Darkwitch Rising (73 page)

At night, when we lay naked together in the Idyll, Weyland would place his hands on my swelling belly, an expression of wonder mixed with fear on his face as he felt our daughter move. I never saw that expression on Brutus’ face. Never.

Weyland was vulnerable. Brutus had never been. Not where our children were concerned. They were merely commodities.

“What will you name her?” he asked me one night when I lay half propped up on pillows. My belly was so huge now that this was one of the few ways I could find comfortable rest.

I smiled, and ran my fingers softly through his hair. “You name her,” I said.

He raised his face to me then, happiness and wariness competing for dominance. The joy of,
He could name his daughter!
tempered with,
What does Noah hope to gain from this
?

“Why me?” he said.

“Why not? Just allow me the right to sulk if I don’t like it.”

He laughed, and the joy won the battle in his face. “I wish…” he said, his voice drifting to a close as he thought of all the things he could have wished for.

“We all wish,” I said, and thought of all the things that could have been.

I went into labour on May Day, which gave me immense joy. My daughter would be born on the rise of spring, which was cause for great celebration.

Unlike my labour with Catling
(with that foulness which had pretended to be my daughter)
this labour was painful and debilitating and undignified—just like all true labours should be. Weyland was so horrified he ran from the Idyll and fetched Jane—that he brought Jane into the Idyll was a true indication of how unsettled he truly was.

In her lives as Genvissa and Swanne, Jane had borne many children and, frankly, was far less interested in me than she was in the Idyll. To Weyland’s dismay she kept wandering out of the bedchamber to explore other areas. I imagine that Weyland’s creation as drastically altered her perception of him as it had altered mine.

How could a creature of pure, innate evil create such a magical world of beauty
?

Eventually Weyland managed to drag her back to my side, where Jane sighed, sat down, and prepared to wait.

“Is there not something you should be doing?” Weyland said, his voice cold as a touch of the old malevolent bully emerged.

“Waiting is all any of us can do,” said Jane. “Except, on Noah’s part, to curse, which is her right.”

I laughed…and then did indeed curse as a red-hot vice closed about my belly.

My daughter was born ten hours later, just as the sun set on London. Jane was a good midwife and the baby herself did all that was asked of her. Still, it was painful, and messy, and sweaty, and I swear I was
never so glad of anything as I was the instant I felt my daughter slide free of my body into Jane’s hands.

At that point Jane did something extraordinary.

She began to sing. Just softly, under her breath, but it was the most beautiful melody I had ever heard. I stared at her, and Jane looked sideways at me.

Slyly, which was Jane all over.

“Your daughter is at the dawn of her life,” she said. “I was carolling her in.”

I knew then what she was doing with the Lord of the Faerie. My mouth dropped open (although maybe it was already open, for I’d been grunting and huffing far more than was dignified), then I collected my senses, and managed to pull my mouth into working order.

“Thank you,” I said simply but, I hoped, meaningfully.

Jane knew. She reddened with pleasure, then bent back to the baby.

I struggled up, more or less supported by Weyland who was less of a help than he was astounded and overcome by the baby’s birth, and watched Jane as she wiped our daughter’s mouth and nose clean of mucus, rubbed her chest until she gave a startled little cry, and then handed her to me, the umbilical cord still binding us.

Oh, she was perfect. I cradled her in my arms and felt that instant bonding, that overwhelming love which I had never felt with Catling.

Weyland stared, too scared, I think, to touch.

Eventually I lifted one of his hands and put it on the baby girl’s head.

“She looks like me,” I said, “which is a mild relief.”

He smiled, just a little, too overwhelmed as yet to manage anything save astonishment, and then jumped as Jane cut the cord.

“Let me wipe her down,” Jane said, and I gave her the baby.

Weyland made a small sound, almost like a baby mewling.

“She needs to be wiped down and wrapped,” I said, and he settled and waited more or less patiently until Jane brought the baby back.

I took her, cradled her, kissed her, and then without hesitation held her out for Weyland to take.

I have never seen such love on anyone’s face as I saw on his at that moment when the weight of the baby settled into his arms.

