by Kate Forsyth
‘My cairngorm ring,’ Hannah said. ‘I can say, truthfully, that my great-grandmother gave it to me and that it is one of the most precious things I own.’
‘But why not just ask for it in the morning? Why sneak back?’
‘I was afraid one of the servants would pocket it and then say it could not be found,’ Hannah replied.
‘No one would believe it,’ Max said.
‘We’ll just have to make sure no one catches us, and then we won’t have to make up a story to satisfy them,’ Scarlett said briskly. ‘Which means, clodhopper, that you’re not coming.’
‘Who, me?’ Max said indignantly.
‘Yeah, you, Mister Xam Pow Bam! You’d better lurk outside where you can’t knock over anything with your elbow, or stamp on anyone’s toes.’
‘I guess you think you’d do a better job,’ Max said rather sulkily.
‘Sure. After all,’ Scarlett said, ‘I am the only one with a purple belt in karate.’
Some hours later, the small party hurried through the dark palace garden, their hearts hammering in their chest. It had been much harder than they had imagined creeping out of the palace, for all the servants—a category which included dwarves, fools, fiddlers, singers, stilt-walkers and actors—slept together in the great hall, on thin pallets of straw. It had been agonising, stepping over huddled snoring forms, tiptoeing down dark corridors patrolled by guards with long halberds, and trying to find a door or window that was unlocked in a palace filled with a thousand unsettled sleepers.
Then they had to get through the gate at Netherbow Port again.
‘Isn’t there some other way of getting into the town?’ Scarlett demanded.
Angus shook his head. ‘There’s a gap in the wall, at Leith Wynd, but it’s guarded too.’
‘Such a trusting lot round here,’ Max said sardonically.
Angus scowled at him. ‘It’s only that wall that’s kept the English out of Edinburgh in the past. You want us to just leave ourselves open to the south?’
‘No, of course not,’ Donovan said quickly.
‘They took forever to let us through the gate that first time we came,’ Hannah said. ‘We’re just signalling that we’re up to some kind of skullduggery, trying to get in the gate so late.’
‘We could bribe them, maybe?’ Scarlett said.
Angus scowled, and closed his hand protectively over his coin-purse, newly heavy with the queen’s gold. ‘We’ll need our money,’ he protested, ‘if we want to eat tomorrow. Besides, it’ll only draw attention to us. We’d be remembered.’
‘Maybe if we explained that we were in the queen’s party,’ Donovan said.
‘No, that’s no good! We want them all to think we slept the night peacefully in the palace,’ Max said.
‘We need to go through in disguise,’ Scarlett said with relish. ‘Let’s wrap our plaids around out heads, and chuck a coin at the guard as we go through and say we’re with that other guy, the one who paid when the queen came through. They opened the door fast enough when they heard his name!’
‘Lord Bothwell?’ Hannah asked. ‘That’s not such a bad idea.’
So when the night guard sleepily called, ‘Who goes there?’, Angus shouted back, ‘My Lord Bothwell’s men!’ The gate was swung open at once, and they all strode through, keeping their plaids wrapped close about their heads. Pocketing his coin, the guard went back to his little hut, and the companions plunged exultantly into the dark and empty streets, filled with new confidence.
All was quiet at the Kirk o’ Fields. It was after half past one, and clouds had obscured the moon, bringing the occasional flurry of snow. Angus hoisted Hannah and Scarlett up and over the wall, grumbling anxiously into his beard. Donovan had wanted to go too, but at last had agreed that the two girls were the smallest and lightest, and the least likely to be punished if caught.
Nervously, her heart hammering, Hannah crept through the dark garden, Scarlett at her heels. There was a little window ajar into the pantry. No man could have squeezed through, but both the girls were slim and supple. They managed to wriggle through, landing with soft bumps on the tiled floor. Hannah caught her breath, but there was no sound, so she and Scarlett crept up the stairs to the young king’s bedroom. Scarlett stayed out on the landing, keeping watch, while Hannah eased the door slowly open and stepped into the stifling-hot closeness of the king’s sickroom.
