Now, as I stand here in the darkness, I feel in these acts – caring for my small sister, reawakening the fields and the orchards – that I am making a place for myself here, at Blackwater. A home.
Though the house is established, it is new in a way I can’t truly imagine Hob’s Hallow being. That place was so old that its weight sat on me my entire life – the weight of the O’Malleys and their history, the children they had and gave away, their taste for the sea. Though I’ve always hated to swim in it, I miss the stinging smell of the saltwater every day; it runs in my veins and will ever do so. Where I am, it is. Here, however, I am becoming a different thing: an Elliott with all the potential that offers, leaving behind the O’Malleys and their burdens – or at least until my mother returns.
I can help the livestock as well, but it will be a little more tricky to visit every home and slip something into their feed.
Now, beneath this moon, I’m aware once again of the strange silence of the place – and startle when a footstep sounds behind me, clear as a bell. I spin around, seeking shapes in the shadows. For a moment there’s a pause, as if a decision is being made. Then there’s a rough grunt, almost badgerish, and someone steps from between the trees into the moonlight.
Jedadiah, the hard-faced man from the village. He tilts his head towards the base of the tree nearest me, to where the newly cut sigil bleeds its sap into the world.
‘Will it work, do you think?’ he asks and that’s not what I was expecting. I don’t answer and he goes on. ‘She used to do it, too. Your ma.’ He grins. ‘Used to take me with her for a while too, when I was younger.’
‘Why did she stop?’
‘She said it weren’t proper for a married lady to keep taking a handsome lad from his bed at full-moon.’ He laughs. ‘Truth was I had no talent for it. Whatever I touched, didn’t die but it didn’t flourish either. She was too kind to say, though.’ He laughs again and the sound is loud in the clear cold air.
I put a finger to my lips, but he just shakes his head.
‘No one about but me. Them in the big house don’t set foot out in the darkness. Might see something they don’t like.’
I bristle at his tone. ‘What do you know about them?’
‘More’n you do, Miss Miren Elliott.’
I slip the pocketknife away lest I be tempted to use it. I have to walk past him to reach the road back to the house – I won’t give him the satisfaction of a wide berth, won’t appear afraid. As I pass him, however, he touches my shoulder. Doesn’t grab me and try to pin me in place, doesn’t even keep his hand on me for more than a second. But I stop and look him in the eye.
‘Do things seem right to you? In that house? Does it seem right that your mother’s been gone so long? Your father, now he’s feckless, he might well desert us when things get hard, but your mother?’
‘I don’t know my mother,’ I say truthfully, painfully. ‘She left me when I was a young child and I’ve no memory of her.’ I swallow. ‘So if you’ve got a certainty that she’d never leave you then you’re far more fortunate than I.’ My voice breaks, just a little.
He looks at me with pity then and I think that might be the worst thing in the world. I continue on and just before I’m out of sight, I hear him say softly, ‘When you’re ready, come and ask me all the questions you want, Miss Miren. I’m Jedadiah Gannel.’
Gannel. Lazarus’ son. His tone’s so gentle it makes me want to turn around and go back to him. To ask everything. But not enough. So I don’t. I’m tired and sad, and stiff-necked as an O’Malley. I feel weak and vulnerable and I don’t like that at all. I’ve had quite enough of that and he’s made me doubt, so very quickly and with so very little reason, my uncle and his kindness.
27
‘This’ll be for you.’
Nelly hands me a folded square of fabric with ill-grace, barely waiting for me to grasp the thing before she lets it fall. I get hold of a corner, the rest slips away like water or a wing, showing a bright, tight woollen weave. A shawl in greens and blues and golds, the pattern exactly like a that on a peacock’s tail. We are at the bottom of the sweeping staircase in the foyer, I on my way to breakfast, she on her way to the kitchen, bearing other offerings.
It’s a fortnight since my night-time agricultural ministrations, and for the past week things have been appearing on our doorstep each morning. Loaves of fresh bread, pies packed with apple and apricots and cherries and peaches from laden trees. Bottles of fruit cordial. Jars of preserves. Uncle Edward, though surprised by the influx of gifts, is nevertheless pleased. When my parents return, perhaps they’ll be pleased too – perhaps my mother will be delighted at how well I’ve looked after her people, how I’ve saved them from lack.
‘My dear, whatever you have done,’ he’d said in measured tones on the third day of largesse, ‘it is very effective.’
‘I’ve done nothing special, Uncle,’ I protested, but he gave me a knowing glance as if we were conspirators. I know, having seen how
