‘Millennium Bridge?’ she said, clearly startled. I saw her look at the window where the wind was still hurling rain against the glass. ‘But—’ She broke off as Ash
interrupted her. ‘No, of course not,’ she said humbly after a while. ‘No . . . no . . . I’m sorry . . . Yes, I know where it is. Of course I’ll be there.’
She ended the call and stood holding the phone, and looked so much like someone looking for a way out and not finding one that I wished I could go and put my arm around her. When she turned at
last, her eyes were miserable, but her chin lifted with grim determination.
‘Don’t try and make me change my mind,’ she said.
‘I won’t,’ I promised and nearly smiled at the struggle between relief and disappointment in her face.
‘Well . . . good,’ she said. ‘Now I have to go and prepare myself.’ She threw me a challenging look, as if daring me to argue with her, but I only nodded.
‘Okay if I make myself something to eat?’
‘If you must.’
She practically ran out of the room, and the next moment I heard her feet thumping up the stairs. The poor thing had to have been starving if she hadn’t eaten all day. I made some cheese
on toast, hoping that the smell would entice her down, but Sophie was stronger than I gave her credit for. I wondered exactly what Ash had said to her and when she would be summoned.
I was rinsing my plate under the tap when Sophie came back in. She was wearing a loose blue robe and sandals, of all things, and had cleaned her face of all traces of make-up. Her skin looked
raw and naked, but although her eyes were frightened, her soft mouth was set. ‘I’m going,’ she said, pulling on a jacket that rather spoiled the homespun look, but was at least
practical in view of the torrential rain outside. Which was more than could be said for the sandals.
Belatedly I realized I should have been prepared myself. I could at least have had an umbrella ready.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I said.
‘No!’ Sophie froze and stared at me, aghast.
‘I won’t interfere. I’ll just make sure you’re all right.’
‘You can’t come.’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘It’s secret!’
‘Sophie, you’re fifteen. You can’t wander around on your own on a night like this.’
‘I won’t be on my own!’ Sophie spat at me, on the verge of tears. ‘Ash and Mara will be with me. Dad put you up to this, didn’t he?’
‘No, I—’
‘He’s determined to spoil it for me! This is the first thing I’ve ever done for myself. I’ve finally found people who’ll accept me for what I am, but Dad hates
that, doesn’t he? He’s just afraid of Ash because Ash lets me be myself and make my own decisions!’
‘Sophie—’
Tears of fury stood in her eyes. ‘Don’t you
dare
follow me!’ she shouted, and swirled for the door.
‘Sophie, wait!’
Cursing myself for handling the situation so disastrously, I rushed after her, desperate to catch her before she left, but in my haste I skidded on the polished floorboards and bumped against
the door frame. By the time I righted myself, clapping my hand to my arm where I had bruised it, the front door was slamming behind her.
My arm hurts. I rub it absently as I wait for Agnes. I must have bruised it, although I don’t remember knocking against anything.
I am standing by the window in her chamber, looking out at the rain that has turned the street to a mire. It has been raining for what seems like months and months. The garths and gardens are
sodden, the rivers swollen, the dykes and gutters running hard. September has turned into October and still it rains. The warmth has leached from the air and the wind blows bitter.
Agnes and Francis now live in a narrow house in Jubbergate. It is not far, but the street feels different here, meaner and more crowded. No wonder they preferred the space and quiet of
Ned’s house in Coney Street. They could have stayed in my father’s house in Hungate, but no! They would come to the same parish, they would be close to me. That was Francis’s
decision, not Agnes’s.
I’m trying to rehearse what I’m going to say to her in my head, but I keep getting distracted by the dirt on the glass panes and the frayed edge of the cushion on the seat. Agnes has
ever been a poor housekeeper. She has a slatternly servant, Charity, who takes no more pride in her work than old Jennet did.
It was Charity who answered when I knocked. Her mistress was out, she said, and she would have closed the door on me if I had not overborne her.
‘I will wait,’ I said, pushing past her. I can be imperious enough when I try. The truth is that I don’t want to have to come back. The women spinning at their doors fell
silent as I walked along Coney Street and turned into Jubbergate.
