Daughter of Satan (12 page)

‘So you've come to work for me in the kitchens, eh?' she said, playing for time.

‘Not for you,' flashed Tamar. ‘For him.'

‘We will see. What are you girls standing about for? Moll, take the key and go to the bolting house. Bring flour and put it into the pastry. I'll be there to do my baking very soon . . . so look sharp. Annis, take the girl and draw some ale. I could do with a drop myself after all I've been through.'

Annis came reluctantly towards Tamar.

‘Go on! Go on!' cried the housekeeper, sitting down heavily upon a stool and mopping her brow with her apron. ‘I was all of a tremble,' she told Betsy Hurly afterwards. ‘So I was to have in my kitchen, at best a bastard, at worst a witch!'

Annis took Tamar into the buttery, where Tamar looked eagerly about her, and Annis looked eagerly at Tamar.

‘So this is the buttery,' said Tamar, dipping her brown finger into a pot of butter and tasting it. She watched Annis draw ale. Then she took that from her and tasted it.

Annis giggled.

‘Did she cut your hair like that?' asked Tamar.

Annis nodded.

Tamar tossed her own luxuriant locks. ‘She cut my mother's. My mother told me.'

‘The master said not to cut yours.'

‘If she had tried, it would have been the worse for her.'

Annis shivered; then she saw that Tamar's eyes were full of tears. Tamar dashed them angrily away. ‘I was thinking of my mother . . . in the cottage. They did terrible things to her . . .'

Annis could cry easily. She picked up a corner of her apron and wiped her eyes.

‘Why do
you
cry?' asked Tamar curiously.

‘She was your mother, even though she was a witch.'

Tamar smiled to herself. The world had ceased to be full of hostile people.

‘Don't cry,' she said. ‘I won't hurt you. It's only those I hate who need to be afraid.'

They had been a long time in the buttery, but Mistress Alton said nothing about that. She was still, as she said, made all of a tremble by this savage creature who had been brought into her kitchen.

Tamar shared a room with Annis and Moll. Moll was only ten years old – Clem Swann's girl – and she went to sleep as soon as her head touched the straw. But Annis lay awake. So did Tamar.

‘Tamar,' whispered Annis, ‘be you really a witch?'

Tamar was silent.

‘You know most things, I reckon,' said Annis. ‘Do you know how to make milk turn sour and make cows so that they won't give milk?'

Tamar still said nothing.

‘I remember you,' went on Annis. ‘'Twas when my mother came to ask yourn for a charm. 'Twas years ago. I took a stone from 'ee and you thought I'd stole it. You looked like a witch then. My mother said she could see the Devil looking out of your eyes. Natural eyes couldn't look so big and blazing, she said. She got my father to use his belt on me for touching that stone. I ain't forgot.'

Tamar contemplated this new friend of hers and felt protective towards her. Apart from Richard Merriman, the girl was the first one who had ever shown friendliness towards her, and she liked friendliness, particularly when it was given with a certain awe and reverence.

‘I didn't mean you to get the belt,' said Tamar. ‘But you ought to have give up the stone when I asked for it.'

‘Was it a magic stone, Tamar?'

Tamar did not answer.

Annis moved nearer to her. ‘You don't think Moll's awake, do 'ee? I'll whisper . . . in case she is. Could you give me a charm, Tamar, some'at as would make a man turn towards me?'

Tamar shivered, for Annis' words had brought her encounter with Bartle very near. She lay silently thinking of it, seeing him clearly, that smile on his face, the lips half parted, the eyes of blazing blue.

She let herself imagine being caught by him, and she could smell the hot grass, feel his breath on her face . . . just as she had when he had tripped her and fallen on her, pressing her down on the ground.

She said sternly: ‘Why do you want a man turned towards you?'

‘Why? Because I do. 'Tis natural like.'

‘But . . . you
want
that?'

Annis rolled over and lay staring into the darkness. ‘Wouldn't matter telling you. I ‘spect you do know. 'Tis John Tyler, who do work on the farm with Father. He's terrible
handsome. You wait till you see him. Well, John ain't the man a girl can say “No” to and . . .'

