The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

  Ben Shakeshaft made a great fuss of the Cassells for, as he told me, they were friends of Sir Percival Hayes and had much enjoyed the play.

  ‘And what of their companion, the lady in the mask – do you know if it found favour with her?’

  ‘No,’ said Master Shakeshaft, ‘but she wants to meet you.’

  I ran out into the courtyard in the hope that I might find her alone. But I saw only the Cassells, and Master Cassell was greeting my lady’s husband.

  Turning, I hid tight behind a pillar lest the merchant should make a sum of Sorrels and find in the answer there were two.

  ‘You missed a good play, sir,’ said Master Cassell.

  Then I saw her, her motionless mask.

  ‘There you are, my lady,’ said her husband. He took off his glove, his fingers claws that sank into her wrist.

  She flinched.

  ‘I do not like the theatre, Master Cassell,’ said the merchant. ‘I have no stomach for the play.’

  Much later I heard my lady and her husband had moved abroad to Paris. I knew she had loved me and I wished I had loved her, but I could not. Passion is blighted when it is not equally shared. And for all the skills of my trade, she knew the truth.

  The last thing she had said to me was, ‘Men long to mount women, women long for children, and all a child wants is a dog.’

  THE SORCERESS

  LVIII

  ‘I will tell, kind heart, strange tales of man’s cruel acts,’ the oakman had whispered as the sorceress returned from but a day’s absence. ‘Come close, and let the wind rustle through my young green leaves the news from my roots, all knowledge known and yet unknown.’

  She had rested her head against its great trunk, put her hands into the cracks of its bark. She knew before the wind whistled with words what it had to tell her.

  ‘Your cubs are dead. Your lover slaughtered, killed by a crossbow’s quarrel. Listen, can you hear the distant horn? The barking of the hounds?’

  It cannot be, it cannot be. Her sweet cubs, her lover, his pelt so soft, who held her tight against the winter storm.

  There is a truth to love that has no tie, no gods to deny the rhythm of the earth, the filling of the womb, no conscience to corrupt the seed. Only the season’s call and the urgency of sex stripped of guilt. Both were free and played for more until life wriggled inside her vixen womb. Three born, blue eyes all, tongues so sweet that suckled her, their scent the perfume of the gods.

  Who killed my cubs? Who killed my lover?

  The great oakman shivered and with its many green-leafed tongues it spoke: Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.

  And such was her fury that the earth groaned. She ran to claim her lover’s body and those of her cubs that she might bury them beneath the hawthorn tree. Their deaths would make the thorns sharper still.

  I would pull down this House of the Three Turrets. I would shake it until its wooden teeth rattled, pile the oak beams high upon my back and carry them as if they weighed no more than feathers. I would build a bonfire and tie Lord Rodermere to a stake and light the pyre with a flame from the sun. When all had been consumed by fire, there would be a mark upon the earth that only generations of Rodermeres’ salt tears would wash away. I would swallow this house, swallow it whole. I would suck in every nail, every bit of wattle and daub deep down into my stomach, digest it contentedly in sleep but for the curse. My curse. A boy will be born to you whose beauty will be your death. Young lord, where are you, you who were born to be my instrument? Where is my lover, where does his body rest?

  ‘Thrown was he to the hounds, his brush lies trampled beneath the hooves of horses.’

  Where are the bodies of my cubs, that I may take them to the hawthorn tree?

  ‘One lost. Two thrown into a basket, their little necks broken.’

  She heard the servants, listened carefully to all they said. They talked of nothing but Lord Beaumont’s humiliation at his father’s hand, of his beauty smeared with her lover’s blood. Was this not cause enough? What more did Lord Beaumont need to exact his revenge, kill his father, free them both? Where then was he?

  The servants said London; he would be well on his way. You can lose yourself in a city that size, they said. Or he has gone to find his sister, his mother and Master Goodwin before his lordship’s assassins do. On one thing they all agreed: where the young lord was no one knew. She trembled with rage, not an ounce of compassion in it.

