But then, as I was about to leave, I heard a male voice.
Unmistakably the merchant’s.
I put my ear back to the door, picking up the odd word of Gaelic. William must be in there too, maybe gaining more instruction for the care of the unicorn. I wondered when the merchant planned to take the poor thing’s horn, hoping that its removal might leave the creature otherwise unharmed. That it might one day be returned to its mother. If only I could see what they were up to.
The clover-leaf window that fed the lower chamber sat a few arm’s lengths away from the top step; if I could climb up on the sill, I could peer in.
Inserting my left boot into the groove between two stones, I tested my weight on it. The frost was completely melted on this, the south-facing side of the tower, but the purchase felt slippery, too unstable. Unbuttoning my boot, I kicked it off, attempting it again with bare toes. That felt much better. I followed with my right foot, now also bare and pushed my fingers into the soggy moss in a crack just above my head. I had been brought up to climb cliffs after all – this would be a breeze. Thankfully, I found that my now fuller figure still lifted easily.
Several manoeuvres later, my nose was at the level of the sill. I raised my eyes slowly above the pane and peered inside.
At first, I could not see much, the windows glazed with dirt. Releasing one hand, I wiped away the outside grime with it very slowly to prevent attracting attention. Now I could make out the outline of the room, then figures moving within it.
The merchant was bending over the fireplace doing something with tongs and there was someone sitting in the throne-chair. As I focused in, an unmistakable mop of red hair was poking out above the high-backed seat. I could not see the unicorn and assumed it to be tethered somewhere beneath the window, maybe near the bed where I had fallen asleep, somewhere out of my line of sight.
William’s left arm was draped over the arm of the chair, palm up and his shirt sleeve was rolled up to the elbow. What on earth was going on?
Presently the merchant turned around and inserted the end of what looked like a shorn quill into William’s arm. William flinched as Plaustrell poked the sharp end into the fold of his elbow.
What was he doing to William? Was he putting some kind of medicine directly into his body? I pulled on my fingers tightly to bring me closer to the window. By the time I looked back up at William, Plaustrell had placed the open neck of a jar beneath the quill, the other end of which was now embedded in William’s arm.
Then I watched in horror as I made out a dark liquid move down the transparent stem of the quill. The liquid began to drip into the jar.
The merchant was extracting William’s blood.
Although I was shocked by the sight, I steadied myself by recalling Maria talking about the practice of blood-letting in the case of certain ailments, but to my knowledge William was not ill. So why would Plaustrell be extracting his blood?
Eventually, when the jar was a quarter full, Plaustrell extracted the quill from William’s arm. The merchant stood tall and raised the glass to the light, swirling the dense liquid around for several seconds, studying its consistency.
After carefully placing a cloth stopper inside the jar, he put it down on a table whilst William wiped his arm. The merchant was going to keep William’s blood, but why?
Just then, a piece of moss tore away from the sill below my fingers and I lost my grip. My knees scuffled down the walls before I landed with a thud, barefoot in slushy snow. I crouched there for a moment, worried that the ruckus may have raised attention.
As I feared, there came a jangling in the lock of the tower door. I didn’t hang around to see who opened it. Instead I sprinted barefoot off around the side of the tower and fled down the other side of the hillock and hid in a bush.
‘Hello?’ shouted the merchant in Gaelic. ‘Anyone there?’
After several long moments, the door closed again. I waited in the bush for a while, peering up at the north face of the tower. How strange, the snow had melted here too, despite this being the cold, sheltered side. I thought of the slushy trail into the woods and the path up to the stables and knew that it must be because the unicorn was now contained within.
When I was certain the merchant had returned inside the tower, I scrambled back up the slippery hillock to retrieve my boots where I’d kicked them off beneath the window.
Unfortunately, they were no longer there.
I found a pair of woollen slippers back in the house and made it to the library in time for Latin with Father Ronan. But at any moment, I expected Plaustrell to burst in and reprimand me for spying on him.
