Daughters of the Witching Hill Read Free Page B

that I was ignorant enough to believe every outlandish tale, but I was shaken to the bone from seeing the boy who disappeared into nowhere. The moon, nearly full, shone in the violet sky, and the first stars glimmered when, at last, I reached my door.
    Our Malkin Tower was an odd place. Tower itself had two rooms, one below and one above, and each room had narrow slits for windows from the days, hundreds of years ago, when guardsmen were sat there with their bows and arrows, on the look-out for raiders and poachers. But, as the tower had no chimney or hearth, we spent most of our time in the firehouse, a ramshackle room built on to the foot of the tower. And it was into the firehouse I stumbled that night. My daughter Liza, sat close by the single rush light, gave a cry when she saw me.
    "So late coming home, Mam! Did a devil cross your path?"
    In the wavering light, my girl looked more frightful than the devil she spoke of, though she couldn't help it, God bless her. Her left eye stood lower in her face than the other, and whilst her right eye looked up, her left eye looked down. The sight of her was enough to put folk off their food. Couldn't hire herself out as a kitchen maid because the housewives of Pendle feared our Liza would spoil their milk and curdle their butter. Looking the way she did, it would take a miracle for her to get regular work, let alone a husband. Most she could hope for was a day's pittance for carding wool or weeding some housewife's garden.
    Ignoring her talk of the devil, I unpacked a clump of old bread, the gleanings of the day's begging, and Liza sliced it into pieces thin as communion wafer.
    Liza, myself, Kit, and Kit's wife, also Elizabeth, though we called her Elsie, gathered for our supper. Kit hired himself out as a day labourer, but at this time of year there was little work to be had. Lambing season had just passed. Shearing wouldn't come till high summer. Best he could do was ask for work at the slate pits and hope to earn enough to keep us in oatmeal and barley flour. Elsie was heavy with child. Most work she could get was a day's mending or spinning.
    When we were sat together at the table, my Liza went green in the face at the taste of the old bread and could barely get a mouthful of the stuff down before she bolted out the door to be sick. Out of old habit, I crossed myself. I looked to Kit, who looked to his wife, who shook her head in sadness. Elsie would deliver her firstborn within the month and now it appeared that Liza was with child as well. First I wondered who the father could be. Then I asked myself how we would feed two little babes when we were hard-pressed to do for ourselves. We were silent, the lot of us, Elsie doling out the buttermilk she had off the Bulcocks in exchange for a day's spinning. Our Kit gave his wife half of his own share of bread—wasn't she eating for two?
    Then I found I couldn't finish my own bread, so I passed it to Kit before hauling myself out the door to look for Liza. By the cold moonlight I found my poor squint-eyed broomstick of a girl bent over the gatepost, crying fit to die. Taking Liza in my arms, I held her and rubbed her hair. I begged her to tell me who the father was, but she refused.
    "It will be right," I told her. "Not the first time an unwed girl fell pregnant. We'll make do somehow." What else could I say? I'd no business browbeating her for doing the same as I'd done with Kit's father, twenty-two years ago.
    After leading my Liza back inside, we made for our beds. I climbed to the upper tower. Room was so cold and draughty that everyone else preferred sleeping below, but of a crystal-clear evening I loved nothing better than to lie upon my pallet and gaze at the moon and stars through the narrow windows. Cold wind didn't bother me much. I was born with thick skin, would have died ages ago if I'd been a more delicate sort. Yet that night the starry heavens gave me little comfort. I laid myself down and tried to ignore the hammer