The Puzzle Ring Read online

  ‘I need you to tell me more about the curse,’ Hannah said, breaking a piece of warm cinnamon roll and tasting it cautiously. It was delicious, and she ate some more.

  Linnet’s face sobered. She sat down heavily on the red velvet stool, her feet dangling centimetres above the floor. ‘Did you have nightmares?’ she asked anxiously. ‘My lady said I shouldn’t have told you so soon.’

  ‘Why not? I need to know all about the curse if I’m going to break it.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Linnet said doubtfully. ‘But you’re still so young . . . and my lady is so happy to have you here. She’s afraid your mother will want to leave if she realises how very bad things are.’

  ‘So how bad are things? I mean, what does the curse do?’ Hannah asked.

  Linnet began to chant:

  By fever, fire, storm and sword,

  your blood shall suffer this bane.

  No joy or peace for Wintersloe’s lord,

  till the puzzle ring is whole again.

  She was silent a moment, then went on: ‘That’s what she said, and so it’s been. Year after year, generation after generation, no peace and no joy, no matter how deeply in love they are, no matter how fiercely they swear to resist the curse.’

  Hannah put down the cinnamon roll. Suddenly it tasted like cardboard in her mouth.

  ‘Your great-grandmother now,’ Linnet said. ‘My lady was a young thing in the Second World War. Fell in love and married, but her husband died fighting the Nazis and she was left to raise a child alone, as her mother had done. Then her son and his wife—that’s your grandparents—they were killed in a car crash, and she was left to bring up your father too. Then one night he goes missing and is never heard of again . . .’

  Linnet sighed and pressed her gnarled fingers against her eyes. ‘So it’s been, ever since the time of Lord Montgomery. It’s been very hard to stand by and watch it happen.’

  Hannah felt as if a heavy cat was crouched on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. ‘What . . . what’s the puzzle ring?’

  Linnet stared at her in surprise, then suddenly smiled. ‘I keep forgetting you don’t know all about it already. Sometimes the past seems so much clearer to me than the present.’ She saw Hannah’s roll lying in pieces and jumped nimbly to her feet. ‘But you’re not eating! Breakfast time is no time to be talking about such sad things, and you’ll need to keep up your strength. Eat up, my lamb, and we’ll talk later, hey?’ The little old lady trotted out the door, leaving Hannah to tear her utterly delicious breakfast to pieces and worry.

  Bloodstains

  After a while Hannah got out of bed and rummaged through her bag until she found her favourite skirt, which she had bought for five dollars at a garage sale. It was long and made of crushed green velvet, and she wore it with black stockings and black boots and a black beret, which made her feel like some kind of romantic and tragic figure. Very appropriate for a girl who was cursed. She wore her favourite T-shirt with it—one with a picture of Nina Simone on it—and a black cardigan with a belt and deep pockets. She put the hag-stone in her left pocket and the old key in the right pocket, and went out her door.

  Jinx the cat was sitting halfway down the narrow twisty stairs, washing her ear. At the sight of Hannah she leapt up, hissing, all her fur standing on end, her tail swollen to three times its usual size. Her round orange eyes blazed with fury. Hannah stopped in her tracks, suddenly frightened. The cat yowled and leapt for her, claws raking. They caught in Hannah’s cardigan, almost ripping off the left pocket. Hannah swept the cat away with her arm, and the cat twisted, yowling like a banshee, and raked her claws viciously. Hannah shrieked with pain, as Jinx yowled again and turned and fled. Hannah scowled and rolled back the sleeve of her cardigan, to see a nasty scratch welling blood. She lifted her arm and sucked the cut, then went on down the stairs, her left hand fingering the hag-stone hidden in the torn pocket of her cardigan. It was all very curious and troubling.

  She found Roz sitting with her great-grandmother in the big drawing room, chatting politely over steaming cups of tea. At the sight of Hannah, Roz’s frown deepened and she gave her daughter a cool look. She’s still angry with me for climbing the hill in the dark with a strange boy, Hannah thought.

  ‘Mum, can I have some money?’ she demanded.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘I want to go down to that fairy shop and buy something I saw there. Please? I haven’t had any pocket money for ages.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ Roz said dryly. ‘Since I left my job.’

