“And you saved Catrin, Roddie and Meg.” He threw a stone into the river. “Together we uncovered Meraud’s deceit.”
“You did. And not before I hurt you and Mairi.”
“It wasn’t you, it—”
“It was some part of me. Some part that wanted to feel important because of my magic. To feel special instead of despised.”
“I think you’re special.” There was something tentative, almost vulnerable in the way he said those words. His hand rested on the ground close to hers.
She folded her arms. “I’m no more special than Margaret or Asrid. They’ll be shut in miserable cell, bruised, humiliated, waiting for a trial before a mob jury that gorges on death.”
“What could we have done?”
“Nothing.” She flung a stone into the river. “There’s nothing we can do.”
They sat in silence until they spotted a boat.
“I’ll look for Mairi,” said Donnan.
A group gathered further down the dock and Kaetha turned from them, holding her hood in place against the wind. Tam leapt to his paws, tail up in the air, and Kaetha gasped as someone grasped her shoulder. But, looking up, she saw that it was only Mairi.
“Come,” said Mairi, leading her out of sight around the corner of a building.
“What are you doing?”
“I didn’t like the way that chicken woman looked at you. Here,” she said, tilting Kaetha’s chin up. She opened a little pot and dabbed something cold on her cheek.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a paste. Your cut is healing well but the scab is dark. It stands out. This should help to hide it. There,” she said with a smile. “Not bad at all.”
“What is it?” asked Kaetha, picking up the pot and sniffing the pale, beige-tinged mixture. “And where did you get it?”
“Never you mind.”
The boat pulled up by the dock and Kaetha rushed over to the boatwoman. “Are you going downriver?”
“Aye,” she said, pulling the mooring rope tight. A child sat at the back, her hand steady on the rudder. “But we’re here for the witches.”
“What?” Kaetha instinctively turned her face.
“You heard me,” said the boatwoman. The taut rope and creaking deck put Kaetha to mind of the gallows. “You’re not one of these ones who insists on stringing them up, are you? Look, it’s the king’s order, alright? They get the chance to choose exile now, and most will pay a pretty coin for it too – which is all the better for me. If you don’t believe me, you can take it up with Laird Ewart for all I care.”
“King’s order?”
“It’s true,” said Donnan, panting as he reached them, holding a sheet of parchment, covered in swirly handwriting. “I may not be able to read it all but I overheard them talking about what it said.”
“Who?”
Donnan’s cheeks bloomed red. “I saw Mairi go into a house and I followed her. But she must have been taken to another room. And I heard the women speak of it. They talked about one of them who had been imprisoned for witchcraft. Falsely accused, they said.”
“That’s right, handsome,” said a woman whose lips and cheeks were reddened with cochineal, her garments cut low, showing plenty of tanned flesh.
Kaetha gaped at Donnan, then at Mairi.
“It was the only place I could think of that would have such paint for the skin,” whispered Mairi. “I didn’t know he’d follow me in.”
“It was good thinking,” said Kaetha as she took the parchment from Donnan and read aloud. “I, King Svelrik, state this decree that any persons marked above the breath on suspicion of witchcraft or convicted of this crime, may enjoy a brief period of the king’s grace. It is our hope that this will quell the violent uprisings against our administers of justice. Should such individuals accept clemency, they will be released from sentences of bodily punishment and, instead, shall be exiled from the kingdom. After boarding one of the king’s vessels harboured at Longmachlag Bay, exiles will set sail for Hildervald upon the autumnal equinox. After these ships depart, the offer of exile will no longer be given. This decree upholds our kingdom’s intolerance of witchcraft whilst seeking to secure peace in this great land at this troubled time. Signed, Svelrik, King of Dalrath. How long has this decree been in place?” she asked.
“Weeks,” said the boatwoman, collecting a coin from each of her passengers as they stepped aboard. “I’ve taken a fair few marked ones south in that time.”
“Yet no one from Creagairde, I suppose,” remarked Kaetha.
