Caitlyn Box Set

by Elizabeth Davies

  I headed for the edge of the cliff. A few gulls remained to haunt the rocky ledges, huddled and squabbling, as they settled to await the morning. They did not sense me, and even if they had, I would be of little concern to them. They were too far down from the edge to hunt them safely in darkness, even with my keen cat-eyes, and they knew it.

  An agonised squeak carried on the air. Other hunters were abroad tonight, another cat, or mayhap a fox, but none were close enough to bother me. I did not stop nor turn back, for I had a rendezvous with death myself. Death and I had more than a nodding acquaintance. I had ended the lives of too many not to know his face, and he knew mine.

  The land dropped towards the sea, gently at first, becoming steeper until the cliff sheared off, meeting the pounding waters in a frenzy of submerged rocks and jagged boulders at its base. Many folk had died on those rocks at the end of a terrified scream. A fall from this height was fatal.

  Sure-footed and graceful, I padded to the edge and worked my way down to an outcrop. Exposed and wind-whipped, no gulls roosted here, although their voices were a raucous din above the boom of the waves.

  Turning thoughts and senses inwards, I imagined myself in woman form. It took a small amount of time, this transformation of mine, longer than several heartbeats, and the discomfort, though not as agonising at it had once been, made me ache and writhe. Both mind and body were stretched and pulled, until I thought I might be torn in many pieces. But then, it was done. One moment I was Cat, the next, I was Caitlyn.

  I staggered, a sudden gust almost blowing me into the abyss, and I put out a hand to grasp the cliff face, crying out when a chunk of rock came away. It tumbled, and I nearly went with it, my skirts whipping about my legs, threatening to topple me.

  Not yet. I was not ready, but soon. Very soon.

  Gingerly I sank to my haunches and eased my backside down. I paid no heed to the outcrop’s cold dampness, and drew my knees up to my chest, crossed my arms over them, and rested my chin.

  I saw less, heard less, smelled less when I was Caitlyn, but I had no need of heightened senses in this place. All I needed was courage.

  The beauty of the black sea, with its silver crests, like the manes of ethereal horses galloping to shore, and the sky with its sparkling lanterns of stars, resonated deep within me. I loved wild places. I had grown up not far from here, long before Llewelyn’s birth, or even that of his grandfather. The world of men had changed since my childhood, but the sea and the mountains remained the same. I wished I had the freedom to enjoy them.

  My life was not my own to govern, and it never would be. The only way out was death.

  I uncurled my body and stood, shaky and fearful, gathering whatever courage I could find and wrapping it tightly around me, before closing my eyes.

  Maybe I should say some final words? A prayer? But to which gods? The ancient gods of my mother or the three-headed Christian God. Where had any of these gods been during my long life? I had seen no evidence of their regard for me. None of them had ever eased my pain, nor lessened my suffering. Anger filled me, bitter and sharp, like biting on metal, and the moment faded.

  I stepped back from the edge.

  Once more, I had failed to put an end to my condition. This time, anger saved me. The time before, it had been pity. I wondered what excuse I would use next time, and there would be a next time. I had been contemplating my own death ever since I had been enslaved by magic almost two hundred years ago.

  But for tonight, Death would have to wait.

  I was not quite ready to go.

  Chapter 5

  ‘Did I give you permission to leave?’ Joan’s voice, January-cold, contrasted sharply with the glow on her face from the heat of the fire.

  ‘No, my lady.’ I hung my head; to do otherwise would antagonise her further.

  I had been summoned to her bedchamber, and at this hour of the night any other lady would be on her knees reciting her evening prayers, but Joan preferred to annoy her cat as a prelude to bedtime.

  I failed to see any problem with my departure from the hall. My main business was to spy for her. With Lord William on the dais seated beside Prince Llewelyn, I assumed that for tonight at least, my services were redundant. Anything of note would have been heard by half the court. Or did she want me to count his breaths, or how many times his foot tapped on the floor?

