A Necklace of Souls Read online

  ‘So much stone, holding something so small,’ Daddy said. ‘Dana, something inside that tower is very important. It keeps the whole Kingdom safe.’

  ‘What is it, Daddy?’

  ‘Just a necklace.’

  ‘A necklace? That doesn’t keep you safe. It makes you look pretty.’

  ‘Ah, but this one is special.’

  I looked up at the tower again. There was a patch of darker shadow at its top. ‘Look, Daddy. There’s a window!’

  My father ruffled my hair. ‘You have good eyes, Dana. The tower is very tall.’

  ‘I bet you could see for miles from there.’ Something passed across the high window. ‘Daddy, I thought I saw …’

  ‘What, Dana?’ Daddy was looking over the battlements, watching the oxen pulling the heavy plough, and I know that he was thinking of the harvest to come. Daddy was always thinking about crops and the harvest.

  ‘Daddy! Look!’

  He shaded his eyes, peering up at the tower. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I saw something.’ I shaded my eyes with my hand so I’d look like him. ‘Look!’ There, at the top of the tower, just below the arrow point of the roof tiles, was a scrap of white.

  ‘It can’t be. She hasn’t been seen for years.’

  I waved at the scrap of white. It raised a hand in reply. ‘Daddy, look! Look, Daddy, there’s someone there. Hello! Hello!’

  Then my father did something strange. Squatting down, he pulled me into his arms, bending over me as though trying to hide me from the person in the tower. ‘Dana, that’s nothing.’ His voice sounded scared and sad. ‘It’s probably a crow. They nest up there.’

  I peeped around his shoulders. For the first time I realized that adults could make mistakes. It was definitely a person. She was waving at me.

  When I was little, I thought the Castle was the centre of the world. All my life I had lived behind its stone walls. The Castle was set as close to the middle of the island as possible; it was the heart of the Kingdom and from its ramparts we could see for miles. North, east and west, the horizon was open, bounded only by wild moorland and empty sea. But to the south were distant mountains. Purpled with haze or white with snow, at times they seemed so close I could almost touch them. Sometimes, when a storm blew up, they were hidden in cloud. I had always wanted to see what lay beyond those mountains.

  The morning after my midnight run across the cobbles, it was the sun that roused me — and Nurse.

  ‘Well, slug-abed?’ Nurse bustled in, followed by the chambermaid. ‘Don’t just stand there, girl. Make up the bed.’ This was to the maid. ‘Princess, I’ve set your breakfast up in the schoolroom. You’ve got a new governess starting today. You need to look presentable.’

  I stretched and blinked. How had the sun gotten so high in the sky? Nurse never allowed me to sleep out my rest; she always hustled into my chamber and, if the noise of the door opening didn’t rouse me, she’d pull off the bedclothes.

  The day, so bright, suddenly seemed dimmer. I hate governesses. I go through them like boots, Mother says. And then she normally says something about needing to be more ladylike.

  ‘I should go see Daddy,’ I said, firmly. Princess-like.

  Nurse, who’s known me since I was a baby, was not easily cowed. ‘I’m sure he can manage without you, Princess.’ She straightened up, her arms full of cloth. ‘You’ll get yourself dressed, like a Christian. And then you’ll break your fast, and then—’

  ‘I will talk to Daddy.’

  She snorted. ‘No such thing. I’ll do your hair for you.’ She touched my head, her fingers gentle, but I still flinched. I don’t like people being near my face. ‘Whist now. ’Tis like a bird’s nest.’

  She pulled me in front of a big floor mirror that Mother, in an attempt to make me feminine, had had set up in the corner of the room. ‘Look at that. Not a good impression for a governess.’

  ‘It’s a perfect impression,’ I said sulkily. ‘Let her know what she’s in for.’

  In the reflection the chambermaid bit back a smile.

  Nurse had a point. My red hair (there’s no other word for it — it’s red, like blood, or rust) had escaped its braids and drifted in wisps across my face. I pushed it out of the way and tried not to look at my face, so freckled and pale.

  Behind me Nurse clucked. ‘Be sure you’re taller than me now, my dumpling. Soon you’ll be a grown woman.’

