At this William burst out in a nervous, silent laugh, letting the blanket drop to the ground. I started laughing too, until tears sprung to my eyes.
‘I can’t believe that this is what he’s got her,’ I said, ecstatic, as the giggles faded. ‘She’s going to be so angry!’
For a moment we looked at each other, forgetting the goat, oblivious to the horses’ nervous stamping on the hay-strewn floor.
But then the goat started up again with its odd, resonant bleat.
I crouched down and put my hand out. ‘It makes an awful racket, though I suppose it is rather endearing.’
But William caught hold of my arm, shaking his head fiercely.
‘Look, it’s calming down,’ I said. ‘It’s stopped its bleating.’
William watched carefully as the goat moved towards me. Its eyes shone bright in the light of the oil lamps. I let it lick my left wrist, where my silvery scar reminded me of Eilidh.
‘It has a pretty purple tongue,’ I observed now, knowing that William could understand every word that I said. ‘Maybe Maria will be pleased with it after all.’
I felt delirious to be here talking to him alone. The first real company I’d had since leaving the island. At last, no one was manipulating me, or tricking me.
The goat’s tongue was slightly rough and left my skin tingling both warm and cold. Just then Whitefoot started up again outside and William motioned with his head that I should go. But I found that I could not tear myself from the animal, for I had suddenly been overcome with a tremendous sense of well-being. A feeling of being enveloped in a warm cloud of air and the ground falling away. I felt set free, just for a moment, like I was back on the island, soft white sand pushing up through my toes, a cool sea breeze on my face.
Impatient, William grabbed my arm and pulled me away – and I literally fell back to earth.
Suddenly I was jealous that this animal belonged to Maria.
‘What if the goat doesn’t like her?’ I said, getting back to my feet and dusting the hay off my skirt. I was still in a daze and the goat’s lick had left my hand with the most pleasant feeling. ‘Will the merchant still let her keep it?’
William shook his head like he didn’t know and led me to the door.
‘I feel sorry for the poor little thing now,’ I said. ‘I mean, animals hate Maria.’
Then, feeling quite overcome with emotion from the wine, the laughter and the strange goat, I stood on my tiptoes and planted a kiss on William’s cheek. ‘For Christmas!’ I explained. ‘And please tell me I can come back and visit the goat tomorrow.’
William nodded – and blushed.
But once we were outside there was the sound of a door slamming and Whitefoot sniffed the air again sharply. He hurried out into the night. Someone was coming.
William’s translucent skin turned even paler, a blue vein pulsing across his temple.
‘Why are you so afraid?’ I asked. ‘Is the goat such a secret?’
William pushed me gently away into the darkness and motioned me to hurry. Hearing footsteps crunching throw the snow, I ducked behind a bush nearby, glimpsing William’s red hair as he pulled the stable doors shut.
Whitefoot remained on his feet, still agitated. A figure strode forward from the shadows – it was Plaustrell, still dressed in his jester’s outfit and heading for the stables. He was coming from the direction of the tower, not the main house.
I noticed that his footfall changed as he crossed on to the snow melt. He patted Whitefoot on the head as he passed, the dog trotting after him obediently. The stable doors opened and shut.
I sat for a few moments in the silence, trying to figure out why the snow had only melted around the stables. I didn’t want to return to the house just yet . . . and with Plaustrell accounted for with William, a sudden urge took hold of me. My feet carried me towards another forbidden place.
The tower loomed large in front of me. But the path to the door was now churned up and trodden, the lid of snow around the door cracked. A curl of smoke snaked from a pipe chimney poking out from the curved brick wall. Plaustrell must have reinstalled himself – I was lucky not to have been caught in the stables. My heart beat fast in my chest, high on the danger of it all.
After one tentative breath turned to steam in the cold air, I crossed the trodden snow up to the tower and pushed down the metal handle of the door.
