Chapter Twenty-four The Funeral #2
‘I appreciate you coming,’ she said, ‘now I would ask you to leave.’
Grumbles were passed from one person to another.
‘There be healing work to do and I would have the peace in which to do it.’
Nods came, widened mouths in ‘O’ shapes, as shoes raised themselves quickly off the ground and turned towards Portscatho.
Naturally, there would be innumerable tasks to complete with Isolde gone.
Wasn’t this young girl their healer now?
It was best to leave her to it, let her settle into the role.
Many folk smiled kindly at Kensa as they left, while others mentioned drinks to one another, beer being the general consensus.
Isolde would likely have approved. Soil was heaped high on the scarecrow and thirst declared.
Old Sal’s tactlessness faded away and Mr Delavaud went with it, though not without a small nod to Kensa, who did not return his farewell.
Slowly, the garden cleared and Kensa could see the nettles again.
Her mother was the last to leave.
‘I never got to thank Isolde for what she did for Elowen,’ she said. ‘I never truly understood what that was, either.’
Kensa tried not to look at Derwa, lower lip trembling. An infant wish compelled her to press her face into her mother’s skirts, to be picked up and held, though she was far too old and fat and grown. Instead, she admitted, ‘I don’t want to do this on my own, Ma.’
‘Hush,’ said Derwa.
Quickly, without needing to ask, Kensa was pulled into her mother’s arms. It was hard to be a person and not a child, to have to fix her own problems and not rely on another.
Now she was a wise woman and could not run home whenever life’s burdens grew too heavy: it was her role to carry the heaviness of others.
She was tired, knew she would always be tired, and knew there was no one else to shoulder it.
‘Let’s get you down to the inn,’ said Derwa. ‘We’ll put a drink in you.’
How tempting to leave this mess and be soothed with ample scrumpy.
In the treeline, the cormorant had yet to depart.
Its shape was a blot against the blue, blue sky.
One which watched her, unendingly. She would not let him see the pain he caused her.
Pride, always her pride, brought her back to herself.
‘I have work to do,’ said Kensa, speaking more to the Bucka than to her mother, ‘and I shall get it done.’
Kensa’s relief was audible when Jack and Elowen appeared not an hour later, the chicken still alive and clucking. ‘I wager she’s hiding in the mines,’ her sister said. ‘No one’s shared any sightings with us, though many a worker sees weird goings-on and won’t speak on it.’
‘And no one’s been hurt?’ Kensa’s arms ached from scrubbing the floors again.
Everything which made life or marked its end had been trodden into the flagstones she once used to diligently brush.
Strange, she thought, how obsessed she’d been with keeping the place tidy.
Now, it didn’t seem to matter. She missed her mentor’s clutter about the place.
No longer would Isolde leave her dirty socks or, alarmingly, her frayed undergarments, hanging from a chair or heaped over a candlestick.
Jack shook his head. ‘Not that we’ve heard.’
Elowen was quiet and withdrawn. Her fingers stroked the chicken’s neck. ‘We need to warn the village,’ she said. ‘That’ll give them time to shut their homes and bar their doors and find weapons.’
Kensa dropped her brush in its cleaning bucket with a loud clang. ‘No.’
Elowen continued, ‘Surely the wisest course—’
‘I am the wise woman and I will say what is wise.’
The chicken squirmed from Elowen’s grasp and squawked nervously. ‘This is about more than you, Kensa.’
Jack made a gruff noise in his throat. ‘She’s right.’
‘Is she really?’ Kensa laughed without humour. ‘What a surprise! Elowen’s right, as always.’ Her voice was thin and reedy to her own ears. ‘I can mend this.’
‘How?’ Jack sounded tired, his wounds reopened from the day’s activities and his sling red with it. ‘Cleaning the kitchen floor isn’t going to do it.’
‘I don’t know!’ Kensa had searched the Bad Books again.
There was nothing there, no hope and no solace.
She’d found no writings on the ritual performed with the Bucka and it was clear his memory and manipulations pre-dated the tomes within the small cottage library.
Worse, Kensa had lost hours in them, stroking the fox on her lap, her head buried in the Bad Books’ pages, forgetting what problems she had that needed fixing, only letting herself be lulled by their voices:
Beware the undrowned man.
A dawning throat is best for cutting.
