Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The pain had already subsided. This was no equal to the far greater nightmare when Vespasian had nursed me in his tower by the river, gradually healing the results of persistent torture. But those marks still remained. I felt his eyes on me and on the thin silver scars that reminded us both of what had been done before. His eyes penetrated, so darkly intense, they also burned; more small flames amongst the sooty wounds. Then Vespasian paused. I opened my eyes. His gaze snapped to mine. I thought the pupils opened suddenly huge and black like tunnels. Inside the tunnels lay something so terrible that I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, comprehend.

  He lowered his eyes. “The burns are minor,” he said quite gently, “and these marks will fade quickly. I can take most of the pain away, and sleep will heal the rest. The charms you held protected you. But the danger does not end here. You must always keep my talisman close.” The carved serpent lay on the small table beside the bed from where the fat beeswax candle cast its light. But he was still watching me. “These other scars from the past,” and he lightly touched the longest which still ran deep in a smooth white worm from my navel up across my ribs, between my breasts and up to the right shoulder, “will fade more slowly. Some may remain forever.”

  His touch was light but I flinched. “The memory remains,” I said.

  He frowned. “You were not conscious,” he replied. “I placed you under trance. I doubt you remember what was actually done.”

  “Fragments,” I muttered. “Strange, horrible pieces like broken mosaic. One scrap of memory brings back another, like ripples on water.”

  He was again gazing so deeply into my eyes, I thought he was trying to read my mind. “Tell me,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” I whispered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He sighed. “In the future, if I’m still here and you have the courage, tell me your nightmares. I can wash them away as surely as I wash these burns. I can eliminate the last fragments of memory, if you wish.”

  I blinked. It sounded almost menacing. Tilda demanded, “You can influence my memory? Wash inside my mind?”

  He was rinsing out the cloth he was using, but looked up again as I spoke, and nodded. “Of course. Though only with your permission – and cooperation. Did you think my powers nothing more than bravado?”

  “I never understood them at all,” Tilda said. “I don’t know anything about alchemy or mysticism, the old gods or the new. It frightens me.”

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing me as I lay half propped up against the pillows. He’d removed his cotte and sword but still wore his travelling clothes. I was deeply conscious of my partial nakedness as he watched me and touched me. This wasn’t the first time, but that did very little to ease the inevitable discomfiture. “The church,” he said, as if recounting lessons to a child just as he once taught me how to steal or to cast an arrow straight up into the heart of a bird, “disguises God’s power behind dogma, elitism and rules. Rules limit individual thought. They offer the safety of mindless regulation. That hides what is beautiful as well as what is fearful. Safe boundaries attract the simple and repel the complex. Spirit is complex. So the church becomes a material power, with only the semblance of spirit. Instead, true religion is a limitless chasm. Why should you not be frightened?”

  “It’s what happened to Bernado, isn’t it?” I said. “He forgot spirit.”

  “He chose to grasp at spirit through materialism, instead of approaching materialism through spirit,” Vespasian said.

  Tilda slumped down, trying to tug the velvet bedcover up around her but it was taut where Vespasian sat and she couldn’t cover herself. He made no attempt to move and he continued to watch her. Because I knew he did nothing by mistake, I also knew he was keeping me vulnerable. Both the nagging pain and Vespasian’s immovable regard made me increasingly irritated. “So you could wash away my memories,” I said. “Out of kindness? Or to stop me realising just how involved you really were? Not just hide what they did, but hide how much you did too?”

  He raised his eyebrows as if my remarks were barely worth the answer. “If I am a man capable of inflicting torture,” he said, “why should I be a man who would deny it?”

