Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

When William came home late that night, he told me baby Ian had died and there were three more cases of the pest in the village. Even though I’d seen how sick Ian was, I was shocked. “Poor Aileen,” I said.

“She was wailing like a ban-sidhe ,” said a saddened William.

“How about Una?” I asked. “Has she gotten sick?”

“Nay, but she’s so stricken with grief I would not be surprised if she fell sick next. Aileen has thrown her out of their house because she said she would not have a witch under her roof.”

“She called Una a witch? But Una loved that baby every bit as much as Aileen did.”

“Aye, she called Nan a witch, too. I fear it’s only a matter of time before others join her. The miller’s family has fallen ill, and the miller’s wife was heard calling Nan and Una out as witches in the marketplace. Last fall Una accused the miller’s wife of giving her short shrift on her grain, and Nan tended their youngest wean when she fell and broke her leg.”

“I guess I can understand why the miller’s wife might suspect Una if she thought Una had a grudge against her—although I’ve heard Beitris and Nan complain of the same—but why would she accuse a woman who had helped them?”

“I don’t know why, lass, but I know that’s the way of folk.” William shrugged and sat down at the table, sighing deeply. His shoulders slumped in a way that made him look older. A day in the fields with the flocks had never made him as tired as a few hours in the village had. The glowing tartan was still around his shoulders, but it had grown fainter. When I laid my hands on his shoulders and massaged his knotted neck muscles, the tartan glowed brighter and his sigh turned into a moan of pleasure. “Och, it feels good to be touched. When I left Nan’s house, I felt the eyes of all I passed upon me, giving me a wide berth. I could tell they were thinking I carried the pest on me …”

The muscles tightened beneath my hands and he flinched away from me. “Ye shouldn’t be touching me! I would not carry the pest to you.”

I sat and took both his hands in mine. “First of all, Ian was here when he came down with it. If I was going to catch it, I would have caught it from him. But I don’t think I will,” I added quickly when I saw the look of worry in his eyes. “I traveled a lot with my parents when I was little, and I was vaccinated against a whole host of diseases.”

“Vaccinated?” he asked. “Is that some kind of magic?”

“No, it’s science, but it is sort of magical when you think about it. It’s a type of medicine that prevents you from getting certain diseases. I can’t be sure that I was vaccinated against whatever this is, but my mother was a witch, so I think she might have strengthened those vaccines with magic. I just don’t think I’m going to get this—and neither are you. Before you left today I wove a kind of protective spell around you. I think it will keep you from getting sick. It’s the tartan that Nan and I have been trying to weave.” I touched the glowing plaid that still mantled William’s shoulders. “You can’t see it?”

William glanced over both shoulders, looking comically like a dog trying to chase his tail. “Nay, I canna see anything but the dust I picked up on the road … only …” He held up both arms and looked from one to the other. His right arm, which hadn’t been covered by the tartan, was coated with a fine brown dust, but his left arm, which had been covered, was clean.

“It kept the dust off you,” I said. “And I think it will keep the pest off you, as well. If only I had been able to make it before. Perhaps I could have saved baby Ian—”

“Do ye think ye could make this sort of cloak for other folks?” he asked, cutting short my litany of regret.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I’d been asking myself the same question the whole time he was gone. “The Stewarts in my time are able to protect Fairwick with their tartans. I think that’s because they consider the whole village their responsibility. I suppose if I felt that way about Ballydoon …”

William snorted. “I wouldna blame ye if ye didna love the place. It’s no’ been verra friendly.”

I shrugged. “Nan and Una have been kind. And Beitris. That’s a start. And Nan cares about the village. If she can weave the tartan, then together we may be able to protect more people—and if we can save the village from the pest …”

“Then we can take the tartan to Castle Coldclough and destroy the witch hunters,” William finished for me.

We waited until midnight to return to the village. The fewer people who saw us going near the houses of the sick, William explained, the better. Even if we managed to help them, suspicion of witchcraft might fall on us, and if we failed and people died, we’d be blamed for that.

We went first to Nan’s house. When we knocked on the door, the curtain over the window twitched, then we heard something heavy being moved away from the door and a bolt being drawn. Finally the door opened and Nan motioned for us to come in quickly. The room was so dark that at first I thought she was alone, and then I made out a crooked old woman huddled by the hearth, bent over her knitting in the faint light of the dying embers. When I got closer, I saw that it was Una. She appeared to have aged ten years since I’d seen her. She was still knitting the blanket she’d been making for baby Ian.

“I’m so sorry about wee Ian,” I said. “He was a sweet little boy.”

“Aye, he was a braw lad,” she said, wiping an eye with the back of her hand, “but Aileen willna let me sit vigil o’er my own grandson.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, feeling foolishly unable to think of any better words.

Una clucked her tongue. “Dinna fash yourself, lass, there wasna anything you could have done.”

Una’s words, excusing me as if I had only been unable to prevent a jug from breaking, brought tears to my eyes. I looked up at Nan and she saw the look of panic in my face.

“Come down to the root cellar with me and help me mix a draft to ward off the pest,” Nan said.

William moved to the seat I had vacated and offered to help wind the yarn that lay in loose skeins at Una’s feet. I followed Nan to the root-cellar door, where I looked back to see William holding a skein of yarn like some henpecked husband from a sixties sitcom and Una placidly wrapping the yarn into a ball. I could hear the soft murmur of Una’s voice and make out the name Ian repeated like a refrain. While engaging in a mutual chore, Una could more easily share her memories of her dead grandson. I noticed that a bit of the glow from the tartan I’d woven for William was carried along the thread and into Una’s hands. The glow seemed to bring some vestige of life and warmth back to Una’s face—at least she no longer looked like a corpse.

“The tartan you cast over William is moving to Una,” Nan said softly from behind me. “Can ye show me how to cast it?”

“I can try,” I said, following Nan down into the cellar. “It starts with the desire to protect someone …” I looked at Nan and thought about how all these weeks she’d come to my house to teach me how to spin and weave, even though associating with me—a stranger who’d appeared out of nowhere—would open her to the charge of witchcraft. She had risked her safety for me and to save her village. She cared about Ballydoon the way I cared about Fairwick. I held out my hands and she held up hers, our fingertips touching. I thought about my friends back in Fairwick and my students and what would happen to them if they were left at the mercy of the nephilim. My hands grew warm and sparks leapt from my fingertips, but they fizzled in the damp cellar air, unable to cross the divide between us.