The Blood List Read online

  Also by Sarah Naughton

  The Hanged Man Rises

  (Shortlisted for the Costa Book Award)

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2014 Sarah Naughton

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Sarah Naughton to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-0-85707-866-7

  EBook ISBN: 978-0-85707-867-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  For Bert.

  Paddington Hospital’s ‘Most Beautiful Baby’ 2006.

  ‘Most of the witches that have ever beene discovered have beene so by malice.’

  Archdeacon of Colchester, 1644

  Contents

  September 1630

  1 The Black Dog

  2 The Path

  3 Kingdoms of Darknes

  4 A New Maid

  5 The Bracelet

  6 The Gift

  7 Farmer Nightingale

  8 The Party

  9 Ice

  10 Fire

  11 Water

  12 Bile

  13 Milk

  14 Flea bites

  15 Black Kisses

  16 The Beetle

  17 The Pact

  18 The Trial

  March 1647

  Acknowledgements

  September 1630

  She awoke to the sound of birdsong. The room smelled strongly of rosemary and rolling onto her side she saw that someone had tied fat bunches of the herb to the bars of the cradle. Gingerly she pushed herself up, using the headboard for support, but the pain was not as bad as she’d expected. Though she was only sixteen her hips and pelvis were large and the baby had been small. A tiny purple thing with a slick of black hair that had sent a wave of disappointment through her for the briefest sliver of time. Then he screwed up his face and cried and she took him in her arms, all naked and wrinkled and slimy. For that moment, as he nuzzled his damp little head into her neck and his tiny hands batted her mouth, she thought she could never ever let him go.

  But they made her.

  They took him and cleaned him and bound him in swaddling cloths and put him to the breast of the fat wet nurse who had fed a hundred babies before him and loved him no more than a frog loves the eggs it squirts onto a lily pad.

  A girl of your birth does not suckle a child, her mother told her; it is beneath you.

  Frances swung her legs over the edge of the bed and cautiously stood up. This time pain clutched at her belly and she bit her lip to stop herself crying out. She didn’t want them up here, not yet. She could not bear to watch Henry lean over the cot and pronounce her child an ugly wizened thing with a nose like its mother. She could not stand to see him poke his finger into that tissue-thin scalp and ask where it got such ill-favoured colouring.

  His colouring was her own. Her hair was coarse and frizzy, the dull brown of leaf mould without the slightest glimmer of chestnut or gold. Even butter would not make it shine. The baby had the same fuzz of dark hair down the length of his spine that had so shamed her on their wedding night that she would not turn her back on Henry. But he had seen her embarrassment and kissed her back and called her his little woodland creature. He could be kind sometimes. And he was handsome. Too handsome. The glare of his beauty blinded people to his character, or perhaps made his faults lovable. And she had loved him so much. A crippling, dumbing love that had made her uglier and clumsier than she already was. It had stripped her of all wit and intelligence and made her mumble in monosyllables and trip over her feet.

  Frances shuffled over to the cot, trying not to move her legs too much and risk disturbing the catgut stitches the midwife had sewn. She didn’t recognise her body any more. She had always been plump but before her pregnancy it had been the puppy fat of a girl, and now it felt like the heavy deposits of middle age. Her belly was still so big she couldn’t see the floor and stumbled, knocking a candlestick off the table. It landed with a loud thud and she peeped into the cot to check that the noise hadn’t woken the baby. He was awake already, but had not turned towards the sound. He was gazing out of the window towards the edge of the forest where the treetops danced in the wind. Only as her shadow fell across him did he move his little dark head. His brown eyes lit up when he saw her and he made a gurgling noise in his throat.

  ‘Hello, little one,’ she murmured. ‘Hello, Barnaby.’

  He was to be named after her father: a brief gesture of humility on Henry’s part, or perhaps a gesture of gratitude. Her father would, after all, bestow his entire fortune on his only daughter and, even ill-favoured as she was, Frances could have made a better match. At the beginning Henry had enjoyed teasing her, saying the opposite was true: that he could have had any girl he wished and she was lucky he had chosen her. But on the first night of their marriage, when he was too nervous to consummate it, he had told her that he loved her for herself, not just her wealth and status, and she believed him. He found his stride soon enough and within a month she was pregnant. From then on anticipation of the arrival of his ‘heir’ occupied all Henry’s attention. He prodded her to make sure she was fattening up enough to nourish his ‘son’ and listened to her belly as if the child might actually reply to his inane prattlings. His father, John, was a shrewd businessman but Frances started to fear she had married a handsome fool.

  It was too late now: she had chosen Henry and now she must put up with her choice. Perhaps as the first mad surge of love for her child passed she would find some room in her heart for Henry again.

  She could hear him laughing downstairs. He did that a lot. Laugh. Henry had a beautiful smile but an ugly laugh, like the yap of a dog. He had been laughing earlier as he told his friend Buck that he wouldn’t have believed the baby was his, except that his wife was so ugly no-one else would bed her. Buck had laughed too, another ugly laugh. His own betrothed was pretty as a kitten and poor as a cellar rat.

