Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“Why, the scissors are meant as a charm to keep the baby being taken by the auld folk—”

“Hish!” Aileen hissed, and took baby Ian from Una. “Reverend Fordick says it’s a sin to believe in the fairies. And look what ye’ve gone and done. You had Ian so close to the fire you’ve fair smothered him. He’s hot as a roasted hickory nut!”

I got up from the loom to peer at baby Ian, moving the blanket aside to look at him. Aileen flinched and jerked him away from me. I was startled. I’d never been sure that Aileen was comfortable with me, but she acted as though I was going to hurt her baby.

“I only wanted to see if he was warm …”

“He’s weel enough, he’s just teething.” Aileen gathered Ian to her bosom and he wailed piteously.

Nan got up from the loom and bent over the baby, her face creased with concern. Una’s face was also lined with worry, making her look as if she’d aged ten years in the last ten minutes. “I’m afraid it isna just the fever,” Nan said. “I’m afraid it’s the pest.” She tilted Ian’s fat baby neck, and I saw that his throat was dark and swollen.

“Don’t you be saying such a thing!” Aileen cried, horrified at the thought of plague. “And layin’ a curse on him. All he needs is to be home.” She was gathering her basket and strapping Ian to her chest under a layer of shawls.

Nan nodded, but she and Una were murmuring to each other in hushed voices, consulting over the best treatment. I wished that I’d paid more attention in science classes. I knew the plague came from fleas, which were carried by rats, but William had gone on a rampage against rats in our first week in the cottage and we were relatively free of them; Nan had also shown me what herbs to use to keep away fleas.

As Aileen opened the door, a gust of cold air entered the house and swirled around the room. I shivered—it felt like the cold fingers of death searching for their next victim. A brief, uncharitable thought flashed through my head— better she take the sickness away from here —but I instantly banished it. “You don’t have to go,” I said, laying my hand on Aileen’s arm. “It would be better to keep him warm here. We could tend to him together.”

She flinched away from my touch. “They all say in the village you’re a fairy enchantress. Jeannie MacDougal says you’ve put a spell on William. Just like the spell you’ve put on my Ian now.” She spat in the doorway. “I’ll no more cross your threshold, witch, and if Ian comes to harm, the witch hunters will hear of it.”

With that, she was gone. I stood, stunned by her speech, watching her swaddled form disappearing in the gray twilight. Although not much past three o’clock, the day was already turning dark, and the heavy gray clouds over the mountains looked swollen with snow.

“I’d best go after her,” Una said, joining me at the door. “She’ll need help tending to the puir bairn.”

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said.

Una squeezed my hand in thanks but answered, “Nay, lass, you’d best stay out of the village. This sickness will only feed the frenzy of the witch hunt. And it’s true what she said about Jeannie MacDougal. She has been spreading stories about you.” She shook her head and hurried away, much faster than I would have thought a woman of her age could go, spurred on by her need to aid her grandson. Beitris left, as well, but Nan stayed on.

“I’ll bide till William’s come home,” she told me. “So you’ll not have to be alone.”

“You can help me, then,” I told her, going to the sheep shed for the large iron cauldron that Mordag had used for washing fleece. “We should boil all our clothes and bedding and bathe ourselves.”

“In this weather?” Nan complained. “We’ll catch our deaths!”

“We’ll catch our deaths from fleas and germs,” I told her. While we boiled water over the fire and I stripped my bed and tossed William’s pallet out into the yard, I proceeded to give Nan a lecture on germs and infectious diseases. She looked skeptical—she who believed in fairies and witches and who had accepted the idea that I came from the future found it hard to believe that invisible “wee beasties” carried sickness from house to house—but she helped me scour the cottage and hang all our clothes and bedding on a clothesline. When I’d pinned the last sheet to the line, I looked up as though someone had called my name. A last bit of sun had sneaked out from beneath the clouds and lit up the western ridge of mountains, turning the sky a fiery red and each line of mountains a different shade of lavender, lilac, and purple. The closest fields were the deep purple of dying heather. Just as the sun sank beneath the farthest ridge, I saw William appear along the closest ridge, his outline recognizable to me even at this distance. I’d know him anywhere , I thought, my heart feeling heavy in my chest. Even across the distance of time. Even if he took another shape, as he had when I pulled him from his fairy steed. Or if he became another man, as Liam and Bill had. Would I really be able to leave him when the time came? But I couldn’t think of that now. When William reached the house, Nan and I told him about baby Ian.

“Aye,” he said grimly, “I heard the plague bells tolling from the village. Things will get even worse now.”

“We can help,” I said. “If people knew to boil their clothes and burn the ones they can’t wash, it might keep the sickness from spreading.”

“I could go from house to house to tell them that,” Nan said.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

Nan and William exchanged a look. “Best you stay here, lass,” Nan said. “You’re a stranger in these parts, and Aileen and Jeannie are not the only ones who think you’re a fairy enchantress.”

“Aye,” William agreed, “folks will say you’re spreading the pest with your strange ways. I’ll take Nan and see what we can do to help.”

“But what about you?” I cried. “Won’t they suspect you of witchcraft if you visit the houses of the sick? And you could get sick!”

“I’m no’ so frail, lass,” he said, smiling at my concern.

Nan went inside to look through Mordag’s pantry for herbs that might relieve illness. William put a reassuring hand on each shoulder and chafed my cold skin. Without thinking whether I should or not, I leaned into him and pressed myself against his broad chest. He was warm and solid, not the insubstantial creature that had come to me in moonlight and dreams, but a flesh-and-blood man. A mortal man who could die of plague just as easily as anyone. “Be careful,” I told him, ruing how inadequate the words were. Wasn’t there a spell I could cast to protect him? I searched my memory for something out of Wheelock but instead recalled one of that sorcerer’s admonitions.

The strongest protection a witch can give anyone is the mantle of her love .

And I did love William. As much as I’d tried not to fall in love with him, I knew now, with the possibility that I would lose him, that I had. I wrapped my arms around him and pictured my love draped over him like a cloak. I closed my eyes and envisioned the threads I’d spun these last two months, each one a different color, each thread a moment we had shared—a meal eaten together, a walk over the hills, his hands over mine when he taught me how to knit.

“Dinna fash yerself,” William whispered into my ear. “I’ll be safe.”

When I lifted my head, I saw that the threads I’d spun were woven together into a luminous multicolored tartan that lay across his chest and over his shoulders like a Highlander’s plaid.

I heard a gasp from behind me. Nan had come out of the cottage. She was staring at William. “You’ve done it!” she cried. “You’ve woven the tartan!”