The Ghosts of Heaven

  She could only see a raggle-taggle crowd, and from their silence, she sensed danger.

  “What do you want?” she said, but she received no reply.

  They came in to get her.

  She tried to shut the door, but someone put a boot against it and they were inside the cottage.

  By force they took her outside and she yelled, “What do you want with me?”

  Again, there was no reply.

  Now she saw who had come. There was Adam Dolen and his wife Maggie. There was Jack Smith. There were the Byatt brothers. There was William Holt and John Turner. And there was Grace, standing off to the side, glaring at Anna.

  “What have I done?” screamed Anna as they began to drag her down the track.

  Still they didn’t answer. They didn’t need to.

  Grace stalked into the cottage as they went and wanted to burn everything.

  She stared at Tom on his bunk, who seemed to have slept through it all, slept in some place very far from the waking world; his chest rising and falling slowly. She looked at the herbs hanging from the roof beam, and at the jars of remedies that Joan Tunstall had made. It was one of those things she’d smeared across Grace’s sick baby, those things that had killed it.

  She saw the pot of tea hanging above the fire and she kicked out at it, sending it flying, spilling the contents all across a wall and onto the floor.

  She spat on the boy Tom as he lay on his bed, and then she hurried after the others, for she did not want to miss a moment.

  15 THE WATER GIVES ITS ANSWER

  They dragged her so hard and so fast that her feet barely touched the ground, and though she begged for answers, to know what they wanted and where they were going, and why, they all held their tongues.

  Their hands however, were not still, and Anna screamed as Jack Smith for one let his hands visit places they had dreamed of at night as he lay in bed beside his wife. She fought all the more as he touched her and that only got her a slap across the back of her head, which made her want to be sick.

  She wrenched her head round and one last time she screamed at them.

  She looked Jack Smith in the eye as she screamed, but there was nothing there to see but hate, and then they were by the pool just above Fuller’s Mill.

  Anna cried out. There was not even anger left in her now; only wild wild fear.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The water will give its answer!” Adam Dolen yelled. His face wobbled as he flung his words at the woods beyond the pool.

  John and Helen came out of the mill house and started toward the crowd, but Adam Dolen swung his fist at them.

  “Get back!” he snarled, and they did. “We’re going to swim her.”

  Anna screamed, again, again, and then they had her on the ground. Hands grabbed her ankles and her wrists and she was lifted off the flags into the air, where they begun to swing her backward and forward.

  She wailed, incoherent sounds pouring out of her, as they let her fly. She was in the air for an age it seemed, and all was silence but for the rushing of Golden Beck filling the pool. Next moment she hit the water, the shock of the cold gripped her, but the only thought in her head was of Tom, who could swim like a fish, where she had never learned, had never had time to learn.

  Her woollen dress sucked itself into the water, and she went under straightaway. She fought against it and managed to erupt from the pool, screaming even as she tried to gasp at the air.

  She batted her hands against the surface, sending great splashes into the mosquito air, but it was not enough to keep her up.

  “If the water takes her…” slobbered Adam Dolen.

  He didn’t finish his words. They all knew what was happening.

  Grace stood on the bank now, screaming at Anna in the water. She had managed to work herself into a frenzy, had even managed to convince herself that she cared that her baby had died, and she wailed as angry tears poured down her cheeks.

  “You killed my boy! You killed my boy!”

  She picked up a stone and hurled it at Anna, who had come up for a second time. The stone missed by a handsome margin, but it didn’t matter. Anna was going down, and secretly Grace started to grin as Anna was about to die. Her drowning would prove her innocence, but Grace didn’t mind about right or wrong, she only wanted Anna hurt and dead.

  Anna went under for the final time.

  She tried to hold her breath as she frantically flailed under the water. She’d seen Tom make the slightest movements, and glide along, whereas all her efforts did nothing.

  She stared up at the sunlit surface of the pool, where the world shimmered through the water. She could see Grace leaping about, and then, as she sank deeper, Anna’s gaze drifted dimly down, where, on the rock wall of the far bank of Golden Beck, under the water line, she saw a huge spiral line carved into the stone. A spiral.

  Under the water, a spiral, illuminated by a single sunbeam that penetrated the depths.

  The witch in the water was not yet dead.

  She tried once more to fight against the weight of her clothes, as the last bubbles of air popped from her mouth, and she tasted the beck entering her mouth.

  Then there were hands under her.

  Too desperate now to even understand, she fought against them, but moments later felt herself being pulled up, and to the side. She was at the bank, with an arm under her, around her, a thin arm.

  She coughed and choked and spluttered water. She heard a voice in her ear say her name.

  “Anna.”

  She turned.

  “T-Tom!”

  She clawed for the bank some more, and Tom pushed her, so that she managed to climb onto the bank, where she lay heaving and spewing the cold water from her.

  Tom clambered out of the water after her, and sat by his sister.

  The crowd stared.

  Not moving, not speaking, they stared, not knowing what to do.

  Grace shoved her father, and Adam Dolen took a step forward, but John Fuller put his hand out and held him by the elbow.

