by Wray Delaney
‘My lady, shall I call for Agnes?’
She looks at him and he turns to her, his full lips parted. She leans forward, her lips touch his. It is kindling for the blaze.
Frantically, she undoes his doublet. He pulls off his shirt, her hand slips into his breeches, she is pleased to feel his cock is hard. On the bed he parts her tender limbs, kisses her lips, her neck. He nuzzles her breasts and gently enters her, not with the violence she is used to, nor is the act over with the pain of a few uncaring thrusts.
Gilbert whispers, ‘Slowly, my lady, slowly.’
He takes his time, waits for her. At each stile the lovers encounter he helps her over, and deeper into her he goes. Then, at the height of their ardour, when all appears lost, Eleanor gives a cry that wakes the baby, that makes the lovers pull away, she embarrassed by the completion of an act that she never knew could be so tender.
Gilbert climbs out of bed, picks up the infant and holds it to him. They wait for the knock on the door, for their sin to be discovered.
But there is not a sound, the house is still wrapped in an enchanting spell. The sorceress would not allow these two lovers to be disturbed. More needs to happen before the cuckoo is well and truly hatched.
IX
Eleanor looks at Gilbert, naked, holding the infant close to him and her breasts ache. They feel full, painfully full, just as when she’d had her own babes. Leaking milk, she takes the babe from Gilbert and begins to feed him. With each thirsting suck he assures his place in her affections. She looks up at her new lover.
‘Tell me what has happened to us – do you know?’
Tears fill his eyes.
When the infant had finished feeding, Eleanor searched hungrily for a mark upon him for she had no doubt that her husband had been faerie-taken, no doubt that this was his child.
The infant fell asleep and Gilbert wrapped him warm and snug and laid him in the cradle. And as he did so, the steward felt that time had gathered itself in quick, aching heartbeats, each beat becoming a month, the months becoming nine. This faerie child was as much his and his mistress’s – born in a flame of a desire – as ever it was his master’s.
Gilbert awoke only when there was a tear of light in night’s icy cloth. Eleanor had the babe at her breast once more.
She reached out towards her lover and whispered softly, ‘I will not give up the child. He is ours. What will we say? What should we do?’
Gilbert kissed her.
‘Leave that to me,’ he said.
In a basket near the bed lay a heap of bloodied sheets. Blood spilt on the floor, jugs of water, pink in colour, clothes and all such stuff to dress a stage for a woman who had given birth.
When Agnes finally stirred she was confused first by how late the hour was, then mystified at the sight of her mistress propped up on pillows with a newborn babe.
‘Oh, my lady,’ said Agnes, ‘why did you not wake me?’
‘I tried,’ said Lady Rodermere, ‘but you were fast asleep and it came so quick upon me.’
‘Was no one with you, my lady?’
Not a beat did Eleanor miss.
‘Yes – Gilbert Goodwin.’
After all it was the steward’s duty to make sure that any child born to Lord Rodermere’s wife was no usurper.
‘I am most truly sorry,’ said Agnes. ‘The thought of you being on your own, and you never knowing you were with child.’
Eleanor felt the smile deep within her and kept her face solemn as she said, ‘If asked, perhaps it would be best that you were to say you were with me all night.’
‘Willingly,’ Agnes said.
And by doing so is caught in the nest of lies.
X
It was Gilbert Goodwin who after the infant’s birth sent for the Widow Bott. The widow had delivered many a changeling child and watched them fade as bluebells in a wood when the season has passed. For the truth is, there are few children who have a mortal and a faerie for a parent and those that are born always have a longing to return to our world rather than stay in the human realm, and who can blame them. Changeling children, instead of being plump and round are sickly things that hang on to life as does a spider swing on a thread in a tempest. These changeling babes, left behind unwanted by the goblins, are placed in cradles where newborn babes lie and when no one is looking they take the child’s form as their own. But not this half-elfin child. He was born to be the sorceress’s instrument of death.
