Page 2 of The Queen’s Witch

One more kiss, and he sauntered off. I was blown into the cottage on a gust of wind that made the fire dance. Everyone looked up and smiled.

Old Mother Redcap sat on her stout chair close to the fire with her familiar, a big brown dog, sprawled on the stone floor at her feet. Grandmother, Mistress Prentiss, and another woman whose name I could not recall sat on stools, working with their embroidery needles on a linen panel stretched taut among them. Mistress Prentiss’s young daughter Matilda, no more than eight or nine, sliced bread on the wooden table, scrubbed smooth from countless meals prepared and eaten.

“Alysoun,” Grandmother said, “you remember Mistress Adela Lupton, from Ainsborough.”

“I wish ye all joy,” Mistress Lupton said. “Ye will look bonny in these fine clothes.”

The kirtle was already finished, the finest garment I had ever owned or expected to, fashioned from a length of costly dark-green brocade sent for all the way from Norwich. Grandmother, lame my whole life, could not make such a journey. Nor could ancient Mother Redcap, although I knew she had paid for the brocade from her mysterious store of coin. Many rumors swirled around Mother Redcap, but to me she was one of the two beloved women who had raised me from infancy.

I bobbed a deferential curtsy. “Mistress Lupton, you are welcome.”

“And ye be late,” Mother Redcap said to me. “Why?”

“The wine stall at Twilford had no wine left. I went with the merchant to his cellar after the market closed. I have two fine bottles.”

“Good,” Grandmother said, smiling up at me, her needle suspended above the linen. “Your wedding should have wine.”

Mother Redcap snapped, “One bottle be for her ceremony, Frances, not her wedding. Alysoun, warm yer fingers and fetch yer needle. A bride must work her own wedding clothes.”

“Yes,” I said. I had never heard that requirement before, but I did not contradict Mother Redcap. No one did. I hung my cloak on its peg and brought my needle from the cupboard.

Little Matilda sidled close to me. “I wish I had such a fine gown,” she whispered.

“You will someday, for your own wedding.”

Her brown eyes opened wide. “Be that prophecy?”

“Of course not. I am not yet even a cunning woman, let alone thrice braided.”

“Then how do ye know someday I will have—”

“Because you are so pretty,” I said, and the child wriggled with pleasure.

“Matilda,” her mother said, “stop delaying Alysoun and finish cutting that bread.”

Matilda scurried away, but not before whispering, “Master Smalacombe be so handsome! And he sings sweeter than birds!”

I laughed, fetched my needle and thread, and took my place in the circle, sitting on a low stool between Mistress Lupton and Grandmother. My needle moved deftly through the pale-green linen embroidered with tiny, exquisite flowers that would form the underskirt of my gown. Green was Mark’s favorite color. Perhaps our cottage, when we had one of our own, should have green shutters and—

Matilda screamed.

Grandmother toppled heavily from her stool onto the stone floor, her eyes wide and astonished. I flung myself down beside her. “Grandmother! What is it? What happened?”

She did not move. Her body lay at an unnatural angle. She grunted, a sound more animal than human. Mistress Prentiss knelt. “Frances, can you hear me? Can you speak?”

“She cannot,” Mother Redcap said. “The three of you, lift her onto the settle.”

We managed it, Grandmother’s body flopping like a cloth dolly. Her crippled leg dangled off the edge, and I lifted it gently, then dropped to my knees beside her. Grandmother’s face had gone white as willow ash.

“Grandmother?”

“She cannot answer ye,” Mother Redcap said. I glanced over at my ancient cousin, sensing that she had cast a probing spell of some kind. When she finally spoke, it was with a voice of pain and iron. “I seen this before. Alysoun, ye will need to be—”

“No!” I, too, had seen this before, when old Master Garney in the village was taken. But I did not believe it, not here, not now. I clutched Grandmother’s unresponsive hand. It felt cold as the North Sea.

Mother Redcap said, “Frances be dying, child. Something broke in her, and she cannot speak or move. But I know what she wants. Ye must—”

“No! She cannot die!”