The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

  I am born from the womb of the earth, nursed by the milk of the moon. Flame gave me three bodies, one soul. In between lies my invisibility.

  XXVI

  Thomas was watching from a window in the turret as the carriage departed. He wondered why the young Lord Beaumont was not inside it, for there would be no point in the boy staying, no point at all. His heart missed a beat when he heard the door to the chamber being unlocked.

  He turned and was about to say that he needed more time, when Sir Percival said, ‘What have you done?’

  Thomas, without looking at Lord Rodermere, replied, ‘He sleeps.’

  ‘Sleeps?’ repeated Sir Percival. ‘Yes, sleeps – and he has aged. Alchemist, I much underestimated your talent. This is indeed a remarkable transformation.’

  Now Thomas looked at Francis. And indeed a miracle of sorts had taken place: the ravages of time had collided with him. Gone was the youthful man and in its place a withdrawn creature whose prick had aged more than the man himself so it would in future be an impotent thing that would cause him much frustration and not one ounce of pleasure. Lord Rodermere looked nothing like the portrait, the two images hardly reflected each other.

  The sorceress’s one regret is that she had not the chance to be there when young Lord Beaumont confronted his father. She would have chosen it to be different but Sir Percival was intent on having Thomas Finglas gone as soon as possible, regardless of the fact it was now night and the roads barely passable. A horse was brought that looked as reluctant to leave the stable as Thomas was to leave the warmth of the house.

  ‘If, Master Finglas, you mention one word of what has happened this day and your part in it, I will not hesitate to have you charged with sorcery,’ said Sir Percival.

  He nodded at a servant who took from Thomas the gown he was given on his arrival. Thomas, in his nightshirt, sat astride the horse.

  ‘But, sir, I will freeze to death.’

  Sir Percival said nothing and the great door closed behind him. Snow was falling on horse and man as they made their way on to the impassable road.

  Thomas will remember nothing of his journey and only come into himself again as he crosses London Bridge and its tongue-tied waters. There, numb with cold, he will urge on his horse until he finds himself haunting his own back door.

  ‘Be I alive or be I dead?’ he asked.

  His conclusion, dull as it is, was that he was dead. There is something so pathetic in man’s desire to know what state his flesh be in. How could he not feel the pulsing of his blood, the beating of his heart? And it strikes the sorceress that in all she has seen of him he possesses very little magic. He jumps when he hears her voice.

  ‘I have kept my part of the bargain, now you must keep yours.’

  Again he asks, ‘Am I dead?’

  Night had reached the hour when it wraps itself starless in its frozen cloth. The door was locked, the house in darkness. Thomas knocked with his fist. He knocked again. His teeth were chattering, his breath a white mist and these bodily signs comforted him and proved he was made of living parts. When still there was no reply he cursed his nick-ninny of an apprentice: was he deaf as well as stupid? Then his courage wavered as an altogether more terrifying thought came to him: what if his daughter had escaped and murdered again? Once more, Thomas raised his fist, ready to feel his knuckles hard upon wood, then stopped as the door all by itself opened into an abyss.

  ‘John?’ he called.

  There is no answer but from within comes that high-pitched yowl.

  XXVII

  Thomas Finglas enters his house with shaking steps, fearful of stumbling over the remains of his apprentice and the serving girl whose name for the moment escapes him. He turns to where he supposes the sorceress is. Look at this learned man, this tormented Thomas Finglas. He does not possess one ounce of power. Now he searches for the sorceress as might a child, frightened of the dark and it occurs to her that the magic she feels in this house belongs to another. Thomas is shaking with cold or with fear, it is hard to tell the difference. In mortals both have a smell to them. In the passage he fumbles for a candle and then searches in vain for a tinderbox with which to light it. Not far from him is a scratching, talons on wood.

  The sorceress lights the candle for him and he nearly drops it. His hands are shaking so violently that he is forced to use both. As he goes towards his cellar the back door slams behind them and the candle is extinguished.

  ‘Did you do that?’ he asks.

  She did not.

  Try as she might she cannot relight the candle. Now she is equally alarmed for the very air is filled with menace. Does the creature have the strength to play with her?

