Just as they entered the yard, Maggie puts a hand on her brother’s shoulder. "Let's offer Jack our help. But after, I need ye  t’tell me what’s passing between you lads and Jim Stone.”

She walks up to Jack with a tolerably pleasant grin and asks how they might help with his task.

Jack looked up with infinite suspicion, then at the cart with its axle up on a precarious mix of logs, stones and slates on its near side. Knowing Maggie could lift it and likely slap the wheel on one-handed if she wanted to clearly tempted him, but he trusted her about as far as he could throw her, which if he was actually capable of doing he'd have attempted long before.

"I've done most of the carpenting, but leave the boy here." He nodded towards the house.

"Wife's in the kitchen, she'll want to know you're not drowned dead in a ditch. I'll call ye when you're needed."

"Aye, Jack, just whistle an' I'll be along," Maggie tries not to smirk at the arrogant man-thing. She goes along to the house. "Katey! I'm home! Let me tell ye all that's occurred up by th' Wyzenwood an' what I've heard. Is there a crust a bread an' some dripping. I'm that starved."

When she finds her sister she greets her with a hug and kiss and takes Jamie off her hip to prattle at and dandle as she tells about the tracks they found and what she believes they portend, about Jim Stone in the bog hole (but not about the fairy door and the riches it could lead to, no need for Jack to get wind of her treasure), about the foolish men that ran heedless into the wood and what they found there, about all that was said by Mercy and the doctor and the preacher.

"It's powerful doings and no mistake." she concludes as she tucks the sleeping infant into his cradle that's growing too short by the day.

Kate had already been fairly cheerful when Maggie came in - unusual, for a day after Maggie'd slept elsewhere, as Kate was one to worry - and moreso to see her sister home, though her joy faded with the rest of the news and she seemed pensive, deeply concerned.

"Mm...I think I heard something of that noise," Kate said, "-but that was after Master Fox was already out. He came up here, y'know-" she caught herself, suddenly deciding against some detail and turning away to ladle more from the pottage pot "-passing through."

"What could they want, whoever would give a poor maid to Her up there?" she wondered.

"Wait there," Maggie says, turning all her attention on her sister, "What would Master Fox be wantin' here at our farm? You must tell me, Kate. Quality folk don't come around just t' hob nob with th' likes o' us. What was he after? What did he say?"

"Said he'd been in the Wood," Kate said, sliding Maggie's bowl back to her with more pottage and bread. She didn't look at her sibling and there was a high flush in her cheeks as she turned away to reach down more barley and herbs to set simmering to top up the pot. "Said it felt like being buried alive, like being sick and alone in a huge house, that he needed to hear, see, touch someone else. He showed me his hands and I took 'em..."

Kate's voice had gone small and trembled now, not understanding herself. "I...I didn't, I wouldn't betray Jack, but we weren't right. He was...so beautiful, afraid like that somehow. Fragile, like a new thing. I...I felt beautiful, too, and new, but me at the same time, and I wasn't afraid of him. I let him kiss my shoulder, touch as he thought he needed. We weren't right."

"When he left I penned the baby in the linen-space with the blocks and went straight out to Jack, and I think - I mean, I just feel like it worked this time, and I been that pleased I'd half-forgot about the young squire, but O God, what did I do?" Kate's breath hitched, doing nothing but leaning on the side of the range.

Along the short passage to the outer door, it sounded like the men of the house were heading in, Jack saying something inaudible. After all this time it was likely he - with the aid of poor Robin doing his best - had probably wrestled the wheel on himself.

"-distract him whilst I pull mysel' together," Kate pleaded, almost looking back, then grabbing a lumpy turnip to peel. _"please."

Maggie grabs her sister in a quick embrace, her head a-whirl with this disclosure. As Jack comes into the room, she rounds on him.

"Ho, Jack! Given up on the cart have ye? Never mind, I'll go out wi' ye after supper an' set it aright. What?! Job's done? Oh-ho, this I have ta see. Come on!"

She practically drags the protesting Jack back outside and around to the cart. She inspects cart and wheel minutely, asking questions and making disparaging comments.

Finally she says, "Aye, well, suppose it'll do. Lucky ye had our Robyn come by t'help, eh? Come along then. Let's wash up and get our vittles."

She is fairly confident she's gotten under the man's skin enough that he'll not notice any irregularity in Kate's demeanour.

Jack had gradually hackled up under this treatment like a cockerel kicked about by barbarous youths, right on the point of launching spurs-first and beak for the eyes despite knowing it'd get him struck again. The avian contempt pulled his shoulders back and put a certain amount of murder in his upward stare.

