Page 6 of The Changeling

Margrit ran to the door, calling for her father. I paid no heed.

All my attention was on the dying woman. ‘I beg of you, absolve me of my sins,’ she whispered. ‘Take them from me so I may rest in peace. Please, do not let me die in a state of sin – please, I beg of you. Promise me?’

‘I promise,’ I said, unable to bear her fear.

She lay back, exhausted. Only then did I see Robbie’s twin, Rory, knelt on the far side of the bed. He looked up at me. ‘Caiti, can you not save her? Please?’

I shook my head, moved to pity despite myself. ‘I’m sorry. I would if I could. Your mother was always kind to me when I was a bairn. I’m afeart her time has come.’

He bent his face down so I would not see him weep.

George Graham, the laird of Inchbrakie, hurried in. He was a thin, stooped man with grey hair and a worried face, a book always thrust into his coat pocket. Carlin bounded to greet him, wagging her plumy tail, and he petted her absently.

‘Papa, Caiti says Mama is dying,’ Beatrix cried. ‘She says she’ll die soon.’

‘The witchling should not be here,’ Margrit said. ‘What if someone saw her? They’ll think us in league with the devil!’

He looked at me sadly. ‘Why are you here, Caiti? What does my wife want with you?’

‘She wants me to eat her sins.’

He recoiled. ‘But what of your own immortal soul? Do you not fear hell?’

I laughed bitterly. ‘What do I have to fear? You ken I have no soul.’

Part II

Rowan, tree of protection autumn berries red as blood black five-pointed star, white bud life, death and resurrection

I

Sweetness and Light

It hurt me that Robbie’s sisters called me witchling.

In old tales, witches were malevolent creatures, working their magic to cause harm in the world. Cunning folk weren’t like that. My great-aunt, my mam, Sorcha and me, we honoured the old ways and revered the land and all that lived upon it. We did our best to help, healing hurts of the body and mind with our spells and songs, finding what was lost, fixing what was broken.

The children of Inchbrakie had known me all their lives. My mam had been their nurse, rocking their cradles, spooning pottage into their hungry mouths, tending them through countless childhood illnesses. The laird of Inchbrakie and his lady had lost none of their offspring, and that was all due to Mam. It angered me that they thought she would do anything to injure them, when she had been the gentlest and merriest of souls.

Mam had grown up in the valley of Monzie, within hearing of the Shaggie Burn all of her life. Her mother had died in the birthing of her, and Mam had been raised by her mother’s sister, our great-aunt Agnes, a thin, spry woman with speedwell-blue eyes, a loose coil of silver hair, and a sharp tongue. Nan had never married. ‘Why would I want a man around?’ she said often. ‘All they do is order you about, when I’m quite capable of kenning what needs to be done myself!’

Nan had been Lady Marjorie’s nurse when she was a child. When Lady Marjorie married Lord George, Nan came to Monzie to work in her service. Now Nan was beekeeper for the two great families of the area, the Grahams of Inchbrakie and the Scotts of Monzie, whose tower-house was a short walk away through the meadows. She tended the beehives, gathered honey, and made candles and seals from the beeswax. Each castle had a room set aside for her use, where she concocted healing tinctures and salves, and made metheglin with mead and elderflowers and wild rose petals.

The Grahams valued her wisdom, but Lord Patrick Scott of Monzie was a stern young man who did not like my great-aunt, nor her metheglin. He disapproved of women who did not marry, and he did not like the way she sang to the bees. Lord Patrick dared not dismiss her, though, for who else would dare brave the bees’ anger to harvest their honey? He had threatened Nan once, for chanting an old charm to keep the bees from swarming. The hive had thought him an enemy, and stung him all over. Nan had to anoint him with honey salve to ease his pain.

Mam had gone to work for the Grahams when their twins Rory and Robbie were born, taking on the same role that Nan had once performed for their mother. She married one of the men-at-arms soon after. Sorcha and I were born on All Hallow’s Eve in the same year the fat English king died. Mam always said she conceived us the day the church bells tolled for his death. Everyone had celebrated the news, thinking it would mean the end of the wars, for his throne had been inherited by a nine-year-old boy. But the young king’s uncle had hated the Scots as much as the old king had, and he sent legions of English soldiers into Scotland once more. Our father died fighting them, and we were born just seven weeks later.

‘Who was born first, Mam?’ I asked her, when I was just a wee thing.

She did not answer for a moment, gazing away over the garden. ‘Sorcha. She was born at dawn, my lambkin, while you came at dusk.’

‘Is that why I’m littler?’

Mam drew me to sit on her lap, coiling my curls about her fingers. ‘Maybe. But maybe you were just made small and Sorcha was made tall. If so, ’twere God’s will and I’m glad of it.’

‘I’m no’. I wish I was tall too.’

‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,’ Nan said from the fire, where she was stirring a pot of soup. ‘And if turnips were swords, I’d wear one by my side. Dinna fash your mam, hinny, come taste the soup for me. Does it need more salt?’