Darkwitch Rising (8 page)

Marguerite hesitated, then picked up the silk and folded it into a tiny square in her hands where, once again, it became the piece of browned turf and crumbled soil.

They sat a very long time in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, until finally Charles stirred himself.

“She is in Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire,” he said.

“Far from London,” said Louis.

“Far from Asterion,” said Marguerite. “For now.”

She put the turf back in its box, put the box into the centre of the circle they still formed, and for the rest of the night they sat there, staring at it, their thoughts filled with Eaving.

A
h, gods, to wake up and feel him staring through the window at me! Not even Asterion suddenly appearing all leering and lecherous beneath the sheets could have killed the joy of that single, fleeting moment.

I felt Mother Ecub there, too, and Coel. All three of them, close, bonded with a deep friendship and loyalty and something else…a sexual intimacy, I think. Their shared closeness reached out and touched me, comforted me. Their care enveloped me, nurtured me. All in that instant.

But of all that love and care and intimacy that had reached me, what I remembered long into the night as I sat there in my third-floor bedroom, arms about my knees, was how Brutus had felt as his presence had merged so fleetingly with mine. He felt…oh, I don’t know. Distant perhaps, but then Brutus was always distant. Uncertain, and that was something new. Unsure, and that heartened me.

I sat there through the long night, my arms wrapped about my legs, my chin resting on my knees, and wept for sheer joy.
I had been three years at Woburn Abbey, and it had been a good three years for me. Lady Anne, the Countess of Bedford, was a kind woman, if a trifle reserved to the point where she sometimes gave the entirely wrong impression of distance. But she loved me in her own way, and had accepted this poor, distant cousin into her family as one of her own.

She put me to school with her children where I tried not to befuddle the tutor, the Reverend John Thornton, with my knowledge of history, as well as several ancient languages. She dressed me in clothes that her own children wore: sober clothes during my early years with her, but now, in my seventeenth year, she allowed me more brightly coloured and daringly cut textiles. I loved the clothes! Oh, this was Cornelia emerging all over again, and I did not begrudge her this delight: the stiff-boned bodices, the full skirts, the embroideries, the silks and satins, the cascading lace of chemises and underskirts, and the delightful brocaded slippers with their daring scarlet heels. Cornelia revelled in it all, and so did I, for which I felt no guilt. The earl and his wife were Protestants, and toed the public line when it came to parliamentary-imposed puritan prudery, but at home, among friends, they still delighted in rich fabrics and the occasional daring neckline. The ivory swell of breast by candlelight was still an indulgence much appreciated by the earl, and I (as well as Lady Anne) was not one to deny him this.

As I grew older, beyond the reach of childhood, I would sit with the earl and countess at night, often with John Thornton joining us, and enjoy the conversation. I remember one night arguing the point that a saint may have been canonised for his
good works and service to the Church, but none of that mattered when he remained a tyrant at home.

That night we had been discussing Edward the Confessor, and I suppose that both the Bedfords and Thornton were a little put out by my vehemence on this subject.

As I grew older I became Lady Anne’s companion. Not quite one of the intimate family, but much closer than a servant. I ate with the family, was educated with the family, and travelled with the family on their various excursions about their estates and to the estates and house parties of their neighbours.

But not to London. When the earl and countess made the occasional (and it
was
occasional, now that the king was dead, and his heir exiled) journey to their London townhouse, I always made the excuse to remain behind. To watch over one of the babies, perhaps, or to attend to one of the more difficult Latin translations that John Thornton had set me. I know this irritated Lady Anne and her husband, but there was little I could do about that.

I could not go to London. Not with Asterion undoubtedly haunting its streets and byways.

I might avoid London, but over the years, and particularly since Long Tom came to me on my journey to Woburn, I had come to terms with what my fate would be.

Asterion’s whore. So be it. I could accept that, I could use it, and I would not allow it to defeat me. I had seen how Genvissa-reborn, Swanne, had allowed it to consume her in our previous life, and I had learned from her error.

