Chapter Twelve Come the Storm
Chapter Twelve
Come the Storm
Dawn summoned bees. One hundred hive-hewn hums woke Kensa, her window browned with their furred bodies, which were heaped together on the glass exterior.
She put a palm against the pane. It was warm with heat and vibration.
And there was something else. Beneath what she could sense was another sense.
It told her the window was hot with fear.
Kensa snatched her palm back and rubbed it down her nightdress.
Odd, these moments. When she touched on more than what was there.
As though she had opened a box to find another box inside, impossibly bigger than the first. The longer she spent in the cottage, the more it changed her.
She called for Isolde and winced, head pulsing in time with her new insect guests.
Yesterday’s happenings at the fete came back as she clunked down the stairs.
If she walked carefully, she could keep from retching.
Isolde, in comparison, was shockingly cheerful.
Rosy-cheeked and singing loudly: ‘As she swang her buttocks and he raised his leg, a cry fell out from their shared bed. From beneath their mattress was—’
‘Bees,’ Kensa blurted.
At least that put a stop to the old woman’s tawdry humour.
The pair whirled their shawls about their shoulders and padded into the garden to observe the swarm which had consumed Isolde’s cottage. The bees poured themselves over the south-facing side and were huddled together in a protective, anxious bundle.
‘Those are from Mr Aldridge’s hive,’ said Isolde slowly.
How she could recognise one bee from another, Kensa did not know.
There was much she did not know. About her sister, about the magistrate and her father, about her own mother.
She was glad Isolde was here. That she could call out in the morning and have her wizened mentor appear and fix it.
‘Humph,’ said Isolde.
The wise woman turned away and her cracked heels flashed beneath her nightgown. She went to the kitchen window, where her onions bunched: the marked ones Kensa was forbidden to touch. There were at least twenty, if not more, etched and inked with symbols.
‘There’ll be no good that comes from this.’
Kensa stiffened. ‘What do you mean by that?’
At first the onions had been placid and brown. Now, two stood out from the regular yellowed-silver huddle. The one with a shell-shaped ‘E’ carved upon it was dank and green, while the second, with a crucifix slit into its skin, was dripping, black and pungent.
‘Do I have an onion?’ And if she did, was it a nice one?
Isolde’s mouth clenched into a miserable pucker. Fox shivered and removed herself from beneath the table, padding out into the drizzled morning.
‘You look troubled,’ said Kensa.
After a time spent in deep contemplation, where she ignored any and all questions, Isolde roused herself. ‘Do you have a fine dress?’
‘I have the one I wore yesterday.’
‘Then you’ll borrow one of mine,’ said Isolde tersely. ‘We are to attend the Sunday service.’
‘Are you joking?’ Kensa frowned at the old woman and her onions and the rapid exit the vixen had made.
Around her was an unsettled quality, a tightening, as though the cottage walls had grown muscle and begun to contract around them.
‘I thought the whole point of being a wise woman was that I didn’t have to go to church? ’
‘You’ll do as you’re damn well told, Miss Rowe.’
‘And who’s going to make me?’
‘I am, because you are my apprentice and it is your duty to do what I tell you.’
‘If I only knew why, I would,’ Kensa retorted.
Isolde paused for the longest time, then said softly, ‘It would not be fair.’
An unsteady quiet followed, nothing solid enough for the younger woman to lean against. It had been like this when she’d been small: her parents arguing, her father and his secrets, a sense that she’d always be the last to know and maybe, sometimes, that was better.
Isolde ran her hand down her face and wrenched herself away, to her room.
Loud bangs were heard, fabric rustling. Eventually, Kensa was given a dress with a faint cupboard scent and told to change.
She wanted to argue. Defend herself. And she would’ve done, were it not for how worried Isolde seemed.
Gone was her rabid charm, replaced with an anxiety Kensa had never seen before.
‘All right,’ said Kensa.
Behind her, a long, black tendril of slime dripped from the most blackened onion and ran its finger down the wall.
Within the hour, the wise woman and her apprentice were trudging along the high lane to St Gerrans Church.
