Chapter 16
The lad’s disappearance had been discovered early this morning, Tieve said, the village alerted by his mother’s screams. That was when Tieve took it upon herself to come to me because she figured sooner was better than later, after what had happened with Ari.
Once there was a child who went a’wandering into the woods, down its paths and then off them, setting foot onto mossy slopes and rocks, forging through undergrowth and brambles, feasting on berries and nothing else.
Certain that the deepest part of the forest held no dangers, only the siren-song of the trees, calling.
I think of my mother’s voice, low and soft, telling this tale to my sister one eve.
I wrack my brains trying to recall the ending, but the memory’s murky, something I’ve given up or suppressed – something I didn’t like and preferred not to hang onto.
Something other than the trees was calling, perhaps?
Something other than a gentle creature? Something with appetites?
The child never left the woods, that’s the only thing of which I’m sure.
I think of Yrse, the old woman who lived in the cottage before I did, the one Fenna deposited me with.
The one I ignored when she warned me against so many acts, including going to Faolan’s bed, then against caring for him in addition to fucking him.
She was right and I’ve hated her for it.
But by the time her predictions of heartache came true, she was dead and gone, and I was left with no one to beg sympathy of, no one to complain to – although I did, sitting by the grave I’d dug for her in the rose garden, where smaller ones would be later sunk to keep her company.
She’d never mentioned children going missing, not in her time, and she’d been the witch by Berhta’s Forge for almost sixty years.
Born in the village, raised there, moved into the forest with a woodcutter husband in her youth, buried him among the trees not long after (Not the man I thought he was she sang to me once in her cups) and then remained there with only occasional guests in the form of runaway rebel witches.
Her own powers were very small – she was a potions woman, though, handy with those medicinal and healthful, occasionally destructive (But only ever for good purpose, to save a woman or a child).
The greenwood had been, for her, quiet and restful, a place of refuge.
Then I came, her last fosterling, a little like Rhea though older, not necessarily any wiser.
Angry and hurt and fearful, used to power and all it had brought me, full of imperious habits, but finding myself unable to use my magic the way I had.
Obliged to hide everything I was because it was too dangerous to show everything I could do.
Eventually, I settled in. After Faolan and that debacle, I settled better.
Made a new home, made my own peace with the villagers, showed them I could be trusted.
But I was never one of them, not born here; a foreigner forever.
‘Mistress Mehrab.’ Tieve’s tone is soft, her small hand on my arm insistent. ‘We’re here.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
‘I could tell you were elsewhere.’ The child looks solemn.
‘Thank you for pulling me back to earth.’ I need my wits about me; it’s one thing to be lost to the world when I’m on my own or even with Rhea (who’s grown used to my habits) and quite another to wander into the village looking like an idiot.
Not a good idea. ‘And now, Tieve, it’s time for you to go home.
And not a word of defiance – it might not help for folk to know you came to me. ’
Reluctantly, she nods. ‘Yes, Mistress Mehrab.’
‘Don’t forget to keep that poppet safe and secret. Take her with you everywhere and avoid Ari as best you can.’
She nods again and slips away. I wait beneath the trees until she enters a small cottage, one of those in the back rows of the village.
What must it be like to live with seven brothers?
Fighting off a shudder, I make my way to the marketplace, which is empty, as is the green.
Stores and stalls are shuttered, and all is silent.
I imagine that most of the adults are out searching the woods.
I make my way towards the Peppergill manor, the largest house in Berhta’s Forge.
I notice, as I always do, that there’s no green woman at the door – she hangs as an ornament on the large ash tree by the picket fence.
Patiently, I begin rapping and am eventually rewarded by a red-eyed maid, very young, opening the door. She hesitates.
‘I’m here to speak with your mistress,’ I say firmly. ‘Since I’m assuming the master is out.’
The girl steps aside, allowing me to cross the threshold, then leads me along a corridor to a spacious dark-panelled parlour, curtains and sofas and chairs finely decorated in shades of yellow, patterned in roses and daisies.