  In the banqueting hall, before a feast of slaughtered animals, sat Lord Rodermere. Alive, far too alive. She will find his son and with all the means she possesses she will bring him back here to finish what she foretold in letters of gold.

  In the green mantle of summer she lost her grief and relished the splendour of her perfect gown. She waited for the sun to begin the fall from its throne, waited for the wind to knock the apple heads together on the tree – the summer’s adieu and the winter’s forewarning. Only then to London does she go.

  When the earth is covered in limestone and flint, when cart and boot make a midden of my soil, when nature is flattened by the weight of brick and timber from which no life springs, when all the comfort man has are lies and deceit and the only god he worships is to be found imprisoned in churches then man is truly lost in the hurly-burly insanity of the cities.

  I remember a time when this river had no name, before they called it Temese, when it ran blue and crocodiles bathed on its banks. Here in its beds of fertile silt were planted not the seeds of a forest but the foundations of the city. In its walls once walked the griffin and the unicorn, now banished and turned to stone.

  This is not my domain. This is land stolen from me. Here I am lost among the narrow lanes, its streets that stink of death and shit, of illness and of plague.

  And where in all this whirling need and greed will I find him, my beauty, my Beau, my arrow of destruction?

  LIX

  At last goes she to the house of Thomas Finglas, a place she had no wish to revisit. She hardly recognises the building for it appears to have pulled itself up straight as if at last it remembered the reason for being there. A sign, newly painted, swings in the breeze. It reads, Master John Butter, Alchemist. In such a short passing of days all has changed. She studies the house well before she enters. She would have imagined that John Butter had married the serving girl, Mary. She remembered her as being presentable. She expects to hear the cry of an infant, the noise of a family, but the house is childless in its sounds.

  One thing has not altered: the ever present ghost of Mistress Finglas, a poisonous odour hovering in the air, waiting to find another jealous soul for her green snake to take possession of. It has wrapped itself tight round Mary’s heart.

  The sorceress does not understand jealousy or perhaps she considers her jealousy to belong to a higher realm than that of this simple serving girl. She finds her in the bedchamber of Thomas Finglas. The place is wrapped in darkness and at first she sees her as a shadow. As for Thomas, he is but an outline. Mary sits next to him, feeding him soup from a bowl. He is not well but what ails him apart from the scarred face the sorceress cannot tell.

  ‘Has Master Butter finished for the day?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Nearly, master.’

  ‘Good. Then he will be up soon.’

  ‘There is one person on his list he has yet to see.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  Mary bites her lip. Yes, who, Mary?

  ‘I do not know, master. It is a lady.’

  The sorceress listens to her thoughts. Mary is not lying. She does not know the name of this lady. She prays it is not Lady Clare returned. For Mary had been in the cellar, the place where once they had kept the creature, and through the floorboards she had heard John Butter speak words of love, heard him kiss Lady Clare and more besides. When last she had come, he had bolted the laboratory door and Mary, with her eye to the crack, saw his arse rise and fall, rise and fall, and the lady’s white limbs, all undone, twisted round his. And the little green snake
bit Mary hard.

  The sorceress sees Mary’s secret. It worries at the serving maid, she fears that John Butter will learn of her treachery. Then what will she say? And how will she excuse what she has done?

  She had paid for a letter to be written in words more elegant than ever she could summon in which she informed Master Gilbert Goodwin and his good wife exactly what kind of balm John Butter used to cure Lady Clare’s condition and where on her body he used it. It had taken her time and coin to find the address and when she had, she paid again to make sure of the letter’s safe delivery.

  It is some months now since the letter was sent and it was said that the family had gone abroad. As Mary feeds her master, spoon by spoon, she is anxious that Lady Clare will return and then how would Mary explain the letter?

  It was in his best interest, she says to herself. Yes, it was, and John Butter should be grateful.

  The sorceress has heard enough. She is bored with Mary’s common thoughts. Perhaps Thomas can shed more light on what has been happening here. She listens.

