It was as if Alice could read my mind because her smile grew wider. ‘Won’t be too hard, will it?’ she asked. ‘Women feed the chickens and help with the harvest, so why shouldn’t men help in the kitchen? Just help me with the washing up, that’s all. And some of the pans’U need scouring before I start cooking.’
So I agreed to what she wanted. What choice did I have? I only hoped that Jack wouldn’t catch me at it. He’d never understand.
I got up even earlier than usual and managed to scour the pans before Jack came down. Then I took my time over breakfast, eating very slowly, which was unlike me and enough to draw at least one suspicious glance from Jack. After he’d gone off into the fields, I washed the pots as quickly as I could and set to drying them. I might have guessed what would happen because Jack never had much patience.
He came into the yard cursing and swearing and saw me through the window, his face all screwed up in disbelief. Then he spat into the yard and came round and pulled open the kitchen door with a jerk.
‘When you’re ready,’ he said sarcastically, ‘there’s men’s work to be done. And you can start by checking and repairing the pigpens. Snout’s coming tomorrow. There are five to be slaughtered and we don’t want to spend all our time rounding up strays.’
Snout was our nickname for the pig butcher, and Jack was right. Pigs sometimes panicked when Snout got to work and if there was any weakness in the fence then they’d find it for sure.
Jack turned to stamp away and then suddenly cursed loudly. I went to the door to see what was the matter. He’d accidentally stepped on a big fat toad, squashing it to a pulp. It was supposed to be bad luck to kill a frog or a toad and Jack cursed again, frowning so much that his black bushy eyebrows met in the middle. He kicked the dead toad under the drain spout and went off, shaking his head. I couldn’t think what had got into him. Jack never used to be so bad tempered.
I stayed behind and dried up every last pot – as he’d caught me at it, I might as well finish the job. Besides, pigs stank and I wasn’t much looking forward to the job that Jack had given me.
‘Don’t forget the book,’ I reminded Alice as I opened the door to leave, but she just gave me a strange smile.
I didn’t get to speak to Alice alone again until late that night, after Jack and Ellie had gone off to bed. I thought I’d have to visit her room again, but instead she came down into the kitchen carrying the book and sat herself down in Mam’s rocking chair, close to the embers of the fire.
‘Made a good job of those pans, you did. Must be desperate to find out what’s in here,’ Alice said, tapping the spine of the book.
‘If she comes back, I want to be ready. I need to know what I can do. The Spook said she’ll probably be wick. Do you know about that?’
Alice ’s eyes widened and she nodded.
‘So I need to be ready. If there’s anything in that book that can help, I need to know about it.’
‘This priest ain’t like the others,’ Alice said, holding the book out towards me. ‘Mostly knows his stuff, he does. Lizzie would love this more than midnight cakes.’
I pushed the book into my breeches pocket and drew up a stool on the other side of the hearth, facing what was left of the fire. Then I started to question Alice. At first it was really hard work. She didn’t volunteer much, and what I did manage to drag out of her just made me feel a lot worse.
I began with the strange title of the book: The Damned, the Dizzy and the Desperate. What did it mean? Why call the book that?
‘First word is just priest-talk,’ Alice said, turning down the corners of her mouth in disapproval. ‘They just use that word for people who do things differently. For people like your mam, who don’t go to church and say the right prayers. People who aren’t like them. People who are left-handed,’ she said, giving me a knowing smile.
‘Second word’s more useful,’ Alice continued. ‘A body that’s newly possessed has poor balance. It keeps falling over. Takes time, you see, for the possessor that’s moved in to fit itself comfortably into its new body. It’s like trying to wear in a new pair of shoes. Makes it bad tempered too. Someone calm and placid can strike out without warning. So that’s another way you can tell.
‘Then, as for the third word, that’s easy. A witch who once had a healthy human body is desperate to get another one. Then, once she succeeds, she’s desperate to hold onto it. Ain’t going to give it up without a fight. She’ll do anything. Anything at all. That’s why the possessed are so dangerous.’
‘If she came here, who would it be?’ I asked. ‘If she were wick, who would she try to possess? Would it be me? Would she try to hurt me that way?’
‘Would if she could,’ Alice said. ‘Ain’t easy though, what with you being what you are. Like to use me too, but I won’t give her the chance. No, she’ll go for the weakest. The easiest.’
‘Ellie’s baby?’
‘No, that ain’t no use to her. She’d have to wait till it’s all grown up. Mother Malkin never had much patience, and being trapped in that pit at Old Gregory’s would have made her worse. If it’s you she’s coming to hurt, first she’ll get herself a strong healthy body.’
‘Ellie then? She’ll choose Ellie!’
‘Don’t you know anything?’ Alice said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Ellie’s strong. She’d be difficult. No, men are much easier. Especially a man whose heart always rules his head. Someone who can fly into a temper without even thinking.’
‘Jack?’
‘It’ll be Jack for sure. Think what it’d be like to have big strong Jack after you. But the book’s right about one thing. A body that’s newly possessed is easier to deal with. Desperate it is but dizzy too.’
I got my notebook out and wrote down anything that seemed important. Alice didn’t talk as fast as the Spook, but after a bit she got into her stride and it wasn’t long before my wrist was aching. When it came to the really important business – how to deal with the possessed – there were lots of reminders that the original soul was still trapped inside the body. So if you hurt the body you hurt that innocent soul as well. So just killing the body to get rid of the possessor was as bad as murder.
In fact that section of the book was disappointing: there didn’t seem to be a lot you could do. Being a priest, the writer thought that an exorcism, using candles and holy water, was the best way to draw out the possessor and release the victim, but he admitted that not all priests could do it and that very few could do it really well. It seemed to me that some of the priests who could do it were probably seventh sons of seventh sons and that was what really mattered.
After all that, Alice said she felt tired and went up to bed. I was feeling sleepy too. I’d forgotten how hard farm work could be and I was aching from head to foot. Once up in my room, I sank gratefully onto my bed, anxious to sleep. But down in the yard the dogs had started to bark.
Thinking that something must have alarmed them, I opened the window and looked out towards Hangman’s Hill, taking a deep breath of night air to steady myself and clear my head. Gradually the dogs became quieter and eventually stopped barking altogether.
As I was about to close the window, the moon came out from behind a cloud. Moonlight can show the truth of things – Alice had told me that – just as that big shadow of mine had told Bony Lizzie that there was something different about me. This wasn’t even a full moon, just a waning moon shrinking down to a crescent, but it showed me something new, something that couldn’t be seen without it. By its light, I could see a faint silver trail winding down Hangman’s Hill. It crept under the fence and across the north pasture, then crossed the eastern hay field until it vanished from sight somewhere behind the barn. I thought of Mother Malkin then. I’d seen the silver trail the night I’d knocked her into the river. Now here was another trail that looked just the same and it had found me.