Chapter Twenty-four The Funeral
Chapter Twenty-four
The Funeral
Elowen twisted her braid over a bucket to free the saltwater from it. She looked furious in a way Kensa had never seen. ‘It’s like he’s in my hair,’ she hissed. ‘Why did he stay? He could have freed Isolde and left.’
‘Gloating, probably,’ said Kensa, elbows on the kitchen table, head in her hands. ‘It’s what I would do.’ There was a single white chicken feather sitting on the floor beneath her shoe; another hook in her conscience that would not let go.
Elowen huffed and tugged her hair harder. ‘He’s trying to shake your resolve, Kensa.’
‘It’s working.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Jack’s sling was back in place.
He was even worse for wear, another bandage around his injured arm as he proposed, ‘Elowen and I will look for Isolde together.’ Kensa surged upright and he quelled her protest with a single raised palm.
‘You need to stay here for the funeral; the village will need its wise woman to show strength. Or, well, at least show herself.’
‘No one can know I’ve done this.’ Kensa’s plea was coarse as it left her. ‘You can’t tell anyone, please?’
Jack’s nostrils flared. ‘We can right it.’
It was a thin reassurance, as he did not promise to keep her secret.
Kensa was ashamed she had even asked him to.
He did not complain about the knife wound on his arm, yet it must have hurt him.
She must have hurt him. Everything was her fault and she could sense him pulling away from her, distancing himself from everything she’d wrought upon them.
‘You can’t carry the body now,’ said Kensa.
‘Not after what I did.’ She referred to the hastily made scarecrow propped up in the Bucka’s old chair.
‘It’ll pull on those wounds and they’ll bleed anew.
’ Jack’s shirt soaked in the same bucket Elowen dripped her hair into.
His body was wrapped with bandages and Kensa could barely look at it.
‘If what the Bucka told us about the hag is true, she’ll avoid sunlight and hide in a dark place. ’
Elowen glanced out of the window, muddy with a morning haze. ‘Everything will be dark again once the sun sets.’
‘Then we have only a day to recover her,’ said Kensa. ‘If we can tempt her here, we can shut her away – properly, this time – and find a cure.’
There was no expression on Elowen’s features, ever guarded, yet she was somehow pessimistic. ‘How do you propose to lure her?’
Kensa raised herself to standing and leaned into the cupboard where the poultry feed was kept. ‘We have one chicken left alive.’ She sighed heavily. ‘At least, for the moment.’
Almost everyone who lived in Portscatho and its surrounds was present at Isolde’s funeral.
There were residents from Gerrans, as well as the few who resided in the Customs House opposite St Mawes and even one or two Falmouth dwellers (as Kensa’s mother told her afterwards).
They arrived in twos, threes and fours – families, neighbours and friends – to pay their respects to Isolde.
Mr Skewes had not shown his face and neither had the other God-fearing types, who put their faith in prayers rather than wise women.
With how warm the day fared, none wore a heavy coat and cloaks were quickly plucked from shoulders.
Kensa wore the dress her mother had sent.
It fit her arms and bust, though she could not shake the notion that the last time Derwa had worn it had been during the funeral for Kensa’s own father.
A nervous energy itched her elbows and she repeatedly stuffed her hands up her sleeves, to dig at the skin beneath.
Jack and Elowen had fled out back to go hag-hunting and she was left to mourn a scarecrow.
Could she lie to everyone? Yes. She’d lied before.
Of these familiar – and unfamiliar – faces present at Bohortha, there was one who did not seem to fit.
He was young, though older than Kensa, and wore black: a clergyman.
Remembrance came and it was bitter. She had met him.
Here was the figure she’d slammed a door on, the night he came to read Elowen her last rites.
Kensa’s hands balled into fists, like small fleshy boulders at her side.
How dare he?
She would have ordered this new Christian man to leave, and cruelly at that, were it not for her audience.
His presence was as irksome as a tick beneath a hound’s pelt.
Worse, he seemed to know it and sought her out, breezing through those assembled in the garden.
The curate was tall, much to her annoyance, with chestnut hair and a certain disposition which said he spoke crisply and not in the Cornish way.
Yes, she could tell that afore he opened his mouth.
And then he did and she was certain he did not belong here.
‘Mr Delavaud,’ said the curate, introducing himself.
‘I can see that,’ said Kensa, with no mind to give her name nor manners.
