‘But it had to be special,’ said the merchant, talking over me. ‘A pure-hearted girl to tame the unicorn. A literate girl to grant my daughter a new mind as nimble as her old one. And it’s perfect, Maria, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree?’
The girl at his side grinned wider, her horse whickering uneasily beneath her. ‘Such a perfect body, Iseabail. Such lovely white teeth and smooth skin,’ she said, stroking one cheek with the back of her hand with ecstasy. ‘I enjoyed dressing you up like a life-size doll. Now thanks to Sylvia’s adjustments, I have the perfect wardrobe too.’
I wanted to protest, to cry out, but I couldn’t, my throat so dry that barely a noise escaped me. Besides, everything that had been said made sense. All the ghastly pieces fitted finally into place.
‘What’s the matter?’ The girl on the horse pouted. ‘Are you thirsty, Iseabail?’
I felt sick with fright.
She laughed cruelly as I spluttered helplessly on the ground. ‘Now do you understand why I was so bad-tempered? Why, if you feel like that all the time you can hardly help it!’
‘Now, Maria, you are not being gracious to our benefactor,’ the merchant chided softly. ‘Iseabail, you have set us free, and for that we are eternally grateful. But I’m afraid now you’ll have to live within these grounds, if you want to live at all. For only the waters here will sustain you in your current state. Or you may leave, of course, and die. The choice is yours.’
I’ll never go home. Never see Artair again. Never. Finally, I found my voice. ‘You tricked me,’ I cried. I glanced around at the retreating wagons. Father Ronan was dead, but there was one other person I trusted in this place. ‘Where’s William?’
‘He’s gone ahead,’ said the merchant. ‘I’ve decided to take him back to Venice with me. I told him you were coming along too . . . though I suspect he might find you a little changed.’ He smirked.
But I could not take anything else in. Wild with thirst, I had to find water. I tried to stagger away from them, but the girl urged her horse into my path.
‘Oh, and you might as well have this,’ said the girl, smiling down from her horse. She lifted something tied around her neck and pulled it free.
My pearl. A pearl turned once again as black as coal.
‘Call it a parting gift,’ she laughed as she threw it down to me. Then she turned her horse to gallop off with the merchant towards the gap in the trees.
Although I was mad with rage and confusion, wanting to run on to the moor, through the gateposts after them, my thirst finally consumed me.
I raced down the steps through the sunken garden, avert ing my eyes from the splintered tree outside of the tower.
But when I entered the walled enclosure and reached the trough, I was faced by the lion crest carved into the stone just above where the metal pipe emerged.
And the words from the Bible returned to me once again:
It will not lie down till it eat of the prey; and drink the blood of the slain.
The water in the trough wasn’t frozen any more; like everything else it had melted with the arrival of the unicorn. But before I could plunge my hands into it, I saw in horror the face staring back at me.
The face of Miss Maria Plaustrell.
Epilogue
I’m on my hands and knees, brushing out the grate in Plaustrell’s old bedchamber when I swear I catch a whiff of the exotic incense he used to burn here – oranges and cloves, ghostly aromas of that fateful Christmas returning to haunt me. Pinching my nostrils, I stand up sharply, only to be confronted by the Lion Rampant stamped into the tiles above the fireplace. There is no escaping the merchant, or what he has done to me. And as I trace the outline of the beast set into the clay with my small soot-caked fingers, I choke on the questions that torture me, over and over again.
Where is he now? That wizard, that fiend? And what has become of my body and the wicked child that resides within it? My natural body will now be worn out – close to forty years old, perhaps nearly at the end of its life. Or could it be that, like this one, it has remained quite unchanged? For Plaustrell had fed both of us with his potion that night – I had swallowed Sylvia’s hot broth all too eagerly. Two girls’ bodies intoxicated with fresh unicorn blood, so that the souls that dwelt within them could be swapped. I lower my hand from the tiles, shivering as I recall the moment I stared down horrified into the trough in the sunken garden – and saw a face that was not my own.
So afraid am I still of being confronted with Maria’s face, I avoid all mirrors, all reflective surfaces that hold potential for its manifestation. I’ve learnt to polish glass without looking, to avert my eyes from the pail as I carry water to my duties, even to avoid the gaze of others in case I should see it materialize in the glaze of their curious pupils.