“She’s…” he said, unable to find the right adjective.

I smiled, looking at him rather than our daughter. “Aye.”

“I can’t believe…”

“I know,” I said.

Weyland ran a finger very gently over the child’s face.

“What will you call her?” I asked.

He raised his eyes to mine, and grinned. “Is that fear I hear in your voice, Noah?”

I smiled. “What name, Weyland?”

He looked back at the baby. “Grace.”

I could have cried. I think I
did
cry, and I swear I saw Jane wipe something from her eyes as well. Grace. Oh, gods, aye. She graced us all.

Later, as Weyland walked about the bedchamber, cuddling our daughter, Jane came and sat by me.

“You are very clever,” said Jane, softly, so that Weyland could not hear. “He will do anything for you now.”

“I did not do this to be clever,” I said. “I did not do it because I hoped to manipulate Weyland. I did it because of what this child demonstrates.”

“And what is that?” Jane asked, archly, reminding me so much of her arrogance as Swanne.

“Reconciliation,” I said. “Healing.” My mouth twitched with emotion, and I almost began to weep once more. “Grace.”

I paused, looking to where Weyland held Grace. “Love.”

She looked at me, her eyes hard with cynicism. “What will Weyland do, do you think,” she said, so softly now I had to strain to hear her, “when he learns all you have kept from him? When he learns of your true paternity, and maternity?”

I held her gaze, unintimidated by the inherent threat in her words. “Then he will hold his daughter, and gaze upon her, and know that the past need never direct the future.
That
is in our own hands.”

She snorted, rose, and attended to the cleaning of both myself and the bed.

Two months later Ariadne stood with me before the malevolent, writhing, rising darkness that was, to ordinary eyes, merely the White Tower, and said, “You’re ready.”

H
e ran, as he had been running for aeons, but there was a change, now, in his running. Whereas, as far back as he could remember, his feet had occasionally slipped on the Ringwalk, or his stride had felt a little constrained, or he had been ever so slightly aware of a pull in a tendon in his off foreleg, or near hind…

…or he had lain within the heart of the Troy Game so close to death that there was no difference…

…now his stride extended effortlessly, and he was not aware at all of the ground beneath his feet although he knew he still ran the Ringwalk.

He felt…
alive
. Aware. Knowing. Energised. Brimming with promise and life and magic and wonder.

Ready.

He leapt, and as he leapt, so worlds cascaded past under his feet, and the sun bowed in homage at his passage.

Noah stood at the doorway to what the White Tower had become—the living Great Founding Labyrinth. Her figure slim and lithe two months after the birth of her baby, her face calm, focussed, beautiful, Noah was dressed in nothing but an ankle-length white linen skirt.

Her hair was left unbound down her back, her arms and hands and neck were bare of any jewellery, her lovely face was left unpainted.

Around them walked the officers and men of the Tower of London engaged in their normal duties.

None saw anything save two women strolling arm in arm slowly about the grounds.

Noah stood, regarding the doorway of the Great Founding Labyrinth. The tower rose above her, huge, threatening, throbbing with a thundery dark blue glow.

“Enter,” said Ariadne. “If you do not survive I will look after your baby for you.”

Noah gave a little smile. “She shall know no mother but me, Ariadne.” Then she looked back at the doorway, her face relaxing, concentrating.

After a moment of almost complete stillness, Noah’s hand went to the linen wrap bound about her waist, and with a swift, economical movement she undid it, and discarded the wrap.

Naked, she stepped into the Great Founding Labyrinth.

His stride fed by his joy, the Stag God stretched out his legs, and bounded over hill and dale, meadow and crag. This was
his
land, and he could have burst for joy of it. As he ran, memories and images jumbled about in his mind: running as a fawn through the forest; his hand, forcing the arrow into his father’s eye; mating the doe that stood silent and waiting in the dappled shade; standing before the girl called Cornelia, but knowing, this time, what and who she was to him; dancing in complex steps through passages of darkness; juggling golden limb bands until they spun in an intricate dance through the great spread of his blood-red antlers.