Not even Sir George Trevanion took such airs about himself, though many claimed he was born from common stock, a dalliance of his father’s. Perhaps this was what made the new curate so ill-placed among the coastal people. He did not have the sea in his blood, only water: weak and saltless.
‘I thought I’d say a few words,’ continued Mr Delavaud.
‘Did you now?’
He spoke in a pinched, deferential way. It made Kensa feel powerful. Here was a man who sought her approval. He wouldn’t get it.
‘Do not bother yourself,’ she said, ‘few are church-goers here.’
There was a bully, squatting as a toad, in Kensa’s gut. She wanted him to be small and would enjoy the process of smalling him. She opened her mouth to speak, to be cruel and feel better in the process, only he interrupted her.
‘I do enjoy a challenge,’ he said jovially, ‘and perhaps one day I might win you over and see you in St Gerrans?’
Kensa’s reply took several long moments to manifest. She wished she were clever, as he was clever.
‘It weren’t so long ago that your stock burned witches, killed the wise women and drowned the cunning folk.
’ She spoke to him down the length of her nose, chin raised. ‘It’s lucky there’s any of us left.’
Mr Delavaud nodded, listening intently, fingers steepled together. His hands were soft, more used to books and quills than hard labour. Nothing like Jack’s hands. ‘If I keep the fires to a minimum, will I see you in a pew?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll ask again,’ he promised, ‘each time I see you.’
‘You’ll be wasting your breath.’
A laugh, he had the gall to laugh at a funeral. ‘I doubt any conversation with you would be wasted breath, Miss Rowe.’
Kensa bet she could fling shit in his face and he would remain quietly smug, as though he possessed all knowledge about everything, shit included, if only she would ask him.
He knew her name, too, even without her telling him.
She did not know what to do with that. Her arms grew uncomfortable.
As though she remembered, suddenly, that she had arms and had forgotten their purpose.
An expectant hush fell over the villagers.
Kensa would have to speak, address those gathered, lie about Isolde’s passing and conceal the truth.
Mr Delavaud remained beside her, as though he knew her thoughts.
‘All right,’ she huffed. ‘Do it.’ She waved her fingers and even that gesture was awkward, as she accidentally brushed his elbow. ‘Pray and sing and do your God bits.’
He smiled again. ‘Conduct a service, you mean?’
Kensa turned about with a loud, ‘Ugh,’ and headed back inside the cottage, the door flung open.
There was a mess within, though she needn’t worry as none would enter it.
She had no means to organise a wake and trusted most funeral attendants would head to the Jennings’ inn to drink, as was the custom in Portscatho.
Thankfully, the men who carried Isolde (or rather, the scarecrow) out and into the earth never questioned her weight gain.
Kensa had scarcely moved while the fake body was laid to rest, lest a saucepan clamour out from its wrappings or a teapot spill forth.
Derwa cried silently, in contrast to Old Sal’s loud honks into her handkerchief.
Around them was the low wood and the hawthorn-swept paths.
She listened for a chicken’s final cries and a hag’s crushing bite.
Instead, there was only the curate’s lulling speech and the occasional breeze, new leaves rustling its presence.
Above their heads, in a gnarled oak which overhung the garden, was a cormorant.
Its teal eyes flashed at Kensa and she did not doubt it was no bird at all.
Had the Bucka come to pay his respects or did he watch her?
She assumed the latter. If he was here, Kensa guessed that neither Jack nor Elowen, nor the chicken, had found Isolde.
That meant wherever she was, she had yet to take a life.
‘We lay to rest a soul whose hands touched every brow and tended every wound in Portscatho and its surroundings … ’
Mr Delavaud had a nice voice. Kensa was reluctant to admit it.
Mr Aldridge had spoken grandly, wanting attention and believing himself a true extension of God’s will.
In stark comparison, this new clergyman preached in a conversational manner.
Worse, he had a sense of humour. Perhaps, thought Kensa darkly, it was not too late to let Merrin eat him.
‘Are you all right?’ Derwa spoke quietly over yet another prayer. ‘Where’s Elowen?’
‘She – she was too upset to come.’
‘Heavens, that girl is a sensitive soul,’ said Old Sal loudly.
‘A shame she’s a sickly sort. Why, I wager it shan’t be long till we’re gathered together for her own passing.
Now, I don’t mean to offend, Derwa, it’s only that she was never going to last to marrying age, not like my Bertha. A sturdy one, with a firm—’
To do him credit, Mr Delavaud barely wavered in his speech. Kensa gritted her teeth. After the last ‘Amen’ was uttered, she clapped her hands together.