Chapter Six
A lthough Aaron had claimed he must immediately leave if he is to reach Coppenhall today, he cannot move on without discovering what has happened to Mother Lovell.
The fact she still lives comes as no surprise. Aaron remembers well how her voice would change from one appropriate to her creased face and spotted, gnarled hands to a bubbling murmur which evoked the spring of youth. Her eyes, too, often belied her body’s age with their gleaming sparks lighting darkness like a lantern in a midnight forest.
He turns off the road to ride the dusty ridged lane which leads to Mother Lovell’s cottage and nowhere else. The rumble of wagons and clop of horses’ hooves fade instantly into silence, unwilling to follow Aaron on this path. He remembers this too, how his younger self viewed Mother Lovell’s world as contained within a secret, invisible wall, a castle where the drawbridge was forever drawn excepting to those the old crone allowed.
Either side, dog rose scrambles among overgrown hedgerows, adding their light sweet scent to the warming air. The pale pink edges of the white blooms and their golden stamen remind Aaron of Rose as a babe, with her pink cheeks and golden fuzz of hair. The child is aptly named, not least for her occasional thorniness.
A familiar elm rises from the hedge on the curve of the lane, and there is the cottage. White smoke drifts thinly from a stone chimney, both smoke and chimney silhouetted against the bright blue of the sky. There is life here, albeit hanging by a thread. Honeysuckle hides the once whitewashed walls and has found purchase in the thatch, battling mats of summer-dried moss. The grimy paned windows are barely visible, patches of rotting wood sinking beneath the yellow creeper.
Aaron ties his horse to the branch of a tree and walks to the iron gate in the low stone wall. There is more rust than iron on the gate, which no longer shuts with a satisfying clang. Rather, it protests squeakily at forced movement. How many months, years, have passed since anyone entered – or exited – this way? There is a second gate behind the cottage, a wooden one which gives access directly into the woods and, further on, fields. Woods, fields and hedgerows, together with her garden, supplied Mother Lovell’s pantry and the herbs, flowers, seeds she worked into potions to cure sicknesses of the body and soul. Has she abandoned her skills?
Between the gate and the door, pots spill with untended flowering lavenders, green and variegated mints and purple-bloomed sage, while thymes, chamomile, blue-flowering borage and pink valerian disguise once well-kept paths and hug blowsy bushes. The sun lights the scene and warms the scents, and the contented buzz of bees accompanies Aaron’s frowning inspection of the neglected profusion.
He turns to the heavy timber door – in no better shape than the windows – lifts the iron knocker and lets it fall. He cannot remember ever using the knocker. The door stood open on warm days, and he and Marianne never stood on the ceremony of asking permission to enter Mother Lovell’s cottage.
Shuffling footsteps, a bolt grating heavily through its rings, and the door is nudged open. A dark eye, buried in crepey folds of skin, squints into the light.
Aaron removes his hat. ‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘To see how you fare.’
‘So this is the day.’ Mother Lovell pulls the door wide, hunched over a stick planted heavily on the step. Her untamed hair hangs in grey wispy strands about her shoulders. The unforgiving morning light gives her face the appearance of crushed white linen. Her eyes bear the milkiness of incipient blindness.
‘They told me you would come.’ She presses her thin, creased lips together and he thinks she is pleased. ‘They’re not good at predicting when, however.’ Her voice crackles like dried leaves.
Aaron smiles. ‘Did they tell you why?’
‘Humph. No need for them to tell me that.’
Mother Lovell pivots clumsily on her stick, motioning with her free hand for Aaron to come inside. He steps over the threshold, closing the door behind him. The cottage smells, as ever, of cat piss. Aaron searches for the source. In a square of sunlight, a grey and white cat, whiskers darkened with age, regards him from a tattered cushion on the settle. The cat refuses to expend the effort of lifting its head. The same cat Aaron encountered six years ago.
The open kitchen door allows in light and air and the ever-constant scent of lavender from the pots outside. A low fire warms the hearth, the same sooty cast iron pot slung above the flames. The normal detritus of seeds, husks and dried leaves is scattered over the flags and the table, where more is contained in stained saucers and chipped bowls.
Aaron breathes in the scent, cat piss included, and finds his heart warmed. This is more of a homecoming than the cool greetings and accusations he left a short time ago.
Mother Lovell reaches to a cupboard where bare wood wins the fight with blue flakes of paint, and brings out two tannin-stained clay mugs. She fiddles with a teapot and soon the scent of bergamot adds to Aaron’s temporary well-being. He clears a mildewed book from a chair and sits, watching the old woman’s stiff movements. He promises himself he will come again, when he can.
‘It’s unwise to make promises you cannot keep.’ Mother Lovell eases herself into the second kitchen chair and gazes at Aaron with steady eyes.