Tamar drew away; she was alarmed by the excited note in Annis' voice. Annis . . . a girl younger than herself . . . and already that which had almost happened to Tamar had happened to her; and it seemed as though she had been far from reluctant.

‘You did . . . that?' said Tamar, shaken out of her role of wise woman.

‘'Twas only once. I'd gone over to see my mother and father and to give a hand in the dairy . . . and John, he walked back with me . . . and then well, he being the terrible handsome sort of man a girl couldn't say “No” to . . . But that Bess Hollicks in the dairy . . . it seems she were after him too, and she'd been down to see old Mother Hartock in Looe Street down in the town, and she got this charm that would take him from me. Old Mother Hartock be caught now. She were one of the first the pricker took; but that don't help me, for the charm do still work; and it be her he takes into the barn . . . not me.'

‘Did he . . . force you?' asked Tamar, her voice trembling.

Annis laughed softly in the darkness. ‘Well, I did make a show of being frightened like . . . but I'd always had my eyes on John.'

There was a short silence, then Annis said: ‘Will you give me a charm, Tamar? Will you make a brew for me? For it does seem to me that if you don't I shall never know another man . . . for I do know there be no one in the world for me but John.'

‘Yes,' said Tamar. ‘I'll make a charm for you. But, Annis, have you thought what happens to girls? Remember my mother. She got a child and then she was married to Bill Lackwell.'

‘Oh, but she were different. 'Twas the Devil . . . I didn't mean that, Tamar. It sort of slipped out. 'Twas the master . . . not the Devil. But I dunno. Couldn't expect the master to look at the likes of me. If I had John's child, he'd have to marry me.'

‘Suppose he didn't?'

‘He'd have to . . . seeing he works for my father. Besides, John's a good man. He did tell me so. He told me in the barn. He said, “'Twas wrong and 'tis wicked, Annis, and I don't want to do it to 'ee, but for the life of me I can't stop myself.” Now, that do show goodness, to my mind. I prayed in church for forgiveness of my sin, I did. “Dead Lord,” I said, “I didn't want to sin, but it was so that I couldn't help it . . .”'

Tamar listened to all this, entranced. No one of her own age had ever chatted to her as this girl was chatting. She wanted to Stretch out a hand and, taking Annis', say: ‘Don't you ever be afraid of me.' But caution restrained her; she loved her power too much to throw it lightly away.

‘I don't know as I ought to brew for 'ee, Annis,' she said.

‘Why not?'

‘'Tis wrong for 'ee to go in the barn with John Tyler, and I won't help wrong.'

‘You're a
white
witch, then?'

‘I don't want to hurt nobody . . . 'cept they hurt me.'

‘'Tis a good thing to take John away from Bess Hollicks, for she ain't a good girl. She don't ask the Lord's forgiveness for
her
sin, I reckon.'

‘Annis, I'll make a brew for 'ee.'

‘Oh . . . Tamar, will 'ee then?' Annis giggled her pleasure.

‘And when you've drunk it, he won't have eyes for anyone else.'

There was silence. Annis was thinking what a fine thing it was to have the Devil's daughter working and sleeping beside a girl, so that she could take advantage of the Devil's power without giving up one little bit of her soul for it!

As for Tamar, her thoughts were mixed. She did not know whether she was glad or sorry, happy or unhappy.

The house absorbed her. So many things to learn. So many things she had never seen before.

Friendship with Annis grew. She had gathered the herbs which she would brew to make the charm, though she warned Annis that she must not be impatient, as some of the
ingredients were not easy to come by. She needed a hair grown on the nethermost tip of a dog's tail, the brains of a cat or a newt, the bone of a frog whose flesh had been consumed by ants, to say nothing of herbs which did not grow by the wayside. These must be collected before she could begin to brew.

Mistress Alton saw the girls whispering together and made the sign of the Cross, while she went about muttering the Lord's Prayer.

Betsy Hurly came to the kitchen to chat with the housekeeper. Betsy – now a comfortable matron – had aged quickly; she no longer indulged in amorous adventures, andhad become a friend of Mistress Alton's. They enjoyed many a gossip together concerning the scandals of the neighbourhood, from which occupation they both derived much pleasure. Mistress Alton was prepared to forget that Betsy had once been what she called ‘a flighty bit of no-good', because of the news she brought; as for Betsy she had been delighted to find a place for her daughter, and she was ready to forget the cruelty she herself had suffered at the housekeeper's hands.

