She was tempted, for a moment, to throw the letter in the fire.

Did Frederick really think a piece of paper could make up for what he did to her?

And anyway, Weyward Cottage wasn’t his to give. It was Violet’s, and always had been – before she even knew it existed. Frederick couldn’t lay claim to the land any more than Father had.