Chapter Fourteen A Fair Hand
Chapter Fourteen
A Fair Hand
As soon as the wise woman and her apprentice recovered themselves, Isolde began her work.
There was no time for Kensa’s sobs, which were quickly stifled with a hard look.
Porcelain crunched underfoot, the rug squelched and blood trailed from the wise woman’s arm.
She ripped a line from the dead curate’s cassock and used it to bind her wound.
‘Get yourself as clean as you can,’ said Isolde. ‘Borrow a coat from Mr Aldridge and hide the blood on your clothes, lest anyone see it.’ Her thin cheeks puffed outwards as she exhaled. ‘We have work to do, you and I.’
Kensa lifted her head slowly.
‘Haven’t you learned yet?’ Isolde was grim-faced and serious.
‘Healing is cleaning, more often than not.’ It took a while and Kensa was largely kept to the kitchen and garden, drawing water from the well nearby and heating it over the range.
It was a kindness, she realised. A forced distance between herself and the two bodies her thoughts dwelled on.
As she brought another bucket to the front room, the previous one soiled and to be chucked outside, Isolde began to speak.
Fractured words, apologetic, then hesitant.
‘If I had known she was as strong as this, I never would have sent you.’
Kensa’s hair was wet and hung heavily across her features. ‘You knew?’
‘Aye, I knew what Merrin was and I wanted to teach you, to show you what it takes to be a wise woman,’ continued Isolde, a dirty rag palmed from one hand to the other. ‘I did not think she could do what she did; it does not bode well for the Pact.’
‘I could have been—’
‘I think it time you learned the Old Ways.’
Kensa’s face bore the same blank shock as Mr Aldridge’s. She turned from his deathly mask to meet her mentor’s grim expression. ‘Am I ready?’
‘You will have to be.’ Isolde’s tunic was heavily stained with blood and sweat and spilled tea. She wrung its end into the dirty bucket. Spoke to it, rather than Kensa. ‘Are you well enough to run to the mine? I need Branok and his son if we are to hide what has happened.’
Kensa’s brows rose into her hair.
‘Would you have the villagers know their curate’s been murdered?
No, we’d be strung up at Percuil River.’ Kensa flinched at the thought and Isolde continued, ‘It is our role to balance the work of Land and Sea. Should we falter, we’ll lose far more than our livelihoods.
Tell the men to bring their picks and shovels, for I wager we shall need to shift soil if we are to sleep in our own beds tonight. ’
Kensa’s hands trembled. She hid them in her pockets.
Well, these were not her pockets specifically, because they belonged to Mr Aldridge’s coat.
Was it still his now he was dead? The wool smelled like him: plum wine and sweetmeats.
Although she had not liked him much, Kensa’s face crumpled at the thought.
Her mind reeled. Her throat burned. When the wind reached where the asrai had touched her, her skin stung anew.
It took a whole hour to get to the mine. Kensa passed through that space and time as though flying. Shock, she supposed. Her mother told her it could kill little birds, but she was a young woman, not a bird, and so all she did was shake.
Porthbeor Mine was a gash in the cliff face, accessible only at low tide.
Its tunnels were held up by stulls – wooden pillars – that seemed too thin ever to support the rock above it.
Kensa lingered at the entrance, the sea behind her, licking at her boot soles.
By now the rain had exhausted itself and fell in persistent, though light, spatters.
It mattered little to her, as she was already soaked through and shivering.
Miners were as superstitious as sailors and Kensa’s presence was not a welcome one.
It was not due to her sex, for many a woman worked below the ground.
It was her craft which singled her out. Although wise women were often needed by the men and women at Porthbeor, to see one at the mine’s mouth was a foreboding sight: it usually signalled the imminent death of a worker within.
‘Branok?’ Her voice was hoarse. Were it not for the shapes who moved near by, Kensa would have assumed she went unheard. ‘Branok!’
A miner’s uniform comprised thin layers, draped over one another.
Feet bore hard shoes, including clogs. From outside, Kensa could hear regular wooden taps against rock, joined by songs that appeased whatever strangeness might be levered up with the copper.
Branok wore the same as his workmen, though he had a higher status among them, as their overseer.
Mining was a hard occupation and it hardened those who did it.
He emerged squinting into the weak daylight and Kensa saw how much his son took after him.
She could guess, then, which features Jack must have inherited from his long-late mother.
