Chapter 12
12
Mrs Webber told Luna that Bran was now well enough to be set free, insisting he was ‘too flappy’ for her liking and belonged in the wild. The bones of birds healed faster than those of people and, when the splint was finally removed from his leg, her sour-faced husband took him to the edge of the woods and left him there. Three times, the raven reappeared at Ravenswood until Mr Webber resorted to leaving him with a feast of fruit and chicken carcasses deep in the dense thicket of trees, returning to the house and closing all the doors and windows.
That night, Luna woke to a tapping sound. Petrified that the Ravenswood Witch or her spirit was attempting to break in and fulfil the frightening prophecy in the wardrobe, she bravely struggled over to the windowpanes in the dark, only to see the black beads of the raven’s serious eyes staring in. She pulled up the sash and he hopped over the sill. Perhaps he simply couldn’t bear to return permanently to the woods now that none of his kind were left. So, instead of fighting it, Luna decided to let him come and go as he pleased from then on.
Over the following week, there was quite the to-do when several items went missing from the house: the silver sugar tongs, the milk money, a writing quill, a tiny wooden snuff box, and even her broken coral pendant – not that she cared for it any more. Suspicious of the manservant, who was often lurking in rooms he had no reason to be in, Luna was relieved not to have made accusations when many of them, although not all, turned up in the Dutch barn. The crate used for the raven’s recuperation had been returned there recently, and the roaming bird had stolen the objects and tucked them into the folds of the blanket inside.
Bran became increasingly chatty as his health improved, corvids being excellent mimics. He had a surprising number of words and phrases in his vocabulary – from a ‘Hello, there’ and ‘Go away’, to her favourite: ‘Nice bit of pie’. She felt comforted with him around, even though he was a food thief – eating anything and everything, from biscuits left out on a tea plate, to a large spider that foolishly wandered across the wooden floor in his path.
On May Eve, Mrs Webber busied herself with various traditions that she insisted were essential for the protection of all at the house. Much like All Hallows’ Eve, it was a night for supernatural encounters, or rather, the avoidance of them. Evil spirits were particularly active on this night of the year, she told the younger woman, as she hung birch and cowslips above the doors to banish the witches.
After the unsettling discovery of the words in the wardrobe, Luna was more than happy for her housekeeper to do whatever she felt necessary to keep the household safe. The woman went about her strange rituals, as Luna sat by the fire altering a terribly outdated dress that had been found in the attics – although Mrs Webber had grumbled that the master, who must have been looking for something quite specific before he left for London, had left the wooden trunks in a terrible state.
‘Witchcraft has been practised in these parts for hundreds of years,’ she said. ‘One legend says that blindfolded villagers chose pebbles from a basket and whomsoever picked the pebble with the Devil’s mark was sacrificed down the well to appease him for another year.’
‘This is nonsense, surely?’ Luna said, carefully pinning two pieces of fabric together. ‘Thousands of years ago, maybe, but not since the digging of the well. We are a civilised people, not a nation of savages.’
Mr Webber grunted from where he was damping down the drawing room fire for the night. ‘The master may think it’s a load of old claptrap,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen things. He laughs at the tales told by the villagers and says it’s just stories spun to terrify the children, but who’s been skinning them poor lambs up on the top field and gutting neighbourhood cats? The postmaster found one practically inside out in his yard.’
Luna was far from a child but was becoming increasingly terrified, nonetheless. Being informed of such things on the night that the housekeeper was doing everything in her power to prevent ghostly apparitions and vengeful forces from entering the house was hardly conducive to sleep. Mr Findlay had raised the possibility that Marcus’s wife was dead, but Luna wasn’t convinced that ghosts could skin cats. If the Ravenswood Witch was still alive, could she be responsible for this cruelty? Wandering around Little Doubton and performing horrific rituals under the cover of darkness?
Mrs Webber drew the heavy curtains and began extinguishing the lamps.
‘Don’t forget, we saw a woman driven to madness by it all. Once Satan got his claws in, even poor Mr Findlay couldn’t save her. I don’t know why I stay here, really I don’t. This house and its secrets will be the death of me.’
It was time to turn in and Bran flew to Mrs Webber’s shoulder, content to be carried up the stairs in this manner, as Luna got up on her crutches and made her way into the hall.
‘Curse you,’ Bran muttered as Mr Webber passed by them all on his way back to the kitchens.
