The Last Balfour

by Cait Dee

  Finster claps his hands and a man enters. He’s wearing a soldier’s uniform and has a quiver of arrows slung across his back. He’s carrying a large cloth sack with bloodstains on it. Finster nods to the soldier, who upturns the bag and shakes it out.

  A raven’s carcass tumbles to the floor.

  ‘This man is an archer,’ Finster says. ‘After a raven attacked our guard two nights ago, a regiment of archers has been travelling the countryside, ridding us of these creatures. I have it on good authority there is not one raven left alive in all of Perthshire. Is it not so?’

  ‘Aye, sir, we shot more’n a hundred.’

  ‘But this one in particular was of interest, was it not?’ says Finster.

  The soldier nods his head. ‘It was freakish. Never seen its like before.’

  ‘Freakish, how?’

  ‘Well, sir, you know ravens’ eyes are always black. This one?’ The soldier shakes his head. ‘Gold eyes, it had.’

  Finster turns again to the hooded figure. ‘The boy who changed into a wolf. He too had golden eyes. As I told you, with Iona Balfour’s help he escaped capture in the form of a raven when we were transporting them here.’

  The hooded figure says something but my head is pounding and there’s a ringing in my ears. I gaze at the mangled mess of blue-black feathers in horror. Please, Cal. Not you. You can’t leave me here all alone. I can’t do this by myself. I can’t, I can’t . . .

  ‘Very well,’ Finster is saying. ‘Time to find out if this witch can fly.’

  My arms snap back and my feet lift off the ground as the soldier pulls the end of the rope. The pain in my wrists, thumbs and shoulders is so sudden and shocking that I fear they will be wrenched from their sockets. While I am suspended in mid-air, Finster continues to bark questions at me, but I can barely hear him now.

  Dalziel is staring up at me, his eyes wide. I move closer to study his face and then realise that the pain has gone. I have left my body again.

  This time I’m standing in a forest. A unicorn grazes underneath an oak tree. Around the side of the tree a lion appears. The unicorn stamps its foot and then the two creatures sit down together beneath the tree. They both wear golden crowns.

  Then I pass on to another scene, in a bed chamber. A man and a woman are lying on a four-poster bed, both dressed in fine silk sarks. The man wears the same gold ring with the red stone. He whispers something to the woman. I hear what he says as if he had said it to me.

  His words shock me so deeply that I fall back into my body with a jolt. By now the soldier has lowered me to the ground. Someone has just poured a jug of cold water over my face. I splutter and cough back to life.

  ‘She is revived,’ says one of the soldiers. ‘Shall we continue?’

  His Grace wants to see it for himself. Dalziel had said King Jamie was journeying to Dunshee to see Cal change into a wolf. The hooded figure has his hands clasped in his lap. The red stone catches the light and it glints for a moment, as if affirming my suspicion. There’s only one thing I know about King Jamie, other than his hatred of witches. Perhaps I’ll regret what I’m about to do, but with Cal gone and possibly the bloodstone too, I have nothing left to lose.

  ‘Finster,’ I rasp. ‘I want . . . to say something.’ The effort of speaking takes almost all my remaining strength.

  ‘Untie her hands,’ the witch finder orders.

  The ropes are cut away.

  Finster crouches beside me and helps me to sit up. ‘What is it, Iona Balfour? Do you wish to confess?’

  I rub my wrists and try to swallow, my mouth dry. ‘I’ve a message for the king.’

  ‘Get her out of here!’ cries Finster, the blood draining from his face.

  Two of the soldiers rush towards me and grab my upper arms, pulling me to my feet. Dalziel opens the door of the chamber to usher them out.

  ‘I know when you will be crowned King of England!’ I cry, as they rush me out the door.

  ‘Hold!’ The hooded figure stands. ‘Let her speak.’

  ‘Your Grace, I must advise —’ Finster begins, but the hooded man holds up his hand and for once Finster falls silent, bowing his head like a lickspittle.

  ‘Bring her to me.’

  The soldiers drag me in front of the hooded man and force me to my knees. I’m in such pain that I fear I’ll pass out before I get to speak to him. ‘A drink?’ I ask through cracked lips.

  He nods to one of the soldiers, who fills a glass goblet from a silver jug.

