“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.”
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.”