Caitlyn Box Set

by Elizabeth Davies

  Her eyes were moist. ‘What were you thanking the Lord for?’ she asked.

  ‘Clarity.’

  ‘A good thing to have. You may leave. I would like to pray now.’ Her voice was filled with melancholy.

  I stood, smoothing down my skirts.

  She reached out to touch my hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For trying.’

  God help me, but I liked her.

  Chapter 22

  How to do it? Killing might prove easier with each successive death but killing oneself was a different matter. The instinct to live was a strong one, and I knew how easy it was to back away from the abyss, to fight against the man holding his hand over my mouth, to cling to life in the face of a storm. Survival kicked in and the desire to die fled. Death by one’s own hand was hard when the body was strong and healthy.

  Hanging might be one way, and there were plenty of places to secure a noose, but the risk of not tying it right and being slowly strangled by my own weight was not a pleasant thought. Opening a vein left too much time for regret and contemplation. My current favourite was throwing myself off somewhere high – the battlements should do it. Any part of the curtain wall or the towers interspersing it would suit my purpose. With the surrounding ditch adding depth, survival would be unlikely.

  Unlikely was not enough. The ditch was feet deep in water. Still water, with no pounding waves or bone-crushing rocks on which to land and ensure the job was done properly. I couldn’t swim, but the water might be shallow enough to stand in. What if I were maimed not killed? I might live only to be paralysed. Or my death might be a slow, lingering one.

  Those images filled me with horror. I should have taken the opportunity when I sat on the cliff edge at Criccieth all those weeks ago. I needed to take a closer look at the battlements, and the ditch.

  Like most castles, the curtain wall was, in reality, two walls, one built alongside the other, to give a hollow space in between. The walls at Abergavenny Castle were over twenty feet thick, and inside was a warren of narrow corridors and small chambers, used for anything from armouries to sleeping quarters. Over three storeys high and topped by crenellations, those walls were an impressive sight. Interspersed by circular towers which stood another storey higher, all these defences were linked by the most important part – the top-most battlements, which were patrolled at all times. This was where I headed.

  Panting from climbing the steep, winding staircase, I paused halfway up. A small recess with its obligatory arrow-slit looked out over the River Usk. The river ran silent and dark around the southwestern flank of the castle, too full of rain for shallows to ripple its surface at this time of year. I strained to see the near bank, but the curve of it hugged the base of the spur on which the castle had been constructed, and the opening was too narrow to poke my head through.

  It didn’t have to be today, this death of mine. It could be tomorrow, or the day after, or the week after. There was no need for urgency. Joan did not expect me to murder Eva before the spring. I could live to see another Christmas, another snowfall, another crocus. I had time.

  Yet, if I failed to do it soon, I would be forever delaying it, finding reason after reason not to perform the wicked deed. Endless life in the thrall of magic could not be worse than endless death in hell, sentenced to eternal damnation by the sin of suicide. I didn’t want to go to hell. To ensure my body would be buried in hallowed ground, my death must appear to be an accident. If heaven did exist, I wanted a chance of entering it. I hoped God would understand.

  The heaving of my chest slowed, and I continued the upward climb, the staircase, circular and steep, only wide enough for one person at a time. A small boot-length wide at the outside, the steps narrowed to insignificance at their inner edges. One slip, and I would tumble arse over tit, as my father used to say. I probably wouldn’t suffer enough damage to end me, but it would be enough to hurt.

  I reached the top of the tower and walked into the biting air, the wind whipping my hair about my face. The yellow and red of William’s pennant flew from the pole high above my head, the cloth snapping and furling.

  From here, the surrounding mountains painted blue-grey shapes in the sky, their colour matching my mood, matching my soul. Such beauty and such wildness crushed all sense of self. Against the permanence and majesty of the landscape, I was nothing, no one. It did not matter if I died. The only person to miss me would be Joan, and she would not miss me, only what I did for her. To everyone else, my death would mean less than a ripple on a pond. That was how it should be – my demise was long overdue.