  I felt weak and naked and exposed and increasingly hot. The flickering candle at my side reminded me of the convent flames. Now Vespasian sat so calmly with the cloths in the water at his feet, and I was scorched all over again by shame. I was deeply agitated. “Sometimes you are kind,” I said. He was prepared to explain some obscure theory of religion, but never the simple truth about himself. “You’ve protected me many, many times,” I persisted. “But the danger was always because of you in the first place. And the pain. And the fear. So tell me now, without riddles or codes, did you torture me? Did you help them with what they did? I know it was your house. I know you hurt me – that one particular way.” Tilda didn’t even want to say the word ‘rape’. She continued, “So what else did you do?” I glared at him, determined to force an answer. “And if you think all that pain’s just forgotten, then you’re mistaken. Waves of it come back, all the time, and remind me. So what happened there, for pity’s sake? And what part of it all was your part?”

  He did, as usual, the thing I least expected. He leaned forwards very slowly and kissed me gently on the forehead. I barely breathed. Never had he shown such affection and I lay still and stared back at him in total amazement. The brush of his lips had been dry and brief. Now he sat straight and gazed directly into my eyes. “I’ll tell you the truth, since that’s what you ask of me,” he said, “though you will mistake and misunderstand. The truth, when told in fragments, can be mightily misleading. One day, perhaps, if you’re still in my life and I in yours, I’ll explain what I cannot tell you now. It would take me days to speak of the truth behind the truth and even then, it would do you no good at all.”

  I took a deep breath. “Tell me anyway,” I said.

  So he smiled without any hint of malice and leaning forward, gently traced those strange dark scars still clearly visible on the lower inside curve of my left breast. His direct touch was so suddenly intimate that I shivered, though his fingers were warm. I knew what he touched although I was watching his eyes and not his hand. It was the design of the little dragon which lay deep and red immediately over my heart.

  “I’ve told you before,” and his words were now so soft that I had to strain to hear him and the small patter of the candle flame was louder. He said, “I am not seduced by pain or attracted to blood and the cruelty of one man to another. That is not my path. The violence done to you for pleasure was not done by me and I used a method to remove you from your own body while that pain was inflicted.”

  “But you didn’t stop them. Arthur and Malcolm and the others. You didn’t stop them.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I did not stop them. I was one amongst many and I am not all powerful. Indeed, I was also a partial prisoner, and could influence very little, only ensure your mind and spirit slept. Unable to give you physical release, instead I gave you unconsciousness. But then what I did to you myself was in many ways the worst of all.” He had been tracing the mark on my breast, as if he found it beautiful, and his fingers gently followed the outline of its wings and snout and claws. I had stared at it myself many times in revulsion. I knew exactly what he traced. Now he looked up and back into my eyes. His own were huge and black again, flooding out emotion. “I was no part of any other violence done to you, but I raped you, as you know,” he continued without pause, “and I did this.”

  “That?” Having challenged him to tell me the truth, now I was bitterly sorry, and hated what he’d said.

  He answered as softly as ever, as if what he said was an endearment instead of a violation. “I branded you with the sign of the fifth essence which is the inner fire,” he said. “And these are scars which will never fade. You will carry this for the rest of your life.” Then he stood up abruptly, and pulled the bedcover over me and up to my chin. I was still staring at him. “Rem
ember in future,” he said, now quite curt, “not to ask what you do not really wish to know.”

  I turned my head away. I couldn’t look at him. “It’s all so frightening,” whispered Tilda into the pillow. “You frighten me.”

  He stood at the side of the bed, the wavering candle light illuminating his face from below, seeming suddenly demonic. Then he leaned forwards and blew out the flame. The immediate darkness fell muffled and warm and I heard only the soft silken murmur of his voice as he moved away. “Good. You should be frightened,” he said. “And if you fear me, then that is best. Remember fear. It may protect you when a sword cannot.” The bed curtains rustled and I heard the door close softly behind him as he left me.

  I lay in the dark and shivered like a fool. I couldn’t calm my own body and it stuttered and boiled as if I was possessed with more than my own panic and confusion. I closed my eyes and placed my hand carefully over the mark of the dragon, still the one remaining place on my body where the unhealed scars jabbed more viciously than the other old wounds. No ordinary tattoo, it had been drawn in flame and for weeks it had blistered. It still stabbed like a knife in my heart.

