Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kirkwall, Orkney

December 1594

ALISON

The trial is suspended until my lawyer arrives, and so I am in stasis, at once besieged with sorrows and yearning for sleep. The moment my body succumbs, Mr.Addis is charged with the task of rousing me by whatever means necessary. His current method is to throw a bucket of snow over me. Until yesterday he had taken to rattling a stick against the bars, but I was quite capable of sleeping through the noise. He brings candles upon candles to rid the dungeon of its darkness, forcing my body to react to the light, and sometimes he will wake me twenty times an evening, forcing me to pace. But he often is too lazy to do this, and so keeps a pail of snow by his chair to douse me if I doze off.

So little sleep has brought me into a world that is somewhere between dreaming and waking, a misty realm where the bars of my cell turn into drips of water, or black snakes that hiss, and the rats that dart about the floor develop human faces. I see my mother, and Solveig, and members of the Triskele I have not thought about for years.

A loud bang against the bars stirs me from my visions. It is Mr.Addis. I see someone with him, and they both stand at the cell door, watching me. The man looks like a plague doctor, and it takes a minute or two for me to realize that he is wearing a cloak instead of a plague costume, a tissue held to his nose.

“Madam Balfour?”

I lift my head woozily and stare at him. “Yes?”

“My name is Andrew Couper,” he says, and my senses sharpen.

“Andrew Couper?”

Mr.Couper kicks something with his feet. “Is this what the woman has been eating?” he asks Mr.Addis, nodding at the wooden trencher of slop that Mr.Addis has placed on the floor.

Mr.Addis is taken aback. “I made it myself.”

“Dear God. Open this door at once.”

With a choleric murmur, Mr.Addis unlocks the door and allows Mr.Couper to step inside. I watch as Mr.Couper pauses to study the wet floor, slimy with urine, mud, and rat droppings, before lifting the hem of his cloak to prevent it from being ruined. His clothing is expensive—the tartan cloak is made from finest tweed with brass toggles. We do not wear tartan in Orkney, but I always find the appearance of it on visitors from the mainland pricks a certain intrigue in me, and a reminder that Orkney sits somewhere between Scotland and Scandinavia—which is to say, we yet belong to neither.

Mr.Couper removes his cap—a little reluctantly, as though he is still cold—and clutches it in his hands. His nails are clean and trimmed. I look down at my own—brittle and torn, a thick line of dirt underneath and the skin around them raw and pink. I cannot remember the last time I washed.

He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a piece of bread wrapped in linen, then passes it to me.

“Take this,” he says. “I will bring more, but you must eat now.”

I am curled up in a corner, my knees drawn to my chest. I am too weak to move. The smell of bread rouses me. He squats close to me and reaches beneath my head, gently lifting me to a sitting position. I devour the bread, coughing and gagging as I do.

“You are my lawyer?” I ask with a hoarse croak, and he smiles.

“I am.”

He appears younger than I remember. His eyes are round and thistle-blue, his skin unblemished by pox or wrinkles, his teeth white as milk. The picture of health and youth. I ask after his journey from Edinburgh.

“Oh, it was well,” he says. “A long distance, but I traveled by carriage. It is good to be home in Orkney. I have missed it so.”

“You have a family in Edinburgh?”

“A wife and three daughters,” he says. “A fourth on the way. I am hoping for a son.”

“They do not mind you being so far away?”

He shrugs. “It is my work. And Orkney is the home of my fathers.” He lowers his voice, leaning close, to prevent Mr.Addis from overhearing. “I see that the situation here has become more precarious than ever.”

“It is,” I say. “There is talk of rebellion. I used to fear it, what it would do to us. How many lives it would cost our people. You must know of this, working with the rebels here.”

He looks puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“My husband said it was an anonymous benefactor among the rebels who paid you for my representation. One of the udallers, perhaps—Jacob McVeigh, perhaps, or Peter Gauldry?”

Mr.Couper remains puzzled and shakes his head. “I received payment from a man named Solveig,” he says, and I fall quiet. He cannot mean Solveig from the Triskele?

“You must tell me,” he says, “as honestly as you can, what role you feel you have played in this charge.”

“None,” I say.

“None?” he repeats, his eyes fixed on me. “You’re quite sure?”

“I am innocent,” I say. “I never gave any charm to Mr.Paplay.”

“But you cured him of smallpox,” Mr.Couper says. “Is that right?”

I look behind him, checking that Mr.Addis is out of earshot. “I believe John Stewart is the one who ordered the earl to be killed.”

He blinks, as though he does not believe me. But then: “Go on.”

I repeat all that has happened so far: the charm for Thomas’s pox, the encounter in St. Magnus Cathedral, when John Stewart asked for a charm to take a life.

“Did he say the charm was for the earl?” Mr.Couper asks.

“Well, no,” I say, but I tell him about the look between him and Thomas Paplay, how they pressed me, even when I told a lie and said such a charm could be performed only by one who has not seen death. I tell him about the arrest at my home, the interview with Father Colville, the pricking of my body. I show Mr.Couper the marks on my skin that have not yet healed, the sore on my tongue from where he plunged the needle. I tell him that Thomas Paplay is dead. He named me as his accomplice, for what reason, I know not. The first hearing.

“I think it is important that we present you to the court as a woman of healing,” he says, tapping his pen against his satchel. “As someone who is concerned for the welfare of others and gifted enough to aid their recovery.”

“Father Colville already knows I am a spaewife,” I say.

“Yes, but perhaps the people in the gallery are not informed of your many efforts to heal people,” he says. “They are mostly from Kirkwall, are they not?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“So it’s fair to say that the people of Gunn are the ones best qualified to bear testimony of your good character?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Then I think we begin there. We know that witches live in the world and that the Devil walks among us, so it is easy to fear that someone as skilled as you may potentially cause harm. I will call upon friends and neighbors who can testify of your goodness. They will persuade the bishops that you are not inclined to harmful practices, that the charge of attempted murder is far removed from your nature.”

I think of the friends and neighbors I saw in the courtroom during the hearing, and my heart sinks.

“I am not sure they will be inclined to testify,” I say.

“Oh, I am sure they will,” he says, his voice filled with confidence. But I think back to the courtroom, to John Stewart watching me carefully.

“You must miss your family very much,” he says then.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I miss them every second of every day. And I fear most that I will never see them again as a free woman.”

“You will,” he says. “I will see to it.”

He rises to his feet, our meeting finished.

“Oh, one more thing,” he says. “Your husband tells me that the court has not appointed a notary to record the dittays. Is this true?”

“I do not believe so,” I say. I know nothing at all about the processes of the legal system, but I have not yet seen anyone transcribe the trial. “If William says they have not, then I believe him.”

“This must be rectified at once,” Mr.Couper says. “The Privy Council at Edinburgh requires a transcript of the charges against you. I realize this may not be the traditional way in Orkney, but it is the law. I will remind the bishops of this procedure.”

I fear his confidence comes too easily. Mr.Couper may have grown up in Orkney, but he has lived a long time away.

He does not know John Stewart, or what he is capable of.