The Book of Witching, page 22
‘My d-daughter, Erin,’ she says, stammering. ‘We think she joined the Triskele.’
‘Do you, now?’ Edina says, cocking her head.
‘Yes,’ Clem says. ‘I’d never heard of you before that. She joined in Glasgow.’
‘I can assure you that she did not join the Triskele,’ Edina says.
‘She came to Orkney,’ Clem insists. ‘And we heard that the Triskele meets here. So we wanted to speak to you – she came to see you.’ This last feels more like a stab in the dark, but it feels impossible to break through to these people how serious this situation is.
‘The Triskele is as old as time,’ Edina says. ‘But there are many fraudulent groups. Your daughter joined one of them – not us. And we’d like to know more about them – we’re always interested in speaking with these individuals to persuade them that the misuse of our name and our values is taken seriously.’
‘What about Senna?’ Clem asks. ‘She went missing from the isle of Gunn. And someone killed my daughter’s boyfriend, Arlo.’
‘I’ll tell you the situation, as far as we see it,’ Edina says. ‘Several years ago, something of great importance was stolen from us.’
‘By Erin?’ Clem asks, puzzled.
Edina cocks her head. ‘We know a group of people visited the isle of Gunn and took the object in question. A book. A very old book.’
‘Erin mentioned a book,’ Clem says. ‘But I don’t believe she stole anything.’
‘We want the book to be returned,’ Edina says in a low voice.
‘I think that’s going to be a bit difficult,’ Quinn says.
‘Why is that?’
‘One of them is dead, one of them is missing, and the other’s in a hospital bed.’
‘You must believe me when I tell you that your interpretation of what is “difficult” would change radically if you know what I know,’ Edina says.
‘Which is?’ Quinn asks.
Edina smiles, her eyes glistening. Clem feels a shiver crawl up her spine.
‘I see the book is still in Scotland,’ Edina says, her voice faraway. ‘It is angry with the person for possessing it, and yet it knows she did so unwittingly. She was tricked by another and attempted to destroy it. And now, if she does not return the book in a matter of days, she will die.’
‘A matter of days?’ Quinn says. ‘Where is this book?’
‘You mentioned you were told about us,’ Edina says. ‘That someone told you the Triskele run things around here. I’m taking it you’re expecting us to help you find your young woman. Senna. Perhaps we can help each other, in that case.’
Clem nods. ‘Yes. Yes, we can.’
She thinks of the book she saw in the hospital bathroom.
The strange scene of the woman that sprang up from its pages.
‘Let us go,’ she says. ‘And I swear I’ll do everything I can to return it to you.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Kirkwall, Orkney
December 1594
ALISON
The year tilts towards the winter solstice. I feel the drag of the days, darkness and ice creeping ever closer and the earth preparing for her long sleep.
The trial is suspended, no one has told me why, and I lie and wait in my cell for something, anything to happen.
My sleep is thick with dreams. I dream of the time my mother taught me about the gifts of a Carrier. When I said I would not follow her path and become one, that I would have nothing to do with the Book of Witching, she grew impatient and told me a story.
‘The book is many things,’ she said. ‘It is a storehouse, a map, and it is also a door.’
In the dream, I see the book transform into its many variations, springing from a square binding made of bark to a vast storehouse, in which shadows bustle and pour through the stones like smoke. Then it spreads outwards, revealing the cartography of evil. It morphs again, taking the form of a black door, at which I stand, my hand on the door handle, fashioned to resemble a claw made of iron.
‘The book allows a Carrier to soul-slip,’ my mother whispers in the dark. ‘If you need, you may pass through it and reside in the body of another Carrier for a time.’
‘Why would I do that?’ I ask.
‘There are many reasons why a Carrier would need to escape,’ she says. ‘You might be in danger. Ravens are Carriers. A human Carrier has been known to soul-slip into the body of a raven in times of danger.’