  But he had kissed me. A father’s kiss perhaps, or a brother’s, but a kiss all the same, and deep with tenderness. The heat of his breath and the touch of his lips now seemed as etched to my forehead as the dragon he had branded on my breast.

  I’d always recognised his danger. I knew him as a ruthless man, capable of causing pain. Even before he said that he raped me, I’d been sure I had reason to fear him. I’d suspected him of every violation except those which he’d eventually admitted. Once I’d even thought him involved in the murder and torture of the sad dead women in Molly’s world and yet, absurdly, I had never expected what he finally told me.

  It must have been an hour or more that I curled in bed, unable to sleep or even to think. I could hear myself crying. Tilda was sobbing into the pillow but I was Molly and my misery was mixed with bitter anger.

  When I heard the door open again I expected Vespasian’s return. I turned away towards the wall and pulled the woollen cover up around my ears. But it wasn’t Vespasian.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” said Gerald, whispering into the shadows. “He ordered me not to. But he’s left now and I wanted so very much to talk to you. Are you asleep?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wiped my eyes on the pillow slip and tried to keep the sniff out of my voice.

  “Shall I go away?” he asked.

  I managed to sit up a little, peering out into the darkness. I could see his blonde dishevelled head bobbing uncertainly, worried that I’d tell him off perhaps, or worried about Vespasian’s anger when he found out. “Come and sit down,” I said. “Tell me what’s happened since I went away.”

  “Most of it’s beyond guessing,” he snorted, that old familiar derision. “The whole world’s gone mad. Vespasian – of course I ought to call him Lord Jasper de Vrais – he’s my step-father and that’s weird enough, but he won’t discuss things and doesn’t explain anything and I’ve been longing to talk to you.”

  Chapter Forty Four

  I dreamed. Once Gerald left me I thought there’d be no time for sleep and supposed my own disquiet wouldn’t allow it. But pain didn’t keep me awake and my dreams were vivid.

  It was the men I feared. Yet now asleep, I was surrounded by women. I didn’t see Vespasian, nor Arthur or his brood. My consciousness held no lingering trace of the things Gerald had told me. Instead I stood in a cold dark place all alone and voices whispered around my head like wind in clouds.

  I knew the woman’s voice I most hated. “You must cut the cards,” she said. “It is time to cut the pack again.”

  “I’m dreaming,” I answered her. “What happens in a dream cannot have validity. I will not play your game.”

  There were other women. One had a small, sweet voice like a loving aunt or a kindly neighbour. “Oh dear me,” she said, “dreaming doesn’t protect you at all, you know. You mustn’t think you understand all the rules.”

  “It’s the church that has rules,” I said, grasping at vague memories. “Only the church makes boundaries. Spirit is a chasm.”

  “Cut the cards,” said the creature which had killed my cousin and decimated her body and ruined my life. “You will see them the moment you cut the pack.”

  I clasped my hands tight, determined to resist. “Are you Satan?” I demanded. “Or are you,” grasping at memory again, “the veleda?”

  “You speak without understanding,” said a third voice. It was low and deep and practical, emotionless but still feminine and I thought I recognised Joanna, Arthur’s woman and the mother of Vespasian’s murdered wife. “You are ignorant and lack intelligence. You are not worthy of your own position.”

  “What is my position?” I whispered.

  “Dear child, don’t you even know?” sniggered the maidenly voice, all artifice and false sweetness. “Why, you’re the Holder of the Portal, my dear. The veleda has set you in her place, though it’s not through merit, I’m sure. You are certainly no alchemist.”

  “And nor are you,” I said, without knowing why or even what I was really saying. “Alchemy isn’t evil. You all practise evil. You’re necromancers, not alchemists. That thing who speaks of the tarot is without humanity and utterly evil.”

