Hobb's Cottage: A Short Story (3 page)
“Can’t keep away from me?” smiled Dan but the banter died on his lips when he saw how pale Phoebe was. He didn’t ask what was wrong but, with an arm around her trembling shoulders, led her into the office and sat her down while he brewed tea so strong that the spoon could stand up and salute at them.
Phoebe was relieved it was Dan who was there to listen as she choked out her story. Lucy would have looked at her as though she was mad, and maybe she was? The mind can play strange tricks. But some instinct told her Dan would understand. Without speaking she reached into her rucksack and held out the hand, still clenched as though clawing at the stone. She’d been surprised just how hard she’d had to tug to pluck it from the heath. It hadn’t wanted to let go.
“Tilly,” breathed Dan, gently taking the hand in his own. His dark curls fell over his face as he caressed the bones tenderly with his forefinger. “You’re back, are you?”
“You don’t seem surprised,” Phoebe said. In spite of the sugary tea she was still trembling.
“I’m not.” Dan smiled at her. “But I’m glad that we finally know for sure who she is.” He glanced towards the museum where only feet away stood a glass case full of bones, strung loosely together with scarlet ribbon. “You reached her, Phoebe. Something about you must echo her story.”
“I’m not sure that I like that idea,” Phoebe said with a shiver. Yet oddly it did made sense; the feeling of knowing the cottage, the dreams, the waking with the sensation that someone had touched her cheek, the smells of rosemary and lavender that drifted unbidden through the rooms and the strange cat that came and went without warning. “So is the skeleton really the girl who once lived in my cottage? Tilly Penhalligan? The witch?”
Dan shook his head. “Tilly was misunderstood, abused and abandoned but no witch. The villagers knew no better than to suspect a woman living alone.”
“Nothing much changes then,” Phoebe said bitterly.
“Life was fragile in the seventeenth century and people were superstitious,” Dan said gently. “There was no science to tell them why a storm was coming or rationalise how sickness spread. Blaming a witch was their only explanation, however crazy that might sound to us.”
Phoebe recalled the names Alex’s wife had called her. Maybe not quite so crazy or as seventeenth century as Dan thought?
“The story goes that there was an evil storm,” he continued, his soft voice transporting her there. “Three boats were lost that night and above the howls of the wind the villagers swore they heard Tilly Penhalligan calling to Lucifer. Some even said they saw her dancing with him.”
Torches throw shadows that loom against the walls. I hear curses and feel nails bite into my flesh. Spittle hits my face and fingers pinch me.
“Burn the witch! Hang her!” they cry.
“Swim her!” howls another. “See if Satan saves her now.”
They rip me from the cottage, my boots dragging over the garden crushing the herbs. I see puss hanging from the porch, swinging in the storm like a wet glossy glove, and tears course down my cheeks.
“She weeps for her familiar!” cries someone else. “Hang her now!”
I start to fight. My fingers, already bloody with digging, lash out at the clawing hands. They mean to hang me from my porch, the very porch where James carried me inside and loved me then and there. I twist and cry and piss myself in terror.
James! Where are you? Why don’t you come?
“What happened?” Phoebe’s tea was cold and she leaned forward in her seat. She could taste Tilly’s fear, bitter as sores, and recognised that clawing sensation of betrayal. “Did James come?”
Dan nodded. “He came and stopped them from hanging her but then he left her to her fate. His infant son had died that night and cries of witchcraft were ringing in his ears too. He wasn’t going to risk anything for Tilly Penhalligan.”
“But didn’t he love her?”
Dan shrugged. “Maybe he did, but he was afraid. Those were dangerous times, Phoebe. In Colchester the Witch Finder General was hanging scores of harmless old women and a frenzy of hysteria was sweeping England. James was a coward, I agree, but also a product of his age.”
Phoebe found she was holding her breath. In her mind’s eye she saw Tilly alone and hoping, Tilly weeping for a baby she knew she couldn’t keep, Tilly abandoned and afraid. The parallels drove the blood from her veins.
“So what happened?” she whispered.
“From the research I’ve done it seems Tilly was taken to Bodmin Gaol to await trial for witchcraft. There’s little record of her from then on but it’s commonly thought she died of a fever. Believe me, that was a blessing.”
“But she’s not at peace, is she? There’s something left at Hobb’s Cottage, something she needs us to find if she’s to rest.” Phoebe gulped. She realised now that she knew exactly what this was. The knowledge chilled her to the bone.
Dan reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. She followed him into the museum and they paused before the case of bones. Gently Dan opened the lid and placed the missing hand back inside.
“Are you ready to help her look for it?” he asked.
* * *
The hearth looked as though a team of road diggers had passed through. Sweating, Dan prised a crow bar under the last undisturbed flagstone, and placed his weight against it. Apart from his grunts the cottage was still, as though waiting. Even the gulls outside were silent.
Dan’s eyes met Phoebe’s.
“Ready?”
She bit her lip and nodded. He didn’t need to lift the stone. She already knew what lay beneath - a tiny skeleton, curled on its side, small bony thumb plugged into the void of that tiny mouth. A few tendrils of hair dusted the skull and scraps of fabric clung to the bones.
Tilly’s baby.
It’s a wild and stormy afternoon. Wild rain lashes the cliffs, driving in horizontal sheets from the boiling sea. Purple clouds race past, shadowed with sickly storm light. Gulls are snatched by the wind and their wings beat feebly before they turn back to the village for shelter.
