The Puzzle Ring (12 page)

Her voice broke at the end.

‘Don't tire yourself out,' Roz said. ‘There's no need to distress yourself.'

‘Hannah needs to know,' Lady Wintersloe said gently. ‘It's her heritage.'

‘Does that mean the blackthorn on the hill?' Hannah asked. ‘The one that hasn't blossomed in so many years?'

‘Yes, though it means the family too.' Lady Wintersloe's voice was very weak. ‘Wintersloe Castle is named for the blackthorn, remember, and our family arms bear the symbol of the thorn tree. Eglantyne spoke both curse and prophecy—they are entwined.'

‘Who's Eglantyne?' Hannah demanded.

‘She was the eldest daughter of the king of the hollow hill,' her great-grandmother replied. ‘The king of the fairy realm. Our ancestor Lord Montgomery saw her ride out one May Day and fell in love with her. He wooed her and won her, and took her away from fairyland to be his bride. Except she was betrayed.'

Roz stood up. ‘Please, Belle,' she said sharply. ‘I don't see what can be gained by dwelling on this silly old story.'

‘She needs to understand,' Lady Wintersloe said.

‘You filled Bob's head with all this nonsense when he was a child too, and he became obsessed with the idea of breaking this stupid so-called curse,' Roz said angrily. ‘Even after we
were married, and when Hannah was just a newborn, he was always worrying about it and thinking about ways he could break it. He would never have gone out that night if he didn't think he had found a way to break it!'

‘You mean the night he disappeared?' Hannah cried. ‘He went out to try and break the curse . . . and ended up dead?'

She was remembering the diary with its strange, incoherent messages.
Back through the winter gate I must go
. . .

‘It was an obsession with him,' Roz said tightly. ‘And I won't have you infecting Hannah with the same nonsense! I knew I should never have come back.'

Just then the door opened and Linnet came trotting in, pushing her tea trolley. It had a steaming silver punchbowl and a bottle of whisky instead of the usual gilt-edged teapot. ‘I've brought you all a nice hot posset to drink. It's a nasty cold night and you've all had a bit of a shock, seeing Jinx like that.'

‘What's in it?' Hannah sniffed the steaming bowl suspiciously.

‘For you, my lamb, sweet apple cider, rosehip syrup, and some heather honey.' Linnet doled out a cup for Hannah, who sipped it carefully before deciding she liked it, and swallowing more bravely. ‘I made the syrup from our own sweetbrier roses, which grow in the castle.'

‘Sweetbrier?' Hannah cried. ‘That old rose in the castle, it's called a sweetbrier?'

‘Yes. Sweet for its fragrance, and brier for its thorns. Though Genie would call it
Rosa eglanteria
. She always likes to give plants their proper name.'

‘Eglantyne,' Hannah breathed. She remembered the last verse in her father's book:

Back through the winter gate I must go
to the time of two hornet queens
flying around the one great chair.
Cut free sweetbrier from thorny tower
find the waxing gibbous moon,
its bewildered quarter I left safe
with the rose of the world, my double rose
.

As a final message from her father, it left a lot to answer for, but suddenly some of it seemed to make a kind of sense.
Cut free sweetbrier from the thorny tower
must be a reference to Eglantyne, and surely the thorny tower meant some kind of prison or cage. Her father had meant to rescue Eglantyne!

But Eglantyne had died in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, more than four hundred and forty years ago . . .

Hannah's heart fell in disappointment. Maybe her father had been mad after all.

Linnet went on chatting genially, though her eyes were bright and curious on Hannah's face. ‘But for Lady Wintersloe and Lady Fairknowe, I'll add a nice shot of whisky.' She poured a generous splash of whisky into the teacup, and passed it to Lady Wintersloe. ‘Lady Fairknowe?'

‘Please, call me Roz,' Hannah's mother said, her arms folded tight across her chest. ‘Lady Fairknowe just doesn't sound like me.'