Below him, man and beast alike raised their eyes skyward, and gasped.

Noah walked into the Great Founding Labyrinth without hesitation. She had done this so many times now that it was second nature to her, and she paid no mind to the swirling stairs and ladders and passages, the promises and delusions that power sent to disarm her. Instead she reached out with her own power, and began slowly to spiral in the entwined energies of tide and river, star and moon, bowel and seashell until she had surrounded herself with a pulsating ball that consisted of myriad lines of light and power. This was the labyrinth, that which bound all life from birth to death, and which, now, Noah sought to bend to her own will.

Be as I am
, she whispered to it.
Do as I will
.

Instantly, every one of the myriad lines of light and power turned black, and the ball which surrounded Noah solidified into a mass of darkness, and hid her from life. Breath. Existence.

Everything.

In the king’s great audience chamber of Whitehall Palace the furniture had been pushed against the walls, the carpet had been rolled away, the shutters closed and bolted, the doors likewise. Two lone lamps glowed on opposite walls. The space of the chamber had been bared, and in its centre sat a Circle, its members sitting cross-legged, their hands clasped, their heads slightly bowed in concentration.

The Lord of the Faerie’s presence dominated the Circle, the deference of every other member indicated by subtle body language and facial expression.

Previously, Charles had led Circles composed only of himself, Marguerite, Kate and sometimes Louis.

Now, the Lord of the Faerie convened a Circle made up of the original Eaving’s Sisters, but also including the reformed whores Elizabeth and Frances, as well as Long Tom and fifteen of his fellow Sidlesaghes and the two giants, Gog and Magog.

I can feel him running
, said the Lord of the Faerie.
Can you? Can you
?

Noah stood within the sphere within the sphere, the dark heart of the labyrinth, and considered.

This is not as I will
, she said.

It is what you have
, said the dark heart.

No, said Noah,
what I have is
this!

She flung wide her arms, her head falling back, and both power and sound burst from her. Very gradually her body twisted to and fro in sinuous, liquid movements, and the black heart of the labyrinth bulged and creaked.

My name is Noah-Eaving
, said the entity standing in the heart of the labyrinth,
and I am both the goddess of the earth, the mother of life, and the mover of waters, and I am also your Mistress, the weaver and dancer of mysteries, and thus I command you: Do as I will, and not as you wish
.

There came a great moan, and then, in a sudden, brilliant burst of light, the black sphere exploded, shooting bolts of light and incandescent globules into the larger structure of the Great Founding Labyrinth, exposing the goddess that stood in its centre, naked and throbbing with power, head back, arms outstretched, eyes as black as a witch-night, her hair snapping wildly in the powers that twisted and turned with the sphere.

She smiled, staring overhead, and said,
Welcome
.
He leapt over the moon, vaulted the sun, twisted within the star dust of the heavens, and then looked down.

Below him lay a vast blue-green-grey lake, and deep in its waters he saw a great witch, naked, standing with her head thrown back and her arms outstretched.

Dance with me
, she whispered.

Ariadne flinched, feeling more than seeing what had happened within the Great Founding Labyrinth.

She wondered that around her the life of the Tower continued so calm. Then a movement caught her eye, and she looked forward once more.

Noah walked towards her. Her eyes were black pools of mystery, and her body was clothed in a garment which appeared to be made of flowing green water with the stars twisting within its depths.

“Who are you?” whispered Ariadne,
knowing
the answer, but needing to hear it confirmed.

“I am Noah,” said the woman standing before her. “Goddess, Mistress of the Labyrinth, Darkwitch Risen. Entwined.”

The Lord of the Faerie gave a great, choking cry, his head snapping back on his shoulders.

An instant later everyone else within the Circle cried out also, their bodies twitching.

When another moment had passed, and the members of the Circle managed to draw breath and calm themselves, they saw that a naked man stood in the centre of the Circle. He looked like Louis, and yet not. He wore Louis’ face and body, and yet rising from his twisting dark hair were a set of blood-red antlers, and from his eyes shone a fierce wildness that made most of the onlookers drop their own gaze away from his.