  And as if I had introduced her, the voice said, “For the third time I order you to cut the cards. This time there is no one to take your place for we have your interfering blasphemer involved elsewhere. We have you alone. You must do it yourself.”

  Each word felt like a blow. The compulsion to obey was overwhelming. I searched for the protection of the ouroboros but I was dreaming and in my dream I truly stood alone. But now I experienced a strange duplicity, for I stood holding tightly to my own wrists and yet I saw one hand reach out obediently to take the cards I could not see.

  As she had said, when my fingers touched, the pack appeared. Their backs were all fire with a whirling myriad of black and gold like a cross of thorns against an eclipsed sun. They spun all around me, intertwining with the voices. In the instant of touch, I had chosen one.

  It turned with a snap and flew towards me, growing huge and spitting fire. I thought it would smother me and tried to step away from it. I stumbled and fell backwards. Then the card landed small in my lap. The voices had gone and there was a silence without echo. I looked at the card that I did not know I had chosen. It had no number and it was the card of The Fool.

  I woke and sat up. A pale cold light was forcing through the unlined bed curtains.

  “It is the thirty-first of October and the day of the Samhain,” said Vespasian. “Tonight is All Hallow’s Eve and there is a great deal to be done.” He stood in front of me looking desperately tired. Beneath the magnetism of his eyes, the lower lids appeared bruised.

  “I dreamed,” I said. The dream fingers still clutched at me and I was shaking. “There were three women. I had to cut the cards. I didn’t want to but they made me. My arm went out even when I held on to it.”

  He sat quickly on the edge of my bed and looked searchingly at me. “Do you know,” he asked, which was not what I had hoped he would say, “which tarocchi card you picked?”

  I nodded. I had wanted him to tell me that dreams didn’t matter and whatever I’d seen was of no relevance at all. Instead I said, “The card of The Fool. Except they called the cards tarot and not – what you said.”

  “Tarot – tarocchi – it’s the same thing.” He seemed greatly relieved. “The card you chose was a good one. They may leave you in peace for the moment, before the final choice.”

  I stopped shaking. “I talked to Gerald before I slept,” I said. “Please don’t tell him off. When you tell me things, it frightens me. But he told me so much and he was able to explain so I actually understood. It helped a lot.”

  Vespasian smiled, heavy with the old malefic gleam. “That means,” he said, “that nothing he told you was of any use. Nor could it be. My dea
r step-son knows only facts and nothing of the truth behind them.”

  “I wanted facts,” I said. “That’s what helped.”

  “And you were soothed and distracted sufficiently by these pointless facts,” he said, “to spin you directly into the unprotected malevolence of Lilith’s dream.” I must suddenly have looked terrified. He smiled again and his own malice faded a little. “No matter,” he said. “The card you chose was Innocence.”

  “The Fool,” I sniffed. I couldn’t do Gerald’s snort. “But I’m not a fool. You may think it, and perhaps sometimes I am, but I’m really not stupid at all.”

  And then he flashed me such a smile of malefic spite that I shrank right back against my pillows. “Ah, but I do not think you foolish at all,” he said. “You hold as many secrets as I do, dear Tilda, though you cannot yet understand them fully yourself, and the danger you bring to us all may be guileless but it is a threat as great as any you suspect of me.” He lifted my chin with one finger, forcing me to look up at him. “Don’t quake when I speak to you. Remember your courage for you are going to need it.”

  “You frighten me,” I whispered.

  “So you keep informing me,” he said. “But that is not yet my concern. If we survive this night, perhaps I’ll attempt to overcome that in the future. In the meantime, know that the tarocchi Fool is not a foolish symbol, but represents the traveller through destiny and the soul open to experience through the innocence of hope. His hope transforms not only himself but the world he travels through. He is the butterfly and the dove, the white rose and spirit in purity.” His eyes were calm and hooded again. “Do you still think you chose a foolish card?”