‘Into its body?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what happens? Where does the raven’s soul go?’
‘They co-exist. A body is just a portal, a container for all that a soul is. The raven and the Carrier become one.’
In the dream, I see a burst of black feathers as I open the door, and suddenly I am lifted high, high above the earth, the trees and fields shrinking beneath and the clouds arranging themselves around me like a vast white dress.
The trial recommences when I am yet suffering from the scorching of my legs. I can walk very slowly with the aid of a stick. Mr Addis leads me up the stairs, and it takes me a long time to follow.
In the courtroom, Earl Patrick is not present, which is a relief, though John Stewart maintains his usual seat before me, eyeing me sourly. When Father Colville approaches, I notice he is wearing the smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, the one that tells me he is about to do something terrible. He turns to the gallery and holds his hands out wide.
‘We wish to apprehend William Balfour,’ Father Colville bellows. He looks up, and I see Bishop Vance give a nod of approval.
For a moment the name doesn’t mean anything, because why would he be calling to apprehend my husband? But then a stramash starts up at the back of the court, and in the middle row the spectators make way for two guards, who wrestle William off his seat, pulling his coat and his hair. My heart thuds in my throat as I watch William thrashing against the guards, the scuffle terrible to witness. The guards haul William up the aisle, his feet dragging, and for a desperate, jagged moment, we make eye contact. I cry out as two more guards walk towards Will, their heavy boots squealing on the wooden floor. The four of them wrestle him down, tying his hands and ankles together. I can scarcely breathe for fear of what they plan to do to him. I glance nervously at the fire. It is only lit a small amount, and no metal strips are visible.
But then Father Colville orders the guards to take William outside, and a commotion sweeps across the courtroom. William’s shouts ring off the stone staircase as the guards heft him into the hallway. The spectators follow, pushing and shoving to see what is happening.
Mr Addis leads me behind the crowd. I am too stricken to speak, to breathe, the pain from the burns in my flesh gone entirely. I am too afraid of what is to become of William to feel anything other than terror. Has he been taken to the dungeon? Surely a charge would have had to have been made for that to be the case?
We follow the crowd not to the dungeon, but to the front of the castle, out into the street. The spectators have gathered all the way to the archway joining the castle estate to the marketplace. From out here the castle is a looming, black spectre, slick with rain and old snow, but the crowd remains, despite the weather, growing thicker as onlookers from the marketplace and the fishing boats are drawn near by the commotion.
At Father Colville’s bidding Mr Addis tugs me roughly through the throng to the front, where I find my husband. He is pinned down on the ground by the guards close to a cart loaded with stones and, bizarrely, a door. William is fighting them, and I cry out.
‘Stop!’ I plead. ‘Please, leave him alone!’
‘Don’t confess, Alison!’ he shouts with a strained voice. ‘For Orkney!’
His cries break my heart. I have to cover my mouth with both hands, so desperate am I to make them stop, to set him free. Father Colville signals hastily to the guards to gag him. They fetch a hangman’s hood from the cart and slip it over his head, then fasten it securely with a belt across his mouth. I fall to my knees, sobbing.
‘Madam Balfour,’ Father Colville calls out to me. ‘Do you still deny your crimes before God?’
I open my mouth, willing myself to say the words. I confess. I look at William, straining to get up, telling them to get off, and I call upon God to save him.
Father Colville steps closer. ‘Say the word, Alison, and it can all end.’
But William’s shouts have lodged in my mind, stopping up my words. For Orkney! I remember what he said when he visited me last – that my confession may be a tool that Earl Patrick can use to deepen his plundering of Orkney.
How can I allow it?
‘Say it,’ Father Colville hisses.
I shake my head, but it breaks my heart.
Two more guards fetch the door from the cart and place it lengthwise across William’s body. Two others gather heavy stones. They heft them and stagger back towards him before dropping them with a loud clatter on the door.
