The Witch’s Daughter by Paula Brackston

knocked from her body as if by a physical blow. She saw her mother suffering in the same way, and both of them knew that no remedy existed. Nothing would ever make them whole again. Bess walked back to the cottage and took the flowers to the graves. The mounds of earth were still wet and would not grass over for many months. There was no money for headstones. Instead, Bess and her mother would fashion something from wood on a distant day in the future, when they could risk doing so without fear of collapse. Bess felt Anne’s presence beside her.
    ‘Come inside, Bess. It does you no good to stand here so long.’
    ‘Have I stood a while? I didn’t know it. Look, I fetched flowers.’
    ‘They are very pretty. Margaret would like them.’
    ‘She should be here to see them.’
    ‘I do believe she is still here, Bess. Do you not?’
    ‘I mean here.’ Bess wrapped her arms around herself as if still hugging her little sister. ‘Warm and alive and full of joy and sweetness, so that I might hold her … not cold and quiet in her muddy grave.’
    ‘We have to keep her alive in our hearts, Bess. That is where she truly dwells now, not in the earth, in our hearts. In us.’ Anne’s gaze fell upon John’s grave. ‘They are all safe in our hearts.’
    ‘I thought they were supposed to be with God.’ Bess could not keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘In his loving arms—isn’t that what we are taught to believe? Do you believe it, Mother? Do you?’
    ‘Bess…’
    ‘Do you?’ Bess began to weep.
    ‘Hush, child. No more tears. No more.’ Anne reached out and wiped her daughter’s cheek with her finger. Her expression changed to one of alarm. ‘Bess…’
    ‘You don’t believe it any more than I. Where was the Good Shepherd when Thomas’s face swelled up like the belly of a dead sheep? Where was our Lord when Father cursed us all from his deathbed?’
    ‘Bess! You are hot.’
    ‘Where was our loving God when Meg clawed the air for breath?’
    ‘Bess!’ Anne took hold of Bess by the shoulders and spoke earnestly. ‘You are not well—you must come inside.’
    ‘What?’ Bess tried to take in her mother’s words. ‘Not well?’
    Time froze in that moment. The two women stood leaning against each other, fear and grief threatening to overwhelm them. Somewhere in the orchard a magpie fought with a crow. A thin wind began to tug at the flowers Bess had laid at the graves.
    Anne drew in a deep breath and turned her only living daughter toward the cottage. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let us go in.’
    Fever quickly robbed Bess of all sense of time or knowledge of reality. She was aware of her mother’s presence, of being washed with rose water and stroked with fragrant oils. She registered a spoon being held to her lips or a cup tipping liquid into her mouth. Beyond that, the world did not exist for her. All that she knew was pain and delirium. She felt at once such heat that she imagined the thatch of the cottage had caught fire, and yet such cold that she believed she must be already dead. Her body became somehow separate from herself, as if she had neither control over it nor use for it. It was a conduit of agony, nothing more. She heard a ragged rasping sound. Was it wind down the chimney? Or wood being sawn. No, she came to realize it was the sound of her own breathing. The air was dragged in and out of her body as if from a worn set of blacksmith’s bellows fanning the flames of her fever. At moments she felt a calmness, an acceptance that she was going to die. It was right that she should. Why should she be the one to live on? Hadn’t she hastened poor Margaret’s death? She would be with the others soon. Once, in the darkness, she heard her mother’s voice. She fancied she spoke of living, not dying, though her words made little sense. Then, strangely, Anne was gone. Bess had no real way of knowing she was not in the house, but she was quite certain she was alone. Not alone for ten minutes while her