The Angel Stone

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning, after William had left with the flocks, Nan appeared on my doorstep. I wondered how William had gotten word to her so soon that I wanted to see her, then, looking past her up the hill, I saw the smoke of a bonfire rising in the still, cold air and realized they must have arranged a signal for her to come. The signal wouldn’t have told her of my purpose, though. She was carrying a basket with food for us and another large basket full of unspun wool, which she said she’d brought for us to spin.

“We haven’t time for that,” I said, trying not to sound as irritable as I felt. I hadn’t slept well the night before, agitated by thoughts of how to steal the angel stone—and by thoughts of William asleep in the next room.

“’Twill calm you,” she said, giving me a keen look that took in my agitation. “You’re as skittered as a cat that’s misplaced its kits.”

That was true enough. I’d asked William to send for Nan so I could tell her what I’d figured out about the power of the angel stone, but now that she was here I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her. Her friends and neighbors were being rounded up as witches. Would she trust me—a stranger—to know how to help Ballydoon? Or might she turn me in to the witch hunters to save her relatives and friends? I supposed it wouldn’t be a bad place to start by going along with her request.

I helped her pull the large spinning wheel from the corner and set it up near the fireplace—the only place in the house that stayed warm now that the days were getting colder. Nan placed the basket of wool under the wheel and explained that Mordag had already combed and carded it. The stuff resembled a cloud of dirty white cotton candy and felt, when I stuck my hand in it, faintly sticky. Nan took a handful of it and, with a series of quick and mysterious finger movements, drew out a thread, which she fixed to the bobbin of the spinning wheel. As Nan pumped a pedal with one foot, the wheel began to spin, drawing more of the creamy thread onto the bobbin. I watched, mesmerized, as the amorphous blob yielded a solid thread of yarn.

“Here,” Nan said after a few minutes. “You try.”

She showed me how to pull the wool back in one hand while pinching the thread between the fingers of the other with just enough slack to let the spinning wheel twist the yarn, but when I tried, it was like sticking my hand in a cloud and trying to wrest something solid out of it. Like trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. No wonder the old wives who wove were sometimes taken for witches.

After I’d failed at several attempts, Nan made a sound low in the back of her throat—a sort of mmppff—and wrapped her own worn and capable hands around my weak and clumsy ones, guiding my fingers in the pulling and pinching motions. When she took her hands away, I could still feel their touch guiding my fingers in the same motions, coaxing a thread out of the clumps of wool and onto the spinning wheel’s bobbin.

“Hey!” I said, delighted at the sensation of making something solid out of so much fluff. “This is fun!”

“Mmppff.” Nan made the noise again and sat back with a hand spindle to work on another clump of wool. “Glad ye like it. There’s a barn full of the stuff Mordag left unspun when they took her.”

“Oh,” I said, my fingers fumbling at the thought of Mordag and the others trapped in the dungeons of Castle Coldclough. “Have you had any news of her?”

“They say she confessed.”

My fingers snared in the wool and the thread broke. Nan clucked her tongue, whether over my clumsiness or Mordag’s confession I wasn’t sure, and showed me how to twist a new thread onto the old. When the wheel was spinning again, I asked Nan how Mordag came to be accused.

“Are you asking me if she is a witch?” Nan asked.

“It doesn’t matter to me. Even if she is a witch, she doesn’t deserve to be locked away in a dungeon and tortured.”

“Nay,” Nan said, dropping her spindle from her hand to pull out a long thread of yarn. “That’s true enough. But Mordag’s no witch. She’s only a wisewoman who uses her plants to heal folks and animals alike. She has a deft hand with the wee beasties. Three years ago, when the blight wiped out most of the local flocks, Mordag kept her own flock alive. She offered to tend the MacDougal flocks, as weel, but Hamish MacDougal was too proud to consult a wisewoman. All the MacDougal sheep perished, which drove up the price of wool next season. It made Mordag a rich woman—but a hated one. I told her she ought to leave off healing, but she wouldna say no to anyone in need.” Nan shook her head and wrapped a skein of yarn around her arm, twisting it into a knot and dropping it into a basket. She’d woven twice as much with her hand spindle as I had with the wheel. “She brewed a special dip for Fergus MacIntire’s sheep last spring, and a few of them died. Fergus accused her of hexing them. Mmppff. Like as not the creatures died from Fergus skimping on their feed.”

“But why has she confessed?”

