I stood by the study door and looked in. My father was sitting at his desk. In front of him was an ebony casket inlaid with tiny stars that glittered in the candlelight. I had never seen it before and was curious as to what it held. I went closer, expecting at any moment that my father would look up and ask what I was doing, but when he did raise his head, he seemed to look straight through me as if I was not there.
I stood beside him and looked in the casket. At the very bottom was something silver, as insubstantial as gossamer. Carefully I put my hand into the casket and touched it.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when my father said suddenly, ‘I should have given it back to her.’
‘What should you have given back to her?’ I whispered. He still had a faraway look in his eyes.
‘Her shadow. She gave it to me on our wedding night and told me to keep it safe. She said that if I ever returned it, she would have no choice but to leave and we would be parted for ever.’
I stood staring at the shadow as it shimmered restlessly at the bottom of the casket. A dull light shone from it. It awoke in me a distant memory of a mirror I had once seen.
‘Now I do not know if I did the right thing,’ continued my father. Then he cried out louder, ‘Oh Lord, did I do the right thing?’
I asked as softly as I could, ‘Father, was my mother a fairy?’
My father looked up and, as if seeing me for the first time, said, ‘What are you doing here, Coriander?’
‘I was woken by the wind and I was frightened,’ I said.
He looked down at the casket and closed the lid quickly.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ he asked.
‘Not long. Is that really a fairy shadow?’
‘It is nothing. The casket is empty,’ said my father curtly.
‘But I saw...’
‘Nothing,’ interrupted my father. ‘You saw nothing. You heard nothing.’ Then he added softly, ‘Nothing but a fairy tale.’
8
What Will Be
I wish I could unpick the stitches of time that have become all tangled and twisted together. If I could have done that, my mother would still be here and everything would be all right. But everything was not all right, and I wondered now if it ever would be again.
Some months after her death my father came back from Bristol saying that he had met a godly widow called Maud Leggs, and it was arranged that come next Wednesday they were to be wed.
I wanted to say ‘Wait, please wait,’ but the look on his face told me this would be unwise. Since the loss of my mother, my father had become a cloudy man, given to sudden changes of moods and temper: a ship on a rough sea, blown by invisible storms, his maps and stars lost for good. Danes called him a man under an evil spell.
The day of the wedding arrived. My father was as much out of sorts as the rainy weather, finding fault with the smallest details. His water was not hot enough, his shirt was itchy, his shoes were too tight, his servants were too slow, his coffee was too cold.
So it went on until finally Master and Mistress Bedwell came to accompany him to church. I would dearly have liked to go with them, but my father thought it unnecessary, as it was just to be a simple service. He refused to have anything made of the wedding, saying that it was unseemly to do so. This set tongues a-wagging, confirming that my father had something to hide. ‘The sooner it is over the better,’ he said to me as he left.
I stayed looking out of the window with Beth, my beloved doll, waiting for them all to return.
It was raining quite hard when the garden gate finally opened and my father came in with a large, shapeless lady who waddled like a goose, followed by a string bean of a girl who looked awkward and ill at ease. My father ushered them quickly into the house where the wedding party stood in the hall shaking the rain from their cloaks and hats. Servants rushed around busying themselves, taking away the wet outer garments and giving the party something to talk about as they were left standing there, like an ill-matched group of figures in a painting.
My stepmother was no beauty. She was round and squat with a face not unlike a potato that had been scrubbed. She had deep pockmarks and a thin scar of a mouth, two tiny beady eyes and a small upturned piggy nose given to sniffing and snorting. She smelt of sour milk. Her voice told me that she was not city bred.
‘Ah,’ said my father, relieved to have something to say. ‘This is my daughter Coriander. Coriander, this is Mistress Maud Leggs and this is her daughter Hester.’
‘Don’t you mean Mistress Hobie, sir? I am your wife now,’ said Maud, smiling at him and showing an odd assortment of black teeth.
My father looked taken aback at her words, as if a spell had been broken and the truth of what he had done had only now occurred to him.
My stepmother looked down at me and said, ‘Coriander, that be a fancy name.’
‘It is a name dear to my heart,’ said my father. ‘It was given to her by her mother.’
Maud scrunched up her nose disapprovingly, and sniffed. ‘It is not a Christian name.’
My father, ignoring her, carried on. ‘This is Mistress Mary Danes, who runs the house.’
I could see clearly by the way she looked at Danes that this did not please her one bit. There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘Come,’ said Master Bedwell, hastily taking Maud’s arm, ‘I am sure you are hungry. You have been on the road for a long time, I hear.’
‘We came with God’s blessing and His grace,’ said Maud.
‘Quite,’ said Master Bedwell, leading her into the dining chamber.
Hester stayed in the hall.
‘How old are you?’ she said quietly.
‘Nine summers. And you?’ I asked.
‘Twelve summers,’ said Hester.
‘Hester,’ shouted her mother so loudly that it made us both jump.
‘What have I done?’ said my father when she had gone. He stood looking longingly up the stairs as if waiting for someone to appear.
‘It will be all right,’ I said, trying to move him towards the dining chamber and the guests.
