Wenham Magna, Suffolk, 1633 “The devil is everywhere,” James Hopkins, the vicar of Wenham, tells his youngest son one morn, his Apostle spoons laid out on the table before him. Heirlooms of silver, each bears the image of a saint moulded into the handle, along with the associate symbol, orb, key or cup. “The worm, […]
A crown wasn’t a requirement for starving, but most of us adopted it as a rule. We imagined the crystals as diamonds, the metal as silver, the weight of the circlet resting atop our hairsprayed updos the triumph we’d been chasing all seventeen years of our lives. Sequins and glitter look better against exposed hip […]
When it was my turn to have my lips sewn, I chose lace. I’d never seen anything so lovely: scalloped edges, intertwining threads forming webs and florets. The way it curled in my palms. How it tickled and scratched my skin, rough yet pliant. The cart in the bright sewing room was neatly packed with […]
John convinced his grandson to take him on this trip even though Franklin had his doubts. John felt apologetic. He knew he was asking a lot. Franklin was a fine young man, and had always been a loyal and dutiful grandson, but clearly John’s progressive disease frightened him. John persuaded him this was his final […]
Every morning is the same. I wake up, shower, get ready for school. I take Mother out of the chifforobe and place her on the dressing table, so she’ll catch a little afternoon sunshine. She tells me I shouldn’t bother, but I think she enjoys it, secretly; on those occasions where I forget, she’s sluggish […]
There were five of us at the start: mother, father, Ren, Penelope, and me. And now there is only me. Since mother and father passed, the garden’s upkeep has been lacking. They gave us enough knowledge to maintain the garden, but not enough to allow it to thrive. And since Penelope left, more than one […]
The maids were busy with breakfast when Rosalía returned to her ancestral home, one hundred and eighty-four years after she left, known by no one. The house she found was not the house of her memories: the original building was demolished and rebuilt in fashionable Italianate style, three stories tall, with narrow windows, quoin, a […]
The first time I saw the operculum necklace, it made me cry. Such a thing was scarcely unlikely: I was only six years old and had never seen such a thing before. Strung on a silver chain and adorned here and there with filigree, the necklace consisted of six discs that some might consider decorative. […]
In the cold dawn light, they carry the child out of the big house and down to the pond. The water is grey with submerged ice, striated mud frozen hard to its banks, and the reeds are swollen within whitish sheaths. The child is sickly. It shrieks and shrieks as they lower its thin body […]
It’s Monday morning when Magda Doubinsky discovers all her chickens are dead. Slaughtered Every egg crushed too. A poultry genocide. Even from here I can see the bright red flecks on the snow. Not just near the ramshackle coop, but scattered the length and breadth of the front yard. Feathers too, although only the dark-coloured […]
