The Angel Stone

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I ran through the narrow alley, my bootheels echoing on the cobblestones. When I reached the square I turned to look back, but William hadn’t followed. I squelched the pang of disappointment, raised my shawl over my head, and hurried through the square, ignoring the curious looks of the few remaining stragglers. Most townspeople had scurried back behind their shutters, but a few old women lingered by the market cross in the center of the square, gossiping—probably about the scene I’d played a part in earlier. They’d go back to Jeannie MacDougal, no doubt, and tell her they’d seen William Duffy’s queer wife fleeing the town alone. Jeannie would decide I’d fled in shame at finding myself married to a man who’d been betrothed to another—or that William had repudiated me in favor of his beautiful first love. It irked me that she would interpret my leaving as proof of my shame and her own superiority, but I couldn’t worry about that—or whether or not William and she would end up married. I could look it up in the history books when I got home.

I hurried fast out of the town, fueled at first by my urgency to get home and then by the need to keep warm. The sunny day that William had extolled on our way into town—it already felt centuries ago—had become gray and overcast. When I got to the top of the hill, it was raining. By the time I reached the stone cross, I was soaked. I glanced up toward Mordag’s cottage, where William and I had spent the night. The memory of the warmth of the fire—and the heat of his hands on my body and his mouth on mine—flashed through me. He wasn’t Bill. He wasn’t the man I had fallen in love with, but leaving him behind seemed a final admission that I would never see Bill again. Even as I’d seen Bill’s throat cut, watched his blood seep into the ground, I’d clung to a remnant of hope that something of him remained in Faerie that I could reclaim.

But now I knew in my heart that Bill was really gone. Since I’d saved William from becoming an incubus, Bill would never exist. When I got back to my own time, I might not even remember him.

Perhaps that was for the best. I pulled my shawl more tightly around my shoulders, bowed my head against the now driving rain, and turned away—into the path of a heavily laden cart. The rain had covered the sound of its approach and it was nearly on top of me, so close I could feel the hot breath of the horses steaming the air. I veered sideways, my ankle twisting in the mud, and stumbled into the ditch on the side of the road.

The wagon wheels narrowly missed my foot but ran over a corner of my shawl and splashed muddy water over my face. I squawked in protest, my cry taking in all the agonies of the day, a sound so pitiful that I was sure the cart driver would stop immediately and get down to help me, but he only cast a baleful glance in my direction and snapped the reins over the horses’ backs to drive them harder. Anger quickly replaced self-pity. I struggled to my feet, prepared to give this road hog a piece of my mind, but my gaze met not the driver’s eyes but the dazed and hopeless eyes of three women standing in the back of the cart. They were bareheaded in the pouring rain, hands chained, feet hobbled, unable to even huddle close together for warmth. Wet hair plastered their heads and turned their faces skeletal and their staring eyes into empty sockets—as if they had already been tried, convicted, garroted, and burned. Clearly these were more women accused of witchcraft, being transported to the dungeons of Castle Coldclough.

Their jailer told me that. I knew immediately that he was a nephilim. He loomed over the prisoners, ramrod straight and stock-still despite the rocking of the cart, in a long black cloak and a ghastly mask. It had a long black beak and red glass eyes that stayed on me as the cart continued on its way down the road. But it wasn’t the horrible mask, which I recognized as the kind plague doctors wore, that held me riveted; it was the brooch pinned to the nephilim’s cloak. It held a cloudy white stone big as a goose egg and shaped like a tear. As I stared at it, it began to glow, piercing the gray steaming air like the moon appearing from behind clouds. The angel stone. Every atom in my body called out to it. The light from it seemed to be filling my body, cold water pouring into my bones as if the rain were coming in through my pores. With it came an overwhelming sorrow—the grief of the creatures who had fathered these monsters and the shame of the children whose fathers had turned from them. This sorrow made the grief I’d been feeling for Bill a moment ago seem like a drop in the ocean, but it also made that grief swell into a flood that threatened to drown me. Every sorrow I’d ever felt—the death of my parents, the shame of my grandmother’s coldness and disapproval, the moment I believed Liam had betrayed me, Bill’s death—rose up inside me. It was unbearable. I wanted to throw myself under the wheels of the cart or lie facedown in the ditch until I drowned. I wanted to …

“Callie?”

The voice behind me barely pierced the fog of grief. I still couldn’t take my eyes off the stone as it receded down the road. I saw the cloaked man touch a gloved hand to it, and beneath the beaked mask he smiled wolfishly. My grief acquired barbs.

“Callie!” A hand shook me roughly, the voice louder now in my ears. He was trying to turn me around, but tearing my eyes off the stone felt like ripping something inside me. William’s face loomed out of the rain, as hollow-eyed as the skeletal masks of the condemned prisoners.

