The Burning Time (26 page)

Sara, Sara
, she mouthed wordlessly,
most dear loved child, forgive me for what I canna help but do. I canna stay, I canna be brave and fight that way. You be growing up strong and wise, I pray it. You be growing free from your mother’s cowardice. T’will be for you what never could be for me. T’is why I canna take you with me. Ah, what a fresh grief, this! The worst of all my griefs, to leave you. And shall you be hating me, then, not knowing how much you be loved? Shall you ever forgive me for what I canna help? Oh little heart, like once I carried you inside my body, I carry you still, wherever I be going, I carry you wrapped inside this rag that be left of my soul. T’would have been grand, watching you grow to the fullness of womanhood. But t’was not meant, not for me. Too much fear in me, too much pain. Oh God, I canna bear it! Sara, Sara, my only child, the one perfect thing I made
.…

The words made no whisper, the cries no noise. Only the pines sighed and swayed in the wind with the woman as she rocked herself, keening soundlessly, beside the shape of the child who slept on, untroubled by such suffering, innocent of its proximity, its depth. Silently, the mother pounded her face with her fists.
I canna leave her—but I canna help it—oh Blessed Mary please Holy Brigid sweet Jesus somebody give me the strength
.…

At last she rose. She hesitated, a stunned woman seeking her bearings. Then she moved swiftly toward the wagon, tiptoeing past the sleepers. From deep in the woods, where the horses had been tethered for grazing, Tissy sensed human movement and snorted softly. Petronilla paused, peering back at her companions. No one stirred.

She reached the cart, fumbled for the muslin flaps, and slipped inside. Quietly, she groped for what she needed. Locating the tinder box, she struck a flame and lit a small candle, closing the flaps after her to ensure no light would be visible from the outside. Hurriedly, behind the food bundles, she felt for the casket she sought. She found her mistress’s Book of Shadows, a quill, and a tiny vial of ink.

How mystical, how holy, these writing tools had seemed to her once, back when Lady Alyce had begun teaching her to read and write! How long ago that seemed now—back when each morning had opened with the gift of every day. Back when she had gulped her sudden unimaginable freedom like
deep draughts of water after a lifetime of thirst, back when she could not believe her good fortune, when she thought she had escaped forever from this dull, familiar universe of threat and pain and punishment.

She remembered the day she’d arrived at Kyteler Castle, one stray among what she would later learn were many who drifted there, wounded, in search of healing. She remembered how she had been terrified by encountering the famous Lady Alyce as a ghost—chalky white from head to toe, eyebrows to ankles—until the playful wraith who greeted her apologized for coming straight from a flour fight with her son in the bakehouse. She remembered the day she danced
—her
, Petronilla!—for the first time in her life. She remembered the day she heard Sara’s laughter for the first time in either of their lives, that laugh like a hundred tiny gold bells chiming at once, a laugh that compelled you to join in for the sheer bubbling bliss of laughing. She remembered the day she’d begun learning her letters, while Lady Alyce had winked at her, “You know, Pet, learning to spell and learning to Spell are not unconnected.…”

Guiltily, Petronilla tugged a leaf of parchment from the book and dipped the quill into the ink vial. For her, the act of writing still exercised mystical powers, even now. But there was no time to draw her letters properly. She blinked away that shame, trying to concentrate on the message she needed to write.

The note, scribbled in a shaky hand, took only a few moments. She folded it and placed it between the leaves of the book, with one edge protruding. Respectfully, she restop-pered the ink vial, wiped and put away the quill, blew out the candle. Letting herself out of the wagon and stepping with care, she carried the book to where Alyce lay, tucking it gently into the folds of the sleeping woman’s quilt where it could not be missed.

Then Petronilla ran once more to the hill’s edge to check the column of torch-bearing armed men.

Nearer, nearer.

She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs as if with her last breath. Then, with no glance backward, she gathered up her things and slipped off deeper into the woods to where the horses were tethered, disappearing into the dark.

The first crash of thunder woke Alyce from her sleep. If there had been none, still she would have wakened, startled more by something she could not name than by the noise.

She struggled with the quilt’s folds, trying to rise—and her hand grazed instead the familiar, heavy shape of her own Book of Shadows. Certain now that something was wrong, she lurched upright and stumbled to the hillcrest, softly calling
Petronilla’s name. There was no answer. Behind her, one of the children whimpered with a bad dream.

Rolling fog now totally obscured the valley and the road below. It was as if the hilltop and forest were adrift in a Samhain mist, an Otherworld terrain suspended outside its own space, like the Day Outside the Year. She could see nothing beyond her own hand held directly in front of her face. Clutching the Grimoire, she groped her way toward the wagon, tripping and falling over a dead branch in the darkness, muffling her cry and scrambling to her feet as noiselessly as possible. Finally she could make out a solid black shape looming against the more intangible blackness. It was the outline of the cart.

Once inside, she reenacted the same ceremony with tinder box and candle that Petronilla had performed earlier.