“Why do ye think? That man ye saw on the cart? The one who wears the moonstone pinned to his cloak? That’s Endymion Endicott. He’s a famous witch finder. Any man or woman he interrogates ends by confessing. By the time he’s done with them, they confess to crimes committed in their dreams. They confess to all the petty acts we each think of doing but don’t. Mordag admitted that she had seen the auld folk riding in the moonlight on All Hallows’ Eve. Same as we all have in these parts. Mordag didna know that the judges didn’t see any difference between the devil and the fey, but the real devil was that monster Endicott, who tortured her into confessing. By the end, he had her sayin’ that she’d kissed the devil’s arse. But she wouldna name any members of her circle, so she will not be given the mercy of a quick death. She’s to be burned alive three days before Christmas Eve.”

I shuddered but somehow kept the thread moving through my fingers—as though I had to do something to keep the horror of Mordag’s fate at bay. Nor did I want to look at Nan when I asked her my next question.

“Not that it really matters,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual, “because where I come from it’s not a crime … even if anyone believed in it … so I just wondered …”

“If I’m a witch?” Nan asked, looking up from her spindle.

The thread broke in my hand and I met Nan’s gaze. “Well, you see, I am, so if you are …”

“Aye, I suppose you could call me a witch. My gram said we were wisewomen and buidseach. I wouldna ever do harm to anyone. That is one of the verra first rules I learned at my gram’s knee.”

“An’ it harm none, do what ye will,” I quoted the Wiccan credo from one of Moondance’s bumper stickers. “Although I’m not sure all the witches I know abide by that rule.” I thought of my grandmother and the curse her grandfather had put on Nicky Ballard’s family.

“Nay, not all do, but the harm they do always comes back on them.”

“Thricefold,” I said. “Yes, I’ve heard that, too. I wonder how many of those convicted and killed by Endicott are actual witches.”

“I do not know for sure. Some of the accused belonged to our circle and some did not.”

“Your circle?”

“Aye, our spinning circle, ye ken. Perhaps you’ll join us when ye’ve gotten your strength back.”

“And this witch finder—Endicott—do you think he’s a nephilim?”

“I dinna ken what he is, except he must be some kind of monster to do what he does to the poor souls he questions. It’s like he breaks something inside them.”

“It’s the angel stone,” I said, stealing a look at Nan. She was watching me, but her eyes were on my hands, not my face. I had somehow gotten the hang of the spinning now, and the repetitive motion of feeding the wool into the wheel made it easier to go on. “The stone makes every transgression seem far worse. The story I heard from my colleagues was that the nephilim were elves that were thrown out of Faerie because of how they abused human women—although, now that I think of it, I don’t see how what they did was any worse than what the Fairy Queen did to William.” The spinning wheel whirred faster as I thought about the abuse William had suffered. “Anyway, when they came here to our world, they bred with humans, and their offspring were born … deformed somehow—monsters. They were so horrified that they disowned their children, and the children in turn were so ashamed of their fathers’ horror that they killed them. The last of their fathers shed a tear that became a stone—the angel stone. It’s supposed to be the one thing that can destroy a nephilim. It’s what I came here to Ballydoon to find.”

“And that’s the stone Endicott was wearing?”

“Yes, and he’s using it to force witches to confess. But if we can get the stone, I think we can use it against the witch hunters.”

“That’s a mighty big if. How do you figure you can get the stone from Endicott? He always wears it, and he’s not likely to hand it over to you.”

“No, but there is one thing that can break the stone’s power. Look there on the settle …” I pointed with my chin to the china saucer I’d put out on the bench in front of the fireplace. I didn’t want to break the rhythm I’d fallen into. Nan was right: the spinning was not only relaxing me, it helped me think. Nan gave me a curious look, then put down her spindle and picked up the two halves of the Luckenbooth brooch I’d left in the saucer.

“While I was in my trance, William put my half of the brooch in my hand and it appeared in my hand in the vision. The inquisitor—Endymion Endicott—was scared when he saw it. I was able to break the stone’s spell with it and escape from him.”

“Aye, but only in a dream …”

“If it was that powerful in a dream, it will be more powerful in reality—and twice as powerful when the two halves of the brooch are fit together. There’s a space between the halves that’s just the right shape and size for the angel stone. If we can fit the angel stone into the brooch, it will become a weapon to use against them. And if we can figure out how to use the plaid, too, we can destroy the bastards.”

Nan looked up from the brooches to me and grinned. “Aye,” she said, “I think ye may be right. And I’ve got an idea about that magic plaid you’ve been nattering on about.” She lowered her eyes to the bobbin on my wheel. I followed her gaze … and gasped, breaking off the thread. The undyed wool I’d been spinning had turned fiery red on the wheel and was glowing.