  ‘You didn’t like that job anyway, Mum, admit it!’ Hannah said.

  ‘Are you speaking of that dreadful shop in the village, the one that sells plastic wands and tiaras and pretends to know all about fairy lore? You must not go there, Hannah, I will not allow it!’ Lady Wintersloe spoke sharply.

  ‘But why not? It’s just the sort of shop a little girl would love,’ Roz said.

  Hannah rolled her eyes. ‘Mum! I’m not a little girl, and I’m not into pink tutus and tiaras, you know that. It just looked as if it had some interesting stuff in there. I wouldn’t mind taking a look.’

  ‘That woman is a ghoul!’ Lady Wintersloe cried. ‘She said she was researching a paper on fairy lore and asked me all sorts of impertinent questions, and then she wrote a book about Wintersloe Castle. I was never more mortified. She wants to turn Fairknowe into some kind of tourist attraction. She had some strange woman up on the hill, playing a harp and singing last May Day! I will not allow you to have anything to do with her, Hannah.’

  Hannah glared at her grandmother. She was just opening her mouth to say, ‘I will if I want to!’ when her mother hurriedly said, ‘Of course Hannah will respect your wishes, if you feel so strongly about it. There’s plenty of things we can do without going to a fairy shop!’

  ‘But I want to go,’ Hannah said obstinately. ‘They have all sorts of interesting books there, and besides, she offered me a job. Singing at fairy parties. I have to have some way of earning pocket money if you won’t give me any, Mum.’

  Lady Wintersloe looked agitated. ‘We have many books here, Hannah, you can look at them any time you choose.’

  ‘And of course you can have some pocket money!’ Roz hurriedly opened her purse and thrust some notes into Hannah’s hand, grimacing at her in a familiar expression that was half begging Hannah not to say anything and half warning her of dire consequences if she did.

  The obstinate look did not leave Hannah’s face.

  ‘Hannah, my dear, I beg you. Do not tell that woman anything. She will try to worm information out of you so she can add it to that book of hers, but our family is none of her business. Will you promise me that?’ Lady Wintersloe leant forward, wincing with pain at the movement.

  ‘All right. I promise I won’t tell her anything about our family. Not that I know anything to tell!’

  Lady Wintersloe sat back, looking exhausted. ‘You’ve only been here a day. I know there’s so much I need to tell you, about the fairy hill and the curse—’

  ‘Please, Belle!’ Roz said sharply. ‘I don’t want you filling Hannah’s head with any of that nonsense. She’s only twelve years old.’

  ‘I’m almost thirteen, Mum!’

  ‘But, Roz . . . my dear . . . she needs to know some time . . . She’ll hear talk in the village . . . and I have to explain . . .’ Lady Wintersloe’s voice was wavering, and her face was white and drawn.

  Roz stood up. ‘Belle, please, there’s no need . . .’

  Lady Wintersloe leant forward, saying sharply, ‘But Roz, there is a need! Hannah must know . . .’ Then she gasped and fell back, grimacing in pain.

  ‘Are you all right? Can I get you anything?’

  ‘My pills are on the sideboard . . . but I didn’t want to take them until I’d talked to Hannah . . . they make me so drowsy.’

  Roz went over to the sideboard and brought the old lady the pills and a glass of water.

  ‘Hannah, I’m sorry . . .’ Lady W
intersloe fumbled to open the little bottle, her face drawn. ‘I’ve had a bad night . . . I fear the castle is being watched . . .’

  ‘Here, let me.’ Roz took the bottle, opened it deftly and shook out two small pills which she dropped into Lady Wintersloe’s trembling hand. ‘You’ll feel much better when you’ve had your medicine. You should be in hospital.’

  Lady Wintersloe shook her head. ‘But who would be left to guard the house? And I must find the child of true blood . . . if only I knew for sure . . .’

  Roz lifted the glass to Lady Wintersloe’s mouth and helped her wash down the pills. ‘There, all done. We’ll leave you to rest now. Don’t you worry. All is well now.’

  Lady Wintersloe leant her head back against the cushion, her eyes closed. She looked gaunt and grey.

  Roz led the way out into the corridor. ‘I’m worried about her. She seems a little . . . non compos mentis.’

