Page 76 of The Changeling

I plunged my hand into the freezing water, seized a handful of my mother’s hair and ripped it from her head. ‘You shallna touch them! You shallna lay a finger on them!’ I cried.

She screamed in pain, clapping her hand to her bleeding scalp.

‘Úath, go and dinna come again!’ I ordered.

She vanished from my sight, her face still contorted with pain and shock.

My arm tingled and prickled from shoulder to fingertips, as if I had been whipped by nettles. My joints ached, and it was hard to bend them. I dropped the long black snake of hair as if it was alive, and stared at it as if expecting it to strike me dead.

It lay unmoving. Carlin sniffed it, then looked up at me expectantly. Her eyes had a strange greenish glow in the starlit darkness.

I dug my fingers into the cold mud, gathering a lump of clay that I moulded into the tiny shape of a woman. Then I held it above the flickering flame of my candle till it began to harden enough to hold its shape. I took the bloodied roots of my mother’s hair and pressed it into the poppet’s head, and then I wound the black lock of hair about it seven times, chanting: ‘I bind you, Queen Quickthorn, I bind you, Úath, so you may no’ harm or hurt my family. I bind you, I bind you, I bind you.’

Then I unravelled a long black thread from the hem of my dress, and used it to fasten my mother’s hair to the poppet, whispering and muttering over it like some black witch from an old tale. I did not know what else to do. My fear for my family was like a fever, making my limbs tremble and my bowels loosen.

My right hand and arm were blue and numb, tingling as if made of frost. I staggered back to the tower, my teeth chattering, my legs stiff and awkward, and hid the poppet up the chimney as I had once hidden a dead baby.

I had to find a way to escape the island. I had to make sure my family were safe.

And, by the Lady, I would take the queen with me.

It took me a while to manage it, though.

In April, we disguised Mary as a washerwoman and smuggled her onto the rowboat that once a week took the great bundle of laundry to shore. The boatman wondered at the whiteness of her hands, however, and drew back her shawl. At the sight of the pale cameo of her face and her crown of rich auburn hair, he fell to his knees before her. He dared not help her, though, and so, choking down tears, we were rowed back to prison.

On May Day, with the help of George and Willie Douglas, we tried again. Willie stole his father’s ring of keys and unlocked the castle gate after a day of drunken revelry to celebrate the coming of spring. Dressed as a serving woman, Mary crept out the gate with me and Mistress Gowland, and Willie relocked the gate and threw the keys into the black mouth of one of the cannons. Tense with the expectation of discovery, we rowed across to the far shore, where his half-brother George waited with horses, ready to gallop to freedom. Once again, we raced through the night, looking back constantly in fear of being followed. Once again, we reached safety in the dawn.

I wanted to leave Mary then and go home to Monzie, but the queen would not release me from her service. ‘I must have a woman to attend me,’ she said. ‘I am surrounded by men, and it would not be fitting for me to be left alone with them. Mistress Gowland cannot be with me day and night. Stay with me just a while longer, Caitlín. Soon I will have won back my throne, and will recall my ladies-in-waiting. You may go home then.’

‘Your Grace, I have not seen my family in so long. I … I’m afeart for them.’

‘Give me a couple of weeks,’ she said. ‘That is all I need.’

So I stayed. Mary did not waste a minute. Without even changing her travel-stained clothes, she called for paper and ink, scribbled messages to her friends, sent messengers galloping forth, and began to muster an army. Within a week, six thousand men had marched to join her.

Regent Moray was quick to call on his own allies. Twelve days after her escape from Lochleven, she marched to meet her half- brother and his army at a small hill outside Glasgow. She had twice his number of men, and right on her side. Lord James, though, was facing accusations of regicide and treason, crimes for which the penalty was to be hanged by the neck till he was almost dead, then emasculated and disembowelled and made to watch as his genitals and entrails were burned before him, before he was at last beheaded and his corpse torn into quarters by horses. He could not afford to lose. He and his generals launched a swift surprise attack against the queen’s forces, and wiped them out.

We had to flee, with Moray’s men hot on our heels. We slept only in snatches, eating as we rode, trying at every town or village to muster more support. But anyone who had fought for the queen was hunted down and killed, and the country was in such a turmoil that no-one dared risk helping her again. I was afraid that Mary’s half-brother would execute her if he caught her, and me too. I knew too much.

Again, I begged the queen’s permission to leave. Tears rose to her eyes. ‘Would you too forsake me, Caitlín? Am I to be left quite alone?’

‘I would never forsake you, my queen,’ I answered unsteadily. ‘But I must go home. My family might be in danger.’

She bowed her head. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘When I have reached a place of safety.’

I feared such a sanctuary would never be found.

Two days later the queen’s party reached the abbey of Dundrennan in Galloway. The old monastery was a place of serene beauty, its fluted grey arches rising in perfect symmetry against the pale pink sky. The monks were all long gone, but a man had been appointed by the crown to manage the lands. He did not know what to do when he saw the queen. First he bowed, then abruptly straightened, saying uncomfortably, ‘I have heard the Regent’s men are searching for you, madam. If they come, I am afraid …’

‘You will be rewarded well for your services,’ Mary said.

He looked pointedly at her torn and muddied mantle, her exhausted horse, the handful of haggard men who accompanied her. ‘I am sorry, madam, but …’

‘A room for the night, is that too much to ask?’ Mary’s voice broke. ‘I will ride on at dawn.’

He showed us to a cold, austere room, and brought us some dark bread and cheese and wine. I was so stiff and sore, I could scarcely get down to my knees to make the fire. Carlin stretched out at my feet, twitching and whimpering in her sleep. The pads of her paws were cracked and bleeding. I had no salve to help ease her pain, nor ingredients to make more. Everything had been left behind.

‘Your Grace, what do you wish to do?’ one of the queen’s men asked.