  She stood beside me in the mirror, a little stout creature with her head swathed in a cream scarf and her body wrapped in linen. As usual, she looked like a pile of walking clothes; wider than she was tall. But her eyes were kindly, and her hands were soft. I kissed her pink cheek.

  ‘Sorry for rousing you last night,’ I said.

  She flushed. ‘Get along with you, now. Should you be sorry for a dream? ’Tis not your fault. Now, get you dressed, lady, and then to breakfast.’

  In the mirror I saw the chambermaid cross herself. She was right to do so, for it was no ordinary dream. The story of my flight across the courtyard had obviously got around.

  My bed chamber was in the topmost room of the east tower. There were three leadlight windows set into the walls with settles beneath them, just right for lying on and reading. Some of the lead around the panes was loose, so the glass rattled in a strong wind and blew the curtains like the breath of a monstrous animal.

  The chambermaids hated it; they thought my chamber was haunted. But I loved my room, for when I looked out the window I seemed suspended in empty air, with nothing below except the tops of the trees in the pleasure wood, moving in the wind like a green sea. And, further out, the honey walls of the outer keep, and beyond them a smudge of shadow of the moat and then the darker green of the wild forest to the horizon, where the grey-blue of the sea met the lighter blue of the sky.

  I stared at the distant ocean and tried to keep my head still, so that Nurse wouldn’t pull my hair more than usual. Behind me the chambermaid muttered and clanged at the fireplace, and threw clouds of ash and smoke up into the air.

  ‘Don’t get that mess on the sheets, girl.’ Nurse dropped the brush, leaping to pull the sheets out of the way.

  ‘’Tis them pesky crows, mistress. Been nesting in the chimney again.’

  Hopefully, the girl wouldn’t get soot on my bed. Made from carved oak aged glossy black, its four posts and overmantel were crowded with intricate images of animals and creatures of faery: half-formed squinting figures that seemed at times part man, part tree or rock or stone. Some, toothed, clawed, were dressed only in scaled wings. Sometimes I lay awake, exploring the carvings with my fingertips. On good days, I discovered new carvings. Today, though, was not a good day. Today, there was a new governess.

  The governesses were interchangeable. They came and went with alarming regularity and I never bothered to learn their names. I’m sure they disliked me as much as I detested them, for I was a very bad pupil. As usual, the last one had left in a fit of temper and an outburst of tears. Governesses were never very robust. They seemed unable to cope with even small amounts of torture. That I had been responsible for stealing her sheets and feeding them to the Castle pigs really wasn’t that serious a crime. It was only sheets, and only pigs. Not really worth crying over.

  Why did I hate them so? Because they limited my world; they told me how to stand, speak, move. And where I could go. It probably wasn’t really the governesses’ fault, for they were only repeating the directions of my parents, and the expectations of the Court. But that didn’t stop me blaming them.

  ‘Where can she be?’ Nurse fretted and pulled at my hair.

  I couldn’t see how it mattered if a governess failed to arrive. No, best not say that, she’d only tug extra hard and give her ‘importance of education’ lecture. ‘Not even at the Castle yet. What sort of a governess is this, if she can’t even arrive on time?’

  ‘Maybe she’s been waylaid by robbers,’ I said, optimistically.

  Nurse paused in her brushing, staring at me in the m
irror. ‘There’re no robbers in the Kingdom.’

  It didn’t stop me hoping.

  ‘Maybe she’s coming with the collier,’ said the chambermaid, banging the steel pan on the fire stones. ‘He’s due today.’

  Nurse sniffed. ‘A governess won’t ride in a coal cart.’ But for a blessed moment she paused her grooming, and set the brush down.

  ‘Can you do a braid, please?’ I hated it when she left my hair out, all flowing and ornamental. It got in my eyes and in my mouth and made me feel like an uncombed horse. Probably thinking of a governess astride coal sacks, she only nodded and began quickly plaiting my hair, pulling it hard against my temples, so it wouldn’t come undone in the wind.

  ‘I’d best go on down,’ she said. ‘Hurry, girl. Can’t have an untidy chamber on the governess’s first day.’

  ‘She won’t be here long,’ I said sulkily. ‘They never last.’

  Nurse sniffed again, and tied the end of the braid.

