Read Online Hobb's Cottage: A Short Story by Ruth Saberton - Free Book Online Page A

sea, lulled by the endless whisper of waves.  Boats chugged into the harbour while seagulls wheeled above the restless sea.  Mesmerised, Phoebe wondered who else had studied this view and what other dreams have been woven from the window seat.  This cottage was so filled with history she could practically taste it.
    “Hobb’s Cottage!” Lucy Donovan had squeaked when Phoebe popped in to the Polkerryn Witch Craft Museum to announce her change of address. “Blimey!  You’re brave.  It’s meant to be haunted.”
    Phoebe couldn’t help smiling at this since Lucy spent most of her time surrounded by some of the most grisly objects imaginable.  A feline skull and a shrunken head perched jauntily on her desk while a voodoo doll moonlighted as a paperweight.  Not that any of this seemed to bother Lucy or her brother Dan, a history graduate who’d somehow ended up in the village to help his sister in the museum.   A wise soul with fawn’s eyes, a wild head of ebony gypsy curls and a voice like velvet, he passed his time cleaning the exhibits, listening to Phoebe rant about Alex and doing research for a book he was writing about Polkerryn.  Phoebe enjoyed Dan’s company but part of her held back from getting closer to him just in case Alex should change his mind.  It seemed she held back on a lot of things for Alex.
    The witchcraft museum was a gold mine.   Holidaymakers in Cornwall were only too happy to part with their cash and the museum featured in all the guidebooks so when the rain tipped down tourists in raincoats steamed gently, marvelling over myths of Merlin and pagan legends.  Phoebe had visited when she first moved to Polkerryn but there was something about the gloomy corners and stillness that she found unnerving.  She much preferred to meet Lucy and Dan in The Mermaid Inn .   Standing before a skeleton, crudely strung together with red ribbon and now hung up somewhat haphazardly in a glass case, she was grasped by a sudden sharp desire for sunlight that made her breathless.
    “Hobb’s an old Cornish word for witch,” Lucy was saying.  “Witch’s Cottage, that’s where you’re living, hon!  Hang on, I’m sure that I’ve got something on it that Dan was reading the other day.” Delving beneath the counter she unearthed an ancient book.
    “ Historie of Polkerryn , by Nathan Miller,” Phoebe read out loud.  She looked up and frowned. “I’ve never heard of him.  Who’s Nathan Miller?”
    “Some famous resident from the nineteenth century,” Lucy said, blowing dust from the cover. “He spent his time here researching Cornish history rather than hitting the cider like the rest of us!  His writing’s dead dull but I’m sure he mentions your cottage a fair bit.  Take it with you. I’m sure there are links to witches.”
    Since most things that interested Lucy had links to witches, and consequently making money from credulous tourists, Phoebe took this with a large fistful of salt.  But she borrowed the book anyway and during quiet periods at work poured over the faint print.  The writing was tinder dry and by the time her shift finished the letters were line dancing in front of Phoebe’s exhausted vision.
      Sitting in the window now, Phoebe recalled the brief tale.  Apparently a young girl called Tilly Penhalligan had lived in the cottage during the seventeenth century.  From what Miller had written her fate was uncertain but she had stood accused of bewitching the Lord of the Manor and killing his infant son.  There were no horrible details of burnings though and the Polkerryn witch appeared to have vanished off to Bodmin Gaol and into obscurity.
    It was hardly a tale to make anyone nervous but rather one that gave her a twinge of sympathy.  Phoebe couldn’t help wondering what her own fate would have been in the seventeenth century.  Would Laura and her friends have stormed up the hill shrieking that she’d bewitched Alex and seduced him with her long black hair