Chapter Three Tide in Turn
Chapter Three
Tide in Turn
Those who lived in Portscatho knew the customs around healers, yet Kensa had never assumed such customs would involve her.
Offerings were placed on the front step of the house where Kensa, her mother, half-sister and Mr Skewes lived.
Loaves, a shiny buckle, flour as fine as silk, a knitted scarf long enough for the wise woman she would grow to be, who would work and mend and watch over her people.
No healer accepted coins in payment. These gifts were exchanges, a contract: the village would keep her and she, in turn, would keep them.
Kensa learned much about wise women in the weeks and months and years that followed, though her apprenticeship had not truly begun.
Occasionally, she would catch Isolde’s eye when the crone visited Portscatho to administer aid or deliver a child, though the answer was always the same: ‘You are not ready.’ After all, the bone-handled knife had yet to return to her.
From time to time, she was bid to watch a birthing or see how Isolde placed a poultice or set a broken limb.
There were some events, however, that she was not privy to.
Deaths, usually, when the frail needed seeing to a life beyond this one.
Kensa was glad for it. She had no eagerness to see a person breathe their last, though that day would surely come.
Portscatho was built upon a slope that ended with a crescent-shaped harbour.
The village inhabitants were primarily fishermen and their wives, miners and their wives, and the occasional crooks with piratical leanings – and their wives – whose blood thickened with the clouds.
Kensa’s affinity lay with the latter. Perhaps it was her misplaced affection for a long-late father or a need to place herself at odds with the Coast Guard, Mr Skewes.
When it had become widely known that Kensa would work as a wise woman, she was treated differently.
Eyes were averted, the nervous ones crossed themselves, and the children began to sneer.
It no longer mattered that Kensa was first when there was no one to follow her to the tree, edge or trail she raced to.
And should she try to join the others in play, they dispersed as silverfish to candlelight, calling ‘haglet’ behind them.
The unkind name was placed into each new child’s mouth as soon as it could talk.
Already, Isolde’s warning seemed true; Kensa was an outcast, more so than ever before.
The only one who did not voice such insults was Elowen, though her silence was condemnation enough.
Since the sea monster’s appearance, there was an unsettled quality to the coastal waters.
Odd shoals swept up with the drifting seaweed, along with shells as large as fists and jellyfish whose mass and colour were foreign on English shores.
More curious than them all was the sea and its barnacled fingers, which curled from the foam in beckoning. Yet only Kensa seemed to notice.
A little after her fourteenth birthday, when the early dawn was an off-colour lilac, a knock startled Kensa awake.
It was cold, as February is cold. It had been an easy winter, with fair weather and infrequent storms. Sails were ever-present on the horizon, the majority belonging to the packet ships which transported Post Office communications from Falmouth to the West Indies.
Despite the settled seas and plentiful catch, one boat had yet to return to the harbour that morning, as Kensa was soon to learn.
She rose from the pallet she shared with Elowen, bare feet on the rush-strewn floor.
A small voice carried through the shadows. ‘Kensa?’
‘Go back to bed,’ she told Elowen. ‘Don’t wake Ma.’
The younger of the two girls had a gaunt look, cheeks sunken and bowled.
Since that fateful morning on the Towan, Elowen had been prone to sickness.
Every head-cold went straight to her chest and too long in the sun would leave her abed for days.
A further anxious knock drew Kensa to the door.
Men came for Mr Skewes at odd hours, bearing reports of vessels with no flag or an unchecked lantern signalling to a distant schooner.
But rather than call for the Coast Guard, the woman at the door had come for her – for Kensa.
‘It’s my husband,’ said Mrs Lowes hurriedly, face slack with sleeplessness.
‘He’s not come back and it’s been over a day.
’ She was in her nightshift, a man’s coat thrown over it.
This was what happened at foul times, Kensa noticed.
Decent folk on the street in their underthings meant trouble had arisen.
Kensa yawned. ‘And what am I meant to do about it?’
‘Isolde’s away to Bodmin and there’s no other who can help,’ Mrs Lowes continued desperately. ‘You will speak to the Father of Storms for me, won’t you?’
‘Pardon?’
Mrs Lowes would not accept a rebuff. Predictably, Derwa and Mr Skewes were woken, irate and ill-tempered by the noise from their doorstep.
