by Kate Forsyth
This gave Rhiannon some satisfaction, and she waited eagerly for news. Yet somehow Octavia escaped the net spread to capture her. When the city guards kicked down her door, in the dingy guesthouse where the warder made her home, it was to find the room in disarray and Octavia gone. No-one knew where. And although both Nina and Isabeau reassured Rhiannon she would be found and brought to justice, Rhiannon had little faith that this would be so. Lucescere was a labyrinth of lanes and alleys and dark, stinking passageways, of chimneys and drains and sewers, of cellars and caves and secret tunnels. Huge and heavy as Octavia was, she somehow managed to slip away into Lucescere’s shadowy underworld and disappear.
The moons began to wane, and Rhiannon’s anxiety grew sharper the closer her trial came. Her attorney was not an optimistic man, and all his grunts and exhortations to prepare herself for the worst preyed heavily on Rhiannon’s peace of mind until the slightest noise or draught of cold air was enough to make her jump.
Then, the day before the quarter sessions were to be held, and all the capital cases tried, Nina came, white and edgy with news.
‘The Cat and the Fiddler are here!’ she burst out, as soon as she had stepped into Rhiannon’s cell.
‘Who?’ Rhiannon asked, looking up from her book in surprise.
‘The Cat and the Fiddler. Do ye no’ ken? Finn the Cat and Jay the Fiddler. Finn NicRuraich is Head Sorceress o’ the Tower o’ Searchers in Rurach, and Jay is her husband. He is a sorcerer too, though all his music is bound up in his viola. Ye must have heard tell o’ them.’
Still Rhiannon looked blank.
‘She is one o’ the MacRuraich clan,’ Nina said impatiently. ‘They are Searchers. Their Talent is to search and find. The Rìgh employs them to find things he needs. He sent Finn and Jay to Ravenshaw to find what evidence they could against ye and Laird Malvern. I had hoped, when there was no sign o’ them, that they had been unsuccessful, or that they would no’ be back in time. But I should have kent better. Finn always finds what she searches for.’
‘So what has she found?’ Rhiannon asked anxiously.
‘I dinna ken, no’ yet. We willna ken until the trial, for sure. It’s just … I’m afraid …’
‘O’ what?’ Rhiannon demanded.
‘Finn and Jay were both good friends o’ Connor’s,’ Nina said. ‘They were all in the League o’ the Healing Hand together.’
Rhiannon’s heart sank. ‘So they hate me. They bring bad evidence against me.’
‘They have certainly been very thorough,’ Nina admitted. ‘That is why they have taken so long. They have brought back witnesses against ye, as well as many statements and reports about the laird o’ Fettercairn. It was quite a procession!’
Nina and Iven had gone into the city as soon as they had heard the news that the Cat and the Fiddler were approaching. Nina knew both Finn and Jay well, but they had had no chance to greet them for the city streets had been seething with people. Thousands had turned out to watch the sorceress ride in with her escort of Yeomen, followed by a long string of packhorses.
‘I do no’ ken if it is true, but I have heard the packhorses carry many dreadful things that Finn found at Fettercairn Castle,’ Nina said. ‘Boxes and boxes o’ severed hands, and mummified heads, and the flayed skins o’ faeries, and the skulls o’ the murdered, and instruments o’ torture, stained with blood, and knives and black candles and all sorts o’ poisons.’
Rhiannon nodded her head. ‘They cleaned out his library then,’ she said. ‘I saw all those things there.’
‘Ye will have to testify to that,’ Nina said. ‘I am so pleased. I want that wicked laird found guilty, and all his henchmen too! That such evil walked abroad for so long! Ye ken, I have heard that one o’ those packhorses carried naught but scrolls and scrolls o’ statements by hundreds o’ witnesses, all signed and sealed, giving testimony against him. They will have to find the laird guilty now!’
‘But what o’ me?’ Rhiannon asked.
Nina hesitated, then said, ‘There is a lot o’ support for ye, Rhiannon. Many in the city have taken Landon’s ballad to heart. There have been many fights and scuffles, ye ken, between those who think ye guilty and those who think ye are no’.’
‘Are any o’ them my judges?’ Rhiannon said with heavy sarcasm. ‘I think no’. So what does it matter?’
‘Public opinion can sway the Rìgh,’ Nina said.