‘Pay the bird no heed, mistress. He’s picked up such things from hearing them in the woods,’ the housekeeper said.
Or perhaps he is simply an astute judge of character, thought Luna, but she kept this to herself.
As the older woman helped her to undress a little while later, she noticed a run of bluish-purple bruises along the housekeeper’s forearms. They exchanged a look.
‘It’s only when he drinks,’ she mumbled, and Luna reflected sadly that the man smelled of drink from dawn to dusk. ‘Besides,’ she said, as though she were merely talking about a grumpy child throwing a tantrum, ‘a nice bit of pie always calms him down again.’
Bran flew up to the window ledge and began flapping his wings and squawking into the night. Mrs Webber, more mobile than Luna, walked over to see what the bird was making so much fuss about.
‘Jed.’ She shook her head and reached into her apron pocket, pulling out a rowan cross and holding it close to her chest. ‘I can’t protect him when he leaves the house. Always out in them woods, but foolish beyond measure to do so on May Eve. The boundary between this world and the next is at its thinnest and beings not of this realm will be walking about tonight.’
‘Please close the window. Bran will have to stay inside until the morning,’ Luna said, wondering why the manservant should be heading out in the forest after proclaiming there was so much evil about. Was he going to the well to witness the gathering of witches? Or maybe even join them? Were the sorcerers and malevolent spirits already creeping through the trees and heading to Ravenswood to cast spells and utter curses? And would a few branches and some wilting yellow woodland flowers really keep them out?
After the woman had left, Luna couldn’t stop her imagination from running amok and Bran was as unsettled as her. The creaks and groans of the house seemed louder that night as she lay back in the oversized bed, thankful that the disturbing symbols and marks on the canopy had been removed.
There was a sudden drop in temperature as a cold chill circled the room, and she shuffled up the bed, clutching the counterpane to her chest. Glancing nervously about, she caught a pale shape in the window to her left. Bran began to flap his wings in an agitated manner from his perch on the back of the bedroom chair.
‘Curse you! Curse you!’ he screeched.
Her heart stopped.
A face.
She sat bolt upright but the image was no longer there. She recognised her own stupidity; it must have been the reflection of the candle in the glass. And yet she felt that Bran had seen it too…
‘The magic is only real if you believe,’ she repeated. Marcus would be disappointed that she was allowing her mind to play such laughable tricks. If only Mrs Webber hadn’t put such silly notions in her head.
She climbed back under the covers, only to become aware of the bitter smell of smoke. How strange. The housekeeper would not be cooking at this hour. Bran started to flap madly about the room.
‘Hello there! Hello there!’ he squawked, homing in on something at the foot of her bed.
Luna manoeuvred herself upright again, only to see a wisp of pale grey floating up from the floor and realise her counterpane was on fire. She hobbled over to the pitcher on the washstand and quickly extinguished the flame. How had that happened? She’d not taken the candle to that part of the room. Her eyes scanned the shadows again but saw nothing.
Her protector flew to the bed, settling by her feet.
‘All’s well,’ Bran squawked, over and over, and she wondered if these were the words Marcus had repeated to his distressed wife in his attempts to soothe her, but she felt far from soothed – someone or something had tried to set her bed on fire, and the words of the prophecy returned to her: she must die .
She finally fell asleep dreaming of a coven of witches dancing through the woods, with Luna at the head, as they slit the throats of innocent children and posted their lifeless bodies down the abandoned well.
As the calendar flipped over to May, Beltane heralded the arrival of summer, and the yellow, blue and purple palette of early spring blooms bled into the softer pinks and bright reds of the coming season. A cherry tree growing to one side of the house was a veritable cascade of vibrant watermelon and rose quartz; this display inspired Luna to ask Mr Webber to dig some flower beds in preparation for the seedlings he was growing for Marcus’s return. The man grumbled at being given more to do, but did as he was bid. If only she could be of more practical help. Her ankle was healing at an astonishing rate, thanks to Mr Findlay, but she was still limited as to the activities she could undertake.
The first week of the month was exceptionally warm and she was once again able to spend time outside. This also suited Bran, who was gliding and somersaulting above her head, the black fingers of his wingtips clearly visible, and the only soaring silhouette in an otherwise strangely birdless sky .