“Not that I recall,” she said.
Kaetha turned to Mairi and Donnan. “McDonn will actually refuse to give authority to a royal decree?” she said, astounded.
The boatwoman shrugged. “Might be McDonn’s happy enough for people to get riled up about protecting or attacking witches. Means their less likely to kick off about the extra taxes he’s been demanding from them.”
“Son of a devil,” said Kaetha.
“So,” the boatwoman held out her hand. “You lot coming too, then?”
“Aye,” said Mairi, retrieving the purse from her pocket.
“No,” said Kaetha, stopping Mairi’s hand. “Don’t you see? We can help them now. Asrid and Margaret and who knows who else!”
“And how do you suppose we defy a thane? Or that savage mob? No, we should go to your aunt’s house as planned. Or go with this lot to Hildervald,” she said, throwing her arms up, “even that has to be safer than going back to Creagairde.”
“If you don’t think we can do anything for Asrid and Margaret, you must have no hope for Pa.”
“What does it matter how much hope I have that I might see my husband again? It’s out of my control. All I can do is try to see that his headstrong daughter is safe. I won’t let you go, Kaetha.” She stepped onto the boat. “We’re going south as you wanted. Now come on.” She held out her hand to Kaetha and everyone on the boat was silent. “Donnan?” said Mairi pleadingly.
“Our chances of seeing Aedan again are slim, we all know that, Kit,” said Donnan. “But we have a better chance if we get there sooner.”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry. No. I cannot abandon them when this chance has come for me to help them. Pa wouldn’t want me to do that.”
“He would want you to be safe!” Mairi was growing redder in the face.
“I might so easily have been one of them. Asrid and Margaret, they showed us kindness when they didn’t have to. I must go back.”
“Foolish, foolish child!” screeched Mairi.
“You should be obedient to your mother, lass,” said one of the women on the boat.
“She’s not my mother.” In the quiet that followed, she saw how those words had cut Mairi like daggers. But she couldn’t take them back just as she couldn’t do what Mairi wished. “You two don’t need to come with me,” she said. “I’ll go alone.”
“No you won’t,” said Mairi as she stepped back onto the dock.
The sun was dropping low in the sky as they strode through a ghostly, empty square to Creagairde’s town hall. The bodies had been taken down from the gallows but the nooses swung in the wind, expectantly. The quiet was like the stillness before a storm. Come at dusk to see more witches hang, Thane McDonn had said, but perhaps they’d made it in time to change things.
“I saw you leave on the boat.” At the corner of the scaffold was the child whose brother had been hanged. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her lashes clumped together. “Why did you come back?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help your brother. Do you know his friends, Asrid and Margaret?”
The child nodded.
“There’s a way I might be able to help them and others like your brother.”
“Are you going to kill Thane McDonn?” the child asked.
“Revenge would only lead to more chaos. But this is the king’s word,” she said, holding up the parchment. “It means we can force him to let them choose exile instead. They could leave tonight.�
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“He was a day too late. Just a day.” She gripped Kaetha’s arm. “Save them. That’s what he’d want you to do.”
“I will.”
A guard opened the door. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk to Thane McDonn,” said Kaetha, keeping her chin high and hoping that he didn’t notice the quavering that threatened to steal into her voice.
“He’s at the trial. Be off with you.” He swung the door but Kaetha stopped it with her boot, trying to ignore the pain.
“We carry a message from King Svelrik himself – a new decree that has everything to do with this trial. I can’t imagine what punishment Thane McDonn would concoct for you for preventing the king’s justice. But you know him better than we do. Perhaps he’s a merciful man.”
They waited a few moments. Then the door swung wide.
