Chapter Twenty-eight Like Father, Like Daughter
Chapter Twenty-eight
Like Father, Like Daughter
In the years Kensa had lived with Elowen, she had never once seen her disobey her father.
That was why everyone liked her, the fair-haired child who was ever so compliant.
It was for the opposite reason that no one liked Kensa, because she rarely took instruction.
Tonight, however, the youngest daughter would not submit.
Mr Skewes said, ‘Get yourself inside with your mother.’
As if on cue, Derwa appeared in her doorframe, muzzy with sleep. ‘Elowen?’ Behind her, a chicken clucked.
‘Here is what will happen,’ said the young woman to her father, quick to understand the situation. ‘You will stay here and protect the village and Ma, while we see that the Weaver is safe.’
Mr Skewes was taken aback. ‘If you even think about … ’
Their argument was a short one and it was due to Elowen’s verbosity. When had she become so clever? Kensa was not clever. Her belly was a lump against her spine, as though it wished to shrink away from her intentions. She found herself speaking up, though she did not realise why until afterwards.
‘We might need you,’ she said to Mr Skewes, her voice entirely level. ‘Come with us.’
Turning in her mind was what Sir George had told her and the threat which would be waiting, the same threat she could push onto Mr Skewes.
What would he make of the hag? With the years that had passed, had he forgotten his role in killing Kensa’s father?
Did he think she would not discover his sins?
It had been well over a decade since she had witnessed Alexander Rowe’s hanging, yet the memory was louder in her mind than it had ever been.
Elowen tried to meet Kensa’s eye. She refused it and stared at the Coast Guard with an expression too measured ever to belong to her.
‘I already said I would,’ retorted Mr Skewes, nodding to himself, though he’d said no such thing. Quickly it was decided: Kensa, Elowen, Jack, Pious and Mr Skewes would go to the Weaver’s farm, not a mile away.
‘Please be careful,’ said Derwa to her children, then to Mr Skewes, ‘Keep them safe.’
To do him credit, the Coast Guard nodded, pressing a kiss to the woman’s cheek. Kensa turned away from it, scowling, ushering their party onwards.
The five took a rarely used path along the coast and upwards, where the trees thickened and the soil was prone to subsidence.
Mr Skewes’s lantern swayed as an uneasy pendulum through the night.
Due to the wind that oft whipped the coast, the only shrubs to survive here were hawthorn.
No blossom remained on them now and their leaves clung to the outer edges, presented with a thousand thorns.
The first dead sheep appeared on the path.
It had been pulled in two and pushed back together, poorly, with its insides arranged on its outsides.
Elowen released a high sound from her throat.
Kensa kept walking. She led the party onwards, unfeeling, even to the shock at catching her foot on a tree root and bumping her palms on the path.
Jack hefted her up with his good arm, silent, ears pricked for a lumbering, beastly movement. ‘Kensa?’ He caught her hand in his. He did not need to voice his questions, she understood them all the same.
And turned away.
The usual gloaming sounds were absent. No crickets sang in the long grass and no birds called the hour.
The hill they climbed sloped to a sudden drop behind them, as though the land had forgotten its shape and faltered at the end.
Ahead was another sheep and another and another, dead.
When Kensa strained her eyes, further shapes appeared, and she stopped straining.
These small woollen heaps led the way along the sloping meadow and to the Weaver’s hut.
One ewe was still alive, its breath hot and shaking as it trembled out its last moments.
‘Who has a knife?’ It was Jack who asked.
He was unarmed, Kensa realised. She had never considered him so, for his fists seemed weapons enough.
Yet with his injuries, his usual defence was next to useless.
Why had she allowed him to come? He stood no chance against the coming horrors.
Even so, he would never have stayed behind.
Mr Skewes reluctantly parted with his dagger.
It was a short gleaming length, never used, and handed over with utmost care.
Quickly and with mercy, Jack delivered the dying sheep to whatever end waited, whether its reaper wore a man’s cloak or ewe’s wool – or both.