‘Oh, I couldn't be doing that,' Linnet said, sounding shocked. ‘It wouldn't be right.'

Roz shrugged, exasperated, and let Linnet splash some whisky into the cup.

‘Now then, that's better, hey?' the old cook said. ‘Shall we
get you away to bed early tonight, my lady? You could have a nice cup of soup in bed.'

‘That would be lovely, thank you,' Lady Wintersloe said.

‘Can I help?' Hannah suddenly wondered how Linnet was going to manage by herself, but both old women shook their heads.

‘Let me preserve my dignity a while longer,' Lady Wintersloe said. ‘Besides, Linnet has been looking after me since I was just a baby. She knows what to do better than anyone.'

Hannah nodded. It was only once Linnet had wheeled her great-grandmother from the room that this comment struck her as nonsense. How could Linnet have looked after Lady Wintersloe when she was just a baby? Hannah's great-grandmother was eighty-eight years old. That meant Linnet would have to be at least a hundred, if not even older. Hannah frowned. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe Lady Wintersloe really was losing her marbles.

Roz and Hannah ate a solitary meal, listening to the rain beat against the windows. As usual, the food was delicious, but neither noticed much what they were eating. Hannah was thinking of Donovan and the music, and the toad and the cat, and the tower room with its cryptic notebook, and the curse. She did not know what her mother was thinking about, but the anxious frown between her brows was deeper than ever.

‘I think we should go home,' Roz said abruptly, laying down her spoon.

‘Go home? But why? We've only just got here!'

‘Your great-grandmother's not well.'

‘Which is why we should stay and look after her.'

‘I'm worried . . .' Roz's voice trailed away.

Hannah got to her feet and said very firmly, ‘Surely you're not letting the stories of an old sick woman spook you, are you, Mum? Why, it's just not rational!' She kissed her mother and went out of the room, saying, ‘Night, Mum! See you in the morning.'

Hannah did not go up to her room, but went quietly down the hall to the dining hall that had been turned into her great-grandmother's bedroom, since she could no longer climb the stairs to the upper floors. She knocked quietly.

‘Yes?' called Lady Wintersloe drowsily.

‘It's me,' Hannah said. ‘Can I come in?'

‘Of course, dear.'

Hannah opened the door and went in. Her great-grandmother was lying in a low bed covered with a pale pink satin quilt. She was dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown with a high neck and long sleeves, and her silver hair had been unpinned and plaited into a thin braid. Her face was clean of makeup, and looked very old and haggard. The newspaper lay beside her, open to the crossword.

‘I thought you'd best tell me the whole story,' Hannah said.

Lady Wintersloe nodded. ‘Come sit near me, Hannah, my dear, so I don't need to raise my voice. I'm very tired.'

Hannah sat down and took her great-grandmother's thin hand. ‘So, what happened? Why did the fairy princess curse us?'

‘She was betrayed,' Lady Wintersloe said. ‘She had a cousin, you see, who was jealous of her. Her name was . . .' She hesitated, and then drew the newspaper towards her and wrote quickly, in the margin, the name
Irata
. When Hannah would have read it aloud, she shushed her and said, ‘Careful! Names have power. We do not want to call her attention here. Her spies watch the castle.'

‘Spies?' Hannah wondered if her great-grandmother was indeed more than half mad. ‘Like who?'

‘There's a magpie that behaves very oddly,' her great-grandmother said slowly. ‘In all my long life I've never seen it with a mate, and it kills the little songbirds, and attacks strangers. It was fluttering at the window of the drawing room the night Robert told me he planned to save Eglantyne, and then . . . he never came back. And my grandmother always told me magpies could speak to witches.'

Hannah remembered the magpie that had plucked one of her hairs, and felt a cold shiver down her skin.

‘There are other creatures too, otherworldly creatures that come out of the cave in Fairknowe Hill. Linnet says she has warned you never to go into that cave. It's not safe. That's where Eglantyne came from, you see, but the Unseelie Court has power now under the hill, and so it is creatures of evil that walk the woods.'