The hinge opened inwards, spinning me into a room I wasn’t really expecting. Although the space was circular, it was not the suspected height. Instead, the chamber had been made snug by a low, beamed ceiling. Only the lowest of the windows was visible, a clay oil lamp balanced on its stucco ledge, its flickering duplicated in the clover-leaf of glass. Dotted around the room, stout beeswax candles danced in glass jars, their shadows liberated around the bare stone walls. And again, there was that spicy aroma, the same one that had filled the merchant’s bedchamber last night, heady wafts of foreign perfumes that I now recognized from the Christmas feast – nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, orange: spices burning thousands of miles from their native Far East.
I shut the door to prevent intrusions of snow, wiping my feet on the straw mat, all the while my eyes adjusting to the shapes in the dimness – a four-poster bed, unmade and rumpled, a throne-like chair set by a brick fireplace, a trestle strewn with bowls. I walked over to these things in turn, my damp boots slipping over the mosaic floor, its opulence entirely out of place with the otherwise rustic decor.
I swiped a finger along the trestle, leaving a trail through a coating of dust, a testament to none of the servants being allowed in here. I wasn’t allowed in here either, but despite the knowledge that Plaustrell could very well have been finished in the stables, I made my way over to the fire to warm my hands.
Now I was in here, in the merchant’s forbidden tower, I felt disappointed. Where were these curiosities Maria spoke of? These jars filled with the grotesque? The stash of tattered scrolls rescued from the obscurity of millennia?
The tower was just another room, inferior to those within the house, with a scattering of furnishings. It was a haven from which the master could escape the household, evade the clutches of his demanding child. Nothing more.
My hands warmed, I made to leave. There was no point in getting caught in here – all for the sake of nothing. But then something caught my eye. A leather-bound book. It was set atop a low table nestled by the side of the throne-chair. So the merchant did keep more books in here after all.
I knelt beside the table and flipped open the cover, revealing a highly decorated title page. But so wrought was the drawing, with branches woven intricately with hanging fruits and songbirds that at first, I could not make out the name of the book. Then, as my eyes adjusted, the title gradually emerged: Compendium Bestiarum, a compendium of beasts.
My rudimentary Latin served me well in working out a translation to the title and I was convinced that there was no other book like it in the house. I turned over the first pages carefully, my eyes struggling to focus on the Latin text beneath the intricate artwork. Each page was embossed in both gold and silver leaf, the text inked in either black or burgundy, and featured illustrations of magnificent beasts.
The first pages were given over to Adam, the first man created by God, and his naming of the beasts, my poor Latin allowing me to string together a few words and phrases. I had flipped over several more pages before noting a piece of red silk protruding from the upper edge of the book. I prised open the pages which it marked.
And there was a painting of a young maiden sitting on a rock in a woodland clearing. She was painted piously, with flowing blonde hair tumbling out over sapphire robes. Across her knee stretched a white animal with a tail that ended in a fluff, not unlike the stuffed lion’s in the merchant’s workshop. From its forehead extended a single long twisted horn.
I tried to figure out the writing but there was a scuffling from outside the door. I shut the book up quickly and replaced it on the table.
In
a panic, I sought a place to hide in the room. There were no corners, of course, and the tower was so sparsely furnished that my choice of hiding place was limited. Quickly I piled into the merchant’s messy bed, pulling a sheepskin cover up over my head.
I lay there shaking, hardly daring to take a breath. After a few minutes, however, with no further noises occurring, I cautiously raised the covers. The door had not been opened and I looked around frantically for another means of escape though I knew fine well, from daily walks around the tower, that there was only one means of exit.
But I had missed something. For in the darkest part of the room, furthest away from the window, a thin ladder led up from the ground floor through a hole into the low ceiling. The lack of illumination in that area had caused it to remain hidden until my desperate eyes had sought it out: the entrance to the merchant’s workshop.
