As I moved closer, I made out three thin lesions scored into her mottled shin. For a second the claw mark pulsed white, the blood forced beneath the surface. But then the colour returned ten-fold and the slits erupted.
‘You are bleeding,’ began the merchant, putting down the jar on the sideboard again. ‘Everyone, stand away, stand back!’ Hastily, Plaustrell untucked his white shirt and tore a length from the hem.
‘It’s just a scratch, isn’t it, Papa?’ said Maria. ‘Nothing serious?’
But the merchant hurried towards Maria with the same urgency as if her jugular had been severed with a sword. Quickly, he tried to cover the wound with the strip of cotton. But all was in vain.
‘Look at her blood!’ gasped Father Ronan, who was backing away slowly. ‘It’s—’
‘It’s just a scratch,’ Maria spat. ‘The lot of you – stop staring at me!’ Furious now, she tried to press the strip of cotton firmly to her leg.
‘Why, your blood, Maria . . . it’s completely black,’ I said, the blood draining from my own face.
In a panic, Maria dropped her bandage. The piece of cotton drifted down to the floor of the chapel, the three gory stripes already hardening to blue-black crusts.
‘No wonder you were expelled from Padua,’ cried Father Ronan, wide-eyed at the sight of the dark stains. ‘Dissection of a live child, the rumours said. More like resurrection of a dead one!’
‘Papa!’ cried Maria. ‘Papa – make him go.’
At this the merchant sprang at the priest and held him by the scruff of his cowl. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Leave my estate right now, or by God I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
But Father Ronan would not be silenced. As the merchant marched him towards the door he cried out: ‘Iseabail, take heed! We thought that that fiend must have replaced his dead child with another – but look how he parades around his daughter’s corpse instead.’
What is the difference between a body that is living and one that is dead? Movement, I had told Maria. And I was desperately clinging on to that thought as the priest was evicted from the chapel.
But didn’t Father Ronan’s rantings tally with my own observations? The freezing hands, the skin prone to plague-like sores, and finally, the thing that was amiss when I’d gone to check up on the girl as she slept in her father’s chamber. I had put my ear to her chest, noted the rise and fall of her lungs. But now I knew what had felt wrong, what was missing. There had been no heartbeat!
Then there was the pearl. It had turned blue-black. The same colour as Maria’s blood.
‘Papa.’ Maria had begun weeping as welts materialized on her wet cheeks. ‘Papa, what is happening?’ But instead of looking like a rash this time, the swellings on her face rose quickly and immediately began to leak yellow.
Just like that dream I’d had of waking in the tower – a living nightmare. Maria died of the plague, along with her mother. The abbot had performed the last rites himself.
Could Maria really have been brought back from the dead?
But no, as I listened to the pleas of the child, I still refused to accept the possibility of it all. Maria was just a sick little girl who needed my help. None of what Father Ronan claimed could be true. I clung on to that thought as I clung on to my sanity. I will not believe it.
‘Quick, we must help her,’ I gasped, glancing at the merchant’s anguished face. ‘Tell me what I can do!’
The merchant looked at me with utter relief. ‘Thank you, Iseabail,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll explain everything to you – I promise.’
Plaustrell knelt down beside his daughter, a broken man. He’d tried everything in his power to cure his sick girl of her malaise and now it looked like he finally might lose the battle for her life.
We laid Maria on her back on the flagged floor, her body in shock. She was shaking, wide-eyed with fright, staring up at her father. I felt so sorry for them both.
‘Let’s get her out of here,’ said Plaustrell, not taking his eyes off hers. ‘In case that lunatic priest comes back.’
We got Maria to her bedchamber and locked the door, the merchant insisting that the cold room would be best to calm her skin. Outside, the wind rattled at the window and from somewhere in the distance, a crack of thunder.
Thunder, I thought. Thunder in the middle of winter?
Placing Maria on her back, we propped her head up with the pillow. The welts on her face had waned a little and the merchant tipped the mixture into the side of her scabbed mouth as I held it open.
