Page 98 of The Changeling

I had to get out of the castle. I could not bear anyone to see me, weeping like this. And I could not seem to stop.

After Nan ate someone’s sins, she went to the Shaggie Burn at dawn, stripped off her clothes and swam naked, so the pure rushing water could wash away the dead person’s wrongdoings and so absolve her. It was too far to walk back to Monzie, but I wrapped my plaid about me and hurried out the gate and across the drawbridge. No-one was about. The whole castle seemed to be sleeping. Even the sentries dozed at their posts, and no-one noticed me passing by.

The sky was a strange, translucent green. The winter-bare twigs looked like black lace. My breath huffed white from my mouth. Every few steps I dashed tears from my face, but they kept sliding down. Carlin looked up at me and whined. She always knew when I was distressed.

Down the road, a small humpbacked bridge crossed the Muckle Burn, casting a shadow across its fast-moving waters. I had first met the queen here, just over seven years earlier, and told her danger, treason and death lay ahead. And now she was on trial in England, charged with plotting to murder her husband, her reputation blackened by accusations of adultery and witchcraft.

I sat under the bridge, untying my boots and rolling down my stockings. My hands shook as I pulled my kirtle over my head and flung it down, then dragged off my chemise. Naked, I made my way over the sharp pebbles and stepped into the fast-flowing brook. The cold scalded me. I gasped and flinched, then lowered myself into the water, grasping a fallen branch to stop myself being carried away. I ducked my head under. My hair swirled like kelp.

I tried to speak some kind of prayer, but I was too choked up. ‘Forgive me,’ I managed to sob. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

I hardly knew who I was talking to. Mam and Nan. The queen. My sister, who had never hurt anyone in her life and was now wasting away under some kind of wicked enchantment. Robbie, whose only crime had been to love me.

The torrent flowed over me, and eddied away down the valley. Eventually it would join with the River Tay and run all the way to the sea. I imagined all my mistakes, the sins I had eaten, melting into the water like snowflakes and being carried away.

At last it was too cold to stay in the water any longer. I staggered out, shivering violently, and ordered Carlin off my plaid so I could wrap it around me. My feet were numb, my skin goose-pimpled. I rubbed my limbs and hair vigorously, then dragged on my clothes.

The sky above me was flushed with rose. A robin perched on a bare twig, its feathers all ruffled up, singing sweetly. Slowly, my hair dripping icily down my back, I made my way to Inchbrakie Castle. Three days I had been given to solve the mystery of Robbie’s unnatural sleep. Three days to try to save him.

I climbed the spiralling steps to his room. He was as deeply asleep as ever. I stood, gazing at him. His face was white, his cheeks sunken, his curls as damp as if I had only just combed them back with water. Suddenly I leaned forward and plucked a brown shrivelled leaf from his curls.

Only then did I think to look at his boots.

They lay sprawled and untidy, thick with mud. The soles were once more worn to holes.

I sat down, his boots clutched to my chest. How? Robbie had not left his bed. He could not have run or danced or tramped so far.

I remembered how weariness had dragged down my eyelids so I had slept curled on the floor of Lady Marjorie’s bedchamber, her family – who had sat in vigil about her – falling as deep into sleep as me. I remembered how silent the castle had been, how the sentries had dozed leaning on their spears, how not one bird had sung the dawn chorus. And I remembered the night the queen’s son had died and I had left a changeling in his cradle. The same heavy, unnatural sleep had weighed down everyone in the castle.

It was my mother. She had made us all sleep.

I stood a long while, warming my frozen limbs by the fire, thinking. Then I took Robbie’s boots back to the castle cobbler.

‘Will you mend them for him, please?’ I asked.

The cobbler shook his head in bemusement. ‘I only mended them last night. What is he doing to wear the soles out so fast?’

I shook my head. If only I knew, if only I understood. But Robbie slept like the dead, and Sorcha could not speak. I had no-one to help me, no-one to advise me. It was dangerous just being here at Inchbrakie Castle. I had not forgotten nor forgiven what had been done to me and mine.

I was very tired, having slept so little, but I dared not rest. With Carlin at my heels as always, I went down to our bedroom and stood by the bed, looking at Sorcha who slept under our mam’s old quilt. She scarcely looked human anymore – her face sharpened to a point, her skin overgrown with that strange pale fuzz. I could see the knobbly bones of her spine, the sharp edge of her shoulder. You will be my sister till I die, she had told me once, knowing I was not of her blood, not of her kind.

Now she looked as if she was not long for this world.

A log fell in the fire, sending up a whirl of sparks. Sorcha stirred and whimpered, opening her eyes. I knelt by her side. She gripped my hand and gazed at me imploringly. ‘Ma, ma, ma,’ she bleated piteously.

‘What happened to you, hinny?’ I whispered.

She tried to answer me, but was only able to utter those awful inhuman sounds.

Once, twice, thrice, must die a willing sacrifice …

Nan and Mam had both died to protect me.

Was my sister to be the next to die?

In a few hours it would be twilight on All Hallows’ Eve, and I would turn twenty-one. Every seventh year, at the hour of my birth, the faery queen had revealed herself to me. She had called me and I had not been able to resist her summons.

My terror was a living thing within me, a shadowy thing of wings and claws and a beak like a hook. It tore at my entrails. I had seen so much death these past few years – I had seen those I loved most in the world hunted and murdered most cruelly. I could not bear to lose Sorcha too; I could not bear to lose Robbie.