The Minotaur (and his dreadful imp) might choose to dictate the boundaries of my life, but they did not own me, and they could not touch who I essentially was: Eaving.

That Asterion’s imp lived inside my womb in this life was undoubted. It was quiescent, but I could feel its
life
inside me, like some dark child. Caela had not realised its presence, but I did. My monthly cycles were bloody and painful: Asterion’s curse, I had no doubt. But I did not allow those to defeat me; I did not allow them to depress me. Instead, I embraced them.
I was Eaving, and I would survive
.

I knew what I had to do. Long Tom had been very clear on that point. I had to make amends with both Brutus and Genvissa-reborn, and I had to learn the duties and steps of the Mistress of the Labyrinth.

Those amends would be difficult, and I dreaded them, but that other thing that Long Tom had told me—that the Lord of the Faerie would walk once more—delighted me beyond measure. The Lord of the Faerie was an ancient memory bequeathed to me by Mag. From her memories I knew that Mag had never met him during her long lifetime, but she certainly had known about him, and because I now carried her knowledge, I also knew about him. Both myself and my lover, reborn as the Stag God, were citizens of two worlds: this mortal one, and the faerie world. When the Sidlesaghes had taken myself and Harold to the water cathedral, there to meet and talk with Mag, they had taken us through the Realm of the Faerie to the very borderlands of this life and the next. The Sidlesaghes themselves were inhabitants of both worlds, but more creature of Faerie than mortal.

I and the soon-to-rise Stag God draw most of our power and knowledge and comfort from the Realm of the Faerie. It is our nourishment, and our ultimate home.

The Realm of the Faerie is ruled by that strange creature known as the Lord of the Faerie. The Lord of the Faerie was not exactly my lord and master, but
he was most certainly my senior, and I would owe him both deference and respect.

As I grew in Woburn Abbey, and basked in the peace and stillness, I tried to recall all I could of the Lord of the Faerie from Mag’s memories. He had not walked during her lifetime, nor during that of three or four of her predecessors. The Lord of the Faerie was ancient beyond measure, a part of the primeval earth; he had literally grown with the island of Great Britain, and was one with it as neither myself nor the Stag God could be. The Lord of the Faerie was of its soil. He was not creature or beast, so much as a glorious living evergreen. Indeed, if I rightly recall my many conversations with Woburn’s head gardener, Samuel Tenfler—who referred to the Lord of the Faerie as the Green Man—the ancient deity was the supreme perennial.

The Lord of the Faerie was magic beyond knowing, if you can describe that strange power of the faerie as ‘magic’—such a cumbersome and overused word. Even thinking about the Lord of the Faerie and his eventual rise made my spine tingle. Every time thoughts of Asterion depressed me, I only had to turn my mind to the Lord of the Faerie, to that wonderful day when I might finally meet with him face to face, and I would rise from my misery and smile.

Apart from what Long Tom had told me, I came to realise there was one other duty for me to accomplish. Something I needed to do in order to achieve my full power and understanding as Eaving.

A duty which pleased me very, very much.

I sat through that night when Brutus, Coel and Ecub had reached out to me, and while I thought on Brutus most of the time, and on what lay ahead of us through this lifetime, I also thought on the intimacy that I had felt between the three of them.
I envied them that intimacy, both sexual and emotional, and it made me apprehend that, as Eaving, there was something I needed to do so I could truly fulfil my potential and which would give me the strength to survive whatever Asterion had awaiting me.

An easy task, and not one I would mismanage as I had when I was Caela.

Thus it was, that harvest season of 1649, I took myself a lover.