  The ringed hand removes the hood.

  They say his mother Mary was a great beauty, but King Jamie looks nothing like I’d imagined. His is not a face you would ever call bonnie. He has a bulbous nose in the middle of a long, thin face. His hair is a sandy-red colour, his beard a darker shade of reddish brown. He is of middling height and build, but sits askew in his chair, as if something’s amiss with his posture. There is nothing, other than his fine clothes, to mark him as the monarch. If I’d seen him in the street, I’d have had no cause to turn my head.

  The soldier hands me the goblet and I drain it, liquid dribbling down my chin. It is not water, but wine, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. It slides down my throat and warms my belly.

  ‘What have you to say?’

  I lick my lips, savouring the velvety texture of the wine.

  ‘Your Grace . . .’ I pause. ‘You are to become the king of England.’

  ‘That is no prophecy!’ Finster spits.

  ‘A twelvemonth hence. That is when His Grace shall be crowned,’ I say. It’s a lie, of course, but if I can get some time alone with the king, then perhaps I can think of a way to turn him against Finster.

  King Jamie frowns. ‘The queen is old and in poor health. I have it from trusted sources that her death is imminent — no more than weeks away!’

  My heart sinks. He’s probably right. I know nothing of Elizabeth, the English queen.

  ‘Nae, Your Grace. The queen may be ailing, but she’ll survive. The throne will be yours, but you must be patient —’

  ‘Such impertinence!’ Finster interrupts. ‘I beg you not to let this girl speak any more. She must be removed from your presence at once. She can perform the most dreadful harm with nothing more than her words.’

  ‘As can we all, Meister.’ The king then turns to me. ‘Why should we heed you?’

  ‘Your Grace, I know something about you. Something . . . private.’

  ‘Private? What could you possibly know?’

  ‘I know what you said to your queen on your wedding night.’

  The king gives a nervous cough, his mouth twitching under his beard.

  Finster looks like he is about to say something more, but the king raises a finger and the witch hunter holds his tongue.

  ‘Come here, lass. Whisper it to me.’

  Dalziel helps me stand and walk over to King Jamie. I cup my hand around his ear and repeat the words from my vision. When I pull my hand away, his eyes are wide with terror.

  ‘Get this sorceress away from me!’ he cries. He stands up, in his haste knocking over a small table next to his chair, the glass goblet smashing to pieces on the floor.

  In moments, the soldiers drag me out of the chamber, back down the stairs and throw me into the pit. This time, when they leave me alone in the darkness, I don’t expect I’ll ever see the light of day again.

  * * *

  What happened afterwards I cannot say. A fever overwhelmed me, my body reacting to the tremendous strain of torture and the lack of sleep and food. At some point I felt myself being carried out of the manor house and thrown into a cart.

  By the time I come to my senses we’ve joined a busy road heading towards a large gate set inside stone walls. Above the road, jutting out from a crag, a forbidding grey fortress looms. Once through the gates, the cart wends its way up a steep hill towards the fortress.

  ‘What is this place?’ I ask the guard.

  He picks his nose and gives me a bored look, then leans over to another gua
rd. ‘Dull-witted, this one,’ he says to his companion. ‘She don’t even know Edinburrie when she sees it.’

  TWO TRIALS

  Underneath the Tolbooth on the King’s High Street is where prisoners are kept to await trial. Here, in a stinking, crowded dungeon, my hands are chained to a long iron bar that runs the full length of the chamber. Women are on one side, men on the other; a large cage in the centre separates us. At first I didn’t know what the cage was for and was too afraid to ask. Then, yestere’en they threw an old man in there whose skirling was so deafening that one of the other prisoners threatened to reach through the bars and strangle him. The caged man stopped wailing long enough to say, ‘Och, man, you’d best make haste. I’ve a rendezvous with the Maiden, come the dawn. Beheaded like a nobleman! My auld maw’d be so proud, she could see me now.’ He laughed a mirthless cackle.

  The Maiden is a beheading machine: a wooden frame with a steel axe head that falls from above. They say death comes swift and painless, a privilege typically reserved for the nobility. Not like what they have in store for me, if Finster has his way and they find me guilty of working malefice.

