Magpie, page 10
Beth did so and followed Bill and Nathan along a shabby corridor past two rooms full of exhibits and into a tiny back room where a kettle was rattling to a boil. The place reeked of damp and neglect.
‘Shift that load of papers off, why don’t you, and then you’ll have somewhere to sit,’ Bill instructed.
Nathan obliged, gesturing to Beth that she take the worn and lumpy armchair. He perched on the arm, a little too close for her blood pressure. He smelled gorgeous, a mixture of soap, sparklingly clean skin and a subtle woody aftershave. She repressed a giggle. After her start to the day, he was just what she needed. He was so wholesome.
They sat in silence while Bill made tea the old-fashioned way, warming the teapot first, adding loose leaf tea and then pouring it into mugs using a strainer. It took time and ceremony.
Nathan gave Beth a sympathetic wink.
Eventually Bill handed over two white mugs. ‘Biscuit?’ It came out as some sort of threat.
Beth caught sight of the packet of Hobnobs and, remembering the afternoon at Jade’s, refused. Nathan, to her surprise, took two. Perhaps he wasn’t as much of a health nut as he appeared.
Bill settled onto an uncomfortable looking stool, sipped her tea and peered over the rim of her mug at them. ‘Loveday, eh?’ she repeated, her glasses misting up. ‘You a relative of old Betty Loveday? She lived down Church Lane. In those Victorian cottages.’
Beth wrinkled her nose. ‘I could be. I’d have to ask my grandparents. I’m a bit vague about my family. It’s not a very common name though, so yes, maybe.’
Bill snorted. ‘You young folk. You never know anything about your family. Never pick at your roots, do you?’
‘Well, my dad didn’t hang around and my mum disappeared frequently, so my grandparents brought me up. In Exeter. Loveday is my granddad’s name. Suppose it’s possible this Betty might be a cousin or something.’
‘You’ve got the same given name. Elizabeth,’ Bill pointed out shrewdly.
‘We have, haven’t we? I’ll have to ask him. Knowing my mum, she’ll have just plucked the name out of thin air.’
Bill snorted again. ‘So what have you brought me?’
Beth put down her tea, it was too hot to drink anyway and, once again, brought out the newspaper package. After carefully unwrapping it she held up the handle. ‘This. It fell out of the chimney. It’s got these beautiful carvings on it.’ She handed it over. ‘I think it’s a handle.’
Bill slammed her mug down on the draining board and took it. Shoving her glasses up onto her forehead, she held it close to her face, squinting at it with one eye closed. ‘Fell out of the chimney, eh?’
‘Yes, the inglenook at Tenpenny House. I’ve just moved in. I live in the flat above and I’ve just opened a shop there. I–’
Bill flapped a wrinkled and age-spotted hand at her. ‘Yes, yes, heard all about it. Soap or lotions or some such. The chimney, eh?’ she murmured. ‘Interesting.’
‘A bird got trapped. When it flew out, the handle must have been dislodged.’ About to mention witches Beth stayed quiet, taken aback by this spiky old woman. ‘It was a magpie, actually.’
Bill’s interest quickened. ‘A mock a pie, you say? Fascinating birds. Oh yes, I see you shudder. More to them than the old rhyme, you know. Givers as well as thieves. And they mate for life and mourn their dead. Chinese believe they’re good luck, did you know that?’ She gave a philosophic shrug. ‘Mind you, they’re associated with witches an’ all. Let’s have a look at this magpie’s gift then.’ Bill twisted stiffly and fetched out a magnifying glass from the sink drawer. Holding it to the handle, she pronounced, ‘I’d say this was old. Really old. Think it’s Roman.’
‘Roman?’ Beth asked, startled. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so old.’
‘There was a big Romano–Briton settlement hereabouts.’ Bill nodded curtly in the direction of the museum itself. ‘Go have a look. Educate yourself as you young folk like to tell me.’ She paused but before Beth could draw breath enough to speak, added, ‘And while this might date from Roman times, it’s not Roman itself. Not with these concentric circles and interlocking patterns. It’s more ancient Briton, Celtic if you will. We had several tribes living in the hillforts round and abouts. It’ll be from the Durotriges or Dumnomii tribes.’ Bill smacked her lips in appreciation. ‘Beautiful thing.’ She nodded. ‘Durotriges tribe, I reckon. They were known for their craftsmanship.’
