‘No. I remember,’ she said quietly.
‘Good. You have a brain. Please use it for more than dreaming about a new gown, or when Alfred will kiss you next.’ Herleva softened. ‘You are young and have only just come into your magic, but you have a lot to learn and time is of the essence. Stop acting like a flighty girl and act like the sorceress you will one day become.’
She did not wait for a response but turned her attention back to me. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
What a stupid question. I blinked at her. Even my eyelids hurt.
‘I meant, do you feel like a cat or yourself?’
‘I still feel like me,’ I admitted. ‘More or less.’
‘Told you,’ she said.
Then I added, ‘I want to kill you.’
She barked a laugh. ‘I expect you do. I would too, if I were in your shoes. However, it is impossible for you to harm me directly, or cause me indirect harm. Remember?’
‘Yes.’ I now remembered everything. Each little detail of the previous night was seared on my soul. I would never forget, or forgive, what she had done. Insanity still pricked and prodded at the edge of my mind but I would not let it win, I would not let her win. I was stronger than that. There must be a way to undo the spell, to reverse it somehow.
Somewhat stronger, I heaved my still-aching body to my feet and stood on wobbly legs. ‘If this is what your spell does to me, I will be of little use to you,’ I said.
‘Do not fool yourself, I will not reverse the spell. You will most certainly be of great use to me, missy.’
‘Stop calling me missy.’
‘It is a good name for a cat.’ She laughed. The sound was pure evil.
I hated her with a passion I had never felt before, not even when I had stabbed Idris in the throat. My heart was heavy with it, and like a pebble caught in a shoe, it would rub and scour at me until all else was obliterated by the emotion. It would wear me away until nothing was left but black hatred.
I vowed not to let her do that to me either. There must be a way to free myself of her and I vowed to find it. I straightened my back and lifted my chin. She might control my body, but as she pointed out, my mind still belonged to me, and if I was to find a way out of this, then I needed to know as much as possible about her, and her magic.
‘How many other poor souls have you done this to?’ I asked, clearing my throat when my voice threatened to let me down.
She dropped her gaze. ‘You are the first.’
‘Why me?’
‘Why indeed? I saw you in the waters of the skull and knew you were the one.’
‘I saw you too. You killed that boy and most likely the woman you sewed a cat inside.’
‘The boy was a mistake.’
‘And the woman?’
‘A necessity. The spell would not have worked without her.’
There was something in her gaze which gave me pause. ‘You did not know whether it would work at all, did you?’
She shrugged. ‘I have never made a familiar before. It is not an enchantment to be performed lightly. It takes great skill and knowledge, and a certain amount of sacrifice.’
The girl had looked very like me. The grey cat had looked like the cat-me. Is that what Herleva meant when she said sacrifice? The dead girl lay rotting in some grave, the cat mouldering inside her, the two of them bound together for eternity, their hearts entwined.
Was that to be my fate – to live my life half cat, half woman until my dying breath?
Lord, spare me from this.
Chapter 19
There must be some way of reversing the spell, some way of undoing what Herleva had done. I could not, would not, live like this for the rest of my life. Part of me still did not believe it. The Church preached that witches were real and they communed with the Devil, but I had never expected to meet one. My mother had been a pagan and a heathen, and she had risked being branded a witch for her beliefs, so I had always thought witches were ordinary women who did not worship in the way the Church demanded. My mother certainly was no witch, merely a woman who prayed to the old gods and had a good knowledge of herb-lore. I thought all witches must be of her ilk – merely women who were misunderstood and badly judged for adhering to the old ways. How wrong could I be?
I waited until Herleva left for the market. Falaise, the largest town for many miles and one of the main seats of Duke Robert of Normandy, sported a market twice weekly, where farmers sold whatever they harvested from their fields and orchards. Early July was a time of plenty, and though Herleva grew some of what we needed in the vegetable patch behind the house and the chickens kept us well stocked with eggs, it was not enough, especially if she wanted to lay down provisions for the winter. She left me with instructions on how to prepare the glut of cherries for drying, a not too onerous task and better than the tanning pits and trenches at least.
Arlette had not been happy to be dispatched to the river to stamp dye into animal skins, leaving me to enjoy the relative comfort of the kitchen and the much easier job of drying fruit.
‘She is too valuable,’ Herleva said when Arlette objected. Arlette had sulked, and flounced, and argued that as Herleva’s apprentice she was valuable too, but Herleva would not budge, so Arlette was up to her knees in the dyeing solution and I was dipping cherries into boiling water.
I sat on the little three-legged stool, far too close to the fire for comfort, and swiped a hand across my face. Sweat beaded my brow and the linen chemise stuck damply to my skin underneath my workday dress. Dip the cherries in hot water, count to thirty, fish the cherries back out and plunge them into the bucket of cold water at my feet. Any fruits whose skins failed to split had to go through the process again. Once the skins were cracked, I wiped the water from them then placed them on shallow wooden trays on the wall of the vegetable garden to dry in the sun.
After three trays, I took a rest. Herleva had been gone long enough, and if I left it any later I would risk her returning and catching me. It had to be now.