Master Bedwell came out into the hall again. ‘My dear neighbour, we are all waiting for you.’
‘What on earth made you think she was a suitable wife for me?’ said my father.
‘She was introduced to me when I was last in Bristol, by a very fine lady who understood your situation,’ said Master Bedwell, patting him on the back. ‘She felt that Mistress Leggs would match your needs perfectly. You must give it a chance. It is the soul that matters, not the outward appearance. What did Oliver Cromwell say? Paint me, warts and all?’
‘What care I what anyone said? I should never have done this,’ said my father.
‘Perhaps it is all for the best. At least Coriander will have someone to play with and it shows the woman is not barren. One day, you might have a son.’
‘With her?’ said my father.
‘Come,’ said Master Bedwell, taking my father firmly by the arm, ‘let us join the others.’
The wedding breakfast was eaten in silence, all small talk having long since run out. Maud looked round the room, which she pronounced not being to her liking. As for the pictures that hung on the walls, in her view it was better that walls had naught upon them than paintings that could lead to unseemly and ungodly thoughts.
‘Well,’ said Master Bedwell, who was doing his best to keep the company going, ‘a new mistress, a new broom to sweep the house clean. I am sure there will be some changes. Why, when I married my dear Patience...’
‘Too many mirrors,’ interrupted Maud. ‘The Good Lord never used a mirror.’
I wondered how she knew that, and I was about to ask when Patience, in hope of changing the conversation, said, ‘Coriander is learning Latin and Greek.’
Maud looked affronted, as if a full chamber pot had been emptied at her feet.
‘I am a plain woman and I speak my mind as God finds it. What use is there, I would like to know, in any girl r
eading?’
‘Surely,’ said Master Bedwell good-heartedly, ‘it is a very -’
Maud interrupted him again. ‘I can neither read nor write, nor would I allow any girl of mine to meddle with letters. I believe that women’s minds are too feeble for such things, and words only confuse them the more. Nay, I will leave the reading of the Bible and such matters to the greater minds of men.’
My father was now drinking the wine as if it were water.
Maud squinted and looked at me. ‘Reading and fancy names do young girls no good, just give them ungodly ideas.’
After that there was nothing more to say.
We all waited to be released like parishioners at a Sunday service when the sermon has gone on for too long. At last Master Bedwell coughed, saying he was sorry to break up such a happy gathering, but Patience, being big with child, needed to rest. My father, by now a little unsteady on his feet, insisted on seeing them out, and pulled me with him.
‘I should never have done this. I feel I have been duped,’ he said to Master Bedwell when we were in the garden again.
‘It will be all right,’ said Master Bedwell reassuringly.
‘We have nothing in common. What will we say to one another?’ said my father, holding tight on to his arm.
‘Give it a chance,’ said Master Bedwell. ‘It is for the best, my dear friend.’
My father watched Master and Mistress Bedwell as they got into their carriage and drove off. Slowly he closed the garden gate, and taking my hand he said, almost in a whisper, ‘I am sorry,’ and for a moment, just one moment, I saw my other father, the kind and gentle man who would whirl me in his arms like a windmill, who laughed and loved. A tear rolled down his face. He sniffed and wiped it away and we returned slowly hand in hand to the dining chamber to find Maud sitting with her daughter, her plate piled high.
‘Furniture, my good husband,’ she said, her mouth full of food, ‘that be too pretty is without pure thought. Tables with turned and carved legs only encourage the Devil to dine.’
My father stared at her, bewildered.
‘This house needs to be made ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, for when he returns to our fair city and takes his rightful place as king, he’ll be needing a good meal in a godly home. Do you not agree, husband?’
My father was speechless. Maud, in no way put off by his silence, said, ‘He will be very hungry. It has been a long time since the Last Supper.’
My father made a choking noise and went to the table. He refilled his glass and swigged the wine back in one gulp.
‘So,’ said Maud, crossing her arms over her ample chest and shaking herself like a hen before it lays an egg, ‘there will be changes in this house.’
At first I thought Maud quite silly, and that nobody apart from Hester could possibly be frightened of a woman who believed in such stupid things, like saying the Lord Jesus never laughed or that all girls had feeble minds, but I soon came to see that for all her nonsense, there was a dark side to this new stepmother of mine.
Over those first few weeks she busied herself like a fat ferret, snooping and sniffing around, looking into every corner with her beady eyes. My chamber she disapproved of the most, because it had pictures that did not feature Bible stories and had too much gold leaf and too many words.
‘I think it be pretty,’ Hester whispered to me.
Maud, whose ears missed not a sound, turned on her daughter. ‘Did the Good Lord ask you to speak?’
‘No, Mother,’ said Hester, cowering.
‘Then hold your tongue,’ said Maud, and she slapped Hester hard across the face. ‘A thorn in my side, that’s what you be.’ She bustled off to examine a piece of silver on the sideboard.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
Hester nodded. ‘I am always doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing or standing in the wrong place.’
Maud turned round again.
‘Be silent,’ she said, pulling Hester away from me, ‘or I will with the Lord’s blessing see fit to strike you again.’