"What," he demanded, carefully setting the mallet down again from making some suggested taps to wedges, "-is it that's wrong with ye?"

It was a statement that fairly ended the conversation, at least until they were inside. Kate was calmly scooping peelings into a stock pot for later boiling and the baby slept on, oblivious to tension that didn't entirely wash away with the grease and sawdust Jack rid himself of as Kate updated him of the village's plans. Aware that he was the easiest target for deflected wrath, Robin had made himself scarce, likely out in the garden with the cat.

"Hrmph - and this hanging about at the stones, it wasn't your idea?" he asked Maggie, scarcely mollified by bread, dripping, and tea, even with kitchen pepper on the former.

"Truly, Jack, I've never figured that out. Do ye think I'm maybe a changeling, some fairy's get? 'Twould explain a lot, aye?"

Maggie's glad to find Kate composed and going about her chores in an almost normal fashion. They eat their tea almost companionably while Maggie recounts the story of the activities around the Wyzenbwood again.



"My idea? Jack, are ye daft? D'ye think I have such sway over doctor an' preacher an' Mast--" A sharp glance from Kate diverts her from that line of thought "--an' Mister Collins? They don't even listen t'th' respectable women in Scorch Norton. They surely don't listen t' th' likes o' me."

Perhaps to his credit, Jack had forborne from making any comment on his late mother-in-law's proclivities, only touching the horseshoe above the door in passing for the invocation of the Fair Folk.

"They heeded your sayin' she was dead, save the Vicar," he pointed out, watching her closely, knowing something was amiss in the house but unable to pin it down save that it had come with Maggie. "An' then mayhap-"

"They're here!" Robin called in the door. "The men to guard our stone - shall I take them up?"

The baby burbled softly, stirring a little. Jack drew in a breath ready to rise, but paused fractionally to see if Maggie would decide this was her errand. For a moment Maggie saw him as the village men might - a small man now but a few years from thirty, trying to hold a farm together whilst all in it squirmed athwart his grip; a silly little fighting-cock - and knew he would not follow at her heel if she went there.

Maggie remains seated, not even turning to look out the door.

"Well, Jack, I expect they'll be wantin' t'get permission from th' master o' th' farm. Robyn, you'd best go along in case Jack has need of ye.

"Is there a bit moore pottage, Kate? It's that hungry I am."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:26, Mon 16 May 2022.

Jack gave Maggie a narrow look of suspicion and went to greet the guests on what was technically his land. "Don't give her all we've got," he told Kate in passing.

"There's enough," Kate responded softly, "-tell them I'll send the hay box up with something later. Maggie, you eat too fast," she finished, using the ladle to sort what was done from the top of the pot. "Here, shall I addle egg in it?"

"Ah...right." Robin ducked back out from where he'd appeared, reluctant but aware he couldn't shirk a man of the holding's duty here. Jack hastened his going, and the pair in the kitchen heard the door shut on greetings outside, a dull babble that grew distant from the quiet within. The baby slept.

"Never mind, Kate," Maggie says, staying her sister's hand and looking intently into her eyea as she pulls her down to sit on the bench beside her.

"Tell me very plainly about Master Fox when he came today. What time was it? What did he wear? Did he look well and was he orderly about his person, his clothes? What did he say when he greeted you and what did you say to him? Quickly now." Her voice is urgent and serious, unlike her usual lackadaisy manner.

"This isn't gossip, Meg..." Kate responded, upset. She looked aside under Maggie's intensity and took a deep breath, her hands trembling a little in her sister's grip as though the younger woman had captured a perfect brace of fearful birds.

"It was...afternoon, perhaps before three? I thought I heard the searchers, calling, so it was when their voices might carry here. He wore that beautiful blue coat of his, with the brocades, and the waistcoat that goes with that, a shirt, white ruffles at the throat clipped down with some green stone...a watch, surely, with the gold watch-chain, breeches of some dark blue stuff, stockins of a new butter colour, not quite white, shoes with silver buckles to them and his hair-ribbon like the breeches, dark. He looked-"

Kate frowned. "No, it wasn't upset. Stunned. Afraid...new. Fragile. Like something fallen out the nest." She swallowed and shifted with discomfort, shame or the memory of being at a raw liberty from such notions changing her breathing and spotting colour in her cheeks. "He 'ad some twigs and leaves and suchlike caught about him, I would say, but about as orderly as you might expect, had he been in the Wood, as he said, an' run out."

"He said 'Please help me,' and I, bein' somewhat surprised and by way of bein alarmed by the young squire coming in like he was blown there, I asked him what was wrong, an' he said that about feeling dead in the Wood, and begged to touch me." Her fingers curled as though away from pain. "It didn't seem wrong, at the time. We can't either of us been right."

