‘Be still, missy,’ said a soft voice in my ear.
It was Herleva, come to work her magic and make me better.
‘Let us get you up and into my workshop.’ Two pairs of hands hauled me to my feet.
‘Just let me go to bed. All I need is sleep,’ I tried to say, my tongue fat and thick in my mouth, my lips wooden. I wanted to lie back down and my legs buckled in sympathy.
‘It is working,’ Arlette whispered.
‘Shush.’ Herleva’s face was a pale disc, with black holes for eyes.
One either side of me, their shoulders under my armpits, they half dragged, half carried me into Herleva’s embalming room. Why did they not take me straight back to my own bed? I would be more comfortable there, on my little hay-stuffed mattress. I wanted to lie down and be left alone to deal with my illness. A good sleep and I would assuredly feel better in the morning.
They leant me against the edge of the embalming table, and Arlette bent down, as Herleva pushed me back until the upper part of my body lay across the wood. Grunting with the effort, Arlette lifted my legs.
I did not like this bed. I wanted my own. There was something disrespectful, sinister even, about sleeping on a table where bodies were prepared for burial. I got my elbows and hands under my back and pushed up. Lying flat felt too much like I was a corpse already.
Herleva pushed me back onto the table. Before I managed to sit up again, she grasped one arm and tied it down with a leather strap. Arlette did the same to the other without being told.
Why had I not noticed them before, and why would Herleva need restraints on a table meant for bodies? Dead people did not rise up. Did they? I struggled and thrashed, thinking she intended to slit my throat and drain my blood. Or worse, slice me open whilst I was still alive. I twisted my head to check the workbench. Was there a dead cat on it? My heart missed a beat, then another. Was that a pile of fur, hidden by the shadows? Did it move? Was it still alive, waiting to have its heart cut out and stuffed inside mine?
I found my voice. ‘Help me!’ I cried. ‘Fulbert! Walter!’
Herleva placed a hand on my mouth. Her fingers smelled of burnt things and decay. ‘Be quiet, missy. It is no use, none of them will hear you.’ She gave a cackling laugh. ‘Not with what I put in their ale. They will sleep like the dead.’
I thrashed with renewed vigour, legs kicking. I tried to bite her hand, but couldn’t get sufficient purchase, and the taste of her skin sickened me further. One foot must have connected with Arlette, for she let out a stifled yell, and grabbed my leg, her nails digging so deeply into the soft flesh I thought she had drawn blood. One ankle was strapped, then the other, until I lay, staked out like a hide in the sun. Herleva removed her hand. I resisted the urge to lick my dry lips, not wanting to taste any more of her.
A stench of burning herbs, dominated by the smell of thyme, invaded my nose. My stomach rolled with nausea, and I pulled weakly at the straps, my strength ebbing along with my sanity. A scream was building deep in my soul, a scream so loud it would shred my throat and burn my lungs. A tremble began in my fingers and spread from my hands, up my arms and down my body to my legs, until all of me shook with unnamed dread.
Herleva moved to my head and stood behind me, her breath warm on my terror-frozen forehead, stirring a stray lock of hair. I wished she would stand where I could see her.
‘The moon is at its zenith,’ she said. ‘We must do it now. The henbane will aid with the transformation, but she has to drink the concoction for the spell to work. Do you remember what I told you?’
‘I think so,’ Arlette said.
‘Thinking is not good enough. You must know so.’
A fire burned bright and fierce in the hearth. Arlette threw a handful of leaves onto it. Thick smoke billowed up the chimney. No curling or dancing this time. The smell of scorched herbs intensified, and the logs crackled and popped. My head spun, my thoughts becoming unclear and vague.
Herleva moved from behind me and came into my line of sight, holding a bowl in one hand, the fingers of the other dipping into its contents. The outside of the vessel was carved with runes and the ancient shapes of gargoyles and demons. I shuddered. How could a simple thing like a bowl seem so evil?
