‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ Mam said. ‘You’ll have your master to talk to. He’ll be your teacher, and no doubt he’ll eventually become your friend. And you’ll be busy all the time. Busy learning new things. You’ll have no time to feel lonely. Don’t you find the whole thing new and exciting?’
‘It’s exciting but the job scares me. I want to do it but I don’t know if I can. One part of me wants to travel and see places but it’ll be hard not to live here any more. I’ll miss you all. I’ll miss being at home.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ Mam said. ‘Your dad’s getting too old to work, and come next winter he’s handing the farm over to Jack. Ellie will be having her baby soon, no doubt the first of many; eventually there won’t be room for you here. No, you’d better get used to it before that happens. You can’t come home.’
Her voice seemed cold and a little sharp, and to hear her speak to me like that drove a pain deep into my chest and throat so that I could hardly breathe.
I just wanted to go to bed then, but she had a lot to say. I’d rarely heard her use so many words all in one go.
‘You have a job to do and you’re going to do it,’ she said sternly. ‘And not only do it; you’re going to do it well. I married your dad because he was a seventh son. And I bore him six sons so that I could have you. Seven times seven you are and you have the gift. Your new master’s still strong but he’s some way past his best and his time is finally coming to an end.
‘For nearly sixty years he’s walked the County lines doing his duty. Doing what has to be done. Soon it’ll be your turn. And if you won’t do it, then who will? Who’ll look after the ordinary folk? Who’ll keep them from harm? Who’ll make the farms, villages and towns safe so that women and children can walk the streets and lanes free from fear?’
I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t look her in the eye. I just fought to hold back the tears.
‘I love everyone in this house,’ she said, her voice softening, ‘but in the whole wide County, you’re the +only person who’s really like me. As yet, you’re just a boy who’s still a lot of growing to do, but you’re the seventh son of a seventh son. You’ve the gift and the strength to do what has to be done. I know you’re going to make me proud of you.
‘Well, now,’ Mam said, coming to her feet, ‘I’m glad that we’ve got that sorted out. Now off to bed with you. It’s a big day tomorrow and you want to be at your best.’
She gave me a hug and a warm smile and I tried really hard to be cheerful and smile back, but once up in my bedroom I sat on the edge of my bed just staring vacantly and thinking about what Mam had told me.
My main is well respected in the neighbourhood. She knows more about plants and medicines than the local doctor, and when there is a problem with delivering a baby, the midwife always sends for her. Mam is an expert on what she calls breech births. Sometimes a baby tries to get born feet first but my mam is good at turning them while they are still in the womb. Dozens of women in the County owe their lives to her.
Anyway, that was what my dad always said but Mam was modest and she never mentioned things like that. She just got on with what had to be done and I knew that’s what she expected of me. So I wanted to make her proud.
But could she really mean that she’d only married my dad and had my six brothers so she could give birth to me? It didn’t seem possible.
After thinking things through, I went across to the window and sat in the old wicker chair for a few minutes, staring through the window, which faced north.
The moon was shining, bathing everything in its silver light. I could see across the farmyard, beyond the two hay fields and the north pasture, right to the boundary of our farm, which ended halfway up Hangman’s Hill. I liked the view. I liked Hangman’s Hill from a distance. I liked the way it was the furthest thing you could see.
For years this had been my routine before climbing into bed each night. I used to stare at that hill and imagine what was on the other side. I knew that it was really just more fields and then, two miles further on, what passed for the local village - half a dozen houses, a small church and an even smaller school but my imagination conjured up other things. Sometimes I imagined high cliffs with an ocean beyond, or maybe a forest or a great city with tall towers and twinkling lights.
But now, as I gazed at the hill, I remembered my fear as well. Yes, it was fine from a distance but it wasn’t a place I’d ever wanted to get close to. Hangman’s Hill, as you might have guessed, didn’t get its name for nothing.
Three generations earlier, a war had raged over the whole land and the men of the County had played their part. It had been the worst of all wars, a bitter civil war where families had been divided and where sometimes brother had even fought brother.
In the last winter of the war there’d been a big battle a mile or so to the north, just on the outskirts of the village. When it was finally over, the winning army had brought their prisoners to this hill and hanged them from the trees on its northern slope. They’d hanged some of their own men too, for what they claimed was cowardice in the face of the enemy, but there was another version of that tale. It was said that some of these men had refused to fight people they considered to be neighbours. Even Jack never liked working close to that boundary fence, and the dogs wouldn’t go more than a few feet into the wood. As for me, because I can sense things that others can’t, I couldn’t even work in the north pasture. You see, from there I could hear them. I could hear the ropes creaking and the branches groaning under their weight. I could hear the dead, strangling and choking on the other side of the hill.
Mam had said that we were like each other. Well, she was certainly like me in one way: I knew she could also see things that others couldn’t. One winter, when I was very young and all my brothers lived at home, the noises from the hill got so bad at night that I could even hear them from my bedroom. My brothers didn’t hear a thing, but I did and I couldn’t sleep. Mam came to my room every time I called, even though she had to be up at the crack of dawn to do her chores.
Finally she said she was going to sort it out, and one night she climbed Hangman’s Hill alone and went up into the trees. When she came back, everything was quiet and it stayed like that for months afterwards.