Chapter Two #2
‘When Albion has need of him?’ Dr Mackie’s tone tiptoed the edge of derision.
‘Theories of magical hibernation seem common to many folkloric figures of the Dark Ages. In fact, a lot of the Abrecan legends sound rather familiar,’ he said.
‘Perhaps because King Arthur has come so much back into fashion of late. There are no written sources attesting to Lord Abrecan’s existence, I suppose? ’
‘He’s . . . he’s mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ Theo said.
‘Indeed. Really, Rosalind, must we—’
‘But your spring was sacred . . . before Lord Abrecan’s time,’ Mrs Mackie said. She was still out of breath, and though her face was damp there was no colour in her cheeks. ‘As I understand it?’
‘Oh, yes. The Romans, and the ancient Britons. The stone in the middle of the village green marks the way to it. Everyone calls it the Roman Cross, but Uncle Crudge says it’s Celtic.’
Mrs Mackie perched on a broken wall to rest, and her husband looked weary. A different kind of weary.
‘It was really the spring we were most interested to see,’ he said.
‘Oh. Well. It’s this way.’
Back down the mound, and along a path into woods of beech and oak and holly.
The spring emerged from a sudden jut of limestone, fell burbling into a pool below, then disappeared back underground.
Theo had always found it mesmerising. The water seemed to bleed from the rock and then soak back into it, endlessly.
It was ice cold, perfectly clear, and tasted – she liked to think – of the bones of the world.
Cut into the top of the outcrop was a pointed niche about a foot high, inside which was the carved relief of a face so worn it could have been anyone.
The water goddess to whom the Romans had dedicated the spring, or some local deity whose identity had vanished with her followers.
Crudge had unearthed enough pieces of dressed stone to indicate that there’d probably been an altar there, once.
He’d also found a silver coin from the reign of Emperor Domitian, in the first century.
It was in a locked display case in the house, along with the far more precious coin that Theo planned to steal later that day.
‘Look, somebody’s left flowers,’ Mrs Mackie said. A small posy of limp violets had been tucked into the niche, and white rose petals were turning slowly on the water.
‘The spring’s a sacred panacea,’ Theo said. ‘And the village girls also think the goddess will bring them love, and grant them wishes, in return for votive offerings.’
‘Does it work?’ Mrs Mackie asked.
‘I tried it once,’ Theo said, her face growing hot. ‘When I was much younger. But I can’t say yet whether or not it has worked. Perhaps these things take time.’
‘But you believe it could?’
Theo was about to deny it, too used to being teased, but Mrs Mackie’s tone stopped her.
She wasn’t treating Theo as a silly girl telling stories, but as a person who knew things.
Important things. The woman glanced at her husband, so Theo did too, and suddenly saw, in his motionless face, a deep and aching sadness.
The shadows under Mrs Mackie’s eyes; the way she couldn’t catch her breath, and didn’t sleep.
Theo’s throat went dry.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe it could.’
She searched for words, and found some of Uncle Crudge’s: ‘There’s so much in the world we don’t understand.
Who’s to say the Romans were wrong, or that what we dismiss as pagan profanity and superstitious “magic” can’t have had some basis, if not in the supernatural, then in the natural?
The human mind holds myriad secrets, and powers not yet fully understood . . .’
Dr Mackie turned away with a quiet snort, but Mrs Mackie took Theo’s hand.
‘I think you’re right,’ she whispered.
‘What is it?’ Theo couldn’t help but ask.
‘A tumour.’
Mrs Mackie’s eyelids fluttered, as though saying the word caused the thing inside her to stir, to flex its terrible muscles.
‘In my lung. The doctors say it cannot be helped – my own dear husband included. But perhaps they simply do not know how it may. So, perhaps there are other ways. Don’t you think? Ancient ways.’
She wasn’t that much older than Theo herself; perhaps nineteen or twenty.
‘Yes,’ Theo said. ‘Yes, perhaps.’
Mrs Mackie turned towards the glistening limestone, and the pool where the trees and brilliant sky were mirrored.
‘What do I do?’
Theo might admit that she didn’t know, that there was no right or wrong thing. Or, she might give Mrs Mackie a fragment of the possibility she craved. She knew what it was like to need to believe in magic.
‘A small gift would be ideal,’ she said, with calm authority. ‘It need only be a token. The ribbon from your choker would do it – it’s such a pretty colour. Here . . .’
She helped unthread a pendant from the pale-pink ribbon. It was a butterfly of solid gold, weighty for its size and lifelike in every way but scale, from its hair’s-breadth antennae to the veins on its wings.
‘Oh – this is lovely.’
‘It was a gift from my godmother,’ Mrs Mackie said, her expression gently ironic. ‘For my confirmation. Butterflies symbolise resurrection, as you probably know. And hope.’
