Caitlyn Box Set

by Elizabeth Davies

  Missy…

  Go away, I refuse to listen to you.

  Missy…

  Unsure whether her voice was in my dream or in my mind, I sat up, sleep forgotten. The night was silent and still. Not a breath of breeze, not a rustle or a squeak.

  Come to me.

  Not that again! I had listened to her once and look where it had got me. I lay back down. Sleep may be beyond me now, but I should rest and preserve my strength for tomorrow’s journey. I hoped to reach Caen by sunset.

  Come to me, missy.

  I swore under my breath, and sat up again. The bitch was not going to leave me alone.

  ‘Go away,’ I said aloud.

  Her chuckle was more felt than heard. The very air seemed to vibrate with her laughter.

  Come to me.

  ‘Is that all you can say – come to me? It will not work. I refuse. I want no part of you, or your evil ways.’

  You do not understand, it was a command, not a request. Come to me.

  She was here, on my little tree island. I could not see her, but I knew she was here in the same way I knew the village was a mile or two ahead, even though it was hidden by the night.

  ‘Leave me be,’ I whispered, dread and fear building. I was too exposed, too vulnerable alone. I should have pressed on until I reached people. She would not have dared to make herself known in front of others.

  You forget…

  She was right, I had forgotten. She had spoken to me whilst I was on horseback, with Idris and Cai mere feet away. She had spoken to me in Chepstow and Castle Cary when I was surrounded by more people than had lived in all of Llandarog and its outlying farms. Nowhere was safe from her.

  I must close my mind, not let her in. If I ignored her for long enough she would eventually leave me in peace.

  I am becoming impatient, missy.

  ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’

  We are bound, you and me. It cannot be undone. Now get up.

  No, no, I won’t, I protested. Yet my body obeyed her anyway. It climbed to its feet, wooden and stiff, and placed one foot in front of the other. I tried to stop it, tried to force my feet to stop walking, but they carried on, as jerky as a stick puppet.

  ‘Nooo,’ I wailed, ‘you cannot do this,’ even as I reached the road and my return was inevitable.

  During the long journey back she uttered not another word, even though she must have heard my soul weep and cry out. And still, she made me walk.

  Chapter 20

  Arlette danced into the kitchen where Herleva was roasting pigeons. Five birds, neatly skewered, hung over the fire. The smell made my mouth water.

  ‘Can we use the familiar to have another go at Edward?’ Arlette asked.

  “The familiar” indeed. The cheeky wench needed to find her manners. I bared my teeth at her in a feline snarl. It caught her unawares, considering I was in Caitlyn-form and not a cat. She poked out her tongue. I lifted my nose in the air, and gave her my most haughty expression. Herleva ignored us both, busying herself with making a sauce of raspberries and mint. I returned to my task of shelling peas.

  ‘I have told you before, you do not have the necessary equipment to pique his interest,’ Herleva said, dipping a wooden spoon into the sauce and gingerly tasting it. ‘Should I add more salt?’

  Arlette stepped up to the table and licked the rest of the sauce from the spoon. ‘I like it as it is, but Father prefers his food with more,’ she said.

  ‘That is what I thought.’ Herleva added another pinch of the rough granules and stirred it in.

  ‘We have not really tried,’ Arlette continued, sitting next to me and trying to steal a handful of peas. I slapped her away. ‘Alfred was easy to seduce. He will bed anyone who wears a skirt. Or rather, he did,’ she simpered. ‘Now he has eyes only for me. Edward will be harder, I admit, but I am certain he can be persuaded to appreciate my charms.’ She pushed out her bosom and stared down at the twin mounds.

  ‘Harder?’ Herleva scoffed. ‘He will be nigh on impossible. I can make a spell which will ensorcel him for a short while, but I cannot alter his true nature. He will never fall in love with you.’

  ‘I do not need him to love me. I need him to bed me.’

  ‘You are too naïve. He beds you and then what?’

  ‘I bear him a child. A son.’

