such a foolish hiding place would conceal the brat? She jerks the cloth from the basket.
The infant blinks up at her in the sudden light, but it hasn't got the sense to stay quiet. It's messed itself. It lies wallowing in its own stench and excrement. Its face screws up and it bawls. It doesn't even look human, an animal, vermin, a stinking demon from the foul filth of hell. She seizes its ankles and jerks it up out of the basket; for a moment the child dangles from her fist, wriggling and writhing like a fish dragged from the river, then, as if it is a fish, she swings it violently, dashing its head against the stone wall. The silence is instant.
She stands quite still, watching the great splash of scarlet blood running down the white wall. The baby hangs limply from her hands, its eyes and mouth wide open, frozen. Then she notices for the first time that the baby's eyes are blue, deep and lucent as the waters of the ocean. They are the eyes of an angel.
Elena arched her back, trying to ease the ache of it, but her belly was so heavy she almost toppled backwards off the keg on which she squatted and had to press her hand on the wall of the dairy to steady herself.
The land was too wet from a week of heavy rain for any good to come from working in the fields, so Marion had rounded up some of the women to help with the work in the dairy. For most of the year the three dairymaids could milk the cows, feed the calves and piglets, and make butter and cheese. But now, with all the calves being weaned and the cows in full milk, extra hands were sorely needed.
Elena's belly was too big even to allow her to grasp the paddle of the butter churn at the right angle, and her ankles were too swollen for her to stand on them all day, so she was left to sit and fill the stomach bag of a newly killed bull-calf with water infused with boiled blackthorn and herbs to produce the rennet needed for cheese-making. It was greasy, messy work and her skirts were already soaked, but she made no complaint.
There was an indignant wail in the doorway and Joan, Athan's mother, marched in, struggling to hold the black dairy cat in her arms. The cat knew from experience what was coming and was trying to claw his way to freedom, but Joan had a firm grip on the scruff of his neck. One of the dairymaids grabbed the poor creature's tail and, parting the fur, searched for white hairs beneath the black. She took hold of a pinchful of hairs and yanked them out. The cat screeched. With a frantic wriggle it leapt out of Joan's arms and raced out of the dairy as if the hounds of hell were in pursuit.
The dairymaid circled the room, dropping three white hairs from the black cat's tail in each of the shallow stone troughs in which the milk had been left to separate. As every woman knew, the cat's hairs would help the cream to rise and counter any mischief evil spirits might have wrought. And it was well they did, for Gastmere abounded in evil-wishers, both spirit and human, just waiting for a chance to cause trouble.
'Has the fire been salted yet?' the dairymaid asked Joan, winking at the other women. They exchanged sly grins. She already knew the answer and was only asking to tease Joan.
Joan's chin tilted up with evident pride. 'Of course, I always do it first thing, before any other work is begun, else nothing will go right. You needn't fret that anything'll go amiss while I'm here.'
According to Joan, no one, not even the dairymaids, knew better than her the charms which would keep witches from spoiling the cheese or preventing the butter coming. And no one was more diligent in ensuring that such precautions were taken. As Elena had discovered, living under the same roof as her mother-in-law for these past four months, Joan had every reason to fear the evil eye, for there wasn't a man, woman or child in Gastmere who hadn't smarted under the lash of her tongue and cursed her under their breath.
Elena saw her mother-in-law casting her sharp little eyes about the dairy, and tried to shrink back out of sight, but with a belly as great as