As Aileen opened the door, a gust of cold air entered the house and swirled around the room. I shivered—it felt like the cold fingers of death searching for their next victim. A brief, uncharitable thought flashed through my head—better she take the sickness away from here—but I instantly banished it. “You don’t have to go,” I said, laying my hand on Aileen’s arm. “It would be better to keep him warm here. We could tend to him together.”
She flinched away from my touch. “They all say in the village you’re a fairy enchantress. Jeannie MacDougal says you’ve put a spell on William. Just like the spell you’ve put on my Ian now.” She spat in the doorway. “I’ll no more cross your threshold, witch, and if Ian comes to harm, the witch hunters will hear of it.”
With that, she was gone. I stood, stunned by her speech, watching her swaddled form disappearing in the gray twilight. Although not much past three o’clock, the day was already turning dark, and the heavy gray clouds over the mountains looked swollen with snow.
“I’d best go after her,” Una said, joining me at the door. “She’ll need help tending to the puir bairn.”
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said.
Una squeezed my hand in thanks but answered, “Nay, lass, you’d best stay out of the village. This sickness will only feed the frenzy of the witch hunt. And it’s true what she said about Jeannie MacDougal. She has been spreading stories about you.” She shook her head and hurried away, much faster than I would have thought a woman of her age could go, spurred on by her need to aid her grandson. Beitris left, as well, but Nan stayed on.
“I’ll bide till William’s come home,” she told me. “So you’ll not have to be alone.”
“You can help me, then,” I told her, going to the sheep shed for the large iron cauldron that Mordag had used for washing fleece. “We should boil all our clothes and bedding and bathe ourselves.”
“In this weather?” Nan complained. “We’ll catch our deaths!”
“We’ll catch our deaths from fleas and germs,” I told her. While we boiled water over the fire and I stripped my bed and tossed William’s pallet out into the yard, I proceeded to give Nan a lecture on germs and infectious diseases. She looked skeptical—she who believed in fairies and witches and who had accepted the idea that I came from the future found it hard to believe that invisible “wee beasties” carried sickness from house to house—but she helped me scour the cottage and hang all our clothes and bedding on a clothesline. When I’d pinned the last sheet to the line, I looked up as though someone had called my name. A last bit of sun had sneaked out from beneath the clouds and lit up the western ridge of mountains, turning the sky a fiery red and each line of mountains a different shade of lavender, lilac, and purple. The closest fields were the deep purple of dying heather. Just as the sun sank beneath the farthest ridge, I saw William appear along the closest ridge, his outline recognizable to me even at this distance. I’d know him anywhere, I thought, my heart feeling heavy in my chest. Even across the distance of time. Even if he took another shape, as he had when I pulled him from his fairy steed. Or if he became another man, as Liam and Bill had. Would I really be able to leave him when the time came? But I couldn’t think of that now. When William reached the house, Nan and I told him about baby Ian.
“Aye,” he said grimly, “I heard the plague bells tolling from the village. Things will get even worse now.”
“We can help,” I said. “If people knew to boil their clothes and burn the ones they can’t wash, it might keep the sickness from spreading.”
“I could go from house to house to tell them that,” Nan said.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
Nan and William exchanged a look. “Best you stay here, lass,” Nan said. “You’re a stranger in these parts, and Aileen and Jeannie are not the only ones who think you’re a fairy enchantress.”
“Aye,” William agreed, “folks will say you’re spreading the pest with your strange ways. I’ll take Nan and see what we can do to help.”
“But what about you?” I cried. “Won’t they suspect you of witchcraft if you visit the houses of the sick? And you could get sick!”
“I’m no’ so frail, lass,” he said, smiling at my concern.
Nan went inside to look through Mordag’s pantry for herbs that might relieve illness. William put a reassuring hand on each shoulder and chafed my cold skin. Without thinking whether I should or not, I leaned into him and pressed myself against his broad chest. He was warm and solid, not the insubstantial creature that had come to me in moonlight and dreams, but a flesh-and-blood man. A mortal man who could die of plague just as easily as anyone. “Be careful,” I told him, ruing how inadequate the words were. Wasn’t there a spell I could cast to protect him? I searched my memory for something out of Wheelock but instead recalled one of that sorcerer’s admonitions.
The strongest protection a witch can give anyone is the mantle of her love.
And I did love William. As much as I’d tried not to fall in love with him, I knew now, with the possibility that I would lose him, that I had. I wrapped my arms around him and pictured my love draped over him like a cloak. I closed my eyes and envisioned the threads I’d spun these last two months, each one a different color, each thread a moment we had shared—a meal eaten together, a walk over the hills, his hands over mine when he taught me how to knit.
“Dinna fash yerself,” William whispered into my ear. “I’ll be safe.”
When I lifted my head, I saw that the threads I’d spun were woven together into a luminous multicolored tartan that lay across his chest and over his shoulders like a Highlander’s plaid.
I heard a gasp from behind me. Nan had come out of the cottage. She was staring at William. “You’ve done it!” she cried. “You’ve woven the tartan!”
When William came home late that night, he told me baby Ian had died and there were three more cases of the pest in the village. Even though I’d seen how sick Ian was, I was shocked. “Poor Aileen,” I said.
“She was wailing like a ban-sidhe,” said a saddened William.
“How about Una?” I asked. “Has she gotten sick?”
“Nay, but she’s so stricken with grief I would not be surprised if she fell sick next. Aileen has thrown her out of their house because she said she would not have a witch under her roof.”
“She called Una a witch? But Una loved that baby every bit as much as Aileen did.”
“Aye, she called Nan a witch, too. I fear it’s only a matter of time before others join her. The miller’s family has fallen ill, and the miller’s wife was heard calling Nan and Una out as witches in the marketplace. Last fall Una accused the miller’s wife of giving her short shrift on her grain, and Nan tended their youngest wean when she fell and broke her leg.”
“I guess I can understand why the miller’s wife might suspect Una if she thought Una had a grudge against her—although I’ve heard Beitris and Nan complain of the same—but why would she accuse a woman who had helped them?”
“I don’t know why, lass, but I know that’s the way of folk.” William shrugged and sat down at the table, sighing deeply. His shoulders slumped in a way that made him look older. A day in the fields with the flocks had never made him as tired as a few hours in the village had. The glowing tartan was still around his shoulders, but it had grown fainter. When I laid my hands on his shoulders and massaged his knotted neck muscles, the tartan glowed brighter and his sigh turned into a moan of pleasure. “Och, it feels good to be touched. When I left Nan’s house, I felt the eyes of all I passed upon me, giving me a wide berth. I could tell they were thinking I carried the pest on me …”