Up that ladder must be the place where he kept his secrets and treasures, where he mixed up his medicines using the rarest ingredients. But what use was this information to me now? If I made it up the ladder unseen, I would be trapped when the merchant entered through the ground floor. My best bet was to remain here, in the safety of the bed then, when the merchant opened the door, I would lie as still as a hunted fox until he ascended to his workshop. At that point, I could slip undetected out of the door and make my way back through the gardens, back to the festivities of the house.
I lay there in the four-poster bed, enveloped in the sheepskin as the residual alcohol took away my last ounce of energy. How I wished I was back home, tucked into my simple bunk in the blackhouse. I’d be cold and most probably hungry, but at least I’d be safe, there with my own kind. A sharp thorn pierced my heart as I ran through the events of the afternoon – Plaustrell’s deception revealed, the drinking, the games, the strange goat. And how could I have just kissed the stable boy? I suppressed a groan of mingled guilt and embarrassment. I thought of Artair, about returning home to be his wife. I prayed that his eye was also not being turned by another in my absence. Perhaps by my beautiful sister Eilidh?
I stroked my scar, thinking of Eilidh singing one of her sweet island lullabies. Despite her fierce nature, she had the voice of an angel. And even though she had stabbed me the night of my betrothal, our dispute had been short-lived.
I thought of her face as I’d boarded the boat. She had not wanted me to leave. She would be suffering without me as I was now without her. Despite our differences, we were close. We had always had one another.
I awoke suddenly in the dark and sat bolt upright, freeing myself from a dream in which I had become trapped in the merchant’s tower.
Then I remembered that I was in the merchant’s tower!
I looked around me. Most of the candles had gone out by now but a few remained, flickering across the patterns of the bed quilt. I couldn’t believe that I had fallen asleep here. And the worse thing was that someone was lying beside me – somebody lying very still.
Suddenly the person sat up. ‘Are you having a bad dream?’ said a sickly sweet voice.
But I was too terrified to reply, recoiling in horror at the being that had sprung up next to me, its raw, pitted nose glistening in the candlelight.
The face sat almost featureless above a stained nightgown, its skin bursting with pustules and sores. A slab of rotten meat with luxuriant hair, scabs leaking eggy pus on to the pillows.
‘Iseabail,’ said the thing, its mouth just a gaping hole.
But I could not find my voice, only a silent scream.
‘Wake up!’ said the voice. But now I was aware that my eyes were closed and that I was being shaken awake. ‘It’s me, it’s Maria!’
I dared to open my eyes, finding myself back in my own bedchamber. The girl was leaning over me.
‘I think that you might have been having a nightmare!’ she declared. The curtains at the window hadn’t been properly drawn and the blue light of dawn cast across her face.
Smooth skin. Normal. Though her perfume was just as ghastly as usual. It took me several moments to believe that I really was safe, back in my own bedchamber beside the girl, not inside the tower waking up beside a hideous ghoul.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, sliding back down on to the pillow, my forehead moist with sweat from the dream. ‘I had a night terror, that’s all. Sorry if I woke you.’
‘When did you come to bed?’ asked Maria, lying back down and tugging on the quilt. ‘You went missing at dusk and you still weren’t back when it was time to go to turn in.’
‘Late,’ I said, trying to remember myself. ‘Very late. I . . . I fell asleep in the library . . . too much wine, you see. Then later when it was dark again, I came up here.’
But the truth was that I had no idea of how I came to be lying in my own bed after the day’s events, wearing only my undergarments.
I lay back down, head throbbing, my throat as dry as sticks.
‘Well, I hope your head hurts,’ said Maria, almost back to sleep again. ‘Leaving me like that – in the middle of Christmas day!’
It did hurt and I swore never to drink again, blaming the wine for conjuring up all of last night’s strangeness. Had I even gone for a walk in the grounds on Christmas day or had I merely fallen into a stupor somewhere in the house and dreamt the whole thing?
Yet . . . the memory of my journey through the garden was too real to be a dream. The snow, the cooing sound, the joy of the baby goat, the kiss I’d planted on William’s cheek. How could they be figments of my imagination?
