The sun on my back is wonderful and I stretch like an old cat. I have the afternoon free for Jessamine has taken the children visiting some neighbour or other, Luther is off somewhere on the estate, so I’m stealing some time for myself. The western parlour is kept for formal occasions, no one will look in here and find me curled on a seat in a patch of warmth, book on my lap. Oh, I’ll offer to make myself useful elsewhere soon enough. Not that I’m obliged, but it will be appreciated.
Yet even my best laid plans cannot compete with the ructions of a household, and I hear Mrs Charlton shouting at Burdon, demanding to know where Luned is. I sigh, and rise, make my way along to the kitchen door which is ajar; I peek in.
‘You know,’ says Burdon stiffly, ‘very well where the girl is.’
‘Not again! Aren’t there enough Morwood bastards running around the Tarn? Bad enough having the Binions creep about here once a week, rubbing my poor girl’s face in it! The indignity! The cruelty!’ The housekeeper’s mouth is drawn, lips thin and tight. Her hands are clenched into fists as she faces the butler across the table. I’ve not yet sighted the Binion twins, but now I’m eager to do so.
‘The master will do what the master wishes. Do you want to go and fetch her?’ he challenges, and begins to lean back as if he might cross his arms over his chest, but thinks better of it. Undignified. ‘If the girl’s too stupid—’
‘Don’t you dare blame her!’ Mrs Charlton’s voice is a knife cutting the air.
I push the door open, step in, smile as if I’ve not just heard their argument. ‘I’m at a loose end, Mrs Charlton, with the children gone for the afternoon. Is there anything I may help with?’
Those lips get thinner and tighter as if she might begin to swallow herself – then she relaxes. Gives a sharp nod. ‘There’s mending needs collecting from the Tarn. Heledd Jones should have everything ready by now. She’s in the house across the way from the apothecary, the one with the green door. Ask Eli to saddle you a horse.’
‘It’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll walk.’ It’ll only take me the better part of twenty minutes; I learned to ride in various houses we lived in, but I’d rather gnaw off my arm than ask Eli Bligh for anything.
Mrs Charlton shrugs as she hands me the silver bits to pay Heledd Jones. ‘Don’t forget your coat, it’s turning colder and colder.’
‘Is there anything else you need from the Tarn?’ I say. ‘Or you, Burdon?’
They both shake their heads, but when I come down from my room a few minutes later, coat in hand, I find Burdon in the foyer as if waiting for me. I grin, slant my eyes up at him. ‘How kind, Burdon, I’d never have been able to open the door on my own.’
‘Saucy miss.’ He holds out a hand and I offer a palm in return: he drops four silver bits into it. ‘If you don’t mind, at the inn they have a peach brandy I’m fond of. Just don’t let Mrs Charlton see.’
‘Your secret is safe with me.’ He helps me on with my coat and soon I’m striding across the gardens, then the fields and into the woods to take the shortcut into Morwood Tarn.
* * *
I break through the trees and the church and tarn are on my left. No sign of the god-hound, probably for the best; I’m not ready for that confrontation quite yet. I walk briskly (just in case) past the graveyard and the angel oak; I look at the scratches in its trunk once again and note no new ones have joined the originals. Perhaps a very large fox or badger made them and nothing more? Without predators (no wolves) they might grow big enough in the woods to make marks so high.
The road leading into the village is smooth beneath my boots. When I had the children with me the other day, I did not linger because I was doing my best to keep my charges in check. To keep Connell especially from climbing anything that would bear his weight. Today, however, I take my leisure, moving slowly, staring at whatever gains my interest, noting where things are, how they look. The cottages on either side are neat and tidy, white-washed daub and dark wooden beams, the glass of the windows thick with a greenish tinge; flaws in their make-up are whorls and pits that look rather pretty. Gardens are well-tended, although most have succumbed to the autumn chill. Smoke billows from the smithy and the sound of hammers on anvils is loud, rhythmic; the two women working the forges don’t lift their heads to watch me pass.
