The Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland Read Free Book Online

mistletoe-bearing oak tree is cut down, the family who owns the
land on which it stands will wither and die out, and their house shall fall and
crumble into ruins.
        The
Mandrake's Herbal

 
     
        
    The Fetch
        
        The
tiny room is dark after the bright sunshine, and crowded with pots, baskets and
dyed linen strips hanging from the rafters. She can scarcely take a step
without tripping over a box or tangling her head in the cloth. Just a store
room, she thinks, no time to bother with it now. She turns, and is ducking
through the low doorway when she hears a cry, the thin, muffled wail of an
infant. It is coming from the far side of the room.
        She
impatiently tears down the cloth and kicks the boxes aside. She is looking for
a cradle, but there isn't one. The wail grows louder. The source is only inches
away, but still she can't see it, nothing but a stack of baskets covered with
cloths like those hanging all around. As she stares, one of the baskets
trembles. She rips back the cloth.
        The
baby is lying on a heap of rags inside the basket. Its face is scarlet and its
eyes are screwed up tightly as it bawls. The toothless red mouth opens wide as
if it would devour the whole world. Its tiny fists clench, beating the sides of
the basket in frustration that no one is answering its insistent summons. It is
ugly, a naked little rat. Now exposed to the light and cold of the room, its
screams redouble, violent, arrogant, demanding to be served.
        'Be
quiet,' she orders, but the baby takes no more notice of her than if she was a
fly on the midden heap. Her hand darts out and she grabs the threshing legs by
the ankles, jerking the infant upwards, so that it dangles upside down, but
even this does not make it stop screaming.
        'Shut
up! Shut —'
     
            
        Elena
jerked awake. Hilda was propped up on one elbow beside her in the truckle bed,
shaking her hard.
        'Quiet!
Do you want to wake the mistress again?'
         Elena could hear the irritation in her voice and small wonder —
three nights in a row she'd wakened Hilda by call ing out in her sleep.
Elena glanced anxiously over at the great bed where Lady Anne now slept. It was
still dark. But by the glowing embers of the fire, she could just make out the
heavy drapes pulled round her mistress's bed. She heard the whimpering snores of
Lady Anne, solidly asleep. Elena crossed herself in a silent prayer of
gratitude.
        Hilda
turned over with a groan, yanking the covers from Elena and pulling them
tighter around herself. Elena didn't protest; her body was drenched in sweat,
despite the icy draught whistling across her from the shaft of the privy
chamber. She shrank as far away from Hilda as she could in the bed, trying
desperately not to fall asleep. She couldn't afford to wake her again.
        The
old widow had bitterly resented Elena from the beginning, grumbling to all,
except of course Lady Anne, that she 'didn't know what had possessed her
mistress to employ a field hand as a tiring maid. Next they'd be dressing up a
pig in robes and sitting it at the high table.'
        Ever
since that first morning, when she'd been compelled to show Elena her duties,
the sour-faced Hilda had watched her as keenly as a hunting hawk, waiting for
some fault that she could swoop down upon. Only that evening, as Elena had
undressed to her shift, she'd been aware of Hilda staring suspiciously at her
belly as if she knew what was concealed beneath the folds of linen.
        Elena
had fallen pregnant that very first night they'd made love. Indeed, it had been
the only night they had made love. Elena could have slipped away when Lady Anne
was resting in the afternoon and Hilda was snoring over her stitch-work, but
what was the use of that, for Athan had to work in the fields or coppices from
dawn to dusk, as he had done for the past ten years, ever since he was a little
lad of seven. And when he was free in