Beth had no idea what Bill was on about. She’d research the tribes later – if she could spell them. ‘So how old do you think it is and what actually is it?’
Bill focused on her. Her eyes were vivid and youthful, and startlingly intelligent. ‘Reckon you’re right. Handle off something.’ She held it out to them. ‘Most probably a knife. See how it’s shaped to take a fist. Wider at the end where it must have been fastened to the blade and at the other, so as you could get a good grip.’ She placed it into her palm. ‘A woman’s fist that is. Too dainty for a man.’
‘Not a weapon then?’ Nathan put in.
‘Not a weapon. Too delicate. Too fancy. A tool of some kind.’
‘For cooking?’ Beth said.
Bill sniffed derisively. ‘Doubt it. More likely for something medical. Women of the Durotriges were distinguished healers. Revered. Held positions of great esteem within the tribe. A knife handle as beautifully made as this one wouldn’t have been used at the hearth. See, look at the care and skill that’s been taken with the carvings. Most likely used to cut up herbs and prepare cures, a sacred knife to add weight to the magic of the healing. Or maybe used in childbirth to cut the umbilical cord. A very special knife would have been used for that. A sanctified one.’ She blinked rapidly and let her glasses slip back down onto her nose. ‘Just think,’ she whispered, ‘we might be the first folk to have touched it in over two thousand years. It’s got magic, this has. Real magic.’
Beth felt a weirdness wash over her. The air thickened. That the knife handle could be a link to such ancient and potent forces was profound. She wasn’t, however, going to let Bill get away with her last comment. ‘Except I have it on good authority Tenpenny House was built in the sixteen hundreds or thereabouts. So someone from that era must have put it up the chimney for some bizarre reason.’
‘Suppose,’ Bill admitted grudgingly, coming back down to earth. ‘It’s a fine, fine thing. If you feel like donating it to the museum, we’d be glad of it.’ She handed it back.
‘I had the chimney swept and when Ian did it, he said something about witches…’ Beth let the sentence trail, embarrassed. She felt Nathan stir next to her.
Bill sucked her teeth. ‘So what do you know about witches?’
‘Not a lot. Hardly anything,’ Beth amended. ‘Just what Ian told me, that people used to shove things up chimneys to ward them off. I didn’t really understand what he was on about. I mean, how can a witch get down a chimney? She’d be too big.’
Bill laughed. ‘She would an’ all. Chimneys were considered portals. From one world to another. It wasn’t the witch’s body folk were afeard of, but her spirit.’
‘A portal,’ Beth said thoughtfully. It made more sense. Slightly. ‘So they shoved things up there to keep witches away?’
Bill nodded. ‘A child’s shoe. A dead cat. Sometimes a spell bottle. Sometimes there’d be protective markings on the hearth. Oftentimes, they’d build the chimney a bit crooked so she’d have more trouble getting through.’
Beth thought of the ledge she’d spied when she’d examined the inglenook. She was finding all this increasingly fascinating. She took the bottle out of the paper. ‘Ian found this.’ She handed it over and watched as Bill examined it.
‘Ah now, this is much more straightforward. What you’ve got here is a spell bottle.’
Beth and Nathan waited patiently for her to explain further.
Bill tipped the little bottle to one side and peered at it. ‘See, inside there’s some kind of liquid, just a mite left. Probably wine or maybe sea water. Sometimes they added urine.’ She grinned, enjoying Beth’s grimace of revulsion. ‘They’d add hair or a speck of shell off the beach, a feather or two.’
‘But what was it used for?’ Beth asked, enthralled.
Bill put it back into her hand. ‘Protection.’ She shrugged. ‘To ward off evil. They’d say a prayer or incant a spell over it, seal it up and put it somewhere safe. Up the chimney or under the floorboards. It’s most likely to ward off witches, like Ian the Sweep said.’
Beth stared at the bottle in her hand. A world was opening up to her, one of which she had little knowledge and no understanding. Someone, many hundreds of years ago, had been so desperate to ward off evil that they had collected objects thought special, uttered a fevered and desperate prayer or spell and secreted it away, never to be found until Ian’s probing brush knocked it out of its hidey-hole. ‘But there’s no such thing as witches is there?’