With that gruesome task done, Jack returned the bloodied weapon to its owner.
Overhead, the sky was filled with a dozen cormorants. Kensa could not see their shapes with clarity, only dark obstructions which occasionally took the moon from sight. Their grumbling cries rose higher and higher.
Pious met them with his altar voice, or what Kensa thought it would sound like, calm and meditative: ‘And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work.’
Kensa asked, ‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing good,’ he replied.
Another sound rose above the bird calls. Distress, an animal in pain, and then an absence where that sound should be. Even the birds stilled their cries, only for a keening wail – a man’s wail – to replace them: the Weaver.
Kensa ran, surging past the green-leafed hawthorn.
At the hill’s midpoint, the sheep farmer stood with flaming torch in hand.
Before him was the hag and, under her mangled grasp, another sheep too far gone to save now.
In the light – moon, torch, lanterns – there were endless masses around the sheep farmer’s hut, as though the animals had run there for safety: fallen half-clumped clouds, smeared with a wet sheen.
BANG, came the gun as Pious fired. It was not a straight shot towards the hag, this was a wild firing, thrown into the air, lest it hit the Weaver.
The noise was enough to distract the hunched shape, whose gnashing teeth froze over a broken neck.
In the small hours in which Kensa had been away from the hag, she looked worse.
Although her frame held a human base, she moved in a frameless way.
Pious was the fastest. His long legs took him to where the Weaver stood, waving his torch in grief and despair. Elowen came second, though she struggled, Mr Skewes hard on her heels, his mouth slack with the fear it held.
‘Inside,’ yelled Kensa, waiting until last, bringing up the rear with Jack.
Struggling, the men pulled the Weaver, who was strong despite his age, into the small hut he called a home.
His flaming torch was lost outside and tumbled downwards into the dry grass.
The door to the hut, although it lacked any real lock, was closed and barred behind them.
It shuddered as the hag threw herself against the wood.
Over and over and over. Jack and Pious leaned against it, while Mr Skewes held his blade in one hand and his daughter in the other.
In their temporary sanctuary, the Weaver’s sobs were loud enough to smother their collective breaths.
His loss fed Kensa’s guilt, until she could barely concentrate.
She thought Jack had spoken to her, though she could not be sure.
Despite his fervent tone, his brows were harshly drawn – in concern or anger, she did not know – and she was too frightened to ask.
Elowen was looking at her, silent as always, her thoughts her own.
Kensa wished they were hers, that she could have Elowen’s clever mind.
That way, she would know what to do and could think, somehow, could think through this.
‘We’re all going to die,’ said Mr Skewes. ‘Aren’t we? Tell me—’
‘Oh, not all,’ said Pious. ‘Logically, it’s quite likely a few of us will live to see the morning.’ He cleared his throat as another hard thump hit the door and sent wood splintering. ‘That was meant to sound reassuring.’
A burning scent pulled the air from their lungs, as fire began to catch on the thatch above their heads, spread by the Weaver’s discarded torch. Embers drifted down to rake Kensa’s face, hot enough to singe her lashes.
‘This is my fault,’ she said, looking across the tiny room to Elowen.
‘I shouldn’t even be a wise woman; this wasn’t meant to be me.
’ Again came another pounding as the door was struck.
‘You found the Morgawr on the beach that morning, Elowen, it should have been you.’ Kensa had never spoken this truth aloud, though it was one she entertained often.
‘I took what was yours and Isolde didn’t even realise. ’
Quiet. How long had it been quiet? The repeated slams had ceased.
For a moment, Kensa thought the creature would leave and find an easier target, until the scrabbling began.
A persistent shovelling at their feet. The Weaver’s hut was small and poorly constructed.
As soon as the hag’s hands began to scoop earth from an outside corner, the walls began to shift.
Elowen shrieked as a rotting arm came through a small dent beneath the stonework.
Illumination poured from the hole and from the burning roof and grass beyond, as the fire caught, as the fire spread, as the hut fell.