A boy’s pride is death to lovers.
It was too late for the first warning. As for the rest, there was little meaning to be made. She did not share them with the others, sensing she was not supposed to.
‘I can’t do this,’ she admitted.
‘You’re not the only one who’s lost someone.’ For the first time, Jack wavered. ‘I can’t even grieve the woman who raised me after my mother died, and now you want to endanger everyone else I care about? I won’t allow it.’
Kensa bared her teeth. He was close, exhaling against her mouth.
When she pulled in a breath, it was the same he pushed out.
She loathed how wobbly it made her. In her anger, she almost didn’t hear the hard steps on the lane above the cottage.
A heavy pulse, a hollow sound upon the earth: a visitor.
Whoever it was would get an earful and Kensa was determined to be the one to give it.
‘You’ve missed the funeral,’ she shouted over the threshold, pushing past Jack in her haste. He grunted in pain and she regretted her thoughtlessness in an instant. It was too late to apologise now – for that, for everything.
Rather than meet late guests, she found two large men and their long, long strides reaching into the cottage.
‘Can I help you?’
Kensa’s recognition was slow to come. These were rough types drawn to rough work beyond Portscatho’s rural boundaries. One was a groundskeeper who set traps for poachers along Trethem Creek – the magistrate’s land – while the other managed the magistrate’s hounds for hunting.
‘We have come for the wise woman,’ said the groundskeeper, mouth obscured behind a bushy pepper-black beard. Had word spread, somehow, as to the crimes she had committed? The magistrate was the law in these lands and she had betrayed it. At least, as far as known customs went.
‘I am she,’ said Kensa quietly.
The men exchanged quick looks and the hound master, a sour-cheeked man with two missing fingers, said, ‘It’s the older one we need.’
‘She’s dead.’
They did not know, then, what she had done.
Kensa sensed Jack behind her. His hand came to rest on her shoulder.
She had the petulant urge to shrug it off, this singular mark of possession.
Even though she wanted him, to be possessed by him, if only a little.
Because that small action, that claim, meant he did not hate her, despite what she had done and may still do.
With inarticulate grunts, the magistrate’s men conferred and the groundskeeper’s beard flapped towards her again: ‘There was an accident.’
‘Come off it, lad,’ said the hound master.
‘While out patrolling the perimeter, we thought we saw— Ah, I won’t name it.’ He cut himself off. ‘It were the magistrate, though, Sir George. He got scared, see, and walked right into his own poacher’s trap.’
Kensa turned back, quickly, into the cottage. ‘I shall gather my things.’
As it was not a direct attack by the hag, only a mishap, she did not know if the magistrate’s death would lead to the Pact faltering.
Her duty was to heal whoever had been harmed.
She could not refuse. At the same time, a hot coal had been set inside her at Sir George’s mention.
It burned and it burned with one truth: the magistrate had killed her father.
Jack’s steps caught hers as she took her satchel off its hook. ‘If it’s Isolde who’s caused this, she’ll be close by in the wood and we can grab her.’
‘And then what?’ Kensa placed a stained apron over her funeral clothes, for there was no time to change.
‘Do we lock her up for ever? How long will you live, Jack? Will you introduce her to the woman you’ll marry?
Pass her on to your children who can watch her day and night while she tries to rip their throats out?
’ She retied the laces on her best shoes and mourned her lost boots.
On her belt was the bone-handled knife, always worn.
She’d even slept with it around her waist, lest the Father of Storms emerge in her dreams.
Jack’s hand found her forearm and held her there, beside him. He was always so warm. She watched his eyes and how they didn’t meet hers. She watched his eyes and how they dipped to her mouth.
‘Yes,’ she said, despite herself and her fury, ever-present.
He paused and Kensa took the moment for them both. She leaned in to broach the distance between them. He did not let her. Pulled back, sharply, the grip on her arm slackening as he angled his jaw away.
‘As I said,’ he grumbled, shingle in his throat, ‘Elowen and I shall take the low path and search the wood by the manor.’
‘Fine, have it your way,’ said Kensa waspishly, striding briskly out of the cottage without a goodbye to him or her sister.
The road was hard and hollow-sounding. Above, a late-sun sky was drawing long shadows. Sir George’s men flanked her and she had the overwhelming realisation that her presence had not been requested, it had been ordered.