Free Hobb's Cottage: A Short Story by Ruth Saberton Page B

and dark brown eyes?  Would she have gone to jail for nothing more sinister than being stupid enough to have fallen in love with a married man?   The fishermen’s wives in the village certainly eyed her with suspicion, that was for sure!  Even in the high tech twenty-first century a woman without a man was a threat.   A free spirit who read Beowulf in the original and who stomped about in long skirts and big clompy boots didn’t fit in with their playgroups and coffee mornings.  They all wondered where she’d come from and why she was in their village.  Let them wonder , Phoebe had decided within ten minutes of arriving.  Their wild imaginings were far more exciting and romantic than the truth.
    After all, there wasn’t anything romantic about losing your baby and then giving your lover an ultimatum…
    Maybe things in hadn’t really changed much at all since the seventeenth century?   Gazing out at the view Tilly must have studied while she waited for her lover with as little hope as Phoebe now waiting for Alex to make up his mind, her eyes grew heavy.  Thinking about Alex exhausted her.
     
     
    She’s here. 
    I watch from the shadows, this girl in my house and I feel her sadness.  An emotion so pervasive I feel it running deep within her and fluttering out through her lips as she breathes.   In her sleep she turns to face me and her sightless eyes open. She senses me.
    The room dips and swirls and now the floor is new, the windows twinkling and in the hearth a fire burns, warming the cauldron of broth that bubbles atop the flames. Chickens scratch outside the door, my pig roots in the tiny yard and puss purrs contentedly in a patch of sunlight.  Herbs crowd the window ledges, rosemary, feverfew and thyme, while outside the roses and honeysuckle that James planted for me nod drowsily in the breeze.
    I glance down at my hands, and laugh to see they are soft and smooth!  I am a maiden again!  Dewy skinned and pink of cheek, my hair is neatly coiffed, the black curls that James loves to wind around his fingers and crush against his lips modestly tucked away.  My dress is of sober brown wool, my apron is white and as I sweep my cottage I hum a little tune to myself.  I’m fortunate indeed that James found me such a haven and I laugh to have the sun on my face and the cries of the gulls in my ears.  I laugh too at James’ curses when he forgets to duck his head as he comes through the porch and when he holds me in his arms I laugh because I am young and alive and so very in love.
    I am safe here.  In this tiny place they know not my mother, Megan the Healer, they are not aware that in our village people came crying to her for cures and herbs.  When babes wouldn’t turn they came, when teeth rotted and swelled they pleaded for help, when hearts were broken they came to have their tears dried.  And when they had taken all that they wanted, they came for my mother, carried her away and hanged her while I fled like a coward and closed my ears to her screams.
    Witch Girl they called me and I was afraid.   I travelled the county finding work where I could and sometimes using my mother’s herb lore. When James Tregarten, the young squire, looked upon me with favour I didn’t say no.  I collected herbs and flowers by moonlight and slipped them into his goblet but any country girl whose head’s turned by a handsome face would have done the same. And is it really witchcraft that urges a man bored with a plain and fat wife to seek his pleasures elsewhere?
    Country lore and love potions, these are the only spells I weave.
    James has hidden me away in this small cottage at the edge of his lands.  Here I pretend I am a respectable widow.  Later James will come and lead me up to the small attic room where we’ll tumble on the bed and crush the wild flowers I’ve strewn across the linen.  His lovemaking makes up for all the nights alone when I watch the waves break over the jagged rocks and feel