Nicola Cornick - The Phantom Tree

This was the end of the town where the tannery was situated and Alison drew a fold of her cloak across her face, trying in vain to blot out the smell of dung and urine and blood. Her stomach lurched with sickness. She had eaten nothing and so there was nothing to bring up; a blessing perhaps.

‘We are at the White Hart, mistress.’

The cart had stopped. The horse waited patiently, the carter less so. He had errands to run. He did not offer to help her down and when she jumped it was awkwardly, hampered by her pregnancy and the full skirts. She gave him a penny and no thanks.

There was no waiting coach in the inn yard. For all his haste, Alison could feel the carter pausing to watch her so she walked nonchalantly under the arch of the gatehouse and through the open door into the hall. It was dark enough to make her stumble after the light outside and the smoke from the open fire caught in her throat. A woman was standing by the hearth, stirring one of the pots that were hanging over the flames on an iron frame. A wooden hourglass stood on the table to the right of the fire. The sand in it had almost run through.

The woman glanced up as Alison came in. ‘There’s no work here. Not for the likes of you.’ Quick to judgement. Her gaze flickered over Alison’s stomach making her meaning explicitly clear. Like the carter, she knew. She had heard about the Seymour cousin, who was no more than a trollop.

‘I am waiting for a coach to London,’ Alison said haughtily. ‘I will sit if I may.’

The woman tossed her head. ‘Sit if you want.’

Go to hell if you want , Alison thought.

She woman offered no refreshment.

The bench was of wood but made slippery by the cushions balanced on its narrow surface. Alison sat gingerly. What now? She was waiting for a coach that would never come and, judging by the sly look in the landlady’s eye, the woman knew it.

A sudden clatter from the yard outside, the sound of voices in some imaginative curses, the splintering of wood made the woman exclaim and sent her hurrying out of the door towards the buttery, wiping her hands on her stained apron as she went. Quick as a flash, Alison slid off the bench and hurried over to the pot. Beef stew; it smelled good now that the nausea had subsided. She tried a spoonful, then another. Too hot, it scalded her mouth.

There was the sound of a latch lifting across the other side of the hall.

Caught.

She turned. The wind blew the smoke sideways, setting it swirling in the draught flowing between the two open doors. For a moment, Alison was blinded by it, eyes stinging, head aching. The world jolted as though she had missed a step in a flight of stairs and tripped over an unseen obstacle lurking in the dark below. She moved instinctively towards the door, seeking light and air and clarity.

The darkness cleared, the smoke disappeared. She was out in the street, but it was a different street in a different place completely. The sunlight was bright enough to make her shade her eyes. The air was full of noises. They assaulted her; shouts, crashing sounds, a roaring she could not begin to identify. Everything was shockingly intense, frighteningly loud and utterly unfamiliar, spiralling outwards into a spinning top of sensation. Her knees sagged. Her heart pounded.

‘Are you all right, love?’ A woman with a broad West Country accent had stopped in front of her. She was wearing very few clothes, legs and arms exposed, brown as a nut and wrinkled. It was disgusting.

‘You should take it easy,’ the woman said. ‘You can’t go rushing about in the hot sun when you’re pregnant, not in fancy dress like that.’ She pushed something into Alison’s hand, a bottle, made of a clear substance, not glass but something lighter.

‘Drink it,’ the woman said. Then, impatiently, meeting Alison’s blank gaze. ‘It’s only water, for God’s sake. I’m not trying to poison you.’

‘I…’ Alison did not know what she was trying to say but the sound was lost in a roar of noise as some sort of vehicle drove past. Beyond it Alison saw the façade of a house that looked familiar with its jetties and steep gabled roof. Familiar and yet different; the distortion was like looking through a glass window at something she knew and yet no longer recognised.

Alison dropped the bottle on the stone at her feet. It bounced. She turned and ran, back through the door of what had been the tavern. Immediately, the sound died, shut off, the silence so loud it hurt her ears. The landlady was stirring the pot over the hearth. The smoke still stung her eyes.

‘There you are,’ the woman said. ‘There’s a man in the yard outside asking for you. Seymour livery.’ There was a grudging respect in her tone now.

Alison sank down onto the cushioned bench and raised a hand to her head. She could feel the sweat, sticky and hot, at the roots of her hair. She had no idea what had happened to her; whether she was mad, possessed, or sick. Perhaps those fools who believed in enchantments were not such fools after all. She had seen… What precisely had she seen? She had no notion.

‘Mistress Banestre?’

Edward’s squire did not look best pleased to have been obliged to come looking for her. He was a dark, surly fellow with a sly expression in his eyes. Alison had seen him before. Edward used him to arrange his amours.

‘She’s sick,’ the landlady said, sounding pleased and important. ‘It’s too hot for someone in her condition to be travelling.’

The man’s gaze flicked over Alison carelessly. It told her that he had seen plenty of light women come and go and her condition was by no means unusual.

‘She’ll manage,’ he said, ‘if she wants to please Sir Edward.’

‘I was not expecting you,’ Alison said coldly. ‘Sir Edward did not mention sending a carriage.’

The man smirked. ‘Aren’t you a lucky girl, then? Sir Edward’s changed his mind. He’s not done with you yet.’

He put a hand beneath her elbow, levering her to her feet, steering her towards the stable yard. His grip felt like a manacle on her arm. Suddenly Alison was desperate to escape. She could not give herself to Edward again when he treated her with such contempt.

She threw a glance over her shoulder towards the other door, the one out into the street. What future lay behind that one in a place so foreign and strange? The servant had her in a tight grip, half dragging, half lifting her towards the carriage and, suddenly, now that it was too late, Alison wished she had found out. She struggled but the man only laughed. And then the door slammed and the darkness closed about her.

Mary, 1560

I missed Alison. It surprised me. I was growing up and the gulf between the younger children and me seemed accentuated by her departure. Wolf Hall was quiet. No new waifs and strays came to take Alison’s place. My lessons with the chaplain and with Liz Aiglonby continued and, in between, I avoided Dame Margery and spent any spare moment in the forest.

I had never been afraid of the forest despite the nightmare that had been my introduction to its secrets. Forests were full of concealment and surprise and I had known that from the beginning. I took delight in exploring Savernake. It was by no means an empty land. It seethed with people: Sir Edward’s ranger, the foresters, the villagers whose pigs grubbed for nuts in the undergrowth in the autumn, the poachers who risked their lives to take the Queen’s deer, the thieves, gypsies, runaways, witches. I saw them all and avoided them as much as I could, slipping between the trees like a wraith, like a hind.

Now that I had a bedchamber to myself, it was easy enough to slip away at night, simply by climbing down the ivy that covered the old brick wall of the manor. I knew every ancient oak in the forest now including the one that marked the boundary of Edward’s land with its huge bulging belly. It was rumoured to be the oldest tree in the woods, already ancient when the Conqueror had claimed Savernake along with the rest of the kingdom, a tree in possession of old magic. I had heard Dame Margery whispering to the scullery maid, with many gestures to ward off evil, that the witches sought its power to summon the devil. I could imagine that they did and I shuddered to think of it. Old magic was dangerous and unpredictable. Even though I had never dealt in it myself, I had an instinct for it, never knowing where my knowledge had come from, only knowing that I saw and heard things that others did not. However, the threat of heresy, of witchcraft, haunted my every step. I thought of my mother and longed for an ordinary life, free of visions, untouched by magic.