Chapter Five Mist from the Sea
Chapter Five
Mist from the Sea
It was always the whimpering that woke her. Kensa could sleep through the rasps and gasps that came from the space beside her, but not the pain. There was a muffled quality to them, as though Elowen was trying to hide her sickness, even in sleep.
‘That’s enough,’ murmured Kensa, a gentle chiding. ‘Come on.’
The sisters lay on the pallet in the kitchen darkness.
Despite the dim light, Kensa could see the sweat across Elowen’s pillow, an inverse halo.
Her fair hair was damp and translucent, while her hands pressed against her ribs, spine curved inwards.
She had been getting bad again. It worsened – her condition – each year when the spring tides came.
Old Sal claimed it was the stars, their mother blamed the damp once the frosts had passed, while Isolde would not say what it was, only that she had brought a special tonic to ease the symptoms.
Kensa put a hand to her sister’s forehead, cold as the ocean. ‘Elowen?’
‘I’m here,’ she replied, spoken in slumber, then repeated upon waking: a reassurance as to where she was and who she was with.
Kensa rolled onto her feet and reached for her shawl.
It was always like this, Elowen and her illness.
None linked it to the Morgawr’s appearance.
People became unwell, no one ever wondered, ‘Why?’ Or if they did, the answer was, ‘God.’ Whether he be the Holy Father or the Father of Storms. Once or twice, the sisters had tried to discuss it and Kensa had been ashamed and Elowen unwilling to yield her own suspicions.
It was their secret – and they would keep it, although Kensa did not know exactly what the secret was or even if Elowen knew it.
‘I never know when to wake you – if I should let you sleep through it.’
‘Always wake me.’ Elowen paused, elbowing herself into a seated position. ‘It’s dark when I dream – and I think I’m drowning or I’m not drowning and somehow it’s worse.’
‘Well, you’re not now,’ said Kensa firmly and with a frown. ‘You’re here, being a pain, keeping me awake.’ If they were not careful, they would disturb Derwa and Mr Skewes.
Kensa slid her thick socks towards the grate.
Its fire sat low and underfed. She would stir it to wakefulness in due course, when the house was ready to wake with it.
There was little firewood to waste. Mr Skewes’s position as Coast Guard did not earn them much.
Her mother’s sewing brought in a little coin, as did Elowen’s role as assistant teacher to Miss Latham.
Despite their meagre income, the household did not struggle.
That was Kensa’s doing. Although she had yet to begin her apprenticeship to the wise woman, she was regularly given eggs, bread, weak beer and even clothes.
She could not work, not in the way others worked.
Instead, under Isolde’s watch, she gave aid to those who needed it.
Should an expectant mother be too unwell to milk her cow, Kensa would do it.
If there was an elderly chap unable to wrangle the village pump, she would assist him.
After all, Kensa was strong enough, able-bodied and did not mind physical labour.
The only difficulties she faced were in conversation.
Talking. People did not want to hear that their problems were their own doing, though Kensa would have them know it.
Begrudgingly, she learned to bite her tongue.
‘You learn more,’ she explained to Isolde, on the frequent occasions the wise woman came to visit Elowen, tonic in hand. ‘Quiet don’t stay quiet for long. It gets filled and you’d be surprised by what people fill it with, what they really want to say.’
‘That there is healing work,’ said Isolde.
And it had been a reminder: Kensa was not a healer yet.
Almost four years had passed since the witches’ convening, yet the bone-handled knife had not returned.
No matter how often she begged, Isolde would not relent.
Only when the blade came back, would Kensa be permitted to learn her trade.
Until then, she was forced to pick up her craft in crumbs, trailing Isolde on house visits and lingering in Portscatho’s alcoves and thresholds, offering help where it was needed.
Elowen’s tonic was kept in the low cupboard where the sun could not reach it.
The glass vial was cold in Kensa’s hand, same as the spring breeze which crept under the door and down the chimney.
By the time she returned to their shared bed, Elowen was fully awake.
The brief openness in her expression was gone, closed off, chased away.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Then you’ll get sicker,’ said Kensa.