“You’d better be telling the truth,” mumbled the guard. Kaetha, Donnan and Mairi stepped past him into the expansive hallway. They hurried down a corridor towards the sound of voices. Opening a heavy door onto a gathering of people, they were shushed and quietly joined the back of the crowd. Asrid stood at the other end of the room, in front of everyone, her hands bound behind her back, arms held by guards. Kaetha gripped Donnan’s arm when she saw the bruises on Asrid’s face and a patch of her hair matted with blood. Asrid had venom in her gaze as she stared at a gaunt faced man with a scar running down his bottom lip to his chin, his black robes trailing after him as he paced in front of her, addressing the jury.
“And, as we have heard, this woman does not even try to redeem herself by confessing to her crimes, loyal, as she is, only to darkness and evil. We have heard from witnesses how her curses have been enacted, causing fever in one, blindness in another, impotence in a third.” Chuckling rifled through the audience. The black-robed man turned his flinty eyes upon the crowd. “And would you snigger so if a curse hung over you? Or your mother? Or your child?” he added, staring at a woman holding a baby until her tittering laugh faded into stony silence. “I ask the jury to do their duty to rid this town of this poison which spreads like strangling weeds, destroying all that is good and pure.”
Kaetha stared open-mouthed at the sound of these unbelievable words but more alarming were the mutterings of agreement in the crowd. McDonn stomped his way to the prosecutor’s side, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword as if he meant to draw it and carry out the execution then and there. “Have the jury reached their verdict?”
Kaetha had to act now. She marched forward, pushing her way through the crowd. “Wait,” she shouted. “Wait! I carry a message from King Svelrik.” Silence spread through the room like wildfire. “See? His signature and the royal seal,” she said, raising the parchment before her, “This decree means that Asrid and others like her may choose exile. Their lives are not yours to take.” Thane McDonn kept his eyes fixed on her, like a snake waiting to strike, while she read out the decree over a rumble of angry mutterings. Mairi and Donnan came to stand either side of her.
“Interesting,” said McDonn when she had finished. “Strange that a copy of this document did not reach me.”
“Aye, strange indeed,” said Donnan under his breath.
“I ask our most respected witch hunter, Roy Macraith, if he has anything to add,” continued Thane McDonn.
The man in black wore a triumphant smirk as he walked up to Kaetha. Donnan and Mairi hemmed her in like stones packed together to make a wall. She flinched as the witch hunter reached out his hand to her face. He pressed his fingers hard against her cheek, pushing them across her skin until he reached her ear. When he stepped aside, there were gasps in the crowd.
“And who would trust the word . . . of a witch?” he said with a satisfied smile. “And one painted like a common whore, too!”
From the corner of her eye, she saw McDonn nod to someone and then Donnan and Mairi were pushed aside and vice-like hands gripped her, binding her hands behind her back as she was dragged towards a door which, she guessed, led to the gaol cells.
“No!” yelled Asrid.
Keeping her head held as high as she could, though her unsteady legs might have been made of seaweed, she called out to whole room. “Is this how you treat the order of your sovereign king? Traitor!” she spat, feigning fervent loyalty to the crown. As the witch hunter’s smile faltered, she felt a glimmer of hope. “You will get what is due to you when Pal Donnchad, Earl of Caordale arrives.”
“What?” said Thane McDonn. “What are you talking about?” He raised a hand, signalling to the guards to keep her in the room and the crowd to be quiet. Mairi and Donnan stared at her.
“I came here from Westrath,” she lied. “I sought work in the earl’s hall and it was there that I overheard the rumours about you.” She watched the cracks appear in this proud man’s composure. “They said you received a copy of the decree weeks ago but it didn’t suit you to obey your king. I couldn’t tell whether the earl was more appalled or thrilled. Perhaps the idea of you being punished as a traitor isn’t so disagreeable to Clan Donnchad. In any case, the earl said that he would see for himself whether the rumours were true. And when he comes, all in this room can witness to him that you defied the king.”
He coughed. “Perhaps we ought to take this document seriously,” he said, snatching the parchment from Kaetha’s hands. “Where did you get this?” he asked her, glancing at his secretary, a young man with a face like a ferret, who sat at a desk in the corner, sorting through scrolls with his ink-stained fingers. The secretary caught McDonn’s eye and shook his head.