  I walked steadfastly closer to the edge, taking one slow, measured step, then another, my feet moving without conscious thought or will. At their lowest points, the crenellations were waist high. Leaning forward would be enough. No climbing involved.

  I placed the palms of both hands flat on the stone ledge and peered over the edge. The base of the tower eluded me. I leaned further outwards, feeling the call of the drop. It wanted me to jump.

  I steeled my mind and leaned even further.

  ‘If you do, you will regret it.’ A woman’s voice, cracked and querulous with age, spoke behind me.

  Oh, dear lord. What was an old biddy doing up here? This was no place for a crone.

  ‘That is absurd.’ I said, without looking around. ‘And none of your business.’ The drop lost some of its allure. I concentrated, trying to regain the feeling.

  ‘Absurd or not, I speak the truth. Taking one’s own life is a sin, and you will go to hell,’ she said.

  Moment lost, I gave up and turned to face her. There was always tomorrow.

  ‘Why are you concerned?’ My own voice was raw and shaky from its brush with death. The rest of me fared no better. I hoped she couldn’t see my trembling limbs, and I shoved my hands into the folds of my gown to hide their shaking.

  ‘Life is too precious to waste, young lady,’ she chided, ‘whatever your reason. Even if you are with child, or he doesn’t love you, or he beats you, or you caught him in bed with another.’ She cackled a laugh. ‘Or he caught you!’

  ‘None of them apply to me.’

  ‘Whatever your reason, it isn’t enough to risk eternal damnation.’

  ‘Too late,’ I muttered. I had committed mortal sins aplenty. Damnation was more or less assured.

  ‘Whatever you have done, God will forgive you.’ She inched closer.

  Did she really think she could stop me if I wanted to leap? She had to be eighty and as frail as a newly-hatched bird, but her eyes were lively, and she held herself as straight as a lance.

  ‘Well?’ She folded her arms across a scrawny chest. Her dress hung from her shoulders without touching anything on its journey to the ground. A veil covered most of her head, and wispy white tufts of hair escaped the sides. A whisker or two sprouted from her chin. Put her in britches, and she could easily pass for an old man.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I wished she would leave me alone. I needed time and space to return to the living.

  ‘An old busybody, that’s who I am. I dislike seeing anyone in pain.’

  ‘If you dislike it so much, you should have let me go.’ Feeling cold now, I wanted a hot fire and warmed wine. The urge to throw myself off the tower had dissipated, but the reason had not, and I needed to regroup my wits for the next attempt.

  ‘Come.’ She shuffled forward and held out a thin arm for me to take. I nearly smiled at the incongruity of it – it was I who should be offering my arm to her, not the other way around. She looked as though she barely had the strength to stand.

  As I dragged my hands free of my dress, the bulge at my waist caught my attention. Of course! I had another way. An easier way. No courage to be screwed up. No screaming plunge filled with second thoughts. No hideous splat onto the earth below. A quieter way. A less fraught way. I could lie in the comfort of my own bed and drift into oblivion.

  Belladonna!

  Why on God’s earth had I not considered it already?


  The old woman took my hesitation to mean something else.

  She sent me flying backwards with a swift kick behind the knees, taking my legs from underneath me. I almost went over the top of the wall, but she gave me a savage shove in the ribs and sent me sideways instead. I fell heavily, banging my head on the corner of a crenellation, and pain, sharp and bright, blossomed in my skull, and my sight dimmed. I felt sick and dizzy.

  ‘Help! Help!’ she screeched, as I struggled to turn over onto my front. On hands and knees, my head hanging low, I wished someone, anyone, would take a sword to my neck and chop off my head. The ache was intolerable, each beat of my heart thudded in my skull, shooting arrows of pain across my forehead and down my neck.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ I whimpered, as she did the opposite, grabbing me with her clawed, swollen-knuckled hands and dragging at my arms. For an old biddy, her strength was astounding, and her fingers dug cruelly into the soft flesh above my elbows.

  ‘Leave me be. You have done enough damage,’ I said.