Elowen gripped the vial loosely in her slim fingers, threatening to stain her nightdress. ‘It tastes awful.’ Her fever had finally broken, though it had taken a day. It always did break, eventually, with Kensa to coax her through it. ‘I’m not a child who needs minding.’
‘Elowen—’
‘You will find it today,’ she said quietly.
Kensa yawned. ‘What?’
Silence. Elowen’s speciality. She sank back onto the pallet and set the empty vial on her bedside table. The blankets strained against her outline as she folded onto her side.
‘I know you’re not asleep,’ said Kensa.
She may as well have addressed the moon for all the response her sister gave.
Elowen was as sallow as the moon, too. Pale, reedy and often in wane, bar the better days she was full and free and laughing.
Equally as distant, too. Now, at eighteen, Kensa bore even less resemblance to her sister.
And if she was stockier and broader and stronger, what of it?
Her hair had grown brassier with age and thickly tangled, no matter how cruelly she brushed it.
Across her face were endless freckles, topped by thick brows, which added a severity to her face.
No, there was nothing of the moon about Kensa.
It was a cold morning in March and thick with mist: flat, veil-like, blurring the village edges.
Kensa went out to greet it. She could not fall back to sleep.
Neither could she lie there beside Elowen and pretend they were – whatever they were pretending.
In the fresh air, she was more herself. There were kittens by the salting house.
Poorly creatures with crummy eyes and patchy fur.
Mr Skewes said they were better off drowned, thereby making it Kensa’s mission to save them.
Weak mewls greeted her as she leaned between two barrels to find the mother absent, hunting most likely.
Portscatho had a tense relationship with its cats, as with most fishing communities.
Their presence was a bad omen, for they often stole the thickest herring from the boat’s latest haul.
However, their rat-catching skills were unmatched and so the half-feral creatures were tolerated.
Everything and everyone in the village had a place.
Well, almost everyone. Kensa remained an outsider.
Those children she had grown up with, the ones who had scorned her, were gone.
Boys who considered themselves men sought fortunes and rank in the military.
At least, those not attached to farmsteads or the mine.
Although the war in the Americas was over, trouble stirred abroad in France.
Girls who grew to be women were sent to grand houses as lowly servants.
That would have been Kensa’s fate. It still could be, if she failed in her duties as wise woman, which Mr Skewes took pleasure in reminding her.
He had a sister at Trewense Manor, a large house which belonged to their local magistrate.
Of course, there were worse options than becoming a maid: one could marry.
Become tethered to a man, usually older, with nightly expectations that tightened Kensa’s stomach when she thought on it.
She tried not to think on it. There was a marked difference between herself and those young women in Portscatho who’d wed as soon as they reached a suitable age.
She could not describe what it was. Perhaps how they carried themselves, how they deferred to their husbands, how they looked down on anyone who did not know what they knew.
Not that Kensa wanted to know. Why would she?
She never even thought about it. At least, not often – not that she would tell anyone.
Elowen was too young to wed, though already it was spoken of.
‘She’ll make a fine wife for your son Jack when she’s grown, won’t she?’ Old Sal had asked Branok one Sunday after church. ‘He’ll need a woman with a solid head on her shoulders if he’s to take over the mine’s running, won’t he?’
Ever the diplomat – above as well as below ground – the mine overseer had simply nodded.
Kensa had not lingered to hear further. Elowen was too weak to consider a husband.
And besides, Jack was – well, he was – it did not matter what he was.
No one talked on Kensa’s own wedding. A wise woman’s only commitment was to her community.
It was not deemed acceptable for her to have her own offspring or even partake in the activities which may lead to that result.
Good, thought Kensa, Good.
The sea was ever-present at her back. A tidal rise and fall, as familiar as Kensa’s own inhalations.
Only today, the sea was impossibly loud, bouncing off the harbour wall, eager for attention.
As the sun began to appear, its surface shone.
A strange winking light. One which stole her focus from the fat-slopped bread she spooned into the kittens’ mouths.
It was a sharp glimmer, more than daylight’s playful sway on the water.
As though the sea could talk, it called to her.
Oh, but the sea can talk, Kensa was quick to remember.