Lord Rodermere had often decried faeries as diminutive creatures made of air and imagination. But we are giants for we hold sway over the superstitions of humankind. I have hunted the skies, chased the clouds in my chariot, I have seen wisdom in the eye of a snake, strength beyond its size in an ant, and cruelty in the hand of man. Our sizes, our shapes, our very natures are beyond the comprehension of most. We are concerned with pleasure and the joy of love, we use our powers to shift our shapes, to build enchanted dwellings, to fashion magic objects and to take dire revenge on mortals who offend us. But for those we protect, such as the Widow Bott, we ensure their youth and health.
She has a far greater understanding in the knowledge of herbs and plants and their properties than many an apothecary, much more than the quack wizard, or so called alchemist, hoping to turn lead to gold, to cheat men from their money.
So it was important – nay, I would say it was a necessity – that Gilbert called for her, for she alone could sway all incredulity, she could assure any doubters that the sheets held the evidence of a human birth, not the blood of a slaughtered rabbit. In short, she would give weight to the child’s arrival, confirm that he was indeed the son of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.
XI
The sorceress had no desire to remain at the House of the Three Turrets that morning. It pained her to see her trees used that way, their branches bent, carved into unforgiving shapes. Instead she went to the widow’s cottage and waited by the fire.
It was dark by the time the Widow Bott returned. Wrapped against the cold, her cloak caked in frost, snow and she came in as one. Putting down her basket, she fumbled for a candle to light. The sorceress lit it for her, set the fire to blaze and the pot upon it.
‘I should have known that you would be here,’ said the Widow Bott. ‘Well, I am not talking to the air. Show yourself, or be gone. I am tired and it shivers me when I cannot see you for who you are.’
For some reason she was out of sorts.
‘You always know when I am near,’ said the sorceress, to comfort her.
‘Tis a pity that a few more folk are not as wise as me to your ways,’ said the widow, dusting the snow from the hem of her dress and taking a chair by the fire. ‘What mischief have you been up to?’
The sorceress laughed. ‘So you saw the child?’
‘Yes. He is more beautiful than any mortal babe should ever be. He has already won the heart of Lady Eleanor.’
The sorceress seated herself opposite the widow. ‘You should be in better spirits,’ she said.
‘And what of Gilbert Goodwin?’ asked the widow.
‘What of him?’
‘Never has a man been more lovestruck.’
‘And Lady Eleanor?’
‘The same. Do you intend to return Lord Rodermere? For he is not missed at all, especially not by his wife who trembles at his very name.’ The widow stood, took a long clay pipe from a jug that sat on the mantelpiece and kicked a log with the heel of her boot, before sitting down again in her rocking chair. ‘You have made a mistake if you think Lord Rodermere is of any importance.’
‘He has dented my forest.’
‘Will you put a curse on every man who fells a tree?’ snapped the widow. ‘Perhaps it would have been best if you had travelled further than the forest and seen what is abroad before you laid your curse, for there are many roads that lead now to the city and news travels both ways upon the Queen’s highway.’
‘Tell me,’ the sorceress said, ignoring her jibe. ‘Did you examine the infant?’
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‘Lady Eleanor would not let me hold of the babe. She seems as devoted to it as if it was hers and she has no need of a wet nurse. Though she did ask about the star that be on his thigh.’
The sorceress stood. ‘What star? The child was blemish free. Did you see it?’
‘No, for the infant was swaddled.’
‘She is mistaken.’
‘I think not,’ said the Widow Bott.
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That such a mark . . .’
‘Such a mark,’ the sorceress interrupted, ‘was not upon the child.’
The widow never once had been frightened of the sorceress. She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I have no need to argue with you,’ she said. ‘If you say there is no star then what I say means little.’
‘What did you say to Lady Eleanor?’