Two people are battling against the gale and I follow them. Their heads are down against the weather and one, the man, pulls a hood over his head. In his arms he has a box clasped against his breast, held tightly as though most precious to him. The girl follows, carrying a spade and a sodden bunch of wildflowers.
Eventually they pause at the place where the cliff path turns easterly, dipping inwards and affording shelter. As the land drops away through the mist the small whitewashed cottages of Polkerryn can be spied, huddled and twisted together. Nearest to them is my little porch with its twinkling lights. In the gloom Hobb’s Cottage beckons of warmth and home.
The man is speaking. His words are soft. The dark haired girl is digging. The rain pastes her hair into her eyes but she wipes it away impatiently until satisfied with her handiwork. I’m drawn closer.
They are holding the box and now I see that the girl has a smaller parcel. She falls to her knees and places it into the earth, wiping tears from her eyes. The man opens the box and bones and red ribbons tumble into the earth and then my arms are full! The baby smiles up at me and we’re flying, soaring with the gulls and laughing!! I leap and spin and weep for joy, pressing kisses to his fat cheeks and whirling him through the air.
The dust has gone! And I’m free! Returned to skies and the sun and the storms!
“Dan!” breathed Phoebe, clutching his arm. “Look!”
Together they watched the storm cease and abruptly as it had arrived. The rain paused as though a heavenly tap was turned off and the wind dropped away as a sliver of golden light slipped through the billowing clouds. The howling wind was hushed and all was quiet.
Everything was peaceful.
Once Dan had buried the bones, Phoebe scattered thyme and lavender onto the earth, breathing in the scents that had filled her dreams for weeks. Maybe burying Tilly on the cliffs wasn’t strictly the correct procedure but from the lifting of her heart she knew it was totally and utterly the right thing to have done.
“It’s done,” she said, turning to Dan. “She’s gone, hasn’t she?”
He nodded. “She’s at peace.”
Drawing her against his chest, Dan and Phoebe watched the world quieten. It was all pink and shining and newly made after the tempest.
Deep in Phoebe’s pocket there was a buzzing sound and reaching into her woollen coat she plucked out her mobile phone. On the screen the words
Alex Mobile
flashed incessantly
like a message from another life, a life that no longer bore any relation to her own and that she no longer wanted. With a heart rising like a hot air balloon Phoebe realised more than one person had been set free today.
Raising her arm she hurled the phone with all her might up into the newly scrubbed sky. High into the shining light it soared before plummeting deep into the depths of the sea, the waves closing over it with a sigh. Then, holding out a hand to Dan, Phoebe looked down towards the glowing light in the window of Hobb’s Cottage.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
The End
Dear Reader,
I really hope you enjoyed this short story. Some of you may recognise Cornish myths, settings and stories within it that have certainly influenced my writing.
Hobb’s Cottage
was written a few years ago and was inspired by an old house in the Cornish fishing village of Polperro, where my best friend was living for a summer. Although the cottage was beautiful, all beams set at quirky angles and lead paned windows gazing out across the rolling sea, the place always had the oddest atmosphere, as though it was holding its breath and waiting for something. This air of stillness was totally at odds with the bustling village outside and I always had the strongest sensation that the twenty-first century was well and truly left behind once the front door closed.
This seventeenth century cottage was situated half way up the very steep hill leading out of Polperro, a road now called Talland Hill, and the location for some of the most beautiful properties in South East Cornwall. However, it’s a little known fact that the road’s far older name is
Hobb’s Hill;
an ancient title that locals say means
Witch’s Hill
. Several people that I know, including tough fishermen and new comers to Polperro with no previous knowledge of the hill’s sinister alter ego, told spookily similar stories of supernatural experiences which occurred there.
Although I never saw anything odd myself, at least not on Talland Hill anyway, while my friend lived in the cottage she certainly had several unsettling experiences and eventually moved on to somewhere less shimmering with vibrations of the past. Since then the cottage has changed hands several times but nobody seems to stay there for long…
My story about Tilly Penhalligan and Phoebe began with the Polperro cottage and developed further when I visited the famous witchcraft museum in Boscastle. Struck by the artefacts displayed there and then inspired further by stories of the Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin Town, told by a very talented ex teaching colleague of mine, I finally sat down and wrote this short story. Reading it several years on, even in the blazing Caribbean sunshine, I still get the shivers because I’m instantly transported back to that very strange cottage on Talland Hill, and watching the sea mists roll in to cut us off from the village below.
I really hope you enjoyed
Hobb’s Cottage
. Please feel free to email me and let me know your thoughts and your own ghostly experiences. I love to hear them and once the new blog and website are up and running I’d really like to pop some up.
You can write to me at
[email protected]
or visit my website
www.ruthsaberton.co.uk
or via my Facebook author page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ruth-Saberton-Author/117666788262892?ref=bookmarks
.
I also have an Amazon page
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruth-Saberton/e/B003VO6PT2
where you can read all about what I’m up too and find out about my other books. If you enjoyed this story I’d really appreciate a short review on Amazon. Reviews are like gold dust for authors and they really do help.
Finally, if paranormal romance is a genre you enjoy, please check out my new novel,
Dead Romantic
, available for pre order on Amazon and released globally by Notting Hill Press on October 2
nd
2014
http://amzn.to/1njG2JA
. The opening chapter is right here to give you a taster. And if you buy and enjoy the book, please leave a review and get in touch – it is very much appreciated and makes all the difference!
Take care and happy reading!
x
Ruth
x