For once, the door to her embalming room was unlocked. I hesitated, my hand on the knob, wondering if she had come back without me seeing her. I put my ear to the door. Silence. The wood was deliberately thick to shield as much sound as possible, so she might be inside, despite me not being able to hear her. I took a gamble. I could always say I needed more cloths to dry the fruit, or any other excuse.
The door yielded without a murmur, swinging open on silent hinges. One candle had been left burning, enough to give the smallest illumination to the windowless room. I checked the table out of habit. It was occupied.
A linen-draped lump, unmistakably a body, lay atop it. Was it a man or a woman, I wondered, resisting the urge to look. It was no morbid curiosity, but a visceral need to check whether the body was young and female and had totally black eyes.
Reluctant to turn my back in case it rose up silently in the semi-gloom, I inched past it, my gaze fixed firmly on its chest, dreading to see a slow rise and fall. The corpse remained motionless and silent.
I needed to concentrate and work quickly if I were not to be caught. Gathering my courage, I headed towards the shelves furthest away from the table. They were laden with bowls and pots, draw-stringed bags and wooden boxes, and a vast variety of things I would have loved to examine but did not have the time.
I was after the books.
Three of them, each one larger and thicker than the bible in the church in Llandarog, and all well-bound in thick leather, was what I sought. I found them on the highest shelf, wrapped in a length of crimson silk. The fabric felt almost cool under my fingers, softer than the hair of a new-born babe. The silk alone must have cost more than a tanner earned in six months.
The books it protected were worth much more.
I lifted them down, one by one, unwrapping them with great care, trying to remember each fold. If I could not find what I sought this time, I would have to look again and I did not want to leave any trace of my search.
The l
eather of the first might have been a cream colour once, but it had darkened to a light oak, and only the stitching gave a hint as to its original hue. It was a fine, fragile skin – the best and most expensive leather.
The front of the tome had been painted with gold symbols and a ruby eye sat in its centre. When I opened it, the pages inside were of the finest vellum and the ink so vibrant the sigils might have been painted yesterday.
’Twas a pity I could not read the words.
I had only ever seen Latin written, and this was most definitely not the language of the Church. It might be French, maybe an old dialect, or maybe even English. My guess though, was that this language was older than any spoken today, and only a few, like Herleva, could speak it now.
With growing trepidation, I opened the others.
I could not read those, either.
Despondent, I rewrapped them in their crimson shroud and put them back where I found them, thinking furiously all the while.
I could not work magic. I knew no spells, could make no potions, and knew of no one else who could. Even if I had found a “How to Reverse a Familiar” spell and the instructions to cast it, I realised belatedly that it would not be as simple as following a recipe. First, you pluck your bird, then you stuff it with redcurrants, then you rub it with bacon fat, put it in a crock and shove it in the centre of a banked-down fire. I could do this, and had done so on many occasion, but Arlette, for all her winsome looks and feminine charms, had done the exact same thing the last time she had cooked a meal and had only a dried-up carcass to show for it. I suspected practising magic was the same, and I was no witch to cook the spells and brew the potions.
There was no other choice – I must run away, as far as I could get, and I would have to resist Herleva’s call. It should not be too hard, now I knew she was real and what lay ahead of me if she succeeded in drawing me back into her clutches.
Where to go?
My French was passable, and my English fluent. Returning to southern or western Wales was possibly not a good idea, but the north would not know me. With a change of name, and with my rough clothes, who would expect the daughter of one dead king and the wife of another to appear in their midst. Finding work might prove difficult without a man or family to vouch for me, but surely I could make up some story realistic enough to pass muster.
The other alternative was a convent. The life of a nun still did not appeal, though it had to be better than being in thrall to a daughter of Satan who wanted to turn me into a cat at every opportunity. Besides, prayer and atonement might ease the burden on my soul. If I prayed hard enough, God might spare me the fires of eternal damnation. Surely he would see I did not ask to be a vehicle of Lucifer.
I would not stay in Normandy if I could help it. I wanted to go home. A wave of homesickness, so strong it nearly sent me to my knees, hit me. Staggering, I lurched to the door and headed for the kitchen. I had little to take with me: a spare pair of boots, my otter-skin cloak, looking the worse for wear now, a change of linen, and my comb.
Working quickly, feeling a sense of urgency, I gathered my things together and thrust them into an old leather satchel. Had I forgotten anything? Food, for I did not know when I would eat again. I had no copper or silver, and nothing to barter, so I had to take as much as I could carry.
Hard bread, cheese, handfuls of berries, slices of yesterday’s cold mutton, carrots (I could eat those raw), were all I could find which did not need cooking. I would drink from streams and wells if I happened to pass through a village, and at this time of year I hoped to forage as I went. Sorrel, dandelion leaves, blackberries, ripening pears, though the latter did not grow wild and I would be stealing if I picked from an orchard. I was aware I might have to resort to stealing and I was just as aware of the consequences of getting caught.
A final check, and I was ready. With the satchel slung over my shoulder I headed out of the door and straight into Fulbert.
