Abomination (42 page)

. . . 
a man named Wulfric my real father was a man named Wulfric my real father
 . . .

The rest of it came back to him all at once and with such force that it made him giddy.

My daughter. My daughter is alive
.

“Good morning.”

He snapped his head around to see a dark figure silhouetted against the dim torchlight on the other side of a heavy, iron-barred gate. Wulfric could not see the man clearly, but he knew Edgard’s voice. His every bone and muscle still protesting, he slowly made his way down off the table and planted his feet on the straw-lined floor. As he stood upright, Edgard took a step closer—though still beyond arm’s reach of the bars—and now Wulfric saw his face.

“I saw no reason for you to be chained up like a beast during daylight, so I had my men release you and clear away the ashes after you returned to human form,” said Edgard. “I must say, that was the most remarkable thing I have ever seen. After Cuthbert told me what you had become, I often wondered how the changing actually worked. But it is far more extraordinary than ever I imagined.”

Wulfric’s eyes had adjusted to the light, and he saw now that the oak table was charred black where he had slept on it, a ghostly imprint in the vague shape of a human seared into the wood. He slowly made his way toward the gate, feet shuffling in the straw, and saw Edgard retreat a step as he approached. Still dizzy, he reached out and gripped one of the thick iron bars to steady himself.

“Where is she?” His voice cracked, throat dry as a bone.

Edgard sighed. “Wulfric, you know that I have always been your friend. What I did for Indra, I did as much out of friendship to you as to protect her. You should be thankful that it was I who found her. Ask yourself, would you not have thought of me to raise her, if you and Cwen were to die? Who could have made a better godfather?”

“Alfred was to be her godfather,” said Wulfric. It was true; that was the one thing Wulfric had planned to ask from his friend, the King, in return for all his years of bloody service. He had intended to ask Cwen for her blessing in it the day after he returned home. The day he had awoken to find her dead.

Edgard glanced away, disappointed. “Yes, well. Perhaps then it was fate that Alfred had his part to play. I returned to Winchester in your stead to inform him of Aethelred’s death, and the King refused to hold any celebration in your absence. He dispatched me to your village to insist that you attend, and so it was that I discovered Indra, the sole survivor of the carnage you—
you!
—had wrought the night before, crying and covered in her own mother’s blood. Had I not, who knows what manner of lowborn peasant might have found and raised her, if anyone at all. It is thanks to me that she survived and had a proper upbringing—not that she has ever shown me an ounce of appreciation for any of it.

“In truth, my friend, I did you a kindness in sparing you from raising her. The girl is willful and disobedient to the point of being impossible. No conception at all of what is to be expected of a daughter. Discipline? Ha! She spits on it!”

Wulfric remembered Edgard striking her across the face, and thought back to all the times he had seen his friend bully and browbeat the men in his charge during the wars.

“Did you beat her?”

Edgard raised his chin, sanctimonious. “You do not know her. I do. Her ingratitude would try the temper of any man. She was raised the daughter of a nobleman, in a house that would be the envy of kings. Her whole life she has wanted for nothing.”

“Except her true father,” said Wulfric. “You knew my fate. You could have searched for me, or told her the truth and freed her to do it. Yet you did nothing.”

“You were damned. Beyond salvation,” said Edgard, steadfast. “I did no wrong in this, Wulfric. Who was harmed? She was in want of a father, and you know that I had always wanted a child of my own.”

“Then you should have
had
a child of your own!” Wulfric spat back. “Instead you forsook me so that you could steal mine.” He seized the iron bars with both hands and shook them so hard they rattled. Edgard took another step back.

“You would have me condemn her to grow up with the knowledge that her father was accursed, a monster who killed her mother and was wandering the earth like a wraith, past all hope?” Edgard said, trying to remain resolute in the face of Wulfric’s withering glare. “What would that have done to her?”

“That girl is stronger than you know,” said Wulfric. “You should have trusted her with the truth. Instead, the wound you inflicted upon her with this lie has festered her entire life.”

Edgard seemed less sure of himself now but determined to cling to his righteousness. He pointed accusingly at Wulfric. “You are wrong to hate me for this, old friend.”

From behind the bars Wulfric shook his head. “You are not my friend. And I do not hate you. I pity you.”

Edgard appeared surprised. “What?”

“I have seen up close my daughter’s anger. It is a thing to be reckoned with. She has spent her life searching for the thing that created it. And now at last she has found it. Cursed though I am, I would sooner be in my position than yours.”

Wulfric watched Edgard as those words sank in, saw the man’s face turn sour. It took a moment for Edgard to regain his composure. “I came here to tell you that I bear you no ill will. You may think that God has cursed you with this affliction, but I believe that he still has a purpose for you. You founded this Order, and now, in its hour of greatest need, you may be the one to save it.”

Wulfric just looked at him, not understanding.

“I have sent for an emissary of the King. He arrives before sundown. When my men come to secure you to the table, I advise you not to resist. I’m sure you would rather not have to die twice in two days.” Edgard turned and marched away, toward the spiral steps at the end of the hallway.

“Edgard.”

Edgard stopped, looked back. Wulfric glared at him from the shadows.

“You look old.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Edgard brushed a strand of thinning hair away from his lined face. A small wound, but one that Wulfric knew would sting.
Still as vain as you were, only now with much less cause
.

Edgard looked back and forth between the stairs and the cell, as though trying to decide whether to let the slight pass. Then he marched back to the cell, stopping just out of Wulfric’s reach. “You know, I never truly realized how close you and Alfred were,” he said with a spiteful sneer. “Until I saw how devastated he was when I told him of your death. He never really recovered from it. The sickness came on shortly after that. I do believe that it was the beginning of the end of him. Such a shame.”

