The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

  ‘Of the two of them I would argue he has been less indulged by his mother. Though both, I agree, are of little consequence. But with such an alliance comes the surety of your place in this, my realm.’

  I bite my lip until it bleeds.

  ‘Please, majesty, reverse the charm.’

  The gavel of his voice is a command. ‘If I do this, you must let him go.’

  ‘I will. After one night.’

  ‘Let him go and marry one of my sons, whichever you wish.’

  I nod.

  LXXIX

  Should I be so easily persuaded? What sentence do I condemn myself to? I tremble at the thought, for I have held tight to one belief, one hope, one wish, one prayer: that deep inside me, concealed by feathers and fur, is a woman waiting to be freed. I am of woman born. Every month I bleed as my mother did, the pain of the menstrual moons pulls my womb apart, cramps me over, curls me up. When the time comes I wrap my arms and wings about me, blood runs down my fur-covered thighs. And yet for all Beau’s loving, I am still the beast.

  I long to tell Herkain that perhaps I, too, have been cursed into a different shape, that in the shadows of my mind I see endless possibilities which amount to nothing. But I do not for I know with all my heart that I would lay my life down to have Beau returned as he was before.

  Perhaps then he – man, not man-wolf – would make love to me and in the power of his seed transform Randa.

  He told me when we lay together, before the wolf devoured him, that he, Beau, knew this house from his dreams. I asked did he see me in it. No. Not me. Not Randa. Only once did he see a young woman with hair so red, with skin so white, so pale. She wore her gown open, revealing her nakedness, and in her hand she held a red feather with which she played, ‘. . . here,’ he said, and touched the secret part of me. I, laughing, told him I was jealous. What if I could be that woman and know in which realm I truly belong?

  These thoughts dance through my mind.

  Herkain draws with his staff two circles. I stand in one, he in the other.

  I am ashamed of my hopes that betray his trust, of my ignorance that has brought about my downfall and near killed my love.

  A blood moon rises, lazily pulling its heavy weight into the sky. Moonshine lights the chamber. All time, no time holds its breath.

  Banish such thoughts I say, harsh to myself, for this is my kingdom, this my king. He who took me in, cared for me, opened my wings. He who said, and still says, that my form speaks the truth of who I am and the rest is an illusion of my desire.

  And I want to say my mother was a woman, my father was a man. I remember the silvery mercury and rising from its waters, remember knowing all I could have been was stolen from me.

  I jump when when he speaks.

  ‘I forbid you to move from the circle for you will have no protection. If there is any interruption of this spell, Lord Beaumont will be for ever lost between the living and the dead.’

  My father’s prayer comes back to me. In the name of God be secret and in all your doings be still.

  The moon has mounted its midnight throne. The King of the Beasts, staff in hand, calls into the darkness, a low rumble, a purr, that owns the pulse of the Earth itself.

  ‘I command you, vengeful spirit – come back to me.’

  All is quiet. So long is the quiet that it trembles with the fear of being broken.

  Again Herkain speaks. ‘Come back, great wolf, lay down your burden and be at peace.’

  I hear something heavy downstairs; panting, steel claws upon the wood. He comes ever closer, with each step is a knock upon the stairs. My heart freezes. I know what it is he carries. Then he is before us in the darkness, amber eyes aflame. And with his jaws he drags the carcass.

  ‘Lay down your burden,’ says the King of the Beasts.

  The black wolf comes close, lets fall the carcass half in, half out of Herkain’s circle. I shiver when I see the dead meat of this man, a bloody sack that leaks his entrails. His eyes, wide open, stare at me, his face frozen in disbelief. Before me is the corpse of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.

  I remember the words the forest whispered, the words that were written in gold on a felled oak.

  A faerie boy

  will be born to you

  whose beauty will

  be your death.

  The black wolf circles, round and round. The doors close of their own accord and the wolf snarls, knowing he is trapped. Herkain calls to him again.