  Frances reached in to pick up her son but the door opened and she snatched her arms back guiltily.

  It was Agnes: Henry’s nursemaid when he was a boy, and now Barnaby’s.

  She was grey and brittle as a dead twig, with probing fingers that had no softness to them. Somehow she always made Frances feel like a naughty child. When Frances had suggested they had no need of Agnes, and that she could look after the child herself, Henry had snapped, ‘And how would a great lummox of sixteen years know how to care for my son?’

  She had cried then and he had apologised, but Agnes stayed.

  The woman walked swiftly to the bed and looked inside.

  ‘Where’s the knife?’ she said.

  ‘I took it out,’ Frances said. ‘I was worried he might hurt himself.’

  ‘Foolish girl,’ Agnes snapped. ‘Babies cannot even turn over until they’re four months old, he’ll hardly be able to stab
himself. Where is it?’

  Frances shuffled to the wardrobe and brought out the knife. A nasty, blunt thing, flaking particles of rust.

  ‘When did you remove it?’ Agnes said, grasping it and tucking it under Barnaby so that the sharp flakes scratched his face. Immediately he began to cry.

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Last night?’

  Frances nodded.

  ‘So the child lay all night unprotected?’

  ‘The iron nails are still there, see?’ Frances pointed to the line of studs at the end of the cot. ‘The Bible is beneath the mattress . . . and I used Henry’s shirt to swaddle him.’

  Agnes stared at her coldly then picked up the child as if he were a hunk of brisket. She narrowed her eyes and made an unpleasant chirruping sound with her tongue.

  Barnaby turned his head in the opposite direction: he was looking for his mother. Frances stepped forwards to take him but Agnes hissed at her. She made the noise again, louder this time. Barnaby squirmed and cried harder.

  Steeling herself against the pain in her groin and her fear of Agnes, Frances went over and plucked her baby out of the old woman’s arms. At once he stopped crying and nuzzled into her neck, coiling his fingers into her hair and pulling until it hurt, which made her laugh. The laugh died when she saw Agnes’s expression.

  ‘What?’ Frances said, lifting her chin defiantly. Barnaby was hers after all.

  ‘When was the child baptised?’

  ‘Three days ago.’

  ‘Four days after its birth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You waited too long.’ Agnes turned and walked back to the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Frances said.

  ‘I must speak to Henry,’ she replied and left the room.

  Frances walked over to the window and gazed out at the forest. The sky was now overcast and the trees were black; they shivered in the wind and whispered to one another. She crossed herself and closed the casement. Perhaps Agnes was right. They were so close to the forest here. It was only sensible to take precautions. Tonight she would replace the knife. And the iron tongs. And she would sprinkle holy water on the window and doorframes.

  She took the baby over to the bed and lay down beside him. As he gazed into her eyes she could see her face reflected in his dark, dark irises.

  ‘The north wind doth blow,’ she sang softly, ‘and we shall have snow, and what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’

  Barnaby batted his hand at her face and she caught it and pressed it to her lips.

  ‘He’ll sit in a barn, and keep his head warm, and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.’

  Barnaby’s eyelashes were sinking and he made little snuffling sighs. His hand slipped out of hers to rest palm-up on the sheet, a perfect pink clam-shell. Frances watched him until she was sure he was asleep then, so as not to crush him with the weight of her arm, she slipped her hand under his, dipped her head until her coarse curls brushed his soft feathers of hair, and fell asleep to the sound of his breathing.

  When she awoke it was dark. The fire had been allowed to die and the room was cold.

  The cradle was a dark silhouette against the night sky. There was total silence. Fear jumped into Frances’s mouth like a toad. She slid out of bed, not daring to breathe, and tiptoed over to the cot, her mind whirring as it struck up deals with Providence: if I don’t creak a floorboard he will still be alive, if I get there in less than five steps he will still be alive; if the moon doesn’t go behind a cloud he will still be alive.

  She reached the edge of the cot.

  It was empty.

  Her breaths came all at once and she panted like a sick dog. Where was he? The wet nurse always fed him up here by the fire. Had they taken him away in a hurry? Was he sick?

  The trees at the edge of the forest whispered and sniggered. Then the moon went behind a cloud and the room was plunged into darkness.

  A chill gripped her like a dead hand.

  Had Agnes’s warning come true?

  Had they come for Barnaby?

  Then someone spoke downstairs; a raised voice.

  Frances flew out of the room and down the stairs. Rounding the newel post at the bottom she burst into the hall and her insides turned to water.

  There he was, tipped over the wet nurse’s shoulder, as she patted his back to wind him.

  She flew over and scooped him up in her arms, squeezing him so hard he burped at once.

  Then for the first time she noticed the other occupants of the room.

  Henry was there, and Agnes; but for some reason Henry’s father John was also present with his wife.