‘Well,' said Betsy, sipping her ale, ‘so you've got that young savage here, I see.'

‘I was all knocked of a heap,' said Mistress Alton. ‘They came to take her . . . as was right and proper that she should be took . . . and when I heard what
he
had to say . . . well I was as I told you, like a ship without a sail. Bold as brass he said it, leaning over the balustrade. I had the door half open, so I saw. Bold as brass he says, “She's my daughter,” he says. “Luce was my serving wench . . . and a comely one . . .” Fancy that Luce! Can you believe it?'

‘No, I can't. And what's more I don't. You forget how Luce and me was together. I remember the night . . . I remember her lying here. There was mud on her skirt . . . and bits of leaf clinging to it. She was staring wild like . . . and I got it out of her. She said: “Big he was . . . and he had horns at the top of his head. His eyes was like a man's eyes . . . shining through the black. I fainted . . . but I knew I'd been took. I knew I'd been ravished by the Devil.” Were that going with the master? Why, 'twould have been a different story then, I reckon.
We'd have had her giving herself airs. There was that girl over at Stoke, remember: Sir Humphrey fancied her and for a week or two she couldn't spare a nod for the likes of we. That's how it is when gentry fancies a girl. But the Devil . . . that's another matter.'

‘'Sh!' said Mistress Alton and recited the Lord's Prayer right through. Betsy followed her, stumbling. Then, feeling herself reinforced against possible evil, the housekeeper gave vent to her feelings: ‘'Tis terrible. What would happen if I lifted my arm against her? I reckon it would be struck stiff like. My father was struck that way by a witch. Right as rain one day, and the next he fell down . . . never spoke again. We knew he'd been overlooked, for he'd had words with an old woman on the road. We boiled his urine up in a pan over the fire, knowing that, as it boiled, that witch would feel her inside burning. We knew she'd have to come to make us stop, and it would be the first as came to the house after the pan began to boil. It were a steady sort of body that come, and we'd never have thought it of her. We hung her, but even that didn't do no good. She were dead, but 'twere a lifelong spell she'd laid on Father, and he never spoke again.'

‘Mistress Alton, you do terrify me!'

‘And 'tis right that you should be terrified, with witches among us.'

‘But . . . how could the master . . .? He be a clever man . . . a gentleman . . . How could he say such things?'

‘There's some as gets too clever. It goes to their heads and then they start acting queer. Do you remember the night when we put . . . or was about to put . . . old woman Lackwell to the test? Do you remember how it was him as stopped us?'

‘I do indeed,' said Betsy.

‘It's too much of these books, that's what 'tis . . .'

Tamar knew they talked of her. She watched them maliciously, trying to frighten them with a flash of her black eyes.

Life had changed, but the power was still with her and she was not going to relinquish it without a fight.

One day, when she was set to dust the woodwork of the gallery, she went into the master's study. No one was supposed to go in there except Josiah Hough, but Tamar had
once spent two days and nights in there, so she did not think that she need obey the rules which other people must.

What interested her most in this room were the books. She had, when she had been a prisoner here, surreptitiously opened one or two of them, but the letters were quite baffling to her, and no matter how she stared at them or from what angle she studied them, she could make nothing of them. She had felt angry, because power meant so much to her. She believed that if she looked at a book and asked the Devil's aid, he would make her able to understand.

Now, dusting the rail of the gallery, she thought of the books, and the temptation to take another look at them was irresistible.

There was no one in the room, so she sped to the bookcase and opened one at random. She turned it round, staring at the letters.

She was still as ignorant as she had been before. She slapped the page in anger. Earnestly she desired to be able to read the letters, as once she had desired to make herself clean.

Richard came in quietly and found her; he looked very angry.

‘What are you doing?' he demanded.

‘Looking,' she explained.

‘Have you not been told that you are not to come here?' he asked coldly.

‘No,' she answered. ‘The others have, but I have not been.'