The room had been crowded with chairs and cushions, Hannah remembered, and a low table covered with green velvet where the lords had played cards. So she went cautiously through the darkness, her hands held out, sliding one foot forward, then the other. Her groping fingers found the king’s bedside table. Gingerly she felt all over it, and caught her breath with excitement as her fingers found the slender hoop of gold. It was bent and quirked into an odd shape on one side, rather like a whorl of petals. Hannah seized it, but accidentally knocked her hand against the king’s wine goblet, which gave a loud clink as it bumped against the candlestick.
‘Wha . . . at?’ the king murmured.
Hannah backed rapidly away, the golden loop thrust deep inside her pocket. She heard the king sigh heavily, and turn over, and felt behind her for the door. It creaked as she pushed it open.
The king’s bedclothes rustled. ‘Is someone there?’ he asked in a trembling voice. ‘Taylor?’
‘Aye, my lord?’ a sleepy voice said, right at Hannah’s feet. She gasped in shock, and backed rapidly out of the room, bumping her hip on a sideboard as she went. She heard an inarticulate cry of alarm from the bedroom, and the sound of someone getting up. Hannah and Scarlett ran as quietly down the stairs as they could, and wriggled out the pantry window again.
‘There was someone in his room, sleeping on the floor,’ Hannah gasped. ‘I almost trod on him!’
‘But you got the ring?’ Scarlett’s voice was shaking.
‘Yeah. Come on! Let’s get out of here.’
The two girls had a great deal more trouble scaling the wall without Angus to lift them up, but both could hear sounds coming from the king’s bedroom window and were anxious to get out of sight as quickly as possible. Hannah boosted Scarlett from below, then her friend reached down and hauled her up, and somehow they managed to scramble over, scraping their knees and elbows on the way.
‘Come on!’ Max cried. Donovan seized Hannah’s hand and they broke into a run, Angus pounding before them, his dagger in his hand. Linnet ran lithely and silently behind.
Suddenly an almighty explosion rent the night in two. Flames shot high into the sky, like some vision of hell gaping open. The children were thrown off their feet as debris rained all around them. Foul-smelling smoke billowed into the air. Shakily, everyone scrambled back to their feet, then clutched each other in horror. Behind them, the king’s lodging had been reduced to a pile of rubble.
‘The house . . . the king . . .’ Hannah said stupidly. ‘That’s right, I remember now . . . Kirk o’ Fields is where her husband got murdered . . .’
‘It’s gone! Blown up!’ Max said. ‘But how? Who?’
‘Terrorists?’ Donovan whispered. ‘But . . . now?’
‘We were there just seconds ago,’ Scarlett said as numbly.
‘Come, bairns! We must get out of here,’ Angus whispered, and he seized the two girls’ hands and drew them quickly away. The boys followed, Linnet hurrying them along. Now they could hear shouts and cries of alarm. Lanterns kindled in windows all about them. ‘The king! Murder! Murder!’ a voice screamed.
‘Keep your heads down,’ Angus whispered. ‘Here, duck in here.’
They took refuge in a stinking alleyway as men in armour went running past, swords drawn.
‘Now we’re in strife,’ Angus said. ‘The king dead, and us on the very scene. How are we to get free of this coil of trouble?’
A Blood-Sucking Mad-Headed Ape
Hannah had little memory of their escape from Edinburgh. No more than a confused impression of running, hiding, creeping, ducking, through a world o
f flame and shadows. Once they were accosted, but talked their way free. The guards were looking for armed desperadoes, not an old man, a young woman and four scared teenagers.
As they walked, heading west towards the coast, everyone talked about the explosion, wondering and afraid. No one could understand what had happened. Hannah slept badly, waking in the middle of the night with a pounding heart, her dreams reeking of gunpowder. She could see by her friends’ pale faces and short tempers that their sleep was disturbed too. Her only consolation was the slender gold loop of the puzzle ring, which she sewed into the hem of her chemise.
A magpie flew overhead as they crossed the Firth of Clyde in a boat Angus begrudgingly hired for the day. It did not return, and Hannah hoped it was just a bird, and not one of Irata’s spies. All four children spat at it, however, and shouted, ‘I defy thee!’ seven times, just to be sure. Somehow, it made them all feel much better.
