Chapter 2 #2
The courtyard below was already thick with movement.
Villagers in rough tunics crowded at the gate, faces pale and set, while the household staff drifted at the edges, feigning disinterest but unable to stay away.
At the center were a handful of men in church livery with black habits, coarse ropes at the waist, who herded a girl so small I didn’t recognize her at first. She was barefoot, legs streaked with mud, her shift clinging to bony shoulders where the fabric had torn.
Only when she turned, and I saw the braid yanked half free, did I realize it was Agnes, the kitchen girl.
She made a pitiful sight, like a lark trapped by crows.
Even from my high window, I could see how she trembled, every muscle tensed as if waiting for the sky to fall.
Brother Tomas Whitcombe stood before her, not a hair out of place, his face composed in that infuriating way the pious have, equal parts sympathy and condemnation.
He held a small leather pouch aloft, pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“Unholy remedies,” he proclaimed, his voice slicing through the gathering. “Found in the possession of this girl, who claims to serve the Ashburn house. Such is the rot that grows when the Lord’s order is neglected.”
Agnes shook her head so violently that the braid whipped her cheek. “It’s for my mum, Father Tomas. She’s sick, she can’t breathe, I only—”
He cut her off with a flick of the hand. “And did you obtain these herbs with permission from your master? Or from the healer, as is proper?”
She started to answer, but the nearest guard cuffed her hard enough to set her teeth rattling. She sagged to her knees, mud splattering up her shins. For a moment, I thought she would curl in on herself, curl so tightly she’d vanish from the world altogether.
Brother Tomas knelt beside her, his cassock pristine against the muck.
“Witchcraft is not always a matter of fire and spells,” he intoned.
“It is pride that drives women to seek knowledge forbidden to them. Pride that leads them from the path of obedience.” He spoke as though he pitied her, as if her shame pained him more than the bruise blooming on her cheek.
The guards drew her to her feet, rough hands binding her wrists behind her with a length of horsehair rope.
Agnes’s face turned upwards, panic-slick and wet with snot, and for one split second she met my gaze through the glass.
Her eyes went wide, as if she’d expected something like hope, to see someone else, anyone who might intercede.
Maybe she remembered the bread I’d slipped her once, a crust still warm from the hearth.
Maybe she thought I was a person of consequence in my own home.
She was wrong, of course.
Brother Tomas unspooled a speech for the crowd, voice swelling with each phrase. “The Lord’s light must be restored. Examples must be made, lest this house fall to darkness.” He listed the old plagues and punishments, every one of them a threat as much to the bystanders as to the girl in custody.
The villagers nodded along, some making the sign of the cross, others spitting on the ground for luck. The women clutched their children’s hands tighter, as if a contagion was airborne.
I wanted to shout at the men in black, at the hypocrites and the gawkers, at Agnes herself for being so stupid, so careless. My fingers gripped the stone window frame until the veins stood out along my forearm, until I half-expected the whole ledge to crumble away in my hands.
When the crowd finally surged forward, the guards dragged Agnes towards the old stables, where the cells for petty thieves were kept.
She went limply, head bowed, lips moving in a prayer I could not hear.
Brother Tomas followed at a measured pace, the pouch of herbs still dangling from his hand, evidence of sin too dangerous to touch directly.
Mother appeared in the doorway behind me, moving as soundlessly as the seamstress had. “What is it?” she asked, not in alarm but in that flat, practical tone she used for dead animals or burst pipes.
I moved aside so she could see, but she didn’t bother. “Another kitchen girl? I warned them about consorting with the hedge witch.” She didn’t sound angry, only tired.
I pressed my face to the glass, the chill biting into my lips. “She wasn’t consorting. It was just herbs, and—”
Mother made a dismissive noise. “You’re naive, Scarlette.
These girls never stop at herbs. Next, it’s love charms and hexes on the hens.
There’s a reason women who meddle in such things end up drowned or married off to the worst sort of men.
” She picked imaginary lint from her sleeve.
“If you must pity someone, pity her mother. Now she’ll have to work the fields herself. ”
I turned away, bile hot in my throat. There were a thousand answers I could have given, a thousand ways to name the hypocrisy, but none would matter. Mother’s world was built of rules too old to break.
Behind my eyes, I saw Agnes’s face and every desperate flicker of hope, every fresh humiliation. The sound of the slap still echoed in my ears, and I wondered if anyone would bother to feed her before the church finished its work.
Mother left as quickly as she had come. I stayed at the window until the yard emptied out, until the crows began their slow descent to the trampled mud where Agnes had knelt.
I pressed my forehead to the cold and told myself that I would not let my story end the same way.
I would not kneel for any man, not even God. I would escape this place before they found a rope that fit my neck.
***
Night at Ashburn Manor was a different kingdom.
By day, the world belonged to my parents, the priest, the overseers, and the grown ones who traded in rules and appearances and threats that only sometimes came true.
But when the sun drowned behind the pine woods, and the rest of the house cowered in its own darkness, I became queen of the corridors, able to drift unnoticed as dust motes on a draught.
I waited until the hour bell sounded in the east wing, then slid from beneath the covers, feet already wrapped in cloth for silence.