Bill’s mouth twisted. ‘Think you’d better do a bit of reading, child.’
‘Oh.’ Beth felt reproved. She placed the bottle on the newspaper on her lap, alongside the knife handle. The only thing she knew about witches was the old Halloween clichés. Old women wearing big black hats and riding on broomsticks. Something else she needed to google. A thought occurred. ‘But, Bill, have you ever known a knife or the handle of a knife being put up a chimney to ward off a witch?’
‘No. And never heard of summat that old being found up one neither. Must have been precious to its owner with that amount of craftsmanship. Maybe it was hidden for some reason? Maybe it’s been revealed for a reason? You got yourself quite a treasure. You got yourself a mystery too.’
Beth picked up the handle and weighted it in her hand. It fitted as if made for her. She agreed with Bill: it was too small for a man; she knew it had belonged to a woman. And, somehow, she was sure it was too beautiful to have been a weapon or something dully domestic. But what else could it have been used for? Was Bill right in thinking it special and sacred? And how had it ended up in her chimney next to the spell bottle? None of this made sense.
‘I can give you some websites to look up the stuff you need to know,’ Bill said, surprisingly. ‘And you can have a look-see in the museum too.’
‘Thank you. I’d appreciate that.’
‘And you, Dr Smith? You’ve come to collect your book, I suppose?’
Nathan handed over the hessian shopping bag.
Bill chuckled evilly. ‘I had a rare old time looking through this.’ She reached out and lifted a leather-bound book off a pile of papers on the floor. ‘This is old too.’ She scrutinised it for a moment.
Beth only had time to glimpse that it was a thinnish volume with battered covers darkened with age before Bill slid it into the bag and it disappeared. A sudden urge came over her, which shocked her to the core, to snatch it off the old woman and clutch it to her own chest. Where had that come from?
‘Any opinions on what it is?’ Nathan’s voice brought her back to herself.
He was calm but Beth could feel his body vibrate with excitement next to her. She remembered the article in the local rag about him finding an old book. This must be it. She recalled the strange pull it had for her when reading the newspaper article. Forcing her buzzing brain to quieten, she concentrated on what Bill was saying.
‘A book of recipes, some fine flower and plant drawings. Remedies, concoctions. No NHS back when it was written. Folk had to heal themselves or ask a cunning woman to help.’
‘A cunning woman?’ Beth asked.
‘A wise woman. A healer.’ Bill tapped the bag with an arthritically bent finger. ‘Time was women were the ones who had the knowledge and the power to keep folk healthy. They’d be the ones sought out to mend the bones, soothe the fever, aid at the birth bed. Like I said about your knife handle, the ancient tribeswomen were venerated back then. This book’s from much, much later. Maybe sixteenth, seventeenth century. Women were healers then too, but ’twas a troubled time for a woman then if you were a gifted healer or cunning woman. You had to tread carefully.’ She glared at Nathan. ‘Of course, now it’s all men doing the healing.’
‘Oh come on, Bill. I’m the only male doctor at my surgery. Everyone else employed there is female.’
‘That’s as may be. But when this was written,’ she tapped the bag again, ‘the physicians were stealing in, taking over. They’d discredit the women and their age-old knowledge, take over.’
‘But why? What was their motive?’ Beth was confused.
‘Power.’ Bill rubbed her finger and thumb together. ‘Money.’ She leaned forward. ‘Men don’t like it when women get together, child. Don’t like to think about what they’re talking on. Take child birthing. For centuries it was women’s business. The women of the community, the sisters and mothers and friends would gather together to see the birth through. Used a birthing stool, sat the woman up, let her lean against them as she pushed. Gossips they were called, the women who attended the birth.’
‘Gossips?’ Beth said, startled. ‘But that means–’
Bill nodded. ‘It does now, child. Comes from the word Godsibb. Women back then needed a network to keep each other safe.’ She snorted. ‘Things don’t change much, they still do! Of course, the men couldn’t be doing with women telling each other to keep wary of Old Joe and his wandering hands and the suchlike so they changed the meaning of the word, made it more derogatory, like. And, not only that, but they put the fear of God into women if they were found to be telling tales and spreading nonsense, they’d be stuffed into a scold’s bridle with a nail through their tongue.’ She stroked the hessian bag. ‘But back when this was written, a gossip was a friend. A friend who saw you through the pangs of labour, who kept you safe. It was the only power women had; their community of women.’
