Page 4 of The Changeling

‘Take me to Robbie,’ I said brusquely.

‘But … Mama? She is most agitated. She wants you …’

‘I must see Robbie first.’

She led the way up a spiral staircase, Carlin slinking along at our heels, her tail tucked between her legs. I had to take each step one at a time, bracing myself on my stick. Beatrix turned and offered me her hand, but I knocked it away. It shamed me to be so unsteady.

It’s just the cold, I told myself. Anyone would be stiff after sleeping rough for weeks.

At last we reached an upper chamber, hung with tapestries and lit only with a low oil lamp. Robbie lay sleeping, frighteningly pale and thin, his chestnut curls lank with sweat. His boots lay on the floor nearby. The soles were worn into holes, just as Beatrix had said.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asked.

‘I dinna ken.’ I bent and took his hand, pressed it between my own. ‘Robbie?’

A shock all through my body, a rush of images I did not understand. A horse galloping through a dark forest, strains of eerie music, Robbie dancing in a hall of icicles, spinning, stumbling, falling. A dead bird with a broken neck. A dagger flashing down, a spray of blood.

I wrested my hands away, sick with dizziness.

‘What’s wrong? Are you faint?’ Beatrix reached out to steady me.

‘Dinna touch me! Naught is wrong. I’m just weary. Give me a wee moment.’

Beatrix stepped back, and I leaned against the bed, trying to compose myself. What had I just seen? The past, the future? Something uncanny, that was certain.

I took a deep breath and laid the back of my hand against Robbie’s forehead. It was hot and damp, as if he had been running. Bending, I smoothed back his curls, then lifted one of his eyelids. He flinched from the light, turning his cheek to the pillow and muttering under his breath. Something eased in my chest.

‘Does he take any food?’

‘We do our best.’

‘And does someone stay with him, watch over him at night?’

‘My sisters and I take turns, but it’s hard when Mama is ill too. At night one of the servants stays with him. They say he never stirs. We do not know what to do.’

‘I will need a chicken carcass, including the feet and giblets.’

Beatrix stared at me in horror.

‘To make broth,’ I snapped. ‘And ask someone to mend his boots.’

I looked down at Robbie. I wanted to bend and kiss him, to see if he responded to the touch of my lips. But I could not, with his sister watching me with such mistrustful eyes.

I smoothed his coverlet. ‘I’ll see your mam now.’

Beatrix sighed with relief and led me from the room. I looked back before she shut the door. Robbie, Robbie, what is wrong with you? Have you been ensorcelled?

Lady Marjorie’s bedroom was thickly carpeted and hung with tapestries of fine ladies sewing and singing. A fire glowed on the hearth, illuminating a crucifix that hung in an aperture in the wall, a prayer stool below. The flicker of the firelight made it seem as if Christ writhed in his suffering.

‘Where is Caiti?’ she wept. ‘Tell her I’m sorry, tell her it was not my fault. Please, say it was not my fault.’

Beatrix’s sisters clustered around the bed, trying to calm and soothe their mother. They all looked so like Robbie, with their red hair and blue eyes, it smote my heart. Margrit, the eldest of the five girls, glanced around as we approached. ‘Beatrix, where have you been all this time?’ Then she saw me and jerked upright. ‘What have you done? How could you bring the witchling here?’

I glared back at her, hating her.

‘Mama wanted her,’ Beatrix said defiantly. ‘She bid me go and fetch her, and I could not refuse her.’

‘But she cast a spell on Robbie! She ensorcelled him and seduced him! And when Father would not let him wed her, she poisoned him!’ Margrit cried.