Chapter Forty-Seven

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Kirkwall, Orkney

December 1594

ALISON

“We have some concern about the burning of the witch’s body here in Kirkwall,” Bishop Sinclair proclaims after Father Colville has passed my sentence. “This has been raised by the earl, who notes that oftentimes the wind draws leaves into his courtyard. He does not wish the ashes of the woman’s body to end up drifting upon his dwelling place. Therefore, we propose the witch to be taken to her own island of Gunn for the execution.”

“Very well, Your Graces,” Father Colville says with a deep bow. “We will see to it that her execution is implemented on the morrow at the Isle of Gunn.”

···

The darkness of this small, dank room feels deeper than ever tonight. I am numb, through and through. I have been sentenced to death but it does not feel real.

I think of The Book of Witching . How one becomes a Carrier not by signing their name upon its pages, but by screaming into its void. The howl of pain. I wish to scream, but I cannot. I think of Edward, and Beatrice. It astonishes me how so much relief is brought to me by the fact that they did not meet the same end as William. They are doubtless alone. I fear that my mother has abandoned them, as she has abandoned me. They must be terrified. They are both so young, and have only each other.

“Mother?”

I look up, recognizing the voice before I see the face.

“Edward?”

I squint into the gloom, making out a figure beyond the bars. He steps closer.

“Just a second,” Mr.Addis says, putting a hand on Edward’s shoulder. He wants payment. I offer him my coif, but he shakes his head. “I don’t need no women’s clothing.”

His wooden teeth click as he talks. Two teeth at the front of my mouth are loose from when the guard tore me away from Edward in the courtroom, and so I remove them from my mouth, holding the cloth of my kirtle to my gums to stop the bleeding. He takes them, beaming brightly.

“Take all the time you need,” he says, shoving Edward forward.

I rush to him, taking his hand when he slips it through the bars.

“My son! Are you well?”

He nods, though still I look him over, checking his injuries. He wears a clean tunic and waistcoat, his cap pulled low over his eyes. I notice that he grimaces when my hand brushes across his chest from where he was burned.

“Mother, I need to tell you something,” he says. My heart drops.

“What has happened? Is it Beatrice?”

He shakes his head, and I feel weak with relief.

“Beatrice is well,” he says. “Grandmother is caring for her at the cottage.”

“Grandmother?” I feel panicked—my mother betrayed my children when she betrayed me. “She is not to be trusted, Edward.”

“Not to be trusted?” he says. “She was protecting me, Mother.”

“What?”

He begins to cry. I reach out and take his hand in mine, clasping it tight.

“Edward, what is wrong?”

“I am Nyx.”

“What?”

“The charm for John Stewart. I made it. And I gave it to Thomas Paplay.”

He is weeping, his voice shaken with pain. I glance quickly at Mr.Addis along the corridor, in case Edward’s words reach him. He is busy cleaning his new teeth, trying to fit them into his wooden mouth brace.

“Why do you say such things?” I ask Edward.

“I saw something,” he says. “In The Book of Witching . It happened the night that Grandmother initiated Beatrice and me into the Triskele.”

“What did you see?” I ask, studying his face. A memory flashes in my mind of the day the same book appeared here in the dungeon, almost where I sit now. The woman tending her daughter in bed.

“In its pages, I saw a…” He falters. “I don’t know what to call it. It was like looking through a window. As real as though it was happening in front of my very eyes.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw you speak with Thomas Paplay and John Stewart in the gardens of the cathedral,” he says. “And when you left, I approached them to see if I could help. Thomas Paplay recognized me, and he asked me if I knew how to make a charm. He told me it was to cause death.” He stops, his eyes wide, as though seeing something deeply profound. “I knew then that this was the reason I had seen you being burned at the stake. The earl needed to die in order to save you.”

Edward tells me he made the charm and placed it outside our cottage as promised, watching as Thomas collected it. He had hexed it for Earl Patrick. He had intended to kill him, so that I would be spared the fate he had witnessed in the pages of the book.

“That is why I made the charm. I knew the rebels wanted the earl gone, because he has robbed our lands and killed the people of Orkney. And I thought that, if he died, the burning I witnessed in the book would not happen. You would be saved.” His voice is stolen by gulping sobs. “But…But…I think I only made it worse.”

I try my best to soothe him, and after a moment he calms.

“You are not responsible for my imprisonment,” I tell him firmly. “That is entirely in the hands of wicked men. Not you.”

He shakes his head in disagreement. “I have learned what the book can do, Mother. I have learned soul-slipping.”

His words rattle me, and I think back to what I learned when I was a child of his age, how my mother said that Carriers could slip for a time inside the bodies of animals, such as ravens and hares.

“You have soul-slipped?” I ask him softly.

“I became drawn to this idea,” he says, lowering his voice. “And when you were arrested, I thought that soul-slipping inside a raven would allow me to come and save you.” He grows upset again, and I reach for his hand. “But the spell went wrong. I found myself not inside the body of an animal, but inside a girl.”

“A girl?” I say, disbelieving. “How?”

“I was in an evil realm,” he says with a whisper. “The people there were evil spirits, and so I told them I was Nyx, so they’d know that if they continued with the burning I would take revenge…”

He begins to weep again. “I was so confused. I didn’t know what had happened. I did the spell again and again, each time finding myself in the body of the girl. And she was in pain, but I endured it…They gave me potions and I thought I might die.” He lifts his eyes to me. “And I could not find you there. I was so lost, Mother. And now they are to take you to be burned at the stake, just like the book showed me. I have failed you.”

I speak gentle words to him, my thoughts flinging in many directions because of the things he has told me. I think of my mother and Solveig, counseling with him. And the woman tending to the girl in the strange white bed. I did not recognize either of them. But there is always a reason for the book doing what it does. It is not by accident that Edward and I both saw what we saw.

Perhaps the woman is a Carrier, or the girl. Perhaps the book wishes her to be so.

But why show me this, when I have left the Triskele?

As I am wrestling with the vision of the mysterious mother and daughter, I think of my own mother, and her betrayal of me in the courtroom. She did so to protect Edward. She knew that was what I would want. If he was found to be the one who made the wax effigy, with the name “Nyx” scored through, they would exile him, or burn him at the stake. And she knew I would want to protect him from that fate.

Or perhaps, she knows that Edward must continue to be a Carrier. Or Beatrice.

“I have seen things,” he says. “Through the eyes of the girl.”

A shiver crawls up my spine. “What things?”

“I know she is badly injured, her body spoiled by fire. She is in a white room in a metal bed, the floor and walls wrought of whitest stone, and she is surrounded by strange lights and machines.”

“Machines?”

“I cannot explain them, Mother. It is a wicked place. But I know the fire was caused by a spell she cast to be rid of the book. It backfired and killed a boy.”

An image is unfurling in my mind. The picture the book showed me when it appeared on the floor of my cell. Of the woman attending to a girl in the bed. Is what Edward has seen?

“There may yet be a way that you can help,” I tell him. “You and I know that David Moncrief is on my side. I believe that, if we can get David to testify that John asked me for the charm, that he is the one behind this plot, I may yet be set free.”

He nods. “You want me to approach him?”

“Yes. Once it is done, you and Beatrice must leave Orkney. As soon as you can. If they find you, they will kill you.”

“You will follow?”

“Of course.” I smile, trying to hide the lie in my words. I sense he knows I lie, that it is the last time I will ever hold my son.

“I love you,” I tell him, pressing my lips to his hand. “Now go.”