  ‘As I said, naïve. What use will a child out of wedlock be, from a woman who is little more than a peasant? Edward’s eyes are too firmly fixed on the English throne to marry a wench of your station.’ She carried the pot to the fire. A blackened skillet rested on the coals, and she placed the pot on it and began to stir. ‘You might want to turn these birds if you don’t want one side charred and the other raw,’ she suggested.

  Arlette looked to me to do it, but I merely shrugged and pointed at the pea-pods. I had my own work. She sighed and got up.

  ‘Alfred will marry me, so why not Edward?’ She had a stubborn look on her face, with her stuck-out chin and her lips drawn into a line.

  ‘Alfred has nothing to lose,’ Herleva said.’ He can afford to marry for love. Edward cannot.’

  The younger woman finished turning the birds and blew on her fingers to cool them. When she sat back down she was deep in thought, playing with a lock of hair, twirling it round and round. ‘Then he will have to be removed,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  I looked at Herleva’s face. She had not been expecting that. Didn’t see that in your nasty liquid-filled skull, did you, I wanted to caw. I wisely kept my mouth shut. Sometimes the play between older witch and younger witch was more entertaining than a troupe of troubadours.

  ‘Got rid of,’ Arlette clarified.

  ‘I understood what you meant.’ Herleva appeared huffy and somewhat put out by the suggestion. I wondered if it was because she had not thought of it herself. ‘Do you believe if Edward dies, Alfred will someday rule England?’ she asked Arlette.

  ‘He is a better option than that weak, effeminate, man-loving excuse for a prince.’ Arlette tossed her dark hair artfully back over her shoulder. It fell in a straight cascade to her waist, thick and shining.

  ‘He might be,’ Herleva agreed, ‘but if Alfred becomes heir, it will not bode well for him to wed someone so low born.’

  Arlette huffed her displeasure. Whatever her high opinion of herself, there was no altering the fact she was a tanner’s daughter.

  ‘Although,’ Herleva continued, ‘if the deed was already done…’ She stopped stirring, lifted the pot off the skillet and turned to face her protégé. ‘Yes, it might work. Some will raise their eyebrows. After all, Alfred is royal born, but he is three times removed from the throne, has no land and little wealth of his own, so why should he not marry for love. He might be considered slow-witted to be taken in by a pretty face, and some may deride him for not seeking a bride with more to offer, but if he stands firm in his love for you, they will not persuade him to put you aside. He is not important enough. We will just have to ensure Alfred remains besotted with you long enough to take his vows.’

  ‘That is the easy part.’ Arlette smiled, a slow seductive smile, no doubt anticipating what she would have to do to keep him from straying.

  ‘Easy for you,’ Herleva said, ‘for you are not the one who is casting the spell.’

  ‘You can teach me to do it. You have taught me much already. I want to learn more.’

  ‘Yes, and you shall, when I deem you are ready.’ Herleva put the pot back on the table. ‘There, the sauce is done.’

  I finished shelling and reached for the long pods of runner beans. I found topping and tailing them to be quite soothing.

  Herleva said, ‘Before we step onto this path, we must be sure of the outcome. I will read the bones, tonight.’

  ‘What is there to read? You have foretold Edward will be king of England one day. Surely Alfred will take his place if Edward dies?’

  ‘The future is not so simple. It is fluid, like a river, with hidden depths and unseen perils. Re
moving Edward may change everything.’

  ‘Can you not scry again?’

  Herleva stepped behind Arlette’s chair and stroked her hair, a motherly, affectionate gesture I had not seen from her before. There was more to their relationship than teacher and taught, I surmised, surprised at the revelation. I had assumed Herleva cared for no one but herself and her own machinations.

  ‘I know how much you love to scry and you are becoming very good at it,’ the older woman said, ‘but the skull does not hold all the answers. It can only tell you what might come to pass with the present as it is now. I need to read the bones. Come.’

  She walked out of the kitchen, Arlette behind her. Not wanting to miss what might prove to be an opportunity to learn something I could use to remove the familiar spell, I followed them into the embalming room. It was mercifully corpse-free.