That evening, when William came home, I had the table set for his supper. I’d made bannocks and a stew from some mutton and carrots Nan had brought. I’d swept the hearth and scrubbed the wide-planked floor and arranged some dried heather in an earthenware jug—although I supposed since William spent his days in the heather he might be tired of looking at it. But I wanted the house to look and smell nice.

“What’s all this?” he asked, his cheeks ruddy from the cold, his dark hair dusted with a sprinkling of snow. He reminded me of Liam when he would come in from his walks in the woods, and I found myself leaning toward him to catch the scent of pine and wood smoke that had clung to Liam’s clothes. But William smelled of heather and peat and sheep.

“I know you’ve been working so hard,” I said. “I wanted to do something for you.”

“That’s very kind of ye, lass, but you shouldn’t trouble yourself. I see you’ve been spinning with Nan …” He cast his eye toward the spinning wheel. The yarn had stopped glowing after a little while. I wasn’t sure yet how to make it glow again, or how we would make a magic tartan, but Nan had promised to come back tomorrow for us to spin some more.

“Yes, she taught me to spin,” I said, spooning out a bowlful of stew. “And I told her about the angel stone. We think we might have a way of getting it.” I told him about the magic tartan that the Stewarts had used in my time.

“You mean it’s like a pen you’d make for your sheep—only made out of glowing thread?” he asked skeptically.

“Yes, and in my time the Stewarts were able to use it to keep the nephilim out of the circle long enough for me to open the door …” I paused, wondering what had happened after I’d disappeared from the circle. Had the tartan held—or had my friends been overwhelmed?

“You’re back with them, aren’t you?” William said softly.

“What?”

“Worrying about your people.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, lass. I understand. I’ve been thinking how ye being here must be a wee bit like me being trapped in Faerie. It isn’t the place you’re meant to be, is it?”

“No,” I admitted, taking a quick swallow of the ale Nan had brought.

“Aye, I suspected as much. I know verra weel what that’s like. In fact, I have a wee confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. When I was taken by the fairies seven years ago, I wasn’t in the Greenwood just to see what would happen there on All Hallows’ Eve. I was on my way out of town, heading for Edinburgh.”

“You mean you were planning to leave Jeannie at the altar?”

William blushed. “I know it’s no’ honorable, but, aye, I saw what my life would be like tied to her and the MacDougals, and I knew that I wanted something different. I wanted …” He leaned forward, his eyes shining in the candlelight. “My plan was to go to Edinburgh and ship out aboard a merchant vessel, although I would not have been averse to joining up with a band of pirates if I happened upon them. I suppose that sounds foolish.”

“How old were—are—you?”

“I was nineteen when I was taken, so I suppose I’m twenty-six now, although sometimes I feel I lived a hundred years, not seven, in Faerie.”

He was a year younger than me. At nineteen, the age when he’d run away from Jeannie, I was in college at NYU. My biggest decision was what class to take and what major to declare.

“I guess you got an adventure after all,” I said.

“Aye, but not the kind I wanted. Being slave to the Fairy Queen wasn’t so different from marrying Jeannie MacDougal after all. So I understand what it’s like to feel trapped. I want you to know that what happened between us that first night …” He blushed and looked away. “Well, I understand you were most likely thinking of your fellow from your own time—Bill, ye called him?”

“Yes, Bill,” I said through a tightness in my throat.

“And I know I look like him, even that someday I’m supposed to be him, and that’s why you … er … might have confused the two of us. But I know I’m not him and this is not your time and place … so you needn’t fash yourself about me. I won’t stand in your way. I’ll help you get the stone you need from those bastards, and after we’ve run them out of Ballydoon I’ll help you get back to your own time, to your friends.”

I stared at William. I’d spent the whole day working up speeches to explain how I couldn’t get attached to him because I had an important mission and would have to leave when it was accomplished. And he—for all intents and purposes a nineteen-year-old boy who’d run away to join the pirates—had beat me to it. Clearly if he could be practical enough to see we shouldn’t fall into each other’s arms, I should be.

“Thank you, William,” I said, the words feeling as cold in my mouth as the cooling stew. “I appreciate your understanding and your offer of help. We’ll need it. Nan and I are going to learn how to weave the tartan to protect us, then we’ll need as many men and women as we can find to carry the tartan to the castle. I’ll use the brooch to get the stone away from Endicott, then I’ll destroy the nephilim and free their prisoners. It will be dangerous.”

“A raiding party against a castle guarded by a host of winged monsters?” William grinned. “It sounds better than being a pirate any day.”