Chapter Fifteen The Old Ways
Chapter Fifteen
The Old Ways
Percuil River was a place Kensa usually avoided.
Her father had been hanged over its waters, where the rocky ledges and outcrops leaned against the nearby village of St Mawes.
She could not see the scaffold from here, the river’s bends too numerous, but she held it in her mind’s eye – or it held her.
Kensa heaved a coracle onto the bank next to the wise woman’s own vessel.
Despite its resemblance to an upturned walnut shell, the one-person boat had been sturdy enough to transport her along the tidal channel and to the narrow tributary of Polingey Creek.
Apprehension, or the past hour on water, had weakened her legs.
A long two weeks had followed Mr Aldridge’s absence.
As always, Old Sal was at the forefront of local gossip, claiming she had suspected such an elopement would happen between the curate and his housemaid.
No one spoke on murder. As local magistrate, Sir George Trevanion had called the village to a meeting and promised a new curate had been sent for, to replace the missing Mr Aldridge.
This was news Kensa heard second-hand, delivered by the visitors to the cottage on Wednesdays, their ailments brought along with them.
The wet bank where Kensa found herself was thick with dry seaweed, empty shells and tangled roots. Ahead were tangled vines and waist-high ferns. No path to recommend itself. She squinted into the thick undergrowth with a sense that something, somewhere, squinted back.
‘Come this way, child.’ Isolde’s grey head dipped into the greenery. ‘Remember, crush no shoot and bend no branch.’
‘Why don’t I fly while I’m at it?’
Kensa was not as light-footed as her teacher.
As she crunched forwards, a heron started, its breakfast – a half-eaten frog – dangling from its beak.
The bird left in an offence of wings and the apprentice pressed on, freckled arms raised to shield her face.
Insects bounced in her ears while salted mud pulled on her boots; a remnant of the spring high tides.
At first, the trees were small and stunted, changing as she walked.
Moss replaced the cloying soil underfoot and squelched her progress back to her.
Ahead came a brown flash as a rabbit’s ears cupped her tracks, then folded below ground.
Kensa contorted her body to pass through the tightly packed copse, branches raking her hair and marking her wrists, until at last she came to a small clearing, alive with silver birch.
Dizzy, she sat and blinked through the light which seemed to taste different to what she had passed through. Tangy, akin to wood sorrel or apple skin. Not unlike the Bucka’s scent. It unsettled her to realise she knew what he smelled like.
Kensa pressed her palm to the point between her brows. ‘What is this place?’
‘A bridge to the Old Ways,’ said Isolde, appearing beside her, manic and be-twigged.
Her bony hand clutched Kensa’s plumper palm.
‘There are few wild places left in Kernow,’ she said, using the old name for Cornwall, ‘those not touched by a man’s plough or spade or round.
’ Her lips peeled back to show uneven, murky teeth.
‘That is where we are, that is this place, Kensa Rowe.’
‘It’s a bog.’
‘An untouched bog.’ Isolde flung her skinny arms out. ‘This was the last stronghold of the Folk and it is here the Old Ways can be found.’
Kensa squared her shoulders and took a mossy seat. No one in the West Country was ignorant of the tales of fairies, piskies and sidhe: cruel beings whose rules were unknowable and beauty unfathomable.
‘Once, power ran unchecked and its people ran with it,’ continued Isolde.
‘Over time, the Folk emerged alongside man, the Old Ways deep-set in their blood. Conflict was commonplace, islands were made and unmade on a whim, miracles ascribed to strange new gods or half-forgotten ones. It was chaos, until the first wise woman of Portscatho bound herself to the Land and trapped another in the Sea, with the Old Ways anchored between them in a Pact. Finally, the wild power which surged through the earth was brought into balance, as were the Folk.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘As man ravaged the earth further, the Old Ways dwindled from it and most fled to the sea or died.’
Kensa thought on the creatures she had encountered or heard about. Sickly, salt-shaped and sly. ‘What happens if the Pact breaks?’
‘There is worse than Merrin under the Bucka’s heel; a whole sea and its vengeance could well make claim to what we have made ours, and I would not blame them.
Before the Pact, anyone with enough power could do terrible things.
Now, one cannot use the Old Ways without giving something of themselves in return. ’
‘If I wanted to mend a cut?’
‘You’d tear your own skin in the process.’
