Wakenhyrst

by Michelle Paver

In his pockets the police found shards of green glass matching the ones embedded in the victim’s eyeballs, ears and tongue, as well as four leaves from a plant named Solomon’s Seal. Three more were crammed down the victim’s throat. All this proved his guilt – but to me it means far more. Because for centuries, Solomon’s Seal has been used in witchcraft.

Take note

It’s not just the Solomon’s Seal, it’s that glass. I found it in Wakenhyrst’s tiny museum. Experts say it’s medieval and bears traces of urine and deadly nightshade, both common ingredients in a ‘witch-bottle’. That’s an ancient charm against the evil eye.

Maud pictured the two sets of rules as a pair of gigantic thorny walls leaning over her. She knew exactly what St Matthew meant when he said: ‘Narrow is the way, and few there be that find it.’

‘Your knowledge of Scripture is impressive, but you mustn’t show off. Intellectual conceit is unattractive, particularly in females.’

patriarchy of course

She helped Cole in the garden and he taught her how to put four seeds in every hole: One for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow.

‘There is a chance that Mrs Stearne’s life could be saved. But then the child would surely die.’

She was such a typical woman: passive, emotional, no conversation beyond the kitchen and the nursery. What could she give a man like me?

the fuck

Maud, when properly trained, will make an acceptable typewriter, and may in time be trusted with minor tasks requiring no exercise of judgement. As she matures, she shall run the household, thus precluding the need for a housekeeper.

They do everything they can to inflame our baser instincts. Take Ivy. An illiterate born in a pigsty, she exists solely to satisfy her bodily appetites. No imagination, no curiosity. Magnificent shape.

Put not your faith in men, she thought. That out there is all you can trust: that hedge and that wet grass. Those dripping trees. As if it were happening to someone else, she observed the pieces of her past – Maman, Father, herself – rearranging to make a different pattern. She saw her childhood peel off and float away like a piece of waterweed in the Lode.

As she lay in bed it occurred to her that between religion and superstition there was no difference, since both were based on unreason.

She sang and knelt at the proper times, but she didn’t pray.

Nature was all there was. And Nature was enough.

Whatever sin Father committed, she promised the fen, I will find out. She felt alive in all her senses and eager for the hunt.

Maud’s response was measured and calm. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck to kill a magpie?’ ‘I dun’t believe in bad luck, Miss.’ ‘That doesn’t matter. It believes in you.’

‘May Father be punished for what he did,’ she prayed to the fen. ‘May his secret sin – whatever it is – eat away at him like acid. May he continue to see devils in church. And may his fear of the Doom grow and grow like weeds—’

As if some malevolent will were acting against me: forcing me to remember, for some occult reason of its own.

Maud knew all this as well as any housemaid, and although she was sure it was nonsense, she saw no harm in observing the rules. Thus while the servants grew merry on kitchel cakes and spiced elderberry wine, she tried to ensure a good year for herself by doing her favourite things. It was too dark to go for a walk in the fen, but she ordered her supper on a tray in the library, which was her favourite room, and she had her favourite foods: venison pie and apple cheesecake with ginger beer. Then she settled down by the fire and read her favourite bits in Robinson Crusoe.

The food and the cozy vibes in this book are everything

DEATH freezes everything. Whatever you did or didn’t do, whatever you said or left unsaid: none of that is ever going to change. You have no more chances to say sorry or make things right. No more chances for anything except regret.