  As usual, breakfast was set out in the schoolroom, a stone-walled room in the lower part of my tower. It would have been gloomy had it not been for the high windows set in the eastern wall that let in the morning sun. I couldn’t see out the panes unless I stood on a chair, an unthinkable action to a governess, so eating alone in this room usually reminded me of a condemned man eating his last meal. But this morning blades of sunlight, turning into beams in the dusty air, lit up the room and gave the place a vaguely spiritual feeling, as though all the angels in heaven were looking down and blessing me. Maybe they would work a miracle, and save me from this governess.

  I poured cream onto my porridge and chewed slowly, trying to avoid the lumps. Some days I felt like the lines of the song:

  In a cage of bone

  Sat a bird made of stone

  And a magic that cried to be free.

  Of course, in the song, a young girl had rescued the bird, whispering songs into its ear until its stone heart began to beat and the bone cage crumbled.

  Not that I didn’t love my Castle, with its strange twisting staircases and its chambers that echoed with unsaid secrets; it was just that there must be more to the world than this great fortress on the hill. I wanted to get away; I wanted to explore.

  The Castle’s proper name is ‘The Castle of the Fallen’, which I used to find confusing.

  ‘Fallen what?’ I had asked Daddy.

  He smiled. ‘Before the plumbing was put in by your great-grand father, there used to be a fountain, and it fell down the ramparts, into the moat. So it might have been “The Castle of the Falling Water”. Some books call it the Castle of the Fell, or Castle of the Fall. Others say it could be Castle of the Fae.’

  ‘The fae don’t exist.’

  ‘Well, what do you think it should be?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. It could be Fallen Angel, Fallen Star, or Fallen Tree. I tried each out in my mind, and liked them all. It didn’t really matter, though, what the proper name was. We just called it ‘The Castle’. After all, there was only one in the Kingdom, so everyone knew what you were talking about.

  Two thousand years ago, the Castle was a wooden-walled fort on a hill, built for protection against the wanderers of the time. Gradually, wood being flammable, the Castle proper was built. First the inner keep and tower, then the outer and finally the ramparts and the moat. The inner walls are grey and drab, but the outer walls are honey-coloured stone that changes shade with the sun. It must be a fine sight to stand on the road below the mount and see the rising sun turning the stone pink. Not that I would be able to see it. I wasn’t allowed to leave.

  I chewed resentfully. If I had been born a boy, I could wear hose and ride horses and carry a sword. And I would be allowed, even encouraged, to have adventures. Owein and Alden, my brothers, rode patrols around the coastline and fought pirates and met with aldermasters and thegns and parish priests. But because I was a girl, I wasn’t allowed beyond the Castle walls.

  The governesses had had many reasons to keep me here.

  ‘Ladies never walk alone.’ That was the tall one with the pointy nose.

  I finally persuaded her to let me go into the pleasure wood. ‘It’s inside the outer walls,’ I said. ‘Technically, I won’t be leaving the Castle.’

  So we went for staid, well-behaved, boring walks among the oaks, and I listened to the wind whispering in their leaves, telling me of lands far away. Some of the boughs were set low to the ground, like stairs leading to the sky.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said the governess. ‘Ladies do not climb trees.’

  It was the emphasis on ‘lady’ that annoyed me. ‘I am not a lady,’ I said. ‘I am a princess.’

  That governess left after I nailed a dead fish to the underside of her bed. She couldn’t work with such an evil creature, she said, and I tried to look repentant.

  I tried the ‘princess’ line on her successor.

  ‘Of course you are a princess,’ she gushed. ‘And that means that you are special.’ She was fat and had bad knees and refused to walk anywhere.

  I had complained to my mother. Mother, born and bred outside the Kingdom and so forever a foreigner, must understand that I, too, might wish to discover something new.

  ‘Why do you want to leave the Castle?’

  I shrugged. ‘I want to see the forest.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just want to see it. Don’t you ever want to go somewhere new?’

  ‘No,’ said Mother shortly. ‘I’ve been in forests. More times than I care to remember, thank you. They’re dark and damp and very uncomfortable. And there are plenty of animals there who would like to eat a well-fed girl like you.’

