by Wray Delaney
She watches them, knowing how easily they will bend to her will. Such merriment does this dance afford her. Master Shakeshaft could be sitting on a boat, he could be sitting on a bench for all the attention he gives the horse and the caravan. It is only with a little help from good fortune that he misses a collision with a much grander carriage that speeds towards them.
The carriage driver stops just in time, swears and shouts at Master Shakeshaft.
A head emerges from the window and the sorceress sees it belongs to Master Gilbert Goodwin. He looks to be a prosperous merchant indeed. She would much like to follow him but she must direct these two buffoons to do her bidding.
XCII
Why now do memories churn the silt of long-forgotten things? Weddings, in their taut grimness of promises that no man or woman can keep, have disturbed my mind. I have lived so long and this is my one regret: that I did not see the infant for what she was and love her for that alone. Did these hands give her to Herkain? Did these feet walk away from her? Did these eyes never wish to see her again, the only mortal child I have ever borne? What madness was in me?
She leaves the players and their caravan and returns with haste to the clearing where stands the Widow Bott’s cottage. Pleased is she to find Beau’s horse tied up, the fox scratching at the cottage door while Beau forces it open. Seeing nothing inside, he goes out and calls for the fox. But the creature does not move.
Now she is uneasy for Beau looks set to go back in again and she fears he might stumble across Randa’s invisible body. She calls the fox to her. It is a call no animal can resist and he runs towards the sound, towards her.
Beau comes out of the cottage again and mounts his horse. The fox, his mind fogged, trots back to his master.
She waits to make sure that neither returns then removes the hem of her gown from the beast’s talon and binds her, folding her wings tight to her body. At the back of the tumbledown cottage is a rickety handcart, perfect for her purpose. She lifts Randa on to it. Randa wakes and in the moment before the sorceress blows the sleeping draught in them, again she sees something in the glint of Randa’s green eyes and is shocked by her own sentimentality. The past clouds the present, she tells herself, and brings with it these maudlin thoughts. She shakes them from her head and sets off for the queen’s highway. Before she reaches it she takes the shape of a simple old widow going to market.
Still it rains, the road is no more than a midden of mud. The cart with its heavy burden sticks firm into the earth. And there in the middle of the road, cart and she wait.
She hears them coming round the corner, Master Shakeshaft singing a drunken song. His companion seems to be no more sober.
‘The thing is, Crumb,’ says Master Shakeshaft, ‘the thing is, drink keeps the rain from the soul. You might feel it on the skin but it does not sink in. Whereas if we were both sober we would know how truly wet we are.’
‘Wise words,’ says Master Crumb. ‘And another little drop from that flagon would do me no harm. It is indeed a charm against the weather.’
‘A miracle, that is what we need, my old friend. A miracle.’
Slowly they come into view. The horse, being sober, senses the way to London without the help of its masters. And it is the horse that comes to a halt at the sight of her.
‘What is it, Daisy?’ says Master Crumb.
‘Daisy?’ says Master Shakeshaft.
‘Yes. It has been a mare since the day we bought it.’
‘Well, I never knew that. A mare indeed . . . called Daisy . . .’
He starts to laugh and only then does it occur to him that they are not moving. Noticing her at last, he realises why.
‘Out of the way, old woman, let us pass,’ says Ben Shakeshaft. His words are slurred.
The sorceress has been waiting for them long enough and has rehearsed her part well. As if every bone in her body aches she limps to their caravan, looks up at the two of them and then at the sign painted on the side of the caravan.
‘Be you actors?’ she says.
‘Yes,’ they say together.
‘Be you well-known actors?’
Master Shakeshaft puffs himself up, all turkey feathers.
‘You might say we are very well known,’ he says.
‘Though not for the right reasons,’ Master Crumb mutters.
‘If you would not mind, mistress, kindly move your handcart out of our way,’ says Master Shakeshaft.
‘I cannot, sir. It is stuck in the mud. Be you going to London?’
‘Yes,’ says Master Shakeshaft, ‘and we are in a great hurry.’
‘I be going there to sell that,’ she says and points to the handcart which is tilted in such a manner that the beast can be seen. The jagged edges of her folded wings protrude from the bindings.