But I was to find myself quite alone in the library for half an hour. The merchant did not show – neither did Maria or Father Ronan. At last, Sylvia arrived to tell me – in the slow, stilted Italian I could half understand – that Maria was unwell and had gone to bed. I couldn’t help feeling a rush of guilty relief.
But as I stood looking up at the map on the wall, my thoughts about home started to close in on me again, superseding any strangeness I had witnessed in the tower. What should I do, now that returning home seemed out of the question? The thought of staying with Maria in any capacity filled me with dread. Plaustrell was kind enough, and yet . . . Suddenly I was desperate to talk to the priest. Like William and me, he was a stranger here: could he understand what I was going through? Maybe he could advise me?
Father Ronan’s quarters were no more than a shabby cell hemmed into the outer wall of the Great Hall. After braying on the thin lattice for several minutes, the door finally opened a crack.
‘No tutoring today, Father?’ I said, putting one foot in the door so that he could not close it.
‘Sorry, no, I’m not feeling the best,’ he replied. The priest looked even more dishevelled than usual and his breath stank of malt. My heart sank. He was in no fit state to offer me comfort or advice. Even so, I didn’t want to leave.
‘I want my lesson,’ I pressed on. ‘I’m in need of distraction.’
Father Ronan observed the desperate look on my face, then his eyes wandered above my head, searching the Great Hall behind me.
‘Maria’s not with me – she is unwell. Now please let me in.’
‘I suppose you can use my paper and quills,’ he said, stumbling backwards into the tiny room.
The room consisted of little more than a pull-out cot-bed suspended on strings from the wall and a desk scattered with inks. A wooden cross hung above the cot and a deep, narrow leaded window afforded ample light to forgo the need for candles in daylight hours. I knew that the priest had been offered grander accommodation next to the chapel upstairs but he had shunned luxury for sequestration.
Father Ronan staggered back to his cot, flopping down on it so heavily I feared the tensed cords attaching it to the wall would snap. He gestured to the chair tucked beneath the desk.
Checking the Great Hall behind me was still empty, I entered, clicking the flimsy door closed behind me.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he said, as I sat on the chair and looked at him forlornly.
‘I’ve already told you,’ I said quietly. ‘She’s not feeling well.’
‘Taking one of her baths, is she?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Something odd about that girl. Something odd about this whole household.’ At this he threw a chunky arm around the room. ‘The monastery warned me about the master’s obsessions with cleanliness.’
The cleanliness rules certainly didn’t extend to his hidey-hole.
‘The merchant believes that it can prevent the spread of disease,’ I mumbled, though my mind was elsewhere.
‘But it is the Almighty that sends pestilence,’ he said bitterly. ‘A plague can’t be stopped by a few bars of soap. And those things that he keeps inside his tower!’ At this his bulk gave a visible shudder. ‘I snuck in yesterday when you all ran into the wood to catch that goat,’ he went on. ‘Witnessed for myself his menagerie of death.’
‘Those animals are just stuf
fed,’ I said, trying to imagine Father Ronan hauling his bulk up through the ceiling in the tower room. ‘Plaustrell told me how he did it with sawdust.’
‘Jesus wept,’ he went on. ‘Now he’s got an innocent involved in his debauchery.’ But then he noted the look on my face. ‘Whatever is wrong, child? I take it you are troubled by something other than the abominations dwelling atop that ladder?’
I nodded my head.
‘Tell me,’ said Father Ronan, leaning towards me with concerned eyes. ‘I am a priest, after all.’
And so I told him about the merchant’s promises, the supplies getting through but being turned away. About how I’d never be able to return home. I didn’t mention the unicorn. I’m not sure why – perhaps because I thought it didn’t matter. What mattered was what I was going to do next.
‘And what do you intend to do now?’ asked the priest gravely, stroking the week-old whiskers sprouting from his double chin. ‘Return to Italy with the master?’
