The Starkin Crown

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Is that why your father chose it as a symbol for his men?’

  ‘How do you know this?’ she asked, almost frightened. ‘Is it your wildkin magic?’

  ‘No. I just notice things. I was taught to notice things’. Peregrine leant forward and touched the brooch that pinned her shawl at her shoulder. Made of some hard, dark wood, it was carved in the shape of a long, thin bird with a long, thin beak, tucked down close to its breast.

  ‘I carved it,’ Molly said. ‘I carve all the brooches for the men’.

  ‘And the spinning-wheel and the dresser?’ He waved his hand at the beautifully carved furniture.

  ‘Yes. I like to make things pretty. And I can’t go out much, not like the other children’. She jerked her crutch.

  ‘The brooch is beautiful. What kind of wood is that? It’s so dark it looks like ebony’.

  ‘It’s bog-oak,’ she said. ‘Wood that has been buried in the bog for thousands and thousands of years’.

  Peregrine stared at her in sudden excitement. ‘But how is that possible? Doesn’t the wood just decay away?’

  ‘No. The bog preserves it. We’ve pulled many a strange thing from the bogs. Barrels of butter, still perfect after centuries, practically good enough to eat. Wooden pendants carved with strange faces. Even bodies of men, near turned to wood themselves’.

  Peregrine hardly listened. ‘So the bog does not cause wood to decay, it actually preserves it’. He laughed out loud in joyous relief.

  Molly was puzzled but pleased. ‘Yes. It’s hard to carve, it’s as hard as iron! My father’s men bring me lumps of it whenever they find it, digging peat for the fires. Here, look’.

  She showed him a basket filled with dark, knobby lumps of wood. ‘This is a piece I found myself just last week. It was floating on the lake, which is odd. Usually it sinks like a stone’.

  She held in her hand a small, heart-shaped lump of wood. It had a naturally formed hole at its base, which once would have been a knot in the bole.

  ‘It’d make a good ring,’ he said, sliding it onto his own finger. He could hardly keep his face from breaking into a huge grin. Perhaps the spear of thunder is still there, preserved in the bog, made harder and stronger, just waiting for me to find it …

  ‘Not for a girl,’ she said. ‘The hole is too big. At least it is for my fingers’. She held out her own hand, brown-skinned, slender.

  ‘Your father?’

  She laughed. ‘He couldn’t fit it on his littlest finger. Have you seen how big his hands are? It takes me forever to knit him a pair of mittens’.

  He laughed in response and slid the lump of bog-oak off his finger to pass it back to her.

  She turned it in her hand. ‘I think it’ll make something special. I found it on Midwinter’s Eve, you see, that’s a special day’.

  ‘That’s my birthday,’ he told her.

  Her gaze flashed up to his, then shyly dropped back down to the bog-oak. ‘I’m holding on to it until it tells me what it wants to be,’ she said, turning it over and over in her hands. ‘I’ll know it when it’s time’.

  Peregrine looked through the basket, exclaiming over some of the half-worked pieces inside. In one she had begun to carve the impression of a tree, its roots and branches reaching out like embracing arms. Another had been shaped into a statue of a woman, cradling a baby in her arms. ‘What do you mean, the wood tells you what it wants to be? Surely you decide what you’re going to carve?’ he asked.

  She flushed. ‘I know it sounds strange. But sometimes … the wood tells me. I feel like …’ she hesitated, then said, ‘like I’m setting free the shape inside the wood’.

  He reached forward and took the lump of bog-oak back. ‘Really? How does it tell you? Not in words?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Her flush deepened.

  ‘But you have a feeling … you sense it … you see it in your mind’s eye’.

  ‘That’s it exactly! How did you know? Do you like to carve wood too?’

  ‘No. But it sounds like a Gift. You know, the Gifts of the Stormlinn. It is hard to describe how they work to outsiders too. I say I have the Gift of Calling, because I can call birds and beasts to my hand. Yet I don’t call them by name, like I would a pet dog, or even with my voice usually. I sense them with my mind, I reach out … and they come’.

  ‘How wonderful!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I wish I could do that’.