  The laboratory door flaps, half off its hinges, and light spills from the hearth but there is no one to be seen. Thomas stares in at the chaos of this chamber, usually an ordered place that he keeps meticulously clean. It is in disarray; all his precious notebooks torn to shreds, the vials of chemicals smashed, his crucible overturned.

  ‘Where are you?’ he says wearily. ‘Show yourself, Randa.’

  In the silence the only answer is the breath of another – but where is she?

  His thoughts are whirling about his head, all wrapped in guilt that he hopes the sorceress does not understand but she does and she fears that whoever is hidden in the shadows can hear them as well as she.

  Anger at the meaningless destruction of all he holds dear causes him to spit out his curses.

  ‘You, the bringer of my ruination, are you my punishment for the sin of adultery? This, my life’s work, ripped asunder. Do you know what you have done? Where are you, you child of malice? Where is Master Butter?’ he shouts. ‘Where is Mary? Have you killed them as once you killed the mistress?’

  Instantly he regrets what he said. He tries and fails to suck the words back into himself. He picks up papers, bunches them in his hand. He is whimpering. ‘All my work, my books . . . they are irreplaceable. Monster! Yes, monster, a monster of my own making.’ His thoughts, now unstoppable, reveal in their brutal honesty the truth of his feelings and fuel his tongue. ‘I should have left you dead. I am disgusted that I had any part in the making of you. Half-human, half-animal – you have never shown any sign of intelligence, you cannot talk, nor do you comprehend what I say. My life has been ruined by you, ruined by the burden of a deformed imbecile who must be kept secret and restrained for as long as she lives – if only I can find chains strong enough to bind her. You have grown beyond my control.’ And now he is shouting, shouting, ‘What will become of me if you are discovered? What will become of you? Oh lord above . . .’

  And all the pity for himself, for Bess, collides into a single thought: what will become of Randa when she is fully grown? The idea that this beast, this thing he calls child, might have physical desires he can hardly bear to contemplate.

  ‘I should have left nature to take its course,’ he says into the darkness. ‘I should have let you die.’

  In the shadows the sorceress sees a human eye, green as an emerald. She is listening, just as the sorceress is, to every mean, mundane word and thought that this pathetic man has. Near weeping with exhaustion, defeated by all he sees, he recites his charm to calm her. To calm himself.

  ‘In the name of God be secret and in all your doings be still.’

  She will not reply. She has never before answered him.

  When she does speak her voice is deep and haunting and he is so stupefied by it that he loses his footing, stumbles backwards, feeling each word of hers as a blow.

  ‘I am not still,’ she says. ‘I never will be. And whatever your God of retribution might say, I will no longer be secret.’

  She screams a scream so piercing it shatters windows, sets dogs to howl. Now the sorceress sees the shape of the beast, she sees the glint of her talons. She hears the flapping of her immense wings. She hears Thomas Finglas cry out in agony. There is a rush of air and the beast is in the snowy garden and the sorceress is in time to see her silhouetted ag
ainst the night sky, a magnificent winged creature who does not belong to the world of man. The sorceress watches enchanted as the creature tilts her head and inhales the thick, foul breath of the city. She opens her mouth and tastes the snow, stretches her wings to their full extent and swoops out over the river. And she is gone.

  ‘Randa, come back . . . Randa . . . in all your doings be still . . .’

  Thomas’s words collapse in on him. The sorceress lights the candle. He is on his knees in the passage. Blood runs down the torn ribbons of his face, he looks like a martyr and she has little sympathy.

  Revenge, she thinks, is the sweetest sweetmeat of all.

  ‘My hem,’ she says. ‘Give me my hem.’

  THE BEAST

  ’Tis my sole plague to be alone,

  I am a beast, a monster grown . . .

  THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ROBERT BURTON

  XXVIII

  In my dreams I am not the beast. I am the child with childish thoughts. I run free on two stout legs, no spiked leather wings to weigh me down. I sing with unformed words that one day will turn into song, a language that will define me. I see my mother smiling, I see my father wake into a nightmare. Who am I, Mother, who am I?

