The Return of the Witch by Paula Brackston

The only course open to me was to obfuscate.
    â€œHad you thought me dead?” I asked bluntly.
    He shook his head. “There were some said you were, but I would not believe it. After you escaped from the gaol, after you fled, there were all manner of theories. Some said you had died, dashed on the rocks jumping off the cliff at Batchcombe Point. Others said you drowned. There were those swore they saw you swim away. And some…” Here he hesitated.
    â€œWhat? What did they say, William?”
    â€œThey said they saw you take flight. Saw you lift into the air and soar aloft like a bird born to life on the wing.” He looked at me, holding my gaze, but not searching for answers, not truly. Perhaps he feared the truth.
    â€œMy own memory of that night is hidden from me,” I told him. “It may be that I fell, that I swam, that I hit my head upon a rock, I cannot be sure. I was fortunate. I did not die, that is the fact of it.”
    He grinned at me, and I saw again the boy I had grown up with. The boy I had loved. “Well, you are most certainly alive, Bess Hawksmith, and I am glad of it! Glad indeed. And now we are home, and we can sit together and you shall tell me all that has happened to you these long years.”
    We had turned a corner in the lane and started up the long, straight drive to Batchcombe Hall. I peered out of the window of the carriage. The house was still magnificent, still able to impress with its size, its glowing red brick, its many windows and chimneys, set in its verdant landscape of lawns and trees, with a lovingly planted knot garden to the fore. I wondered how I would be received by William’s family and servants. How many would recognize me? I quelled at the thought of how awkward it would be to face their questions.
    â€œIt is such a fine day,” I said quickly. “Let us not waste it by being indoors. I would rather we walk in your lovely gardens. I remember them fondly.”
    â€œI should like that very much. Keanes!” He rapped on the ceiling of the carriage. “Stop here, if you please.”
    As we stepped out onto the springy turf I looked up at the driver. I recalled Keanes as the groom who had worked for William’s father for so many years. I was surprised to find him still alive, let alone working. He glanced in my direction and I saw a flicker of recognition pass over his craggy features. I was aware of Aloysius stirring and fidgeting in the bag at my waist, as if sensing the scrutiny I was under. Keanes did not speak, only turned away again and clicked his tongue at the horse. As the carriage followed the drive around the house William offered me his arm, and together we strolled through beneath the rose arbor. Here there were signs that all was not as it should be. From a distance the garden had seemed unchanged, but up close I saw the weeds running rampant, the untrimmed hedges, the ornamental fruit trees that were no longer held to espalier.
    William sighed. “No one has time for flowers anymore, Bess.” He waved his arm at a desultory show of white roses. “What you see here is what will survive untended. Our energies are expended to the rear of the house, where you will find turnips and beans and all manner of produce.”
    â€œI never saw you as a grower of vegetables, Will!”
    â€œNor I. Yet that is what I must do now. We must all do what we can to ease the terrible suffering this war has wrought.”
    â€œAnd your wife, how does she fare with a gardener for a husband?” By the stricken look on Williams face I realized at once I had said the wrong thing. “Oh, I am so sorry!”
    â€œYou didn’t know. How could you? She died two years ago. Smallpox. Such a pitiless disease. Many were lost to it.”
    â€œYour father? And Hamilton?” I could have kicked myself for not asking after his brother and the rest of his family sooner.
    â€œBess, my father was an old man before