The Pure Heart

by Trudi Tweedie

  ‘It’s called a turban,’ he said, striding to the window. ‘Very fashionable these days in Europe – and more hygienic than a wig. The mice don’t want to live in it for one thing.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ was all I could think to say.

  He stooped his tall frame to look out of the window. Fresh snow had begun to fall and tiny crests of it had collected along the leaded ridges in the glass. ‘You’ll be used to this dreich weather? Must be even worse out on that island of yours.’

  ‘The snow isn’t too bad there,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s more the wind one has to worry about.’

  ‘Nice and warm in this house though, heh?’ he said, clipping over to the fireplace where he stood with his back to the dying flame. ‘Everything you could ever want here – good food, wine, hot water.’

  ‘Yes, you have been most generous with your accommodation . . . and everything else,’ I said, my hand subconsciously brushing my skirt.

  ‘I’m glad nothing went to waste,’ he said, his gaze falling on the sumptuous material.

  ‘I am sorry about your wife,’ I began.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said absently. ‘Seems such a long time ago now. That’s why I built a house here: so that my daughter would be safe – and so that she can benefit from the waters.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, to show I was listening, though I was really figuring out how to bring up the subject of my return home. Then I noticed that his eyes were not fixed on the bodice of his wife’s dress but on the necklace resting above it.

  ‘I see you are still wearing the pearl,’ he commented, his gaze not wavering.

  ‘Yes, I love it,’ I said, my fingers seeking out the smooth orb. And that was the truth. For as time had marched on in the house, the necklace felt like the only thing of worth that truly belonged to me. ‘I have several sea-pearls back on the island – but this one seems special.’

  ‘That is because it is no ordinary pearl,’ he replied smiling. ‘Indeed, it once belonged to a Persian princess.’

  ‘Then why give it to me?’ I said, quite dumbfounded.

  ‘I gave orders that the chosen girl was to put it on,’ explained the merchant. ‘It was kind of a test.’

  ‘A test?’

  ‘Legend has it,’ the merchant went on, quite seriously, ‘that the stone is a reflector of the soul: if it remains white, then the wearer is a girl pure of heart.’

  Caileag ghealchridheach. There was that phrase again.

  ‘So, if I had put it on and it had changed colour – then you would have had your sailor toss me over the side?’ I said, nervously.

  ‘Maybe just taken you back to your shores,’ laughed the merchant, tearing his eyes from the pearl. ‘I’m not a monster, you know!’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ I said, looking down at the pearl, which looked exactly as it had the first time I had put it on. ‘This pure of heart?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t just choose any old girl as a companion for Maria,’ he explained. ‘She’s a delicate thing – prone to bouts of weakness. I needed to find a good girl, someone virtuous and kind. A girl that would be compatible.’

  The merchant seemed quite certain about the abilities of the stone. I, however, was not convinced – either that the stone could change colour, or that anyone could be truly compatible with Maria.

  ‘I take it that you have been advised to take the waters here?’ said the merchant, changing the subject and marching back to the window sill where a large jug sat within a china basin.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, good,’ he said, pouring himself a glass tumbler full of water. ‘The water here is special, you see – it has the ability to heal. It is the only reason any rational man would build a house in these desolate borderlands.’ He paused, then added softly, ‘It truly could mean the difference between life and death for Maria.’

  Although Maria had already told me this many times, I hadn’t realized that the girl was so ill. That she needed to take the waters here.

  ‘If you’ve been drinking it every day then I’m betting you’re feeling quite invigorated,’ he mused, putting the glass to his lips and sniffing the liquid. ‘It certainly helps Maria with her malaise.’

  I didn’t have the courage to say that, if his daughter’s malaise was temper, it was getting worse. Nor that since coming to the house I felt anything but invigorated. In truth, what with the oppressive temperature of the rooms, the rich food, the lack of hard work, I’d been rendered weighty and lethargic.