‘By the Devil, what is that?’ says Master Crumb. ‘Is it beast or man? Alive or dead?’
‘Alive,’ she says. ‘It sleeps. It be a beast that my son caught in one of his traps. We cannot keep it for it is too big. We cannot eat it for it is too human. But I said to my son, who is gormless and a burden, that I will take the beast to London and sell it. I have been told I could get three pieces of silver for such a creature at the bear pit. And this be better than any bear, worth more than any bear.’
‘It resembles a very large, flightless bird,’ says Master Crumb.
‘Take a look, sirs,’ she says, ‘if you wish.’
Cautiously and none too soberly both actors climb down and approach the handcart, Ben Shakeshaft drawing his sword. He quickly steps back.
‘That . . . that . . . that,’ he cannot finish what he is saying but takes another drink from the flagon and pulls Master Crumb away.
But Master Crumb brushes him aside and less frightened than his friend goes closer. He returns to his trembling companion and the sorceress hears their whispered words.
‘That,’ says Ben Shakeshaft, ‘is the same monster I saw in the house, the same monster that ate Beau Sorrel. I swear to you, it is.’
‘You are ridiculous, Ben,’ says Master Crumb. ‘Look at the thing – it is very peaceful. And anyway, Beau Sorrel was not eaten.’ And being a little less drunk than Master Shakeshaft he says, ‘Old woman, would you consider selling the beast to us?’
‘It depends,’ she says. ‘It depends on you having three pieces of silver.’
Master Crumb takes from Master Shakeshaft’s doublet the purse that Sir Percival gave him.
‘What are you doing, Crumb?’ says Ben Shakeshaft.
‘Buying an attraction that will make us our fortune.’
‘No, Crumb, no! Leave it be. Remember, it murdered Beau Sorrel.’
‘How many times must I tell you,’ says Master Crumb, ‘Beau Sorrel lives.’
‘No, no. It murdered and ate him. Once it wakes it is a terrifying thing.’
‘You were frightened of that creature?’
‘When it was awake. You never saw it when it was awake.’
‘Think, Ben,’ says Master Crumb. ‘We could do the play – one performance only – with a real beast. Think of the audience we could attract. Think how much we could charge.’
‘Three pieces of silver,’ says the sorceress, ‘and I will put in the sleeping draught and the draught you need to wake it by. But only use it once.’
‘It is the Devil’s own,’ says Master Shakeshaft.
‘And with the Devil’s luck it could keep you out of the debtors’ prison,’ says Master Crumb.
The sorceress is much amused as they to-and-fro, coming down on one side of the argument and then the other. In order to hurry the conclusion she pulls the handcart wheels free from the mud and slowly starts to walk away.
‘Wait, wait,’ they both shout.
‘Not so hasty, mistress,’ says Master Crumb. ‘You have a deal. Here – two pieces of silver.’
‘No, sir,’ she says. ‘Three pieces of silver and I will give you the draughts you need to make it sleep and to wake it.’
Relucta
ntly they hand over the silver and she helps them carry Randa to the cart. The sorceress dusts her hands as they go on their way. Her part is done and she will not think of Randa again.
THE BEAUTY
XCIII
Three days I have been in the forest searching for Randa, growing more desperate with every hour that passes. All paths lead me back to the Widow Bott’s cottage. I sit on the doorstep and from afar watch my fox sniffing the ground.
Whatever elfin charm I was born with is gone. I possess no more magic than any other man and perhaps less for I have made a shambles of my wedding and no doubt brought down the wrath of the Cassells on the head of my blameless mother. I refuse to think how furious Sir Percival Hayes is.
‘Do you love Mistress Marian?’ Clare had asked me the day before the wedding.
‘Do you, who know me so well, need to ask me that?’ I said.
We had been walking in the grounds of the House of the Three Turrets, wondering how such ancient oaks could have moved nearer to the house. We decided that in the night they must be pulled by their roots ever closer, waiting to reclaim the place that had robbed them of so many of their companions.
‘Do you miss your beauty?’
I, trying to make light of the question said, ‘What, mistress, are you suggesting that I am no longer handsome?’