For although I have been taken on as a maid by the handful of families that have moved through the estate since Plaustrell’s departure, my presence here has not passed completely without question. The new owners do not stay long, each leaving after only a few years, citing business or urgent matters elsewhere (when, really, it is the merchant’s estate itself that drives them away). But I catch them looking sometimes, either with pity or revulsion, at the sickly little maid, the brown-skinned yet pale bloodless child who keeps herself to herself, who hardly eats a thing but has an endless thirst for water, who, as long as they have known her, has never grown an inch. But luckily, I am treated with the obscurity fitting for the lowliest household rank. I can go about my work invisible, largely ignored, enduring back-breaking hours of mopping, fetching and scrubbing, a distraction from my unnatural situation.
And every night in the kitchens, whilst the rest of the servants snore fitfully, I lie quite still on my pallet, relishing the heavenly limbo between consciousness and sleep. For that is when the unicorn comes back to me, its presence announced by a purr reverberating around the blackened stone walls. Then I feel the spark of electricity brush the skin between my eyes, the very spot that had once touched its tiny, pink horn, allowing me to experience its own happy memories.
Now, as I stand by the fireplace in this moment of unexpected peace, it is like it is with me again. My whole being vibrates in ecstasy as the unicorn returns my memories of the islands.
I’m barefoot on the beach, the sky above a blanket of glittering stars, soft shell-white sand pushing up between my toes. And as the waves pound against the jagged rocks of the cliffs and my lungs are infused with sprays of seaweed and salt, my soul and body are once again reunited.
As suddenly and unexpectedly as it arrived, the vision leaves me, and I’m left standing on the cold, sobering hearthstone. But as always, the feeling lingers, stays with me – like the imprint of a kiss to the lips: it never fails to renew my resolve of returning to the islands even though there might not be a person alive that still remembers my name.
I look back up at the lion with resentment. Mammy would be long dead by now, her old age tortured with the uncertainty of what had become of her eldest daughter. And Artair? Eilidh? Would I never know what had become of them?
My hand strays to the necklace sitting below my rough maid’s smock. Whenever I’m troubled with thoughts of home I find myself pulling out the pearl, its resounding whiteness a source of comfort. Still good, I tell myself; still pure of heart. Despite the corruption of this body, my soul remains untainted. My people would be proud of me, for every day I try to be kind to others and work hard to fulfil all that is expected of me. But now, looking up at the lion, I think: why? If everyone I loved is now gone, what am I still being good for?
‘Iseabail, whatever are you doing?’ comes a sharp voice from the doorway. ‘Stop your daydreaming, girl, and get on with your duties!’ It is the housekeeper, a terrible old nag with no patience for dallying or idleness.
Quickly, I tuck the pearl back into my smock, just as that familiar, terrible thirst creeps up on me again.
‘If I catch you slacking off,’ she goes on spitefully, ‘you’ll feel the back of my
hand!’
I stoop to pick up my bucket of ashes, ignoring my parched throat. Someday, I must find a way to be free of the mineral water, find my way back home. And if I cannot, then maybe I won’t care about keeping the pearl white any more.
Maybe, I will have my revenge.
Glossary
blackhouse – an early nineteenth-century drystone dwelling of the Scottish Highlands and Islands (no one is sure exactly what type of house a sixteenth-century St Kildan would have lived in but they were probably of similar construction).
cleit – a drystone hut, unique to the islands of St Kilda, used to store and dry birds, crops and peat.
eight-day sickness – infantile lockjaw (tetanus) that caused the death of many newborns on St Kilda.
gout – a form of inflammatory arthritis associated (especially in medieval times) with excessive consumption of rich foods.
guga – a gannet chick. Still eaten (more now as a delicacy) in the Outer Hebrides.
Maiden’s Rock – legend has it that the young men had to balance on one foot on a rocky outcrop to prove they would make worthy husbands. The actual rocks on St Kilda are called the Mistress Stone and the Lover’s Stone.
Soay sheep – a Neolithic type of sheep that still roam wild on St Kilda.
St Kilda – an archipelago formed from the remnants of an extinct volcano ring. The group of islands (Hirta being the main island, the others being Boreray, Dùn and Soay) sit sixty-four kilometres west of the Outer Hebrides. It was the remotest outpost of the British Isles until its inhabitants were evacuated in 1930.
