Chapter 11
‘How long’s she been back?’ I ask at last. Walking towards Berhta’s Forge, neither of us has spoken for the last ten minutes, me still uncertain of my stomach, he wrapped in his thoughts.
Anselm had waited patiently while I bathed the stench from me, drank a ginger tea.
Wet hair soaking through the back of my fresh dress, I’m not looking my best or most imposing.
I told Rhea to wait in the cottage, to stay out of the barn; I put the bar across the doors just in case this summer husband happened to come to himself faster than others – they’re often different, each one.
But the average? He won’t be mobile for another day; birth is exhausting.
I personally would like to be in my bed, sleeping off my pains and disappointment and pulling my energy back.
He clears his throat. ‘A week.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to let me know?
’ I can’t keep the peevishness from my tone.
Again, they’ve delayed in sending for me.
These past weeks when I’ve gone into the village to collect Rhea’s new boots and occasional supplies, Reynald’s whispered there’s been no trace of the child, although her mother’s been seen wandering the forest paths, still seeking.
For one part, I think, there’s still a lack of trust, a modicum of fear when it comes to the witch in the woods.
For another, I’m out of sight, out of mind, unless they want something.
That has its advantages of course. If you’re not on people’s minds, they’re not thinking either good or bad things about you.
They’re less likely to blame you for something. Mostly.
‘We were just so relieved to have her back.’
I note he doesn’t say “happy”. That’s the guilt speaking. Don’t let her be gone and leave us with the burden of knowing we didn’t care enough. Love enough. ‘And?’
‘At first it was little things, mannerisms, habits. We thought – Gida says it’s the time she’s been away.
Gida says that people change when they’re away from family and children are more changeable than adults.
Then the way Ari speaks – the accent odd sometimes, the word choice not like a child’s.
Words I had to ask Faolan the meaning of.
’ He seems to struggle to continue. ‘We’re both sleeping badly – deeply but badly. ’
‘And?’
‘And we wake in the night and find her standing at the foot of the bed, just watching. Staring. Gida says sleepwalking’s normal. That’s all.’
‘But?’
‘Sometimes I think her eyes shine like they shouldn’t, not in the dark.’
‘And?’
‘She’s started cursing at her mother, me too, if she doesn’t like something.
Things keep getting broken, small things with sentimental value – a vase that belonged to my mother, a drawing by our oldest son, a hand-embroidered apron, even the highchair that’s been in Gida’s family for almost a hundred years.
We use it when the grandchildren visit. Came home to find it almost in splinters one afternoon, and only Ari had been there that day.
And the handkerchief we gave you? To scry?
Found scraps of it in the hearth, mostly burned, but enough left so we’d know what it was. ’
‘Maybe Ari’s just feeling lonely and looking for attention?’ I offer, weakly.
He shakes his head. ‘Her best friend won’t have anything to do with Ari anymore. She and Tieve were thick as thieves.’
‘Two months is a long time for children – perhaps Tieve’s made new friends? They’ve grown apart?’
‘But I’ve seen Tieve run away from my daughter, seen the fear in her face.
Gida says it’s our punishment for being poor parents.
’ He clears his throat. ‘But we weren’t so bad, didn’t beat her or abuse her.
Maybe not as attentive as we should have been – it’s hard, when you think you’re done with breeding, you know?
That you’ve got some freedom… But Gida says it’s our burden to bear. ’
‘Sounds like Gida’s saying a lot of things.’
‘She… she doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong. Won’t believe it. She’s treating the child like a princess instead of—’
‘An irritation?’ I’m swinging between some sympathy and none.
Making a child feel like an inconvenience is a terrible thing, yet so many parents wonder why their offspring turn on them as adults (I speak from experience).
Anselm colours, a dusky red, and I go on, ‘Exactly what do you think I can do about it?’
‘Talk to Ari? Children listen to you – scare her.’ He shakes his head. ‘Or talk to Gida and make her see sense. She,’ he coughs, ‘doesn’t know I’ve come to you.’
I cough too, swallow, taste the bitterness of the elixir’s fumes once more. My eyes water at the strength of the memory. We don’t talk for the rest of the journey.