  ‘Spirit, you have your revenge on he who slew you. The King of the Beasts sets you free.’

  The wolf lunges at Herkain who does not flinch but raises his arm and sinks his powerful fist into the wolf’s belly and begins to pull pelt from skin. It comes away reluctantly and as the fur is gathered in Beau returns. He stands upright, naked, bedewed with blood.

  I fear this be his ghost and the man is gone. I fear that Beau be dead.

  The pelt lies twitching on the floor. Herkain brings down his staff and the chamber fills with acrid smoke that turns to flames in which flicker the image of the hunter and the wolf.

  Is it over? I do not know.

  Beau, his eyes closed, is as white, as still as frost. Herkain has not moved from the circle. He twists his staff the other way and places it on the body of Lord Rodermere, calls for Papio, tells him to return the corpse to the mortal world.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ says Herkain to me, ‘this young lord must be gone or his flesh will make a dish for our banquet.’

  I nod.

  ‘We understand each other well. I leave you, my lady, to undo what is left of the charm.’

  ‘How can I? I do not own your staff – I do not have the power of life and death.’

  ‘Do you not?’ he asks and goes to the doors.

  ‘But the charm, majesty . . .’

  Not a word he says but with a bow he makes his exit and I am here with a shell of a man who looks like Beau and has no movement that life could own. I go to him, my wings trailing behind me, a vista of loneliness before me. If he should not wake? What then, my heart, what then?

  I kiss Beau once to warm his lips. Twice, three times – and he opens his eyes. They are golden, they are his. Life pours back into my love.

  He takes me in his arms and whispers, ‘Tell me, will this for ever be so?’

  THE BEAUTY

  LXXX

  It is the eve of my nuptials and I should be asleep and content in my dreams. I am awake. The bells of a distant church chime midnight, the unforgiving hour when yesterday tips what is best forgotten into the new day.

  My betrothed is well educated and has all the attributes that any man might wish for. But I do not love her. She reminds me of a lapdog and is just as spoiled. Our marriage is to be an alliance of two families: the wealthy merchants, the Cassels, and the near-penniless family of Thursby, the Earls of Rodermere, possessors of the House of the Three Turrets and a forest. These stand in lieu of love.

  I pour a goblet of of claret, stare into the dying fire and remember Randa. It is not wise to think of the last night I spent with her. All that is past is best forgotten. Wine is not the friend of wisdom, being better acquainted with maudlin thoughts and self-pity.

  I wonder where you are, my little soul. After more than two years Randa still haunts me. The rose she gave me is dead but tonight it shines blood red in my memory. I tell myself that what happened in the darkness of her house was naught but a dream.

  I had woken with relief into the light of her, her kisses. I had not done it. I had not killed. It was the destruction of her chamber that concerned me.

  ‘Who did this?’ I asked.

  She kissed me again and said, ‘None of this was your fault. I am to blame. Forgive me.’

  I did not understand.

  ‘I should not have given you the gown, the fur-lined gown.’

  Slow was my mind. I could not make sense of what she was telling me and asked again if I had done the damage.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Not you. It
was not you.’

  When did I start lying to myself?

  All of my body was grazed. Papio brought up jugs of steaming water and I washed away the blood. I felt that I was born again into a new skin.

  ‘You will heal,’ she said. ‘It was where the fur was pulled away.’

  Fur? What fur? I remembered and I did not remember. The images came in steel-bright shafts of knowledge. Teeth and fangs sunk into another’s flesh. Not yours. Not mine. Then whose?

  I clung to her explanations as a drowning man does to a log.

  In the broken mirror I saw the scars, criss-cross, razor deep on my back.

  She bowed her magnificent head.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said, whispered kisses in my ear.

  I told her they were trophies of passion, that I was proud of every one of them. We both knew that was not what she was asking forgiveness for.

