Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt Page B

thought of my own unhappy marriage.
    Betty danced with one farmhand after another. For her mother's sake, I was pleased to see that she seemed to have lived down the shame of nearly being called out as a thief. She still acted stiff round me though, as if she couldn't quite trust me to mind my own business.
    "Listen to that music!" I cried. "Some would say we're too old to dance." I grinned at Anne, daring her.
    "Well,
you
may be a grandmother, but I'm not." With a flourish, Anne drained her cup and leapt to her feet. "Let's see what these old legs can do."
    Shameless as she'd been forty years ago, my Anne hitched up her skirts to show off her ankles, neat and slender as a girl's. Before I knew it, I'd joined her. Round and round we jigged, pounding our bare feet into the new grass. Two fifty-six-year-old women dancing as though we'd never stop.
    When the heavens darkened and the crescent moon rode the sky, the bride and groom retired to their bed strewn in sweet violets. By then many of our guests had wandered home, but Anne and I kept dancing round the bonfire. Laughing and dizzy, we spun, free as the girls we once were. We danced to banish want and unkindness, gossip and ill fortune. We danced to kindle hope. It was April and the world was new. The night swam with stars, and off in the fields lambs bleated to their mothers. Throwing back our heads in glee, we danced till sunrise filled the sky, and then we fell gasping upon the dewy earth.

    After the wedding Liza and John did not move away to Bull Hole Farm as I'd feared, but stayed on with me. Since the fields near his farm were overgrazed, Anthony Holden decided to rent the meadows near Malkin Tower. Switch in hand, our John Device drove the cattle to their new home, rich with grass. Each morning at dawn he rose for the first milking. With Liza helping him, he set up a dairy in the shippon over in the next field. The Holdens didn't pay John much in the way of brass, but they let us keep a goodly portion of the milk, cream, curds, butter, and cheese. Every month Anthony Holden sent our John a peck of oats besides. If we would not get rich, we might at least grow stout off this plenty.
    The weeks of May and June passed in happiness: John and I watching our Liza bloom as the child inside her ripened. Her hair shone with a rare lustre and her skin glowed healthy and fresh from the good milk and cream. Of a Sunday the newlyweds strolled back from church arm in arm, cooing to each other, whilst I pressed on ahead to give them their privacy. Sometimes I helped in the dairy, and if ever a cow or calf sickened, John called for me at once. The Holdens were well pleased that I was so close on hand to see to their animals. When I wasn't needed in the shippon or dairy, I set off on my rounds through Pendle Forest, same as before, working what charms and blessings as I could.

    Our John was a kindly soul. If he'd a fault to his name, it was only his conviction that Anne Whittle possessed some secret sway over me and that if ever I chanced to get on her bad side, she would wreak her revenge by cursing the lot of us. The kiss Anne had given him upon his wedding day never ceased to haunt him.
    It wasn't magic itself that he feared. On the contrary, he believed that lawful folk had need of blessers such as Liza and me to shield them from baleful forces. Though he was no cunning man himself, he wasted no time in drawing upon his own charms of protection, clambering upon a ladder to hang a horseshoe and a rowan cross over our door at Malkin Tower. To safeguard his master's cattle, he nailed three horseshoes over the shippon door, and behind that door he hung a sickle and a rowan switch, and behind each beam a bit of cold iron. When he drove the cattle out to graze, he tied holed stones round their necks to guard them from black magic and lightning besides. Fearful for Liza's condition, he had her wear a twisted iron nail on a string hidden down her smock to keep her and the baby safe. Of an