  Herleva went to a high shelf, reached up and took hold of a velvet bundle. With great care, she lifted it down and placed it on the table.

  ‘Best to do this at night,’ she explained, ‘when there is no moon. The ideal time to ask questions of the dead is at Samhain, when the powers of darkness begin to take their yearly hold. That is the time when the boundaries between the two worlds are at their thinnest.’ She stroked the bundle. ‘Samhain is many months away, and too long to wait. I will seek answers at the next new moon. If we are to kill Edward, then we must do it soon.’

  Should I warn him? Could I warn him? Or did that go against the grain of the familiar spell? Edward had not impressed me much when I first set eyes on him in Wulfstan’s hall, and closer encounters on board ship had not changed my opinion. I had thought Alfred to be the more kingly of the brothers, but in spite of it all, Edward did claim to be England’s heir, and what right did these two have to deprive him of his legacy and his life?

  Besides, it was bad enough to imagine Arlette as the wife of Alfred who, as the second-born heir to the throne, would have more wealth and power when Edward took the crown than Arlette could ever hope for. Arlette was dreaming of grander things, like becoming queen of all England.

  It rankled to think I had been cast so low and Arlette, a common tanner’s daughter, might be cast so high. The unfairness of it galled me.

  ‘Are you going to spend the day lollygagging in here?’ Herleva stood by the door, tapping her foot.

  No doubt she had more tasks for me, though since she had changed me into a cat I had not been expected to work in the tanning pits and trenches, which was a consolation, albeit a small one. Maybe she did not trust me fully, or trust the spell to work properly, in spite of my not being able to run away, or to harm her, for she kept me close and watched me intently. I suspected there was an aspect I had not found, and vowed to look harder, to think harder. There must be a way to outwit her magic.

  She poked me in the chest as I sidled through the doorway. ‘I do not know why you are looking so smug,’ she said. ‘If the bones say Edward should be killed, then it will not be me or Arlette who will perform the deed. It will be you.’

  The thought filled me with dread.

  Chapter 21

  They did not care whether I watched or not. Why should they? I was no threat to them, however much I wanted to be. I think Herleva was secretly pleased I took an interest, even if we both knew I only did so to understand her, and my situation, better. The more knowledge I had, the greater the chance of finding a way to break the spell. Besides, the idea of asking a heap of old bones a question and receiving an answer intrigued me.

  The night was a dark one. My mother used to slip away under the cover of a night such as this, out of my father’s fortress and into the hills. I wondered if he knew, for little escaped him. If he did, to my knowledge he had never tried to stop her. I used to believe she sometimes took me with her. Now I was not so certain. Had I actually accompanied her, or had I been with her in spirit, in the same way I had watched Herleva whilst I was still hundreds of miles away?

  Herleva did not need to slip away. She used her embalming room, a room where Fulbert was too squeamish to enter and his boys were simply not interested in visiting. Osbern preferred chasing girls and Walter was too concerned with ensuring his claim on Fulbert’s tannery. Besides, despite what folks were led to believe, Herleva was the embalmer, not her husband. Fulbert, for his part, was more than happy to go along with the subterfuge. embalming was a lucrative business and he enjoyed spending the coin it brought him.

  Only one candle burned, its wax stem as black as the entrance to hell. Did a black candle mean a black mass? I shuddered, wanting no part in any communion with the devil. And I had no doubt at all that Herleva had sold her soul in exchange for dark magic. My mother, for all her purported pagan ways, had worshipped the gods of the trees and the water, and had drawn on the power of the light and nature itself. This one liked the night and dead things, and her authority came from hell. I was certain of it.

  Should I leave, before they drew me in any further? I was already tainted by their evil through no fault of my own. Was my soul already damned? The Church would claim so. In the eyes of the priests, I was condemned to spend eternity in the fires of hell. The unfairness of it filled me with despair and outrage.

  ‘Stay well back and do not utter a word,’ Herleva said. ‘That goes for you, too,’ she added, pointing to Arlette.

  Arlette pulled me down to the floor, the flagstones cold and unforgiving under my knees. She looked as though she were about to be taken by a lover, all misty-eyed and parted lips, her breathing light and fast.