‘It is no’ up to the Rìgh,’ Rhiannon said. ‘He does no’ try my case. It is the judges who will find me innocent or guilty.’
‘Aye, but the Rìgh can call for a lighter sentence, or issue a pardon,’ Nina said hopefully.
‘Aye, he can, but he willna, will he? The Rìgh abides by the verdict o’ the judges, and they judge me on the evidence offered at the trial. That sour-faced lawyer has told me that over and over again, so that I can say it in my sleep. So tell me, what evidence has this Cat o’ yours found against me? What witnesses has she brought?’
‘I dinna ken who they are,’ Nina said hesitantly. ‘There was one, a poor auld bent and scraggy man, all wild hair and beard. Apparently he has been held captive by the satyricorns for years.’
Rhiannon could not believe what she had heard. ‘Reamon? They brought Reamon here? But why?’
‘Who kens? If he is a friend o’ yours, surely he will testify on your behalf?’
‘I suppose so,’ Rhiannon said, though she felt sick in the stomach. Try as she might, she could not imagine how the Yeomen of the Guard had managed to capture Reamon. She could not imagine why they would have brought him, and could not help feeling anxious about what he might say.
‘At least ye do no’ have so long to wait now, Rhiannon,’ the sorceress said consolingly. ‘One day more, and then it’ll all be over.’
‘Aye, one day more,’ Rhiannon repeated, and heard how the words echoed with grief between them.
That night Rhiannon found it hard to sleep. She lay in the darkness for a very long time, her mind churning over the past few months. Nina’s words ran like a refrain through her mind. One day more, and then it’ll all be over. One day more, and then it’ll all be over. When she managed to force her mind away from this chain of words and what it meant, it was only to hear again another sequence of words that had haunted her for weeks. Hung, drawn and quartered. Hung, drawn and quartered.
She may have dozed for a while, drifting away into images that seemed to have no connection one to another. A winged horse carved from wood. Lightning striking down from the sky. A silver thread unspooling. A black knife slashing. Blood. A cry of triumph.
Rhiannon woke, or seemed to wake. She felt the familiar lumpiness of her pillow under her cheek, the scratchiness of her blanket on her legs. She was cold, but she could not reach down to drag her blanket higher. She could not move her arms or legs, or fret her head against her pillow. She felt as if she had been chained down. Her hair was wrapped tight about her throat, choking her, strangling her.
The ghost hovered above her, coating her in ice. ‘It’s time,’ she whispered. ‘Are ye ready to die?’
Rhiannon screamed. Her eyes opened into darkness. She lay rigid, listening. All was quiet. She dragged one icy-cold breath into her lungs, and then another. Gradually her pulse stopped hammering in her ears, and her clenched fingers uncurled. Still she listened. Then she heard a furtive scrabbling at her door, and sat up, staring towards it even though she could see nothing but blackness. Every nerve shrilled.
The door scraped open. She heard a soft footfall, then another. Rhiannon slipped off her bed and lay on the floor. Swiftly and silently she rolled underneath her bed. Her head clunked against the chamber-pot. At once the footsteps paused. Rhiannon fought to soften her fear-quickened breath. She heard another soft step, then heard someone standing right next to the bed, breathing quietly. They bent and seized what lay in the bed, but found their arms full of only pillows. A curse was muttered, and Rhiannon heard the quick scrape, scrape, scrape of flint and saw the sudden flowering of light. At t
hat very moment she struck out with the chamber-pot. The man beside her bed fell with a thump, and Rhiannon rolled out and was astride him in a moment, hitting him as hard as she could over the head.
His lantern had fallen to the ground and rolled away. Just before the light guttered out, Rhiannon saw her attacker’s face.
It was Shannley, the lord of Fettercairn’s groom.
As Rhiannon stared at him, stupefied, she heard a quick flurry of footsteps and looked up to see the lord of Fettercairn himself, dressed all in black, and carrying another lantern. Behind him came his servants, all looking grim and intent in the flickering light of the candles they carried.
Rhiannon had no time to wonder how they came to be free of their own cells, or opening the door to hers. She just knew they had come for her, to do the ghost’s will. She screamed.
Rhiannon had a good set of lungs, and her scream was driven by an engine of terror. It was so shrill, so piercing, that the lord of Fettercairn was stopped, involuntarily, in his tracks.