Her face was serious. ‘No, Brother,’ she said. ‘It was a strange enchantment and now you look yourself. Surely that is better?’
‘I do not know,’ I replied, which was the honest truth. ‘Since first I looked in a glass I wanted it to be gone. And now that it is, I seem to have lost the magic that came with the curse, for without it I cannot . . . I cannot find her.’
‘Who is it that you cannot find?’
‘Randa.’
‘John has spoken of her,’ she said carefully. ‘She is the daughter of Thomas Finglas. You denied all knowledge of her.’ Clare was silent for some time, then said, ‘She is half-beast, half-woman, is she not?’
‘You think that is a bar to love?’
‘Is it?’
‘There is in her a woman trapped but I know not how to free her. You think me a misguided fool. Her father treated her abysmally, kept her chained in the cellar. He told her she had no soul.’
‘Do you not think,’ said Clare, ‘that all men are frightened of what they cannot understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And fear turns to harm, to neglect, to murder.’
We walked on for a while in silence.
‘My face,’ my sister said, ‘is the opposite of yours. It never held any magic, no mirror delighted in my image. Only you, our mother and Master Goodwin truly knew who I was and loved me. I once asked John if he could take away my blemishes and make my face as other women’s are, would he do it. He shook his head and said that the marks are what made me and shaped me into the woman he fell in love with.’
‘And he spoke the truth,’ I said.
‘I did not believe him, no more than I believed you when you told me the same. Then I gave birth to our son and something happened when he looked up at my face. He smiled and he smiles still. And I know now that love has transformed me.’
‘I thought by loving Randa I could transform her.’
Clare took my hand. ‘There is hope,’ she said. ‘It is an equation.’
I laughed. ‘What equation, Mistress Butter?’
‘It is to do with alchemy; the power of the opposites.’
‘Tomorrow, I marry another.’
‘You cannot sacrifice yourself for this house, to hold fast to the estate of a violent man. Look, the trees already have begun to reclaim what is theirs. Beau, do not do this.’
The rooks called out in a black chorus of agreement.
The fox returns and paws at the door. I push it open and with frantic energy he goes in and comes out, again and again. He has a scent. I remount my horse and follow the fox out of the clearing through the forest to the highway. Without stopping he turns towards London. Better, I say, that we go this way for the other leads to the House of the Three Turrets where a hangman’s noose of debts and guilt awaits me. I am a madman in search of the unobtainable. What fools we men are to think that by one wish we can put right what fate has refused us. One stone lifted is not enough to make a mountain fall.
And so it is that I go to London and take rooms at the Unicorn, by the alchemist’s house. I have enough money on me for the innkeeper to tolerate my companion. The fox is confounded by the futility of his search, the scent having disappeared among so many others on the road.
What kind of figure I cut I do not care as I go to Thomas Finglas’s house. The river this morning is no nosegay; it stinks, a bitter, metallic smell mingled with shit. It is a smell I completely forget when I am not in London and remember all too well when I return.
Heartache makes me careless of other people’s clocks. I ring the bell of the alchemist’s house and am surprised to find the door opened by Master Finglas himself. I say something to him – after all, you must say something when a door opens – and he takes me down the passage to a chamber I did not see before. It smells of beeswax and lavender and in the middle is a round table laid with their midday meal. Beyond, the door to the garden is open and the room is filled with sunshine. Mistress Finglas rises when she sees me.
I have so long thought about this meeting but I have forgotten the rigmarole that is necessary before I can say why I am here. I bow and apologise profusely for interrupting them at their meal. I say I will come back later if it is more convenient. I speak with such little enthusiasm that it must sound as if the very words exhaust me.
Mistress Finglas asks me to be seated. She looks so completely different from the wild woman who as a child I loved. She has gathered all the witchiness of herself and made it respectable. She pours me a goblet of wine and brings a plate.
‘Lord Rodermere,’ she says as she cuts slices of meat, ‘I think you have not slept for five days.’
I nod and feed the meat to my fox.
I catch the look that husband and wife exchange. They must have learned about my wedding. I am so tired that it feels as if all of it happened to another person a long time ago.