  I kept my head down. Joan, adept at reading the expressions of others, would easily see the defiance in my eyes. There was nothing supernatural about it – she made a study of people. Her husband found it useful and often the information she reported to him was gained by honest means, and sometimes it was not. Of course, he knew nothing about her witchy abilities. Wife or not, he would hang her if he did.

  ‘I want you to arrange a meeting between myself and Lord William,’ my mistress said. ‘I want to meet with him alone.’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ I murmured, wondering how on earth I would slip her past William’s guards. Even if I did, Llewelyn would be bound to hear and would ask the purpose of it. I also wondered at the reason for her wanting a private meeting.

  ‘Use that man of his, Hugh of Pembroke. I hear he likes a pretty face and a well-turned ankle. Flaunt your charms.’

  Then I realised what she had just said. Flaunt your charms. Did than mean I did not have to remain a cat all the time? Joan had not allowed me to appear as myself in public for many, many years. I was only allowed to be seen as Cat. None of the younger maids knew me, but my mistress was worried that I might be recognised by one of the older ones. Joan had been surrounded by many attendants during her childhood, and she had brought some of them with her on her marriage. I had been among them, but when it started to become apparent that I did not look a day older than when I had first arrived in Clemence’s household, I was banished to catdom. Joan gave the story that my head had been turned by a visiting baron, and that I had left her service to marry him, and Caitlyn was seen no more.

  Anyway, I had few charms to speak of. She was the one with the charms, with her chamber full of spell books and diced newts. She could put a spell on this Hugh or slip a concoction into his wine to make him compliant to her wishes, but she was cautious in the use of her craft and would not waste a spell on something achievable by other means.

  Joan kept the room where she performed her devilish incantations safe through the use of witchcraft. I had witnessed for myself how people’s eyes slid past the door without ever really seeing it, although Joan made no secret of the chamber. She called it the ‘herbery’, and in it she concocted an assortment of ointments and poultices, balms and salves to soothe the ailments of the folk in her care. If pushed, no one could give accurate directions to it, and people tended to forget it even existed. I didn’t know how she did it, but it appeared as though their memories were being misdirected. She had done the very same to my tiny chamber.

  A rap on the door of her solar made us both jump. Well-drilled, I hurried to take a seat by the fire, picked up a basket of silk skeins, and pretended to sort through them. Joan grabbed her embroidery. The tableau was set.

  ‘Enter,’ she called.

  Llewelyn. He might be nearing sixty-years-old, but he still commanded attention. Weatherworn and battle-scarred, he reminded me of an old stag, lording it over his harem of does, at the pinnacle of his prowess, vigorous and powerful. Tonight, he had a light in his eyes and a smile on his lips. I caught a glimpse of the handsome man he had once been, and although time had roughened his face and thickened his body, he had not lost his magnetism.

  I kept my face averted, because it would not do to be recognised by the Prince either, but his gaze did not touch me. He had eyes only for his wife, and I placed the basket on the floor, jumped to my feet and curtsied, keeping my head bowed. He never noticed me.

  ‘You may leave us,’ Joan said to me. ‘I have no further use for you tonight.’ And she opened her arms to her husband with a smile.