Kensa closed her fists, uncomfortable at the thought. ‘Then what are the Old Ways good for?’
‘Not much,’ admitted Isolde, leaning back on a tree trunk, ‘but a coven together can manage more than a single witch alone. Besides, it does extend our lifespan somewhat, which has its own challenges. I’ve lived longer than a century and a half and I have learned that everything must remain in check.
For that reason, no wise woman who holds the Pact can take a life, for she has given one, forever, to the Bucka.
To do so would be to rupture that bind.’ The wise woman leaned forwards, cupping her hands around Kensa’s ears, heightening the noises around her. ‘What can you hear?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You will.’
Kensa shook her mentor’s grip from her head.
She could not deny there was a nice quality to their surroundings.
A peacefulness without livestock’s lowing or a cart horse’s hasty clop over road.
No net-slap against the harbour wall or gasping scythe through stalk.
Quiet, without civilisation, only bird chatter and bug scatter.
The way the world was meant to be: manless and emerald.
Her foot was going numb. One sleeve was damp from where it had trailed in the river.
Her own hair tickled her mouth when it escaped the leather tie she had bound it with.
There was no hidden force seeking entry into her mind.
Only her own blood in her ears. She tried harder, although she did not know what she was meant to try.
Beneath her, the soil moved and wriggled. A hundred insect lives carried themselves around her. It was there she began, considering the land and her imagination supplied –
Her father, rotting in an unmarked grave.
His corpse, its eaten decay, carried in invertebrate stomachs, crawling around her.
The last words he spoke to her: You will always be my little girl, Kenny.
She heard him, from the millipede and the worm and the woodlouse, she heard him.
No one can take my place, do you understand?
‘I think I get it,’ she lied, swallowing around a tightness in her throat.
Isolde’s fingers came to rest on Kensa’s chest, in the space above her heart. ‘Each of us has a wildness inside us, one unbent by man’s will,’ she said. ‘It is that spirit I saw on the Towan, it is why I sought you out.’
Kensa’s hope caught against her teeth. ‘Then the Morgawr had nothing to do with it?’
‘She brought you to the beach, did she not?’
‘Not only me.’
‘Elowen has her own concerns,’ scoffed Isolde. ‘Don’t you mind that. Listen, hear it? Isn’t it—’
‘I already told you,’ came Kensa’s waspish reply, ‘I can hear it.’
She braced her hands on her knees and pushed onto her feet, a ridiculous prickle at her eyelids.
A thousand explanations jumped into her skull, telling her she was wrong and the Old Ways knew it, that she was bad and everyone suspected as much.
She was her father’s daughter, she was his and nothing else – would never be anything else.
There was no impatience in Isolde’s demeanour. She took Kensa’s mood in her stride, limbs spread easily under a bracket mushroom as wide as a shelf. ‘Why do you want to be a wise woman?’
‘I was chosen to be,’ said Kensa automatically.
‘That’s not what I asked. Do you know why I wanted to be a wise woman?
I wanted to be listened to and admired. I desired status and control – and to control others.
Of course, I soon learned you end up responsible for them, fond of them, even.
’ Isolde sighed. ‘You don’t need to be the best wise woman Portscatho has ever had, you don’t even need to be that good, you only have to try. ’
‘I am trying,’ said Kensa defensively.
‘That’s all I would ask. Once you have tapped into the Old Ways, you may call them to help with small favours, provided they are known to nature.
’ It was here that Isolde paused, waiting until Kensa’s face tilted towards her own.
‘The greater the ask, the larger the sacrifice needed.’ She held up her arm to show the long, deep cut she had etched into her flesh to stop the asrai’s voice.
Its scar was pink and puckered, marking her for ever.
‘That moment in Mr Aldridge’s front room, I cut myself and bound Merrin’s throat, briefly, for long enough to give us the upper hand.
’ A smile, then. ‘Consider our friend Young Robert,’ said Isolde.
‘If I wished to help him regrow his leg, I’d have to hack off my own and bind it using the Old Ways.
Even then, it would not be enough and I would not survive the process.
I’d be dead and no use to anyone in Portscatho. ’
‘I s’pose if anyone knew it was possible, a few might try to convince you to trade your health with theirs?’
Isolde’s expression shifted and became darker. ‘Yes, may the Pact protect us.’