She flicked the droplets off her fingers and they hissed and spat on the fire. The flames turned from orange and yellow and red, to green. Black smoke writhed and cavorted, twirling up the chimney. Head, body, and tail. So that is what happened to the cat she sewed inside that poor woman. It had turned to smoke and got sucked up the chimney. Had the same thing happened to the woman too? Was she waiting in the sky for the cat? Cat, hat, mat, vat, sat… I shook my head to rid it of rhyming words, wanting to laugh. Was Herleva going to turn me into smoke and send me up the chimney, too? If she did, I would be more bird than cat, floating in the sky. I could sit on a cloud and hiss at people below. Or chirp, if I became a bird. I would like to fly. I would be a bird-cat, cat-bird, with pointed ears and feathers.
Arlette leaned over, grasped the back of my head, and lifted it up. There was that bowl again, coming closer and closer, the gargoyles and demons skipping gleefully around it, grotesque dancers around a dark and clotted Maypole.
I did not like the look of what was in the bowl, the contents as black as congealed arterial blood, thick and stinking. A cat swam in its depths, a shadow in the midnight. Where was the moon? I craned my head to see it and the edge of the bowl touched my lips. I recoiled. It was cold and reeked of death.
Bile rose in my throat, and I tasted rancid honey once more. My sharp intake of breath was a mistake. No sooner had I opened my mouth than Arlette tipped the contents of the bowl into it. I gagged and swallowed as the vile liquid threatened to drown me, and I twisted my head from side to side, her fingers digging into my scalp, entwined in my hair. She fought to keep me still. I clenched my jaw, my lips a thin line of futile resistance.
‘Get the rest of it down her and be quick about it.’ Herleva huffed her impatience.
‘I am trying.’ Arlette let my head drop back onto the table with a thud and pinched my nose shut.
My heart yammered, lungs straining. I opened my mouth, desperate for air, and she tipped the rest of the devilish brew into me. I coughed and spluttered around it, swallowing and breathing at the same time. The obnoxious concoction burned its way down my throat, invading my already delicate stomach. I heaved. Arlette clamped both hands over my mouth, throwing all her weight on my chest, holding me down.
Desperate not to be sick and risk drowning in my own vomit, I closed my eyes, willing my outraged belly to be calm. When I opened them again, it was to see Arlette staring inquisitively into my face.
‘Her eyes have gone totally black, as you foretold,’ she said.
Black eyes? What had they made me drink? The dead woman and the cat came back to haunt me.
‘Move aside. Let me look at her.’
Arlette disappeared and Herleva took her place. She grabbed my cheeks, turning my face this way and that. With a grunt of satisfaction, she let me go.
‘Watch, listen, and learn,’ she said to her protégé.
Herleva drank deeply from a goblet and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then grimaced. A shudder ran through her and she held onto the back of a chair for support. Once she had steadied herself, she picked up the skull, its contents still and dark, the reflection of a candle flickering on its surface. She held the forefinger of her right hand up to the ceiling and muttered an incantation, pointing to all four corners of the earth, then to heaven once more, and finally to hell. Closing her eyes, she blew on the dark liquid, once, twice, three times, all the while murmuring in an unfamiliar tongue. When she opened them again, her eyes were utterly black too.
‘Do I drink some?’ Arlette asked.
‘No, child. You are not skilled enough to control henbane, not tonight.’
Henbane – the herb of witches, my mother once said. It helped them fly.
With reverence Herleva placed her finger into the skull
, stirring its contents. ‘Widdershins and deasil, moon-wise and sun-wise,’ she said, stirring to the left then the right, setting a storm to rage in the bowl of the skull, choppy waters and strange tides. She removed her finger and popped it into her mouth, sucking it clean. ‘Thus the connection is reinforced,’ she said to Arlette.
‘I do not understand. Why use the scrying bowl when she is here in front of us?’
‘I will see her spirit animal in it. The potion she drank draws it out and the spell will solidify it.’
‘But we already know the familiar is a cat. Why do you need to see it?’
‘It has to answer to me. She has to answer to me. Now, hand me the other potion.’
Arlette moved away, out of my sight, then returned with a similar bowl. This one lacked demons, but made up for it with an abundance of animals carved into its wooden sides: owls, bats, toads. And cats. One of them winked at me.