  From tomorrow, I tell myself, as I have every day since we parted, I will think of her no more. But for tonight let me remember, remember all that happened that evening.

  We dined on raw meat – I wanted nothing else. She told me that such longing would fade over time, as would the speed of my movements, the strength of my body. She was right. By degrees they have faded but not altogether gone. The one thing that does not fade – in my memory or in my heart – is Randa.

  ‘This is where I belong,’ I told her that last night.

  We made love and I hoped, as much as she hoped, that I might be transformed into a beast or she into a woman, that we would meet in the same shape. So certain was I, I told her a hundred times before we fell asleep, that tomorrow we would wake the same.

  We were just children, children wishing for the impossible.

  I woke before dawn to find the bed empty. She was standing at the window as she always was.

  ‘Come back to bed, my love,’ I said.

  She turned and said, ‘I am, I always will be this abominable accident, this foul thing.’

  ‘You are not, you are . . .’

  She interrupted me. ‘You cannot stay. You will be killed if you are not gone by the time the sun is up.’

  ‘Killed? But why?’

  She did not answer. Papio arrived. There was nothing generous in his step, in his gaze, and only menace in his eyes. He had brought my threadbare garments to put on me.

  ‘A horse is ready,’ he said. ‘You must hurry.’

  I went to Randa. Surely she would not allow me to be banished? We were each other’s shadow.

  She shook her feathers.

  ‘Go quickly and think no more of staying.’

  I have held onto this moment because I do not understand it and cannot let it go.

  Randa walked with me down the great staircase and out into a morning of uncertain mists. There stood a horse.

  We looked out of the gates to the road beyond; two strangers who had never discussed the depth of love or the weight of abandoned passion. My fox – her fox – trotted up the steps to Randa. I tried to speak, to plead for a life already gone. She turned her head away and pointed to a red rose below the first-floor window. Papio, sighing, climbed with great speed and brought it down to her.

  ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘I give it to you as I gave you my heart – neither stolen.’

  I mounted the horse, the gates opened and with such little effort I left a world of enchantment, one to which I have never returned and have no idea how to find.

  Yes, Beau – tell me again: when was it you first lied? For all that has followed has been thorns on your tongue. Tomorrow I am marrying a woman I will never love. The wine jug knows what the heart dare not admit.

  I love Randa.

  I love.

  LXXXI

  Only the absence of time on my return made me realise its unbearable weight upon the soul.

  I had been delivered with such speed to the House of the Three Turrets, from one world to another, that it had the effect of making me sick and giddy with the heaviness of travel and not knowing what hour I had arrived in, nor the day, nor the year. It was as if a part of me had been left behind. Now I know it was my heart.

  The mortal world I find myself in once more is pulled by such a violent current; its endless seasons that toss and turn men’s lives upon its tides of worry, of age, of sickness; of death the eternal fisherman that shares not his catch.

  Such were my melancholy thoughts that morning when I dismounted and heard in the tolling of church bells a judgment on my ungodly thoughts, their doleful tone a reprimand even to this spring day that held such abundance of life.

  I had no wish to be discovered or see my father again and with a weary step I took the forest road towards London. Quite what I would do when I arrived there or where I would stay I had not given much thought to. All the riches I had on me were one penny, and a blood-red rose whose value to me was priceless. I put my faith in the day being fair and the drum of my feet eventually bringing order to my scattered thoughts.

  Wood pigeons cooed over the sound of the bells and I thought it must be Sunday and if it was, it went some way to explaining the persistence of their reproachful chimes.

  I had not gone far when I came to the church among the trees – a gloomy building that once, before the Reformation, the monks had owned. It stood on the edge of the forest where the trees nibbled at its foundations. This was where Parson Pegwell gave his sermons, damning witches and all other such demons that he believed dwelled beyond its buttressed walls.