A week later, they came to the town of Dumbarton. For once Angus did not lead them in a wide circle around the town, but jerked his broad thumb and said gruffly, ‘Let’s go in and have some hot stew and some ale, and see what news there is.’
‘Glory Hallelujah!’ Scarlett said. ‘I’m about to drop dead from exhaustion.’
‘And hunger,’ Max said.
‘I never thought I’d get excited at the thought of stew!’ Hannah said, and saw Donovan smile.
Angus did not have to remind the children to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Everyone was still afraid that someone would realise they had been at the king’s house the night he died, and the crime would somehow be pinned on them. Hannah could only hope that no one would bother to wonder about their disappearance from the palace. After all, they had said several times they planned to leave early.
Dumbarton was a busy port town, dominated by the twin peaks of the Rock which had been fortified and turned into the rambling mass of Dumbarton Castle, an ancient stone fort which overlooked the river. It was one of the queen’s castles, Angus told them. Queen Mary had lived there for a time as a child, leaving when she was six to spend the next decade of her life in France. Because it was a port town, people came and went all the time and so their presence would not occasion any remark.
They slipped into a crowded inn, a white plastered building with great oaken beams stained black from the fire in the middle of the room. Hannah’s eyes stung and watered from the smoke in the room, which belched up from the sods of peat in the hearth, and rose in billows from the innumerable long clay pipes clenched in the corners of everyone’s mouths. The innkeeper brought them haddock soup, thickened with turnips. After a week of nothing but porridge and thin broth, it seemed an unimaginable delicacy. The children were so busy gobbling they did not pay much attention to the crowd. Once Hannah finally pushed her bowl away from her, though, she realised the mood in the inn was tense and ugly.
‘They say the king was found in the garden outside the city wall, strangled to death,’ a brawny waggoner was saying. ‘He was still wearing nothing but his nightgown.’
‘But wasn’t the house blown up with gunpowder?’ a sailor in broad canvas trousers demanded. ‘Why would they blow up the house?’
‘I heard the idea was to kill him while he slept, but then maybe he heard something—or saw something—and tried to escape. So they chased after him and strangled him in the garden,’ the waggoner said.
‘They say the queen is distraught with grief,’ the young sailor said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
The man in black snorted. ‘She’s a fine actress, that one!’
‘I know she hasn’t been on good terms with her husband in recent times, but that doesn’t mean she’s not upset,’ a fat woman said belligerently, taking her clay pipe out of her mouth to point it at the man in black. ‘He is the father of her child, after all.’
‘I heard she and Lord Bothwell danced the whole night away,’ a red-faced man said. ‘Happy as clams at high tide, they were!’
‘That’s not true!’ a merchant in a rich velvet gown cried, banging his fist on the table. ‘The queen was with the king all evening! She meant to stay the night there, and would have if she hadn’t remembered the wedding. The explosion was clearly meant for her Highness! Who cared about young Darnley? He was just a lazy fool who trod on a few too many toes. It was the queen who was the target!’
‘Which is why she so conveniently remembered another engagement elsewhere, at twelve o’clock at night!’ the man in black sneered.
Hannah remembered the smiling queen, sweeping out in her black furs, followed by her train of haughty courtiers. She could not believe that Queen Mary could possibly have known about any plot to murder her husband. Could anyone smile so sweetly with such dark knowledge in their heart?
All around the inn, people were arguing. Some were defending Queen Mary, others were insinuating that she was the chief plotter, others were saying ‘no smoke without fire.’
‘Tell me this,’ said the man in black, ‘if our precious queen is so distraught with grief, why did she go to yet another wedding only two days after the explosion? And now I’ve heard she’s gone to Seton, and is playing golf and dillydallying with her ladies in the garden!’
‘The poor queen can’t lie a-bed all day!’ the innkeeper’s wife said, though with a shade of uncertainty in her voice.
‘If she’s well enough to play golf, I can’t see why she’s not well enough to find out who murdered her husband!’ the red-faced man retorted, banging one fist on the table.
‘Isn’t that the job of the sheriff?’ someone enquired, which elicited a bitter laugh from the red-faced man.
