Page 97 of The Changeling

‘This is no ordinary sickness, my lord. You ken it’s no’. I need to find out what … or who … has caused it.’

‘Who?’ he repeated.

‘’Twas not me, I swear it. I would never do aught to harm him.

Please, my lord.’

‘My children blame you. They say you were jealous because he spurned you at the Lammas Fair.’

‘I was jealous,’ I admitted. ‘It hurt me terribly to see him dance with another lassie, and … and kiss her. But I’d no’ hurt him like this, in some kind of revenge.’

‘My wife said he had an empty bottle of your great-aunt’s mead in his pocket. She thought it must’ve been poisoned.’

I shook my head. ‘Nan would never poison someone! She was a cunning woman, sworn to do no harm. A whole bottle of mead would’ve given him a headache come morn, no doubt, but naught more sinister than that.’

‘What about you?’

‘I didna poison him! And I didna make those poppets either. I’d never do such a thing.’

He was still frowning, his arms folded.

‘Please. I ken you dinna want me here … I ken you think we are witches. But I swear to you, by Mam’s ashes, that I didna cast this spell on Robbie.’

Lord George harrumphed, scratching at his beard in thought. ‘You think you can break the curse?’

‘I … I want to try, at least.’

Another long pause. I held my wheesht and let him think.

‘You must keep to his room or yours,’ he said abruptly. ‘The servants are scared of you.’

‘I will, I promise.’ I hesitated, then added, ‘Though I will need to cook for him. He is wasting away to naught.’

‘You may take what you need from the pantry, as long as you cook after the servants have gone to bed.’

‘And the garden? He needs fresh greens.’

‘Very well, and the garden. I will give you a couple of days only, though, Caiti. Do not think this is a more permanent arrangement.’

‘Three days,’ I said. ‘The three days of Allhallowtide.’

He nodded, and flicked his hand in dismissal.

‘I will leave you to mourn.’ I turned away so he would not see that I was very close to breaking down and weeping.

When you know what it is to sorrow, then you shall be ready …

Those words had haunted me for a long time. And now I ran through the dark halls of Inchbrakie Castle, sobbing as if my heart was broken. It was as if the keening had broken a dam in me, and I could not stop my grief from pouring out. Indeed, I knew now what it was to sorrow.

Who was it who had keened with me?

A ghost?

Or someone else? The queen of the dark wood, who had haunted my dreams and my imaginings for so long? Again and again my mother had called me, and each time I had to obey.

The words of her eerie prophecy echoed in my memory. Blood on the throne at the year’s dark cross-quarter, she had said. Well, it was almost the dark cross-quarter of the year now. All Hallows’ Eve, the night when the veil between the worlds was at its thinnest. Samhain, they had called it in olden times. The end of summer and the beginning of winter. And my birthday.

Twenty-one years ago Sorcha had been born at dawn and I had been born at dusk. Why had I never thought that was odd? Once, it had been believed the day began with the coming of darkness, as the year was said to begin with the coming of winter. So, in those ancient times, Sorcha and I would have been born on different days. Indeed, we would have been born in different years. There was no blood tie between us, no true kinship, no twinship. We were not even of the same kind. She was human and had a soul, and I was a faery and had none.