Page 60 of The Changeling

‘Nay, I shallna do it.’

You shall. We do not have much time. Get up, unknot your birthing cord and lower it to me now.

With all the strength of my will, I held myself motionless.

Ruis, by your secret name, I command and compel you!

I struggled to hold myself still, but my body jerked into motion.

As clumsily as any wooden puppet, I walked to the window. No matter how hard I tried to stiffen my limbs, I could not resist her order. I took the nettle string out of my pocket, opened the casement and let it dangle from my hand into the darkness. Strangely, magically, it uncoiled till it was delicate as a cobweb and impossibly long. Far, far below, someone caught it, then something was attached to its end. I hauled it up, the nettle string burning my hands, my shoulders aching with the strain. At last a tiny wicker crib came into view, a sleeping baby tied securely within. I manoeuvred the crib within the narrow casement, desperately afraid I’d tip the baby out.

Then I flopped on the floor, rubbing my shoulder, staring at the sleeping child.

My brother.

He was tiny and pale, with wisps of dark curls. One little fist had freed itself from his swaddling, and was flung over his head in a gesture of victory.

‘What’s his name?’ I managed to say.

We of the Shee have two names, one secret and one known. His secret name is Fearn, for the alder tree.

‘Fearn,’ I whispered.

Do not think you can command him by knowing his secret name, Ruis, for I hereby bind you to him. You can never betray or harm him, without betraying and harming yourself. Now go. Hide yourself from anyone’s eyes, exchange the babes.

It was easier than I could ever have imagined. I simply untied the nettle string and let it fall to the floor, then carried my brother’s wicker basket down to the queen’s apartment, past guards leaning asleep on their spears and maids-in-waiting asleep at their tasks, to the queen’s bedchamber. She slept too. The wetnurse slumbered in her hard wooden chair, and the baby prince lay in his ornately carved cradle, eyes shut, limbs still. Nervously I touched his cheek. It was cold, and no pulse fluttered in his throat.

It was true. The prince was dead. I wondered how. Had he drifted away in his sleep or had the faery queen killed him? The thought filled me with horror.

It was very hard to lift his tiny body, to take his limp arms out of the sleeves of his richly embroidered nightgown and his icy feet out of his satin booties, to wrap him in a thick blanket, covering his slack blue face. My hands shook, my knees trembled, and I felt sick. I did not know how to hide him. Then I remembered how Nan kept her cunning book hidden in a secret aperture in the fireplace. I wondered if the long-ago builders of the castle had thought to create such a concealed space here. The embers were low, barely glinting in their bed of ashes. I bent and twisted, putting my hand up the chimney and groping about. I found an opening, empty of all but dust. I pushed the dead baby inside, and blocked the hole with a stone door stopper.

Then I laid my brother, the changeling child, into the cradle. He was a frail, sickly-looking babe, just like the queen’s son had been. As I dressed him in the dead prince’s clothes, I saw his legs and feet were thin and crookit, like mine had been when I was a babe. Tenderly I tucked the silken coverlet about him, burned the changeling’s wicker cradle in the fireplace, the flames leaping up strange and blue, then crept back to my own room as silently as I had come.

No-one saw, no-one knew.

II

Owl

I crouched for a long time in my bed, trembling.

What uncanny powers my mother had! How had she brought about such a devious and intricate plan? Had she killed the queen’s son, as she said she had killed my six sisters born before me? Or had she simply foreseen the princeling’s death, and decided to insert her cuckoo into the empty nest? But how then had she been sure to have a son at exactly the right time? And how had she known I would be on hand, at the heart of the royal court, able to facilitate the swap? Had I been her unwitting instrument all along?

Carlin curled up next to me, her head on my lap. The faery queen had commanded me and I had been unable to resist her. If I knew her secret name, I could command her. Or at least stop her from commanding me. But how was I to find out her name?

It seemed impossible. My mind went round and round the same unanswerable questions. As my shivers slowly eased and my heart stopped its erratic banging, I thought back over all that had happened. I remembered how I had fought the faery queen’s will, refusing to do as she commanded. I had held myself still, though I had felt the force of her will hammering against me.

Ruis, by your secret name, I command and compel you, she had said, and my arms and legs had jerked – I had taken a step and then another, despite myself.

Ruis …

A thrill ran through me.

She had called me Ruis, the secret name for the elder tree, known for both its curses and its cures. The rune meant the most intense of passions. Desire, ecstasy, fury, jealousy, shame. I had heard the rune’s name, and I had felt such a quickening of blood within me, a roar in my ears, a jerk of my heart, a twist in my loins. My body had known my name, and had instantly responded to it.

When I was a child, my mother had called me Rue. Perhaps it was a diminutive, like Nan instead of Agnes. It had been enough to summon me, but not enough to compel me. When I had defied her and set my will against hers, she had to utter both syllables to force me to do her bidding. Perhaps she had not wanted to speak my whole name before, so that I would not learn it. For if your secret name could be used by another to force you against your will, maybe that meant you could use it to protect and guard yourself against such malice? And maybe … maybe my mother had wanted to hide my secret name from me so that I could not guess hers.

I got up and began to pace around my room, thinking hard.