We step through it into a passage made of stone, the air immediately cleaner and cooler. Gruoch slides the panel shut behind us.
I suppress a shudder. I know we haven’t stepped into some mystical realm, that it was a mere curtain, not the crossroads to the Underworld. That this is but a secret artery, running across the palace, passageways probably leading to different parts. We’re in a narrow hallway, similar to the pantry at the inn, only instead of food and bottles these walls are lined with open arches, their top parts lost to spiderwebs. But something scratches up my skin, a sense that we’re this much closer to a reckoning. These spiderwebs look hungry, glistening, the last inviting thing a fly would see. A torch next to the panel flickers, as if echoing my fears.
‘You can breathe now,’ Gruoch says. ‘They can’t hear us in here. Every guard who knew about the existence of these passages died with my husband – and these brutish replacements my son employs are too dim-witted to consider defiling my decorations of bereavement to check.’
‘So that’s why you’ve drenched the place in black,’ Anassa mutters. ‘Not out of true grief for your husband’s passing, but to move around unseen.’ That tone again, dripping with praise and poison, tough to untangle.
Gruoch picks up the torch, points it ahead and starts walking. For a second, I believe she’ll let Anassa’s wordsgo, but then she turns around so fast the flames dance frenziedly, inches from my raven’s startled face. ‘I should have let Lulach burn you at the stake. Do not presume to know me, or my feelings. I loved my second husband well enough, despite his being my first husband’s killer. He could have sent my son to exile, or worse, yet he chose to raise him as his own. Macbethad was a fair man and a good king – better than most.’
Gruoch turns her back on Anassa, leaving her speechless. ‘Are you all right?’ I whisper, reaching out to take her hand.
She gives my fingers a light squeeze, but doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t need to; I can hear her doubts as if she’s phrased them. Is this the innocent we came to save? Is this the woman we need to convince to trust us, to leave her palace with us? Gruoch’s intentions seem more mercurial than mist as she guides us to the third passage on the right, a serpentine thing snaking upward, narrow steps carved in stone turned slippery with time.
Twice I have to duck to avoid getting tangled in a web. Thrice we stop, alarmed, when eerie wailing breaks the silence, as if the stone itself is weeping, wheezing.
‘Merely the wind crossing the passageways,’ Gruoch mumbles. Even she doesn’t sound entirely convinced. And every time I reach inside my cloak, seeking the reassurance of my knife, I come up empty. It gets harder and harder to unsnarl my fingers from the fabric with each try – as if the cloak is hungry and my hand is prey.
Shakespeare, next to me, notices. ‘All well, my friend?’
‘The magic cloak the Moirai wove for me, the one that’s saved my life more times than I can count, seems to be breaking apart and I fear what this may mean,’ would be too long an answer. So, I settle for a nod.
Up and up we go, Gruoch leading the way with her torch, Anassa’s shadow frantic on the walls, like flocks of blackbirds struggling to take flight. We’re all unmoored, uncertain, though the tiniest hope seeps through. Surely, if Gruoch wanted us dead, it would be wiser to have left us in that cell, to wait for our execution. I’m turning this thought in my head, over and over, when she suddenly stops.
‘We’re here,’ Gruoch declares, and her relief is unmistakable. She pushes on a panel right in front of her, which opens with a creak, and climbs out, urging us to hurry.
One by one, we follow.
She’s brought us to a massive bedroom, dark but for the moonlight seeping through a window so tall it could be a door – and for the candles. A host of them, burning together in the middle of the bed, surrounded by dead flowers and small bones, artfully arranged.
‘What … is this?’ Anassa whispers, at the same time as Shakespeare gasps, ‘Witchcraft.’
I say nothing, because I understand. This bed is not a bed; it is an altar to her husband.
And every altar needs a sacrifice.
I try for my knife one last time in vain when Gruoch speaks up, loud enough to raise the dead. ‘I’ve brought them, Spirit, just as you instructed me, night after night. The witches three are here, unharmed. Now, take them as my offering, and reunite me with my husband!’
A long, curved blade flickers in the candlelight. Not mine – she must have hidden this in her black skirts all this time.
I grab Anassa’s wrist with one hand, Shakespeare’s with the other, and push them both back, towards the panel.Even those wailing stairs are better than being gutted, and I don’t trust Gruoch not to manage an injury on at least one of us before I overpower her.
The mad queen smiles, pressing her finger on the wall next to her.
The panel snaps shut. Smoke rises from the candles on the bed, taking a human form.
41. Anassa
What fragile hope I had sustained throughout my quest to find and save Gruoch, dies in my chest as I take in my surroundings. Her knife. Her smile and ritualistic words.
That candelabra on the bed with its cacophony of candles.
She only saved us from the stake to offer us as sacrifice to her misguided spirits.
As her terrible intentions are made clear, and that candle smoke starts swirling, looking more and more human, I lose my tether. Reality unravels, like someone’s plunged me headfirst into the running waters of a river and I have stayed there, eyes wide open, watching my sanity wash out of me. Claret’s grasp on my wrist may be the only thing keeping me from collapsing – her nails sharp, reminding me of the danger, of the need to do something.
Something. But what?
Gruoch advances on us, curved cutter raised. It dawns on me that we’re more similar than I could possibly imagine, and in all the worst ways. Drugging the guards. Wearing a friendly face while planning our demise. Turning to magic in our moment of despair … I look at the woman I was based on, taking in her gleaming, maniacal smile, her eager blade and glassy eyes. Bile rises to my tongue, tasting just like the brew the witches gave me, back at the beginning.