  I was more than happy to go.

  ~~~~~

>   A castle never sleeps. It slumbers, half-awake, like a dragon with one eye on his hoard of gold, always aware and only a moment away from battle-readiness. Sentries paced the battlements, ever-watchful, and the great hall, where many slept, held a mass of bodies: knight and servant, soldier and squire.

  Unable to settle, I paced my small room, restless and on edge, ten steps one way, twelve the other. The gown laid across the back of the chair had dried, and I picked it up, tracing my finger along the tear in its side. The ginger tom’s claws had been sharp. It always astounded me how wounds sustained as Cat were present when I became Caitlyn, and vice versa. The rends along my ribs itched as they healed, still sore to the touch but thankfully free from inflammation.

  I thought of Hugh’s gentleness when he probed the wound, and I wondered where Llewelyn had housed him. If I were to attempt to arrange a meeting between Joan and William, I would have to appear to Hugh as Caitlyn, and risk being seen. Most of the soldiers, knights, and squires would not take much notice of me, and if they did, they wouldn’t think to wonder who I might be. However, the women of the castle were horses of a different breed. A strange female was bound to attract their attention, and even a serving wench’s curiosity would be aroused. The worse scenario was that someone might recognise me.

  I stopped in mid-turn, thinking hard.

  Joan was thirty-six. She had been thirteen-years-old when she was given in marriage to Llewelyn. I had been twenty-three. I was still twenty-three and had been for nearly two hundred years. I counted off the years between Joan’s marriage and today. There were enough of them to make my idea feasible.

  Could it finally be time for me to be Caitlyn once more? I could be passed off as the daughter of the noblewoman who had served Joan all those years ago, the one who had ‘left’ to get married.

  This story might work. A similar one had worked well for me in the past (more or less) and it would mean that I would be able to move freely about the castle as a woman, which could only help with my current task. The thought of joining society again filled me with a gladness I had not felt in a very long time. I needed to discuss this with Lady Joan, though I prayed from her comment earlier that she would not be averse to the idea.

  But first, I wanted to find Hugh. I told myself it would be a good idea to familiarise myself with where he slept – all the better to find him again when the time came.

  I changed into Cat and slipped through the small hole in the base of my door. The smell of cow-fat candles, wood-banked fires, and many bodies, mixed with the aroma of fresh baking bread from the vast castle ovens, familiar and normal, but underlying all was the unexpected scent of him – Hugh.

  Faint yet constant, it took a while for me to realise where it came from. My fur carried the smell of him with me as if he had marked me as his, and the thought was disconcerting. I wanted to roll in the heather at the top of the cliffs and rid me of his scent, but I had called out to Death once tonight and had no wish to attract his attention again. Now the thought of the yawning, sucking void made me shudder. The longing to leap had gone, and fear had taken its place, although I knew it would not be too long before I once more felt the call of Death’s sweet embrace.

  Hugh was not in the hall, nor was he in the barracks. He might sleep on a pallet in William’s quarters but something told me otherwise, so I searched the castle.

  After looking in all the obvious places, and some not so obvious, I was beginning to think my hunch had been wrong and that he was entrenched in Lord William’s rooms after all.

  I finally found him in the stables.

  I had been searching one of the buildings in the outer courtyard, when I heard him laugh. My heart stuttered, and I sank lower to the ground as I sped across the cobbles towards the sound, but I stumbled when he laughed again, for this time a high-pitched giggle accompanied it. An assuredly feminine giggle. I should have turned back, but curiosity drove me forward.

  The stables were peaceful, the only noises were those of grinding teeth and the occasional blow of air through hay-dusty nostrils, and the scent of horse and leather hung heavy in the air. I crept forwards, the horses paying me no heed. They were well used to cats hunting rodents around their hooves, although both cats and men alike avoided the stall at the far end where Llewelyn stabled his destrier. The massive warhorse did not like cats, nor dogs, and definitely not stable boys. He didn’t like anything, or anyone, so why was the rumble of Hugh’s voice coming from his stall?

  The stallion sensed me as I drew closer and let out a warning snort. I ignored him; the half-door penning him in should be solid enough, although I needed to be careful of the snaking neck and big teeth if I got too near. Trained to bite and kick anyone who came within range, he happily attacked friend as well as foe and was wickedly quick.

  I slid into the next stall, which contained a calm and peaceful gelding, who had one hind hoof cocked and his head hanging as he dozed, and I peered through the chinks in the wooden partitions. It was empty, except for the stallion. Puzzled, I moved further into the gelding’s stable and peered again. No sign of Hugh.