  How long before the ferry man comes? How long before I see my Bess?

  Nothing.

  She is about to leave when she spies that the door to the laboratory is open a crack, enough for her to see John Butter seated in front of the fire, staring at the flames. She wonders at how master and servant have exchanged places.

  She catches a thought of his. It comes back to him from the watery realm of daydreams when sleep has yet to catch him in its net of hours. His eyes are shut and she glimpses a silver fish of something near forgotten swimming through the sleepy seaweed of his mind. He is half dreaming about a midsummer’s afternoon at the House of the Three Turrets when he was but a boy of twelve summers, and first he saw Lady Clare Thursby.

  Tell me more, John, I am listening. Tell me, tell me more.

  LX

  John Butter is in a tree.

  His master, Thomas Finglas, hoping for an afternoon of unbridled pleasure with the nursemaid Bess, has sent his new apprentice to find a four-leaf clover – a fool’s errand, and John knows it to be so. He has taken delight in being free to play, to climb. From the tree he sees a little girl dressed in such a manner that she looks like a miniature lady. She must have been told by her nurse not to run for she is fighting an instinct that makes running essential.

  ‘Beau,’ she calls as she runs, ‘Beau, Beau, come home. Please, Beau – where are you?’

  She looks up and sees John Butter in the tree and, showing no fear of strangers, says, ‘Please, would you help me find my brother? He is only two and he is missing. Our mother’s heart will break if he does not come home.’

  John jumps down, lands before her and kneeling looks directly at her. She stares back, her gaze defiant, waiting for him to turn away. Instead he touches her face.

  ‘These are the honourable scars of a warrior,’ he says. ‘You have fought bravely, my lady, against an infallible enemy. It has left its mark but it has not touched your spirit.’

  Many years later, when they have become lovers, Lady Clare confesses that she had thought him to be an elfin prince, for she had never seen anyone with skin so glorious and eyes so dark as his. Now John is thinking of Lady Clare full grown and the thought of her makes him ache.

  No, John, no. I will not let sleep drown out all. I am a catcher of dreams. Come then, John Butter, let the past slide over the present, banish all notion of the future. Tell me what happened that day.

  Little Lady Clare places her white hand in his. He remembers her utter faith in him.

  ‘You will find him,’ she says, ‘I know you will.’

  It does not occur to John as they walk deep into the woods that he has been cast in the role of a faerie prince.

  ‘We must ask the forest to give back your brother,’ he says.

  ‘Will the trees listen?’

  He does not answer because in a clearing between two oak trees stands the little lordling.

  Lady Clare pulls her hand away from John’s and starts to run towards her brother. John stops her for he understands exactly the danger the child is in. They must coax the boy back through the watery veil that separates the world of elfin from the world of man. If he does not come of his own accord he will be lost for ever. But the little boy vanishes in front of them and John Butter fears it is already too late.

  ‘Where has he gone?’ cries Lady Clare.

  John tells her she must ask the trees to let him go then say his name again.

  He remembers this, this moment, remembers Lady Clare pleading with the trees. He remembers the scent of the forest, the heat of the grass, the buzz of the insects. And the sun breaking through, a beam of golden light illuminating the place where Lord Beaumont had stood, indented with the tread of his shoe.

  Lady Clare, near tears and terrified, stands straight, closes her eyes and softly calls her brother again.

  ‘Beau – let us go home and play.’

  Nothing but the song of a lark. They stand. They wait. How long John cannot say. Her little hand finds his again and the afternoon becomes early evening. Still they wait and all ties to the world are lost.

  They hear his laughter before they see him. He comes running towards his sister, arms outstretched. She does not move but quietly calls him on. When he is near enough John catches hold of him. He wriggles to free himself and, realising he cannot, cries out, turns his head, pointing at the two oak trees as if he could see friends there.

  A sudden wind roars in at them on a sea of leaves.