  “No more, Adam,” he said, and he said it well enough for Adam to stop.

  Anna lay on the ground still, Tom sitting there; his hand on her head, gazing at his sister.

  “I’m here,” he said. “You’ll be well soon, Anna. I love you, Anna.”

  And then Anna began to cry, though she didn’t want to in front of these people who had tried her in the water, but she did, she wept. The crowd, Adam, Jack, and all of them, turned their faces to the earth and slunk away, leaving only Grace to stand and hate Anna.

  “You won’t,” spat Grace. “You won’t.”

  But what it was that Anna wouldn’t do, Grace didn’t say. John Fuller came and shoved her in the back, sending her packing, and no one saw the black charcoal marks on her left palm.

  Anna rolled onto her back and found Tom’s hands with hers.

  He laughed quickly and happily.

  * * *

  When they could stand Anna up on her feet again, John Fuller helped Tom to take her home, though they went in silence the whole of the way.

  That night, Anna didn’t sleep. All through the long hours, she expected the cottage door to burst open, and the crowd to come back.

  All through the long hours, she lived again and again in the water; feeling the cold holding her, tasting the water in her mouth, the surge of panic as she knew she couldn’t swim, and would drown. But for her little brother, who had somehow woken, and found strength, and run down the valley to throw himself straight into the water, she would have.

  Above everything else, she wondered about what she’d seen under the water; there on the wall of the rock beneath the surface, hidden from view, the spiral.

  She was afraid, and she wondered what it meant.

  She’d grown up with the spiral maze on the tentergrounds.

  She’d danced widdershins in circles with the rest of the village, just as much as any of them. But then that mark had appeared again, on the toy
that Robert Hamill had given Tom. And then again on the axle of the waterwheel.

  And now here it was, on the rock, under the water of Golden Beck, and it scared her. There was some magic about that mark, something old and powerful, she was sure, and though, like her mother, she had always wanted to know what is not known, and uncover the covered, and find out everything she could about the world, something deep inside told her to be scared, and she was.

  16 THE NAIL

  These were the bright hot days in which Anna’s fate was sealed. The sun scorched the grass of the tentergrounds. Trees wilted; branches of the tall ash by the churchyard cracked and simply fell off in the dried air, even the level of Golden Beck seemed to fall slightly, though not enough to expose the carving it had long been hiding.

  The strong colors of early summer were gone. In their place were pale browns and greens that faded further every day, and if there was only one strong color left, that color was black, the black of the minister’s cassock.

  * * *

  This was the time when Father Escrove began his work in earnest, and he was as shrewd as he was eager.

  He had heard about the ducking of the gracewife’s daughter. It made him smile, to think of these simple people. Their enthusiasm was undeniable, and yet their methods were crude, primitive. There were much more subtle ways of bringing justice, much more powerful. And having heard about the ducking, and how the inevitable conclusion was made inconclusive thanks to the intervention of the girl’s brother, Father Escrove grew very interested in these goings-on indeed.

  So his first visit was to the nursery of the manor house.

  There he found Grace, with the third Hamill son sucking at her breast. The minister suppressed the desire to wrinkle his nose, and instead placed himself by a small window that possessed a broad view of Welden Valley.

  He’d waited some days since his arrival before getting to his work, and he knew now that that had, as so often before, been a successful strategy. It was important to listen, to hear what people had to say for themselves. For it could so often be used against them.

  “Girl,” began Father Escrove, without looking at her. “You have a babe of your own?”

  Grace looked up from the Hamill boy. She could just see the minister’s profile as he looked out of the casement. Didn’t he know she’d lost a child?

  “No, Father,” she said. “It passed over.”

  Escrove nodded.

  “So you came to wet nurse here?”

  Grace nodded. Then she remembered the minister wasn’t looking at her.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I am sorry for your loss. It must have been a … torment to you.”

  Grace nodded.

  “Why did your baby die, child?”

  Grace’s eyes widened.

  Oh God, she thought. What happens if I say?

  “It was born sick,” she said.

  “And it did not recover?”

  “It ailed every day.”

  “Till it died?”

  “Till it died, Father.”

  “And what caused the ailment of your baby?”

  Grace hesitated. Was it just so easy as to say it? Could it be?

  Still she hesitated.

  Father Escrove turned in his chair, and now he looked straight at her. She lifted her head and found she was looking straight into his eyes, which held her, fixed her, and she stayed that way as she became aware that the minister was saying something to her.

  “Do you think there was some malign influence on the infant? Child?”

  Grace found herself nodding.

  “Every day I took it to Joan Tunstall.”

  “Joan…?”

  “The gracewife. She died just last week.”

  “And every day you took the child to Joan Tunstall, and every day it got sicker?”

  Grace nodded again. Still she stared into the minister’s eyes and she felt small. All she wanted to do was to please him.

  “Father?” she said.

  “Yes, child?”

  “The gracewife? She was a cunning woman, too. And she was helped. By her daughter.”

  “Her daughter?”

  “Anna Tunstall.”

