Chapter 9 #2
I turned to study the room. Inside here was everything I hoped I’d need to carry out my plans.
Her execution had only been the beginning of my heartbreak.
The Witchfinder was the reason behind my father bolting, my aunt and grandmother losing their beloved twin and daughter, and the pair of them needing to care for me while taking on the running of my birthright and finding inventive ways to keep the estate going in my father’s absence.
They had done their best, and I would be eternally grateful to them for their love and devotion, but the way things were going I couldn’t foresee Thistlebury Manor being here in ten years’ time.
The place was falling into further disrepair, and dilapidation wasn’t something we could afford to keep ahead of, not just because we hadn’t the money, but because there were fewer and fewer workers to help us take care of the estate.
I shuddered at the thought of what lay ahead, afraid I lacked the knowledge to fight the darkness in the house, but I was determined to study my magick.
I had much to learn, but I also had determination.
I clenched my fists. I could do this. I had little choice if I was to save what little I had left of my family and home.
I thought of my late mother’s grimoire, hidden under the floorboards of my bedroom.
I had felt disloyal delving into the book too deeply before I was a fully-fledged witch, but now I had been inducted into the coven I was more confident that I had inherited the right to use as much of my mother’s knowledge as I could glean from this spell book, certain she would want to help me reclaim my family home.
I also sensed she wanted me to locate my father should he still be alive.
Even if he had been heartbroken to discover her practice of witchcraft, I hoped that my father loved her enough to want to help me save the house he brought his bride to, and support my revenge for mother’s cruel and unnecessary death.
If I did find him, I knew I would need to dismiss my resentment at his leaving me and ask for his help to hurt the Witchfinder in the worst way possible.
‘Are you still down there, Rue?’
Not wishing to anger my grandmother again, I hurriedly closed the door and ran up the few stairs to join her in the kitchen.
‘Sorry, I was putting everything away.’
She arched an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving me. ‘It shouldn’t have taken you that long. You were daydreaming again, weren’t you?’
‘Did you want me for something?’ I asked, not wishing to admit to my thoughts.
My grandmother was a kind, caring person deep down, but she was also strong-willed and possessed a sharp tongue.
I sensed her barely suppressed anger was due to the unexpected way her later years had turned out.
She shouldn’t have been taking care of a grief-stricken little girl and this huge manor house after working hard her entire adult life and almost reaching a time when she should have been able to take things easier.
‘Take this to Pierre and that boy of his. Use a cloth, though, it’s still hot.’
‘Yes, Grandmama.’ I took several cloths from the rail in front of the fire where they had been drying and picked up the hot pie dish.
I carried it out the back door, across the yard and down a short path to the line of cottages where what was left of our estate workers lived.
My widowed aunt Sorrel also had a cottage here, having moved out when she married her late husband twenty-five years before.
Her son hadn’t been home for several years since joining the Parliamentary Navy, and her daughter, who as far as I was aware wasn’t a witch, had married and moved to another village a couple of years after that.
I suspected they both wanted to distance themselves from ‘those people at Thistlebury Manor’.
I understood the sentiment. After all, I knew only too well how difficult life could be when others constantly whispered behind their hands as you passed.
I wouldn’t have chosen that for me either.
‘I hope that’s for us,’ Jem said, coming to join me from one of the barns. He stopped in front of me and breathed in slowly.
‘It is.’ I smiled. ‘I presume you or your father took the apples to Grandmama for this very reason.’
He laughed. ‘We did. I’m sure she’s made one for the pair of you too.’
I knew she would have done. ‘Lead the way to your cottage then,’ I said, impatient to put the weighty pan down. ‘I don’t want to drop this and have your father upset with me.’
‘Well, hello there, young Rue,’ Pierre said when we arrived, his pipe dangling from his mouth. ‘What brings you here this evening?’
Jem followed me into the cottage. ‘She’s brought us a delicious apple pie from Mistress Tredwell, Pa.’
I placed the pan onto the table close to their fireplace. ‘With my grandmother’s thanks.’
‘Now that is a treat. Would you like to join us for some?’ He motioned for Jem to go to the sideboard where bowls and spoons lay stacked in readiness for their evening meal.
Pierre stepped forward and peered down at the pie, taking in a long slow breath through his nose. ‘Hmm, that smells as good as I’m sure it will taste. Me and the boy thank you and your grandmother.’
‘The boy’ was two years older than me at twenty. Jem and I swapped amused glances that his father still occasionally referred to him in this way.
‘Thanks to you, Grandmama and I also have one to enjoy soon.’
Pierre rubbed his hands together. ‘Please thank her for me, won’t you?’
I promised I would and left them cutting into the pie, feeling a little happier having spent a brief time with the pair of them in their warm cottage. It was good to know that however bad things got, I still had Pierre and Jem to look out for me and Grandmama.
I left them to it. As I passed Aunt Sorrel’s cottage, then crossed the dark yard back to my own home, I thought about how happy she had been in her marriage to my uncle Jarrod.
Although my grandmother and I sensed her grief, my aunt had rarely shown how deeply she had felt his loss since his death eleven years ago.
Uncle Jarrod was a kind man and an experienced farrier so when a horse he had been about to shoe reared in panic and one of his hooves collided with my uncle’s temple on the way down, we were all devastated. I wiped away a tear. Such a loss to us all. He had also been Pierre’s good friend.
Unlike my uncle’s and Jem’s mother’s traditional burials in our parish churchyard, when my mother had died, my grandmother and aunt, together with the other women in the coven, had gone to the Market Place in the middle of the night, collected as much of her ashes as possible and brought them back to the estate to scatter over the herb gardens she loved so much.
I felt the coolness of a tear on my cheek and brushed it away with the back of my hand. I stilled, suddenly aware that the presence of my mother, which I was accustomed to feeling, was no longer there. Or was it there but somehow different? No, I decided, bereft: my mother had gone.
I calmed my rising panic and attempted to recall when I had last felt a sense of my mother near me here.
I gasped at the realisation that it had been several months ago – around the time when the darkness began to creep over my home.
An icy tingle raced down my spine. If I was right and her spirit was no longer with me, then whatever had replaced her was powerful enough to force its way into this place where my mother had been laid to rest. The thought frightened me.