* * *
‘What are you doing here?’ Gida raises her voice. She’s standing in the kitchen, was staring out the window at the river when we arrived, took some long moments to realise she wasn’t alone.
‘Anselm was kind enough to let me know Ari’s returned. What wonderful news. You were so distressed when you came to ask for my help.’ A reminder, not so subtle, that I’d already been brought into this. That I’d made myself ill in their service, taken no payment for it.
‘Oh. Yes. In the excitement we forgot to tell you.’ The glare she gives her husband is searing; there’ll be more raised voices not long after I leave.
‘And is she well, your Ari?’ I sit without being asked, elbows on the tabletop, heedless of the floury surface; the smell of baking bread doesn’t tempt my appetite and I still feel queasy. Anselm sits across from me and Gida reluctantly follows suit. Both of them look exhausted.
‘Healthy as a horse.’
‘And did she say where she’d been all this time, with so many people looking for her without success?’
‘She doesn’t remember. Except for falling from the fence around the orchard’ – I think of the lack of footprints – ‘and waking in the darkness. In a cave, she said. Then she slept again, woke and slept again. When she woke next it was to find herself in a grove of trees. She’s been walking home ever since. ’
‘She must have been very deep in the woods. North or south? East or west?’
‘She couldn’t say.’ Gida’s tone is growing sharp. But what child of Berhta’s Forge can’t tell their compass points from the position of the sun or the moss on the side of a tree?
‘What did she eat?’
‘Berries. You know the woods are filled with them this time of year, so many varieties. She dug roots as well – she’s clever my Ari, knows how to feed herself.
All village children do, all those who were born here.
’ This last is said tartly. This reminder that I was not born here, and twenty years later that lack is still not forgotten.
‘All that time on berries. She must have returned very thin.’
‘Very thin, I’ll give you that. But she found tubers and the like, drank from streams.’
‘I’d like to see her, Gida, even though it sounds as if she’s in rude health, and I know you care devotedly for her.’
Gida’s mouth moves without opening, as if she’s fighting to keep her reply in, and I have to bite down on a grin. Laughter would do no good. I simply gaze at her until she realises she’s got no good reason to refuse, and she turns and calls, ‘Ari, my dove, will you come down?’
And Ari steps so quickly into the kitchen that it’s clear she’s been listening from the staircase that leads up to the living quarters.
In the seeing of her I finally recognise the child; she bears a vague resemblance to the image I’d conjured in my mind those months ago when the parents came to see me and I could not really recall a face.
Shortish, dark hair in tight braids, blue knee breeches and a white shirt, leather shoes with laces, and she’s wearing her fine red woollen cloak, inside.
I recall her nodding to me whenever she passed, smiling shyly when I visited the village, the bakery for bread and rolls fancier than I was prepared to make; a quiet, polite child.
But now, the set of the chin is different, a haughty angle, an insolent cast to the brown eyes.
As if her absence has been accompanied by a personality change. Much as her father said, I suppose.
‘Hello, Ari. It seems you’ve had quite an adventure.’ I’m usually wary of speaking down to children, but irritating someone can often make them show their hand.
She nods, doesn’t answer.
‘Ari.’ Anselm’s voice is louder than is required, a tense wire plucked.
‘Yes,’ says the child, as if dribbling out a taste she doesn’t like.
‘And you’re quite well? Despite nothing but berries and roots?’
‘And eggs. Sometimes I’d find nests with eggs in them. I’d eat them raw – nothing to cook them in, you see.’
I nod. ‘Do you recall how you got so far into the woods?’
‘I—’ She tilts her head to one side as if listening.
‘No. I was playing in the orchard, on the fence. I’d picked the mushrooms, but I didn’t want to go home and something happened,’ she squints trying to recall, ‘I dropped the mushrooms and thought how angry Mother would be, then…’ She shakes her head.
‘All I remember is waking in the dark many times, until one day I woke in the light, in a clearing, and started walking.’
‘And you knew which way to go?’
‘I can find my way in the woods.’ Scornful. Probably right; most children know how to get their bearings, to wind their way home. And contradicting what her mother told me – possibly what she’d told her mother.
‘And you didn’t see anyone else? The whole time?’
