The Memory of Snow by Kirsty Ferry

Meggie looked at all three women. She raised her arms before her and
turned her hands palm upwards in the age-old gesture of pleading for one’s
innocence.
    ‘You killed her!’ cried Alice’s mother. ‘Look at her. Look at
her and tell me you weren’t responsible...’ she howled pitifully and crumpled
onto a stool, sobbing pathetically. ‘My baby is dead, and it’s all your fault,’
she said. ‘She’s dead.’
    Meggie ran back to the bed and hung over her friend,
searching for some hope, some faint breath or heartbeat that would tell her all
this was a mistake. It couldn’t be happening. Not to Alice. Not because of what
she had done. But it was. Her spirit had come to tell Meggie as much when she
had been at the Sacred Well. But she’d also told her she didn’t blame her. It
had to be the mugwort; Alice had been too weak to take the full strength
potion. Why hadn’t Meggie thought ahead? Alice was being violently sick, and
that was how she had guessed. But Meggie hadn’t been sensible, had she? She
only wanted to rush in and help her friend. Not only could the mugwort do what
Meggie had prepared it for, but it could make you fall asleep. Too much of it-
or if the person taking it was too weak - and the drug would numb your senses.
It might even lead you into a sleep from which you would never wake. Alice was
dead.
    ‘No!’ Meggie shouted. ‘Alice told me. She doesn’t blame me.
It’s not my fault. She came to me, I was on the moors by the old fort and
she...’
    ‘Enough!’ screamed Alice’s mother. ‘Enough of your evil. It
is your fault and I blame you.’ She pointed at Meggie. ‘Get her out of here.
Get her and her evil ways out of my house. She killed my daughter. She killed
her!’ Alice’s mother broke into a fresh onslaught of sobbing. One of the women
in the house pushed Meggie roughly out into the street. She was, Meggie
realised, the widow of a farm labourer, killed in an accident last year. She
had a son and two daughters of her own. Three children, all under five years
old.
    ‘Don’t you dare come back,’ the girl hissed. She was barely
twenty two. ‘Don’t you dare turn up at the funeral, you hear me? You’ve done
enough damage as it is.’ She looked terrified. And with good reason. Meggie’s
eyes widened in disbelief. This girl had received the same service from Meggie
only three months ago.
    ‘You!’ cried Meggie. ‘You. How can you do this, Lizzie? How
can you believe all this?’
    ‘Just go away,’ said Lizzie. ‘Just go away.’
    Lizzie slammed the wooden door in Meggie’s face. Meggie was
left standing in the street, scared, lonely and very, very bewildered.
    Hidden away in the alley across the street, Charles Hay
watched the proceedings with no particular emotion. It wasn’t his fault. The
girl, Alice, had obviously been weak and sickly anyway. He turned his back on
the cottage and mounted his horse. Flicking his crop against its flanks, he
trotted away from the village towards the old pack horse route across the
moors. It was annoying, but he felt sure he would be protected. Nobody except
Meggie and himself knew the truth of the matter. To anybody else, it would just
be one of these tragic incidents that happened every now again. He didn’t need
to worry about it all.
    Once clear of the village, he whipped the horse harder and he
felt its muscles contract beneath him. He clung on tight as it cantered away,
and the fresh Northumbrian air blew all thoughts of Alice from his mind.

 
    2010
     
    ‘Wow!’ murmured Liv. She had made her way up the central
aisle of the Mithraeum and was leaning over the three altars. She was bending
over the altar on the left. A picture of a god was carved onto it and three
leaf shapes were punched out of the stone at the side of his head. ‘Sunbeams,’
said Liv. ‘Of course. Mithras is the sun god.’ She ran her fingers over the
stone. ‘The way that was glowing when we came in – like a candle was showing
through the