Then, in the dim light, she saw the parchment’s edge, a small white flag protruding from the Grimoire.

Her teeth began to chatter. She closed her eyes and told herself it was merely the cold. Then she forced herself to open her eyes. Unfolding the note, she began to read.

Stupefied, Alyce tried to grasp her thoughts as they raced through shock after shock.

She must follow Petronilla. She must find her.

She must not let her be driven back to the very sources of her fear.

She must keep her from Donnan’s vengeance.

She must
rescue
her, she must—

Alyce burst from the wagon, to be met by a wash of lightning that drenched the sleeping children with a harsh blue brightness.
The children
! They could not be left. How could she seek out Petronilla and leave seven young children alone?

A deafening bellow of thunder opened the storm itself, downsweeping in torrents—needles of rain, chunks of hail.
Like a madwoman, Alyce reeled in the wind to where the small ones were waking, wailing. Already, the hail was bringing down the canopy above their heads.

A child under each arm, Alyce dashed back and forth, trip after trip, between forest-bed and wagon, bundling them back into the covered cart. Meanwhile, thoughts kept shuddering through her in spasms, like the lightning.

She dared not risk taking the children to the church to retrieve Petronilla. But there was no place safe to leave them—not even a goatshed or pigsty in sight, as glare after glare of lightning made punishingly clear.

She ground her teeth in fury. Trapped. She was trapped into forsaking Petronilla, trapped into abandoning her to an old slavery from which she had all but broken free. Trapped into defeat at the hands of these malicious foreign churchmen who had come to wreak ruin on her Ireland. Trapped. Humiliated. Powerless.

Numb with sorrow, she staggered out of the wagon, now sour-smelling from so many wet children packed whining, half-asleep, into its confines. She slipped in the mud and fell, then slid again trying to stand, and finally pulled herself up to lean against a wheel, raving into the wind.

“Oh Petronilla, how could you abandon Sara? How
could
you?
Damn
you Petronilla,
damn
you to all your Christian hells!”

The hail started to lessen, though lightning still rinsed the air between thunderclaps, and the rain swept on in a steady, thrumming downpour. But Alyce’s tempest was not spent. Soaked to the bone, she turned her wrath on herself.

“
How
could I not have seen?
Why
did I not take the first watch,
why
did I not take her terrors more seriously?” She lifted her face to the elements, sobbing her rage at the moonless sky.

“And You, Morrigan, Great Queen! Where are You while your people are driven from our homes, our lands, our lives? Where are You this Samhain Eve, this Night Between the Worlds, this time of descent when the Sidhe mounds gape and the past wakens and walks visible? Why are Your eyes fixed inward, indifferent to us, pitiless? Why do You show us only The Crone, The Hag, thrilling to bloody justice and hidden purpose? Show us Your face again as Maiden, generator, possibility—or as Mother, nurturer, preserver!
Appear to us, Morrigan
, as You did to the Ancient Ones! Aid us! Aid thy daughter Petronilla in her dread! Give me the power to save her, give me the power to protect these children!”

A fresh shaft of lightning flared, and she addressed it directly, shouting into the storm’s howl.

“
Evo Kore!
Hide Your countenance from me no longer—even if it be The Cailleach! Even if it be the Unnameable, the Ancient Chaos!
Show me Your face, though it be the Face of Nemesis
! Aye,
even if it be forbidden
, still I summon You!
Badb
,
I summon you!
Macha
, I summon you!
Nemain—I summon you
! Appear to us, Key Holder!
Whatever the cost
, fill me with Your Frenzy! Even if it
destroy
me, grant me Your Power! Old One!
Appear to us now!
”

Less than an hour later, the rain-sodden, grumbling men assigned to the Bishop’s search for Dame Alyce Kyteler heard distant hooves pounding toward them. Then they spied the outline of a lone horse galloping through the fog, down the hill road toward their column.

The commander ordered a halt as the animal’s shape drew nearer and pulled up on an outcropping of rock above them. Their spitting torches glowed yellow through the fog, reflecting on the men’s spear-points and drawn swords. But as they peered upward, the flares began forming strange fogged aureoles of light, through which floated a spectral form.

It sat astride the horse with an air of unchallengeable authority. A heavy black cape denoting rank and wealth billowed from the rider’s shoulders. The figure’s face was veiled by a curtain of rain, its hair drenched by the storm to the colour of shadow.

But with the next stab of lightning, the men started in terror, many of them dropping their weapons, falling to their knees, and crossing themselves.

For the flash had imprinted on their gaze a sight they would never forget. The lightning had carved out the reflection of a shining crown the rider wore. It bore the shape of a full moon cradled in the arc of a crescent moon, its two points upreaching, shaped as a pair of bright horns.

Motionless, the apparition shimmered at them, waiting.

The commander knew he must address this creature. He opened his lips and worked his jaw, but no words came. His voice shriveled into a knot of panic in his throat.