  John, holding tight to Beau, takes Lady Clare’s hand and they run until she can run no more. He carries them both, still feeling the wind to be chasing them. Only when they are out of the forest does John put Lady Clare down. Her brother is fast asleep on John’s shoulder, his thumb in his mouth, and there in his fist is a piece of fabric the like of which John has never seen before.

  It is the children’s nurse Bess, frantic with worry and guilt, who runs to meet them; Bess who sees what Lord Beaumont holds in his small hand. Bess who gently takes it from him and gives it to her lover, the alchemist.

  The sorceress has heard all she needs to hear.

  Outside in the narrow lane she pauses and in the rush of people, she smells her own kin. There is a fox who walks beside his mistress. This sight stops her as it does many. His coat is lush, his eyes blue, and she is certain he is hers. The young fox smells her out, his hackles rise, his teeth bare. His mistress, her face hidden in the hood of a cloak stops and asks of the fox, what is it, who is there? And looks quickly about her. The door of Thomas Finglas’s house opens and fox and mistress disappear inside, out of October’s golden light.

  She could laugh the leaves off the trees. This is why she has not found Beau Thursby. She has been looking for him in breeches when all along he has been hiding in petticoats.

  LXI

  Some say actors are the invention of the Devil, others that they are an offering to idolatry, responsible for the blossoming of vanity, the route of all iniquity. They say that the player is a master of vice, the teacher of wantonness – and in that the sorceress has much time for him. At least there appears some honesty in the glass he holds up for the reflection of his audience, a chance to see a truth so often lost in man’s day-to-day manoeuvring. And among the minstrels and vagabonds is where she finds her actor, her beauty. A strolling player who takes the female role and so dressed in borrowed threads he has come here today to improvise his own drama.

  She is intrigued. He looks the part but can he act it? She will take her seat in the same small cellar where Randa was held prisoner. The place has been cleaned and is empty apart from a bed and some bunches of herbs hanging from the beams. Here she will listen to the play unfold and in it she may yet discover a way of bringing Lord Beaumont to perform the part for which he was born. Alas, the applause he will not live to hear for it will be at his hanging.

  She cares not whether he chooses to dress in women’s robes or like a man go forth, dagger in hand, bu
t in one act he will perform her curse and not even his quicksilver tongue can alter the role she has in mind for him. She listens and not a word is spilt that she does not hear, not an action taken that she does not know where on the stage it is performed. Yet still she cannot fathom Beau Thursby’s thoughts; they are as before all blank. She blames this fault on her handmaiden who gave birth to him. The handmaiden, knowing of the sorceress’s design, refused to have a puppet of her offspring made. But even had she bestowed on him the gift that the sorceress might not be privy to the machinations that whirl in his head, what of it? Unless by chance he can hear her and know what it is she thinks. That would be the cruellest of all blows.

  So here then be two players: John Butter, heavy of heart, Beau Thursby in the disguise of a fair – nay, a beautiful mistress. The sorceress waits to hear their lines. Will his voice be low and deep and in it lie the truth of his sex? Beau speaks. Far from it. It is melodic and does in no way vex the ear.

  ‘I am told, Master Butter,’ says he, ‘that you have healing hands. And the gift of talking to the faeries.’

  Neither does his voice make one doubt the sex of the character he is playing.

  ‘And that you alone in all of London know how to make gold from lead.’

  ‘You flatter me greatly, mistress, but such trickery I leave to cozeners.’

  John is wondering what this mysterious and pretty young woman has come for. A potion for the prevention of the plague? Possibly. The prevention of pregnancy? Very likely. A complaint of the flesh? It is hard to tell if her pallor be caused by nature or by an artful paintbox. This kind of work pays for the care of Thomas Finglas, and for Mary with her doleful eyes that follow him dog-like, wherever he goes. The income it provides he calls his steak and ale money.

  John Butter asks how he can be of service and offers the lady a chair.

  She declines to sit. The reason she is here, she says, is that she believes it is because of him, John Butter, that her mother and stepfather have taken her sister abroad and now she has no idea where they are.