  ‘That tree growing by the tower has done me a world of favours,’ the merchant continued, gulping down the water in one.

  I nodded again, remembering Maria telling of how the tree had made the purchase of the land possible because the locals believed it was cursed.

  ‘Little do the villagers know that I planted it myself!’

  ‘You did what?’ I said, shocked back into listening properly. ‘You planted the spiky tree that grows by the tower?’

  ‘Indeed I did,’ went on the merchant roguishly. ‘You see, I’d heard about the miraculous spring that bubbles up here. From a contemporary in Padua. He said it had completely healed him of his gout. You do know what gout is?’ The merchant paused whilst I confirmed that I did. ‘Well, when Maria became sick, I travelled here and made the laird an offer for his land. And a very good offer it was too!’

  ‘And he accepted?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said the merchant, clearing his throat. ‘Not long after, however,’ he went on, ‘the laird passed away, and under the guise of paying my respects I secretly planted the tree. Then I waited. Within weeks there were tales of the laird leaving a curse on the land – rumours spread around, of course, by my men. As further evidence of this hex, a strange tree sprouted up next to the laird’s old tower – rumoured to have the Devil living in its trunk!’

  ‘But how could it grow that quickly?’ I asked, thinking of the massive tree. Maria had showed me how to count the rings in logs to know the age of the tree from which they came – but even trees with small trunks took many years to reach any girth.

  ‘It’s a fast-growing variety – at one point, it was growing a whole inch per day!’ laughed the merchant as he poured another glass of water and offered it to me. ‘Then I sealed the deal by adding those obelisks to the moor. Now what do you think of that?’

  I took the glass from him, cradling it in my palms, not knowing what to think.

  He smiled expectantly, his eyebrows arching up towards his ridiculous turban.

  Reluctantly, I took a sip.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ he said, returning to his seat, satisfied. ‘If only my dear Rachel could have benefited from it too.’

  ‘I hear that you are working on a cure for the plague,’ I ventured, wiping the water’s metallic residue from my lips discreetly. It was the first time I had heard the name of his wife.

  ‘Isn’t everyone these days?’ he said, waving his hand at such trivia. ‘But what makes me different is my ability with languages. If you can see across them, you can unlock the secrets of the world.’ At this he turned and picked up the old scroll he’d been copying from as evidence, bidding that I move in for a closer look. ‘There is so much more than mere plague cures out there waiting to be uncovered, Iseabail. Many secrets from the ancients that have been lost to time.’

  The parchment on his desk was covered in unfamiliar marks that I did not recognize as letters.

  ‘It’s written partly in Greek, partly in Hebrew,’ he explained. ‘And I’m trying to translate it into Latin.’

  ‘Hebrew?’

  ‘It’s a language of the Middle East. See – the characters have been written using the flat side of a cut reed.’

  I tried to focus in on the sea of symbols but couldn’t make out anything recognizable. ‘But what does it say?’

  ‘It’s a spell,’ he said, looking at me directly.

  ‘More old superstitions?’ I commented, surprised. I had thought the merchant to be a man of science, yet
here he was talking about spells.

  He merely smiled. ‘The scroll claims it contains a cure for death itself.’

  I glanced away, a little uncomfortable at the subject – surely this was nonsense? ‘Your daughter has certainly inherited your talent for languages,’ I said earnestly. ‘She is already quite fluent in Gaelic and Latin – as well as Italian, of course.’

  ‘She is certainly wise beyond her years,’ said the merchant.

  ‘I can hardly believe she is only seven years old,’ I said brightly.

  At this the merchant tensed.

  ‘She has spent too much time in the company of adults, that’s all,’ he said tersely, rolling up his scroll and focusing back on me. ‘But I’m afraid things have grown a little wild around here in my absence. That dog, for instance: letting the thing have the run of the house with all its fleas – I’ve banished it to the stables where it can be of use.’