  A funeral was taking place and two gravediggers were lining the grave with black velvet. I wondered who it was who had died for the fabric alone made me think itmust be someone of noble blood. A little further off by the churchyard gates, villagers had gathered. Those that could afford it wore black and all made me think of rooks. At the door of the church two banners stood. They bore our family’s coat of arms.

  Was he dead? Was my father dead? I was once more confused and it occurred to me that I had perhaps been gone for far longer than I had thought. What felt like a matter of days could well have been years. Had he died of old age?

  I pulled my hat down and relied on my threadbare clothes, knowing that in them I would not be recognised. Both men were familiar to me for they had often worked for Master Goodwin. I asked who it was who was being buried.

  ‘Bugger off,’ said the first grave digger.

  ‘Whose funeral is it?’ I asked again.

  ‘Look, lad,’ said the second gravedigger who I knew to be called Master Tom, ‘take this bread and if you are wise and not a ghost I advise you to leave with haste.’

  ‘Is it some noble?’ I asked

  ‘Take this and leave, lad.’

  I took off my hat and both men stared and stared again.

  ‘Well,’ said Master Tom. ‘I will be buggered. By the Devil’s own horse, we thought he had ridden off with you moons ago. We thought you were long dead.’

  I put my hand out to the first gravedigger who took it.

  ‘It is warm,’ he said to Master Tom. They both bowed. ‘Forgive us, Lord Beaumont, we did not recognise you. You have changed mightily.’

  That thought had not occurred to me and I found it strangely reassuring to think I might have. If I had aged I felt no older.

  ‘It is your father who is dead, my lord. It is his grave we dig.’

  ‘When did Lord Rodermere die?’

  ‘Three days ago, my lord.’

  ‘Tell me how.’

  The men looked awkwardly at each other, looked awkwardly at their shovels and then back to me.

  I patted Tom on the back. It mattered not, for I knew what I was going to do and I cared little for the consequences. If my father is dead so is the curse.

  The church was full of mourners and the voice of Parson Pegwell was as unforgiving as it always had been, dogmatic in its hypocrisy.

  ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I shall rise out of the earth in the last day, and shall be covered again with my skin, and shall see God in my flesh.’

>   I pushed myself forward, person by person, until I stood in the middle of the nave. In the pews either side of the coffin sat my father’s kinsmen and other landlords, all dressed in black gowns, sprigs of rosemary in their hats. The only face I recognised was that of Sir Percival Hayes. The rest – as was the audience to me when on stage – was a blur.

  The parson was standing at the altar. At the sight of me he became a mute gargoyle and it was left to Sir Percival Hayes to take charge of this awkward situation. He rose from the pew.

  The congregation fell into mutterings. I went to where my father’s coffin rested, it too draped in black velvet.

  ‘Open it,’ I commanded. ‘I wish to see my father.’

  I could tell by the expression on Sir Percival’s face that he knew not if he was dealing with a ghost or a mad man.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, raising his hand for silence. ‘My lord, it is not . . .’

  Before he could say another word, I interrupted him.

  ‘As you well know, Sir Percival, I was born with a curse on my head. If the Earl of Rodermere is dead then I am free. Open it.’

  Sir Percival lowered his voice.

  ‘My lord, this is most unseemly. Is it not enough that you have my word on the matter?’

  ‘No, Sir Percival. I must see for myself that there is a body to bury.’

  I was not to be moved by argument nor by force. Sir Percival nodded to two attendants who took the velvet cloth from the coffin and the nails from the lid. By the time they had opened it the congregation was standing in hope of seeing the corpse.

  Parson Pegwell went white at what was before him.

  It was not so much a body more a butchered carcass that had been with great haste and little ceremony tipped into the coffin. The most recognisable part of my father was his face: frozen in terror, his eyes hanging from their sockets, his mouth open in a scream. I took my only penny and placed it there.

  ‘He will be needing this when he meets St Peter at the pearly gates,’ I said, ‘for such a tyrant must surely buy his way in. One can only pray that God has a greater heart for forgiveness than man.’