12.THE CRONE'S GIFT

Janie has a strange visitor with an even stranger gift.

It hasn’t always been particularly important how old a person is, especially in stressful times when there were so many other things to worry about, like the harvest, the next meal and the hangman, so when Janie Cobweb sailed past her eighteenth birthday she wasn’t sure how old she was and didn’t have a clue that it was her actual birthday anyway. Details like that didn’t matter, not to her and not to anyone.

She had spent that last five years establishing a place to live. The building where her father had offered her shelter for the night was a no-no because it disappeared the moment she left it. Every stone, every piece of thatch, every wooden beam, they all went wobbly as if they had been made of magic, which she supposed they were, and then they weren’t there. Instead there was a patch of scrubby woodland, and that offered no shelter at all.

She ended up soon after the meeting with the devil who professed to be her father, back at Amblesole and that was more by accident than design. She was, she supposed, still only a child, but the ,ocals had a huge doubt about her.

Was she a witch? Or was she just a little girl lost, a child gone wrong because of a cruel happenstance to her mother years earlier? They didn’t know, but that ignorance hardly affected their opinion of her.

Most people didn’t like her because even though still young and pretty she may or may not have been a witch, and she was often booed by erstwhile friends and neighbours, some little tykes even thought of throwing stones at her but desisted when they saw the expression on her face, and the Priest, who had been rescued by the Bishop and really didn’t want to be in Amblesole any longer but had to stay where he was posted, called her an Antichrist, a word she was unfamiliar with but sounded even to her to be appropriate.

Her family home, no longer, you will recall, a castle-like solid building but somehow reduced to a hovel made of wattle and daub in a way that had strangely passed unnoticed by one and all, was still unoccupied. Somebody (or maybe quite a few somebodies) had tried to reduce it to ashes, but it had refused to burn, much to the consternation of the arsonists. All this went to support a wide range of theories concerning the Cobweb family, and even the child Janie was looked upon with what could only be called venomous spite.

But they say that it takes cruel opposition to make a person strong, and Janie gained in strength.

She became two things simultaneously. Firstly, the became an object of desire for all single lads over the age of twelve and secondly she became the unknown source of a great deal of what looked like an anonymous administration of justice.

The lads were easily dealt with because they offered her what she most wanted: someone who chose to spend time with her because they liked her, and as she grew older they began competing for her attention. Then it became more interesting as they nervously tried to go further than conversation and the odd knobbly ball game. Then the competition was for her favours, and that was far more interesting.

At the same time the odd person, maybe an irritable man sobering up after a night on bad ale, or a harridan of a wife over-reacting to her husband’s advances when she didn’t want them, had an unpleasant accident on the land for no apparent reason, or was attacked by crows in formation when crows never behave like that normally. That sort of administration of justice may well have emanated from some wish or mental image within the brain of Janie Cobweb. Nobody even guessed, but many were pleased they happened

Therefore, as the years crawled along (and they do seem to crawl to the young) she reached an age at which she felt particularly happy. She (had she known it) was eighteen and had already been, in the terms of the times she lived, an adult, a woman, for some years. There was no artificial distinction in that century when it came to adulthood. It was mostly related to the natural cycles that a girl and then a woman go through. And at that particular time, at that particular age, she decided to stay how she was, not growing a day older and enjoying things.

There were women she had seen growing old around her. A young and charming woman might be tender and delightful, get herself a sparkling young man with more hormones than enough, settle down with him, become pregnant in the rosy sort of way that young women do, have her babies and then, almost overnight, become middle-aged and haggard. And she didn’t want that.

That’s it, she told herself, enough is enough. I think I’ll stay like this.

And the very moment she thought that there came a knock on her tumbledown door.

The crone standing knocking was the oldest creature she had ever seen, but what was most remarkable was the pair of horns growing where her hairline should have been, and the suggestion of a wafting tail under her plentiful skirts was most suspicious.

“Yes,” she asked, frowning. There was something familiar about this crone, something she recognised, something very much like the creature who, years earlier, had called himself her father.

She shook her head. She must be mistaken. He had been a sort of man, not a crone

The crone, when she spoke, had a wavery voice that suggested untold years of growing ever older.

“Bunch of herbs for a little lady?” she asked.

There were two things that Janie didn’t want. She didn’t want a bunch of herbs because there were plenty of those growing in the little garden behind her cottage, and she didn’t want to be called a little lady.

“No thank you!” she snapped. “I’m quite happy without more herbs.”

But the crone, it seemed, was of a persistent nature. With a strength that went far beyond her relatively feeble appearance, she pushed her way into the cottage, and this made Janie particularly angry.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, trying to push the ancient creature back out. “I never said you can come in! Go away!”

“But you need me, my dear,” rasped the crone, “for have you not made a decision? Have you not concluded that growing old like me is a waste of time? Do you not wish to remain eternally young?”

“What do you know about being young, a hag like you with more than one foot under the sods of earth?” she demanded.

“Oh, the young can be so cruel,” sighed the crone, “there must come a time, surely, when compassion rules the heart and the evidence of the eyes becomes false?”

Janie felt stubborn. It wasn’t always in her nature, but this time the unwanted visitor was annoying her.

My father annoyed me like this, flashed through her mind. But, “I know the evidence of my eyes,” she said, “I know what I see!”

“You do?” asked the crone, “so look at me and tell me what you see...”

“I see a vicious old hag with more wrinkles … no, let me see, no, don’t do that, please stop, now...”

But the old woman did precisely what Janie told her not to do. The years began to fall from her. A face, that had been more wrinkles that skin, began to gain a new and vibrant lustre. And the lines smoothed themselves out, the eyes, dim with age, gained a sparkle and the woman stopped stooping and stood proudly upright.

Only her horns and the unseen tail remained the same, and only she knew that.

When she spoke, her voice was clear without the ragged croaking of too many years distorting it.

“I have come to give you your heart’s desire,” she said, her voice almost tinkling.

“I see beauty,” whispered Janie, shocked to truthfulness.

“And this beauty has a gift for you, my dear,” grinned the vigorous young visitor, her voice tinkling and sparkling, and she held out a bunch of herbs. “Take these, my dear, infuse them in clean hot water and drink the fluid created tonight, before you go to sleep. Then you will get the gift, the one and only gift that you desire.

“You will stay forever young and forever alive. Yours will be an eternity of grace!”

© Peter Rogerson 19.11.17