‘We heard, my lord,’ says Master Finglas, ‘that you were to be married.’
‘Then you may also know that I walked from my wedding. Bad news has the ability to travel faster than good.’ I drain the goblet of wine and say, ‘Master Finglas, I lied when I told you I did not know your daughter.’ He looks uncomfortable at the mention of her. ‘I must ask you: do you know where she is now?’ He says nothing and I am certain that he is weighing my words, unsure if I am genuine. To prove that I am, I say, ‘I love Randa. And I have lost her.’
This statement is greeted by bewilderment on Master Finglas’s part and recognition of its truth on the part of his wife. I can see that the alchemist thinks perhaps I have lost my mind and the declaration is a manifestation of my lunacy.
But Mistress Finglas says, ‘Speak, Thomas. Tell Lord Rodermere the truth. Tell him.’
XCIV
I listen to Master Finglas’s confession. He is full of remorse and feels the sludge of guilt for his treatment of Randa. He assures me he tried to contain the beast in her – but what could he do, he asks, especially after she had killed? She being only a child and not a child. If she had been discovered they both would have hanged. Even though he is nearer the grave than the cradle, his wife urges him on as if he was a child admitting to having pulled wings off butterflies.
I am no minister to give him absolution.
His memory has softened the image of his daughter, made her more human. He looks exhausted when he tells me that Master Cassell and his wife had once come to this house and asked to see her, the half-beast, half-child. He did not allow it. But what choice had he, what choice had he but to lock her away from prying eyes?
He touches his face.
‘I was an arrogant fool as a young man. I believed myself to be London’s greatest alche
mist. It amuses me now for the truth is, as my dear wife says, that I lacked wisdom. And knowledge without wisdom is useless. I would have died if it was not for this kind woman. I did not believe I deserved saving. She mended me, she healed my face, my heart – but not my conscience.
‘Bess. You will want to know about Randa’s mother. Bess could neither read nor write yet it was she who predicted the date of your father’s return. She knew the very hour – and the consequences. My Bess was born to magic, its deep secrets ran in her blood, she needed no books. She was my philosopher’s stone and I, puffed up with conceit, refused to acknowledge it.’
Thomas Finglas looks embarrassed by his outpouring of feelings. His wife leans across to him and kisses him gently.
‘All is well, Thomas,’ she says. ‘All is well.’
She takes him up to their chamber and I help myself to more wine, while I wait for her return.
When she comes down, Mistress Finglas takes a clay pipe from a pot near the chimney and sits at the table and lights it.
‘He is a daft old bugger,’ she says. ‘It was fear made him cruel. But without his protection I would not be here today. No, I would not. When I left the forest this was the only address I knew in the whole of London. Thomas could have thrown me out to die on the streets, as many do. Instead he hid me in the cellar, where once he had kept Randa. But that be not why you come, Lord Rodermere. You be not here to hear the confessions of my husband.’
‘No, mistress.’ I got to my feet, impatient to continue my search. ‘As I told you, I am looking for Randa.’
‘Sit by me, my lord,’ she says, ‘and listen. I will tell you what your ears have not heard before. It was in the years after your father’s disappearance, when I lived in the forest, that Bess came to me. She was with child.’
At this I sit.
‘She was early in her pregnancy and I wondered if she had come, as many do, in need of one of my remedies to rid her of such an inconvenience. But she had not. She asked me a strange question. Be the child human or be it a beast? I pretended not to understand. Old widow, tell me the truth, she said. I thought the answer would determine whether or not she kept the infant and told her what my hands had seen, what my heart knew, what witchcraft had taught me. I told her that her babe possessed the power of both human and beast but I knew not the form the child would take, only that it would be a girl. She thanked me and there was such a smile upon her face. She begged me on no account to tell the sorceress. I knew who she spoke of, as do you, Lord Rodermere. But Bess said her name, such a powerful name, one best not spoken. Bess said it out loud. She said . . .’ Mistress Finglas leans close and whispers a name unknown to me. ‘And I felt that word as a tempest that had blown into my cottage, and I waited and held my breath, wondering if the sorceress would appear.’