Theo handed it back, then tied the pink ribbon in a bow.
‘Put it up by the goddess – can you reach?’
‘I think I can . . .’
‘Be careful, Rosalind!’
‘I’m fine, Bertie. Really. What comes next, Miss Hallewell?’
‘Next, you should wash your face and hands in the pool, thank the goddess and ask to be blessed, say your wish, and then drink some water from your hands.’
‘Is that all? Should I say it out loud?’
‘I think perhaps it’s better to. It . . . needn’t be loudly, though. I’ll go away a bit. You must hold the wish in your heart as you speak it – that’s the most important thing.’
‘Oh, it is in my heart.’ Mrs Mackie smiled faintly. ‘Have no doubt about it.’
Theo walked a short distance away, avoiding Dr Mackie’s eye. But it might work, she told herself. It wasn’t false hope, it was simply hope, and where was the harm in that? She heard faint sounds of splashing, and softly murmured words, and longed to be back out in the bright sunshine.
She’d felt so certain upon waking – the day and the world and her own self had seemed on the brink of some wild glory.
But the young woman behind her was dying, and Theo’s inner world was suffering a small quake that threatened to escalate.
The undeniably real world around her came into sharp focus.
It might not work. Neither Mrs Mackie’s cure, nor her own designs for that night.
And if they did not, then Toby Meriwether would leave Hallewell without a backward glance, and all Theo’s hopes would go with him.
Sitting on the grass with Missy after the midday meal, their fingers pink from purloined strawberries, Theo saw Toby in the distance, walking home along the lane from West End. She surged to her feet, shading her eyes for a better view.
‘“She left the web, she left the loom; she made three paces thro’ the room,”’ Missy quoted merrily, lifting from Theo’s favourite poem.
Theo glanced back at her, cheeks blazing. ‘It’s Toby, not Sir Lancelot,’ she said. ‘And I’m not the Lady of Shalott.’
‘You wish you were.’ Missy was merciless. ‘And he might as well be, for the way you swoon at the sight of him.’
‘I do not wish I was the Lady of Shalott, else I’d be dying now because I’ve looked at him.’
‘I think you are dying!’ Missy cried.
Theo let her laugh. She turned to watch Toby again: his familiar outline, his familiar walk. She would have known him anywhere, at any distance.
‘If he looks up, he loves me,’ she whispered. ‘If he looks up, and he sees me, then he loves me and will be mine.’
Toby didn’t look up. He disappeared behind the trees at the foot of the hill.
‘He’s just a boy, Theo,’ Missy said. ‘There’s plenty of others like him.’
‘There aren’t. Haven’t you ever been in love, Missy?’
‘Love’s what men say to get what they want from you.’
This shocked Theo into silence.
Missy leaned back on her elbows with a sigh. ‘He’s nice looking, I suppose,’ she said, perhaps deciding she’d gone too far. ‘And he’d have to be as big a dunce as his brother to turn you down.’
Theo snatched gratefully at the words. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Well – we’ll see tonight, won’t we?’
‘Tonight is about summoning Lord Abrecan, and the ancient—’
‘Oh yeah?’ Missy cut her off. ‘Nothing at all to do with being up close to Toby Meriwether in the dark, then?’
‘Not at all.’
Missy laughed again. ‘Ha! Will you let him kiss you?’
‘Missy!’
‘Will you?’
Theo didn’t reply – she couldn’t, given the way her lungs had emptied out at the thought.
‘Want me to tell your fortune?’ Missy said then, and Theo nodded.
She ran her index finger across Theo’s palm, and looked closely.
‘Your lifeline is long, like your bloodline. You shall know a love the likes of which you’ve never dreamed. And you shall be loved, and you shall marry.’
‘Who? Who shall I marry?’
‘Difficult to see. But it’s someone you already know . . . and he has a handsome face.’
Theo beamed. ‘Will I leave Hallewell?’
Missy squinted, checking. ‘Yes. And you’ll forget all about your good friend, Missy.’
‘I won’t. Not ever.’
Toby got home with the bones of his backside bruised and his head overstuffed with geometry, to find the table covered with newspaper and a strong smell of lanolin in the air.
Kit, his knees bobbing impatiently, was doing his best to clean his shoes without getting dubbin all over himself. He was fighting a losing battle.
Kit flashed a smile. ‘Toby’s back.’
‘So he is,’ Mona called from the kitchen. ‘But you carry on brushing your shoes, please, Christopher.’
‘I am.’
Kit nipped the end of his tongue between his teeth, scrubbing even harder. He could be so delicate with certain things, yet so cack-handed with others. Toby picked up the shoe Kit had already done and reached for a cloth.
‘I’ll buff it for you, shall I?’
‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘Thank you, yes.’