Chapter Twenty-seven A Man’s Work #2
Pious nodded, absently, his tall boots already at the door to The Plume. In his hand was the pistol and he seemed as attached to it as she was to the bone-handled knife. ‘Apologies are for afterwards,’ he said, ‘and only when there’s no other option.’
Kensa hung back as he entered the inn, standing in the doorway, unseen.
When Pious took charge, there was an odd comfort in it.
To have a man speak for her, reassure her, take responsibility.
She could agree, for once, that it was nice not to argue.
Was this what it was to be a wife? As tired and scared and frightened as she was, she could see the appeal at last, to be taken charge of.
To hide in a man bigger than her. Jack. To be his, and he hers.
It was weakness, a moment’s weakness, tepid and selfish and tempting.
‘I must be heard,’ announced Pious, at a volume that disrupted even the loudest drinker.
Jeers were swallowed into pint mugs. An instant quiet fell.
Unease passed over curled lips and bent necks.
The inn did not get his sort often. Their customers were the low-born land-workers, seafarers and occasional soldier.
Pious’s slightly pompous air carded the hackles on Kensa’s neck, yet not enough to take her inside with him.
This would not go well.
‘I would have you cover your windows and block your doors,’ came his instruction, ‘for there’s danger afoot.’
‘Speak plainly,’ said Mr Jennings, bushy brows – the only hair upon his head – lowering down to his small eyes.
‘There’s a wolf about Portscatho.’ He did not say the village’s name as the locals did, too crisp and measured on his tongue.
‘What’s more, it seeks to kill.’ Shocked exclamations rose to meet his announcement.
‘I ask the frail and infirm to barricade themselves in their homes, while the rest help me and Miss Rowe hunt this hound.’
Sir George’s groundskeeper, far into his cups, stood and did so with a leaning wobble. ‘He’s lying, he is,’ he sniffed. ‘It ain’t no wolf, it’s a woman, stinks o’ the grave. She ate my grouse and killed the magistrate.’
‘He’s not dead,’ corrected Kensa, too late. Rumour had spread hours ago, the workers from Trewense having long since stoked the gossiping fires within the village and beyond. On went the groundskeeper, talking on tales and mentioning the apprentice.
‘Kensa?’ Old Sal scoffed her name and the weight of the inn’s stares followed it. ‘I’ve been around long enough to know who to blame for such foul practice,’ continued the fishwife, glittering with excitement as her mouth ran on, slurring on occasion. ‘This’ll be your doing, will it, girl?’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ she croaked.
‘It’s as I warned. See, she’s exactly as her father! His badness trailed after him and now here’s hers, come to bring harm. On the day she were born, I swear I saw a—’
What could Kensa’s reply be that wasn’t an agreement?
Old Sal was right.
It was all the confirmation the village needed, for Alexander Rowe’s reputation outlived him and brought due fear.
Aghast cries sang up, fingers pointed, further questions were shouted at the curate than could be answered.
Young Robert, who had been unable to hobble to Bohortha for the funeral service, squeezed Kensa’s shoulder as he eased past her, out the door.
‘No one pays Old Sal any mind these days,’ he said reassuringly, yet with disappointment beneath his kindness.
Kensa called after him. ‘You’ll be safe?’
‘I’ll stay inside and knit,’ he said, with false levity, ‘can’t risk losing the other leg, can I?’
Rather than his usual ascent, he took a downwards path and she only hoped he went to visit his sweetheart.
No sooner had he left than a firm hand closed around Kensa’s arm and dragged her fully into the inn, hemmed by chipped furniture and hissed jibes.
Pious had relayed what he knew and, worse, much of what Kensa had told him at Trewense Manor.
The curate had no control, his protests drowned out in the general chaos and fright.
‘If it’s Rowe’s daughter who’s summoned this fiend, it’s her we give to it,’ said Farmer Hayle. ‘Tie her to the water pump in the road, let her see her workings done to herself.’
Kensa tried to pull her arm free and failed. ‘Pious?’
Nothing, only shock. That he was not listened to, that his rank held no bearing against mob rule.
‘It’s what was done to a witch in Llanddona when she cursed the dogs,’ encouraged Old Sal. ‘As soon as the last bite o’ her was gone, the hounds calmed.’
Mr Jennings began to untie a rope from a beer barrel behind the bar.
The healer renewed her struggle. A long debate ensued about what to do with her, while the hag paraded about the night.
Kensa told them. Begged them to listen, until Pious took over.
The louder the curate argued, the larger the revolt against him.
Who was this caddish rakefire to tell them how to be?
He was no Mr Aldridge, who always kept the wise women in check.
A rope grazed Kensa’s wrist, tight and coarse, as she kicked her fury.
Her fingers went to the bone-handled knife and never got there.
Even if it had, what would she do with it?
She could not hurt these people, they were her people.
Next came talk on piling wood, on duckings and those past torments as had been rained upon anyone who did not fit the norm.
Though it had been a long while since any such killings had been done on their land, the punishments were well remembered, spoken with gleeful tongues.
Centuries could pass and a mob would always know how to kill a witch.
Pious, however, had no such qualms about raising his weapon. The gun shone in the dull, tallow light. ‘I do not wish to injure, though I will if I must.’
A bottle swung and smashed over his head. Glass scuffed Kensa’s cheek. A tiny shard, a sliver of a cut. Gone was the pistol, wrested from his hand, as he crumpled. Heaving, tugging, forceful hands dragged both healer and unconscious curate onto the street.
‘I swear—’ began Kensa, only to find the protest shook from her throat.
She tripped, knee skimming the ground, and was hauled up again.
She could not get her legs to work. Was this what her father knew as he was taken to the scaffold?
One or two villagers fled, stealing to their homes with a guilty look back.
In their silence, they were as culpable as those who tied Kensa’s and Pious’s wrists together and to the village pump, torches swinging and lips with them, until silence came.
If the worst happened, Portscatho would be without a healer.
Who, then, would care for them all if Kensa died?
Mr Jennings, Farmer Hayle and Old Sal were the ringleaders, who stood back from a small crowd and observed their work.
The curate barely stirred, though he was slowly coming round.
Kensa’s teeth chattered together. It was in this awkward pause that unease fell.
Kensa saw it, their ready hands now limp.
‘This isn’t right,’ said Kensa, though her tone was firm. She refused to beg. In that way, at least, she was her father’s daughter.
‘Don’t listen or else she’ll charm your ears,’ said Old Sal.
‘I couldn’t charm a pig to mud and you know it,’ spat Kensa.
‘Yet there’s evil here tonight,’ said Farmer Hayle. ‘Who raised it if not you?’
She glowered and her tongue stilled. Behind them, outside the inn’s entrance, Pious’s horse whinnied its unhappiness. The assembled villagers took this as a sign and, in clumps, drifted apart. Mr Jennings hesitated enough to place the pistol a small distance away.
‘It’ll give you a chance,’ he said, as though she had the hands or reach to grasp it.
Kensa watched her neighbours go, pulled at the ropes which did not slacken and leaned as best she could, into the curate’s side.
It was a quiet night – ink-black and thinly clouded – and even the sea was still, as though to listen for a scream: for the hag and her terror.
An hour must have gone by, though the creature never came.
No lone shape in a tattered nightdress was seen.
Had the hag travelled further? Why, she could be halfway to Truro by now and all she need do was tear a single throat.
‘Mr Delavaud,’ said Kensa, then, when he did not answer, ‘Pious?’
A groan and the curate, on his knees, arms raised and bound, finally regained his senses enough to speak. ‘Where’s my pistol?’
‘Here, for the good it’ll do,’ said Kensa.
‘Can’t you untie these ropes?’ Pious tugged at the restraints futilely, as though she had not been attempting the same. ‘If you’re a witch, isn’t there a spell or a familiar who could chew us free?’
‘Or you could ask God for help,’ she countered dully.
Pious thinned his lips. ‘This is your fault.’
‘You’re the one who tried to lie to the villagers,’ said Kensa. ‘Did you think us halfwits who’d believe our betters over common sense?’