The mood in the city is fractious and sour. Perhaps it is something to do with the rain that falls so remorselessly, but the streets are dark at the moment, and something dangerous runs unseen
through them. You can feel the tautness in the air. Small disagreements flare up and blows are exchanged, where once an insult would have done. There is a vicious edge to the gossip, a sullenness
to the way folk walk. Everyone wants someone to blame.
I felt the women’s eyes on me as I passed, and heard the murmurings that followed me. These are the women who sat with me in childbed and offered me cheer. Have they forgotten how I
screamed in pain? How I cried when I held my baby? How they clucked around me and cooed over Bess?
How can they listen to a whisper that I am a witch and not laugh it to scorn? But they are not laughing, and Jane reports that the rumours are growing more bitter by the day. Yesterday she came
back, grim-faced, with the news that two goodwives in the parish have buried a witch’s bottle beneath their doors to protect them against me.
And this morning it was worse.
I’d been to the warehouse and I was grumbling about the weather as I went into the kitchen. I stamped the mud from my clogs and shook the wet from my cloak, while Mog insinuated herself
past my ankles and flicked her paws distastefully.
‘It’s like winter already. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun— Jane, what has happened?’ I broke off as Jane turned half-defiantly to show a bruised face
and a split lip.
‘Got into a fight, didn’t I?’
I tossed my cloak over the table and rolled up my sleeves. ‘Let me see.’
‘Other girl looks worse.’
I made her sit on the stool so that I could bathe her face and scold her gently. ‘You are not supposed to be fighting, Jane.’
‘Couldn’t help it,’ she said sullenly. ‘She were saying such lies about you.’
I paused. ‘About me?’
‘Stupid lies,’ she muttered.
I wrung out the cloth and laid it back against her puffy mouth. ‘What are they saying, Jane?’
She twisted her thin fingers together. ‘That you’re a witch too. I said you wasn’t, but she said everyone knew you was in league with Widow Dent. And now you’ve got that
cat,’ she said with a narrow glance at Mog, ‘they think that proves it. I said it was just a cat, and then she said that before little Bess was born, you had another child. You
didn’t, did you?’
‘I had a babe that was born before its time,’ I said sadly. ‘It happens.’
‘It weren’t a hare with two heads?’
I jerked back as if she had slapped me. ‘Of course not!’
‘That’s what I said,’ said Jane stoutly.
‘Who says that?’
She shrugged. ‘Dunno. Someone whispers it to someone else, and then
she
says what she’s heard . . . all private, like.’
‘And meanwhile what little is left of my reputation is gone,’ I added grimly. ‘Who could possibly know anything like that anyway?’
‘The midwife?’
‘The midwife came too late. Only Agnes was there.’
I would laugh at the rumours, but my business is beginning to suffer. Children are starting to point at Bess and whisper behind their hands. If it goes on like this, she will be an outcast, just
as I was. And now Jane is hurt. I need to put a stop to it now, and for that I need my sister’s help. So I will wait. I don’t want to have to come back.
The sound of the door latch makes me spin round and my stomach plunges in dismay as I see Francis standing there, watching me with that glistening gaze that always makes me want to scrub myself
clean.
‘So, Sister, what can we do for you?’ he says, turning to close the door. The sound of the latch dropping into place is very loud in the silence. ‘You do not often grace us
with your company.’
I put up my chin. ‘I want to speak to Agnes.’
‘She is not here, as you see.’ Francis spreads his hands. ‘Can you not speak to me?’
He is between me and the door. I don’t want to be alone with him. For years I have avoided just such a situation, but it is Francis who has started these wicked rumours, I am certain, so
perhaps it is as well that I have my say to him.
‘They are saying in the street that I am a witch,’ I tell him bluntly.
Francis strolls into the room, very much at his ease. ‘Now why would they say something like that, hmm?’
‘That is my question to you,’ I say coldly.
‘To me? I am not the one who flaunts her familiar as she walks around the city.’
Mog has not made it easy for me, it is true. She has attached herself to me and follows me around, the way Hap used to. She is so proud, so striking, that of course the neighbours have noticed.
Cats are supposed to walk alone, but this one is like a dog, and they don’t like it. They don’t like it when she accompanies me to the market and looks at them with her great yellow
eyes. Sometimes, I admit, it unnerves even me.
