The Blood List Read Online Free PDF

souls.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Barnaby snapped.
    Abel smiled. ‘Agnes rejected the Lord God and put her faith in the potions and charms sent from the devil. God has punished her.’
    Barnaby sprang forward, grabbing his brother by the scruff of the neck and spinning him round.
    ‘Shut your mouth,’ he snarled, ‘or I’ll snap your stringy neck.’
    Abel’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down against Barnaby’s knuckles but in his face there was no fear, only hatred and sly triumph. Barnaby hurled him aside in disgust and flew
out of the door.
    Agnes lived at the other end of the village in a tiny, neat cottage that was always plentifully stocked with firewood and flour and fresh eggs from all the grateful families whose babies she had
safely delivered. She was over sixty now and on recent occasions she’d winced at his embraces. He’d been steeling himself for the inevitable but all his preparations were as nothing as
he blundered through the streets with tears streaming down his face.
    Her little window was aglow with welcoming firelight and he couldn’t repress the little skip of happiness his heart gave every time he arrived at her door. But then he realised: in May
only the dying feel the cold.
    He never usually knocked but now he hesitated, his palm flat against the warm wood. Was this the last time he would ever push open her door?
    He could hear his father murmuring inside. If Henry could be brave, then he must be too.
    The door swung silently open and he was struck by a wall of hot, foetid air.
    He stepped in and closed the door quietly behind him. Agnes’s bed had been drawn up to the fire and was surrounded by figures silhouetted against the flames. Two of the men were speaking
quietly.
    ‘She dies very hard,’ one of them said. ‘Are ye sure the cause is not game feathers in the pillow?’
    ‘It has been checked several times,’ the other murmured, ‘and ’tis only duck and goose. Perhaps the evil eye has been put upon her.’
    The other grumbled unhappily and moved away.
    Now Barnaby could see the bed with his father kneeling beside it. Barnaby caught a glimpse of his old nurse’s face and stifled a gasp.
    The last time he visited she was as spry and sharp-tongued as ever, if a little yellow around the temples. Now she looked like a week-old corpse. The flesh had shrunk from her bones and the skin
was waxen. He could clearly make out both bones of her forearm as it rested in his father’s lap.
    Had it been so long since he’d visited?
    Then she saw him: her face lit up, and suddenly she became Agnes again. Her lips moved but he couldn’t hear what she said. He stepped closer and the stench of death grew stronger.
    He moved behind his father, laying his hands on Henry’s shoulders while, just for a moment, he got used to her appearance.
    ‘Now, what’s all this fuss,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re not just trying to get out of your chores, are you?’
    Agnes gave a papery laugh – it was a phrase she had used to him on countless occasions.
    ‘Yes,’ she croaked, ‘I am.’
    She raised her arm from his father’s lap and stretched her fingers towards him. It was all right now. He was ready. He walked around his father and knelt down on the floor beside her, then
he took her hand in his own.
    It was shockingly cold, and light as the shed husk of a spider.
    ‘Bye baby bunting,’
she sang, her voice reed thin and almost lost in the hiss of the flames,
‘Daddy’s gone a hunting . . .’
    But she subsided into coughing and couldn’t continue.
    ‘He’s gone to fetch a rabbit skin,’
Barnaby murmured,
‘to wrap the baby bunting in.’
    The eyes that finally turned on him again were misted with death.
    ‘You know . . .’ he began haltingly, ‘that I love you as a mother.’
    He leaned forwards and kissed her hollow cheek and his tears dropped into her white wisps of hair.
    ‘There, there, my love,’ she murmured. ‘It will be all right.’
    ‘No,’ he