I blinked, my sight too blurred to trust what I saw. It winked again, with both eyes this time. Lord, what evil liquor had they forced upon me? A wooden owl stretched its wings and fluffed its flight feathers. Disconcerted, I found something else to look at.
The ceiling was high, the beams blackened from the smoke of countless fires. Rhain peered down at me from the rafters. I had no idea why he was up there. He would serve me better down here, wielding a sword and freeing me from my bonds. He could also kill Herleva while he was at it.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Rhain nodded and smiled. He lacked a body and I wondered where he had left it. His smile became a grimace, then a rictus of terror and his tears rained down on me, dampening my face.
It took me a moment to understand the wetness on my cheeks were my own tears and Rhain had gone.
The skull was once again as still as beaten metal, the only movement was the flickering of a nearby candle reflecting across its smooth surface. The flame in the skull flickered green rather than yellow, and the candle grew ears and whiskers. A pink mouth opened, showing a set of tiny sharp canines. It hissed.
I screamed.
The hiss had come from me.
Chapter 17
Chanting filled my head, growing louder and more insistent. Herleva swayed to its rhythm, taking sips from her bowl, her black eyes on mine. A ghostly, smoky cat hovered in the air above the murky liquid. It also stared at me with inscrutable, black pupils.
‘It is starting.’ Arlette’s voice was hushed, and awe-filled.
Herleva did not falter, did not acknowledge her companion. Her swaying intensified. Arlette threw more bunches of dried leaves on the fire, then circled Herleva widdershins; anti-clockwise had always been the Devil’s preferred path and I had no doubt it was the Devil who was playing this tune.
A tremendous shudder surged through me, starting at my head. Like a wave rushing toward the shore, it travelled down the length of me, crashing against my feet. The sound of it boomed in my mind. Or was it an almighty thud of my heart? The wave built again. I heard the mewling of gulls as it broke on my toes with enough force to crush bone.
I cried out, a thin and high-pitched sound, more like one of those gulls than my normal voice. My skin itched, lightly at first, a feather-touch of irritation. I squirmed, unable to escape the sensation, and as I strained against the leather straps, the irritation grew. Desperate to scratch, I heaved and bucked. Insects crawled and skittered over every inch of my body, their tiny feet burning and stinging. Please make it stop, please!
I tried to plead, but when I opened my lips my teeth were too big, filling my mouth with sharp daggers. I snarled and hissed – the only sounds I could manage.
The hiss became a screech of pain. My innards were being pulled out. I was being turned inside out, but when I opened my clenched eyes, nothing had changed. Arlette still pranced around a rocking Herleva, who sat cross-legged on the floor, and no one hovered over the table with a raised knife. I lifted my head, still convinced I had been slit from throat to groin. My body was whole and unbloodied, though it seemed smaller, flatter. Was I disappearing, falling into myself, to grow steadily smaller until all that remained was a blot on the wood?
The air was thick with magic and intent. A vast pressure pushed me down, squashing me into the table. My head fell back, and I did not have the strength to keep it raised. A huge invisible hand forced the air from my lungs. I writhed in pain, my bones squeezed and crushed, pulled and pummelled. My heart beat so fast I worried it might burst through my chest. Every vein, every artery screamed its agony, the very blood surging through them boiling and burning.
This torture had to stop. It had to. I could not bear any more. My body was being turned inside out, and torn in two, crushed and stretched, all at once. My flesh was being seared from my bones, the bones themselves ground to dust.
And all the while, the gulls called, sounding more like a cat in distress with each beat of my desperate heart.
Green eyes invaded my mind, pointed ears, soot-dark fur, sinuous tail, whiskers. Surely at this moment, dying on a wooden slab, poisoned and tortured, my thoughts would turn to more ethereal things, such as God, the Lady Mary, even Satan, if hell was where I was headed after I took my final breath. Or had I done that already? I craved air, but had no lungs with which to breathe. My blood sang with anguish and despair. If it were not for this indescribable, unendurable pain, I would have believed I was already dead.
A terrible thought occurred to me – maybe I was dead. Maybe this was hell, an eternity of pain and suffering and dreadful burning, apt punishment for abandoning my husband’s people. My people. And for killing Idris. Stubbornly, however much pain I was in, I could not regret killing Idris. I would do it again if I could.