‘I’d hoped to do this in the presence of God,’ he murmured. ‘I thought we could use the help of some greater power.’
‘God is everywhere, sir,’ I reminded him softly.
At this the merchant looked reassured.
The residue in the jar remained faintly green but strangely left a stain of stark red on Maria’s lips.
Maria’s chest still heaved softly, like she had fallen asleep. That’s all it is, I told myself. Sleep. Maybe her heart was so weak that I had not been able to hear its faint beat last time.
‘Now we wait,’ said the merchant. ‘Why don’t you lie down beside her, hold her hand – that way she won’t be alone when she awakes.’
‘I think that you owe me an explanation for all of this first?’ I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed wearily. Despite my fatigue, I did not relish lying down beside Maria, nor touching her icy skin. I was not sure she would want to wake beside me, either.
‘But you look quite worn out,’ said the merchant sympathetically. ‘And I hope that you have at least been fed this evening.’
‘Sylvia brought me broth,’ I said dismissively. ‘But I demand answers before I turn in for the night. No more lies. No more games. The whole truth. Don’t you owe me that much?’
‘Of course,’ said the merchant, sitting down beside me. He took a deep breath. ‘It is true that I brought my daughter back from the brink of death,’ he began, checking over his shoulder to see that Maria was asleep. ‘Cured her using the blood of a unicorn.’
‘You have already used a potion containing unicorn blood in the past?’
The merchant nodded. ‘Unfortunately, like the alicorn powder I used for my wife, Rachel, the sample was imperfect – just a few dried drops that I’d acquired in desperation.’
‘So Rachel died from the plague but Maria did not?’
‘It was a miraculous thing that Maria survived – but it was just down to medicine, a successful tincture. Not a macabre resurrection. But I’m afraid the whole thing was witnessed by a jealous contemporary of mine. Let’s just say he retold the story to academics at the university in a rather different way.’
‘The abbot at the monastery?’
‘That’s right,’ continued the merchant. ‘After Rachel’s funeral he spread the rumour that Maria had died too, that he’d given them both their last rites.’
‘Why on earth would he do that?’
‘Because he had always been jealous of my abilities, and longed to ruin my reputation. He wanted to believe that my potion had failed, that I was unable to save my family. He told everyone that I must have buried Maria and replaced her with another child – just to prove that I was brilliant.’
I nodded my head, trying to take it all in.
‘But Maria never truly recovered, her life always hanging by a thread. That’s the real reason she was brought here to the moor. So the waters could sustain her until I found more unicorn blood.’
The merchant paused.
‘I never dreamt I would acquire a live animal. Nor get my hands on fresh blood. But I always clung to the hope. And God answered me. I acquired the unicorn from trading contacts on the continent . . . and then I found you. My final prayer was granted.’ At this he stared up at the ceiling, like he was thanking God.
‘But why me?’ I asked, stifling a yawn. All I wanted to do was sleep but I needed answers first. ‘Why did you choose me?’
‘I sailed to three islands before yours, Iseabai
l. None of them could supply what I required. The odds were never in my favour. A literate young girl from an untouched part of the world . . . it was folly. It was fate.’ His voice was full of warmth now. Full of kindness.
‘But why was it necessary that the girl chosen should be able to read and write?’ I said, thinking of how Mammy might have been right to think my literacy a curse. If Father hadn’t taught me, then I would never have been taken away.
‘Maria insisted on it,’ laughed the merchant, shaking his head. ‘She said that any being she was to spend time with should have an agility of mind, a fluid dexterity of hand.’
This last part didn’t really make sense. So the merchant had rejected other girls that were pure of heart all because they were not literate? All just on a whim of his daughter?
‘And you truly believe that the potion will cure her – completely?’ I said, struggling to process my thoughts now I was so tired.
The merchant nodded. ‘If I have translated that scroll correctly – and I’ve added the other ingredients in the correct measures – then before morning, my dearest Maria will be quite restored.’