  More laughter. Ah – it came from the hay store beyond this last stall, and that was where Hugh and his giggling companion were hiding. Mystery solved, for I had not been able to understand why such a vicious brute of a horse would stand quietly while two strangers canoodled under his feet. The only man he allowed anywhere near him was Llewelyn himself, and even the prince displayed considerable caution around the stallion.

  As I thought; the couple were canoodling, although with the woman’s skirts hiked up around her waist and Hugh’s hand delving beneath them, I surmised the tryst had gone further than a quick, stolen kiss. She lay back with a sigh, and he leaned over her.

  The stallion kicked his water trough in annoyance. I knew how he felt; he was not the only annoyed animal tonight, and I hissed softly, jealousy coursing through me at the sight of Hugh and his lover.

  I sat back on my haunches, wondering where such a reaction came from. I knew nothing of this man, except his name and his allegiance. He might be more pleasant to look at than many and he had an affable manner, but those things did not explain the tightening in my stomach, nor the thrust of envious irritation that the sight of him with another woman caused. I had seen my share of handsome men, of men too fetching for their own good, but only one had affected me like this one. For the first time in nearly two hundred years, a part of me I had thought long dead had awakened.

  I shook my head at my stupidity. Remember what happened last time…

  Another kick and a squeal to accompany it. The destrier was fast losing patience at the antics in the next stall, and Hugh sat up.

  When I saw the face of his companion, I knew why the pair were hiding. Hugh was tupping Margedd, the wife of Barris, one of Llewelyn’s most influential barons. He was so influential that he had been sent to Winchester to convey the terms of William of Abergavenny’s release to the King. No wonder the frisky pair had chosen such an unlikely place for a mating.

  The stallion scraped a hoof along the stone floor, the noise harsh enough to set a saw’s teeth on edge, and Hugh stood, brushing stray strands of hay from his breeches. Then he did something I would not have believed if I had not witnessed it with my own eyes – he stretched out a hand to Llewelyn’s horse.

  I held my breath. Hugh had no idea of this animal’s reputation. Those huge teeth could crush his hand. I did not want to watch, but my gaze locked on the scene and I couldn’t blink, let alone look away.

  The stallion snuffled and stamped a hoof, his tail swishing and his ears laid back. He was preparing to bite. I expected that the temerity of someone treating him like a child’s pony being given a carrot must have taken him by surprise, for he hesitated, his neck stretched over the stall’s high wooden side, about to strike.

  The horse’s ears flicked forward and slowly he lowered his head and sniffed Hugh’s hand. The man held steady, murmuring nonsense to the destrier, stroking the beast’s nose and ru
bbing the velvet-soft skin under his chin. The horse let him. He even pushed his muzzle into Hugh’s hand, seeking more caresses. If I could rub my eyes to clear them, I would have, convinced that it must be an illusion.

  A final pat on the neck and the stallion drew his head back into his own stable.

  Hugh turned back to his lady-love, and as he did so, he caught sight of me. The first sighting could be taken for an unfortunate accident, but by the third time of him noticing me, I was beginning to question my carelessness.

  His wink and slow smile were too much.

  I whirled and ran.

  Chapter 6

  The clang and ring of sword on sword drew me nearer, for I knew who was fighting in the practice arena. Everyone in the castle must have been aware of the small war being waged in the outer bailey.

  I had left my cloak in my room, the late October sun warm enough to cast it aside and revel in what might be the last of the good weather before the rains and cold of winter descended. I danced down steps and along passageways until I reached the courtyard, rejoicing in being Caitlyn, my skirts fluttering around my ankles.

  My gown, simply cut and unadorned but made from finely woven wool, was oak-leaf green. A braided, leather girdle encircled my waist, and a flimsy veil covered my hair, held in place by a circlet of copper given to me by my lady. She had seen the sense in my plan, quickly recognising the possibilities which my being Caitlyn allowed. Of course, I would become Cat again whenever the need arose. I had no choice.

  The castle, built for defence and not comfort, had an outer curtain wall, rising massively from the sheer rock beneath it, and an inner wall protected by two circular towers, the gates nestling between them. The light breeze teased the end of my veil, and carried shouts and curses from the men in the practice arena as I walked through gates which were four times my height. The outer courtyard housed the mechanics of the castle: barracks and stables, smithy and kitchen, chapel and granary, and the practice arena. Today, soldiers and servants alike had stopped what they were doing, eager to watch the contest. Wagers were busily exchanged and yells of encouragement filled the air, the encouragement being somewhat one-sided as every man, woman, and child rooted for Llewelyn’s man.