‘It is a
cat
,’ I say.
‘A witch’s cat,’ Francis corrects me and puts his head on one side to study me. ‘Is it true you suckle it like a babe?’
I flinch with disgust. If that is what they are saying, things are even worse than I thought.
‘They are saying all sorts of nonsense,’ I say, keeping my voice even with an effort. ‘My servant heard a woman in the market telling her gossip that I had given birth to a
monster before I had my daughter.’ That one hurts the most. I have not forgotten the pain of losing that child before its time.
‘Can you say it is not true?’ asks Francis.
‘Of course it is not true! Agnes knows the truth. She was there. She helped me.’
‘She did not think you were strong enough to know the truth.’ Francis shook his head sadly. ‘Did she not say that she would deal with everything for you?’
‘Yes, but I—’ I stopped, making myself remember that terrible day. The pain and the tearing loss. My sister had stayed beside me. I had turned my face into the pillow and let
her deal with it all. ‘I would have known,’ I say, but I can hear the uncertainty in my voice.
‘You gave birth to an abomination and grieved as if it were a baby.’
Francis is enjoying himself. His face is bright with satisfaction, and all at once I find myself thinking about the look I surprised on Agnes’s face that day – the sharp gleam of
pleasure as I lay and wept for my lost child. The look I have pushed to the back of my mind.
Is it possible? Was the babe a monster? Surely I would have felt something?
‘Better not,’ Agnes said when I had roused myself to ask to see my child. She was wrapping it briskly in rags. ‘I will dispose of it, and no one need know.’
And now it seems the entire neighbourhood knows. My throat is tight. I swallow hard. I mustn’t let Francis glimpse that he has hurt me. Turning, I move back to the window, rubbing my arm
without thinking.
‘She said she wouldn’t tell anyone.’ I force the words through stiff lips. ‘How do you know this?’
‘Agnes is a dutiful wife. She has no secrets from her husband.’
The way I had kept my knowledge of Francis a secret from Ned. That was a mistake, I realize now. I should have told Ned and let him deal with Francis for me, but it was too late for that now. I
had to deal with him by myself.
‘She could tell everyone the rumours are mistaken,’ I say after a moment. ‘She could say that she saw the babe herself. Everyone would believe her.’ They would. Agnes has
a reputation for piety that has won her respect, if few friends.
‘You want to ask your sister to
lie
?’ Francis’s voice is shocked, but when I turn to face him, his eyes are gleeful.
He wants me to beg, I realize. He wants me grovelling at his feet so that he can grind my pride beneath the heel of his boot.
I cannot do it.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say slowly. ‘I think
you
suggested to Agnes that there might have been something wrong with the babe, just like you suggested that the
remedy I had from Sybil Dent was witchcraft.’
‘It was! I saw that token you hung around your husband’s neck. It was the work of Satan.’
‘It was harmless,’ I say, exasperated. ‘I hung it around your neck too.’
‘You wanted me to die!’ There are little flecks of spittle at the corner of Francis’s mouth. ‘You admit it!’
‘I wish you
had
died,’ I tell him. ‘But you didn’t. I nursed you and you survived. I saved you,’ I say dully and he smiles.
‘I was saved by God,’ he says, and I clench my hands in my skirts.
‘It was not God who nursed you!’
‘Careful, Sister,’ he warns, still smiling. ‘You come too close to blasphemy. Are you really suggesting that it was you, rather than our Lord, who saved me? We are all in
God’s hands, you know that.’
‘Tell them to stop the rumours,’ I say, my face stony.
‘Well, that is easily done,’ he agrees. ‘All you need to do is let us back into your house. Who would believe the rumours, when you have your sister and I to lend you
countenance and guide you away from the darkness onto God’s true path?’
‘No,’ I say flatly. The thought of sharing my house with him makes my skin creep with disgust.
Francis shrugs. ‘Then I fear I cannot help you.’
‘You’re punishing me,’ I say slowly. Why did I not realize it before? ‘I am the only one who sees you for what you really are, Francis Bewley, and you cannot bear that.
I’m the only one who knows that you are not pious, that you are no God-fearing man, but a brute who would defile a young girl.’