The Puzzle Ring

by Kate Forsyth

  What was different was Wintersloe. There was no house with mismatching turrets and crow-stepped gables, no garden laid out in knots of green hedges. Where the ruin normally lay was a tall, grim castle of stone, with narrow slits instead of windows and a moat of dark, gleaming water.

  ‘We did it,’ Hannah breathed. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  A sudden gust of excitement overtook the four friends, and they danced and capered about madly, their packs banging on their backs. Just as suddenly, sobriety crashed down upon them. What had they done?

  In that moment all four realised that they had not truly believed it was possible to travel back in time. Now, though, now they knew it was not a game. The four of them had left their own lives and their own time behind them, and come into a world that was played by far different rules. They could easily die here, or be trapped, unable to find their way home again. It was a terrifying thought, and one they all flinched from.

  ‘Don’t drink the water,’ Max said. ‘We’ll have to make sure we boil everything.’

  ‘What shall we do about our clothes?’ Scarlett cried. ‘They’ll lock us up if we walk around looking like this!’

  ‘We’ll have to steal some,’ Donovan said. ‘But we’d better make sure we don’t get caught. Didn’t they cut off your hands or something for stealing?’

  ‘I think thieves were . . . are . . . hanged,’ Hannah said soberly.

  They stood in silence for a moment, completely overwhelmed by the enormity of what they had done. Hannah’s mind was blank, and she found it hard to breathe. Thoughts and questions scrabbled through her mind. Instinctively she turned back to the crack in the hill, seeking to scramble back through to her own time. But she saw Jinx crouched behind the boulder, her orange eyes glowing. Behind her was a host of other strange and menacing shadows, with hooked wings and claws, and slitted, smouldering eyes.

  Immediately Hannah panicked. ‘Run!’ she cried. ‘They’ve followed us through! Don’t let them catch us!’

  She plunged down the hillside, calling urgently to the others to follow. Uttering cries of alarm and terror, the other three crashed after her, racing towards the castle.

  Backflips and Cartwheels

  Hannah crashed straight into a man who was hiding in the blackness under the yew tree. All the breath was knocked out of her, and her nose was jammed hard against sour-smelling wool. She tried to leap away, but he seized her arms roughly, and spoke in a deep, gruff voice which sounded like the guttural growl of an animal.

  Hannah was so frightened she could not speak. She pointed wildly up the hill. The next instant the man was running, dragging Hannah along with him. She called shrilly to her friends, and they bolted after her, following the thin, pale, winding path away from the fairy hill and towards the forest. Behind them came a howl and a yowl, and the flap of feet, and the scratch of claws, and the whirr of leathery wings.

  They came to a stream, water tumbling white and foamy over boulders and blocks of ice. The man turned and plunged into the stream, and Hannah was dragged willy-nilly after him. The water was cold and deep and strong. She was wet to the waist, but stumbled after the man, remembering that evil spirits could not cross running water. She could hear her name being called behind her, and turned and whispered, ‘Here! Hurry!’

  The man hissed, ‘Wheesht!’

  Donovan scrambled beside her, and Hannah could hear Scarlett’s quick breaths just behind. Hannah looked back anxiously, checking to make sure Max was still following them. He trailed behind, hunched and gasping. Round the corner came a dismal ululation as the fairy host realised they had lost the trail. Max suddenly hastened his pace.

  They splashed along the stream for another ten minutes or more, not daring to climb out onto the bank in case the fairy host picked up their scent again. At last the man clambered out, and Hannah crawled after him, lying gasping in the snow. Her feet in their drenched boots felt like blocks of ice, and she could not stop shivering. Her friends were all crouched beside her, as cold and exhausted as she was.

  The man spoke to them again. Hannah could not understand a word. She bit her lip in consternation. It had not occurred to her that a completely different language would be spoken in Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century. Thinking quickly, she sat up and groped in her pocket for the hag-stone and lifted it to her mouth. ‘Let me hear true and speak true and all my friends too,’ she whispered through the hole.

  At once the man’s words began to make sense. ‘Who are you? What are you doing coming through the fairy hill? Where’s Lord Fairknowe?’