Clustered in the room are women I recognise as the foremost matrons, wives of men of various standing and others who are the mistresses of those self-same foremost husbands.
Gathered with them are children, aged from babes-in-arms to perhaps fifteen, girls and boys looking surly.
Elsewhere in the village there will be other children shuttered in their own homes in the care of mothers, older siblings or grandparents unfit for traipsing forest paths.
Some, for whom no one cares, will be doing as they please.
I wonder if Tieve’s mother has been waiting anxiously; I wonder if she’s yelling even now at her daughter.
Deva Peppergill sits in a tapestry-covered chair shaped not unlike a throne, gold and silver threads picking out more roses, more daisies.
Unlike most of the other women in the room, she’s not weeping, although her long face is the colour of milk, not helped by her greying hair.
The child – Matthias – was a miracle; she and Thaddeus had spent many years trying for a baby, and although Thaddeus managed to father offspring on any mistress he took (at last count there were six girls and three boys all bearing his large brown eyes and thick hair, just not his surname), his wife seemed impregnable.
Until they – she – finally came to me, five years ago, all unwilling to have truck with a witch, but spilling out how other women had come to me and borne offspring.
That they’d urged her to come to me, even Faolan’s wife.
It was a near squeak of a thing, with her almost fifty then, but with some of the strongest fertility potions and spells I could muster, and a little something else, Deva finally fell pregnant.
Though they both dote on the boy, neither likes to be reminded that they needed aid; and Deva doesn’t like to think of a time when it was whispered that her husband would likely put her aside for one of his fruitful paramours.
Yet I can’t help but wonder, if Tieve hadn’t come for me, how long it might have taken before the Peppergills thought to do so – would they have learned from the Hadderholms’ lesson?
Or thought themselves better and let that longed-for child disappear through pride?
‘What are you doing here?’ Deva Peppergill’s tone is unfriendly; perhaps that’s my answer there.
‘Hello to you too, Deva.’
‘Hello. What are you doing here?’
‘I heard Matthias has gone missing. I thought perhaps I could help.’
‘You didn’t manage to help Anselm and Gida,’ she hisses at me.
I wonder at the vehemence – she and Gida are not especially close.
Gida doesn’t even begin to approach the status required to take tea in Deva’s elegant parlour.
A shared loss, then; a shared grief. Resentment.
Idiocy. ‘Thaddeus is leading search parties.’
I ignore the accusation. ‘No one came to me when Ari went missing, not for days. I can’t work miracles, or at least not all the time.
’ I drop my gaze to her stomach, remind her that she wouldn’t have that child if not for me.
She flinches. ‘Yet you all expect them. So, tell me: when did you last see your son?’
‘When I put him to bed last night.’
‘You did? Or the nanny?’
‘I did. He’s mine.’ Over her shoulder I see the maid servant who’d let me in; she gives a slight shake of the head. Deva won’t want me to know she’s handing off care of the child she wanted so badly.
‘Of course.’
Even though the others, the richer ones, do exactly the same thing.
None would admit they don’t tuck their little darlings into bed at night, sealing them in with a sweet kiss to the forehead, perhaps a story before slumber.
No. The nannies and serving maids do these things, telling the little ones the tales they grew up with, little snippets of superstition, folk and fairy lore, warnings about the creatures that creep about in the dark looking for tasty treats, how they shouldn’t let a foot or hand hang over the edge of the mattress lest it prove too tempting for the things that live beneath the bed, that only come out after sundown – the night-tenants, as my mother called them, those with dominion over the dark hours.
The children of the rich are frequently raised by the poor, yet familiar fears are carried in our blood just the same, planted there before we can properly speak, sung to us by the voices of those who guard our bedtime.
‘And the house was undisturbed? No sign of anyone entering? No strange noises heard after lights out?’
Deva shakes her head, twists her hands, one around the other. Still hasn’t risen from her throne.