He let that linger for a moment, then turned with a flourish of his cape and swept back down the hallway, dousing the torches on the wall as he went, until the dark had swallowed Wulfric whole.

Time has a way of bending and stretching strangely in total darkness, and Wulfric did not know how much had passed before the torch at the farthest end of the hallway was lit again, creating a tiny, flickering point of light. Then another, closer. Someone was moving along the corridor toward his cell, lighting the torches on the wall as they went.

Wulfric stood and made his way closer to the bars. It was not one figure approaching but two. At first he assumed it to be Edgard’s men, as promised, but then he heard the two voices quietly bickering with one another as they went along. One voice he recognized immediately, the other was harder to place, but it was someway familiar to him, too.

The nearest torch was lit, and as the flames grew, casting a dim glow in front of the cell, Wulfric saw Indra and a slender man in a hooded robe, who fidgeted and wrung his hands nervously. But all Wulfric’s attention was on his daughter. He pressed his
body against the bars, reaching out for her. She took his hand and brought herself as close to him as the iron between them would allow.

Wulfric looked upon her, and even in the poor light it was obvious to him now. She had her mother’s eyes. Her nose. Her smile. Her spirit. It was uncanny. How had he not seen it before?
Because who sees the impossible, even when it is standing right in front of them?

“Father,” she said, her eyes welling up.

“My girl.” Wulfric gripped her hand tightly.

In the end it was the man in the hood who brought them back to the world. He issued a polite cough as he drew back his hood.

“Um, perhaps there will be more time for this later?”

“Of course,” said Indra. “Father, this is—”

“Cuthbert,” said Wulfric in wonderment. He recognized him instantly. He had always liked the man, strange as he was, and though he had all but forgotten him in the years since, the sight of the priest now overjoyed Wulfric for reasons he could not explain. Something about the man, even in all his timidity and awkwardness, brought great reassurance. Wulfric might even have said hope, but for the fact that he had long ago forgotten how to recognize it.

“My lord,” said Cuthbert. “I believe there may be a way to help you.”

Wulfric’s expression turned grim. “Do not think of trying to help me escape. You will only endanger yourselves. I will not—”

“Just listen to him,” said Indra. “We don’t have much time.”

“No, not escape. Not really my specialty,” said Cuthbert with a nervous smile. “Magick, however . . .”

Wulfric saw the glimmer of intent in Cuthbert’s eyes and shook his head. “There is no way to break this curse.”

“That is true,” said the priest. “But if I am right, there may be a way to bend it a little.”

“You are not beyond salvation, whether you can see that for yourself or not,” said Indra. “This I know for a fact. And I can prove it to you.”

Wulfric was perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“You believe that the monster within you destroyed the man you once were. But I know better. Those years ago, when it first came, it spared me while all around me were killed. Then a few nights ago, when I fought with it in the clearing, it did so again.”

“No,” said Wulfric. “You said the beast ran off after you wounded it.”

Indra glanced away for a moment, embarrassed. “It’s possible I may have . . . embellished my account somewhat in the first telling. The truth is, the beast did not run. The wound I gave it only enraged it more. It had me on the ground, disarmed and helpless. It could have killed me easily. It
should
have killed me. But it didn’t. It left me alive.

“Don’t you see? It spared me not once but twice, because you would not allow it to harm me. Because even within the beast, some part of you down deep knew that I was your own flesh and blood. And some part of you, conscious or not, was strong enough to stop it.” She squeezed his hand more tightly. “Father, the man you were was not destroyed. That man still lives. He has defeated the monster twice already, and he can do so again. If he has the will to fight it.”

Wulfric’s mind reeled. What he had just heard made a lie of everything that he had long believed about himself, and yet something about it rang true.
Perhaps only because I so want to believe it
. He looked to Cuthbert, lost. The priest nodded soberly to confirm what Indra had said.

“There is a way to help you, but it begins with you believing that you are worthy of it,” Cuthbert said, “It begins with you seeking not God’s forgiveness, but your own. The guilt you carry with you proves that you are a man of conscience, but it is time now to
put it away. For this to work, you will need faith in yourself, conviction, and strength. And perhaps some luck.

“Wulfric, you are the strongest man I have ever known. But you have to want this. More than you have ever wanted anything. Do you?”

He looked at the daughter he believed he had forever lost, into her eyes, so much like her mother’s. “Yes,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Good,” said Cuthbert, drawing back his sleeves. He cracked his knuckles, clapped his hands, and rubbed them together vigorously. “Now, let us begin.”

“Wait,” said Indra. “There is something I must ask. Something I’d given up hope of knowing.” She looked at him imploringly. “What is my name? My real name. Please tell me you remember.”

There was much that Wulfric had forgotten, eroded by the passage of years or cast away by choice. But not that. Though his old life had been crushed into dust, that one memory had remained forever intact, as clear and indestructible as a diamond. It came to him instantly.

“Beatrice,” he told her. “Your name is Beatrice.”

And Beatrice wept.

The King’s emissary made his way down the spiral steps, Edgard before him, leading the way with a torch. Under different circumstances, Edgard might have been apprehensive about this visit; with King Edward so consumed with preparations for war, requesting any of his attention, even via a proxy, carried considerable risk of being deemed a waste of his time. But Edgard was quite sure that once the emissary had seen what he would see this night, he would return with exactly the message that Edgard intended. That is, if he still had the stomach to ride the next day. The man looked to be relatively young and had probably never seen an abomination in the flesh, much less the kind that Edgard was about to present to him.