‘Just one more question,’ I said, mustering my last ounce of energy. ‘Father Ronan said that Maria was seven years old when she caught the plague . . . and that the outbreak in Venice was six years ago? But how can that be?’
‘That’s right, for once the fat monk has got his facts right,’ said Plaustrell, bending over to take hold of my legs and hoisting them on to the bed. ‘Maria hasn’t grown since her last treatment of unicorn blood. My daughter is thirteen years old. Now, if all your questions have been answered, why don’t you get some sleep?’
I looked up at him in disbelief as a flash of lightning burst through the lattice glass. But the merchant seemed unconcerned at his incredible revelation about Maria’s age. Now he was calmly lighting a candle at the side of my bed and I noticed he’d already lit one to balance in a holder on a stool beside Maria.
‘You said yourself that she was very grown up for a seven-year-old,’ he laughed, bending over me now and pushing my head gently down to the pillow as thunder rolled above the roof. Then he took my left hand and entwined it in Maria’s right. I badly wanted to untwist them and sit back up but all the energy had drained from my being.
‘What’s that smell?’ is all I could mutter as I found the girl’s freezing hand coiled around mine. For my nostrils had been filled with a familiar putrid odour I had not smelt for some time. The burning of animal tallow.
I looked into the merchant’s eyes as he bent over me again, searching for so many answers. What was the meaning of the blue robes, and why was he burning animal tallow? Didn’t he abhor it and claim that it smelt like death itself? But there was no feeling behind those amber orbs of shifting colour. I remembered only how his nose wrinkled up at the rank vapour of the candles and his teeth glinting yellow as another flash of lightning lit up the room.
Then I remembered nothing at all.
When I woke up it was light. And at first I thought that I’d had another nightmare.
But then I sat up and observed my sapphire robes catching the cold light of morning. And the tallow candles, burnt down to their wicks in their holders. Last night had definitely happened, but now the girl was gone from my side.
I looked around in a rising panic. Had Plaustrell come to retrieve her already? Was she cured now? Or had she died in the night, her body taken away?
It was then that I noticed that Nell’s cage had also been removed from the corner. In fact, other than the bed and the stools that held the candles, there was no furniture left in the room at all.
I got out of bed, my legs shaky, desperate for a drink. My head was groggy, like it had been on Christmas morning, but last night I had not drunk any wine or alcohol of any kind. The only thing I had consumed was the broth that Sylvia had brought me.
That delicious broth that I couldn’t get enough of.
But there was now no jug of water on the sill. Confused, I looked out across the moor. And there they were, a convoy of wagons chiselled into diamonds by the lattice glass, making their way out from the merchant’s estate.
The merchant’s household was on the move! But what about me? Wasn’t I supposed to be going home today too?
Quickly, I ran from my room, only to discover that everything in the upper gallery had gone. The pictures that had adorned the walls, the mirrors, the rugs, the vases. Running down the stairs, I found more of the same. The chequered hall now looked massive and empty, dirty marks where the furniture had once stood.
I ran through the kitchen barefoot, the faint tang of the copper pans still present after the storm, though they were no longer lining the walls.
Through the sunken gardens, up the steps to the tower, my legs too weak to be able to take long strides.
And that’s when I saw it. The tree outside of the tower was on its side, its trunk ripped in half and blackened. It must have been hit by lightning during last night’s storm.
Worse than that, there were someone’s legs beneath the felled part, a pair of man’s boots sticking out from the huge jagged trunk. I recognized the body with a gasp. It was Father Ronan, still clutching a sack of his belongings. I’d told him to wait for me here, and now—
‘Father!’ I cried, running to where the priest lay buried. But it was useless, of course – the poor man was dead.
It was then that I heard it: the cry of the unicorn.
I spun round as the last of the household’s procession trundled into the trees, spoked wheels churning up the dirty, slushy snow. On the rearmost wagon was strapped the huge reinforced cage I had seen on Christmas Eve, though this time it did not contain the wooden crate but instead was wrapped on the outside in a tangle of thick, silver chains.