  Although Mother never helped me in my battle against the governesses, she did allow me to learn horse riding and tennis. So I practised riding in the arena and played in the royal pleasure grounds. I considered trying to escape but I knew the guards wouldn’t let me, and any resulting scene would be not only pointless but embarrassing.

  I picked a piece of grit from my teeth. The week following the Festival was a holiday for the cooks. As everyone gorged at Festival, and so had no appetite for at least a week, this didn’t matter too much except at breakfast, when it would have been nice to not have pieces of grit in one’s porridge.

  Nurse’s voice drifted down the stairwell, blending with the clanging of brushes and mops as the maids scoured my room of soot and dust and cobwebs. A pity they didn’t come in here, to this dusty, dreary schoolroom. But Nurse had decided that the schoolroom lay outside her boundaries. ‘It’s not my place, lady, to manage the governess’s rooms,’ she said primly.

  Daddy, too, had been wakened by a dream last night. A dream about me. Apparently, I needed more time in the sun. I wasn’t getting much sun in this grim room. Outside, the weather was fair and this morning I was free from books and chalkboards and teaching. I should listen to my father’s dream and enjoy the sun while I had the chance. So what was I doing, sitting here like a prisoner too scared to seize his liberty?

  And if I wanted to get away from a governess, I would have to rescue myself. Only the brave deserve freedom went the saying, so today I would have to be brave.

  Taking my slippers off so my footfalls would be silent, I crept down the stairwell. Across the courtyard, through the postern gate, were the stairs to the outer keep where the laundry maids’ hut was, and the pleasure grounds. I was going to do something I had always longed to do, but never had the courage to try. Today, I was going to try my hand at thieving.

  5

  The Boar and the Minstrel

  Aunt Agnes stood at the farmhouse door. Like her writing, she was angular and spiky. Her grey hair was tucked into a bun, but bits of it had come out of the pins and hung loose about her neck. Her mouth was grim. Aunt Agnes, it seemed, wasn’t given to smiling.

  ‘You must be Will. Ferryman told me you’d be here afore sundown. Pity you didn’t think to write, tell me you were coming.’

  ‘I couldn’t …’ said Will.

&
nbsp; ‘Couldn’t what?’

  I couldn’t write, thought Will, because who would take the message? Save the courier, and Will had come with the courier anyway, so he’d get here just as fast as any message.

  Aunt Agnes sighed. ‘Can’t you write? What was your ma thinking of? Fancy not sending you to school!’

  ‘I can write,’ protested Will.

  ‘So. You can write, you just chose not to?’ She sniffed. ‘Just like your precious father. Bone lazy.’

  That was the way of it. With Aunt Agnes, nothing Will could do or say would be right. If he remarked on the weather being pleasant, she would say he’d wished drought upon them. If he said it was wet, Aunt Agnes said he was hoping for a flood. After a couple of weeks, Will learnt not to talk. Aunt Agnes told visitors that he was Foreign and Not All There. She would tap her head and they tutted sympathetically and stared at Will like a freak in a show.

  It had taken three days to travel to the Kingdom; a long route across moorland and marsh. The courier, not being one for speaking, said little beyond what was necessary. They saw no people on their journey, no sign of life or other habitation. The world felt large and lonely to Will.

  Finally, they reached the Straits of Terenu. Water swirled angrily around the rocks and seabirds cried overhead.

  ‘How do I cross?’ Will asked the courier.

  The man shrugged. ‘Never had cause to myself. Most folk, they hold the token. And call for the Ferryman.’

  ‘Call? Call what?’

  ‘I don’t know. They do it inside, like.’ He thumped his chest.

  Will clutched the seed so its carved surfaces dug tight into his hands, and left their print on his fingers. ‘I wish,’ he thought. ‘Oh I wish.’

  With his heart he called for his mother, his father.

  ‘Ah,’ the courier sounded surprised. ‘It worked. Not everyone is heard.’

  Out of the mist came the Ferryman, pulling his boat along the ropes.

  Uncle Wavern, a big man with few words and a hard hand, was busy on the farm, mending fences and fixing gates and calling sheep. The only person Uncle Wavern ever spoke with was the farm dog, Bess, and even then it was a rare moment to have more than two words together: ‘Come here,’ ‘Go there,’ ‘Not that.’