  Now this bit of news would not go down well. Losing Whitefoot to the stables to be looked after by ‘the boy’! Not that the dog had ever cared for her but Maria would be unbearable when she found out.

  ‘I doubt its ability for catching rats, sir.’

  ‘The dog will provide some extra security for the stables. I have a new animal arriving – it is rather valuable.’

  ‘Is it a horse?’ I ventured, thinking that this must be Maria’s gift. Though why he would fear theft from the villagers when no one ever came near the place was beyond me.

  ‘No, it’s something rather more exotic,’ he said, tapping his nose. ‘Now I really must be getting on with this scroll, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said reluctantly.

  ‘There is something else?’ he asked when I did not move from the spot.

  I had intended to ask about going home, but my tongue had turned to jelly inside my mouth. ‘I wanted to ask,’ I said finally, my knees twisting inwards. ‘About the letter to my chief.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Plaustrell, his tone jaded. ‘I thought that you would have more interesting things to ask me about. Like my sunken garden . . . or my book collection.’

  ‘Well, those things are highly interesting, but—’

  ‘I understand,’ he said, holding up one hand. ‘Go on then.’

  It would seem that just like his daughter, the merchant could quickly sour.

  ‘The letter?’ he said impatiently. ‘I believe you had a question about it?’

  My courage slipped away. I didn’t want to ask any more – not with the merchant in such a mood. ‘Did you write it?’ I blurted out finally. ‘Just that the calligraphy . . . it was so beautiful.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Plaustrell, raising a thin eyebrow in amusement. ‘I take great pleasure in my writing. Now you must leave me, Iseabail. Please find Maria. You girls enjoy your evening.’

  Without further dismissal he stood up, turned his chair and picked up his quill.

  And so I was left there by the glowing embers, blankly staring at the symbol of the lion emblazoned across the tiles above the fireplace. Had the merchant forgotten that I had come here on the condition that I could return home? Or now he had observed me, enjoying the comforts of his house, did he assume that I would never want to leave?

  That night, the household took delivery of several wagonloads of wine, food and fine goods brought overland from the merchant’s ship moored in North Berwick. The wagons, however, uncoupled their loads just beyond the posts and hardy ponies from the stables were used in convoy to pull them the rest of the way down to the house.

  I wagered the wagon drivers had been relieved at not having to engage further with the merchant’s domain. For I was beginning to see the fear that the mysterious Alexander Plaustrell could evoke. His flamboyant clothing, the obsession with dead languages, the foreign servants who never left his estate . . . The posts on the moors were just markers, a mere boundary to the strangeness of all that lay within.

  ‘The first wagon should get to the house soon,’ said Maria, pointing excitedly out into the night through the lattice of the upper gallery. In the distance, lanterns flickered across the moor like will-o’-the-wisps, the whinny of frightened delivery horses carried on the wind.

  We were snuggled in quilts inside the bay of the window seat, eagerly watching the first transfer take place up at the posts. Although the night was moonless, the lanterns amplified to halos on the snowy ground, allowing us to easily follow their progress.

  ‘Here it comes now,’ I chimed in as the first of the deliveries was brought out through the trees, a swinging lantern guiding the pony’s path. The glare of the lantern bleached out the rider’s face but I assumed that it was William.

  But the wagon passed by and circled to the left, around the house to the stables, leaving us none the wiser of what might be aboard.

  I yawned widely. It was well into the early hours, midnight Mass already a distant memory.

  By the time the third wagon emerged, I was ready for my bed but Maria had other ideas.

  ‘I won’t go until I see the last load,’ she insisted, pulling the quilt around her tightly. The servants were bustling in and out of doorways in the hall down below by now. The kitchen maids would be staying up all night spinning sweetness into puddings, grinding spice into meats with their fresh batch of exotic foodstuffs.

