Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

Suzette hurried across the twilit back lawn to the garden shed, where she found two spades with blades polished silver and sharp by being driven into unwelcoming shaly soil.

From under the kitchen sink, Katharine produced a torch, spare batteries and another can of insect spray.

Stars were opening their eyes in the black sky when they shut the front door behind them. Katharine checked it was locked, and the three women hurried down towards Carmichael Road.

Nicholas watched Quill rise from her chair and walk to the fire pit.

Her calves — squat and blue and veined, then slender and pale and taut — passed before his face. She knelt at the larger fire and began stoking its coals. Glowing orange sparks rose in a syrupy fountain of dying stars.

Outside, the wind grew stronger. It batted at the window, setting it knocking in its frame, and whistled sorrowfully in the flue. The fire behind the grate grew brighter as if jealous of its increscent neighbour.

Nicholas felt his mind eat its way back, like a snake through its burrow, to the Ealing flat’s bathroom where he sat watching Cate hear her mobile phone, climb down the ladder, slip and fall — sudden as a snapped branch — to strike the icy white of the bath edge, to lie still. She’d never have fallen if he hadn’t phoned. He’d never have phoned if he hadn’t dropped the bike. He wouldn’t have dropped the bike if he hadn’t seen the face between the dark trees in Walpole Park. And he wouldn’t have seen the face if Quill hadn’t asked for him to see it.

She’d summoned the Green Man.

‘You killed my wife,’ he whispered.

Quill drew a hooked poker through the coals as if she hadn’t heard him, and blew gently through pursed lips. Flame burst alive, and, as reward, her profile grew young and perfect, a sculpture cruel and lovely.

‘I asked. The Green Man arranged. But you killed her,’ she corrected.

The flames in the fire pit licked higher.

‘You selfish bitch,’ he whispered. ‘Cate. Me. Tristram. All those children.’

Quill looked sideways at him. ‘You haven’t asked why,’ she said.

Nicholas saw she wore a thin belt under her cardigan. On it was slung a sheath, narrow as a letter opener, from which protruded a bone handle.

‘I know why.’

She arched her eyebrows.

‘You bought yourself a longer life with theirs,’ he said.

She watched him for a while, long enough for him to hear the hungry crackle of flames and the eerie moan of high, cold wind — the scene was so rustic, they could be a hundred miles away and a hundred years ago. Then she shook her head and laughed. For just a moment, it was a pretty, girlish laugh without poison or hate. Then it soured and died. She gritted her teeth.

‘I did nothing for me, Nicholas Close,’ she tutted. ‘I thought you were wiser than that.’

He watched her: an ancient woman with a ghostly flicker of youth haunting her features, tending a fire in an old cottage in the middle of woods that should have been bulldozed and built over long ago.

‘For the woods?’

She gave the fire a last prod. Satisfied, she rose painfully to her feet.

‘Everything I’ve done was done for these woods.’

She sat again, and fussed her fingers over the wooden calendar, then leaned to look out the window. As she did, moonlight struck her skin, washing away the years and bringing the young Rowena Quill full into life. She stayed that way — youthful and perfect — as she spoke, staring at the moon.

‘My mam had skill. She taught me. Her mam taught her. We were women of the woods for as long as long. There was respect once, for women with knowledge. Who knew how to heal. How to divine this and that. How to help sway luck. Respect and fear. But the world. . the world moved on. .’ Rowena cocked an eye at him. ‘Bought life, ya say? Do you know what was considered an old woman when I was born? Forty years.’ She hissed the words, disgusted. ‘ Forty years was old age. We were a dozen folk a cabin in our clachan. Our land was long in the hands of the English. Cromwell did his work well and thorough. My folk were cottiers, pretty low folk. We grew lumpers, ’taters. We all grew lumpers. .’ She nodded to herself. ‘I was jes’ a girl, not twelve, when the ’tater leaves started turnin’ black and rottin’.’ As she spoke, her lilt grew thicker, her gaze farther away. ‘You’ve smelled dead t’ings. But nothin’ stenches like a t’ousand fields of a million wet, rottin’ lumpers. No ’taters. So they sold us corn. Peel’s brimstone. It rips ya up inside and does nothin’ good for ya. Useless. We were payin’ ta die. We started starvin’. My beautiful mam. .’

Rowena’s skin was the cold blue-white of marble in the moonlight. She might have been carved of milkstone, but for the flicker of her dark eyes.

‘She, all of us, we all starved thin. So we all stole. And we all whored. Only I picked poorly. The man I whored for wanted what I wouldn’t give him. He wanted a wife and a sprig.’ She frowned. ‘Sweet words and fancies. I thought about it, I truly did. But the shame of an English husband was too much. Too much.’ Her small nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘He got violent, this Englishman. Got to hittin’ hard, takin’ for free t’only thing I had to sell. So I stabbed him. But I were no good at that, neither. Three days he took to perish. Plenty of time for him to tell who done it and for the coats to find me and gaol me up. And try me. Hangin’, they gave me.’

She swiped the fire lazily with the poker, and turned her eyes to Nicholas.

‘But we had a calf, a skinny ragged t’ing. But the most valuable t’ing me mam owned. Mam took it to the woods on Mabon, when we say thanks for the harvest. Not much ta thank for. But she took it and cut it and asked Him to save me from swingin’.’ Rowena nodded her head at the carved image of the Green Man. ‘The next week, m’ sentence was commuted to transportation. Mam waved me off from Youghal. She walked all the way, poor pinched t’ing, and as we were marched to the pier, she ran up and told me how she bought my life. What He did for her. She made me promise, wherever I ended up, to show m’ thanks by lookin’ after His woods.

‘He saved me.’

She stared at Nicholas, chin high.

The fire ticked uneasily.

Nicholas held her eyes.

‘And who is here to save the children from you?’

Quill didn’t move a muscle. She seemed frozen in light and time, an ice statue that could stare implacably for a thousand years. She spoke at last.

‘Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.’

There was nothing left in Hannah’s stomach to sick up. As she’d struggled to ease her hands out of the silk, the clinging strands had stuck between her fingers and under her nails. Finally, she’d freed her fingers enough to rip a hole through which she could shove her forearm. She cleared her eyes and mouth, but the feel of the persistent, sticky web pulling at her face and hair made her choke. What she removed from her hair stuck to her fingertips. After a while, the sense of it clinging and grasping sent her into a panic, and she danced about, trying to fling it from herself; as she whirled, she collided with the mummified black boy in his cocoon, sending him rattling dryly. Her stomach gave itself up in a long retching fit.

It was while she was on her hands and knees, ropy spit hanging from her mouth and nose, that she spotted something curled in the corner of the cellar. She wiped her mouth and hurried to it. Her backpack!

She carried it to the brick stairs and, under the three slivers of moonlight, opened it, heart thumping excitedly. Inside were sodden newspapers, still tangy with the smell of alcohol. Loose matches scattered like tiny bones. She dug, and found what she was looking for: the paring knife, its blade still wrapped in crinkled aluminium foil. Just holding its plastic handle in her fingers made her feel better. A weapon.