  ‘Help us! Help us!’ she shouted at the top of her ancient voice. A pause for breath, then quieter, ‘I saved you, you ungrateful wench.’ Then she returned to full volume. ‘Help!’

  Nailed boots clattered on the steps, and three men burst out onto the turret, their swords drawn.

  The old woman crouched in front of me, her arms outstretched. Did she think they would strike?

  I got my legs underneath and heaved my heavy body to its feet. The three soldiers lowered their blades and glanced at each other.

  ‘We thought you was being attacked,’ one of them said.

  ‘I was.’ I tottered towards them on blancmange legs.

  ‘No, I mean, we thought you was attacking her.’ He jerked his head at the old woman.

  The crone produced a bright smile and a sticky, fluff-covered sweetmeat from her pocket. ‘Here.’ She held it out. ‘You can have it if you carry the lady to her room.’

  ‘Er, many thanks, mistress, but you keep it for yourself, eh?’ The man in the middle grimaced at her offering.

  She put it back. I wondered how long it had been in there.

  ‘What happened?’ another asked, sliding his sword back into its sheath.

  ‘She fell.’ The old woman glowered at me, daring me to contradict her. ‘And hit her head.’

  ‘Let me take a look.’ He took one step, and the old woman yelled, ‘Catch her,’ as I slid to the ground.

  He caught me. ‘Fetch wine and make it strong. She needs fortifying before we attempt to take her down the stairs.’ He turned to the woman. ‘What on earth were you pair doing up here anyway? Have you no sewing to keep you busy? This is no place for a woman.’

  ‘Taking some air.’ Her rough hands roamed over my skull. ‘She will have a headache for a day or two,’ she announced, after prodding and poking, and causing me yet more pain. She let go of my head and wiped her hands on her crow-black dress. ‘No real harm done.’

  No harm? The old hag had almost killed me.

  More boots clattering and a flask was shoved under my chin. ‘Brandy. Drink, my lady, it will help.’

  I drank, and spluttered as the liquid forged a molten trail down my throat. My head hurt even more, but the nausea diminished somewhat. The soldier helped me lurch to my feet.

  ‘Where to, mistress?’ he asked.

  ‘I share a room with Hesta,’ I said, hoping he knew the location. Though hopefully I would not be sharing with her for much longer.

  ‘She is in Dulcie’s old room,’ a child’s voice piped up, and Maude danced across the turret on bouncy young legs, her face alight with curiosity.

  Wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed being today’s entertainment. Would anyone else like to watch?

  The soldiers prepared to move me. One man was stationed on either side, each with a shoulder under an armpit, and I hung between them like a drunk at the end of a long night.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Maude, the words slurred and thick. Why were there two of her?

  ‘I followed Blod. She is more fun than Mama, and I hate learning my numbers. Mama is doing the accounts, and she says I must learn to do them too, ready for when I have to run a household of my own, but I am not going to have my own household. I am going to be a troubadour, and live in other people’s houses. So, I don’t see why I have to learn my numbers.’

  Blod. The old woman’s name meant nothing to me.

  ‘Worry not,’ Blod whispered in my ear. ‘Last week she wanted to go on crusade.’

  With Blod leading the way and Maude skipping behind, chattering, our small procession ended inside Dulcie’s chamber. The soldiers laid me on the bed and shot out of the door with alacrity, no doubt glad to return to more normal duties.

  I groaned when my sore head touched the pillow. My skull weighed a ton, and pulsed and throbbed like a rat in a sack. The sooner I escaped this plane and moved to a higher one, the better. There was no pain in heaven. I refused to think about the eternal agonies offered by the other realm.

  I placed all my troubles firmly at Lord William’s door. My life had plodded along quietly for the last twenty years since Joan became my mistress. Nothing ill had befallen me, apart from the odd squabble with the ginger tom. But since Joan’s first sight of William, I had been half-suffocated, nearly drowned in a storm, imprisoned, nearly swept off the castle wall by that same storm, captured and nearly killed by outlaws, and attacked and nearly killed by a woman three times my own age. A lot of nearlys in a short amount of time. I was lucky one of those nearlys hadn’t turned into a definitely.

