Page 88 of The Changeling

‘How?’ I asked.

Mam smiled faintly. ‘She hit him over the head with her stick, and told him that she would report him to the magistrate if he wasna careful. His father was the magistrate, and a cruel, hard man if ever there was one. Nan knew Patrick was afeart of him, and that he had already been whipped for the scandal with me.’

She took a deep breath, pleating her plaid with her fingers, smoothing it out, then pleating it again. ‘The thing is … I’d told Patrick he’d be sorry if he ever touched me again. He married soon after and … well, it seemed he had trouble in the bedroom. Lady Egidia came to Nan and asked for a potion to help him be lustier. I think he found out … anyway, he has hated me ever since, and Nan too.’

‘Did she give him the potion?’ Sorcha asked, fascinated. ‘What was in it?’

‘Never you mind,’ Mam said firmly.

‘I’m so cold,’ Sorcha said. ‘And hungry too!’

‘When the men are gone, we can go and forage for some food. Though I’d rather no’ risk a fire.’

‘How long do we need to stay here?’

‘I dinna ken,’ Mam said after a long moment. ‘Until it’s safe.’

‘They’ll give up hunting us soon, willna they?’

‘I dinna ken,’ Mam said again.

Sorcha began to cry. ‘But what can we do? Where shall we go?’

‘Somewhere far away from here,’ Mam answered. ‘Dinna weep, sweetling. Come, cuddle up to me. We need to keep warm.’

We took turns to forage, but it was hard to sustain ourselves on blackberries and mushrooms. We could not get dry and warm. Soon fever overtook me. The next days passed in a blur. I had nightmares, of being hunted, of falling, of flames leaping and water sucking. I did not know if they were a memory or a foretelling.

I woke to find myself tucked under warm plaids, firelight dancing over the cave walls. I raised myself on one elbow.

‘Caiti,’ Mam said. ‘Are you feeling better?’

I tried to smile, but even that seemed too hard.

She brought me a thin soup in a cup made of birch bark. Before she gave it to me to drink, she took off the blue glass bead she wore around her neck, and dunked it in the broth seven times, holding it by the end of its long red cord. Then she hung the charm-stone about her neck again.

I drank a little, then asked anxiously, ‘Have they given up? Are we safe?’

‘For now.’ She was still dressed only in her thin white chemise, the skin of her arms purpled and goose-pimpled. Her bare legs were smeared with mud.

I looked at the flickering flames. ‘Should we have lit a fire?’

She tried to smile. ‘Only if I wanted you to live.’

I was so weak I had no strength to do more than nod and sink back onto the rough bed of heather and bracken. Carlin lay beside me, her head on her paws. She was frighteningly thin.

‘Where … Sorcha …’ I could barely frame the words.

‘Looking for firewood.’ Mam lifted me up and gave me another sip of broth. ‘Caiti … I’m sorry to ask … but do you think you could bring the mist again?’

I frowned questioningly.

She gestured towards the fire. ‘The smoke …’

I understood her. My pulse beat heavy in my throat. I groped for my ribbon, tied a knot in it, said hoarsely, ‘I canna be heard, I canna be seen …’

Mist came, but it was too little and too late. In the dawn, the sound of a horn came, and the barking of many dogs. I tried to scramble up, but my head whirled and my legs felt like wilted fronds. I sank back down, tears springing to my eyes.

Sorcha clutched at Mam in terror. ‘What shall we do? Where can we run?’