  They seemed not to have registered her arrival at all – all their attention was fixed on Agnes, who was speaking in hushed tones, as if a corpse had been freshly laid out in the room.

  ‘I knew from the first time I laid eyes upon it that there was something amiss. You should have summoned me when the first pains came; I would have made sure everything was in place.’

  Henry rubbed a hand across his face and said nothing. He was very pale. His mother was crying.

  ‘As it is the girl tells me the child has been sleeping without the knife.’

  All eyes flicked to Frances, then back to Agnes.

  ‘It’s plain to see the child is over-admired by its mother – this only draws their attention. Why in God’s name did you not baptise it straight away?’

  ‘We were waiting to see if it lived,’ Henry said. ‘It was such a scrawny thing after all.’

  ‘And still is!’ Agnes said. ‘Despite its appetite. Martha tells me it is never satisfied and seeks to suckle all day long.’

  All eyes turned to the wet nurse who immediately turned her attention to a milk stain on her dress and wouldn’t catch Frances’s eye.

  ‘This is just one sign. There are plenty more. You have seen yourself how its attention is elsewhere when you try to engage it: it is fixed on the world we cannot see.’

  Barnaby clearly had more wind because he started to squirm and whimper on her shoulder. She jiggled him but her movements were jerky with stress and it only made him worse. Agnes came over, her watery eyes glittering with malice.

  ‘See how ill-tempered it is?’

  ‘No he isn’t,’ Frances cried. ‘All babies cry!’

  ‘Ill-tempered,’ Agnes repeated, as if she had not spoken. ‘Its skin is yellow and covered in hair.’ With a look of distaste she tugged the loose swaddling away from Barnaby’s face. ‘And look at its sly, black eyes. Those are not the eyes of a week-old child.’

  ‘They are my eyes!’ Frances cried. ‘Dark brown, like mine!’

  ‘That is the gaze of one of the immortals.’

  Frances stared at her. The baby was dark and hairy like her, it cried like all babies, and surely constant hunger was the sign of a hale and hearty infant.

  Agnes stood in front of the fire, casting a long shadow over the room.

  ‘No luck will come to a family with a changeling child. It will drain away all your happiness, your good fortune and your wealth.’

  Henry grew paler than ever. ‘What can be done?’ he said.

  ‘There are some tried and trusted methods,’ Agnes said. ‘The fairies will not stand to see one of their own hurt, so if the changeling child is threatened they will at once rescue it, returning the original human baby that was stolen.’

  ‘Go on,’ John said.

  ‘The first method is to hold the baby over a fire.’

  ‘No!’ Frances shrieked but Henry’s mother shushed her angrily.

  ‘Heat and fire are anathema to the changeling and it will fly away. The second is to force foxglove tea down its throat. In a human child this would burn out its throat: the fairy will simply—’

  Frances didn’t hear the final part of the sentence.

  ‘Henry!’ she shrieked. ‘What madness is this? Get her out of my house!’

  ‘Your house?’ snuffled Henry’s mother. ‘You are wed now, girl, the house is H
enry’s.’

  ‘Hush, Mother,’ Henry said, then for the first time he looked at his wife and his face crumpled. ‘You must have noticed something wasn’t right, Fan? He won’t look at me. He shows no interest in his surroundings. He looks so . . . so strange.’

  ‘If you heat a shovel until it is red-hot,’ Agnes went on, ‘then shovel the creature up in it, it will at once leap off and run away. I know a woman who saw such a thing happen with her own eyes.’

  ‘Get out of my house!’ Frances shrieked. ‘Or I will take that poker and spear your black heart.’

  The room fell silent but for the crackle of the flames in the grate.

  Agnes regarded her steadily.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said quietly, ‘a witch begets such a child by copulating with the devil.’

  Frances shifted Barnaby onto her other hip, drew back her right arm and struck the old woman in the face. Agnes flew backwards onto the soft cushion of Martha’s lap.

  Frances was hyperventilating now, gasping such huge gulps of breath that she could not say more: though she wanted to.

  ‘Get her upstairs, Henry,’ John snapped.

  She turned to see John and his wife fixing her with matching expressions of disgust. How things had changed now that they were married and Henry owned everything. Beside her the two women were struggling to their feet, spluttering their outrage. To add to it all the baby was crying.

  ‘I will not go upstairs,’ Frances cried over the cacophony. She turned on Henry, who now had vivid spots of scarlet on his cheeks as he stared over her head at his father.

  ‘I am your wife, Henry, and I demand she leaves this house. And that fat milk cow along with her. I will feed my own s—’

  Henry lunged forwards, grabbing her so violently that she bit her tongue and the midwife’s stitches tore.

  ‘Yes, you are my wife and you will do AS I SAY,’ he bellowed, ‘AND I SAY GO UPSTAIRS!’

  She stared at him, the bitter taste of her own blood filling her mouth. Apart from Barnaby’s cries the rest of the room was silent. Henry’s parents were staring at them and she could feel the eyes of the other women on her back.