His pointed silence betrayed that he, in fact, did. Around them came hammering sounds as residents barred their doors or boarded their windows. Nothing else, no wails a hag might offer to the night. ‘Any sign of it?’
‘No.’
Kensa sank her head into her elbow, lest he see her cry.
Was this how she would die? If so, she deserved it.
She bit down on the sensitive flesh of her bicep, seeking a pinch and the clarity it brought.
A short distance away was her mother’s house.
If she called, would Derwa hear or was she too sleepy with drink to wake?
‘At least it’s not the bore you feared,’ remarked Kensa, thinking on the curate’s earlier words.
‘It appears I spoke with haste.’ Pious twisted his wrists again, to no avail. ‘I should think a quiet clergyman’s existence would be far preferable to this.’ His attention struck on her middle and stayed there.
‘What’re you doing?’ Kensa asked, sharply, till she understood his focus. On her belt was the bone-handled knife, though she could not reach it. Perhaps he could?
‘Raise your leg onto my shoulder and we’ll ease your waist towards—’
‘I shall do no such thing,’ she baulked.
‘How else can we get free? If I get to the knife, I’ll cut us loose,’ explained Pious, with a slow and patronising insistence.
Kensa shuffled a little closer and raised her ankle half-heartedly above his knee. ‘Could you at least close your eyes?’
Pious crouched and his fine boots creaked with the strain. ‘If I do that, I won’t be able to see.’
‘You’re not going to see anything!’
From the high bend in the main road through Portscatho came a shout.
Flat and dry-sounding. It was Mr Skewes.
Kensa’s bearing stiffened. An intense fury squeezed her skull until her vision went fuzzy at the edges.
He wore his Coast Guard’s uniform: a long navy coat with a short dagger at his side.
It was not an official uniform, only a degree smarter than the usual fare worn by the villagers in Portscatho.
His post was hardly an official one either.
It had been given to him by the naval patrols from the Falmouth coast, who needed a man to report on the smuggling which ran along Percuil River’s eastern flank.
These days there was little crime to report, or it had been so since the hanging of Alexander Rowe.
At his side was Young Robert, who nodded as he limped past them, as though he had done Kensa a favour. As though he had not brought her father’s killer.
‘Well,’ said Mr Skewes.
Only that word, unsurprised to find her tied to the water pump.
Duty bid him to free her, which he did, and Pious next.
Kensa wished she were a snake, secretive and vengeful, filled with venom enough to kill.
To think she had lived under one roof with him, had eaten at the same table as him, had let him near Derwa.
The bone-handled knife at her belt was heavy again and she thought unspeakable things, none she would ever admit to anyone.
The pistol scraped the road as it was raised once again into the curate’s hand.
Not far behind him were Jack and Elowen, the latter hastily – quietly – tucking the chicken through Derwa’s front door as surreptitiously as possible.
Good, the pair seemed whole enough and Kensa’s relief was heavy in her chest. Elowen’s mouth was slack with tiredness.
She eyed her father, for once equally as wary as her sister.
As for Jack, Kensa could not look at him long, fearing he’d see the darkest thoughts she harboured.
It was enough to know he hadn’t sustained any further injuries, even though his shirt was wrinkled and stained.
‘I find my only daughter barely able to stand, with talk about a beast loose in the village. I should’ve known you’d be the cause … ’ began Mr Skewes’s tirade, until a strange and lumbering sight interrupted him.
A sheep, throat torn and bleeding, stumbled into the road. It sank onto its forelegs, bleated once, then died with a slump to the floor. She knew who it belonged to.
Oh, sweet one, come homeward.
Kensa flinched as though a jellyfish had run its compass down her skin.
Why would Isolde come to Portscatho with its cob-walled houses and warning bells and obstacles?
She seemed hungry, desperate to eat and going for livestock.
Thus far, she had decimated chickens, hunted grouse and gone after horses. Wouldn’t sheep be next?
‘The Weaver,’ said Kensa, with alarm that rose with the welts at her wrists. ‘We’ve warned everyone else and forgotten him.’