Darkwitch Rising (7 page)

“What is it?” said Charles.

“There is a man who came across yesterday from France, majesty. He claims to bear a message for you, for your ears only.”

Charles raised an eyebrow.

“He has no weapon, majesty, and no poisons secreted about his person or clothes. He is well-spoken and -bred, although he bears but a common name and a base ancestry.”

“And that is…?”

“Louis de Silva, bastard son of the Marquis de Lonquefort.”

Charles started to shrug in disinterest, but then paused. “De Silva?”
Of the forest
?

“Aye.”

“Tell me of him—his appearance, his aspect, his humour.”

“He is of your age, and as dark, although not so well-built nor with your height. He speaks well, in quiet and pleasing tones. He has the eyes of a poet…and the impatience of one, too.”

Charles very slowly smiled, and for a moment Hyde thought he’d never seen his young king look happier.

“Then send him in, my friend. Send him in!”

Hyde had only to step to the door and murmur a few words to admit the man: Hyde must have been certain of Charles’ reaction.

As soon as Louis de Silva had entered, Hyde exited, closing the door behind himself.

De Silva stared at the young king sitting on the chest by the window, then he bowed, deep and formal, sweeping off the hat from his head so that it swept the floor.

“Charles,” he said. “Majesty.”

Charles rose slowly, looking intently at the newcomer. The man had dark hair, as dark as
Charles’ own, but straight, and worn much shorter, slicked back from his face; his build was less muscular than Charles’, but nonetheless gave the impression of wiry strength and grace, as if he would be as useful on the dance floor as on the battlefield. His hands, where they emerged from the lace cuffs of his doublet, were long and slender, yet with the same implied strength as his build and bearing.

De Silva was a stunning man, not simply in his dark fine-boned handsomeness or in his graceful carriage, but in the depth of his dark eyes, and the wildness that lurked there.

De Silva…of the forest.

Louis de Silva watched Charles stare at him, and then he slowly smiled. “Greetings, Brutus,” he said.

Charles took a halting step forward, then another, and then one more before he embraced de Silva fiercely. “Oh, gods, I am glad you are here!” He pulled back, and took de Silva’s face between his hands. “Poet Coel? Is that you I see in there?”

“Who else?” said de Silva.

For a moment both men stared at each other, then they burst into laughter, and embraced once more, even more fiercely than previously.

“I had not believed that Asterion could be bested until now, this moment, when I laid eyes on you,” Louis de Silva said, finally pulling back.

“Careful,” Charles said, and laid a hand on Louis’ mouth. “Words are powerful, and they can also be enemies.”

“But not you and I, not any more.”

“We were not enemies in our last life, Louis. Not then, and most certainly not now.”

Again they stared at each other, hands resting on each other’s shoulders, wordless, their eyes brimming with tears.

“Who else?” said Louis eventually, and Charles knew instantly what he meant.

“Mother Ecub is here with me,” he said, and then grinned at the expression on Louis’ face. “A
younger
Mother Ecub, called Marguerite Carteret now, and the delectable daughter of the governor of this island.”

“Delectable? You have
tasted
her?
Mother Ecub
?”

“Why is it you always think me old and arthritic?” said a woman’s voice from the doorway, and Charles and Louis turned to see the woman who stood there.

Marguerite entered, closed the door, and curtsied prettily first to Charles and then to Louis. “Demure and sensible, and always at service,” she murmured. Louis chuckled, stepped forward, and kissed her hand.

“The first among Eaving’s Sisters,” he said, all humour now gone from his voice, and Marguerite shuddered at the blackness and depth in his eyes. “Where is she, Marguerite?”

“We don’t know precisely,” Marguerite said. “She is in England, but further than that…” She shrugged.

“Is she with Asterion?” said Louis.

Charles shook his head. “We would have felt it,” he said. “All of us.”

Louis sighed. “Any others?” he said.

Charles and Marguerite exchanged glances.

“Well?” Louis snapped. “Who?”

“Loth is back,” said Marguerite.

“Born my younger brother,” Charles said.

“James?” said Louis. “The Duke of York?”