Mrs Charlton has been generous with local knowledge and gossip. Perhaps a thousand souls inhabit Morwood Tarn, living in all manner of houses from tiny black-and-white cottages to red-brick two-storey abodes for those with more money and stature (although no one the Morwoods consider their social equals). There is a lazy constable who attends to the small matters of crime that occur in places such as this, and reports to Luther. A lawyer who deals with the legalities of life and death. A blacksmith and his daughters who tend to the need for horseshoes, ploughshares, scythes and other instruments, while the son does leatherwork: shoes and boots, belts and bridles, bags and saddles, what-have-you. An inn is run by a widow and her three children, providing decent meals and passable accommodation for travellers through the village on their way to other, more important places. There’s a bakery, a butcher, a grocer, a jeweller, a seamstress, a tiny coffeehouse for those wives who consider themselves above the common rooms of the inn. All with a hundred tiny details of gossip attached – so many, in fact, I can’t keep track.
I drift by a dozen or so other places of business until I reach the inn. Its sign swings in the breeze; the name is The Good Wolf, freshly picked out in gold, with a rather handsome-looking beast – black-furred, green-eyed, sharp-toothed, razor-clawed – beneath it.
Inside, the atmosphere is warm, a little smoky, with a hint of meat pies and a fair whack of grain alcohol – the scent of it having been poured, imbibed, burped and sweated out again. Unavoidable for such an establishment, but it’s not unpleasant and there’s no accompanying odour of vomit, which cannot be said of many hostelries I’ve frequented in my day (often trying to extract my mother from one). No one notices me; my sparrow’s appearance makes me almost invisible. It’s a decent-sized public house – the Tarn is one of those locations that’s on the way to a lot of other locations, but otherwise offering no compelling reason for a traveller to stay.
I make my way over to the bar, admiring the look of all those glasses suspended in front of the mirrored wall. Tapping the counter, I gain the attention of the girls. All three are blonde, blue-eyed, and give me a look of bored curiosity. They’re all dressed in red skirts and white low-cut blouses. Pretty enough now, late teens, early twenties, but their edges are beginning to fray – crow’s feet too soon, hard mouths – and this life will only continue to take. None look happy with their lot, but that might be boredom. It could simply be that I’m not male and some women won’t light up for one of their own. They are familiar, however, and it takes a moment for me to realise they were my fellow travellers on my last coach journey to Morwood. If they recognise me, they give no sign.
‘Help you?’ drawls perhaps the oldest, but she doesn’t push herself away from her position leaning on the benchtop. I’m sure they’d be different if it were busy. I’m half-tempted to stay around and find out what the evenings are like, but then I’d have to walk home in the dark, and somehow that makes me far more uneasy than it ever did in the city.
‘May I have a bottle of your peach brandy, please?’
‘Don’t got none.’
‘Never sold it.’
‘Nothing fancy here.’
A little chorus of malice. The longer I look at them, the stronger the familiarity; even the tone of their voices is like hers.
‘You’d be Luned Wynne’s sisters.’ I fold my hands in front of my waist, like a nun going about her day. They shift uncomfortably, caught so easily. I took a chance, didn’t know she had any siblings, but it was too obvious.
‘What’s Madam Muck up to then?’ one of them scoffs. The other two have expressions I don’t like. I take another chance: that they know Burdon and that he’ll have no patience for their games. ‘Mr Burdon has asked me to purchase this brandy on his behalf. Perhaps you would prefer that I tell him he must come himself to conduct his business?’
The oldest one straightens, reaches beneath the counter and produces a brown bottle with a stopper. She plants it on the nicked benchtop in front of me. I pull the cork out amidst protests and sniff at the contents – I’d not put it past them to give me the wrong thing; but no, peach brandy, very strong. Nodding, I toss the coins so they bounce once, twice on the benchtop then fly off onto the floor at their feet so they scramble to collect. I’m out the door before they reappear.
That was unpleasant. Imagine, a whole family of Luneds. I continue on until I see the apothecary’s shingle – a mortar and pestle – then look to the right. There it is, the house with the green door. There’s a white picket fence and an arch over the wooden gateway twined with the last of the season’s roses. I pass beneath, take the cracked stone path, to knock.
‘Come in,’ is called.
The small room that acts as a parlour is bright. There’s a woman in a corner, nestled in a chair by a small fire, nursing a child with fine silver hair that matches her own. An idea begins to form, a solution to a problem I’ve been turning around for a while. She looks tired, as if the earth is pulling at her features, but she smiles at me coolly.
‘Heledd?’ She nods. ‘I’m Asher Todd,’ I say, ‘the new governess at Morwood Grange.’