She shakes her head. I gesture for her to come closer.
She hesitates, then concedes. I examine her hands and nails, the palms with their map of lines so intricately drawn.
Next her face and throat, along the hairline and at the back of her neck in the little dip where skull sits so neatly on spine.
I’m tempted to hold tighter, dig deeper into the very being of her, but that will hurt her, she’ll scream, and her parents will say how I injured their child out of spite.
It’s not worth it. When I’m done, I sit back in my chair and nod.
‘Thank you, Ari. You’ve got your cloak on, going out I take it. ’
She nods. I gesture towards the door, whether it’s my place to give permission or not, and the child skips away. I wait until the front door opens and closes before looking at her parents, pronouncing calmly: ‘Nothing wrong that I can see. You’re very lucky to have her back.’
Gida nods, sullenly, although she looks a little relieved. Anselm, beads of sweat on his brow, walks me out. In the front garden, he gives an anxious look. ‘Well?’
I shrug. ‘There’s nothing physical that I can point to.
You may just have to come to terms with the fact she’s behaving badly because she was on her own for over two months and no one rescued her.
She feels abandoned and she’s going to punish you for that for a while.
And remember she was on her own and survived without help – that’s a hard-won independence right there, Anselm.
She might forgive you eventually, might behave better. But it will take some time.’
He stares, disbelieving. ‘So, you don’t think there’s anything wrong.’
‘I didn’t say that. Until there’s proper evidence of something worse than bad behaviour there’s nothing I can do.
Keep an eye on her, send for me if there’s anything concrete.
’ I touch his arm, find him shaking. ‘Give her some time, Anselm. Practise patience. Keep an eye on Gida, though, she seems brittle.’
However, as I’m walking away from him all I can think of is Ari in her red wool cloak.
Her perfectly lovely, perfectly intact red cloak.
No sign at all of the piece the size of my hand that was torn from it, that bore traces of blood.
The scrap of fabric that sits in a bottom drawer in my workroom at home.
Or the piece that wrapped the chunk of unidentified meat that was left on my doorstep.
* * *
There’s a group of children and a dog playing on the common, a little desultory this warm afternoon as they kick a ball around.
As I approach, they stop moving, wait for me to speak.
Five of them, three girls, two lads, maybe eleven to fourteen.
Some on school recess, some snuck away from apprenticeships, I assume.
‘Do any of you know Tieve?’ I ask, and as one they shrug. I wonder at this. ‘Does that mean you don’t know her? Or she doesn’t want to be found. Or you don’t want her found?’
A long-legged boy with tousled black hair steps forward, the oldest of them perhaps, gives an aggressive little bounce as he stands in front of me.
The dog – a dark grey lurcher of a thing with more than a little wolfhound in her blood – follows him closely, leans against his leg.
His hand drops down to pat her head, and eyes close in contentment.
I’m still taller and if he thinks I’m easy to intimidate, he’s got another thing coming.
There’s something familiar in his features but I can’t place him.
The others cluster behind him like chicks.
‘What do you want with her?’ His voice breaks between two notes, on a cusp as he is. I hide a smile.
‘I want to talk about her friend Ari.’ His expression shutters, as do the others’, and I know enough about people to understand I’ll get nothing from them, not today at any rate.
Pushing will only make things worse. ‘If you see her, please pass my message along, that I would speak with her. At her convenience.’
The lad nods, still suspicious, but at least he mutters with more politeness, ‘Yes, Mistress Mehrab.’
And I give a sketchy curtsey, which makes them laugh, relieving the tension.
I offer the dog my hand to sniff and she lets me pat her before I move off, murmuring, ‘Good girl.’ Most adults would insist, start yelling, and nothing’s more likely to make children obdurate than that.
Most adults too. Best I can do is sow the seed.
Witchcraft isn’t just potions and powders and spells.
It’s whispers and gentleness, giving folk a sense they’re free to share their secrets with you – a feeling of a door left ajar, open without obligation.
It’s listening to what’s not being said as well as what is coming from someone’s lips and watching in case words do not match deeds.
It’s knowing that every lie told will eventually reveal itself and the person who told it.
Not everyone understands this.