It was glorious to inhale air that was so fresh and clean because, despite everyone’s best efforts, the house still had a lingering smell of damp and the bitter tang of smoke from the open fires. She spotted the rose bush that Marcus had planted by the gate and made slow but steady progress down the meadow path to check that it was being cared for, knowing he would be upset to find it neglected in his absence. As she approached, she saw it was dotted with small green rosebuds, slits of creamy white showing where the petals were waiting to burst through.
She looked across to the bank where she’d collided with him back in April. Given everything that she’d been through recently, it was nothing short of miraculous that she was living this life: mistress of a household, fed, watered and sleeping in a comfortable bed. And all because they’d both been so preoccupied in that one moment that they hadn’t seen the other.
As she looked over to the river, the banks a lush green and the shimmering water reflecting the clear blue sky, she heard gruff voices floating down the track. Encumbered by her walking aids, she could not move out of view fast enough, and a small group of men approached, clearly on their way to the ferry. She remembered Mrs Webber talking about the hiring fair in Manbury and guessed that they were from the village, heading to the town in search of employment.
The loud chatter died down when they spotted her by the gate, and she caught snippets of what they were saying as they advanced.
‘…That’s her. Don’t let her catch your eye.’
‘You sure?’ a questioning voice asked.
‘Yeah, Ned saw her prancing about naked in them woods that run up the hill, didn’t ya?’
‘Wasn’t looking at her face, if I’m honest.’ A ripple of laughter broke out .
‘Who else would it be, y’fool? Besides, Jedidiah’s been saying she’s out in daylight now and calmed down a bit.’
‘Blimey, don’t think I’ve seen her in years – not close up, at any rate.’
As they drew level to the gate, she decided to brazen it out.
‘Hello, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Lovely morning.’
‘Dirty witch,’ an older man said, avoiding her eye, and then spat on the ground.
One or two of them doffed their caps, perhaps out of embarrassment, but she kept her head high as they passed by, fighting back her tears at being treated so.
The contented feeling of only moments before was lost and she suddenly felt desperately alone. Even Bran was nowhere to be seen, doubtless bothering Mrs Webber for scraps. She’d thought being someone else for a while might solve her problems, but what she hadn’t counted on was being someone hardly anybody liked.
She remembered Mr Findlay’s invitation to call on him at any time. Other than Mrs Webber, he was the only kindly soul nearby, and she could do with a hearty dose of kindly right now. It was taking all her strength not to cry at the way the men had spoken to her, so she waited until she saw the ferry take them over to Manbury before wrestling with the gate and heading down the winding track to Honeysuckle Cottage. Her housekeeper had told her his property was hidden by the curve of the river and barely a quarter of a mile from them.
The path was uneven and had a loose gravelly surface, which increased the possibility of her slipping. Another broken bone would be catastrophic and further delay her leaving, so she made certain to rest at regular intervals. Soon, however, she spied a charming whitewashed thatched cottage in the distance, nestled in a cluster of trees.
As she approached, she could see that the small but fragrant garden was well-tended and positively overflowing with plants of all descriptions. Many were unfamiliar to her but she felt certain most were planted for their healing properties. The sweet trill of turtle doves drifted down from the purple splendour of the copper beech, as she entered through a gate in the glorious hawthorn hedging, white with May blossom.
She quickly spotted Mr Findlay in his garden, kneeling on a cushion and tending to a herb border. Hints of mint and rosemary were carried from the breeze that danced over the river and up the banks to the house. Even the water had lost the unpleasant stench of effluent and death that swirled up from its muddy depths in the city.
‘Mrs Greybourne,’ he exclaimed, when he heard the squeak of the wooden gate. ‘What an absolute delight. The ankle must be much improved for you to undertake such a walk. How marvellous.’
On this occasion he was wearing a battered maroon bowler hat – perhaps to shield his head from the sun – with a black-and-brown striped pheasant feather poking out from the band. He came to her side and slipped his hand under her elbow to take her weight. She was grateful as the crutches were digging into her armpits and causing her increasing discomfort.
‘Come inside and rest awhile. I might be able to rustle up a herbal tea that will aid your recovery even further… if you are prepared to risk the wrath of your husband, that is.’
He helped her step over a high stone threshold and into the cottage, the interior of which was gloomy due to the poor light. The space was undivided, an open fire on one side with a high-backed bench and fireside rocking chair in front. Low, wide beams were hung with bunches of drying herbs, and slender shelves lined the walls, full of stone jars and glass bottles, with labels proclaiming lavender oil, dried eyebright and ground horsetail .