  “Anna Tunstall. And is she a cunning woman, too?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Yes, Father. The cottage is full of it.”

  “So, child. This Anna Tunstall. She helped bewitch your infant?”

  Grace smiled inside, but outside, her face was a mask as she looked the minister in the eye and said, “Yes, Father. I’m sure of it. My mother swears so.”

  * * *

  Father Escrove doubted very much whether a wench like this Anna Tunstall would have a coffin for her funeral, but if she did, the first nail had just been hammered into it.

  17 GAINING WATER

  Father Escrove made his way down the track that wound through Horsehold Wood. Wood pigeons called to each other through the leaves of the scrub oaks, tall flowers thrust rude parts up from the darkness of the forest floor to find light and insect lovers. Golden Beck rang louder and louder as he approached, and with that sound, the sound of hammering grew louder, too.

  He turned the final corner in the track to see Gaining Water smithy directly by the waterside, a large pool spreading beyond it, which quickly narrowed into the neck of a waterfall that dropped down toward Deepdale.

  Through the open door of the smithy he saw the fire of the furnace, and in the hands of the smith, the fall of a hammer on glowing metal. Escrove enjoyed this infernal picture. He was at God’s work, after all, and any malefactors he found would soon be enjoying the same scenes in Hell.

  The way forward, of course, was to pick people off, one by one. The way to do that was to start at the weakest end of the chain. And Father Escrove had heard some things about Jack Smith.

  He watched for a long time, through the door, waiting for Jack to finish his hammering. At last, the metal he was beating grew too cold to work. He thrust it into a glowing bed of coals, then stalked out of the door to cool off while it softened again.

  He saw the minister right away, standing. Waiting for him.

  “Father?” asked Jack Smith.

  “Would you talk to your priest, Jack?”

  “Of course, Father. What would you talk about?”

  “I would talk about a girl named Anna Tunstall.”

  The minister noted that the blacksmith stiffened slightly at the name.

  “What of her?”

  “You swam her in the pool at Fuller’s Mill?”

  “There were many of us did that,” Jack Smith said hurriedly. “It was not only me did that.”

  Jack saw that the minister was nodding. He sounded understanding.

  “Of course, of course. And you must have good reason for doing what you did.”

  Jack Smith felt his mouth dry.

  “We did,” he said.

  The Father was smiling at him, broadly.

  “And what were your reasons?”

  Jack Smith felt his tongue like a rough ball in his mouth.

  “She’s a witch,” he said, very quietly.

  “How do you know that? Did the water reject her?”

  The blacksmith looked back inside his forge, and the minister coughed, just once, to get his attention back. He swung round and found that the minster’s eyes were fixed on his.

  “No, Father. That is … She was saved before we knew whether the water had made its choice. But she is a cunning woman, all right.”

  “You know that?”

  “Everyone knows it!” cried Jack. “A cunning woman, just as her mother was. Everyone goes there!”

  “Everyone?” asked the minister, and Jack knew he’d made a mistake.

  “Many do.”

  “Do you?”

  Jack Smith thought about the pots of herbs sitting on the shelf in the smithy kitchen.

  “No,” he said. “Never.”

  “And you would testify to this? About the girl?”


  Then Jack Smith thought about Anna—her long hair, those slender legs he’d once seen as she danced the spiral dance and the wind lifted her dress. He thought about those wide lips and he thought about the number of times he’d imagined them on him. He remembered how she’d felt under his hands as they’d dragged her to the water. He’d managed to feel her softness. Oh God, how he wanted her. Oh, how he hated her. Bitch.

  “Yes, Father,” he said. “I would.”

  * * *

  The second nail. And the third was even easier to come by.

  18 WHAT FEAR CAN DO

  Father Escrove asked to be introduced to Jack Smith’s wife.

  They found her in the kitchen and Jack was stupid enough not to be able to stop himself looking at the jars of herbs on the shelf. But the minister didn’t seem to notice.

  He was smiling easily at Elizabeth Smith.

  There were three brats in the room. A lumbering boy and two pallid girls who looked just like each other.

  “Perhaps our conversation is not for innocent ears…?” said Father Escrove, and Elizabeth shooed the children outside. They ran out, and then all three crept back and sat under the open kitchen window, a rare truce agreed in an unspoken moment.

  The tall man of God was speaking to their mother.

  “And what do you know of her?”

  “Anna?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Anna. Just so.”

  “Not so much. They live up there by the tentergrounds…”

  “And your view of her?”

  “Why, I … I don’t know.”

  “She is an evil woman, is she not?”

  “Anna? Evil? No, that’s…”

  “That’s curious,” said the man in black, cutting into her words with his own.

  “C-curious, Father?”

  “Curious, when your own husband here says that she is.”

  There was a long silence then, during which the children ached to peep over the windowsill, but dared not. There was something in that room that stopped them, and though they couldn’t have named it, they felt it.

  Fear.

  Into the silence, Father Escrove said, “have you had an accident, Elizabeth?”

  “Accident?”

  “How come you by that bruise on your neck, Elizabeth?”