  She called me Randa.

  She lied. I was no child. I was a malformed, half-wished-for babe. After only three summers I was a thing too strong for chains to bind.

  And he, my father, thought me an abomination. I heard his thoughts, caught on the wishbone of his sorrows, tied to his mean regret. I was his greatest triumph and his greatest failure. No word dare he speak of this to her, his love, his beloved, his Bess, my mother.

  Soft be she, kind be she, loving be she. She who knew what darkness filled my father’s dreams.

  I am old bones wrapped in young skin. I am the beginning and the end without end. I was plunged into mercury vapour and under those metallic waters, in that mirror, I caught a glimpse of time beyond understanding, of a past beyond regret. I knew things no infant should know, wisdom soaked into a deep, an ancient soul.

  When my mother still lived she told me tales of fantastic beasts, of a land where I would be queen. Where I would not be alone.

  ‘And will you come with me?’ I asked her, her my mother.

  She kissed me and told me of the House of the Three Turrets where she had met my father, of a boy born so beautiful that his mother forbade all mirrors, fearful that he might fall in love with his own reflection.

  ‘Why am I not beautiful, Mother? Why?’

  She whispered, ‘Love will transform you.’

  I heard the woman, she who called herself a good wife, wife a word of spikes to pin a husband to, the f of the word being the mightier weapon of all the letters for it has a cruel curve to its bow. Mistress Finglas, the good wife, she who whispered through the door that I be a hellwain, a curse upon all mankind. That they would come. Who would come? They would come. To take me to the slaughterhouse.

  My father was right. He should have murdered me when he had a chance. Before I made my first kill.

  I am three when I sink my talons into Mistress Finglas’s lardy flesh and strip the fat from her. No one being home, she comes at me with a fiery poker. I am not frightened but I relish the fear in her eyes, the smell of terror a hard-won perfume. I pounce. Lard her flesh, steel my claws. I want to free the vileness, the slithering snake that lies buried in her entrails. But she does not move. I pull at her and all life is gone. I have consumed two of her fingers when John Butter finds me. I am surprised at how sweet such cruel flesh tastes. John, never fearful, not then when I still owned the enchantment of a cub, took the bones from my hand, said I must promise, Mistress Randa must promise, never to do it again.

  No one else called me Mistress. Only Randa. One name sufficed for such a malignant thing as I.

  John Butter cleaned me and sent for the apothecary. I watched the scrawny man as he entered the house. Hair the colour of pigeon shit, dirty ruff, smell of stale wine. He vomited on the stairs when he saw the good wife. A shame for there is nothing sweeter than the smell of fresh blood.

  My mother asked me why? Why I had done such a thing?

  I told her that Mistress Finglas had come for me, that there was a beast in her belly and I had tried to set it free but it must have been eaten up within her.

  She held me in her arms, said she would take me to where I would be safe, that she would be back in a day and we would go by barge to the forest where stood the House of the Three Turrets.

  ‘Where the beautiful boy lives?’

  ‘Yes. And there in the forest lies your way.’

  XXIX

  I knew she was dead, my mother. The cord that bound us cut for ever. A vital spirit gone. My protector. She who understood her child and called her little one, my sweet Randa. Loss made the loneliness of my being all the greater, made the house smaller. All the words in me sank to the bottom of my soul. I saw no use in speech. Better a watcher be. So a watcher I became. My silence was confirmation to my father of my bestial nature, more animal than human. So he thought. Not so John Butter. I saw a tear in his eye when the iron collar was placed round my neck to rub away my feathers, rub raw my skin, let in the fury.

  John Butter’s thoughts are too fast. They gallop free of his mind. He sees what his master should be doing before his master knows it. John has chains like me. Unseen by the human eye, they run through his blood, jigger-jugger, tip-tripping his words on his tongue. It was John who smuggled me a book. Slowly I made the letters reveal their spell, not one word lost. There were pictures of beasts; a bear, a fox. No picture of me.

