I had sown the seeds of love in grave dirt; who could say what monstrous bloom would grow?
XVIII
Itired of the spinning after a few weeks; the Witch saw it, and ordered me out. She talked less and less as the fleece on the distaff depleted, her work to keep the thread steady becoming more delicate and demanding. I felt guilty slinking back down the spiral stairs, but I also knew that fighting with her about it would come to no good so I left her to her choice. If I had grown weary of it after only a matter of weeks, I could only imagine how she must feel after centuries.
I made it my business instead to make regular visits, bringing her newly plucked mint and sorrel from the garden, pears sliced so thin you could see a foggy window of the other side, tiny freshly baked buns studded with cardamon and cloves, cups of spiced wine on the final cold days before summer took root.
Some nights the Witch would follow me to my room and curl up upon my bed like a cat, twitching occasionally with a dream. She looked beautiful in sleep. The harsh lines of her old expression softened, and the curve of her ear peeking through her hair, the fan of her lashes against her cheeks, were fragile details that seemed so human for someone as impossible and wild as the Witch. I would draw a blanket across her and edge the bed warmer towards her feet.
That was the unexpected thing the Witch had taught me: the value of offering an act of care to another. I never pictured myself as the kind of person to take pleasure from cooking a meal or folding laundry, but then here with the Witch, someone who seemed to give those things even less regard than I did, I saw it differently. She had slipped so far from love that she didn’t think to take care of herself; she walked barefoot through icy flagstoned rooms, ate sparingly, wore the same ink-stained gowns for days on end. She outright refused to take a moment of kindness for herself. It made me realise that I had been living like that too, in my own way. I had always known myself as a problem to be dealt with. ‘Care’ was not a word that meant something to me – if I ate, kept clean, it was to not be a burden. Seeing it in the Witch, the sadness of it struck me like a blow. I would care for her because I loved her, not because she was a burden or a problem. I would do the same for myself.
So I elbowed my way into the kitchen alongside Wolf, rolled up my sleeves and started to learn. I began with bread. Stodgy loaves I forgot to salt, with crusts like leather that were good for nothing but feeding the birds. I practised: I baked pies with flaky, buttery crusts, plucked armfuls of ripe cherries that hung heavy from the tree branches. I boiled up vats of jam in heavy pots, an easy, spiced mixture of fruit so ripe they split their skins.
‘How did you come to work for the Witch?’ I asked Wolf, as we stood side by side kneading dough.
I wondered what sort of half-answer I would get today.
‘I came from the village to work in the kitchen,’ she said, then surprised me when she continued. ‘My husband died when I was still very young, so I needed work. Most who work here don’t stay long. Most can’t cope. But when I saw my mistress, I thought she needed someone to look out for her.’ Wolf had stopped kneading, lost in memory. It was as though she’d forgotten I was there. ‘Everyone else was too scared to notice, but I did.’
‘How long ago was that?’ I spoke softly, hoping not to break her from her reverie.
‘A long time, I should think. In a place like this, you learn to stop counting in years.’
The kettle boiled, filling the kitchen with a piercing whistle and Wolf snapped back to herself. ‘Get that off the fire now, you daft girl, or do you like listening to this racket?’
I did as I was told, pouring the water over a mixture of tea leaves and ginger to steep for a cake, holding close the small piece of the Witch’s past I had been gifted.
At first I’m not sure she noticed the difference between the food Wolf had always delivered, and that which bore the mark of my hand – but she didn’t remark on the poor quality of my work and that was praise enough. One evening she asked for a second serving of jugged hare and I flushed with elation.
I could not be with her every moment in the Tower – that would not do either of us good – but I could make my love known in other ways.
The rest of the time I was free to pursue my own interests. My garden was growing fierce and strong, an Eden of plants thriving in the rich soil and bright sun. I still turned up bones when I dug, found vines of pea shoots winding around ribs or knucklebones strung along a tomato plant. Everything grew so well, I couldn’t help but think about what had fertilised this land. But it was like a madness had taken control of me, an infernal bargain I had struck to be loved. The more I found, the less I let myself see. If I truly thought about what was buried below, a door would be opened that could never be shut. The bite of an apple I could not spit out.
I kneeled in a graveyard and told myself it was paradise.
The strangeness of time at the Schloss made its presence felt even here. One morning I came to inspect my beds to find a row of kale greens shrunk down to their tiny, budding forms, as though they were growing backwards. On another day, a whole head of cauliflower so big I could hardly take it in my arms had sprung up in an afternoon. Perhaps the messy sprawl of time in the castle had spread. I saw these as benign mistakes, but Hanna the scullery maid never returned and when I asked Wolf why, she gave me a pinched look and said, ‘For the girl’s own good.’