We’ll all be dead if I can’t get that stone away from those monsters, I thought, and then William’s face bobbed like a balloon over me, getting farther and farther away, as if he was floating over me—or I was sinking down beneath him.

I sank deep into the darkness, into a waking dream, as if falling into a pit. Far above the pit hung a gibbous moon that looked down on me with a cold and pitiless eye. I could feel the angel stone pinning me down—its gravity pushing me ever deeper into the dark.

But then I was being lifted and carried out of the pit. I struggled to open my eyes and saw William’s face instead of the cold, heartless moon. I couldn’t keep my eyes open for long, though: the force of the angel stone was dragging me down into a nightmare world where, instead of being carried by William, I was taken to a dungeon. I wasn’t alone there. The skeletal faces of the condemned women in the cart were with me, as were my friends from Fairwick—Frank and Soheila, Nicky and Ruby Day. All of us had been condemned by the nephilim to this cold dungeon, where our hands and feet were bound by cold iron and the beaked-faced creatures came and took us one by one to another room, where someone screamed and screamed and screamed …

When I was able to open my eyes, I caught glimpses of William and Nan. I saw that they had carried me to Mordag’s cottage and put me in the upstairs bedroom under layers of wool blankets and sheepskins, but when I closed my eyes I was back in the dungeons and nothing could keep me safe or warm—not the hot tea that William held to my lips or the broths that Nan brought. Just by looking at the angel stone, my soul had been pierced. How could I ever have thought I could wield it as a weapon against the nephilim? How could I ever have thought I could save my friends back in Fairwick when I couldn’t even save myself?

“Foolish girl,” my nightmare inquisitor said when at last they came to take me to the torture room. “You didn’t come here for this.” He touched the stone and I felt a cold weight against my breast, as if a heavy stone had been laid there. “You came for your demon lover, to consort with him. Look, here is his devil’s mark on you.”

I looked down and saw the dark circles on my wrist where Liam’s hand had encircled mine when I banished him to the Borderlands. As he dissolved, the shadows had bitten into my wrist.

“You see what trafficking with the devil has gotten you,” he sneered.

The weight on my chest grew heavier, crushing my lungs. My hands clawed at the stone, trying to push it away, but it was too heavy. It held the weight of every regret—banishing Liam, loving Bill too late to save him, failing to save my friends and students from the nephilim back in Fairwick.

Somewhere I heard a woman’s voice say, “She can’t breathe,” and I knew that in a sheepherder’s cottage on a Scottish hillside I was strangling to death.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped with my last breath. “I couldn’t save you.”

“But you did.” I heard a man’s voice. “You saved me.”

I felt something press into my hand. In the cottage room, warm fingers gripped my hand. In my nightmare dungeon, I looked down and saw the heart-shaped brooch, then looked up and saw the red glass eyes of my inquisitor fastened on it. The mask couldn’t hide his surprise. I wasn’t supposed to have the brooch.

I curled my fingers around it. In the cottage room, a hand closed over mine. In my nightmare, the inquisitor opened his mouth and let out a raucous caw. Black glossy wings filled the room with wind and noise. I could barely lift my hand in the tumult, but then I felt another hand on mine, guiding it to my chest. As soon as the cold silver heart touched my chest, the weight burst. I opened my eyes, gasping for breath, in the cottage. William was by my side, holding my hand.

“She’s back,” I heard Nan say.

When I saw the look of relief on William’s face, I didn’t have the heart to correct Nan. I wasn’t back. I was trapped in the seventeenth century. But I did manage to squeeze William’s hand and whisper before I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, “I think I know how to get those bastards.”

Once the immediate danger to me was past, Nan came less often, leaving William to care for me. I felt bad that William was stuck watching over an invalid—and worse that, while I lay in a warm bed, Mordag and eleven others were in the dungeons of Castle Coldclough. Nan had told me that the number of the accused was up to twelve, but she was right that I was too weak to face the nephilim now. I had to gather my strength. I sat up when William brought me oatmeal—my parritch, as he called it—in the morning and broth in the evening. During the day I watched out the window at the foot of the bed. In the morning, I followed his progress through the heather as he led Mordag’s sheep, which a neighbor had been tending since she’d been taken, into their pastureland; in the evening, I waited for the moment when I’d spy him silhouetted against the lilac sky, a lithe shape like some pastoral figure on an antique vase. In between, I thought about the vision I’d had of the inquisitor. The angel stone he wore had exerted great power over me. I didn’t even like to think of how it had made me feel, but I forced myself, remembering the cold weight of despair that had nearly crushed me. Despair, guilt, regret—the stone had evoked every mistake I’d ever made. It seemed to pull them out of me like a magnet. Only the Luckenbooth brooch had broken the spell and released me. I lay in bed each day trying to figure it out, my thoughts spinning in fruitless circles.