‘You should not be here, Miss Rowe,’ said Branok. ‘Taking a charm into the mines is one thing, taking in the charmer is another.’
He had a low voice, as though enriched by the mineral veins he hunted for.
Kensa had never spoken to him. She’d had no need.
Besides, he cut an intimidating figure, taken seriously – and respected – by landowners and labourers alike.
He talked sense, he spoke carefully and he never took part in gossip.
It was hard to know what he thought or who he liked and it made Kensa unsure and uncertain around him.
‘Isolde needs you,’ she mumbled. ‘She asked for Jack too, if he’s here.’ Kensa’s lip caught on his name.
‘Where else would he be?’
Jack was not happy to be summoned. He took his time, wading from the shadows – which seemed reluctant to leave him – and out into the day.
For a man who reminded Kensa of summer’s height, it was strange to think he was so frequently underground.
After setting his lantern down, Jack clapped stone-dust off his shoulders and asked, ‘Is it important?’
Father and son both raised their brows in a gesture so alike in its condescension, Kensa could have screamed. Instead, she took a measured breath.
‘I wouldn’t be here if—’
Jack reached forwards. ‘What’s this?’ He pulled at her collar to reveal her bruised neck.
With no looking glass, Kensa had not seen the mark the asrai had given her.
Judging by Jack’s expression, it did not look good.
‘How did you get this?’ His thumb was gentle on her chin, though his face hardened. ‘Tell me, please.’
Kensa leaned into his hand. It would be easy, wouldn’t it? To cry, rupture, let him hold her and find comfort. In the past she might have done, if only to be close to him. Not that she needed it. She didn’t need anything. After this morning, her impulses seemed foolish and she a fool to have them.
‘I will tell you when we leave,’ she said, ‘and we must leave now – your picks and shovels with us.’
Shielded from the dotting rain by Branok’s hat, Kensa trudged back to the curate’s abode with the overseer and his son behind her.
She revealed little about what had taken place, her tongue stumbling whenever she touched on a memory that was too raw.
She did not know how much the wise woman wished to reveal and kept her details vague, with mutters about an ‘accident’ and little else.
It’s not my fault, she longed to tell them. Isolde could have warned me! If she had, I would have known what to look for, I could have saved Mr Aldridge.
Kensa clutched the hagstone tight in her fist. It calmed her.
When at last they reached the cottage beside St Gerrans Church, it was grimly evident that Isolde had kept busy.
The bodies of Mr Aldridge and Wenna lay side by side on the bare boards in the front room, shrouded in white sheets.
There was a third, thin length beside them: the stained rug, too saturated to lie neatly.
The crockery had been cleared away and its remains sat in a reed basket usually allocated for kindling.
A large stain wounded the room’s centre: blood.
No scrubbing had erased it, though Isolde’s reddened knuckles betrayed her attempts.
It was those Jack reached for, scanning his aunt for injury and finally closing a hand around her forearm.
Branok rubbed at his chin. ‘I see.’
Kensa would have expected disbelief or shock from the men, as – with not a word wasted – Isolde relayed what had taken place.
Instead, the two seemed thoughtful and their questions thoughtful too.
Although this was not a regular occurrence, it seemed incidents such as these were not entirely unknown.
‘I take this to be the Bucka’s doing?’ Branok spoke with such ferocity that it betrayed an eerie familiarity with the Father of Storms. ‘If he has—’
‘No, his acts are far subtler,’ said Isolde plainly. ‘Few can easily cross the sea’s threshold without his permission and he would not grant it to her.’
‘And you?’ Branok asked. ‘It is the Bucka who controls the Sea, whereas your place is the Land. Are you capable of defending it, Isolde?’
The wise woman raised herself to her full height and angled her bony shoulders back. ‘Don’t forget who raised you, boy.’
‘That was fifty years ago and you were haggard then,’ said Branok. ‘I am ignorant to the Old Ways and their uses, and I don’t know how they change a person, but you have to admit you’ve slowed?’
Isolde chewed on her tongue and would not meet his eye or anyone else’s. ‘Yes, the Pact is weakening, because I am weakening. I can feel its tethers loosening from me, leaving gaps for creatures like the asrai to exploit.’
Loosening? The apprentice wished to ask, to pry and learn, and yet, this was not the time. Besides, she was loath to seem foolish, especially in front of—
‘Will this creature return?’ Jack interrupted. ‘That’s all I want to know.’