‘Shut her up!’ he hissed. ‘She’ll have the whole guardroom down upon us.’
As that was Rhiannon’s intention, she took a good, deep breath and screamed again. The sound was shut off abruptly by a rush of bodies, but Rhiannon had no intention of going meekly. She laid about her with the chamber-pot, with satisfying thunks and umphhs, all the while calling, whenever she could draw enough breath, ‘Help! Help me!’
There came a cry, and a clatter of boots. Rhiannon screamed again, as loud as she could with so little breath left to her, and fought her attackers off fiercely.
‘Leave her!’ Lord Malvern cried. ‘We’ll find ourselves another sacrifice! Let us go while we can!’
His servants drew back at once.
‘She is the only one who saw us,’ a quavering voice said. Rhiannon recognised the voice of the lord’s librarian and genealogist, Gerard.
‘True,’ the lord said. ‘Best leave no threads dangling.’
He stepped forward, his lined face grotesque in the wavering light of his lantern. Rhiannon saw he had a dagger in his hand and staggered back. He drew back his lips in a smile more grimace than grin, and advanced upon her.
Just then a massive dark shape appeared in the doorway. ‘The guards!’ a hoarse and all too familiar voice hissed.
Lord Malvern took another step towards Rhiannon, the point of his dagger glinting.
‘No time!’ Octavia whispered. ‘They come. Leave her to the hanging judges!’
Lord Malvern hesitated, then drew back. He turned away, taking the light with him. In the darkness, pressed hard against the rough stone wall, Rhiannon heard the thud of their feet as they ran down the stairs. She listened hard for a betraying breath, or scrape of shoe against the stone, or the whistle of a sharp knife blade against the air. Nothing, except the distant shout of voices. Then she heard feet running up the stairs towards her, and, as light once again bloomed up the stairwell, a harsh clamour of bells.
The prison guards came thundering into her cell with weapons drawn and lanterns raised high. Shannley, the lord of Fettercairn’s groom, still lay unconscious on the floor. Rhiannon sat upon her bed, the chamber-pot decorously hidden behind her feet under the bed, her hands folded on her lap.
‘They’ve gone,’ she said. ‘Ye’ll have to be fast to catch them.’
But of course they were not fast enough. Lord Malvern and all his men were gone into the night, and Octavia with them, leaving only Shannley the groom to face the Court of Star Chamber in the morning.
Lewen woke. He lay still, leaden with misery, wondering why his chest ached with such grief. Then he remembered. Today was the day of Rhiannon’s trial.
He turned on his side. He did not want to get up. He would have liked to pull his sheets over his head and stay in bed all day, pretending it was not happening. But he could not. With all that had happened between him and Rhiannon, the least he could do was stand up in court for her, as he had promised, even though the very thought of seeing her made him squirm with anxiety and dread.
The bed beside him was hollow with Olwynne’s absence, though if he pressed his face into his pillow he could still smell her sweet lingering fragrance. It filled his nostrils and made his groin tighten with longing for her. The scent of roses, jasmine and violets, with a hint of something else, something that was Olwynne’s alone.
Lewen closed his eyes and groaned. He did not understand this fierce love for Olwynne that had seized him and shaken him like a terrier shakes a rat. Everyone kept saying how sudden it had been, yet it did not seem sudden to Lewen. It felt rather as if he had always loved her, without realising it, as a man loves his own heart for beating and his own lungs for breathing, without any knowledge or effort or need. It hurt and grieved him that he had not understood any earlier. How Olwynne must have suffered while he stumbled, blindly and stupidly, into Rhiannon’s sorcerous toils. How bravely Olwynne had borne her secret hurt and grief, and how nobly she had forgiven him. Lewen just wished he was worthy of her.
Sometimes, at night, when Olwynne had slipped from his bed to creep back through the moonlit corridors to her own room, and Lewen rolled over and deeper into sleep, he found himself remembering Rhiannon again. Not with his mind but with his skin, his flesh, his nerves. When he woke the next morning, he would remember, in flashes, and feel sick with shame that he could betray Olwynne so. But his banprionnsa never blamed him. She questioned him often about his feelings for Rhiannon, and reassured him that the satyricorn’s spell had been strong and subtle, and would take time to completely overthrow.