With a horrible grunt, William stops bucking against the door. The sound he makes is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
Some spectators look away.
‘Alison?’
Father Colville is before me. His face is wet. It has started to rain in earnest, the light spit from the sea escalating to a heavy lash, pooling darkly in the nooks of the road. William’s clothing is soaked through, his hands in fists, the tremor and clenching the only thing I can still see moving below the weight of the door, the boulders. My stomach roils as I eye the stones on the cart. There must be the weight of a house on that cart. Enough to crush him.
Spectators cluster together, watching my husband on the ground beneath the door and the stones. Birds cry overhead. On a wall opposite sits a large black raven, its darkness hooking the scene as it watches on.
In my mind’s eye I see my mother, pleading with me to sign the black book. Had I signed it, perhaps I would have had powers to escape. Perhaps I would have foreseen the angers to come.
A stream of dark liquid runs from under the door, down through the cobbles like a snake. The rain falls hard, the sky a silver shield.
And I look up and meet Edward’s eyes through the crowd. My son. It breaks my heart to witness him here, watching on as his beloved father is killed before him, and in such an unspeakable manner. Edward’s mouth hangs open in a wordless howl, his eyes sightless and streaming with tears. I should confess. But even as I open my mouth to scream out the lies, I cannot – to do so is to damn my soul forever. I will not see my family in heaven.
Father Colville turns his head and nods at the guards. A moment passes before I realise what is meant by this exchange, and then I gulp back air to scream it out again in a long, single word.
‘No!’
Father Colville pays me no heed. The wind unfurls as it does, no pause in the rain, the insistent movement of light. The birds call above, stars winking in the firmament, that old, death-defying pulse of light. And wherever He rests, God’s ear does not turn to my cry.
The guards make for the row of boulders and heft one each. They don’t stop until Will’s groans cease. Until the crowd grows quiet and disperses, Edward disappearing with them. Until Mr Addis drags me away, Will’s body lifeless and still beneath the weight of the stones bearing my silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Isle of Gunn, Orkney
December 1594
EDWARD
Edward walks across the beach of Fynhallow, stopping every now and then to pick up dulse on which to chew. He is hungry and afraid, but he can’t risk being discovered, not even by the boys he has grown up with or the people who live by their cottage.
And now, he weeps for his father, and for Mr Couper. He is terrified, and wrung out with guilt. He wants to see his mother, and his grandmother, and his sister.
When he sees his cottage on the hill, he starts to run, his body propelled towards it. He is crying noisily now, and so exhausted that he stumbles and falls to his knees several times before he reaches it. He can smell the peat burning, sees the shaggy Kyloe gifted by Agnes. The sight of her burns in him, the familiarity of home an overwhelming comfort.
Just as he reaches her, a girl comes out of the cottage. It’s Beatrice, his sister, and he is astonished. Her fair hair is braided in a long plait that hangs down one shoulder, catching the light of the sun. She lifts her eyes to him, then shouts out his name.
‘Edward!’
They run towards each other, colliding in an embrace, and he is laughing and weeping and she is asking question after question. Where is Father? How is their mother?
She leads him inside the cottage, where a fire is blazing. Porridge is bubbling in a pot over the stove and the smell of it pulls him close.
‘Where is Grandmother?’ he asks as Beatrice serves him. She is so little, he reminds himself, not yet seven, and yet she is so capable. ‘How long have you been alone?’
‘Not long,’ she says. ‘Grandmother is looking after me.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I think she’s with Solveig. The Triskele are helping get Mother out of prison.’
Edward’s heart lifts. ‘Is that true?’
She smiles and nods. ‘It is. But we must not tell anyone. Do you want to see something?’
He nods.
‘You have to promise not to tell anyone,’ she says, suddenly cautious.
‘Just show me.’
She moves to the space under the fire, the space he knows neither he nor his sister are to touch, for his mother uses it to keep her potions and strange powdered bones and any extra coin that comes her way. He watches as Beatrice lifts out a large object wrapped in black linen, peeling back the fabric to reveal what looks like tree bark.