Whitefoot followed the wagon, circling it, whimpering, and I thought I glimpsed a flash of white fur beneath the matrix of chains; the unicorn was being transported back to Venice.
‘Now it will never be set free!’ I cried out, my voice strangely shrill in the morning air.
‘As if I could let such a precious creature go,’ said a voice behind me. I swung round to look at the merchant. He was high up on his horse, all dressed up in his best riding attire, his black pointed boots polished to a high shine.
‘You are ready to leave now?’ I cried, aghast. ‘What about me?’ With the priest gone, the merchant’s promise was now my only hope. ‘You gave your word that you would arrange my transport home on your ship.’
‘I promised many things,’ said Plaustrell with a strange half-smile.
‘You now intend to bring me with you?’ I said, trying to read his expression. ‘I am to accompany you to Venice?’
‘Not exactly . . .’
What did he mean, not exactly? I couldn’t think straight, it was all too much. And why did I feel so thirsty, never more desperate for a drink of water in my life?
‘Where’s Maria?’ I managed to gasp, my hands encircling my own throat.
At this the merchant shouted for his daughter.
‘Here I am, Papa!’ came a joyous voice from the direction of the stables. ‘All ready to go.’
Maria sounded quite well. Her voice confident and strong. The potion must have worked.
Then Velvet reared out from the stables. As usual, the spirited creature was not happy in her charge. The horse was snorting, biting at the bit, tossing her head this way and that. Was Maria really strong enough to ride her own horse? In response to its mutiny, the girl administered a sharp thwack of her whip to its rump. The horse fell into line.
But as the grey gelding neared, I realized something.
Maria had grown.
At first I thought that the potion had just taken her back to the size she should have been, a normal size for a thirteen-year-old girl, but when I looked again, I fell back in horror.
For the face looking down from Velvet was not Maria’s, but my own.
I pulled my hands from where they still encircl
ed my neck, but studying them now, I realized how small they were.
And there were my bare feet, poking out from beneath the blue robe. Adorned with the dainty toes of a seven-year-old child.
‘Dear Iseabail,’ said the girl on the horse – the girl with my hair, my eyes, my mouth, but with a quite different smile. ‘I can’t thank you enough for all that you have done. All that you have given me.’ I noticed now that she was wearing a riding outfit that Sylvia had recently adjusted for me, in anticipation of my first lesson. That she was wearing my boots.
‘Didn’t I tell you I’d found the perfect girl, Iseabail McCleod?’ laughed the merchant, turning his horse towards the trees. ‘You certainly proved to be compatible. And didn’t I promise you’d be riding out at my side? See, in a way you are.’ He glanced over in triumph at his daughter – at me.
‘But the cure . . . the potion . . .’ My head was spinning. How could this be? Was I trapped in a bizarre dream? A nightmare? I didn’t understand what he was trying to say to me.
‘It’s true that I brought that body you now inhabit back from the dead,’ said Plaustrell as I stared up at the girl on the horse as if she was a ghost. ‘But that body is rotten. Infected. Only with special healing waters can it keep even a semblance of life. No, my real “cure” was something rather more . . . ambitious. But you don’t believe in magic, Iseabail, do you?’
I was struck dumb with disbelief, but he continued anyway.
‘And I’m afraid that logic has been your downfall, your weakness. You chose to ignore all the clues – the tales from the drunken priest, the things you witnessed with your very own eyes. You have been blinded by your modern thinking – it would not let you believe that the unbelievable could be true.’
‘Then what is the truth – please tell me!’ I cried out.
‘That there is no cure for the death of a body, Iseabail,’ said the merchant, almost with pity. ‘So I used the next best thing – I found my daughter’s soul a new vessel in which to thrive.’
‘No!’ I cried out. ‘This is all impossible!’
The Pure Heart Page 18