Maggie peers intently into her sister's eyes.

"I've something fearful t'tell ye, Kate. Your visitor this afternoon couldn't have been Master Fox. Master Fox was still lost in th' Wyzenwood then an' when he emerged with Tom Bees, he was... was all over blood they said, though he said it wasn't his own. And when he come out, he went straightaway to his house with Widow Sexton and Mistress Criddle who wouldn't let go of him." She squeezes her sister's hands ever tighter.

"What I fear... What I fear, Kate, is that you were visited by some fetch sent by th' Witch o'th' Wood. Mercy Westcott told us how th' Witch has been in th' Wood since before th' Church come to these parts. And her greatest desire was for a woman who could bear... somethin'--some evil child. But th' Druids an' th' Romans an' th' priests kept that from her.

"What I fear is that she sent out some semblance o' Nathan Fox while she held himself at th' heart of Wyzenwood. Tell me, Kate, did ye lie with him today? Y'know I don't ask for gossip or t' shame ye and wouldn't even if my own name were spotless, which we know it isn't."

She lets go Kate's hands and snatches her into a tight embrace. Whispering in her ear, "Tell me true, Katy love. Did ye lie with him?"

Kate wouldn't look back, gasped and began to struggle like a trapped beast at the hug. "Maggie, what-? Get off! Get- off!"

Freed, she clung to the end of the bench under her where she'd fallen back and gave Maggie a look that made Maggie think of the time she'd slipped into a field with a cow as a child: she'd thought nothing of it, as the neighbouring cattle were always kind to her, big, slow-moving beasts with warm muzzles. Only that once, one had a new calf. Enough halfhearted grey light wound through the kitchen's smoke to catch the smudges of green in the wintry wet-leaf brown of Kate's eyes, gazing back with that flat wild danger where always docility had been.

"I didn't. Listen to me, what I've sinned, I've sinned, an' he never did more than I let 'im, Wood-thing or no. Why would I say it was touch and not even kissing on the mouth if I was set to lie about it?" In the brief quiet after the queston, both sisters knew they knew that answer: distraction. Kate looked away, still highly flushed.

"Well, I didn't. You could ask Jack if ye were minded to set him fixin' things with blows, or if I'm right come back and see come the new year that my...my child had dark hair, if the story about Fox red holds water. How d'ye know it was the young squire I had here and not the one went with his bride that was the false one, or if Herself was making doubles, why would She let the true one go?"

"An' if - if - it was a child She wanted - an' I won't believe there's such thing as born evil, even the gorgon, if it was a gorgon, must've took milk and been harmless like another babe, that they let it live, an' it them - there's no reason it'd be now, or me, or if it was now and me that Her thing wouldn't have..." she took in a quick, sharp breath. "Look, he did what I let him, an' if he smelled like leaves he felt and breathed like a man, an' gave me all due courtesy. If he made a finish of it for his own self, it weren't in here, and weren't in me."

Kate was quite pink in defiance, but took off her bonnet to re-fix her hair, as though re-making her good self, or whole self, with all that might befit a proper wife. "It's not like either'd have to honour that," she said thickly, too aware of herself in her skin. "An' before you ask, if it weren't what I'd chosen, if he'd but come in and put me across the table or some like, knowing as I couldn't lift a hand for myself against gentry nor be heeded after, I'd never have mentioned it."

Kate swallowed, calming back to the woman who could never replace Maggie's mother for all her work or taking on of burdens. A woman, Magggie saw as she rarely did, who was only four years older than she. "Not because you'd say any like of that I was game if I didn't go out and call for my husband at once, or if I'd red in my stockings, or any such men's nonsense...but I think ye'd kill him for me, an' that's a death by the stake, and then where would we be?"

She nodded over at the cradle and at last offered her hands back again, ready to be touched even if there was a wet bright glitter to her eyes. "I'm sorry, Maggie. I did something fair wicked today and I'm not sure why, or now quite what, and this notion you have...I don't know I doubt the whole, but there's a lot to it."

Tears of relief spring to Maggie's eyes as well.

"Oh, Kate, my heart is joyed to hear ye say so. I never would expect different of ye but it seems witchcraft is afoot and I was sore a-feared for you. Well, all's right for now. Still, you must be watchful, with that Wood loomin' so close here. I'll see can Mercy come t'put th' house under protection somehow. But know that any man that would harm you in any way would answer t'me an' I'd have his life or his manhood to square accounts, even were I t'hang for it." She is silent a moment struck by a thought.