O
ne of the Reverend John Thornton’s favourite rituals was to sit by his window, with all but one of the candles in his chamber extinguished, and watch the night settle over Woburn Park as he sipped a small glass of wine. It relaxed him for his bed, enabling his mind to let go the myriad little worries and irritations that had beset it during the day: one of the children refused to pay attention; the eldest son, Francis, was weaker than usual and unable to attend his studies; the new translation of Machiavelli (never to be displayed in the schoolroom) had yet to arrive even though he’d ordered it six months past; and Noah Banks…

Noah Banks. Invariably, during this nightly peaceful ritual, Thornton found his mind returning to the strange girl-woman that the countess had brought into the household. Noah was an unsolvable puzzle. How had she become so learned in ancient languages and in history and the manner of conquerors and saints, when, by all accounts, her father had barely enough learning to write his sermons each week, and her mother could only sign her name with a cross? From where had she received her wit and her perception?

And at such a young age.

She was sixteen years old, yet she had the maturity and demeanour of a woman far older. During his
thirty-two years Thornton had met women who, although young, had been old far beyond their years. Women who had suffered, women who had been debased—the wretched of street and alleyway. These women wore their experience and knowledge poorly; hardness glittered from their eyes, and spilled in brittle and bitter words from their mouths. These were women who had been spoiled; not allowed to ease from innocence into experienced womanhood with gentleness or the guidance of either a parental or spousal hand.

Noah Banks was not one of these hard, ruined women. She wore her experience and knowledge easily. It did not emerge in her demeanour as coquettishness, which Thornton would have despised, or as pride, which he would have loathed even more thoroughly, but as a deep peacefulness of which he was—he sighed, admitting it to himself—deeply envious.

She was a girl (
a woman
) who Thornton suspected had such boundless compassion combined with her strange store of knowledge and experience that she would, to whoever loved her, become an endless source of comfort.

Of shelter.

Thornton slouched in the wooden chair, his half-drunk glass of wine resting on his chest. This was a rare moment of relaxation for him. The Reverend Thornton was a man who never relaxed in another’s company, only in his own. He was a tall man, his long legs now stretched out before him, crossed at their ankles, with shoulder-length, wavy dark brown hair worn swept back from his brow. He had a thin humorous mouth, and dark eyes that sparkled with what might appear to be mischief—save that Thornton so habitually clothed himself in the dark tones of Puritan garb that the humour of his mouth and the mischief of his eyes was (thankfully for the
reverend’s public persona) quite obscured and shadowed. Thornton had dedicated himself to God and to instil the knowledge of God into his young charges; his humour and mischief he tried to bury or to ignore.

Now relaxed, at ease, Thornton’s eyes drifted lazily over the deep twilight outside, the still of the gathering night broken only by the movement of a small group of deer towards the shelter of a stand of great oaks and the haunting cry of an owl, out hunting mice and kittens.

There was a movement—the sudden sweep of the owl’s wings as it launched itself from one of the trees—and Thornton sighed, and sipped his wine.

The only reminder of the day past was the line of gentle light sinking across the horizon of the hills. It was a beautiful sight, peaceful and powerful, and Thornton imagined for a moment that the land was about to rise up and reach out to him, seeping in through the window until it embraced him and made him part of its earthiness.

“Do you feel it, John?” she said, and her voice seemed so much a part of the gathering night and of the gentle landscape beyond the windows, that Thornton was not perturbed, nor even overly surprised, to hear her speak, here, within the inner sanctum of his private chambers.

He turned his head, slowly, almost lazily, but otherwise did not move.

She was standing a pace or two inside the door, and Thornton, so given over to the magic of the twilit landscape, found himself thinking that she had not entered the chamber as any mortal person would have done, through the door, but had instead just materialised where now she stood, just as the night slowly fell outside without any discernible movement of arrival.

Then his reserve roared to the fore.

“Noah!” Thornton said, rising so abruptly from his chair that the remnants of his wine spilled from the glass. He suddenly realised that he stood before her in bare feet, clad only in breeches and a linen shirt that he’d unbuttoned in the warmth of the night, and he almost dropped the glass in his haste to set it to one side so he could pull the shirt closed about his chest.

“John,” she said, and smiled.

It was very gentle, that smile, and so unexpected in a sixteen-year-old girl, so comforting, so
deep
, that Thornton’s hands stilled where they fumbled at the shirt.