Outside was muggy and warm, the sun’s heat trapped under a low bank of cloud to press down on those below it.
Neither spoke, ill-humoured and cross and a tad hungover.
The youngest wore a borrowed garment of brushed brown velvet, which she quickly sweated through.
If she kept her arms at her sides, no one would know.
It was the nicest dress she had ever worn, complete with gold-threaded leaves at the bust. She pressed her hands over the embroidery, fingering the pattern: the occasional precious stone glimmered at her touch, betraying the wealth Isolde must once have owned a long time ago.
Although her chemise was yellowed beneath it, she passed as decent enough, if you overlooked the musty smell.
Isolde wore a grey smock, the only change in her bearing a bangle which rattled on her wrist, large and silvered against her bony joint.
St Gerrans Church was a squat, low building with a thin spire that shot upwards as though caught unawares.
Its grey stone was stacked and slated, while arched windows held sallow glass patterns, plain and without adornment.
It was attached to the parish of Gerrans, a small group of houses above Portscatho, which had been established long before the harbour’s development.
For hundreds of years, a clergyman had given a sermon at this place every Sunday.
Mr Aldridge was the most recent in a long, long line and was wont to tell his congregation so.
At the hill’s end, where it ran to the sea, was a new Methodist sect, although none mentioned their ilk, and only one or two worshippers had defected.
Kensa had never paid God much mind and He had given her the same disregard.
The Land itself seemed more faith to her and that belief had only increased since working with Isolde.
Sometimes she thought she heard more guidance from the Sea than she ever did from a pulpit, the endless waves more real than the Heavens.
The church’s Norman interior was beamed and plainly carved, the floor cracked with tiles, and – to the entrance’s right – was a large stone font, where Kensa herself had been baptised. Her mother had told everyone how Kensa had cried as soon as the holy water met her forehead, a good omen.
Elowen had not.
‘She’s still got the Devil in her,’ Old Sal had joked once, which brought her a cuss from Mr Skewes and a mean smile from Kensa, which she nursed now at the memory.
As soon as she entered the church, the air grew colder.
Its stone could not take the day’s Sabbath heat.
Inside, the village turn-out was surprisingly high.
Sir George Trevanion had taken his pew at the front, while the usual rabble sat in the rows behind.
There was Old Sal and her pasty daughter, as well as the forge workers, the wading crew who poached a living on scallops and winkles, Young Robert, the Preventative men such as Mr Skewes and – much to the latter’s dislike – the smugglers they tried to apprehend, who sat grinning with tobacco pressed into their gums. Here, too, was Kensa’s mother and sister.
Yet what drew Kensa’s eye was not them. Bright amid the squalor was the pretty woman she had seen at the May Day festival.
Rather, the prettiest woman Kensa had ever seen in her life.
It was she, then, who had drawn a crowd.
Odd, that she sat a distance from Sir George at the church’s front.
‘I figured the pair of them were together,’ said Kensa, as she slid her backside on the wooden seat closest to the door.
‘Her with ’im?’ Isolde sucked her teeth. ‘It could be. Money can make even the ugliest man palatable and it helps that he’s not unfortunate looking.’
Elowen’s thin face was intent upon the new woman. In fact, she did not once look away, a frown creasing her brow. At last, here was someone to cast shade over Kensa’s sister. No longer would the fair-haired girl be the loveliest in the room, for now she had competition.
There were a few grumbles at the healers’ entrance.
Church was not a place for them, though Kensa had never been welcome.
Her father’s reputation prevented her acceptance here.
It used to make her angry, the same way everything made her angry.
Yet with Isolde beside her, she now wielded authority.
No longer was she a splinter on a pew. She was integral to the community.
As it should always have been. Despite the strong attendance, there was one person missing from today’s gathering.
Isolde touched an elbow to her apprentice. ‘Who’re you looking for?’
‘No one,’ said Kensa quickly.
Jack was not present, nor his father, their seat behind the gentry empty. A heaviness pulled on her stomach: she’d wanted him to see her dress, to think she might be handsome enough in the soft light, in the right clothes.