Chapter 6
THEN
As Meg continued through the village, merging with the shadows as she walked, she passed a gaggle of village women standing by the edge of the market.
Their arms were folded into their shawls, and their baskets were laden with purchases, and they were entirely unaware that she was there, right next to them.
Which was exactly how she liked it.
Some of their items had been paid for, whilst others had been bartered for.
Stray chickens and animals wandered amongst the merchants and bits of old straw and rubbish littered the ground.
The sky was grey and foreboding and, usually, the talk would be of the weather or the chance of snow.
Indeed, flurries were already drifting down out of the sky today.
‘If I was her, I’d take better care to hide my ways,’ said one of the women. ‘They found them all over yonder in Newcastle.’ The rest of the women nodded in agreement.
‘The likes of her should be careful,’ muttered another – a toothless old biddy who walked with a stoop and stank of ale.
‘You must watch out for yourself,’ said another one snidely. ‘The signs can be found on any auld woman if you know what to look for. They see you and they know. They do the test and it tells them.’
Meggie slipped past the women. She had no time for idle gossip, and she pitied the poor wretch they were talking about.
These were the sort of people who could cause so much unhappiness to people, just by their words.
‘Two-faced’ Meg’s grandmother had called them.
Snide comments behind a friend’s back one day, and laughing with them the next.
Meggie tried not to stand out from the crowd; she just wanted to do her work and not engage with the gossip.
That was difficult to do at times, though, living in Newbrough.
Her white-blonde hair would make her stand out regardless.
Her skin was milky and her eyes, although sharp, were the colour of the moorlands swirling in fog, ever-watchful.
Emory called her beautiful, but she laughed at him.
To Meggie, her cheekbones were too sharp and her eyes too big.
And because she worshipped at the well of the snow goddess and roamed the land around there, never still, always looking for something to add to her stash of apothecary ingredients, Emory’s childhood name for her had somehow become part of the Newbrough language.
Meg Noble, the Snow Witch. She was twenty-two years old now and had accepted that name without complaint for fourteen years, but a tiny part of her hoped that now, after what had happened in Newcastle, the villagers would be kinder with their words.
A stranger might not be so forgiving – or not understand why she was called so.
But for now, she was not worried. She was happy to go through life as strange Meg Noble, the Snow Witch who lived on the outskirts of Newbrough, in a cottage nobody came to unless they had to.
But she was thankful for what she had. Thankful for her life, her gifts and her lover.
If she had been more conventionally beautiful, like Alice, then Charles Milburn would not just tease her, but he would target her.
Meggie was an autumn child. Her grandmother told her she had given her hazelnut milk to drink when she was a baby, to encourage her abilities; and all the knowledge she had gleaned from the natural world around her and the ancient tales her grandmother had told her would not help her fight him off.
‘Yes,’ said the first gossip today, continuing the conversation as Meg slipped past, ‘she ought to watch herself, that Meg.’
What?
Meg paused, her stomach suddenly turning over. She had to watch herself? Because of what had happened in Newcastle?
‘But didn’t she sort you out when you had that foul rash last year?’ asked the snide one.
The first woman flushed an ugly red. ‘That’s as may be. But it’s still unnatural what she does. It just needs to go bad the once, and she’ll be in trouble.’
‘Blessed Coventina!’ Meg murmured. It was her they were talking about. Even after fifteen people had just been hanged in Newcastle a few months ago? For possibly doing the same work as she did, healing and helping and birthing babies?
What evidence did the judges have against any of them? Whose word did they believe? A year, it had taken, to make them confess. A year of incarceration and torture and hell. Idle gossip like the words she had just heard were a death warrant to people like her…
Her stomach churned, knowing what they could do to her if women like this continued that sort of clash, that idle gossip.
She needed to go to the Sacred Well – the meeting with Charles Milburn had unsettled her, and the clash had scared her, and only by distancing herself from the village did she think she could find any sort of inner peace.
She would go there and make the medicine for poor Alice, and hope that Coventina would bring her peace.