I decided to use the castle’s chaotic time to my own benefit. The summer room by the kitchens I used as a greenhouse to grow fat tomatoes and juicy strawberries. I found the room with the smashed windows was still banked with snow, wedged produce into the drifts, ready for whenever Wolf needed it. She seemed a little confused by this influx of supplies, accustomed as she was to carrying everything we needed up from the village and its market. I had found the room frightening before, but now I saw it as another oddity of the wheel’s influence, part of this strange home I had come to love.
If I were to spend my life here, I realised I needed to rehabilitate the Schloss’s reputation with the villagers. I decided to start by selling my fruit and vegetables in the market. I harvested and dried the herbs from the apothecary garden, closely following along the book of herb lore I’d found in the Witch’s library. Willow bark for pain and ginger for nausea were straight forward enough that anyone would buy or sell them, but some of the other things growing – foxglove for heart problems, saint john’s wort for melancholy – might be less palatable. It occurred to me as I hung up bundles of herbs by the fire to dry, grinding some into powders or steeping in honey or sugar syrup, that turning up to a market peddling spells and potions, people might call me witch myself. I broke into a smile as I portioned up mint leaves to sell as tea for digestion.
I found out the next market day from Wolf, and packed baskets of goods to take down, along with a list of errands: find someone to limewash the disused rooms, a stonemason to look at a crumbling wall and a carpenter to consult about the woodworm and rotting beams. I rounded up the scant servants and gave them orders.
A couple of days before the market, I made a sweep of the castle to check there were no further errands I should add to my list. I left the Witch spinning with a wind chime I’d fashioned out of pieces of wood hung in the window for something like music to keep her company, and stared from the great hall that was now looking bright and clean, if a little empty while we waited for the tapestries to be rehung, and worked up past the summer rooms, our dining room, my bedroom, the winter room and the Witch’s study, until I was drifting past rooms I hadn’t bothered with since my arrival at the Schloss. Here were the rooms of junk, the broken chairs and staved-in trunks, broken tennis rackets, spotted mirrors, moth-eaten curtains heaped up by cracked chamber pots. Perhaps I could get some of it mended and sold, or put to use in the many empty chambers.
In the room of travelling cases, I stopped. Like a stone in my shoe they had been a disquieting thought in the corner of my mind since I had found them. There they still were, the seven cases that could only belong to my predecessors, discarded like refuse. I dragged them into a line, and organised them from least decayed to most. Here was the history of the people who had come before me. Themenwho had come before me. Jealousy flared in my belly; the Witch hadn’treallybeen alone, she’d had these men to keep her company for centuries. Perhaps she’d loved some of them, too. Maybe they’d known how to mind their own business and the Witch had liked them from the start.
I knew nothing good could come of opening the trunks, but I also knew I was going to do it anyway. Like picking a scab or drinking to excess, the allure was stronger than the fear of the consequences.
I kneeled by the newest. It was only a little faded, battered at the corners and sporting a fine lock, engraved with the initialsE.H.The date 1818 had been added next to the maker’s mark. Edgar Hässler’s case.
Naturally, it was locked. I looked warily at the other trunks, each with a lock or fastening of some variety. The second in line was smaller, more modest. Leather and camphor wood, with straps holding it closed which had grown brittle with time. I tugged at one, and felt guilt like mould growing inside of me as it snapped. Someone had locked it for a reason, shutting away the last of their life spent alone in this place, old age claiming them before they could ever leave. Or perhaps the Witch had been the one to lock their possessions away after they died. Packing away another life that had been over before hers.
I eased the strap off, and lifted the lid. Inside were stacks of neatly folded shirts and embroidered silk breeches and waistcoats of a style I recognised from portraits of my great-grandparents. They must be at least a hundred years old, handsome things well packed with mothballs between delicate linens and sheets of tissue that crumbled when I touched them. Men’s clothes, as I’d thought. The only personal effects were a gold cross on a chain, and a small pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. I wondered who he’d been, how he had spent his solitude in the castle.
I opened the next trunk using my pocketknife to lever the crumbling wood apart, and found a similar contents, linen underthings, breeches and this time sumptuous knee-length overcoats in velvet and brocade. There was a leather-bound Bible in English and dried-up pots of ink nestled amongst the clothing, and one threadbare quill. A writer, then.
The next three had been badly affected by moths, but I could see sets of clothes, smelled the sweat still soaked into the armpits and crotches.