Gradually, the village would muster and Kensa sensed her responsibility pucker around her.
She was to be Portscatho’s wise woman. She could not refuse to help.
Even if she wanted to. What would Old Sal say? Kensa would not dare find out.
‘All right,’ she said to Mrs Lowes, crossing the threshold with sockless feet stuffed into boots and hair an uncombed tangle. ‘I will speak with him.’
Truthfully, she was certain the Bucka did not exist. Yes, there was a spirit, a minor sea god who lived in the ocean, though he was only that, the ocean.
He was a current beneath the surface or the foam at a wave’s tip.
If she was bid to speak to the tide, she would, as foolish as it was and for all the good it would do.
There was a place where offerings were left to the sea.
A bend in the creek where brine met fresh river.
Whenever the tide turned, the two conflicting waters would tussle and roll with a force nothing could stop.
It was here the people of Portscatho left sweet bread or polished glass, coloured ribbon or stones stacked in precarious towers during low tide, only for it to be swept away.
Tributes asking for safe passage, firm winds and a bountiful catch.
It was an exchange much like that between a wise woman and her charges.
Kensa’s own father had taken her here and told her to place a token on the ever-moving shoreline.
If only she could remember what he had bid her to ask – and what he had asked the Bucka for.
The walk from the village was not a long journey, though the ground was hard and made her ankles ache.
With the sun not yet risen, the world was monochrome to her eyes.
Bare hawthorn rose along the path. She must have been half-asleep, for it seemed to reach for her cloak as she passed.
In the sheltered spaces, which the frost couldn’t find, mud tensed around Kensa’s boot soles, as though to trap her.
Mrs Lowes stayed close. What good did she think Kensa could do?
Were it not for the other’s company, she would’ve waited in a hollow and returned to the village when a suitable time had passed.
Then lied about talking to the Bucka and how accommodating he’d been.
Now, unable to dissuade the sailor’s wife, she had to trudge to the creek and do, well, who knew what?
‘You’re a treasure, you are,’ said Mrs Lowes for the umpteenth time.
She did not reply. What could she say? Her gratitude did not make Kensa’s mood less sour or return her to her warm bed, which Elowen now had all to herself.
It was high tide and the creek was a flat, smooth expanse. Thin roots shivered beneath the water, crossed with the reflections of bare branches above. A few bore ribbons in different colours: wishes, prayers, tributes.
Mrs Lowes waited, expectantly. ‘Go on, there’s a dear.’
Kensa patted her gloved hands together. An echoing clap, clap, clap was her answer. Uncertainty brought sweat to the crease behind her knees.
‘All right,’ she said to herself, throat tight. ‘Father o’ Storms,’ she began, then faltered. She looked over her shoulder to Mrs Lowes, who stared owlishly back. Kensa tried again. ‘A fisherman called Mr Lowes is missing and it would do well for you to return him to us.’
‘And his boat,’ said Mrs Lowes.
‘And his boat,’ intoned Kensa.
‘With a fair catch in it too.’
Kensa released a low grunt.
‘If that’s no bother, mind.’
After relaying what Mrs Lowes asked, Kensa waited. For a sign, an acknowledgement, a wordless agreement that the Bucka had heard and would do as she wished. Nothing. Only the same lapping water, reflecting a waking sky streaked in yellowish light.
Kensa sighed heavily. ‘I don’t think—’
‘That’ll do it, I’m certain,’ beamed Mrs Lowes.
Her features had lost their anxious edge and slackened with relief, as quick as the wind changing.
She did not tarry and turned back towards Portscatho with a skip in her step.
Kensa could not fathom it. The soon-to-be healer hadn’t done anything.
Or was this all it took? Perhaps being a wise woman wouldn’t be as hard as she first assumed.
Night had folded its blanket from the sky.
The emerging sun was as ill-mannered and sulky as Kensa, refusing to leave the clouds around it.
She did not return to the village, not straight away.
Mrs Lowes was a slow walker and she had no desire for that woman’s company.
Only, it was quiet, when it had not been quiet a moment ago.
The trees were empty frames, leafless and clattering together in near-silent laughter.
No birds chattered and no mammals scurried in the underbrush.
Even the clouds’ scudding progress slowed, everything holding its breath.
Kensa stepped back from the creek.