2019/93: The Coffin Path -- Katherine Clements

For every life, something else must die. [loc. 4083]

It's 1674, and Mercy Booth, thirty-two years of age and unmarried, manages her ailing father's land, which he has promised she'll inherit. Scarcross Hall has a reputation for being cursed. It's high on the fells, accessible only by the old coffin road that leads from the village church to the stone circle, the White Ladies, at the top of the moor. Mercy doesn't believe in the curse. She works hard, alongside the men and women of the village employed by her father: she dresses in men's clothes for practicality, and can ease a difficult lambing, nurse a sick child, gather the harvest. And she is fearless: when she sees a shadowy figure at the gatepost her instinct is not to flee, but to run towards it.

Mercy's father is distressed by the loss of three gold coins that he once found up at the White Ladies. There are stories about those coins: they won't stay lost for long. One turns up under the pillow of Sam, a boy who helps on the farm; another is found in the hayloft by the new hire, a man named Ellis Ferreby, who Mercy does not altogether trust. Ellis -- who is the third-person narrator for substantial parts of the novel, alternating with Mercy's first-person narrative -- finds other things, too: a lamb that has been messily killed, an illicit sexual liaison, perhaps even a home.

This is a suspenseful novel, packed with sensory detail: the feel of ewe's blood on the skin, the pain of cold hands when you come into a warm room, the glimpse of a pale figure at a window, the dull thud of a child bouncing a ball in a locked and empty room. There is a sense of quiet menace, of something eerie threatening Mercy's way of life: but there are also very real threats from superstitious villagers.

I found the ending a little weak, and I wasn't sure which of the various folk-tales -- ancient evils, murdered children, simple witchcraft -- were more true than others. On reflection, there's a strong theme of vengeance throughout the novel: Ellis, Mercy, Bartram (Mercy's father), John Ravens: perhaps the story about ancient invasions is key.

The Coffin Path is tremendously atmospheric, very much rooted in its place and time, and features strongly-characterised individuals with complex motivations. Mercy's and Ellis's voices are distinctive, and their perceptions of the world contrast very effectively. This may not be, as the blurb has it, 'the perfect ghost story', but it is certainly chilling.