  ‘I know what that means!’ Hannah said hotly. ‘It means you think she’s losing her marbles! You just think that because she keeps talking about the curse and stuff. But she obviously believes it’s all true, Mum.’

  ‘The things people believe.’ Roz shook her head in wonder.

  ‘I bet you would have said that in the olden days when someone tried to tell you the world wasn’t really flat.’

  ‘I would not! I would have observed the curvature of the horizon and deduced that the world must be round,’ her mother replied indignantly.

  ‘All right, Mrs Science Teacher, bad example. But you know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t. You’re saying that I’m close-minded just because I don’t believe in curses. Forgive me, but your deductions are completely unsound. The fact that I don’t believe in fairies and ogres and giants is a sign that I’m an intelligent and rational human being.’

  Roz was still lecturing when mother and daughter came into the kitchen, where Donovan was sitting on a stool by the fire, patiently feeding one of the tiny squirrels with a dropper. Dressed all in black again, he was hard to see in the gloom of the unlit kitchen, and Roz did not see him. Hannah did, though.

  ‘Okay, Mum, I get the point.’ Hannah’s cheeks burnt with embarrassment. ‘Can we just leave it?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s important that we try to understand the universe as it really is, not as we wish it to be,’ Roz said, taking a plastic bottle to the sink to fill it with water. ‘Clinging to a delusion simply because it is reassuring is totally irrational. We all need to—’

  ‘All right, Mum!’

  Her mother stopped and smiled ruefully. ‘All right then. Lecture over for now. So what do you want to do today? Shall we go to Edinburgh? I think you’ll love it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Hannah snuck a look at Donovan, who was gently mopping the baby squirrel’s nose with a tissue.

  ‘We should enjoy the sunshine while it lasts,’ Roz said, taking two apples from the bowl on the table. ‘Make sure you pack your raincoat, though, darling, the weather can change pretty fast.’

  ‘If you’re going to Holyrood Palace, make sure you look for the bloodstains on the floor of Queen Mary’s bedchamber,’ Donovan said, looking up. Roz turned in surprise.

  ‘Bloodstains?’ Hannah demanded.

  ‘Yes. Her secretary, David Rizzio, was murdered there, right in front of her. By her husband and his friends. They stabbed him about a hundred times and he fell on the floor, and his blood spread everywhere. No one’s ever been able to get rid of the stain.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It must be some kind of natural discolouration in the wood,’ Roz said coolly.

  ‘That just happens to be in the exact same spot where David Rizzio fell,’ Donovan said, making his voice deep and ghoulish. Hannah laughed.

  Roz looked at Donovan with disfavour. He was wearing black jeans, a studded belt and a grey and black T-shirt.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ she asked.

  He gestured with the milk dropper. ‘It’s the holidays. I can do what I like. Besides, I have to feed the squirrels. I’ve been here all night.’ He yawned ostentatiously, hiding his mouth behind his hand. Hannah couldn’t help yawning too, and he flickered a smile at her.

  ‘I’m surprised your father lets you,’ Roz said.

  ‘He doesn’t know I’m gone,’ Donovan said. ‘I climbed out the window. He’ll be furious when he finds out.’

  ‘So he should be,’ Roz said austerely, and swung her backpack onto her shoulder. ‘Come on, Hannah.’

  ‘See you later then,’ Donovan said, and Hannah waved her hand in farewell.

  Roz and Hannah had to walk to the village, catch a bus to Balmaha, and then a train to Edinburgh. ‘I might have to see about hiring us a car,’ Roz said. ‘Scotland is the most difficult country in the world to get around. If it’s not a mountain in the way, it’s a loch!’

  ‘And I want to see everything!’ Hannah said.

  They spent a happy day exploring the Royal Mile and the labyrinth of wynds and closes around it. They began at Edinburgh Castle, towering high above the Old Town on its steep rock, then headed down the hill, stopping to look at the Witches Well, where a bronze fountain commemorated the thousands of witches killed in Edinburgh during the Burning Times, when the witch-hunts of the sixteenth century reached a frenzy of fear and hatred.