Her great-grandmother's voice was so faint Hannah grew
worried she might grow too weary to speak any more. ‘Tell me about the curse,' she urged. ‘Tell me everything.'

‘Eglantyne left the fairy realm to marry Lord Montgomery. Her father was furious, and so she left with nothing but the clothes she stood up in, and her faithful maid and her dog. The little hound was white with red ears and tail, and refused ever to be parted from Eglantyne, sitting at her feet during mealtimes and sleeping on her bed at night. When Lord Montgomery locked it out of her room, it howled so piteously that he was forced to let it back in again, much to his disgust.'

Hannah slid her hand into her pocket and fingered the hag-stone wonderingly, remembering the howls she had heard.

‘Lord Montgomery was very jealous of his beautiful wife, and had a ring forged for her, a puzzle ring which would fall apart when removed.'

‘A puzzle ring! Linnet said something about that. What is it?'

Lady Wintersloe sighed and pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘It's a ring very cleverly constructed from four interlocking bands. When it is fitted together by someone who knows the secret, it looks just like a normal ring, with a golden rose in place of a gem. However, as soon as you take the ring off, it falls apart. You can only fit it back together again if you know the secret.'

‘And Eglantyne didn't know the secret?' Hannah guessed.

Her great-grandmother shook her snowy head. ‘No one knew, only Lord Montgomery and the goldsmith who made it.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Well, at first Eglantyne was happy, but as the months passed she grew lonely. Lord Montgomery often left her to
ride to the court of Queen Mary in Edinburgh. The young Queen of Scots was then not quite twenty-five years old and had recently married her cousin, Lord Darnley. In those days an ambitious man must win the favour of his monarch if he was to prosper, yet Lord Montgomery dared not show his fairy bride at court. So he left Eglantyne behind, forbidding her to ride out for fear of those who muttered against her.'

‘That seems a bit mean,' Hannah said.

‘People in the sixteenth century were very superstitious,' Lady Wintersloe said. ‘They feared anything that seemed otherworldly.'

‘But he didn't have to keep her locked up!'

‘Maybe he did, given that Eglantyne was burnt to death as a witch only a short while later. These were dangerous times in Scotland.'

‘So tell me, what happened?'

‘Eglantyne was bored and lonely. Her only consolation was to walk in the castle garden, the only spot of green in all that grey. She would take her little dog and go and play with it on the lawn, and smell the herbs and flowers, and sit in the sunshine. In time, she made friends with the young gardener who loved all green and growing things, as she did.'

Lady Wintersloe's eyes were hooded with weariness. ‘It was not long before Eglantyne realised she was to have a child. She could not wait for Lord Montgomery to return so she could share her happiness with him. However, her cousin, whom we shall call the black witch, was furious to hear the news from the spies she had left at Wintersloe Castle. She had encouraged Eglantyne to elope with Lord Montgomery because she wanted to become queen of the fairy realm in Eglantyne's place.'

‘Oh,' Hannah said with a sigh. ‘So was Eglantyne the heir to the throne?'

Her great-grandmother nodded. ‘She and her sisters after her. But the black witch had plans for them too. First, though, she had to dispose of Eglantyne and her unborn child. She had one of her spies poison Eglantyne's meals. Eglantyne, however, had a hag-stone she wore on a cord about her neck. It enabled her to see true, and she saw that certain dishes came to her tainted.'

Hannah touched the hag-stone again, wondering. Surely it could not be the same stone? She almost pulled it out to show her great-grandmother, but Lady Wintersloe had continued with her story, a faraway expression on her face.

‘Puzzled and afraid, Eglantyne refused to eat from those plates. So the black witch had to formulate another plan. She knew of the puzzle ring, for one of her spies had watched the ring being made, and she knew of Lord Montgomery's jealousy. The black witch waited till the lord was almost home, then she took Eglantyne's little dog and she strangled it and hanged it from the archway into the garden.'