The moon, nearly full, cast enough light through the glass to paint blue lines along the floor.
Each step I took was measured and practiced: the second board past the hearth creaked if you weren’t careful, and the iron latch on the stair rail had a snare for loose skirts.
I’d mapped every hazard in childhood, when hiding from Father was a game with consequences, and old habits had only sharpened with age.
On the landing, I paused, listening to the voices, low and urgent, that leaked from the great room below.
I ghosted to the top of the stairs, shrinking into the blackness where the tapestries hung.
Father’s study door was ajar; in the hearth-glow I saw his shadow slouched in the big chair, a glass flickering in his fist.
He was not alone. Sir Aldric sat opposite, boots spread and hands clasped as if holding invisible reins. Even across the hall, I could smell the clove and oil from his coat, a stench that made my stomach curdle.
Father spoke first, voice slurred around the edges. “She’ll do, so long as your steward can keep the tenant men in line. My daughter has never caused real trouble.”
Sir Aldric made a sound, a dry cough of a laugh.
“Girls of that age are all potential. Raw material, nothing more. It’s the shaping that matters.
The girl is comely enough, though I’ve heard whispers of an overly curious mind.
” He tilted his head, eyes shining in the firelight.
“That will need tempering, but I have the means.”
Father bristled, then relented with a half-hearted shrug. “See her settled. That is all I ask. She’s not suited to...managing things. Too stubborn, like her mother.”
I could picture Sir Aldric’s smile. probably small, tight, and practiced from years of threatening without ever raising his voice. “I assure you, Master Hale, I know how to break such habits. My previous wife was even more resistant. For a time.”
I stopped breathing. They continued in the same vein for several minutes.
They talked of the value of land, the hazards of old blood, and the obligations of men who wished to remain relevant.
I heard the word “dowry” and felt my entire body lock into place, as if I, too, were a sack of coin to be passed from hand to hand.
I heard Father offer up my future in a single bored sentence, as if it were nothing more than a favor owed.
Finally, Sir Aldric stood. The chair scraped against the floor, and I flinched, sure I’d been seen, but neither man looked up.
He left first, taking the side hall that led to the cellars, leaving Father to his drink and his ghosts.
After a long time, Father’s candle snuffed itself out, and I slipped away, heart thundering against my ribs.
Back in my chamber, I sat on the edge of the bed and let the cold soak through my nightdress.
Every item I needed was already lined up beneath the window: Mother’s silver comb, the last dry heel of bread swaddled in cloth, a length of old woolen cloak, the poetry book.
I added a small knife from the sewing kit—a thin blade, sharp enough for mischief if not murder.
I worked quickly, hands shaking only when I allowed myself to remember Agnes’s face, the terror, the sense of falling through air with no one to catch you. Sir Aldric’s words gnawed at me, the way he spoke about breaking women as if it was no more serious than breaking in a horse.
Mother would be asleep by now, drunk on laudanum and regret, and I doubted she’d notice my absence until it was too late to matter. She’d wake, and the room would be cold, and the bed would be made, and she would wonder how she had ever imagined she could keep me.
When my bundle was packed, I sat for a moment in the dark, legs folded under me. I recited the poem from memory, each word a slow drip of honey and iron:
No prison built by mortal hands
Could keep the wildness tamed,
No master born of mortal line
Could bind what can’t be named.
It was almost time. The tales said the stones in the wood—ancient, older than the Abbey itself—could open paths if the moon was right.
Old Nan used to tell it to us in the nursery, how the circle of oaks could whisk away a girl in the night, if only she was clever and a little bit mad.
The grown-ups always laughed, but I’d seen the mossy ring for myself, the stones set in a pattern that made your teeth ache if you looked too long.
I’d measured the distance from my window, across the moat by the willow roots, past the frozen tilth, into the shadowed woods.
Maybe an hour’s walk if your legs didn’t fail you.
I tied back my hair, tucking every stray wisp under a scarf. My hands had steadied. I listened once more to the silence, perfect and absolute.
The window latch was stubborn, but I’d greased it with tallow earlier in the week. It swung open without protest, the night air biting and full of frost. I eased my bundle onto the ledge, slipped after it, and let myself down onto the tiles below. The drop jarred my knees, but I did not cry out.
I crossed the courtyard with my head down, hugging the shadows.
The stables were empty, the grooms off somewhere dicing for pennies.
The mud sucked at my slippers, but I kept moving.
At the gate, I paused. No one on watch. No dogs, no lights.
I slipped through the postern and into the narrow lane that led toward the woods.
The path was as I remembered it, winding, haunted by the last rotten leaves of winter. The moon was a cold eye above me, watching and unmoved. I walked until the manor was a memory, until the only sound was the frantic rush of my own breath.
When the circle of trees came into view, I slowed. They looked like centurions, created by the earth, glistening with frost. I stepped into the circle and dropped my bundle at my feet.
I did not know what would happen next. Maybe the old women were wrong, maybe the trees were just trees. Maybe I would freeze, or be found, or worse. But for the first time in my life, I was standing somewhere not mapped by any hand but my own.
I raised my face to the sky and waited, a wild thing unbroken.