  In St Giles Cathedral, Roz showed Hannah the bagpipe-playing angel in the Thistle Chapel, and then they museum-hopped all the way down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace. Hannah was particularly interested in the rooms of Mary, Queen of Scots, and not just because of the bloodstains. She knew her ancestor, Lord Montgomery, had fought for the young queen, and that the Curse of Wintersloe Castle had been cast during her reign. She was thrilled to find the large reddish stain beneath one of the windows.

  ‘Can you imagine how awful that would be?’ she exclaimed to her mother. ‘To have someone killed right in front of you? He was stabbed fifty-seven times. And Queen Mary was held prisoner here by the murderers. She knotted her sheets together and climbed out the window and escaped, even though she was about to have a baby.’

  ‘Really?’ her mother asked, examining a tiny high-heeled shoe in one of the cabinets. ‘That was brave of her.’

  ‘Yes. And look, the stain is still here, four hundred and forty years later, just like Donovan said.’

  ‘It’s not really a bloodstain, Hannah. How could it be? They must scrub that floor every day! And would have done so for hundreds of years.’

  ‘No, it’s definitely blood,’ Hannah argued. ‘It’s red as anything!’

  Roz sighed.

  I Put A Spell On You

  By the time Hannah and her mother got home, it was dusk and rain had begun to fall. The looming mountains were wreathed in mist, and a cold wind blew curtains of rain across the loch.

  ‘I am definitely hiring us a car,’ Roz said grimly, holding the hood of her raincoat close about her face.

  Donovan’s bicycle was still thrown down on the grass outside Wintersloe Castle. Music poured in a golden blast from the ground-floor window of the smaller tower. It was just the sort of music Hannah liked, with a sweet voice and a saxophone and the blue note of soul.

  Then she heard a trumpet join in, not quite so smooth but played with unmistakable passion and verve. Through the window Hannah glimpsed Donovan playing, his head bent back, his hair tossed away from his face. Hannah turned away, afraid he would see her watching him and know she had seen the look on his face. It was both joy and misery, it was both longing and loss. She felt she had seen a glimpse of something he would rather have kept hidden and she understood this, having the same hunger for privacy herself.

  ‘Run on upstairs and get changed, ’ Roz said as they came dripping into the front hall. ‘Here, give me your raincoat; I’ll hang it up for you.’

  Instead, Hannah followed the sound of horns to the far end of the house. Soul music was her great passion. She knocked on the door, waited a moment, then went in. Donovan put down his horn and turned towards h
er, scowling.

  ‘I love this song,’ Hannah said. ‘Nina Simone.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He sounded surprised.

  She showed him her T-shirt. ‘I love Nina. Play it again and I’ll sing with you.’

  So Donovan started the CD again, and Hannah began to sing along with the words. Donovan nodded his head once or twice, then lifted his horn and began to play. It was an old-fashioned instrument, with a flared bell and only three valves, and a beautiful, deep tone.

  When they had finished there was a pause. ‘I like your horn,’ Hannah said shyly. ‘I’ve never seen one like it before. Is it some kind of trumpet?’

  ‘It’s a flugelhorn,’ Donovan said. ‘It’s very old. It belongs here, but Lady Wintersloe lets me play it. It’s got a darker, lower tone that a trumpet. I like that.’

  ‘Me too,’ Hannah said. ‘You’re pretty good.’

  ‘You’re good too. You should join our band. You’re a much better singer than Scarlett.’

  Hannah’s heart sank. ‘Scarlett’s in your band?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What sort of music do you play?’

  ‘Whatever we like, really. Scarlett’s into pop, while I like jazz and blues, anything that’s got horns. Max plays the keyboard and the recorder, though not that well.’

  ‘I play the guitar. Mostly I like to sing, though.’

  ‘What else can you sing?’ he asked.

  Jubilant, she said, ‘Anything, really. Play me what you’ve got.’

  They mucked about, playing and singing snatches of songs, talking about who they liked and why. In one corner of the room was a grand piano (out of tune, as Hannah discovered when she tried it); in another an old electric organ that must have been state of the art thirty years earlier. There were also bongo drums, tambourines, flutes, and tin whistles in cases so old their velvet had almost rubbed bare, and a beautiful big double-bass which Hannah guessed must be Mary-Lou. She opened the case to have a look at it, and plucked a few strings, wondering about her father.