The Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland Read Free Book Online Page A

the evenings, Elena was waiting on Lady
Anne and could only steal away from her chamber for long enough to fetch a dish
from the kitchen.
        So
the fragments of precious time she and Athan had been able to spend together
had been snatched in barns and byres or in the dark corners behind the manor.
They clung to each other, drinking in the smell of each other's skins and the
heat of their bodies, alternating fierce kisses with whispered conversations.
But all the time they were constantly on the alert for the sound of approaching
feet and the ribald taunts of the other servants that would follow if they were
discovered alone together.
        When
they did meet, they spoke mostly of the baby. To hear Athan talk you'd think no
man had ever accomplished such a miracle before. It was all Elena could do to
stop him crowing his prowess to everyone in the village.
        'It's
only been four months. Wait just a few more weeks,' Elena had begged him, 'till
we've a bit more put by.'
        The
tiring maid she replaced had been sent packing the moment Lady Anne discovered
she was with child. Elena had no illusions about being kept on once the news
got out and she had no wish to return to the fields in her condition, not in
the winter freeze.
        'Besides,
there's your mam to think of,' Elena had reminded him.
        Athan
had flushed to the roots of his sandy hair. 'She's always wanted a grand-bairn
. . . She'll be happy as a fishmonger's cat when it's born,' he added, though
it sounded more like a desperate prayer than a certain belief.
        'Aye,
she'll want the bairn all right,' Elena said, 'but not with me as its mam.'
        The
whole village knew that Joan regarded any woman under the age of seventy who so
much as looked at her son as a wicked temptress hell-bent on snatching her
boy's affections from her, and any girl who did succeed in ensnaring him would
earn Joan's undying enmity.
        Athan
grimaced. 'I know Mam's tongue is a mite on the sharp side, but she doesn't
mean it, and when she sees you with our bairn in your arms ...' He trailed off
— even he couldn't finish that lie. 'Anyway, who cares what Mam wants?' He
pulled Elena close to him. 'I want you, that's all that matters.'
        Elena
wriggled her thin body closer against his chest and felt the same shiver of
bubbles run up her spine as it always did when he held her. The muscles on his
shoulders and arms were as strong as an ox's from his work in the fields, but
she had never known anything except gentleness in his arms. Some girls might
giggle about his coarse, sandy hair that constantly stuck up like the feathers
of a hedge sparrow after a fight, and some might think that his nose was far
too flat and squat to make him handsome, but Elena saw none of these
imperfections. She wanted nothing more than the bairn she carried to be a
miniature of Athan in every way.
        Athan
had seen the sense in keeping the pregnancy quiet in the end, but even so he'd
come close to blurting it out to the other lads more than once, and as soon as
the twelve days of Christmas were upon them and Athan was doing the rounds of
the village with all the other mummers, swilling down cider, mulled ale and
wassail at every croft, Elena had no doubt that the secret would soon be out.
Besides, how many more months could she keep her swelling belly concealed?
        She
saw again the baby in her dream, the baby that would not keep quiet. Suddenly
she shivered. She felt cold now, bitterly cold.
        Although
it was late afternoon, patches of frost from the night before still rimmed the
corners of the courtyard and the water on the horse trough was beginning to
freeze over again. A young scullion ambled towards the bakehouse, dragging a
basket of turfs behind him. He started violently as a voice roared out from a
doorway.
        'Pick
it up, you lazy little toe rag; don't drag it. If you rip the bottom out of
that basket, I'll flay the skin off your arse