  Taking a cloth, Herleva dipped it in a jug and wrung it out. Arlette watched intently, but with a look in her eye which showed she had witnessed this before – expectation and anticipation, as well as curiosity. Herleva wiped her face and then her hands, all the while muttering under her breath.

  ‘What is she doing?’ I whispered.

  ‘She is cleansing herself,’ Arlette explained. ‘Now be quiet.’

  Herleva repeated the ritual three more times, turning to face each corner of the room as she did so. She folded the cloth and put it neatly on the table, before picking up a besom and sweeping the already spotless floor. The muttering became a soft chant, but I failed to make out the words.

  I opened my mouth, but before I said anything Arlette nudged me in the ribs. So low I had to strain to hear her, she said, ‘Now she is cleansing the area where she will read the bones.’

  ‘Have you seen her read them before?’ I asked, equally quietly.

  ‘No, but she begins every casting and ritual in the same manner. She purifies herself and the casting circle of earthly things, in order to concentrate on the spiritual.’

  What circle, I was about to say when Herleva glared at us, and I thought it best to refrain from asking any more questions. She picked up the one candle and used it to light four others. Their flames illuminated most of the room, chasing the shadows across the walls and onto the ceiling. I kept glancing at them as if I expected them to come alive, and if they did, I would not be unduly surprised. In this room anything was possible.

  I swallowed nervously and turned my attention back to Herleva. She had taken a burnt stick from the fire and was drawing a circle in charcoal. Then she drew another inside the first. In the channel made by the two, she trickled fine-grained salt out of the palm of her hand, creating a symbol; two small half-circles, back to back with two lines in between them, one from top to bottom, the other from side to side, dissecting each curve right through its centre. Below it all, she painted a small whole circle. I wished I knew what it meant. I had a feeling that in the world of magic, knowledge was everything.

  Leaning forward, I craned my neck for a better look. The symbol reminded me of the ancient runes carved into equally ancient stones dotting the Welsh hills. My mother could read them, but she never told me what they said. ‘They speak of a time gone by and best forgotten,’ she said once. A time of darkness perhaps? Did Herleva still adhere to those dark ways?

  She painted another, and anoth
er, until there were five of them, equally spaced and all very different. One of them looked like two tadpoles, side by side, facing away from each other, with wiggly tails ending in a narrow point.

  Arlette let out a tiny gasp. ‘She is going to use the powdered silver,’ she murmured, as Herleva reached for an ornate casket on the highest shelf. From its colour, I guessed it to be made of the very precious metal it contained, and it was intricately worked all around with leaves and vines. It was a valuable piece, with equally valuable contents I noticed, when she opened the lid. I had never seen powdered silver before, but I knew it was often used to paint the carvings in church. She tipped the casket until a steady stream of darkly glittering silver sand flowed out. A five-pointed star appeared inside the inner-most circle, each tip pointing to one of the symbols. Even I knew what this was, an inverted pentagram, the standard fare of witches and sorcerers.

  There was no longer any doubt in my mind – this woman was in communion with Satan himself.

  I wanted to run, to flee to the ends of the earth, but nowhere would be far enough to escape the witch, not if she could call on hell and all its minions to find me. I was most certainly damned. Fear held me motionless, and dread filled my heart. The room hummed with power and an evil which was barely-felt but there all the same, and it grew with each action she performed, with each word she chanted.

  Am roth, am gaer, am chorion

  Dwl eich gobion pwca

  Droth amen mar

  Her voice was clear, chanting the same three lines over and over. The language was not one I recognised, though it had the cadence, feel and rhythm of Welsh, and there was a strange compelling resonance to it. The hair on the back of my neck rose and a chill prickled my skin. This was old, I thought, older than Latin, older even than the Welsh which had been spoken long before the Romans appeared in my ancestors’ lands. As she chanted, I could almost grasp the meaning of those words – almost but not quite. They reverberated through my chest like a drum, and I began to sway to their rhythm. The chant filled my head and body, and I lost myself in it.