  Oranges and lemons, cinnamon and vanilla, rosewater and dates and sacks of sugar had arrived to replenish the depleted storeroom. Maria was particularly looking forward to a honeyed Italian bread, the shape and size, she claimed, of a small boulder. It was an act of great persuasion as the last wagon had trundled by to get her to bed.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she complained as I tucked her in. ‘I want to stay up all night.’

  But seconds later, she was sleeping soundly, leaving me wide awake, listening to the dulled cacophony emanating from the kitchens.

  I swung my legs out of bed and felt my way along the wooden panels of the dark corridor back to the window seat. The quarter moon emerged from the clouds, striking the flat sides of the posts on the moor like they were lit from within. And my mind was drawn back to the island. To the last night I’d spent there, walking along the cliffs with Artair, looking at the moon, the endless stars. Back there the celebrations would be around the winter solstice, not Christmas. The islanders would kill the weaker sheep, for they would be unlikely to make it through the winter, and there would be a feast, a last sustenance before the hellish months running up to spring. I vowed that the day after Christmas I would ask the merchant about the promise of supplies – I prayed that they had been safely delivered. Then I would ask to go home.

  The clock in the hallway below chimed two and I resigned myself to turning in. But then, I sensed a movement out across the ridge.

  Approaching was another wagon.

  On cue, not one but two steeds rode out from the back of the house and disappeared into the trees to meet it. The moon now afforded enough light to make out the identity of the figures of two men – one on a pony, the other on an elegant horse.

  William and Plaustrell.

  I didn’t have to wait long for them to gallop up through the other side of the trees and on to the moor where the single wagon slowed to a halt. The wagon looked bigger than the ones that had arrived so far, its black silhouette revealing it carried a large, square crate.

  Maria’s present.

  As the two parties converged on one another at the posts, I felt my neck grow pleasantly warm. Looking down, I observed the sheen of the pearl, fiercely catching the weak moonlight.

  I pulled up the leather twine, dangling the stone before my face. The pearl hadn’t changed colour but its whiteness seemed to shift like water was flowing beneath its lustrous surface.

  I recalled something that my father had once said about the pearls I had found growing in clams at the beach. That because the tides were affected by the moon, so were the stones that grew within the sea. That they were connected. That they could not resist each other.

  I wa
s so mesmerized by the pearl that I did not witness the recoupling of the wagon. The next thing I knew, William’s pony was leading it out from the trees towards the house, Plaustrell’s horse riding closely at its side.

  The procession passed by the house and turned towards the stables as I pressed my face against the window for a better view. By now the pearl was glowing and I was torn between watching it and following the progress of the wagon.

  I pushed the pearl back under my nightgown and focused on the crate. It was too small to contain a horse and on closer inspection had a cage framing the wood, the moonlight glinting off the metal.

  I figured that it was another pet for Maria. After all, Plaustrell had said that it was exotic. But what animal could be so precious that it needed locking away like this?

  Forests no one has ever set eyes on, beasts that your mind could not even conjure up. That’s what Maria had said when I asked about her father’s travels.

  Suddenly I yawned widely; I had to get some sleep. I began feeling my way back through the corridor only hoping that whatever was in the box was robust enough to cope with the affections of the girl. By the time I lay down beside Maria, the pearl had grown cold again against my chest. I fell into a deep sleep.

  When Maria awoke on Christmas morning the first thing she did was sneak out to the stables to fetch Whitefoot, claiming that she simply could not enjoy the day if he was to be neglected. She came back covered in snow, dragging the great beast behind her.

  ‘That accursed stable boy,’ she steamed as we changed into our outfits for the day while Whitefoot pawed the door of our bedchamber, desperate to escape back outside. ‘He had Whitefoot tethered outside the stables. The poor thing – it’s a wonder he hasn’t frozen to death.’

  ‘He looks fine to me,’ I said, trying not to breathe in as I tied her hair up in a ribbon. Today her perfume was a special Christmas pomade concocted by Sylvia and she had certainly not been frugal in its appliance. ‘Dogs are hardy beasts.’