She leaned in and snarled and Beth wondered if she were quite sane. ‘How many men have you known to be called a gossip?’ she asked.
Put on the spot, Beth had to concede to none.
‘There you go. The men doctors came along, took over, got rid of the birthing chairs, put the woman flat on her back and there she was pushing uphill against gravity. And took a handsome fee for the privilege.’
‘Why did they do that?’ Beth wondered how Jade had given birth. They’d not discussed it. To be honest, Beth hadn’t wanted to.
‘Easier for the men to see what’s going on.’ Bill sat back in triumph. ‘Keep the woman under control and where they want her.’
‘That’s appalling!’
Bill nodded.
Nathan interjected, obviously unable to keep quiet any further. ‘But now we have birthing pools, balls, candles and music, hypno births. Whatever the woman wants plus medical intervention whenever necessary. And we no longer have to choose between the mother or the child. And it was often the mother who was sacrificed. We’ve moved on, Bill, you’ve got to admit that. Not everything historical is better.’
Bill huffed, unwilling to concede. ‘There’s a lot of wisdom in this here book.’ She pointed at Beth. ‘And it’s like your handle, it was precious to her owner. Someone prized it enough to use parchment and leather to keep a record of the remedies. It was special to its owner and it’s worth keeping safe.’
‘How old do you think it is, Bill?’ Nathan asked.
Bill’s nose twitched. ‘Thinking with your wallet, Dr Smith? This isn’t the Antiques Roadshow.’
Nathan didn’t rise to the barb. ‘I’m simply curious.’
‘If I were pushed for an exact date, mid-seventeenth century, I reckon. Post Culpepper. Lot of his influence in there.’ She handed over the bag reluctantly. ‘You take good care of it. There’s power in there. Feminine power.’
Nathan took the bag gingerly. ‘I will. I promise. And trust me, I’m not about to sell it. We believe it’s a family heirloom.’
‘Trust you, why? Because you’re a doctor?’ Bill gave a girlish giggle.
‘Seems as good a reason as any.’ He smiled.
Bill grumbled something under her breath and then rose stiffly. ‘And now, you two young ’uns, I’m going to turf you out. Got to eat me lunch. You’ve eaten all my biscuits so I’ll have to make do with a sandwich from the coffee shop. Scarper.’
CHAPTER 12
JULY 2018
Beth and Nathan were outside, standing on the sun-soaked pavement amongst the tourists wandering beachward.
‘As you said, bit of a character.’
Nathan grinned. ‘She is. Local legend. But no one knows more local history than she does.’ He nodded to the now firmly shut museum door. ‘And she runs this place with little help. Coffee? Don’t know about you but I couldn’t drink much of that tea. Besides, I’ve a craving for a toasted teacake and I know just the place.’ He gathered the hessian bag close to his chest. A passing group of tourists barged into Beth, knocking her into him. He slid an arm around her waist and righted her. ‘You okay?’
Beth liked the feel of his strong arm on her body. She felt heat rise where his flesh pressed against her T-shirt and she liked that too. ‘I’m fine but wondering where you’ll find a place quiet enough at this time of year.’
‘Come with me.’
He hitched the bag onto his shoulder and led her across the street and down a narrow alley she’d never noticed in between the chemist and a charity shop. A waft of newly baked bread assailed Beth’s nostrils making her tummy grumble.
‘Flete’s best kept secret, or one of them. The town bakery.’ Nathan opened the door of the unassuming-looking shop and its bell jingled merrily. Inside was a counter and one tiny table with two chairs. The view of the old wall opposite wasn’t alluring but the scent of fresh bread certainly was.
A skinny man, possibly in his early forties, came out of a back room and smiled in greeting. ‘Nate! How are you doing, man? Coffee?’
‘Two, please, and two of your teacakes to eat in.’
The man nodded and disappeared again. ‘A running mate,’ Nathan explained as they sat down.