Her expression clears but the smile grows no warmer, nor more genuine. In fact, there’s a little wariness in it. Still, I move my lips up in a friendly fashion. ‘I’ve come to collect the mending.’
‘On the table,’ she says and gestures with an elbow, helpless beneath the weight of the babe.
And it is, folded neatly in a small basket; I pull one of the petticoats out and examine it. It’s only on my third attempt that I find where she’s darned the tears, and I nod. ‘Excellent.’
She looks at me with pride and not a little amusement – seeming to warm towards me. Then again, we both know I’d be a fool to deliver work to Mrs Charlton without checking it first. I take the silver from my pocket and go over to her, put it directly in her hand. There’s a low footstool she’s not using, and I sit on it without asking permission. It makes me smaller, less threatening.
‘I wonder…’ I say delicately and pause until she snorts with laughter.
‘Out with it. Subtlety will gain you nothing here, Asher Todd, so just ask me straight and I’ll say yea or nay with no suspense.’
I grin, a little ruefully, all my cleverly selected words worthless. I like her, but I must now throw the dice at her feet. ‘Forgive me for being so bold but… I would buy some of your breast milk.’
She looks taken aback. ‘What on earth for?’
‘For a poultice for the older Mrs Morwood.’
‘We’ve not seen her here in perhaps three years. Some folk say she’s dead.’
‘Very much alive,’ I say and laugh a little. ‘Is she missed? Was she popular?’
‘She was hard but still better than her son.’ Instantly she seems to regret saying anything. ‘I’m sorry, you’re of the house. Please don’t tell Master Luther I said that.’
‘Never fear, I’d not tell him anything for either love or money.’ And I say it with such conviction that she believes me. It is the truth, a rare thing from my lips. ‘But I… want to help the old woman.’
‘And you can do this? You can make magic?’
‘Medicine,’ I say hastily, although yes, magic will be part of it. We are remote here, superstition abounds, naturally she leaps to magic before medicine. ‘But nothing a doctor would recognise; and something a priest might fear.’
‘Met ours, have you?’
I nod.
‘Old goat,’ she sneers. ‘Alright. But what’s in it for me?’
I nod, then draw two gold crowns from my pocket: they are rare and unscored, not meant for the making of change. Very old and not needed by those who gave them to me. ‘These. And your silence about it.’
She narrows her eyes, gaze flicking between me and the coins burning cold in my palm.
‘The old woman,’ I say hesitantly, unsure how much to trust, ‘is losing her sight. I believe I can help. But I need an ingredient I cannot provide myself. When I saw you with the baby, I thought it was an opportune moment − unless you can direct me to another breastfeeding mother in the village?’
‘You’re a cunning woman,’ she says and it doesn’t sound like a curse. It’s not quite true, but I take heart. She stares at me for a while, then says, ‘I don’t want your money. But I’ll have your help instead.’
In turn I nod, though I know that help is often more expensive than silver or gold. I slip the crowns back into my pocket.
‘My family,’ says Heledd, ‘don’t live in the Tarn, but in the woods – my father’s the coppicer – manages the forest on the estate. They’re ill’ − then hurriedly adds − ‘not contagious, though, not a plague,’ she emphasises. ‘But they’ve been unwell for a few months now.’ She lifts her chin. ‘If you can cure the old lady, maybe you can help them too.’
I say, ‘If I aid your family, I have your promise of silence? Such things might be regarded as hedgecraft and it’s best if no one hears whisper of it.’
‘Certainly not the priest,’ she says slyly.
I snort. ‘Then we have an agreement?’ She nods. ‘Tell me about their symptoms.’
‘Fevers and rashes, which go away for a while, but return. It’s confounding: not enough to kill, but sufficient to make life difficult, always being not quite well.’ She smiles. ‘I visit them, and I’ve not caught anything.’ There’s a pause. ‘But don’t tell my husband I’ve seen them; he’s fearful of infection with the babe.’
‘Perhaps it’s something near their cottage, something they eat? Water supply?’ I tilt my head, thinking.
‘But you’ll go? Go and see them?’
‘Yes, of course. Point me in the right direction. I can go on Sunday, it’s my day off.’
She pulls the baby away from her breast and holds the child up; it begins to cry immediately, deprived of its meal. ‘Take this’un then, and I’ll get you what you need.’