The Language of Stones. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

       CHAPTER FIVE THE MARISH HAG

      For a while Will lay by himself on the fringe of the forest, knowing he ought to return to face Lord Strange’s wrath, and that the longer he delayed the worse it would be. But something defiant inside him resisted. He looked out at the still waters of the pool. When the thump-thump-thump had ended for the day it had been like the fading away of a toothache. Wisps of smoke still rose up from the charcoal burners’ mounds, but there was no other movement. Everyone, it seemed, had gone down to the village to prepare for the Midsummer.

      He sighed, feeling truly alone. At home in the Vale, folk would be dancing and feasting and playing festive games long into the evening, but all that seemed too far away now, and a chill touched him as he lay on his mat of mossy grass. He fell into a sombre mood as he watched the pool and saw the doomed trees reflected there.

      After listening to the silence for a while, curiosity roused him and drew him down the slope into a forbidden place. He was mindful of his promise to Gwydion to remain within the Wychwoode, but a desire to know the truth pushed him just a few steps beyond its bounds. Around him stood heaps of rubbish, piles of sawdust and the axe-hacked stumps of large trees. Sheds and shelters clustered round Grendon Mill. Piles of small logs were stacked up ready for charring. Where the sluice leaked there was the sound of water spilling down behind the stationary wheel and tumbling through the race.

      He looked inside the mill and saw a great square oaken shaft, toothed wheels, trundles bound in iron and bearings set in stone. There were empty anvils at each of the three trip-hammers and an idle bellows by the covered hearth. Long pincers and mallets hung on the walls. All around lay piles of metal that had been cut into different shapes. Most of it was rusty or fire-blackened, though some of it was burnished bright, but there was no mistaking what was being made here.

      ‘War,’ he whispered, picking up a half-formed sword blade. ‘Just like Master Gwydion said…’

      Excitement thrilled through him as he looked at what had been fashioned. There were blades of different lengths, all as yet without point or edge. Grim-looking axe-heads and war-hammers stood in rows. And thousands of sharpened arrowheads waited to be attached to shafts. In another shed were iron hats and helms, many roughly-made pieces of armour for limb and body. And in the shelter of a thatched lean-to was a mail-maker’s bench with boxes of rivets and pairs of pincers with rags tied round their handles. Thousands of close-linked rings had already been painstakingly fitted together to make hoods of mail like Lord Strange’s guards wore.

      Every shed Will looked into was the same. There seemed to be enough iron to arm five hundred soldiers, and if as Willow had said waggons came most days taking away what had been finished, who could say how much had already gone into store?

      Does Lord Strange know what’s happening? he wondered. Of course he must know! The sound of those trip-hammers carries far and wide.

      He felt suddenly cold inside. His fingers reached for the comfort of the leaping salmon talisman that hung about his neck. He wished Gwydion was here. This is a fine way to spend Midsummer, he thought as he came away.

      He was picking his way past the mill-race when he chanced to look down. The sight that met his eye made him exclaim. Where the water gushed under the sluice and splashed down like a waterfall behind the green paddles of the wheel there was a pale hand. Slender it was, like a girlchild’s, and wax-pale in the darkness.

      He stared at it, shocked. Unable to turn away, he bent to get a better view. The hand seemed to wave to him and he watched it beckon for a moment. Then, he stood up and looked around in panic. Moments ago he had feared discovery in a forbidden place, now he yelled as loud as he could for help.

      But no help came.

      I have to do something, he thought, and leapt down into the race. The escaping flow was knee-deep under the wheel and cold enough to make him gasp. The water showering down on him gurgled past in a mass of bubbles. The wheel and stonework in which it was set were slimy and slippery. He reached out to touch the waxen hand, but it was dead and he pulled back from it.

      A groan of dismay escaped him. Here was a drowned thing, a body caught up horribly in a wheel. What had the beating and turning of it done to the flesh? He screwed up his face and reached into the narrow gap. There, revealed to his exploring fingers, was a lolling head and a slender arm, trapped and mangled by the tearing of the wheel. His feet kept slipping, but he ducked under the water again, braced his back against the paddles and forced himself up with all his strength against the current to lift the wheel a little and so free the arm from its grip.

      It fell away. There was no blood. The body was frail and light as it came free. He carried it in his arms, looking for a place to lay it down. There was dust and dirt everywhere in the clearing, so he carried the body back up into the forest and laid it on a bed of moss. He was drenched and shivering as he knelt beside the dead, pale thing, but all he could feel was an immense sadness.

      He blinked, wiped his face and allowed his eyes to dwell on the body. At first it seemed to be a trick of the light, but then he realized that the skin was as pale as could be, silvery, transparent almost. A tracery of greenish-blue veins showed through. The flesh of the arm was torn where it had been trapped in the wheel, and on the forehead and at the temples there were greenish marks, as if lampreys or sucker fish had attached themselves to draw blood. The hair was greenish too and child-fine, yet the features of the face were adult – sharp and delicate, a pointed chin and wide mouth, and the eyes almost as if closed in sleep. Will knew the creature he was laying out had not been born of woman, but that did not matter.

      The poor thing must have died alone, he thought. Caught as it tried to swim in the pool. Dragged under the wheel.

      A bout of shivering overcame him and he shed a tear. But he arranged the creature’s limbs with dignity and laid leafy branches over it to cover its nakedness until only the face showed. Then he gathered a posy of woodland flowers. Despite its ugly wounds the creature was beautiful. He felt he must lean over and kiss its forehead in farewell. He did so, then fled back to the tower.

      As blazing June turned into an even hotter July, Will longed more and more for the return of the wizard. The wild words he had spoken to Lord Strange had brought punishment – work at the slate had been doubled and his long afternoons of freedom were taken away. He was put to do the chores of a kitchen servant to pay his way, which he did not mind. What did trouble him was that he had been stopped from going back to the mill to see if Willow had come to meet him, and now he was no longer allowed to go beyond the moat.

      ‘What about Willow?’ he asked the white cat, appalled. ‘Shall I ever see her again?’

      The cat came and rubbed its head against him, looking up with unblinking eyes.

      He hated staying indoors when the sun was shining. The constant squeezing of the quill made his finger-ends sore, but he had begun to see the power of letters, and then