‘And who, pray tell, is the Sheriff of Edinburgh?’ he sneered. ‘Why, Lord Bothwell, of course, the queen’s favourite! And may I add that some of Bothwell’s men were let into the city only a scant half-hour before the explosion, their plaids wrapped well about their heads so their faces couldn’t be seen!’
Hannah started guiltily, colour surging to her cheeks. She dared not look at Angus, or Linnet, or any of her friends, who were all listening just as intently, turning their faces from speaker to speaker, Max squinting to see without his spectacles.
Cries and exclamations rang out all around the crowded, smoky room.
‘You cannot mean . . . I don’t believe it!’
‘No!’
‘Really? But . . .’
‘They say Lord Darnley and Lord Bothwell have hated each other for years.’
‘You can hate a man without deciding to blow him to smithereens!’
‘I bet it was those foreigners she keeps hanging round her,’ someone else said. ‘All those Frenchies and Italianos, always singing and playing the lute. Faugh! It makes me ill!’
Max scowled and looked like he would like to protest, but Linnet surreptitiously shook her head, laying one hand on the boy’s arm.
On and on the discussion raged, growing ever more heated. Angus got up, paid quietly, and led the party outside again.
‘But I thought we were going to stay overnight?’ Scarlett protested. ‘In nice, soft, warm beds, with pillows and blankets . . .’
‘And bed lice, probably,’ Max said.
‘At least it was warm in there,’ Donovan said, pulling his sheepskin coat back on. ‘Though didn’t it stink?’
‘If there isn’t a fight before much longer, my name isn’t Angus MacDonnell,’ the old man responded, hoisting his unstrung bow back over his shoulder. ‘We’re better off out of it.’
‘Never mind, my lambs,’ Linnet consoled them. ‘At least we’re not hungry.’
‘Hag-stone, help us on our quest, where is the ring thrown to the west?’ Hannah asked in the cold frosty dawn, the hag-stone lifted to her eye, as she had done every dawn since leaving Edinburgh.
She saw nothing but a swirl of spinning water. Her heart sank. She thought as she walked, trying out different rhymes, but every time she asked she saw the same vision. That night, as they sat wearily by the campfire, eating their thin broth,
she asked: ‘Angus, do you know of any whirlpool around this way?’
He shook his head, but Linnet said, ‘There is the Hag’s Washtub west of here. It is where the Cailleach Bheur goes to wash her great plaid. When it is all clean and white again, she then flings it across the land so it too is white again.’
Hannah remembered Miss Underhill, with her blue painted face and her orange lantern, intoning, ‘The ocean’s whirlpool is my washtub . . .’
‘Where is the Hag’s Washtub?’ she asked in a leaden voice.
Linnet shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, my chick, I do not know. I have just heard the old tales. In the western islands somewhere.’
‘Do you know how many islands there are on the west coast?’ Scarlett demanded.
Both Linnet and Hannah shook their heads.
‘Hundreds. Maybe even thousands! I don’t think anyone knows!’ Scarlett spread wide her arms in a dramatic gesture.
‘I’m betting there’s only one whirlpool,’ Donovan said dryly.
As so often proved to be the case, Donovan was right. The closer they came to the coast, the more stories they heard about the Hag’s Washtub. No one had ever managed to navigate across it. It was a ship’s graveyard. You could hear its hungry roar more than eighteen kilometres away.
Nearly three weeks after leaving Dumbarton, the six footsore travellers came at last to the coast. It had been a slow and arduous journey because of the many lochs and hills and forests that had to be crossed or circumnavigated. The ferryman who took them across Loch Fyne had told them to head towards Port Righ, a small fishing village on Loch Crinan. It was, he said, the closest port to the Gulf of Corryvreckan, the turbulent stretch of water between the islands of Juta and Scarba where the Hag’s Washtub was to be found.
Port Righ was a very small village, with only a handful of stone cottages built on the rocky shore of a harbour protected by a steep headland. Small, shabby boats were pulled up onto the mud, and men sat on the rocks smoking long clay pipes and mending nets and sails. They stared in surprise at the small party of travellers who came wearily down the steep goat track, and nudged each other and whispered.