‘That such a mark shows him to be of faerie blood and the star, a gift. She asked what kind of gift and I told her that only his mother could answer that question. She blushed when she realised that she had unwittingly confessed that the child be not hers, milk or no milk. She begged me never to say a word. She showed me the note left pinned to a fur and I assured her that her secret was safe.’
‘Good, good. But there is no mark.’
‘If you say so,’ said the widow. ‘But Lady Eleanor knows more of your ways than her husband did. She asked if the babe be a hollow child for she has heard of women who give birth to changelings and having no appetite for life, they mock a mother’s love and fade away. I promised her this be no such child. Was I right?’
‘Yes. Yes,’ the sorceress said again and all the while the thought of the star worried her.
‘You should not toy with us as if we be puppets,’ said the widow.
‘Come, that is unfair – I do not.’
‘But you do. Look how many lives will be changed by your curse. You would be wise to leave it be, not have Lord Rodermere return to plague his wife, to accuse me again of being a witch. Let the good of his disappearance be your comfort.’
‘No, what is done is done and cannot be undone.’
The sorceress watched the Widow Bott as she relit her pipe.
‘So you know how all this will play out? How Lord Rodermere will meet his end?’
These questions annoyed the sorceress.
‘My curse will come to pass. What befalls the players on the way has little to do with me.’
‘I think you are mistaken. You are dealing with our lives.’
The Widow Bott pulled at the sorceress. But no one talks that way to her and she turned to leave.
‘Wait,’ said the widow. ‘Wait. You know there is a reward for anyone with information about Lord Rodermere that would lead to his safe recovery?’
‘They will never find him – of that I have no worry.’
‘You may have no worry, but I do. They may never find him unless you will it but what you have done this day will bring to leaf a tree of questions that fools and mountebanks will try to answer, their brains baited by the riddle of the boy’s unholy beauty. I will be marshalled and again accused of witchcraft. The monks feared nature’s beauty, seeing it as a seducer, a tormenter of men. Even in the soft petals of the rose, they thought they saw the face of evil. Do you believe this child will go unnoticed, that his very looks will not be brought into question? How far do you suppose the news of his birth has already travelled?’
The sorceress said, ‘Your word is enough, I am sure, to confirm that the child is the son of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere. No one will question his parentage.’
‘Again, you are mistaken.’
The sorceress had no interest in this. What concerned her was the star.
‘Keep yourself to yourself, widow,’ she said, ‘and you will be safe.’
‘Perhaps. But for how long?’
‘Near seventeen years,’ said the sorceress.
She was in no mood to contemplate consequences and as she lifted the latch on the door, she congratulated herself that her powers had not waned.
XII
The sorceress returns to her dwelling deep under her angel oak, whose veiny tendrils weave the domed roof of her chamber. Here stands her bed – raven black, the colour of dreams – with its canopy of stars. Fireflies light the room and gather, as do the moths, round one golden orb, a heavy pendant that swings slow across the chamber. She sleeps suspended between the streams of ages. Her spirit barely stirs to hear minutes passing. It is a parcel of time put to good use.
A moth’s wing flutters and almost seventeen years are gone.
XIII
Something gnaws at the edges of sleep. Not the rhythm of the days but her passion for Herkain, the King of the Beasts. It is not wise, she knows, to let herself visit him even in dreams for it brings her to the well of her own emptiness. He who had the sorceress’s very heart where all her love lay, who sunk his glorious teeth into its arteries, pulled it beating from her breast, left her heartless. He did not take her power, only her reason. She conjures the memory of Herkain’s tongue licking the flesh from her to reveal her pelt in all its lush resplendence. Once, she longed to return to him, ached to feel his prick deep inside her, to feel his strength contain her, the howl of his whole being released into hers. When they lay together they were one, she his dark, he her light.
Memory can disturb even the deepest sleeper with its incessant chimes upon the mind. Does the sorceress deceive herself when she dreams again of Herkain? Or is it the infant’s beauty that so enchants her that she cannot rest until she has the measure of the boy, knows what kind of fiend she has created?