‘What other choice do I have?’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘Am I fated to spend the rest of my days with the merchant and his ungrateful daughter?’
But Father Ronan didn’t answer my question: he only barked a laugh. ‘Good Lord, the man has everyone fooled.’
‘What do you mean?’ ‘Nobody knows where that child came from,’ said Father Ronan. But then he hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. If he finds out . . .’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think I should know everything if I am to continue to live with them?’
Father Ronan nodded slowly. ‘Well, be sure you don’t breathe a word of what I’m about to say – to anyone,’ he said.
A nod assured him of my discretion.
He took a deep breath of the stale air. ‘The first thing you need to know is that Plaustrell’s wife died in the last outbreak of the plague in Venice,’ he said. ‘That was six years ago.’
‘But that does not make sense,’ I objected. ‘For one, Maria has clear memories of her mother dying.’
‘Does she now?’ said the priest. ‘Or is that just a convenient ruse for her to act the way that she does?’
I shook my head, confused. The emotion I had seen from Maria when she talked about her mother’s death had seemed real to me. ‘And you are quite sure that the outbreak was six years ago?’
‘Check the history for yourself!’ went on Father Ronan, frustrated at my questioning. ‘The sickness killed half of Venice. And I have it on good faith from the abbot at the monastery that he himself read Plaustrell’s wife her last rites.’
‘If Rachel died in that outbreak, then Maria would have only been a baby. She would be unable to recall memories of her mother’s death,’ I said, thinking out aloud. ‘Maybe it was a more recent outbreak of the disease that took the master’s wife?’
The priest shook his head.
‘I’m afraid there is another explanation for all this,’ sighed Father Ronan sighing deeply. ‘The child in this house isn’t the merchant’s daughter.’
I looked at him wide-eyed. ‘She can’t be,’ he continued sternly, reading my expression as one of disbelief. ‘Because the real seven-year-old Maria Plaustrell died with her mother – side by side, on the very same day. I have it on the abbot’s authority: he administered last rites to them both!’
I felt a shiver running down my spine, but forced myself to think logically. The priest’s story didn’t add up. ‘Then how do you explain that the girl looks so much like Plaustrell?’ I asked desperately.
‘There’s no denying there’s a likeness,’ said Father Ronan, cooling a little. ‘Maybe it was a cousin he adopted, a child from the same family. Wherever that little devil came from, the merchant’s own daughter is dead!’
‘But why the deception?’ I went on, growing more and more convinced that the priest had it wrong. ‘Why pretend that his own daughter is still alive?’
‘That’s just one of the mysteries surrounding the master,’ said Father Ronan, flopping backwards on the bed. Now only the support of his elbows prevented him from completely lying back down, stretching his habit across his stomach like a bloated drum. Then he added, ‘I suppose you don’t know that he was expelled by the University of Padua?’
‘Expelled – as in thrown out? Whatever for?’
‘Illegal practices some call anatomy,’ muttered Father Ronan. ‘Not fit for your ears, child.’
I folded my arms, growing tired of the priest’s wild tales.
He continued. ‘All I know for sure is that I’ve worked in many a manor and haven’t seen anything like it before.’ He tipped his head back to stare up at the ceiling. ‘It’s ungodly.’
‘Then why don’t you just leave?’ I said, peeved he was avoiding my eye. I had poured my heart out to him but all he had voiced was a barrage of strange and ridiculous rumours. ‘If, as you say, the household is ungodly?’
‘I will,’ he said simply. At this, he leant forward and pulled a chipped flagon from under the cot. Then he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. ‘You would be wise to consider coming with me, Iseabail, to Ireland. I would arrange for you to get back home. When the seas are calm again.’
‘I’ve told you!’ I said, wondering if he’d listened to a single thing that I’d said. ‘I’ve nothing to go back for!’
‘Maybe that’s just what the master wants you to believe,’ said the priest, lying back down completely on the cot. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in no fit state to teach.’