  My father calls himself an alchemist. I know not what that means. He tells me he searches for a reason for my existence but I am here, Father. I am here, locked up. I exist, I live without a life. I hear him tell John that he knows not what to do with me, that if the truth of what he has done is ever discovered it would be better by far that he throws himself into the Thames otherwise be arrested, tortured and taken to the hanging tree.

  I grew. All things do grow. Helped by love they grow, crippled by hatred, still they grow. My father became smaller. Fear shrank him. He would talk to the ghost of his breath, he would ask Bess what he should do. She never answered.

  Yes, Father, tell me: what will you do? For I grow restless. Cramps hurt me, my bones ache. I cannot move, the space grows tighter. I dream of flight, wake in such pain within my limbs that I would tear myself apart to stop it. My screams bring my jailer, my father. Keys rattle, door opens with a squeal so that he curses and curses me more.

  I, his daughter, worse treated than a bear. My only comfort the sky I see through the round circles of glass. It calls to me. Certain am I that there in its moving clouds I could stretch myself into my fullness, stop the pain that runs rattling through me.

  I listen. Always I listen, watch the floorboards above me, the light that slips through the cracks. Where the voices fall is a place I am never allowed to enter.

  Gold. All they want, those shoes and boots that walk back and forth, is gold. I hear my father say it is against the law.

  But, Father, am I not against the laws of creation?

  A gentleman and a lady came to the house, to his laboratory. What they said scared him. Their voices were not to be trusted. They were slippery, they spoke in one tone and meant something altogether different.

  They came, again. They spoke loudly. They were not here to pry, the lady said. She was a great believer in alchemy, she said. There be far more to the heavens than the mortal eye can see. She said.

  The gentleman, his voice commanding, said they were here to take an intelligent interest in what my father had achieved.

  My father denied everything.

  ‘Master Cassell, Mistress Cassell, it is the stuff of tales,’ he said.

  When they had gone he came down to the cellar and, drinking from a flask, he sat with me.

  ‘God lives in church,’ he said, ‘but you cannot see him. He is invisible. He can see you though. What wil
l I do with you, tell me?’

  I waited. I am good at waiting. Sleep, dream, listen. Note when the voice is strange, is dangerous.

  A beast. I hear the word and stand to catch what is being said. You say one thing, Father, and do another.

  ‘What if I was to tell you that I could sell you – a beast of such a fantastical appearance that you would be assured of an audience every night.’

  Oh, Father, how you betray me.

  Another day, another voice. For all the fullness of his sound I think this stranger is meaner than Thomas Finglas. My father is telling him that the beast – that I – am made in terrifying proportions. The stranger asks the price. The price of me.

  ‘Nothing,’ says my father, my keeper, ‘as long as you never tell a soul where you bought her.’

  I hear doubt in the stranger’s voice.

  Footsteps leave the laboratory. Door opens, door closes and all is silent except for the rustle of the wind. I close my eyes and dream.

  XXX

  I curl in upon myself and hope this bitter winter, muffled in white beauty, brings me my death. I will not survive this cruel night. It is a strange relief to know that I will be free of this body, these wings, the aches that torment me, the constant hunger. Best that it is over soon. A deformed thing, this self that no one wants unless to gawp at. My bones will become stones once more. My eyes are heavy, sleep is here to carry me away in its cold chariot.

  I smelled the animal before I saw her. I pulled myself up to the small window and there a fox was looking at me, fire licking her breath. I heard my heart beat with excitement, heard the thud of blood. Then silence.

  Someone is in the house. A stranger – no, two strangers. I am an expert in the weight of boots. Two men hiding their heaviness in soft, uncertain steps. They waver. I think this way they will come. Then the stairs creak, then all is quiet. I listen, straining to hear. Nothing. A nothing filled with everything. Air taut then it comes with a rush, something, someone pulled down, down to the back door. I am up at the window to see who it is, what it is. It is Father, bare-footed in his flapping nightshirt, fighting the air. Two men with him, a fluster of movement, a blow. I let out a scream, a rusty nail is my voice, a wild screech. And there is the fox, the brush of her tail disappearing. Silence once more but for the gate groaning in the icy wind. I wait. I wait. I wait. Then, in a moment of moonshine, the glint of the fox’s eye meets mine.