  Above us we can hear boots clomping about with the comings and goings of the town officials. They throw their waste water through a hole in the floor. It seeps down the walls of the dungeon and pools in the cracks between the flagstones. There’s only a tiny window near the ceiling to let in clean air. Through that window we hear the folk of Edinburgh going about their business while we sit here, wretched in our own filth; the rubbish of the burgh that those folk out there, with their precious freedom, would rather forget.

  That’s the worst punishment of all. Finally I’m here in Edinburgh, and I know Angus Ancroft is out there, somewhere, on the other side of those walls. For all I know, he walks past that window every day. Sometimes I like to imagine him leaning against the wall of the Tolbooth, smoking tobacco and wondering about the poor souls inside. But even if I were free, there’s no point finding him now. If it wasn’t destroyed, Finster has the bloodstone. Either way, I’ll not be seeing it again.

  Even though I know I’ve failed, that I’ll never be able to keep my promise to Grizel and find Ancroft, all I can think about is Cal. The grief and shame I feel when I remember the sight of the dead raven on the floor is far worse than the feeling of having lost the stone. If it weren’t for me, he’d still be alive. He was the only good thing to happen to me since leaving Heatherbrae and now he’s gone, too. All that’s left is to wait for the farce of a trial that will surely see me sentenced to death.

  * * *

  Seven nights pass before the dungeon door opens and a guard calls my name. Two other guards take me to a crowded building, where folk stand in a haphazard queue, clutching scrolls of parchment tied with ribbon. The guards chase them away like midges.

  ‘Who are they?’ I ask one of the guards.

  ‘Plaintiffs,’ he replies with undisguised scorn, leaving me none the wiser.

  He opens the door to a chamber. Gawping back at me is an unruly mob of men crammed together on benches. There’s a rowdy group near the front; some of them are holding horns of ale.

  The guard says something to another man, then turns to leave.

  ‘Please!’ I say to the guard. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

  The guard looks me in the eye for the first time. ‘This man is the tipstaff of the courtroom,’ he explains. ‘You must do as he says.’

  The men give a cheer as I enter, but the tipstaff shouts at them to be silent. Then he tells me to stand in front of them in a wooden cage. My knees turn to water. They can’t mean to put me on trial in front of this rabble?

  At the other end of the chamber sits a very tall, thin man behind a raised bench. He wears scarlet robes and a white wig. He peers at me in a way I find unnerving, as if his eyes can see inside of me. His face is lean and angular, and he rubs his chin while he studies me. I can almost hear the sound of his fingers scratching the bristles of his black beard. The laird heard all the disputes in Strathcraig, so perhaps he is the laird of the whole of Edinburgh.

  To the left of the high bench sit two rows of men. Unlike the mob in the packed gallery, who shout obscenities and whistle at me, these men are dressed in fine clothes and watch me in silence. They probably think I’m guilty, seeing me covered in filth. With clammy hands, I smooth down my hair and brush the dirt off my skirt as best I can, trying to ignore my burning eyes and the tightness in my throat. What I wouldn’t give to be back in the Tolbooth dungeon.

  I scan the room and see another man sitting at a long table near the laird. He’s very short, of stocky build, with a ruddy face. He stands very straight, his shoulders erect and his head tilted back, as if the tip of his nose would somehow make him taller.

  ‘That’s Iain Knox,’ a man sitting in the gallery says to his companion. ‘Finest procurator-fiscal in Edinburgh. Hasn’t lost a case in years, so I’ve heard.’

  My head is pounding. None of this makes any sense to me. How am I supposed to defend myself with such a man as my adversary?

  The laird invites the tipstaff to read the dittay. The tipstaff bows and then reads aloud from a scroll of parchment. He speaks so quickly I cannot understand half of what he’s saying. As far as I can gather, I am accused of using malefice and working wonders in Dunshee. Some of the men behind me begin to hiss.

  ‘Silence!’ shouts the laird, making me jump. Then he asks the fiscal to call his first witness.

  The one called Knox nods, then stands. ‘Gregor Brodie!’ he shouts.

  My heart almost gives out as the door swings open and Gregor saunters in. He ignores me as he walks past and goes to stand next to the fiscal’s table. My knuckles turn white as they grip the bannister of the dock.