‘Look what I found.’
His breath catches. ‘The Book of Witching.’
She is disappointed, having hoped to astonish him. ‘You recognise it from the initiation?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I am the Carrier. That is why it’s here. I have been keeping it safe in our cottage.’
‘Not safe enough,’ Beatrice says. ‘The soldiers came and pulled everything apart, looking for it.’
‘I do not think they were searching for this,’ Edward says. ‘And besides, it can hide of its own will. It can vanish and travel without us knowing.’
Beatrice looks puzzled, and he realises – she has not seen what he has seen.
She does not know what will befall their mother.
Edward is asleep when he hears it, the drumming sound. He is entangled by dreams about wild dogs rushing inside Mr Couper’s office and biting his ankles, and in the dream, one of the dogs – a large black one – noses the crawl space and begins to bark, alerting the others.
The snort of a horse outside draws him sharply out of sleep. He shakes his sister awake.
‘Go up into the roof,’ he says, and she does so, quickly and quietly, right as the door opens.
And though he climbs after his sister, the soldiers stride across the floor of the cottage, grabbing Edward before he has time to make a sound.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Scarwell Woods, Orkney
May 2024
CLEM
They are in the car, driving away from the Triskele in a hurry, the car swerving dangerously across the muddy pathway. Quinn narrowly misses a metal cattle gate that swings towards them, the headlights glinting off the aluminium posts. He gives a shout and manages to right the car at the last minute.
‘Why did you promise them that?’ Quinn says finally. ‘You said you’d find the book and yet you’ve no bloody clue what they were on about.’
Clem turns to him. ‘I do, actually.’
‘You do?’ He doesn’t believe her.
She draws a sharp breath, recalling the book she saw in the hospital bathroom. She knows better than to attempt to explain that. I saw a ghostly book in the hospital that showed me a woman in flames and then it vanished.
‘I need to talk to Erin,’ she says finally.
It’s the next morning, just after eight o’clock. They’ve not spoken since leaving Orkney. Clem can sense that Quinn is angry at her. That he blames her for the confrontation with Edina and her crew.
‘What was Edina’s last name?’ Quinn presses.
‘I’ve no idea. Why?’
‘We need to tell the police about what happened.’
‘I thought you said the police were shit.’
Quinn says nothing. She checks her phone and sees a number of missed calls from Stephanie. First, she rings the hospital to check on Erin. She’s just been in surgery. They’ve removed the stitches from her other eye, and her vision is clear. Clem breathes a sigh of relief.
‘Morning,’ Stephanie says when she calls her back. ‘Just checking in. Everything OK?’
‘Yes,’ Clem says, and she suspects Stephanie is wondering where the hell she and Quinn have been for the past two days. She holds back from mentioning their trip to Orkney. ‘I was hoping there had been some news of Senna.’
‘No, sadly not,’ she says. ‘I have some updates from the SIO,’ she says, the sound of rustling papers in the background.
‘SIO?’ Clem asks.
‘Senior investigating officer,’ Stephanie says. ‘And some things I wanted to follow up on. In particular, we managed to track down Paul, the guy Erin mentions on her TikTok. Do you want to come to the station?’
‘Oh,’ Clem says, taken aback. They’ve not met at the police station before. ‘Yes, of course,’ she says, and they arrange a time to meet, but she can’t help but feel uneasy.
Stephanie greets them at reception and takes them through to her office.
‘This man,’ she says, bringing an image up on the screen of her desktop, ‘is Paul Renney.’
Clem looks him over. He’s a heavy-set white male, mid-fifties, black hair with silver temples. Deep eye bags and a bovine expression. An old leather jacket, the lapels curled from use, a blue shirt.
‘He’s an antiques dealer based in Stratford,’ Stephanie says. ‘We brought him in for questioning.’