Ah, God, it hurt. Please make it stop. Please…
Panting hard, I lay on my side, the wooden table firm and unyielding, grateful to finally be able to breathe. The air smelled of death and magic, but never had such rottenness tasted so sweet. I sucked it in, great heaving gulps of it. The fire roared and crackled. I stared into its heart, mesmerised, drained, flattened, and did not have the strength to move. I recalled feeling a similar debilitation when I was a child, after a harsh fever finally broke and it seemed death would not steal me away from my mother after all. I had lain in my bed for hours, staring at nothing, lacking the strength to move even my eyes. My ears had worked well enough though, and my mother’s thankful prayers had washed over them.
No prayers this time. No noise at all except for the fire, and…was that breathing? I cocked an ear and it swivelled towards the sound. Someone, something, was behind me. In a moment I would sit up and see who it was but for now I just-
My ear moved.
I held my breath, too unnerved to take another. Did it really happen? Ears did not move, though I recalled a boy who could make each one wiggle on its own. My ear had done considerably more than wiggle. It had swivelled. Then I thought of Rhain’s disembodied head in the rafters, and hearing gulls crying overhead, and realised I must still be delirious.
‘It worked,’ Herleva said softly, disbelief mingling with reverence. Whatever it was she had done, she had not expected it to work. But what had she done? I shied away, not wanting to consider it. I was not ready to face it yet. Lying here, blessedly pain free, was enough for the moment.
‘Praise be to God!’ Arlette, too, sounded awed.
‘Hush, child. God had nothing to do with this.’
‘Can I touch it? Her?’
‘She is still herself, despite her appearance,’ Herleva said. ‘But leave her be for now. She will not react kindly when she sees what she has become.’
‘Should she be in a cage in case she runs away? We could use the one for the chickens.’
‘She will be of no use if we have to keep her confined. Be assured, she will not run away. She cannot. Remember what I told you.’
They had done something to me. I did not want to know what it was. I wanted to lie here and hope I was dreaming. Orange flames licked lower, the smoke curling light grey and unad
orned by oily, writhing animals. A normal fire, a comforting fire. A weariness so deep it made my bones ache, took hold of me. If I could sleep and wake in my bed to face another day of tanning leather, I would not complain, but would accept my lot and be thankful for it. Please let this all be a dream and I will promise never to complain again. I will be obedient, and good, and will attend mass every day, and confess my sins, and…
My one cheek lay flat against the table, the wood irritating my skin. I lifted my head a fraction. Several long, bristling hairs tried to spring free. I froze. The hairs were sticking out of my face; not my scalp – my face. They quivered and twitched. I put my head back down, and my soul quivered and twitched instead.
I was not what I had once been. Reluctantly, I knew that.
Somehow, they had changed me. I thought of the dead woman with the cat inside her and was glad they had not killed me. Would I still be glad when I accepted the truth? I knew what they had done, of course I knew; I just did not want to believe it.
I stretched out an arm, moving my hand closer to my face. A grey fur-coated paw hoved into view. I curled my fingers into a fist, and the paw moved, soft pink pads bending in on themselves.
No, please no. This could not be happening.
Moving my head oh so slowly, inch by cautious inch, I peered down at my body.
I had disappeared. In my place lay a cat. A dove-grey cat. It even had a tail. Its tip curled and unfurled, all of its own accord. I seemed to have no control over it, yet I felt it moving, stroking against my leg. Fur on fur.
Instead of a woman with a cat inside her, I was a cat and the woman was inside me.
Gathering my courage, I twisted to sit up, my body reacting before my brain had a chance to think about what I was doing. In one fluid motion, I had gone from lying on my side to crouching on the table, finally seeing the enormity of what Herleva had done.
Fur, paws, tail. They all belonged to me.
I did not want them.
A wail started in my chest, flowing out from my heart, expanding my lungs, forcing its way up my throat and into my mouth. I mewed, a pitiful, pathetic noise. For some reason, I had not expected to sound like a cat.
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