  ‘Will she live, Blod?’ Maude asked, her tone full of unbridled curiosity. ‘I would not like her to die. She seemed nice. Mama liked her. Uncle Hugh did, too. He didn’t say, but he looked at her the same way Papa looks at Mama when he wants to make a son.’

  Oh, dear lord! The child was incorrigible. Eva would be horrified, and thank you, Maude, for talking about me as if I had already passed on. I refused to think about what she had said about Hugh…

  ‘Shush,’ the old woman said. ‘You are too young to talk about such things as making sons. No, the lady is not going to die.’ Blod sniffed the contents of a jug. It contained only water, and she poured some into a bowl. Using the knife from her girdle, she tore a piece of cloth into smaller squares. When she finished she threw wood on the fire, and all the time her eyes came to rest on me repeatedly, her expression thoughtful.

  Maude spoke. ‘Her name is Caitlyn, and she has been sent by Joan, Princess of Wales, to be a friend to Isabella, because one day Isabella will be the princess and I expect I will have to curtsy to her. I don’t think I will like that.’ Maude twirled around, her arms outstretched.

  ‘I know who she is and why she is here,’ Blod said in a sharp voice. She dipped a strip of cloth in the water, wrung it out and positioned it on the side of my head. Gingerly I touched the lump behind my ear. It was the size of a duck egg, and I thought it might crack just as easily. Cold water trickled nastily down my neck, but I made no attempt to wipe it away, too weary to move.

  I watched the old woman through half-closed lids. Behind the wrinkles and folds of loose skin, was a person of quick wit and intelligence, and her strength when she had floored me was unusual for someone her age. Why had she acted like a doddering, addle-pated crone?

  Maude hadn’t stopped talking. ‘Shall I go get Uncle Hugh? He knows what to do when you get a bang on the head. He had two bumps to his, he said. One of them scrambled his wits because he could not remember my name when he saw me. He thought I was a scullery maid.’ Maude hardly gave herself a chance to take a breath.

  ‘No wonder,’ Blod said. ‘Look at you, you’re as dirty as a ragamuffin. No, do not fetch Hugh. The lady needs to rest. You can leave, too. Your jabbering cannot be good for her. Go. Shoo.’

  Blod ushered the child out of the door and closed it firmly, then she leaned against the wood, her lips a thin line almost lost in the folds around her mouth. Her eyes met mine. There was a
steel in them I failed to notice before.

  ‘Now,’ she said, grimly. ‘Tell me why the woman my grandson is to marry wants to kill herself.’

  Chapter 23

  Who on God’s good earth was this woman? And who was her grandson?

  She saw the question in my eyes, and folded her arms, watching me with the intensity of an adder before it strikes. I knew all about adders – I had captured enough of them. Every witch who possessed me loved to use snake venom, and snake heads, and skins. The fangs came in handy, too.

  ‘You know who I am,’ she stated. ‘Think about it.’

  Could she be a witch? Unlikely. I had been bound by enough of them to know the difference between them and normal folk. This woman might not be normal, but she was definitely no witch. However, there was something about her… but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Then it came to me. ‘I know who you are. You are Hugh’s grandmother,’ I said.

  ‘Give the girl a gold coin.’

  I struggled to sit up. In two quick strides, she was at my side, pushing me back down.

  ‘Lie still. I shall give you a potion for the headache.’

  I gave her an incredulous look. If she thought I would drink anything she gave me after she had nearly killed me, she needed to have another think.

  ‘You are being ridiculous for someone who wants to die,’ she said, taking a small leather bag out of her pocket. I watched her pinch some powder between thumb and forefinger and add it to the water, using her finger to stir it. She held the cup to my lips.

  I drank, tasting the bitterness of ground willow bark on my tongue.

  Putting the cup on the table, she leaned over to examine the lump on my head. ‘Arnica. Good for bruising,’ she said, more to herself than to me, and proceeded to rub a sticky paste into my hair. How many more things did the woman have in her pocket? And how many pockets? I winced. Her hands were far from gentle.