A huge refectory table stood in the centre of the room, covered in further glass vessels, small brass weighing scales, and a round-bottomed flask standing on a metal tripod over a small paraffin burner. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal sat on the corner of the table closest to her. There was a strong aroma of exotic spices and woodsmoke, and it was clear that Mr Findlay’s life was devoted to the preparation and packaging of his cures and charms.
He saw her eyes alight on a sturdy locked trunk next to a small bookcase.
‘Ah, those powders and potions that are dangerous in the wrong hands,’ he explained. ‘Poisonous berries, rare spices and delicate scientific instruments that cost me dearly. They are locked up as I have been the target of thieves and accused of all sorts by non-believers. So frustrating that I am revered when ailments are cured and misfortunes are reversed, and vilified when they are not – but many things are beyond my control, such as the failure of a harvest. Occasionally, I too have been labelled a witch.’ He shrugged.
She knew from her own experience that people were quick to judge, and it appeared he’d been bundled up in the dark accusations levelled against Luna, when all he’d done was try to help.
‘Despite Mr Greybourne’s insistence that I stayed away from his wife on pain of death, she would seek me out, and I was attempting to alleviate some of her mental suffering. She felt uncomfortable that Marcus could issue such violent threats, but his belief that magic is nonsense was as strong as Luna’s conviction that it was not.’ His visitor did not bother to repeat the false assertion that she was Luna. ‘Unfortunately, the woman was… unpredictable and did not always follow my instructions, but I helped where I could, as I am helping you now.’
‘I suffered similar judgements this very morning from passing villagers,’ she said, as he helped her to the fireside bench, humming to himself, and slid a small three-legged stool out for her foot.
A cast-iron kettle was already hanging above the flames, and he unhooked two pottery mugs from the mantel, setting them on the hearth stones, before embarking on the preparation of the promised tea.
‘Pay them no heed. They simply don’t understand the difference between confused and delusional individuals, and the very real threats from realms outside our own.’
‘Then you do believe that evil forces exist? You believe in magic?’
‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Greybourne? In the miracles talked of in the Bible? That Jesus rose from the dead?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you already believe in magic, and there must be darkness to counteract the light. One cannot exist without the other. We pray to summon the help of the Lord in times of crisis. Do you not think there are those praying to His nemesis? However much we might wish this were not the case.’
There was a pause as she contemplated his words. He poured the infusion through a strainer and stirred in some honey, before changing the subject.
‘Hibiscus, chamomile and the red clover flowers – all will help with the further healing of your bones. I had quite the reputation in my beloved Amesbury for healing, and I drew on the strength of the nearby Stonehenge megaliths. I was sad to leave such a sacred place, but my cards told me that there was a time coming when my gifts would be needed here. And it is not so very far away, only thirty miles or so, should I wish to visit old friends.’
He handed her a small mug half-full of a floral-smelling tea. She put it to her lips and took a sip as he studied her face.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I mean, who are you really , my dear? ’
The drink wasn’t unpleasant, helped by the sweetness of the honey, so she took another mouthful.
‘Luna Greybourne,’ she said with conviction.
Mr Findlay nodded, perhaps with a grudging respect that she still could not be persuaded to stray from her story. He took a seat in the rocking chair opposite, and they talked for a while of gardens and the delights of countryside living. It felt good to be in the company of someone other than a grunting man, an anxious woman or a temperamental bird.
Eventually, she moved to take her leave.
‘I’ve prepared some comfrey and arnica poultices for you. Mrs Webber knows how to apply them.’
‘What do I owe you? She can drop off your fee.’
‘Nothing. Your company has been payment enough. I should very much like us to be friends and want you to know that you can call on me should you ever be in need. I am not welcome at Ravenswood, but you are always welcome here, any time of the day or night. Whenever you feel in danger.’
‘Why would I be in danger?’ she asked, wondering if he might suggest the floating spirits and roaming witches Mrs Webber seemed so keen to protect herself from, but he had something altogether more tangible in mind.
‘Oh, my dear child,’ he said, leaning closer, his face etched with concern. ‘Because the woman you claim to be, for reasons that are not mine to question, has simply disappeared from the face of the earth. I have consulted the cards and spoken with the departed, and am utterly convinced that she has been murdered, even if I do not know for certain by whom.’