After leaving the priest to his vices, my emotions now in worse tatters than before, I headed for the stairs. I would go and check on Maria.
But my step was heavy as I ascended the wide stairs of the entrance hall, Father Ronan’s drunken rant whirling around my mind.
Something odd about that girl, something odd about this whole household.
I liked Father Ronan but the drink had clearly sent him mad. Maybe it was better if he did leave, if he went back home. I was glad that I had not mentioned the unicorn or seeing the master take the blood of the stable boy. Both revelations could only have stoked his delusions.
When I reached the door of our bedchamber, my hand hesitated on the latch. What if Plaustrell had already informed Maria that I was no longer welcome back on my island? That in all probability I’d be accompanying them both back to Venice?
Surely, she would be furious.
But on entering the room I found myself staring at a neatly made four-poster bed, devoid of an occupant. As further testament to her absence, the fire in the grate had not been lit and Nell’s cage had been installed in one corner, though the monkey herself was fast asleep.
I went over to the window sill and looked out across the moor. The sky was unremarkably grey and I could barely make out the posts jutting up through the stilled mist. An image of Father Ronan overriding his pony’s fear flashed before my eyes. Now it was the priest who was desperate to escape the merchant’s estate.
Before heading back down to the library, I decided to check in the master’s bedroom in case the girl was there.
This time, I was met with a wall of heat. The fire was blazing with fragrant pine logs and the room was unbearably hot.
Then I saw Maria, fully dressed, lying on her back on the bed, the lion curtains pulled back.
‘Maria?’ I said, entering the room. ‘Are you all right?’
But the girl didn’t respond – she just lay there on her back, eyes shut, the skin of her lids a delicate lilac. I lay my head on her chest and was relieved to feel it rise and fall, but still the girl did not stir. And something felt out of place. Something I could not put my finger on.
Nobody knows where that child came from. The priest’s words rang out in my head. Could it be true that Maria wasn’t really Plaustrell’s daughter? That she was another child adopted to take her place?
But suddenly Sylvia barged into the room. Angrily, she shooed me back out into the dim corridor. After a stiff scolding from her I surmised that Maria was suffering from on
e of her periods of lethargy and was not to be disturbed.
But the maid refused to leave me on the landing, ushering me down the stairs with a stiff finger-wagging that I was not to go back up there.
It was lighter down in the entrance hall, the afternoon sun spilling dusty rays through the leaded windows, but still I didn’t notice the merchant’s approach from the library. That is, until something clattered on to the black and white tiles.
‘Torna in cucina, Sylvia,’ said Plaustrell briskly, ordering the maid back to the kitchen whilst I eyed what had been thrown down at my feet. The boots I had abandoned outside the tower.
Plaustrell looked down his nose at me expectantly but thankfully he didn’t ask for an explanation.
‘I’ve come to ask for your assistance again, if you would be so kind,’ he said instead.
I looked up at him blankly.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t seek your blood,’ he said gently, toeing one of the boots with his own. ‘Unless, that is, you have had the plague?’
‘Sir?’ ‘That is why I take the boy’s blood,’ he explained. ‘I know what you saw through the window must have looked strange. His fellow villagers cast him out for surviving the plague, believing he must be in league with the Devil when all the time he’d just been born with a natural immunity.’
I looked at him sceptically.
‘I believe that his blood contains some of the healing properties I need for my cure. A necessary ingredient I have deciphered from my scrolls.’
‘And William does not mind if you take his blood?’ I continued, faint with the thought.
‘I only take a small amount, nothing his body can’t replenish,’ answered the merchant.
So Plaustrell had started to assemble his potion – a potion that would cure not only plague, but any sickness, including his daughter’s malaise. Their departure to Venice would be imminent – if the cure was effective. I swallowed, feeling sick as I stared down at the tiles of the hall floor. What would I do, since I couldn’t go home?
The Pure Heart Page 15