“I was leant it,” she said, wracking her brains to remember the name she’d heard the boatwoman say, “by Laird,” she hesitated, “by Laird . . . Ewart of Nuckelavee. He said that if you, his chieftain, had had the misfortune not to know the will of the king, he would be glad to be of assistance.”
The jury whispered to one another, each man eyeing the parchment, whether or not he could read. McDonn took Roy Macraith, the witch hunter, aside. They spoke so as not to be overheard, though McDonn’s voice was a rumble of frustration. Cracks showed in Macraith’s flinty demeanour until a smile twisted his lips. He said something to McDonn and the chieftain looked as though he stifled a laugh.
“It seems that some error occurred,” McDonn said, raising his hands to the muttering crowd as if to hold back an invisible assailant. “The result was that the king’s most loyal servant,” he gestured to himself, “did not know of his new decree. The document appears to be legitimate. That being so, those convicted of witchcraft or suspected of it may choose exile. I shall not put obstacles in the way of their departure.” He paced over to a window. “However,” and now he faced Kaetha like a man in a duel who has just disarmed his opponent, “I cannot promise the same on their behalf.” And now Kaetha noticed the greyness through the window and the sounds of voices from the square below. As dusk had gathered, so had an expectant crowd. “They’ve come to see punishment.”
TWENTY SEVEN
Redirection
Margaret ran to Asrid, joined by a group of around half a dozen others, all bearing cuts on their faces. Kaetha explained to them about King Svelrik’s decree and the choice it gave them. All wished for exile, even those who had not yet been tried, such was the scantness of their trust that they would have a fair trial.
“All we have to do is get past the crowd in the square,” said Kaetha.
“Hell’s teeth!” said Margaret.
“And how are we going to do that?” said Asrid.
Kaetha looked across at McDonn and his witch hunter, at their smug, self-important smiles. She reached out to Margaret and Asrid. “With courage,” she said, leading the group through the shocked gathering and out to the square.
As her eyes fell upon the mob, her heart leapt to her throat. Eyes glinted, faces twisted in wry smiles and grimaces. Those who crowded in on them had the look of hungry wolves.
“What’s going on?” shouted someone from the crowd.
“Which
ones are for hanging?” asked another.
McDonn stood in the doorway, flanked by guards. “I would have filled the gallows for you,” he said, his deep voice resonating over the chatter of the crowd, “but strangers to our town have brought a legal document which binds my hands on this matter. The witches walk free in the light of day, despite the darkness of their crimes.”
A surge of angry voices filled the air. Kaetha held up the document. “The king’s decree allows them to choose exile,” she shouted, but trying to be heard over the crowd was like swimming against a forceful current. “They are allowed safe passage to the port, by order of King Svelrik. You cannot hurt them!” Spit hit her face and sprayed the document she carried as the crowd closed in on them.
Then shrill screams sent an icy shiver through her. A figure was slumped on the ground behind her, her long, grey hair spilled in wiry tangles around her contorted face, her hands, spotted with age, knuckles bulging, pressed into her belly, darkness spilling through her fingers, forming a puddle on the dirt beside a bloody knife. Kaetha pressed her hands onto the wound. She thought of Nannie as she looked into the old woman’s cut and bruised face. The woman stared into nothing, releasing a steady, last breath.
Whilst chaos churned through the crowd, a tiny movement on the ground caught Kaetha’s eye. A mouse. “We need protecting now, my friend,” she whispered. Then she rose to face the crowd. “Who did this?” she roared. “Whoever it was should hang for murder.”
“Death’s their due punishment,” said someone from the crowd. “I say if our thane can’t bring these people to justice, we must take things into our own hands!”
Kaetha spread her arms like wings to guide her group backwards as a number of people stepped towards them brandishing sticks and knives. Then a deep-throated snarl ripped through the air and Tam the wolf leapt between the crowd and Kaetha. Those bearing weapons stumbled backwards.
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