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While Maud sat in her tent of huddled silence Lucinda busied herself tidying up and packing their supplies. She picked up the rope where Maud’s father had thrown it against the wall, hiding it beneath the jars and pots packed into Grandma’s basket.
At the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs Maud flinched and Lucinda set the basket between her feet. Judging by the hard set of his jaw and the way he looked everywhere in the room but at his daughter, all the hammering at his anvil had not chipped a single hard edge from the blacksmith’s anger. There seemed to be a certain pattern to how families reacted when a daughter was ravaged. Fathers talked of revenge and raged a lot. Mothers fretted over their daughters’ reputations and hushed things up, while the girls themselves closed up like a flower starved of sunlight. All understandable in such a fraught situation but why didn’t anyone try to do something useful like find the culprit? There were many details that might help in the search, details that needed to be discovered before the girl forgot or suppressed the facts or started to believe she was somehow to blame. Women were well trained in the making of mental lists, and Lucinda had two such lists running in her head. One list was all the facts she knew so far. The other was a list of things she needed to investigate further. There were so many questions begging to be answered.
“Try and get her to have something to eat and go about her usual chores,” Grandma advised the blacksmith. “Busy hands are the best remedy for dealing with misfortune.”
The blacksmith seemed to take her advice, for himself at least. They were only halfway down the lane when they heard the clang, clang, clang of hammer on anvil. Sadly, any tears Maud might be shedding, would never be heard.
“Such a distressing affair,” Grandma Jones said linking her arm through Lucinda’s as they set off on their journey home. For a while she let it all wash over her, putting one foot in front of the other, smelling the scent of herbs wafting from the remedy basket, soothed by the sway of her grandma’s stride. For a while she was able to walk without thinking, but all too soon it came back, the bitter taste of remembering, like bile at the back of her throat.
“You know she is only fifteen.”
Grandma pulled her a little closer. “The age of the victim is no barrier to the wickedness of evil men. I have seen younger. Much younger. Girls who have not even begun to bleed.”
“No! That is despicable. There must be something we can do.”
“We can heal a girl’s physical wounds, birth any child that may result, even find the babe a home if the mother cannot find a husband, but we cannot stop wicked men from taking what they want when they are cunning about it.”
“Well somebody should,” Lucinda said, “or else things will never change.”
“God knows the evil men do,” Grandma Jones declared, her fingers digging firmly into Lucinda’s forearm. “He will mete out punishment come judgment day.”
“But what of justice now?”
“Oh, my love, do not tie yourself in knots over this. Men make the laws. Men break the laws. And it is men who judge what merits punishment. It suits them to believe that if a woman is penetrated, it is an act of consent. If she does not wish a man to have her, she should magically close the drawbridge to her cunny and deny him entry. Just like that.” She snapped her hands together to illustrate her point, and just like that they were both laughing at the absurdity of it all. If you did not laugh about it, you would cry.
“There is something I need to ask you, later when we are alone,” Lucinda said as they were about to take the side path to the courtyard storeroom. Grandma Jones gave her one of her ‘looks'. It was easy to see why some folk thought her grandma a witch. Not only did she effect remarkable and miraculous cures, but she could also peer into the darkest corners of your soul.
