Darkwitch Rising (24 page)

Noah looked radiant—even more beautiful now in mid-term pregnancy than she had ever been when she’d been in his bed, and John found it difficult to look away from her.

He envied, desperately, the man she loved.

When the meal was done, and the children had run laughing into the front parlour to play at some game, Noah came to sit next to John. She smiled at him, then reached out, took his hands, and put them on her belly.

“Feel her?” she said. “She twists and turns, awaiting her birth.”

John had never before touched a heavily pregnant woman. At first he felt embarrassed and hesitant,
then the wonder of the moving child within Noah’s body overcame him, and he pressed his hands tighter to her belly.

He raised his eyes to Noah’s, then froze, transfixed by her eyes.

Their dark blue had faded, and now they were a soft green, streaked through with rivers of gold.

“My God,” he whispered, “who are you?”

“She is Eaving,” said Marguerite. “She is the fertility of the land, its waters and rivers, its breath, its soul. You have lain with her. Surely you have felt this?”

“Aye,” he whispered, his eyes once again on his hands, still splayed over Noah’s belly. “In her arms I have felt the land rise to meet me.”

“If we have need of you, John Thornton, will you aid us?” said Kate.

“You are witches all,” he said, and sat back, removing his hands from Noah. “You are everything I have been taught to hate.”

“And yet you do not hate us,” said Noah. “How are we bad? How are we harmful?”

He did not answer, only looking between each of the women in turn.

“I cannot live without you,” he finally said to Noah.

“I cannot be yours,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

He looked away, keeping silent for a long time. Eventually he sighed, and spoke. “I will aid you, if you ask,” said John, and Noah smiled, and leaned forward to kiss him softly on the mouth.

“The land,” she said, “shall always rise up to meet you.”

The girl had led the imps out of the stone hall and back into the twisting maze of alleyways. Now she directed them to a particularly dank corner. Here she sat, and indicated that the imps should do likewise
.

“
I said that I had the power both to trap and to free you,” she said as the imps sat, crossing their spindly limbs neatly, their bright eyes watching her with the utmost suspicion. “I said that I had the power to earn your love. Do you doubt any of this
?”

“
Of course,” said the imp who sat to the girl’s left. “We don’t trust you at all. We know what you are
.”

“
Ah,” said the girl, her tiny face screwing up as if in thought
.

“
Your mother, on the other hand,” said the imp sitting to the girl’s right, “thinks you are a sweet little thing
.”

His brother giggled, a hand over his mouth to hide his pointed teeth
.

“
My mother shall love me well enough once she truly knows my purpose,” said the girl. “Now, to that purpose which is, of course, to destroy you, and your current master…as he thinks he is. I shall have the greatest pleasure in wrenching Weyland apart, for he has caused me innumerable troubles, but you and I can come to some small accommodation
.”

“
Won’t that destroy you?” said the imp to the right
.

“
Nay,” said the girl. “I have grown way past such minor details. I am far different than ever I was, or was planned to be. Now, do you want to hear my proposition, or not
?”

“
We wish to hear,” said the imps as one
.

“
Firstly,” said the girl, “I want you to continue to obey Weyland. I don’t want him suspicious
.”

The imps glanced at each other, relief clearly etched on their faces
.

“
I want him to have no reason to know of me,” said the girl, “so for the moment you may continue to dance to his orders
.”

“
What is this proposition, little girl?” said the imp to the left. The last two words he spoke with a decided edge
.

“
You do my will, all of it, and when that will is done, you may be free. Completely free. To be and do what you will
.”

“
But doesn’t that contravene all that you are?” said the imp
.

“
It contravenes all that I once was,” said the girl, “but not who I am now
.”

At that she smiled, and it was the coldest expression either imp had ever seen
.

The imps looked once more at each other, then both looked back at the girl
.

“
I think we might have an agreement,” said the imp to the right, while his brother nodded vigorously
.

“
A deal!” said the girl, and sounded that strange chilled laugh of hers. “A deal!
”

“
A deal!” cried the imps, and laughed with the girl until the sound echoed up and down the alley, frightening the rats rummaging about in the refuse
.

“
A deal!
”

C
harles sat sprawled in a large chair under the window in the parlour of the agreeable house he occupied on the Rue Haute in Bruges. Outside, the late February weather threw sleet against the window, but for once, Charles didn’t particularly care. He’d actually had enough money to pay for firewood this winter. In his right hand he held a letter.

Across the room Louis stood, waiting, very still. He hadn’t wanted to disturb Charles until he’d read the letter. But, by the gods, it had been a quarter of an hour since Charles had opened it. What did it say?

Unable to wait any longer, Louis spoke quietly. “Well?”

“General Monck is receptive to the idea of my return,” Charles said as Louis walked out of the shadows. “He is pleased that I have been conducting myself in the manner of a king. With dignity.”

Louis laughed softly. “He has heard that you have removed your mistresses…but not that you’ve sent them to Woburn, or with whom they now reside.”

“But…”

“Ah, I knew there was a reason for this silence.”

“He counsels that it may be many months yet before I can return by invitation. He hopes that
disappointment won’t make me think to invade. He reminds me of his military command, and their experience.”

“If only he had half your experience,” Louis said.

“What is past is past,” said Charles, “and should remain so.” He sighed, finally holding the letter out for Louis to read. “I should have known. My thirtieth birthday is yet many months distant. Fate, or the Game, or whatever, shall conspire to keep me from England’s green shores a while yet.”

Louis read the letter, then put it aside on a nearby table. “And Noah?” he asked, his voice very soft now.

“I have heard only that Marguerite and Kate and our children arrived safe, and that they now live with Noah in a house within Woburn village. More than that I do not know.”