Charles nodded. “Aye.” He paused, and looked at Louis steadily. “He calls me Brutus, and hates me.”

Louis’ mouth slowly dropped open. “He doesn’t—?”

“No,” said Marguerite. “He lives with his mother in France, and has taken greatly to Catholic priests.”

If possible, Louis’ jaw dropped even further open. “Christianity?
Loth
?”

“Charles and I think,” Marguerite said, taking Charles’ hand, a gesture that Louis did not miss, “that perhaps he has lost purpose.”

“Or has had it lost for him,” said Charles.

“What do you mean?” said Louis.

“That perhaps the Game has no more use for him.”

Louis raised his eyebrows, blowing out the breath slowly from his cheeks. “I still cannot reconcile the idea of Loth taking to Christianity.”

“Is that idea any stranger than what some of us have taken to?” asked Charles with a grin, and Louis smiled back.

“No, I suppose not.”

Charles waved Louis to a chair, then sat himself down on the chest under the window, Marguerite beside him. “Genvissa?” he said once Louis had seated himself.

Louis shrugged. “I have no interest. I cannot bear the thought of her. I do not know where she is, or what her estate. I imagine that she has found herself a comfortable magnate to take her as wife, and that she lives somewhere in London, in comfort, and plotting with…well, with whoever suits her purpose for the moment.”

“We are merely glad she has not yet touched our lives,” said Marguerite.

At that Charles leaned forward, changing the subject, and thus they sat for many hours, talking of this and that, renewing friendship, and staying away from the one subject that ate at all three of them: Cornelia, where was she?
How
was she?

M
arguerite tossed in her sleep. It was a warm night, and Charles more than half lay over her, but neither the oppressive heat nor her lover’s weight caused her restlessness.

Instead, Marguerite dreamed of Pen Hill, where, during her last life, she’d spent so much time as prioress of St Margaret the Martyr.

At least, Marguerite
thought
this was Pen Hill.

It was of a similar height and aspect, with the same gentle rounded grassy knoll ringed by the standing stones (Sidlesaghes). But the hill did not overlook London, as had Pen Hill, and there was something very different about the stones, and Marguerite knew she had to concentrate on them.

Pen Hill had a score or more of stones on its peak, but now that Marguerite focussed, she saw that this hill only had two stones, standing on opposite edges of the summit. Marguerite could feel the wind rush through them, and she knew she was being shown the rushing of this wind for some reason.

Something changed. A third stone materialised at the edge of the knoll, and the two stones already there somehow shifted their position so that there was now an equal distance between each of them.

The wind no longer rushed through.

The dream stilled, and Marguerite knew that at this point an understanding was being demanded of her.

The wind no longer rushed through…

Where two stones had formed no barrier at all, the presence of a third
had
formed a barrier.

The wind no longer rushed through, but was contained within the grassy knoll.

Contained within the circle of the stones.

Two cannot form a circle.

Three can.

The wind was power…held within the Circle
.

Marguerite gasped, her body jerking in its sleep so that Charles murmured and shifted.

Now something was happening within the Circle on the hill. Something momentous.

Something in the grass.

Something in the
turf
.

A face was forming…a girl’s face on the verge of womanhood.

Marguerite woke with a half-shriek, sitting up so abruptly that Charles rolled away to the other side of the vast bed.

“Gods, Marguerite…what’s—”

“Get Louis,” she said. “Get him
now
!”

Charles slid out of the bed and stood, staring at her. “Marguerite?”

“Get Louis.
Now
. Please, Charles, please. Get him now!”

He gave her one more uncomprehending look, then he strode to the door, flung it open, and shouted his valet awake. “Fetch Monsieur de Silva. Now! Fetch him to this chamber!”

When Louis entered the chamber, confused, more than a little concerned, and still blinking away the sleep from his eyes, he saw that Charles stood naked by the shuttered window, staring at the bed where sat Marguerite, similarly naked.

“Thank the gods,” she said as Louis closed the door behind him.

“Charles?” said Louis.