  ‘Lord Fairknowe is my father,’ Hannah said, stiffening her back. ‘Were you expecting him?’

  ‘Of course I was. He said if he did not return at the winter solstice, to expect him tonight. But . . . you can’t be his daughter! He said he was soon to be a father, that his babe was due any day now.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘That was me. I’ve grown.’

  ‘But it’s been only six weeks since he was here!’

  Hannah was completely flabbergasted. She stared at him, open-mouthed, while her brain did backflips and cartwheels. She realised that he was, of course, right. Her father had made his first journey back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Halloween, when he had found—somehow—the first part of the ring. Then he had returned to 1566 on the winter solstice, the twenty-second of December, the day after she was born. It was now Candlemas, the second of February, 1567. Her father had been here, at this very spot, only six weeks ago.

  ‘It’s been thirteen years in our time,’ Hannah said.

  The stranger uttered a sharp exclamation. ‘That can’t be!’ He bent towards her and examined her face closely in the uncertain light of the moon through leaves. She stared back at him, seeing only a great bush of beard and hair, and craggy brows bent close over shadowy eyes.

  ‘You have a look of him,’ the man said gruffly. ‘Your nose . . . your hair . . . but how can you be his bairn all grown?’

  ‘I just am. More time has passed in . . . in our day than in yours.’ Hannah found it very hard to frame a sentence that made sense.

  Luckily he seemed to understand, for he nodded. ‘Aye, I see. So you’re his daughter. Where is my lord? Why is he not here with you?’

  ‘He never made it home that night,’ Hannah said. ‘He died, or disappeared, we don’t know what happened. So I came instead. With my friends.’ She waved her hand at the other three, who had all rolled and sat up, their panting breaths showing frostily in the night air.

  ‘What of my Lady Eglantyne?’ the man demanded, seizing her shoulder. ‘Lord Fairknowe was going to try and rescue her and take her back to his own time where she would be safe. Did he succeed?’

  She gave a little shake of her head. ‘We don’t know for sure. I think . . . I think he might have . . . except we don’t know what happened when they got back to their own time.’

  The man turned away. One hand went up to cover his face. ‘My poor lady. To think we were so glad she had got away from the witch-burners!’

  ‘Who are you?’ Max demanded. ‘What do you know of all this?’

  ‘My name is Angus MacDonnell. My grandson was one of the gardeners here at the castle, but . . . Lord Montgomery killed him. Didn’t wait for an explanation. Saw what he thought he saw and killed my poor boy because of it. That is one reason why, I think, my lady was in such a state. She had Ian’s blood splashed all over her.’

  Hannah winced, and Scarlett said, ‘Urrghh.’

  ‘So the gardener . . . the one that helped Eglantyne bury her dog . . . was your grandson?’ Donovan asked, and Angus nodded.

  ‘So . . . you knew my father? You helped him?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Let us get away from here and I’ll tell you the tale. We’d best go quiet and quick, we do not want the Wild Hunt upon our heels.’

  Angus led them away into the forest, heading east into the hills. He moved at a swift jog that soon had Hannah panting and sweating, despite her damp clothes and the icy night a
ir. The pack, her guitar and the walking-stick all seemed very heavy and cumbrous, and she wished she had not brought them.

  They heard a howling some distance away, and then something with immense black wings soared against the moon. Angus and the four friends crouched silently in the shadow of a bush. Hannah’s limbs trembled so much with fear and cold she could barely stand up again, when at last Angus straightened and whispered, ‘Let’s go on—quietly now.’

  As they plodded on, he spoke in a low voice: ‘I found your father at the fairy hill last Halloween, the night my lady Eglantyne was cast out of the castle. I was seeking to help her, but it was too late, they had locked her up in the prison. I was angry at the death of my grandson, and worried about what would happen next. So I set up camp under the yew tree, to watch and learn what I could. Your father came creeping out of the fairy gate at midnight. I thought he was something evil, come to do more harm, and tackled him. I’d have killed him too, if he had not thrust my lady’s hag-stone in my face.’