‘Oh,’ was all I could manage.
He scratched his beard and took a step back. ‘What has she got you doing now?’ he asked, eyeing the full bag. Then he noticed the cloak draped over my arm. It had not fitted into the satchel, and he came to the correct conclusion.
‘You are leaving?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Does Herleva know?’
Should I lie or tell the truth? ‘No,’ I said.
‘She deserves the courtesy of hearing it from your lips, not mine.’
‘She will persuade me to stay.’ Command me, more like.
He sighed. ‘Aye, she is very persuasive, is Herleva. Where will you go?’
‘Home.’
‘Have we treated you so badly?’
I had expected him to stop me. I was not an indentured serf nor a servant, I was a free woman, but without a male relative to speak up for me, I was at the mercy of this man who had taken me in, and not out of the kindness of his heart, either. Herleva had told him he must, and afterwards he had been glad of the extra pair of hands to tan his leather for him. Perhaps he did not care whether I stayed or left, now that Herleva did not want me working in the trenches. He most likely considered me just another mouth to feed.
‘No, but I long for my own kith and kin,’ I said.
He moved aside to let me pass. ‘You have taken only that which is yours?’ he asked suspiciously, inspecting the satchel.
‘The bag is an old one. It will not be missed.’
He shrugged, but did not demand its return.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, and God bless.’
He huffed and without a backward look went into the house. I hurried down the path, striking out across the fields as soon as the house was out of sight. The sun was almost overhead and the day was another warm one. If I kept the sun at my back I would be heading north towards the nearest large town, Caen, and beyond that the English Channel. When Alfred had brought me to Normandy we had landed on the west coast not the north, but Arlette had boasted her father had taken her to Caen once and they had journeyed all day to get there. That was on horseback. I was on foot. It would take me twice as long, two days, maybe three, because this day was already well advanced.
The road to Caen was well-trodden, if a tad rough and badly pitted. It was easier to walk beside it rather than on it, my feet swishing through the long grass and meadow flowers. Cowslips, harebells, and buttercups lined the way, their faces turned to the sky. The scent of freshly scythed grass wafted on the breeze, and cows grazed placidly, flicking their tails at the summer flies. A bumblebee droned past, longer than my thumb and twice as fat. I stopped to watch its weaving progress on its endless search for nectar, and contentment stole into my heart.
Confounded at the unaccustomed emotion, I sat on a weathered milestone, dried moss clinging stubbornly to its sides. For the first time since that dreadful day in Llandarog, I felt at peace. I was free, and the grief which I had carried with me like a bag on my back, was gone. Strange that today of all days, I should feel like this, when my future had never been so uncertain. For the first time in my life I was truly alone, not a coin to my name, with barely enough food to last two days, no idea where I would lay my head this coming night, and I was joyful. Not happy, exactly, but my heart was lighter than it had been for many months.
Resuming my journey, I did a small skip, glancing around nervously in case anyone saw. The road was empty, not a horse or cart in sight. No one had passed me from either direction for several miles. I skipped again, then when I had rid myself of the itch in my feet, I settled to a steady walk.
Every so often a hamlet lay in my path, and on one occasion I passed a village with a square-towered, squat church at its centre. Too early to stop for the night, and a little uneasy at the thought of bedding down too close to strangers, I carried on, my legs aching pleasantly from the unaccustomed exertion.
By the time the sun dipped towards the horizon, I was more than ready to stop. A stand of trees off to the right, far enough away from the road, seemed
a likely place to spend the night. Off the path, long grass and low scrubby bushes lay between me and my destination, and I had to pick my way carefully, for some of those bushes had thorns. A bird rose up in a flurry of flapping wings and angry chirping. I stopped, hand on my thumping chest and caught my breath. I do not know who had been the most perturbed, me or the bird.
The stand of trees was on a slightly raised piece of land, an island surrounded by an undulating sea of grass and meadows. A brook ran alongside, only a few inches deep and easily forded. Even better – I would not go to bed thirsty. I knelt and scooped water into my cupped hands, drank my fill, then splashed my face. Ablutions completed, I got to my feet and clambered up the slope.
I had a good view of the surrounding countryside from the top. The village with the church was a few miles to the south, and up ahead a larger collection of buildings suggested another village. I found a suitable spot on the edge of the trees and spread the cloak on the ground. With bushes behind to guard my back, and open land in front, from my vantage point I would be sure to spot anyone who approached, or at least hear them once the sun went down.
A meal of cheese and bread, another drink of water, and I was ready for my rather hard bed. Using the satchel as a pillow, I lay back and looked up at the sky. It was darkening swiftly, stars appearing one by one until the heavens were awash with twinkling lights framed by the branches of the trees behind me.
The night was far from quiet. Leaves rustled, branches creaked, small animals scurried and pattered. A dog barked in the far distance and a fox called, much closer. For a moment all noise seemed to cease at the hoot of an owl. I imagined rabbits, voles, and mice frozen in fear, waiting for the danger to pass.
I drifted off to sleep with the call of the owl’s mate in my ears.
Caitlyn Box Set Page 15