Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“They’ve taken Bess MacIntire, have ye heard?” Beitris said. “Dorcas MacGreevey accused her of bewitching her husband. If you ask me, it wouldna take a witch to make a man stray from a dried-up stick like Dorcas.”

Aileen looked scandalized. “But it’s a mortal sin to commit adultery! Surely Dorcas’s husband wouldn’t do it unless he’d been bewitched.”

Una snorted. “Poor lass, ye think that because you’re new married and my Ian’s fair besotted with ye.”

Aileen blushed prettily at mention of her husband’s affection for her and jostled the baby, whom she managed to nurse while spinning, a feat I couldn’t help but admire. I leaned forward to peer at the baby’s plump face, his pink mouth pursing like a sea anemone.

“What a pretty baby,” I said. “What’s his name?”

“Ian, like his da,” Aileen replied, her cheeks turning as pink as her baby’s mouth. She leaned forward so I could see him better, and a fold of his swaddling cloth fell over his face. Instinctively, I pushed it away, stroking the velvet softness of little Ian’s cheek.

“What a handsome young man,” I cooed.

Pleased, Aileen jostled him again and began to sing—the same song that Bill had once sung, the one William’s mother sang to him as a baby. Little Ian laughed and crowed at the song and at being bounced up and down. We all laughed, and the atmosphere in the room lightened. When we’d all gone back to our spinning, I noticed a faint shine to our threads—Aileen’s was the pink of her baby’s cheeks, Beitris’s was a vivid yellow, Una’s a dark navy, Nan’s a forest green. And mine was heather purple—the color of the flowers William brought home for me. I looked around to see if the women noticed, and Beitris winked at me. Una and Nan nodded, but Aileen seemed oblivious, humming her lullaby to baby Ian.

Throughout the rest of November and the beginning of December, the spinners came to the cottage. Beitris always had news of who’d lately been accused of witchcraft and who was rumored to be next. Nan would shake her head and suggest we dwell on cheerier topics. Baby Ian always provided a few items of good news in the form of a new tooth, sitting up for the first time, and, on an overcast day in mid-December, his first step. All our threads turned bright gold when that happened.

Nan observed that the thread glowed after I touched the spinner. “It’s your magic combined with our feelings,” she said. But the results were erratic and unstable. The thread would glow for a bit and then grow dull. If the spinner became angry—as Aileen did once when Una chided her not to let baby Ian suck his thumb—the thread might suddenly break. Once, when I was thinking about how William had brushed against me the night before, my thread went up in flames. Even Aileen seemed to notice that, and Nan gave me a guarded look and stayed after the others had left.

I was afraid she’d guessed what I’d been thinking about, but when we were alone she said instead, “It’s almost the time of the trial, and we don’t know how to make this tartan of yours. We don’t have enough thread.”

“I’m not even sure we’re going about it the right way,” I said, discouraged. “The Stewarts in my time were able to weave the tartan out of thin air. They didn’t need wool and spinning wheels and looms.”

“It’s queer you don’t know how to do it, seeing as you’re the one who taught them.”

“The whole thing is queer,” I said, exasperated. “How could I have been the one who taught the Stewarts how to make the tartan when they already knew how to make it when I met them?” When I thought about the tangle of time, my thoughts became as snarled as knotted yarn.

“Aye, ’tis a puzzle. But that’s not all I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve noticed the way William looks at you when he comes home, and I saw how you were looking when your thread caught fire. Were you thinking of William—or were you thinking of the creature he became?”

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” I snapped.

Nan gave me a level look. “It’s my business because I care about the lad and I would not see him trifled with after all he’s gone through. He’s been the plaything of one woman already.”

I bristled at being compared to the Fairy Queen, but then I met Nan’s steady gaze and saw the genuine concern there. In her eyes, I might be just as much a threat to William’s happiness as was the Fairy Queen.

“I was thinking of him,” I admitted. “I’ve come to care for him. How could I not? He’s a sweet boy and he will become the man I fell in love with—and lost.”

“But you still intend to go back to your time when you’ve gotten what you came for, aye?”

“What choice do I have?” I cried more shrilly than I’d meant to. “My friends are waiting for me back in Fairwick.”

“Do ye know for sure they are, lass?” Nan asked. “From the stories I’ve heard about travelers in Faerie, there’s no telling when you might come back. Perhaps it will be a moment after you left or a month or a year or two hundred years, like Oisin when he returned to his country to find his castle in ruins and all the folk he knew long dead and gone. And then, when he stepped foot on the ground, he turned into an old man and died.”

“I know the story,” I said. “Do you think I haven’t wondered about that? No, I have no idea what will be waiting for me when I get back to Fairwick—or even if I’ll be able to get past the Fairy Queen’s curse to get there—but I can’t just abandon my friends no matter how I feel about William.”

Nan’s face softened. “Aye, I thought as much. Then I beg you to be careful not to break the poor lad’s heart.”

When William came home that night, I did not walk out to meet him. After dinner, I picked up my knitting to keep my hands busy and kept my eyes on my stitches to keep from meeting his gaze. When he asked about the spinning, I told him, “Well, we’re going to start weaving tomorrow. We’ll have the tartan soon, and then we’ll use it to get the angel stone from the witch hunters.”

William got up to poke the fire, hard enough to make it nearly go out, then with his back to me said, “Good. I’ll start collecting a few lads brave enough to carry your tartan to the castle.”

“Are there men willing to risk it?” I asked, knitting faster to resist the urge to knead the tightened muscles in his back.

“There are sons and husbands of the accused,” he answered. “What kind of man would not be willing to risk his neck for the woman he loved?”

Without waiting for an answer, William walked out the back door, muttering something about needing to check on the sheep, leaving me to wonder why William was willing to risk his own neck carrying the tartan to Castle Coldclough.

The next day we set up the loom in the central room, and Nan and Beitris took turns teaching me how to weave while Aileen and Una took turns knitting a blanket for baby Ian and rocking him by the fire.

“He’s fretful today,” Aileen complained as she handed him over to Una and stood to stretch her back. “He might be cutting a new tooth.”

“I could brew him a tonic,” Una said, crooning to her grandson.

Aileen sniffed. “Reverend Fordick says if ye say your prayers and attend kirk regular, ye have no need of herb craft and sech witchery. Put yer faith in the Lord, he says.”

“That’s all very well,” Una replied, “but if the Reverend Fordick didna spurn my dandelion tonic, he wouldna look like a man who’s not moved his bowels since Whitsunday.”

Beitris and Nan laughed, but Aileen looked scandalized to hear the reverend’s bowels discussed.

“And I wouldna have ye hanging scissors over his cradle anymore,” Aileen added.