Aaron shifts in his seat. There is no point asking what Mother Lovell means. She will have no idea, or none she will say. He tucks the comment to the recesses of his mind, aware his life does not leave space for long journeys. There is the promise to his mother, however.
He sighs. ‘Are there no secrets from you?’
‘Many,’ she says matter-of-factly. Her voice, while not youthful, has lost its ancient crackle. ‘I’m grateful for the intention and will be overjoyed to be proven wrong.’ She pours the tea with a steadiness her knobbled fingers should deny.
Aaron lifts his tea, sniffs, takes a careful mouthful. ‘I’m on my way to see Reverend and Mrs Ward.’ He keeps his tone as matter-of-fact as Mother Lovell’s.
‘Ah.’ The old woman blows on her steaming drink, her eyes fixed on Aaron’s over the rim. ‘Lad, I tell you as I have told you too often. You must cease this insistence on bearing the burden of Marianne’s recklessness.’
Aaron has borne the burden for over a decade. It will not be easily discarded.
‘She was too eager, too greedy for the power.’ Mother Lovell lowers the mug but not her clear-eyed gaze. ‘Throw off this futile guilt.’
‘How can I?’ Aaron’s wellbeing cracks. ‘If I had done what she had asked, if there had been two of us … I have told you this, Mother …’
Mother Lovell sets down the mug and reaches across, palms up, fingers beckoning Aaron to grasp her hands. When he does, he flinches at the stab of heat which enters his own hands to travel up his arms and into his chest. With the pain comes the recollection of Marianne brewing her potion, her ambition to fly to be achieved at last.
A cold October night, the All Hallows Eve village fire burning across the river, red and gold flames leaping.
‘To power.’ Marianne had lifted her head to the dark cold. ‘Mother Lovell never could make me a spell to fly. I can, Aaron. I have.’ She had waved the cup, swallowed the hot liquid and offered him the remains. ‘Will you soar with me, my love?’
‘No!’ he cried when Marianne ran to the cliff edge, lifted her arms to spread her cloak, and flew.
Mother Lovell’s scrutiny is merciless. ‘This is the pain you feel, have felt ever since.’
‘Yes,’ Aaron whispers, despite the fact Mother Lovell did not ask him a question. The pain tightens around his chest like a metal band around a hooper’s barrel. His stomach churns as it did when Marianne’s soar to the stars jolted to a halt. She hung, a heartbeat, two, before she fell, feet first, towards the water. Demonic shrieks, hellish as witches being flayed, rose flaming on the windless night above the river, their fury fierce at being summoned.
Mother Lovell releases Aaron’s hands. He cries out as the stabbing pain ebbs from his heart, leaving the dull ache he knows too well. Exhausted, he stares at the old woman. His skin is hot, feverish. He wishes he had not come.
‘Let it go, lad.’ Mother Lovell relaxes in her chair. Her eyes are milky again, and she rubs her fingers as if to soothe a hurt. ‘Tragedy will come of you seeking out the grieving parents.’ Her voice is a husk, like those littering the floor. ‘Besides,’ she adds as an afterthought, ‘if they are not dead, the truth will add to their grief.’ She takes a fluttering breath. ‘If you tell the truth.’
‘No,’ Aaron says. He has this worked out, a plausible story.
Mother Lovell pushes herself from the chair. The grating of the legs on the flags are a sign Aaron’s explanation will not be heard here. The grey and white cat stretches its front legs along the patch of sunlight, lifts itself in mimicry of its mistress’s heavy movements, pads the cushion and sleeps.
Aaron stands too. Mother Lovell has taken up her stick and hobbles, bent and slow with great age, to the front door. She steps to one side to allow Aaron to open it. He faces her, the warm outdoors on his back.
‘I will come again, soon. I will bring Hester –’
‘Goodbye, Aaron Appleby.’ Mother Lovell presents the soft wrinkles of her cheek to him, and he brushes them with his lips, inhaling the scent of bergamot on her breath
‘Until next time,’ he says.
He strides through the straggling garden and out the rusting gate, which he forces to close. He glances at the cottage, to wave a farewell. The peeling door is shut. Aaron rubs his beard and walks to his horse, which tosses its head at his arrival with a faint air of reproach.
It is not until he has left the dusty lane and is riding the wider track on his way to Coppenhall that Aaron realises the use of his full name is an omen, a warning.
Do not keep promises you cannot keep.
He shivers in the hot sun and urges the horse forward at a trot. He has one more duty to fulfil, hard as it will be. Afterwards, whatever the outcome, he will be free to live his life with Hester and the girls.
Tragedy will come …
Mother Lovell’s words blight his anticipated freedom.