  ‘How did you know about the hag-stone?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘My grandson had often seen my lady Eglantyne with it. She would look through it, or hold it to her ear, or put it on her finger. She carried it with her always. Ian had asked me about it, and I told him it was a fairy stone, a thing of power. You hear stories about things like that, growing up in the shadow of the fairy hill like I did. Your father said it had been given to him so that he could break the curse. So I said I would help him, if he would try and help my lady Eglantyne. He agreed. It was no use trying to break her out of prison, it was impossible with just the two of us, so he decided to track down the first quarter of the puzzle ring, and try to save Eglantyne later. And so that is what we did.’

  ‘So Hannah’s father really did find part of the puzzle ring?’ Donovan asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Angus said. ‘He found it, and he went back to his own time six weeks later, at noon on the day of the winter solstice. He was going to try to get back to his own time earlier, though, at dawn of the same night he went away, since he said he could not be away from home so long. He was afraid he would miss the birth of his baby.’ Angus turned and gave Hannah a long, hard stare, then shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘So what night was that?’ Max asked, trying to get the dates straight in his head.

  ‘Halloween?’ Hannah suggested. ‘He must’ve managed it, because no one missed him that night. It was the night of the winter solstice that he disappeared, six weeks later.’

  ‘That’s useful to know,’ Donovan whispered. ‘That we can come back to any time we please.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want to meet ourselves on the way,’ Hannah whispered, before turning her attention back to Angus, who was saying, ‘Aye, that’s right. Lord Fairknowe told me to wait for him at the fairy hill, because he would come back at dusk to rescue Lady Eglantyne from the fire. So I waited and watched, though it was very hard to see them tie my lady to a stake and burn her.’

  ‘You watched them burn her?’ Scarlett was horrified.

  ‘I watched the crack in the hill, and I looked for smoke. Lord Fairknowe said he would conjure smoke to hide him while he cut Lady Eglantyne free. I was the only one to see him do it. Except, perhaps, for the witch’s magpie.’

  Hannah was silent, trying to work out the sequence of events. Scarlett stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together, saying with a rising note in her voice, ‘All right then, but what about us? I’m freezing! I’ll die if I have to stand out here in the cold any longer! What are we going to do?’

  ‘We need to find the other three pieces of the puzzle ring, that’s what we’re here for!’ Hannah replied sharply, to hide her own confusion and anxiety.

  ‘But it’s the mid-sixteenth century! They burn people as witches! They had the plague! They all wore codpieces, for heaven’s sake! How are we going to survive?’ Scarlett’s voice was distinctly wobbly.

  ‘Angus will help us, won’t you, Angus?’ Hannah was dismayed to hear how frightened her own voice was.

  ‘The first thing to do is get you somewhere safe,’ Angus said, sounding distracted. ‘Then we’ll see what can be done. Linnet will know what to do.’

  ‘Linnet?’ The name was like an electric shock. Hannah stared at Angus in absolute disbelief. ‘No. Surely not. You can’t mean . . . not my Linnet?’

  ‘I don’t know if she’s yours or not,’ Angus said. ‘Linnet is Lady Eglantyne’s maid. Or was, I should say.’ Grief thickened his voice. ‘My lord has let her stay on at the castle for she has nowhere else to go. Besides, she’s handy in the kitchen.’

  ‘Linnet was Eglantyne’s maid? Linnet?’ All four children were astounded.

  ‘But that would mean . . . she must be well over four hundred years old. Older. Four hundred and sixty years at least.’ Max calculated the numbers quickly.

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ Angus said scornfully. ‘Linnet’s as young as a spring lamb.’

  ‘Linnet? Young?’ An hysterical laugh bubbled out of Scarlett’s mouth.

  ‘Can we see her?’ Hannah said eagerly.

  ‘She’s up at the castle. We’d better not go near there. Lord Montgomery’s not happy with me, for I took off after my grandson died and so he lost his best gillie. Come, we’ll go to the hut where I’ve been hiding out and decide what to do in the morning.’

  Feet leaden, breath harsh, bones aching, they plodded on through the frosty night. Hannah looked up at the night sky, swarming with more stars than she had ever seen, and felt a great sense of the enormity of time and space pressing down on her. Will we ever get home? she wondered.