Though he be half of faerie blood, all of him will be his father’s child. His beauty will corrupt him and the years will make a monster of the man.
And she wakes. By the lantern light she sees that the hem of her petticoat is torn, a scrap of the precious fabric gone, her very inner sanctum violated.
A tear in her petticoat is an unbearable weakness. It wounds her as if it is her flesh that is peeled from her for that piece of fabric is a charm that would give the thief power over her.
Who would do such a thing? No mealy mouthed mortal could part the watery curtain that divides the world of man from faerie. No spirit would dare come near her. Was this Herkain’s mischief? No, no, it was not he, of that she is certain. Then who?
Such was her fury, such was her malice, that she howled with the pain of it. And her faithful trees stayed silent and gave no clue as to who the thief might be. Her rage was uncontainable, she rocked the earth with it and heard winter shiver.
The sorceress dressed to hide the tear and against the season of snows she wore a gown made of summer gold, sewn with the silk of spiders’ threads, embroidered with beads of morning dew. Its rubies ladybirds, its diamonds fireflies, hemmed with moonshine’s watery beams; yet it was the tear in the hem of her petticoat that weighed her down for some mortal held its threads and by such stitchery, she was tied to them. She smelled blood, she smelled the shit and the fear of mortals.
She hardly noticed the cold or winter’s white mantle. Rage kept her warm and fury brought on a blizzard. Only in the icy breeze did her balance return to her. All was frozen, held tight against nature’s cruelties.
The Widow Bott, she will know. She will know who committed this crime.
She reached the clearing where the widow’s cottage stood. A papery yellow light glinted through the slatted windows. The wind whirled the snow as she knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ said a voice.
‘You know it is I.’
The widow unbolted the door that had never before been locked for she had no one to fear, not even the black wolf. She was wrapped as tight as her cottage, her clothes quilted against the cold. The fire flared in the draught of the open door and she closed it quickly, and moved to her chair.
‘So, mistress, you come at last,’ she said.
‘I told you it would be near seventeen years,’ said the sorceress, ‘and tr
ue to my word I am here. What is wrong, old widow?’
The widow’s hollow eyes as good as told her that something was amiss. She took the chair opposite her and the widow turned her face away. Where, thought the sorceress, was the widow’s bright, piercing stare that dangled challenge in its light?
She thought to ask a simple question.
‘The babe – what did Lady Rodermere call him?’
‘He is called Lord Beaumont Thursby, but all that know him call him Beau.’
‘He is now near grown, is he not? Ruined by the knowledge of his beauty and its power?’
‘If that was your design then you will be disappointed. He has grown to be the sweetest of young men. If his beauty has any consequence it is to those who look upon him for, man or woman, it makes no difference, all are enchanted by him.’
‘So, I am right,’ the sorceress persisted. ‘He uses his looks to make slaves of those who his beauty entraps.’
‘Again you are wrong.’
‘Impossible.’
The Widow Bott leaned forward and poked at the fire as if she had no desire to speak the truth.
‘His sister,’ continued the sorceress. ‘That toad-blemished creature: surely she is bitter with jealousy?’
‘Again, no. Powerful is the bond of affection between brother and sister. And tomorrow, their mother, Lady Rodermere, is to marry Gilbert Goodwin.’
‘But she is still married to Lord Rodermere, is she not?’
‘Not. The queen was petitioned to annul the marriage as Lord Rodermere has not been seen, alive or dead, for eighteen years come May. Please, mistress, I beg of you, let this be. Do not return Lord Rodermere to them.’
The sorceress looked at the widow more closely as she repacked her pipe and lit it, sucking in her sallow cheeks.
‘What are you not telling me?’
‘There is nothing to tell,’ she said.
She was lying, trying to hide her thoughts, the sorceress knew it. One name escaped the store cupboard of her mind. Sir Percival Hayes.