‘Did you get your present, Maria?’ I asked the girl. But she was already back to sleep, snoring gently.
I swung my legs out of bed, desperate for a drink. A jug of freshly drawn water was usually kept on the window sill, so I stumbled about feeling for the edge of the dresser. Instead, I bumped straight into a chair, the back of which was covered in a velvety cloth. I recognized it immediately, even in the dimness, as my Christmas dress.
I smoothed it down feeling sick, wondering who might have laid it there after they’d relieved me of it, then left me to sleep. My hand brushed the hem. It was dripping wet, testament of my walk through the snowy gardens. But hadn’t I ended up in the tower?
After swigging straight from the jug I lay back down, listening to the wind howling across the moor, the residue of the water clinging to my parched lips. The water in the jug was replaced fresh every day, but even a few hours of settlement rendered it stale-tasting, gritty.
My head throbbed. How on earth was I going to explain all of this? The merchant must have found me trespassing in his tower – in his very own bed, before dragging me back up to my own chamber.
Oh, the shame of it, the humiliation! Would he be angry? Deeply offended? Would he turn me out of his house into the snow? I prayed that he had already retreated to his tower and that he was so wrapped up in his precious work that he might completely forget what had taken place last night.
Maria woke me again just before noon to summon me to Mass. She had picked me out a rather sombre outfit, a white blouse with a plain black skirt. The snow-wet dress had disappeared from the chair, presumably taken to the laundry.
The girl was in a foul mood, probably because she had still not received her real present. I wondered why the merchant was keeping it from her in the stables.
After Mass, a feast of sorts had been assembled in the Great Hall. The food was half-hearted compared to yesterday, the table of desserts and jellies rather sad and flaccid.
After we had eaten Maria announced that her papa requested my presence in the library.
‘Isn’t he busy in his tower?’ I asked, alarmed at the prospect.
‘I imagine so,’ said Maria sulkily. ‘And he must have taken that stinking monkey with him – but he won’t let you in there, that’s why he is using the library. Please ask one of the servants for more logs for the fire on your way there.’
I swallowed a lump of vomit rising in my throat. The thought of apologizing to the merchant for carrying me through the
house back to bed made me faint. I’d almost forgotten to be angry with him about his Marcus Amanza charade.
After knocking, I entered the library where I found Plaustrell standing with his back to me. He was dressed smartly in black again, his arms folded behind him so that the puffed sleeves of his jacket rested on his rump. He was leaning over the sideboard, looking at the map.
I stepped gingerly into the library and stood by the door.
‘How is your head this morning?’ he enquired, without taking his eyes off the map.
‘It is well, sir,’ I replied.
‘Don’t lie, Iseabail, it doesn’t suit you,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘But it was Christmas, so don’t worry about it. Now if you would be so good as to let me see your hands.’
‘My hands, sir?’
‘I want to check how clean they are,’ he said, taking a step towards me. My legs turned to jelly as I walked to meet him halfway across the room.
I offered out my arms and he took my hands, first examining the front of them, then the back. ‘And you do not feel unwell this morning?’
‘A little, I suppose,’ I concurred, not daring to fabricate the truth again. ‘My head throbs.’
‘That will be the wine,’ sniffed the merchant, flipping my hands to examine my palms again. ‘French stuff, you see – it can be rather strong.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, also looking down at my hands, puzzled at his intense interest though I was glad he hadn’t confronted me about the tower.
But then I snatched them back.
‘My God, where is it?’ I said, turning my left hand back and forth.
‘Where is what?’ asked the merchant, genuinely bemused.
‘My scar,’ I went on. ‘I had a scar . . . on my left hand. From an injury – it’s gone!’
‘Show me!’ said the merchant, excited now. ‘Where was this wound of yours?’
‘Right here,’ I said, tracing over the place where the scar should have been with my right forefinger. ‘This is where my sister . . .’
The merchant looked at me quizzically.
The Pure Heart Page 11