  ‘I do like being able to do it,’ he admitted. He glanced at the marmalade cat, asleep on Nan’s lap, and silently called to it. The cat opened round orange eyes, rose gracefully, stretched out its front legs and then its hind legs, then jumped down and stalked over to sniff Peregrine’s hand. The tip of its tail twitched slightly, but it permitted Peregrine to stroke it, leapt lightly into his lap, turned round, kneading its claws painfully, then lay down and went back to sleep.

  ‘Oh, you are so lucky! What else can you do? Do you have other Gifts too?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

  Peregrine hesitated. ‘You do not mind? I thought the hearthkin hated our wildkin Gifts?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Molly said. ‘We have heard how your mother has the healing touch and your aunt tells the most beautiful stories. And we know your father has power over birds, but a bird is our emblem too, we don’t shoot them like the old hag Vernisha tells us too’.

  Peregrine laid down the lump of bog-oak and picked up his flute, softly playing a few sweet notes. ‘I have the Gift of Music, the Erlrune thinks, though it’s tied together with the Gift of Calling. And maybe the Gift of Finding too. I’m always the one that finds my father’s seal when he misplaces it, or my mother’s thimble …’ His voice choked suddenly, at the thought of his parents.

  ‘Don’t you know if you have a Gift?’ she asked.

  He coughed and cleared his throat, and said huskily, ‘Not always. The Gifts of the Stormlinn are strange, unknowable things, different for everyone, and often taking years to show themselves. Usually you only have one Gift, which reveals itself as you grow into adulthood. But when you have more, the Gift takes longer to reveal itself, and, well, sometimes it’s hard to know if it is a true Gift or just luck, or a talent, or intuition …’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘So you have three Gifts?’ she asked, awe in her voice.

  He shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Maybe. The Erlrune thinks so. She has three herself. It is very rare. That’s why—or that’s one of the reasons why—they fuss over me all the time’.

  Peregrine was amazed he was telling her so much. Perhaps it was the darkness of the room, the soft glow of the peat fire, the way she leant forward, her eyes filled with sympathy. Perhaps he was just tired. He changed the subject rather abruptly, picking up the bog-oak, tossing it in the air and catching it.

  ‘Perhaps it will be another bittern brooch? You could carve the beak arching over the hole, like in your candlesticks’.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Each brooch I carve for our Levellers is quite different from the others. Perhaps it will be a brooch’.

  ‘Levellers?’

  ‘Those who believe that all should be level,’ she answered, fixing him with her grave eyes. ‘Men, women, boys, girls, kings, serfs. We all should have the same rights. Love, justice, the right to work …’ She bent to poke the fire, biting her lip, then raised her eyes to his. ‘We are all Levellers here’.

  ‘Is that why you do not live in the old castle? I must admit, I was surprised to find the Marsh King living in the castle smithy’.

  Molly smiled. ‘Oh no! I mean, not really. It’s because of Nan’. She glanced at her grandmother, sleeping peacefully as a baby in her cushioned wheelchair. ‘There are so many steps at the castle, and the cobblestones are so uneven. Here the floor is smooth, and Nan can roll herself about all she wants’.

  Peregrine heard the sound of footsteps overhead, as Grizelda at long last roused herself from the bath. No doubt the water would be cold and dirty by now, no use to anyone else at all. He looked at Molly urgently. ‘Please help me! What should
I say to the council? I’m only a boy, but I need your father’s help, really I do!’

  She hesitated. ‘Don’t lie to them. They have had a lifetime of lies and false promises. My father values truth above all else’.

  Grizelda appeared in the doorway, glowing golden and pink, wrapped in nothing but a length of damp white linen. Peregrine had forgotten how very pretty she was. She smiled at him. ‘The bath was marvellous! I’m a different woman! But I have no clothes …’

  ‘You may borrow some of mine,’ Molly said colourlessly and limped out of the room.

  Grizelda came to sit by Peregrine, all the glory of her fair hair tumbling down her back. ‘Have you forgiven me?’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘The hunter,’ she said. ‘I swear I did not know he was following us’.

  ‘You saw him, the time he attacked us at the pool’.