Stac an Armin – the highest sea stack (around 196 metres high) in the British Isles. I have not used it in its correct geographical location and it would have been Stac Levenish (sixty-two metres) that was visible on the journey from the main centre of population on the St Kildan island of Hirta.
tam-o’-shanter – a traditional Scottish woollen flat cap. Its name is derived from a Robert Burns poem of 1790, before which they were simply known as bonnets.
Gaelic pronunciation
(Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language closely related to modern Irish and Manx)
Eilidh – Ay-lee
Iseabail – Ish-ah-bel
Gaelic translations
caileag ghealchridheach means literally ‘white-hearted girl’ (geal has all kinds of associations with white/bright/pure)
gaoth means ‘wind’
Fun facts
The St Kildans used to eat puffins for a snack – just like a packet of crisps!
St Kildan men developed large muscular feet and ankles (with prehensile toes) over time due to constant rock climbing in search of eggs and birds.
The Gaelic for ‘Gaelic’ is Gàidhlig.
Acknowledgements
I’ll probably never be brave enough to make the journey to the isolated archipelago of St Kilda, that jagged glut of rocks rising out of the Atlantic like the pinnacles of a lost world. Situated at over sixty kilometres west of the Outer Hebrides, it is Britain’s only dual UNESCO World Heritage Site (now in the safeguard of the National Trust for Scotland) and has many claims to fame, including the highest sea cliffs in Britain. Yet many people have never even heard of it and only a handful each year are daring enough to venture there.
The islands are thought to have been inhabited for over 4,000 years but were abandoned to the nesting seabird colonies and ancient breed sheep in the summer of 1930. The Pure Heart is set in the later half of the sixteenth century, a period before significant accounts of day-to-day life were recorded for this remote place. I have, therefore, taken a few historical liberties as to how St Kildans might have lived, loved and died. And, in the absence of evidence for the language spoken at that time, I have used modern Scottish Gaelic forms.
Similarly, the approximate datings of great plague outbreaks in Venice interjected within the story do not completely tally with official records, though the disease was ever present across Europe during that century. Finally, I admit to shamelessly stealing the name Alexander Plaustrell from a real Italian merchant listed as living in Cheapside, London in 1456.
I am still in awe that my story of a peasant girl from St Kilda caught the eye of Jazz Bartlett Love, who sieved out my manuscript from the piles of entries for the Times/Chicken House competition 2018. And so my thanks start with her – and extend to the other judges of the competition – Josephine Hayes, the magnanimous Chris Riddell (who presented all the finalists with their very own bespoke drawing), Florentyna Martin, Joe Brindle (whose kind comments had me tearing up), Martin Pope, Zoë Plant and Alex O’Connell.
And I have so much gratitude for the rest of the wonderful chickens too – with special mention to my editor Kesia Lupo (for patiently coaxing me up my first novel learning curve using the carrot method rather than the stick), to Rachel Hickman, Elinor Bagenal and Barry Cunningham (who might just be the most modest, inspirational and barmy man I have ever met. He did, after all, cook me sprouts in September!). I am also indebted to Dr Sharon Arbuthnot for the Gaelic translations. Isn’t it handy when a historical linguist (who is based at the University of Cambridge) happens to live on your street?
I also would like to give a shout out to Tease coffee shop in Banchory (for consistently the best lattes in Aberdeenshire) and to the early readers of the story in its pre-competition Lion and the Unicorn manifestation. I was completely taken aback: firstly, that you actually read the whole thing and secondly, that you genuinely seemed to like it. Your feedback was uplifting.
So (in kind of the order in which it was read), my most heartfelt thanks to Sean Kelly, Julie Wood, Jules and Fiona Holland, Hazel Kelly, Fiona Thompson, Claire McCabe, Kathryn Ardila, Blair Michelle Whitehurst, Clare Jones, Claire Cohen, my sister Debbie and my mam June. I’m so sorry if I’ve managed to miss anyone out. Sharing my manuscript was one of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever done but it was my first step towards becoming a published author.
Finally, to my husband Andrew and kids Fara and Innes. I appreciate that you have given me the space and time to write – and put up with endless outings to graveyards and historical sites from which I draw much of my inspiration.
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Published by Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd
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First edition published by Chicken House, 2020.
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd, 2020
E-PUB/MOBI eISBN: 978-1-76097-375-9
Text © Trudi Tweedie 2020
Cover illustration © Jeff Fisher 2020
Cover and interior design by Steve Wells
Cover and interior illustrations by Jeff Fisher
Trudi Tweedie asserts her moral rights as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, unless specifically permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 as amended.
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