There were only two chambers that my new stepmother could not enter. One was my father’s study, and this caused her much frustration. The other was the stillroom. Maud did not notice it until the weather improved and she was able to turn her attention to my mother’s garden.
‘All these fancy flowers that have no respect for the Lord will have to be dug up,’ she said, waddling out one late spring morning. ‘We will replace them with good Christian plants that have honest English names.’
‘I think you should ask the master before you dig anything up,’ said Danes.
Maud took no notice. She went over to the stillroom and stuck her face against the glass until her breath clouded up the windowpane.
‘What have we here?’
‘It was my late mistress’s stillroom,’ said Danes.
‘It is just as I thought, a place for the Devil to make his potions and charms. Where is the key?’
‘The key is with Master Hobie,’ answered Danes.
‘Do not fib to me,’ said Maud. ‘You have got that key.’
Danes repeated what she had said, whereupon Maud started to push and bump at the stillroom door with all her might.
‘Shall I get the master?’ asked Danes.
Maud stopped her banging, out of breath.
‘There is no need to trouble my good husband. This is a matter we womenfolk can sort out.’
‘I think you will find that the master may well have something to say about you breaking down the stillroom door,’ said Danes calmly.
Maud was now as angry as a buzzing hornet. Hester backed away while Maud stamped her foot and banged her chubby fists once more upon the door. At last she gave up and dragged Hester back towards the house.
‘Well, Hester, what do you think?’ she yelled.
Hester stared down at the floor as if all the words had fallen out of her.
‘The Good Lord give me strength, to be plagued with such a dim-witted child,’ said Maud.
Hester, looking terrified, said nothing.
‘Strange, do you not think it be strange,’ said Maud, shaking her fist, ‘strange that a wife be not allowed into her husband’s study, strange that the stillroom be barred from her? I think it more than strange.’
Hester flinched.
‘I tell you the Devil himself waits in that garden in the guise of a serpent,’ Maud spat out.
‘Do not say that, Mother, I beg of you,’ said Hester, trembling with fear.
Maud let her go and turned round to face Danes. ‘I say that there be witchcraft going on in this house,’ she said with a sniff.
Hester made a whimpering noise.
I stood there amazed at all this talk. There was no serpent in our garden, only herbs and flowers that could help to make you well again.
‘What are you staring at?’ yelled Maud, turning to me.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Do you know where the key is?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Come here, you little...’
Danes stood in front of me, pulling herself up to her full height so that Maud could not get hold of me. ‘Maybe you should rest, mistress. You are out of sorts. I will ask the master to call the doctor.’
My stepmother sat down heavily, her legs spread out, her body slumped like a huge roll of unwound fabric.
‘I do not need your meddling,’ she said. ‘Get out, you witches both. I know what devilry you are up to now. Bringing on my toothache, that’s what.’
We left the house before my stepmother had a chance to change her mind. We could still hear her infernal bawling from the street.
Danes walked with such purpose that I had to run to keep up with her. I hoped that perhaps we were going to see my father to tell him the truth about Maud, for I felt sure that if it had not been for Danes I too would be feeling the full force of her anger.
To my surprise Danes made her way to the tailor’s shop on Londo
n Bridge.
When we arrived, Gabriel Appleby, Master Thankless’s apprentice, was helping a lady with a large parcel into a sedan chair.
‘What can I do for you, good mistress?’ said Gabriel cheerfully.
‘I need to speak to your master alone,’ said Danes.
‘Certainly,’ said Gabriel, taking us through the shop and up the small wooden staircase that led to Master Thankless’s living quarters.
‘Mistress Danes, how good to see you,’ said Master Thankless. Then, seeing the look on her face, he said, ‘Mistress, are you all right? You look pale.’
‘I must ask you a favour,’ said Danes. ‘You have been so good to us in the past and once more I have to lean on your good nature and ask for your help.’
Master Thankless sat us down and fetched some wine and sweetmeats.
‘How can I be of service?’
‘As you know, we now have a new mistress. Nothing is right with her. Now she claims to believe that the garden is the work of no lesser person than the Devil.’
‘Surely not!’ said Master Thankless.
‘As for the stillroom, she says it is where charms and potions are made. She has already demanded the key and I believe that she will not hesitate to destroy all my mistress’s potions once she gets inside, believing them to be the stuff of witchcraft.’
‘Oddsfish, what is the world coming to!’ said Master Thankless. ‘I will gladly keep them for you, mistress. I have a good dry cellar to store them in. It would be terrible if those remedies were to be lost. Why, in the past I have often been cured by one of those tiny bottles, as have many of my friends and neighbours.’
‘The new mistress is a Puritan with strong beliefs.’ Danes moved her chair closer and whispered to the tailor, ‘There is something not right in all this. A dark riddle that I do not understand.’
I got up and went to look out of the window down into the busy street below. That was when I first saw the crooked man. He was dressed all in black and was standing in the doorway of a shop across the street. His tall hat was tilted back and round green glasses hid his eyes, but I sensed that he was looking straight at me and I felt a shiver go down my spine. Danes says when that happens someone has walked over your grave.