  It’s only been a few weeks, but Gregor looks completely different. He’s wearing newly tailored raiment for the occasion. Not his dour black coat and breeks, but a saffron-coloured linen shirt over plaid trews. He flings off his grey woollen cape and tries to hand it to the tipstaff, who just stands there, arms folded. Gregor slings his cape over his arm. The tipstaff pulls Gregor’s tam off his head and throws it on the floor, so Gregor must stoop to pick it up. Mocking laughter ripples through the gallery.

  I can’t help but smile. He looks like a country oaf trying to cut a fine figure in the city fashions. He’s fooled nobody; the folk here see him for what he is.

  Gregor swears an oath on the Bible and hardly pauses to draw breath before telling the packed courtroom of my wickedness. He says I’m a notorious witch, that my aunt was executed in Strathcraig but a moon ago for the same crimes, and that I was apprenticed to her. He says it is well known in Heatherbrae that all Balfours have uncanny powers and that my father was a warlock who disappeared from Heatherbrae many years ago under mysterious circumstances.

  The laird seems impatient. ‘That is all very well,’ he says. ‘But do you delate Mistress Balfour as a witch? If so, what is your evidence?’

  Gregor rests his lizard eyes on me.

  ‘I saw Iona Balfour working cantrips in my very own home.’

  ‘You’re a liar!’ I cry.

  ‘Order!’ barks the tipstaff. ‘The panel shall be silent while the witness is speaking.’

  Gregor could send me to the pyre with his lies, and well he knows it. Never once did I forge any spell at Gregor’s farmhouse. The closest I came was Bride’s cross, but Ishbel burned it in the hearth, so Gregor can’t know about it. Grizel always told us to be careful with spell-forging. She never did it where people might see, knowing that folk wanted the benefits of magic but didn’t want to know how it was done. Much of the power of magic is in the mystery, she always said.

  ‘What cantrips did you witness?’ asks Knox.

  ‘I saw Iona’s aunt give charms to folk in Heatherbrae. She claimed the charms had healing benefits. Indeed, when I was but a lad, my uncle broke his leg in a fall from a horse. Grizel Balfour tore a clout from his breeks and tied it to a hawthorn that grows ov
er a well just outside the village. The old folk say it’s a healing well. Grizel promised my uncle he’d recover when the clout rotted away.’ He pauses, allowing himself a triumphant glance about the gallery as the crowd falls silent, enthralled.

  ‘And did he?’ asks the laird. ‘Recover?’

  Gregor looks annoyed at the question, as if it’s irrelevant. ‘Aye, after a fashion. The leg was never quite the same. He hirpled about until the day he died.’

  ‘And what do you say to that, Mistress Balfour?’ the laird says to me in a voice so quiet that I have to strain to hear it.

  ‘Gregor speaks only of my aunt, not of me. I would have been but a wean when that happened.’

  Scornful laughter echoes through the courtroom.

  ‘Her sister bewitched me into marrying her!’ Gregor spits, pointing at me.

  The laird drums his fingers on the bench. ‘How so?’

  ‘Grizel gave my wife a charm before we were wed. Ishbel handed me a bodle on Midsummer’s day. A token of her devotion, she said. I never had any feelings for Ishbel before then, but I soon fell deeply in love with her. We were wed several days later.’

  The laird shifts in his seat. ‘Fascinating a tale though it is, what relevancy has this to the libel? That is to say, of Mistress Balfour’s guilt of the charges of malefice? You are required to depone in respect of these current charges laid against this Mistress Balfour, standing in front of you, not her aunt or her sister.’

  Gregor’s cheeks flush. ‘As I said, she was apprenticed to her aunt. She is a Balfour. It is well known in Heatherbrae that all Balfours are witches!’

  ‘Mr Brodie, we grow weary,’ says the laird, leaning forwards in his chair to set his withering gaze on Gregor. ‘Have you, or have you not, any evidence to prove Iona Balfour practised witchcraft?’

  ‘Only that which I have shared with you this day. She is the niece of a convicted witch who was only recently executed for her crimes. Her own sister died during an arrest for witchcraft. If that is not evidence enough . . .’ Gregor holds up his empty palms.