Which was one reason Lewen dreaded seeing Rhiannon today, the first time he would have seen her since that last encounter in her cell. What if she worked her magic on him again? Lewen could not bear the idea that he might weaken, and betray Olwynne’s love, in thought and feeling, if not in deed.
Yet he must go. Apart from anything else, he was one of the key witnesses in Rhiannon’s defence. Nina had begged him to stand for her, and Lewen had promised to do his best, putting aside his own revulsion at what she had done to him. It was not an easy thing for him to do. For now that Lewen was truly in love, he realised with fervent intensity what a terrible thing it was to enslave another’s will and spirit with desire, to make them love where they would have loved not. He knew now why love spells were forbidden by the Coven, considered as heinous as necromancy. For where necromancy was a black art aimed at controlling the dead, eromancy was a black art to control the quick, and so arguably even more wicked.
Lewen still felt Rhiannon’s chain upon his soul, no matter how hard he tried to dissolve it with the scent and flavour and bright goodness of Olwynne. When Olwynne was with him, it was easier, but too far away from her and he felt the slow drag of Rhiannon’s hand upon the chain, drawing his thoughts and longings back to her. So Lewen tried never to be apart from his new love, his true love, and struggled to unclasp his body and his will from Rhiannon.
He groaned again, in weariness and frustration, flung back his bedclothes and forced his body to rise. He bent and splashed his face and body with lukewarm water from his jug, and flung open his window, leaning out in search of a breath of fresh air. It was already very hot. The leaves of the oak tree outside his window hung listlessly.
He dressed slowly and carefully, in pale wool breeches and a brown linen coat, trimmed with velvet, with a blue sash across his breast to show he worked for the Rìgh. He forced a comb through his unruly thatch, and tied it back neatly, then polished his shoes and brushed his coat. Inside his pocket, over his heart, he tucked the withered nosegay of flowers that Olwynne had given him the morning after their first night together. Lewen wore it in his inner pocket every day, even though the flowers were all crushed and broken now and a faint whiff of rot wafted up from their brown petals.
Lewen stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. He saw the same face he always saw, broad and brown and smooth-skinned, yet he felt he did not recognise himself. How did he come to be here? He was about t
o give witness at the murder trial of a woman he had thought he had loved as truly and as deeply as it was possible to love, and when that was done, he planned to jump the fire with another, a girl he had never even dreamt of loving till a few scant weeks ago. None of it made sense to him. It was as if he had lost his lodestone, the pull of the true north that held him steady on his life’s course. It made north south and up down, made love hate and good evil. All Lewen could do was hold fast to the knowledge of Olwynne, and hope that she could drag him free of this magnetic maelstrom.
There was a soft tap on his door. Lewen huffed out his breath, squared his shoulders and went to open it. Fèlice stood on the other side, her face grave. Lewen’s heart sank at the sight of her.
‘It’s all right, Lewen, I’m no’ here to reprove ye,’ she said. ‘I just want to make sure all is well with ye. I mean, for Rhiannon’s trial today. Ye are coming?’
Lewen could only feel miserable that her opinion of him had sunk so low. ‘Aye, o’ course I’m coming.’
Fèlice hesitated.
‘There’s no need to fear,’ Lewen said stiffly. ‘I would no’ perjure my soul by giving false witness, no’ even to punish that ensorcellor!’
Fèlice set her jaw. ‘She’s no ensorcellor, Lewen, ye o’ all people should ken that. How could she have learnt to spin a love spell o’ such power, high in the mountains by Dubhglais?’
‘No doubt the satyricorns have their own magic.’
‘I hardly think love spells are their style,’ Fèlice answered angrily. ‘As far as I can tell, a satyricorn prefers to use a club!’
‘Och, aye, happen so, but then Rhiannon is no’ your usual run-o’-the-mill satyricorn, is she?’
‘Nay, she is no’,’ Fèlice replied.
Lewen paused and glanced down at her, troubled, and Fèlice grasped his arm with both hands, saying in a low, urgent voice, ‘Oh, Lewen, canna ye see …’
Just then another voice called his name, a warm musical voice. At once Fèlice dropped her hands and stepped back, turning to curtsy demurely as Owein and Olwynne came up the stairs together.