  She nodded. ‘I don’t know all my father’s servants, though. The dogs looked like ours … but then we sell our sleuth hounds far and wide. How was I to know? I was too busy running’.

  Peregrine considered this. ‘You think your brother set him to guard you?’

  She nodded. ‘It makes sense. I mean, although your father is famed for his chivalry—’

  ‘Or maybe he was set to follow you so you could lead him straight to the Erlrune’.

  Her blue eyes opened wide. ‘No! You think so?’ For a moment she was silent and then she leant forward, touching his arm. ‘If so, I didn’t know. I swear it’.

  She smelt clean and fresh and sweet, like spring flowers. He wondered where she had found the perfume here in the marshes in the dead of winter. Perhaps it was Molly’s.

  He got up and walked away from her, feeling hot and strange and bothered. ‘I have to speak to Lord Percival and his council. What do you think I should say?’

  ‘Oh, tell them whatever they want to hear,’ she answered at once. ‘Whatever you do, don’t admit weakness. Men like that only understand brute strength. Promise them whatever they want. Else we might never get away from this damp and dreary place’.

  CHAPTER 18

  Tongue of Flame

  QUEEN LILIANA CROUCHED IN THE FILTHY STRAW, HER cropped head resting on her manacled arm. She tried to breathe shallowly, for the stink of the dungeon made her feel ill. Rozalina lay beside her, struggling not to weep.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Liliana said. ‘You know the Erlrune will be on her way. She’ll fly down on her grogoyle and blast this castle to the ground. She’ll bring an army of gibgoblins to skin that vile woman alive’.

  Brave words, Liliana thought to herself. Yet she feared there was little the Erlrune could do. She was an old woman now, and if she flew down on her grogoyle the starkin soldiers would just shoot them down from the sky. There was no army of gibgoblins. Or, at least, not much of an army. The wildkin had been fighting side by side with King Merrik and his supporters for twenty-five years now, and they had all suffered terrible losses. Liliana felt tears welling up in her own eyes. It seemed a dreadful thing that all their bright hopes, their battle to overthrow the tyrant Vernisha, should end so tragically.

  Rozalina could not answer her. Her head had been locked into a witch’s bridle, a cruel contraption like a cage, which enclosed her head, an iron curb-plate pressing down on her tongue so she could not speak. Since Liliana’s hands had been locked in steel gauntlets, she was unable to do anything to help her.

  It was their second day in the dungeons and already they were sick and weak. In that time there had been little to eat or drink, and no concession made for their personal comfort. Their own clothes had been roughly stripped from them, and a pile of uncured animal skins flung in for them to try to cover themselves decently. ‘What do you need clothes for? Wildkin animals,’ the soldiers had shouted.

  ‘It’s a blessing really,’ Liliana had said to Rozalina. ‘These skins are warmer than our chemises’.

  Rozalina had nodded and fashioned rough slippers for their icy feet, tying them up with leather thongs.

  Liliana’s weather witchery meant that snow was no longer falling, but the dungeons would be bitterly cold and damp even in the height of summer. The cold kept them awake and made them feel feverish and ill.

  Once a day all four captives were dragged from their cells and paraded before the court. On the first day, they had appeared at suppertime. Hundreds and hundreds of roasted birds had been laid on immense silver platters, their aroma filling the air, torturing the prisoners’ empty stomachs.

  ‘Your little friends,’ Vernisha had cried, waving a tiny roasted lark on a skewer. ‘I have to thank you for calling them to your aid, we haven’t eaten bird flesh in simply ages! Come and eat!’

  King Merrik could not touch a mouthful, nor could Liliana, Zed or Rozalina, hungry as they were. The smell made them feel ill. Vernisha laughed in glee and said cruelly, ‘What, you refuse the feast I’ve prepared for you? You’ll eat nothing else until you’ve tasted your poor little feathered friends!’

  So they had not eaten since, and their hollow stomachs were burning with pain.

  Straw rustled near the cell door. Liliana’s nerves tightened. She peered through the gloom and saw a large black rat dragging something under the dungeon door. She swallowed and clenched her swollen hands inside the steel gauntlets, ready to strike out if the rat attacked them.