Charles shrugged. “Marguerite will not tell me what ails her. She insisted you come to this chamber.”

Marguerite made a gesture of impatience. “I know how to reach Cornelia,” she said.

“
What
?” said both men together, each taking a step towards the bed.

“We have a hill,” said Marguerite, patting the bed. “And Louis makes the third we need to form a Circle. James would never have done. But Louis will.”

Now the men looked at each other, bewildered.

“A Circle,” said Marguerite. “A Circle of power, drawn from the land itself.”

The men continued to stare at her, then Charles’ face, finally, showed some comprehension. “The turf…” he said.

“Aye,” said Marguerite, “that piece of turf. Where is it?”

“Where is
what
?” said Louis.

“This,” said Charles, who bent down to a chest, opened it, and pulled forth a small box. “When I was forced to flee England, I brought this with me.” He opened the box, and held it out.

Louis walked over, looking inside where lay a lump of browned turf still attached to a clod of crumbly dirt.

Louis lifted his eyes to Charles. “England.”

“The
land
,” said Charles. “Aye.”

“We form a Circle on this bed, this hill,” said Marguerite, again patting the sheets, “and we use the turf, the
land
, to find Cornelia-reborn.”

Louis looked uncertain. “Are you sure that
I
should be here?”

“Never more sure,” said Marguerite. “You are welcomed among us, Louis.”

“But the land, its power…I am not—”

“It was the
land
which showed me the way,

Louis,” she said. “The land was waiting for you to join us.”

“You have as much right to touch Cornelia-reborn as any of us, Louis,” Charles said very gently. “Marguerite is right. The land waited only for you to join us before it showed Marguerite the way.”

Louis sighed, then nodded. “What is this Circle, then?”

“It is the living embodiment of the Stone Dances,” Marguerite said. “It commands the same power.”

“And as prime among Eaving’s Sisters, and the one who watched over Pen Hill in our last life,” said Charles, “you are the one to lead the Circle.”

“Yes,” she said. “Louis, you shall need to disrobe. We come into this naked, as do the stones. Charles, bring me the box.”

Louis removed his shoes, then shrugged off his hastily donned shirt and breeches, dropped them to the floor, then walked naked to the bed, climbed into it, and sat cross-legged where Marguerite indicated.

She and Charles also sat, cross-legged, equidistant from Louis and each other, and Marguerite took the box, opened it, and removed the turf.

Taking a deep breath, she held it reverently in her hands, then suddenly cast it upwards, towards the ceiling, calling out at the same time a word that the two men could not quite make out.

The turf hit the plaster with a distinct thud, then fell back towards the bed and, as it did so, transformed.

Marguerite, Charles and Louis gasped. The turf shimmered, then flattened and expanded all at once until it became a large circle of lustrous emerald green silk, fluttering gently towards the bed.

It settled in the centre of the Circle, stilled for a single heartbeat, and then began to rumple, rising and falling into hills and valleys, moors and fields until it represented a relief of the land of England.

Marguerite reached out a hand. It trembled a little, and she had to clutch it momentarily in order to still it. Then she said, “Eaving? Eaving? Where are you?”

The emerald silk again moved, now forming a lake, and then it shimmered once more, and its surface became opaque, then clear until an image formed within it.

A great house that sat nestled in rolling hills.

“Woburn Abbey,” Charles said.

“You know it?” said Louis.

Charles nodded. “Aye. I’ve been there twice as a child. Woburn Abbey is home to the earls of Bedford. Gods…
Eaving
? Are you
there
?”

Again the silk shimmered, and the image of the house rushed towards them until a single window occupied the entire silken lake, and in the window…in that window…

In that window a girl of some sixteen years lay in a bed. As if she felt the weight of their regard, she woke, and rose so that she sat staring out of the window. She was beautiful, her heavy hair framing a face made almost luminous by its pale, translucent skin, and containing the most wondrous pair of deep blue eyes.

Her mouth moved, forming soundless words, but each of the three watchers heard them in their minds.

Brutus? Brutus? Is that you, Brutus
?

The image faded, and Charles put his face into his hands, and groaned.