Then one day after a week or so, I got up to meet William downstairs as he came in the door. His eyes lit up at the sight of me; his cheeks glowed red as apples from the cold air. I felt a corresponding flare in my own heart but then a pang, because I was planning to leave as soon as I was able to get the stone away from the nephilim.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened when I saw the witch hunter,” I said, as I spooned out the stew that William had made for us.

“Are you sure you want to be thinking about that?” he asked. “You were raving as if you were being tortured …”

He paused and looked up at me, his eyes shining in the firelight, and I suddenly wondered if he spent his days thinking about his captivity with the Fairy Queen. “I mean,” he continued, “I know you are worried about your friends and that you must get this stone to save them, but perhaps it’s better if you use this time to get your strength back for when it is time to go.”

“Is that what you did when you were in Faerie?”

He looked surprised but then nodded. “Aye. I thought of what I should do if I had a chance to escape. I even dreamed sometimes of the lass who would save me …” He looked away, embarrassed. Since we’d returned to the cottage, he’d studiously avoided touching me more than he had to in the course of nursing me back to health. Sometimes I wondered if that first night we’d spent here, when we’d come together so urgently in front of the fire, had been as much a dream as the dreams of the Greenwood. “But those dreams of mine were a great deal more pleasant than the ones you were having,” he said. “I don’t like to think of you dwelling on them.”

“I have to,” I told him. “I have to understand how I broke the angel stone’s spell, so that I can get it away from the nephilim. Not just for my friends back in Fairwick but for everyone here—for Mordag and the rest.”

He nodded. “Aye, I don’t like to think of what those bastards are doing to them. But I don’t see how we can help. They’re deep in the dungeons of Castle Coldclough and guarded by a squadron of those cloaked bastards. The whole town is terrified of them, everyone afraid to speak up in the kirk session lest they’re accused next. And when someone does speak, they’re struck dumb. I went to the kirk session on Sunday and watched Donald McCreavey try to speak up for his sister, but he fell on the floor in a fit. The minister said he’d been possessed by a demon and had him taken to the dungeons to join his sister. He was babbling all the while about all the sins he’d committed, how he’d stolen from the collection plate and watched the girls swimming in the burn naked. Harmless things, but he took on like he was the devil himself.”

“It’s the stone,” I said, guiltily thinking how much worse than Donald McCreavey’s were the stains I had on my own conscience. “It makes you remember all the things you’ve done wrong—and makes them worse—until you feel like your own guilt is crushing you.”

“That’s why you were gasping for air?” he asked. “But what could you have done …” He stopped as the blood rushed to my face. “Oh,” he said, “did it have to do with me—or who I became?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m afraid I caused you a lot of pain.”

William smiled crookedly. “I imagine I deserved it—and I can’t imagine whatever you did to me wasn’t worth the time I got to spend with ye.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “Dinna fash yourself, lass.” As he squeezed my hand, I remembered how I’d felt his hand in mine during my vision.

“That’s how I was able to break the angel stone’s hold,” I said, looking down at his hand. “You put the brooch in my hand …”

“Aye.” He reached under the collar of his shirt and pulled out a leather thong. Hanging from it were both brooches. “I was unpinning your shawl when you started thrashing about, so it was in my hand when I grabbed yours.”

“I saw it in my hand in my vision, and the witch hunter saw it, too. I could tell he was surprised—and frightened. When I laid it on my heart, I was able to break the angel stone’s hold.”

“Then you ought to be wearing it now for protection,” he said, pulling the thong over his head. As he leaned closer to put the thong over my head, I smelled heather. A sprig was in his hair. I pulled it loose … and was flooded with the memory of the dreams I’d had of making love in fields of heather and the sprigs I’d find in my bed afterward. Perhaps he was remembering those dreams, too, because he blushed as he saw the flower in my hand.

“Och, aye,” he mumbled awkwardly, “that’s a queer thing. I fell asleep on the hillside today and awoke to find myself surrounded by heather, though it’s too late in the year for the stuff to be flowering.”

I thought about the beds full of flowers I’d awoken to back in Fairwick and wondered what William had been dreaming about. I looked down so he wouldn’t see me blush and fingered the brooch he’d put around my neck. I fitted the two hearts together. I remembered the part from the ballad of William Duffy when the fairy girl breaks her brooch in half and gives one half to William.

“Tell me what Cailleach—the first Cailleach—said to you when she split the brooch in half,” I said.

“Keep this as a token of my love,” he said, so quickly that I guessed he had repeated the lines many times. “My heart will be halved until we are together again. And …”

“There’s something else?” There wasn’t anything else in the ballad.

“Aye, she said that when the two halves were joined again, nothing could hurt us. What? What does it mean?”

“It means,” I said, holding the two halves of the brooch up together, “that I have an idea how to get the stone and destroy those bastards. But I’ll have to speak to your auntie first.”