  Yet the rat only sat up and stared at them with the most piteous expression on its face, something bright dangling from its mouth. It crept closer and dropped the object at Liliana’s feet with a clanking noise, then darted away through the door. Bemused, Liliana bent and picked it up. It was a ring of small keys.

  ‘Rozie, look!’

  She passed the ring to Rozalina who at once began to try all the keys in the lock of the manacles that circled Liliana’s wrist, keeping the gauntlets fixed on her hands. In seconds, the lock was loose and the gauntlets thrown on the ground. Liliana gasped in pain as the blood rushed through to her fingers, and she shook her hands. She then found the key to unlock the witch’s bridle and the shackles around their ankles.

  Taking each other’s hands, the two queens did a little staggering jig in the straw.

  The straw rustled again as the rat crept in under the door dragging a parcel wrapped up in a white linen napkin. This time Liliana approached the rat without fear, bending to take the parcel and unwrap it. Inside were floury white buns, a triangle of soft white cheese, two thick wedges of bacon and egg pie, and a bunch of dried cloudberries still clinging to their stem.

  ‘Thank you,’ Liliana said to the rat, who gave a courtly bow and scurried away under the door again.

  Never had any meal seemed so delicious. Liliana and Rozalina devoured every last crumb and berry, wishing only for something to wash it down with. As if in answer to their wish, the rat reappeared dragging a bottle in a wicker case. He had some trouble manoeuvring the cork out with his sharp rodent teeth, but at last it popped out and the two queens were able to take turns in drinking one of the finest drops of brandywine they had ever tasted.

  Only then did Liliana and Rozalina feel strong enough to turn their attention to the rat, who had watched them eat and drink with an expression of smug pleasure.

  ‘Tom-Tit-Tot?’ Liliana asked hopefully.

  In answer, the rat somersaulted forward into his usual hideous omen-imp shape, with black leathery wings, orange fur and a huge grin that showed a mouth full of fangs like a cat’s. The omen-imp put one finger to his black lips and pointed at the door, then pulled out a tightly rolled note from a message tube attached to his leg.

  My dear friends, do not fear. We know of your plight. Pedrin flies today for bargaining chip. Mags on her way. L & I will bring wildkin. Robin on own quest, may he be blessed with success, love, B.

  Liliana and Rozalina read the message and then looked at each other with questioning eyes.

  ‘Bargaining chip? What can that mean? And what does she mean, Robin is on his own quest? I thought he was safe with her?’


  ‘Shhh!’ Rozalina hissed as heavy footsteps marched past the door. She quickly drew the witch’s bridle back over her head and crouched down in the straw. Liliana forced her hands back into the manacles, her heart in her mouth. A tiny grille in the door slammed open and one bloodshot eye stared through. Liliana dropped in a dispirited way, her body hunched over the precious note, the empty bottle of wine hidden behind her body. The grille slammed shut and the footsteps moved away.

  Rozalina and Liliana grinned at each other in fierce excitement. Help was on the way!

  The great hall of the old castle was packed with men and women and children, filling the cold, echoing room with a hum like bees in a summer garden.

  The Marsh King sat on a dais at the end of the hall, with three men and women sitting on either side. Two were grey-haired and elderly, two were in the prime of their lives, and two were young, not much older than Peregrine himself.

  Peregrine stood behind a lectern. He carried the falcon on his wrist as always, a visible symbol of his status. His knees were shaky and his stomach cramped. He looked down into a crowd of upturned faces, seeing Jack and Grizelda sitting next to Molly and her grandmother in the front row.

  ‘Stormlinn Castle has fallen,’ he said. A roar of distress rose up. Peregrine waited for it to die down. ‘My father, King Merrik, and my mother, Queen Liliana, have been taken captive, as well as Queen Rozalina and her husband, Lord Zedrin. I do not know the fate of the hundreds of others who sheltered at the castle. I fear the worst’.

  ‘Then all is lost!’ someone cried out.

  ‘Vernisha has won!’

  ‘What are we to do?’

  Peregrine held up one hand. ‘All is not lost. As long as there is breath in my body I will fight to free my parents and restore the true king to the throne. I will need your help’.