"I'm wonderin' if it might be as you say. That the real Nathan Fox was here and a false one gone home to Fox Manor. I don't know what can be done about that. Perhaps Mercy'll have an idea."

She hugs her sister to her and kisses both cheeks: "I owe you so many debts, Kate, that I can never repay any way but t'be true to you, and to Jack aye, and do all I can for your family. I promise that I will.

"Now I'd best be out and see what men have come here and what it is they want and what's doing. Then I'll away to Mercy. But I'll sleep here tonight, or send word."

Another kiss and she's grabbing up her shawl and out the door.

"If the real one ever came out...Lord save that young Janet, she's scarce more than a girl..." Kate said, but returned the hug with a sure, strong grip that reiterated that love gifted never was for deserving. She caught Maggie briefly in rising to kiss her temple and give her a small smile.

"Thank you," she said, meaning it, then hefted up as Maggie looked set to dart out, gesturing to the relevant basket. "-and take some onions for them to be getten on with, at least...!"

---

Maggie clambered over the wall at the most convienient spot, onions swaddled in her apron. Damp hid in the deep grass heading up to the Crop Stone once she'd crossed their top field, and though the trees surrounding the stone itself were few the hush inside them made the spot feel like stepping into an empty church. Tobacco smoke wended its way through the scent of may blossoms and greenery, suggesting the men were talking over such a treat and as yet not doing very much guarding at all: stepping closer to the clearing about the broad and drunkenly tilted monument, Maggie spied Natty Hartman explaining something that might be 'antlers' by the gesture he was caught in, Jack with his back to her and the younger Toby Aching, a cousin of Polly's on a spring visit to his parents and sister.

The latter youth was a rambling freckled creature who might be set going on any topic and get around to scaring himself, as much like his sister Emma as a round ball of chalk to a solid chunk of limestone. It was a little concerning that he currently had Robin fascinated with what looked to be a pistol. Natty only had a pitchfork, but expecting a Hartman to add gravitas to any proceedings was like expecting a Yendale to live purely off green vittles. The straggle of trees stretched out behind them a little way, curving towards the Fox estate and messy with shrubbery, half of it hazel coppice gone gleefully feral with neglect. Somewhere out among it a blackbird sang with excessive enthusiasm.

"Jack," says Maggie as she nears the knot of men, "Your wife has sent these onions to refresh you an' your guests." After allowing Jack to tell her to pass out the onions, she shakes out her apron and says, "Do any of you know whether Mercy Westcott was still at the inn?"

"Aye, but she was about set to leave when we were, at that," Natty said, taking his pocketknife to the top of his onion with fair dexterity.

"Wouldn't have anyone go with her for witness," Toby added, somewhere between awe and suspicion.

"Aye, then I'd best look for her at her cottage. Good day t'ye, Goodmen."

Maggie takes the fastest way to Mercy's home.

[I had thought Mercy's cottage was marked on the map and can't remember where it is.]

Maggie's sudden lurch from the grove and the copse to the field was marked by alarmed hails from the men that faded behind her as she loped for the road.

"Hey, don't _go ^alone-!"

                                    "Maggie!"


Likely Jack reassured them or said she'd have it coming if some murderous road man took her, refusing to be told - or both, for none ran after. Maggie was alone with her steady breaths and the gentle crush of enriched earth or fieldside weed-beds underfoot, the wind on her face and the fields and village stretched out below as they'd always been. She clambered over the stile at the field boundary and onto the coach road, finding herself in the company of wheel-ruts and a flight of goldfinches that had been picking insects amongst the thorny hedge. She set off downhill.


[[it's the one with its own little corner of trees at the base of Yendale's dale/corner of the main road and back lane at the edge of the village - Maggie started out just off-map at the top and is coming down the main road towards the village now, right on the very top of the map.

Relatedly, please give me a Spot Hidden.]]

Maggie ran, heedless of the men’s warning cries as they faded behind her, glad of the wind in her face, happy to release the strength of her body. She approached the little copse that sheltered Mercy’s home.

Margaret Yendale rolled 72 for Spot Hidden 25.

Loping freely, seeing nothing but her path and a vague impression of the green swaying over it to her left, Maggie came nigh the windbreak trees behind the midwife's house. She slipped through a withered gap in the hedge and threaded the trees, coming past the pond that caught any drainage off the hill not sent around it by field drains, busy with tadpoles, and into the back garden. It seemed Mercy was not outside at present.

Maggie steps carefully through the garden, approaching the back door.

"Mercy, it's Maggie. I come with a tale t'tell." she calls.