The Phantom Tree. Nicola Cornick

to keep the child if she was brave and followed her plan. Her hand strayed to her swollen belly. She had tried to hate the baby for ruining everything but to her surprise she had failed. Accustomed to thinking herself cold, she had found nothing but maternal warmth towards the unwanted child. It was hers and she loved it fiercely. If she were honest with herself, and she had no wish to be, she had loved its father as well. Loving him had been a mistake but perhaps she was not as strong as she liked to imagine herself. That, however, was no way to think when she was facing the future alone.

      She thought of Mary then. Mary was lucky and the thought turned Alison’s stomach sour as it always did. Mary might be an orphan, but her status as the late Queen Katherine’s daughter would protect her for as long as there were people to remember it. Even if they did not care, the Seymours had to be seen to do right by her. They would provide her with a dowry, or the Queen would grant her an estate, or perhaps two. Alison closed her eyes and rested her head against the hard wood of the side of the cart. The Seymours might once have provided her with a modest dowry to encourage some rustic squire to take her to wife, but not now. She told herself she was glad and swallowed the bubbles of unhappiness that rose in her throat.

      The cart crossed the river by the stone bridge, turned right into the high street and rolled past the town cross, weaving across the street to avoid a pile of brushwood stacked haphazardly in front of a house. Craning her neck, Alison could see the mound, with its tumbledown castle atop, cutting the skyline to the west. The castle belonged to Edward, too, but since his father’s fall from grace he did not have the funds to restore it and it had been slowly decaying for at least a hundred years. It was said that the mound beneath contained the body of the wizard Merlin, which Alison thought was a ridiculous idea. People were very credulous. Never had she believed in magic. Dame Margery babbled about witchcraft because she was frightened, of life, of those matters she could not explain. Alison had always considered life to be mundane and without any sort of enchantment except perhaps of the sort she had briefly found in her lover’s arms.

      This was the end of the town where the tannery was situated and Alison drew a fold of her cloak across her face, trying in vain to blot out the smell of dung and urine and blood. Her stomach lurched with sickness. She had eaten nothing and so there was nothing to bring up; a blessing perhaps.

      ‘We are at the White Hart, mistress.’

      The cart had stopped. The horse waited patiently, the carter less so. He had errands to run. He did not offer to help her down and when she jumped it was awkwardly, hampered by her pregnancy and the full skirts. She gave him a penny and no thanks.

      There was no waiting coach in the inn yard. For all his haste, Alison could feel the carter pausing to watch her so she walked nonchalantly under the arch of the gatehouse and through the open door into the hall. It was dark enough to make her stumble after the light outside and the smoke from the open fire caught in her throat. A woman was standing by the hearth, stirring one of the pots that were hanging over the flames on an iron frame. A wooden hourglass stood on the table to the right of the fire. The sand in it had almost run through.

      The woman glanced up as Alison came in. ‘There’s no work here. Not for the likes of you.’ Quick to judgement. Her gaze flickered over Alison’s stomach making her meaning explicitly clear. Like the carter, she knew. She had heard about the Seymour cousin, who was no more than a trollop.

      ‘I am waiting for a coach to London,’ Alison said haughtily. ‘I will sit if I may.’

      The woman tossed her head. ‘Sit if you want.’

      Go to hell if you want, Alison thought.

      She woman offered no refreshment.

      The bench was of wood but made slippery by the cushions balanced on its narrow surface. Alison sat gingerly. What now? She was waiting for a coach that would never come and, judging by the sly look in the landlady’s eye, the woman knew it.

      A sudden clatter from the yard outside, the sound of voices in some imaginative curses, the splintering of wood made the woman exclaim and sent her hurrying out of the door towards the buttery, wiping her hands on her stained apron as she went. Quick as a flash, Alison slid off the bench and hurried over to the pot. Beef stew; it smelled good now that the nausea had subsided. She tried a spoonful, then another. Too hot, it scalded her mouth.

      There was the sound of a latch lifting across the other side of the hall.

       Caught.

      She turned. The wind blew the smoke sideways, setting it swirling in the draught flowing between the two open doors. For a moment, Alison was blinded by it, eyes stinging, head aching. The world jolted as though she had missed a step in a flight of stairs and tripped over an unseen obstacle lurking in the dark below. She moved instinctively towards the door, seeking light and air and clarity.

      The darkness cleared, the smoke disappeared. She was out in the street, but it was a different street in a different place completely. The sunlight was bright enough to make her shade her eyes. The air was full of noises. They assaulted her; shouts, crashing sounds, a roaring she could not begin to identify. Everything was shockingly intense, frighteningly loud and utterly unfamiliar, spiralling outwards into a spinning top of sensation. Her knees sagged. Her heart pounded.

      ‘Are you all right, love?’ A woman with a broad West Country accent had stopped in front of her. She was wearing very few clothes, legs and arms exposed, brown as a nut and wrinkled. It was disgusting.

      ‘You should take it easy,’ the woman said. ‘You can’t go rushing about in the hot sun when you’re pregnant, not in fancy dress like that.’ She pushed something into Alison’s hand, a bottle, made of a clear substance, not glass but something lighter.

      ‘Drink it,’ the woman said. Then, impatiently, meeting Alison’s blank gaze. ‘It’s only water, for God’s sake. I’m not trying to poison you.’

      ‘I…’ Alison did not know what she was trying to say but the sound was lost in a roar of noise as some sort of vehicle drove past. Beyond it Alison saw the façade of a house that looked familiar with its jetties and steep gabled roof. Familiar and yet different; the distortion was like looking through a glass window at something she knew and yet no longer recognised.

      Alison dropped the bottle on the stone at her feet. It bounced. She turned and ran, back through the door of what had been the tavern. Immediately, the sound died, shut off, the silence so loud it hurt her ears. The landlady was stirring the pot over the hearth. The smoke still stung her eyes.

      ‘There you are,’ the woman said. ‘There’s a man in the yard outside asking for you. Seymour livery.’ There was a grudging respect in her tone now.

      Alison sank down onto the cushioned bench and raised a hand to her head. She could feel the sweat, sticky and hot, at the roots of her hair. She had no idea what had happened to her; whether she was mad, possessed, or sick. Perhaps those fools who believed in enchantments were not such fools after all. She had seen… What precisely had she seen? She had no notion.

      ‘Mistress Banestre?’

      Edward’s squire did not look best pleased to have been obliged to come looking for her. He was a dark, surly fellow with a sly expression in his eyes. Alison had seen him before. Edward used him to arrange his amours.

      ‘She’s sick,’ the landlady said, sounding pleased and important. ‘It’s too hot for someone in her condition to be travelling.’

      The man’s gaze flicked over Alison carelessly. It told her that he had seen plenty of light women come and go and her condition was by no means unusual.

      ‘She’ll manage,’ he said, ‘if she wants to please Sir Edward.’

      ‘I was not expecting you,’ Alison said coldly. ‘Sir Edward did not mention sending a carriage.’

      The man smirked. ‘Aren’t you a lucky girl, then? Sir Edward’s changed his mind. He’s not done with you yet.’

      He put a hand beneath her elbow, levering her to her feet, steering her towards the stable yard.