“There must be more!”

“Louis, I am sorry. What can I say? I dare not write them, nor they I, and to try and touch them magically might harm them. Besides, Marguerite has the turf. We may no longer convene the Circle.”

There was quiet for many long minutes.

“I wish…” both men said together, then they both smiled a little self-consciously, and lapsed back into silence.

T
he final few weeks of my pregnancy were filled with girth, discomfort, swollen veins and exhaustion. Not even Eaving, apparently, was allowed to escape every woman’s burden during her final months and, indeed, I would not have wished it. This was a much-loved and anticipated child—I pushed to the back of my mind any uncertainty I felt—and this discomfort would be forgotten the instant of her birth.

I tried not to think of the imp. I tried to believe what my daughter had shown me, that she could manage both imps. But if I believed that, I had to accept that my daughter was not going to be quite what I wanted—an innocent, squirming child who existed only so I could love her.

On this night I lay restless and greatly uncomfortable. Marguerite and Kate lay together on the other side of the bed. I now slept so restively they preferred to keep their distance. Thus I was left, a great hulk breathing with only the most strenuous effort. I grew thirsty, and thought about finding myself some ale to drink—that would send me to
sleep, surely—but moving was so difficult, the night so cold, and the kitchen so far, and down so many stairs…

I resolved to make the effort, no matter the difficulties, and threw back the bed covers, swinging my legs to the floor and slowly pivoting my body about. But just as I was about to rise, I felt the most extraordinary—and most extremely unwelcome—sensation in my lower body.

It was not so much the pangs of labour—I had experienced those as Cornelia, and I knew well enough what to expect—but something much more debilitating.

The sense that someone else had taken over my lower body and was controlling my actions. I felt a pang of fear, and tried to struggle to my feet, but my legs did not obey me.

Of their own accord—under the control of that someone else—they swung back onto the bed, then my body shifted so that I lay comfortably against the pillows.

My daughter moved in my womb, and I felt the opening to the birth canal softening for birth.

Gods,
she
was doing this!

I gasped—in shock, in disbelief, and in some measure of horror—and almost instantly Marguerite and Kate stirred on the other side of the bed.

“My lady,” Marguerite said as she sat up and looked at me, “is it time?”

I nodded, taking a very deep breath.

Marguerite placed one of her hands over mine where they were splayed across my belly. “Is all well?”

“I do not know, Marguerite. This is not labour as I have known it previously.”

“It is a special child,” said Marguerite, meaning to comfort me.

“She is taking control,” I said, “and I do not like it.” At that I winced, for a wave of discomfort—not pain, not agony, just a strange discomfort—rolled up over my distended belly and into my chest.

Marguerite stared at me, then leaned over and shook Kate awake. “Noah,” she said, “is giving birth.”

“My daughter is birthing herself,” I muttered between clenched teeth as another wave of discomfort—strange, irritating, and deeply uneasy—swept over me.

My legs drew up, and I groaned.

“Noah?” Marguerite said, now kneeling on the mattress at my side. “What should we do?”

Kate now moved about the bed so that she sat on my other side, on the edge of the mattress.

“None of us can do anything,” I said, and then felt my body take a huge breath. Ah! How I loathed this lack of control! I had been entirely taken over, and it terrified me for what it implied about my daughter.

My sweet, innocent daughter. That’s all I wanted…please gods, let it be what I received.

I took another breath, very slow and deep, and arched my back slightly.

“Is the pain—” Kate began.

“There is no pain,” I said, and then arched my back again as that strange hateful discomfort swept over me. I could feel the child moving through my birth canal, could feel her head crowning, and yet there was no pain.

Just that total lack of control.

I cried out in frustration, and Marguerite, who had now shifted very close to me, reached down her hands, and drew forth my child from my body.

“Look!” she said, holding the child up before me. “Look!”

The baby stared at me with deep blue eyes, perfectly aware. A calm, cool stare, tinged with
what I thought might be triumph. This was no sweet child, no dependent being on whom I could lavish love and care. I tried to smile, but found it difficult. I rested one hand on my now flaccid belly. Where my daughter had rested I felt now only hollowness and loss rather than the ecstasy of a successful birth, and where my heart should have been I felt only sadness and despair rather than the unconditional love every mother should feel instinctively for her child.

My daughter, still held in Marguerite’s hands, stared at me, and her tiny brow seemed to wrinkle, as if in irritation. Maybe I was not the mother she had wanted; as I wondered that, maybe…no. I could not think that at all. Not wanting this child went against my every instinct, both as Eaving, and as Cornelia-Caela-Noah. She was my daughter. I ought to love her.

None of this Marguerite or Kate noticed. Marguerite was now holding the baby in her arms, the umbilical cord severed, one fingertip tracing out the lines of the baby’s face.

“She looks like a kitten!” Marguerite declared.

Once more I tried to smile, and this time somehow I managed it. “Then we shall call her Catling,” I said, “not merely for her looks, but for the game she plays.”

My heart felt like a great, still, cold rock in my chest.

W
eyland grew more impatient and more nervy with each passing day. He spent most of his days, and half his nights as well, out in the city, listening to both gossip and hard news, trying (along with every other person in London) to hear if Charles was on his way yet, if the king was to return. No one now doubted that he would return, but no one could know the how and the when.

Most of the citizens of London were torn between two emotions: joy that the king would return—surely he would usher in a glorious golden age for the city and country both—and a deep anxiety that the king may exact revenge for the unfortunate murder of his father so many years ago.

Both anticipation and nervousness beset Weyland as well. There was, after all, a long history of debt and hatred between Brutus and Asterion, and Brutus-reborn in this life had considerably more reason to exact revenge than just Charles I’s murder.