  At last Angus led them to a tiny cottage, built of rough stones and thatched with old heather. It was so low it seemed part of the hillside itself. There was no door, only a curtain made of ox hide. The fire was built in a hearth in the centre of the room, and there was no chimney, so that when Angus poked at the sods of peat, smoke erupted into the room, stinging the children’s eyes and making them cough wretchedly.

  Angus lit a crudely made iron lamp that stank abominably of old fish as it began to smoke. By its flickering uncertain flame, Hannah saw the tiny room was furnished with only a clumsy three-legged stool, a shelf with a black pan and kettle, and a pile of straw with a few rough hides spread across it.

  ‘You can sleep in here, I’ll lay me down in the pen,’ Angus said, and went through another low door into what smelt like a pigsty. After a moment he stuck his head back through the doorway. ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re safe enough here for now.’

  The children were so exhausted they could only drag off their damp boots and their coats, and crawl into the straw, to fall instantly asleep.

  The First Day

  Hannah woke stiff and aching the next morning. At first she did not know where she was, and then a dreadful cold realisation spread through her, sinking like a lump of lead into the pit of her stomach. She leant up on one elbow and looked about her.

  The bare earth beneath the straw was hard as rock. Although a fire glowered on the circular hearth, it did not throw out much heat. Angus was crouched on the three-legged stool, stirring something in an iron pot above the fire. By the drear light of day he was revealed as a thickset old man, with a weathered face, huge hard hands, grizzled hair and a silver beard. He wore a length of brown and grey wool, woven in checks, pleated about his body and secured with a broad leather belt. The remaining length was drawn up and over his shoulder against the morning chill, and tucked back through the belt.

  ‘You awake now?’ he said, showing a mouth full of yellow crooked teeth and gaping holes. ‘You must be hungry. I’ve got some porridge on.’

  ‘Porridge?’ Hannah asked in dismay. ‘I hate porridge. Isn’t there anything else?’

  He scowled. ‘No, there’s not.’

  ‘But . . . porridge,’ she wailed, suddenly as homesick as she had ever been in her life.

  ‘You should be glad for what you get,’ he snapped.

  The children got up and trailed disconsolately
to the fire, coughing in the smoke. They looked around for bowls, and some spoons, and maybe some sugar or honey, but there was nothing.

  ‘What are we meant to eat with?’ Scarlett demanded.

  ‘Didn’t you bring your own spoons?’ Angus asked. The children shook their heads, surprised. ‘Och, well, you’ll just have to share mine.’ He pulled out a black-stained wooden spoon from his sporran. The children stared at it in distaste.

  ‘Could we boil it first?’ Max asked.

  Angus scowled, flung his spoon down on the ground and stamped outside.

  ‘Ewww, yuck,’ Scarlett said. ‘Can you believe he expected us to share his spoon? Can you imagine the germs?’

  ‘Did you see his teeth?’ Max said. ‘Clearly not a big fan of dental hygiene.’

  ‘I’m not eating any,’ Hannah said. ‘I hate porridge!’

  Donovan turned a cool look on her. ‘Well, they don’t have McDonald’s back here,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be too fussy.’

  But he did not pick up the stained wooden spoon from the dirt floor, nor try to eat any of the porridge. All four were snappish and irritable, and sniped at each other until Angus returned with a bucket of icy water. He was not pleased to find the porridge uneaten, cold and congealing in the pot. ‘Och, well, that’s all there is till suppertime,’ he said. ‘Happen you’ll be hungry enough to eat it before I get back.’

  ‘But where are you going?’ Hannah asked, her jaw aching with tension. ‘We need to get on our way!’

  ‘You can’t be going anywhere dressed like that,’ the old man replied. ‘I’ll have to find you some decent clothes before you step foot outside. I’ll be a while. Only the Lord knows where I’m to find clothes for the four of you, let alone the money to be paying for them!’

  By the time Angus returned in the cold dark of the evening, the four teenagers had almost driven each other crazy with anxiety and irritation. The old man had turned the free length of his plaid into a kind of sling in which he carried various supplies, and four sets of old, shabby clothes which he said he had purchased from a woman whose children had grown out of them.