Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Even though you picked a tarot destiny for me that denied Lilith both my body and my soul, she decided my past still entitled her claim. I’d paid the price demanded of me at the time, fully understanding, and accepting it. I paid with my ruin and my solitude. It is many years now since I learned to judge, and chose to take the path away from amorality. But I’m still capable, it seems, of cruelty in pursuit of power. Lilith knew this and demanded the forfeit. Perhaps her claim was just.”

  “Richard says it wasn’t,” I insisted.

  “But,” smiled Vespasian, “with the same power learned from the veleda and used in the past, it was I who summoned Richard.”

  I suppose I gasped. “The message – from Him – was ordered by you?”

  “Of course,” he said, quite without humility. “Designed and franked. But remember this; no one speaks in God’s name without His sanction. Had He denied me and repudiated my message, I would not have survived the attempt. I would have become Lilith’s property with more surety than you can possibly imagine.”

  I could not in any manner appreciate or consider such a danger. “But you took that risk? I cannot even think about that.”

  “There’s no need to think about it,” Vespasian told me, sardonic again. “I took that risk. It’s done.” I was still warm in his embrace. He smiled down at me and brushed the tickle of fur from my chin. “As for the rest, I’ll not tell you everything Lilith did. Her altar’s stained with your blood, but that will fade, as all her gluttony does in Time. When the trance I put you in begins to loosen further, some memory may return, but most will not. I will tell you only that first she needed to dominate whatever power you had as the veleda’s gatekeeper. As a substitute for divinity and subjugated to humanity, she thought she could eat you alive. She was wrong about two things.”

  “She underestimated you,” I said.

  “Indeed,” he agreed. “Us both. Her conceit is monstrous. Evil always underestimates its enemy. She had not appreciated what power I’d gained after leaving her priesthood, and she did not realise how well I had protected you.”

  “Oh,” I managed to smile. “The ouroboros?”

  He shook his head and the cold black silk of his hair brushed across my burning forehead. “She took that from you and burned it. It was a small thing, a talisman against lesser powers than hers, and had already served its purpose. But then she saw and touched the dragon.”

  The pain was returning rapidly. I was losing coherence as my focus wandered. Now past the sharp shadows of Vespasian’s cheekbones, the trees had reassembled. Again I saw my chestnut tree swinging its striped hammock, entwined with the creeping fingers of wisteria from my eaves. When we’d first arrived in Vespasian’s grove, my chestnut had worn her green summer petticoats. Now she blushed sweet russet and gold. Behind the willow I heard the faint lustre of running water and knew the cold pool and her jumping fish had also returned. I saw the huge girth of the yew tree, quite healed and whole and bristling growth, gnarled branches spread and a blackbird calling between his arms.

  Reality, yet so unreal. The confusion was in my head. I could not remember a dragon, though my memory was filled with flame and dragon’s breath. “There isn’t any dragon,” I said, pitifully vague. “Just bird song.”

  Vespasian’s black eyes were pouring over me. “The dragon I gave you,” he whispered. “Another journey into pain, my child. But you’ve listened enough. It is time to sleep and heal, although I shall not remove you entirely. No burning rooms in your mind, just the soft music of the new day.”

  Chapter Fifty Four

  At first it seemed the gift of Vespasian’s sleep, instead of taking me forward into hope and peace, took me backwards into memory. I remembered vestiges of what I had asked to know, and no longer wished to.

  I had been placed on the altar without ropes or chains but I could not move. Around me I smelled an eternity of old bloodshed in misery and terrible pain and the reek of it suffocated me. My fingers touched dried clotting, all that remained of many thousand years and many thousand souls, all lost to Lilith.

  I surrendered to lethargy and the acceptance of inevitability. It was such a relief, not to struggle anymore. I wondered what Hell would be like.

  I heard myself scream even as Vespasian’s trance transported me from nightmare into fantasy. But now I also saw a little of what Lilith had done to make me scream.

  I turned away from the desecration of my body and watched Vespasian. He stood at the foot of the altar. He was trapped in consciousness, eyes wide and mind aware, but unable to move, or blink, or speak. I believe it was my mother’s spell, as she had previously held me. He was weeping. His wounds continued to bleed but it was not for himself that he wept. I had never imagined him so vulnerable. Now I saw my sacrificial ruin but felt myself blessed, because Vespasian wept for me.

  Quickly my dream swept me into sweet rose flavoured fields, cherry blossom and sunbeams. The horror in the glade faded. Happily, I let go, when something pulled me back. A howling, yowling, awesome screaming, all beast and nothing of humanity, and as the altar cracked beneath me, so Lilith cracked, a wound she’d not suffered for an aeon. I was still there, writhing in pain, but she sprang away. Her claws, deep in my blood, had touched the brand of the dragon, the tattoo on my breast above my heart, mark of the fifth essence and symbol of the inner sacred fire. The metamorphosis of dedication to the Ultimate Purity had entered into her own being and, as she had done to others, it had flayed her hand.

  Flung back from the altar, her fingers in flying streamers of flesh, Lilith’s spine snapped through its centre. At that moment Vespasian slipped free. He called on salvation and summoned Richard. And, sanctioned by Paradise, Richard had come. It was Lilith’s final failure. With a screech of abject fury, she had disappeared and taken the veleda with her.

  I drifted through star milk. The night was deliciously empowering. It smelled like chocolate and vanilla, kisses and warm summer afternoons under the vines with the sun turning the grapes dark purple, pale polished with a white sugary blush. I could smell the tiny sweet jasmine flowers and clustered orange blossom, huge cream gardenias slowly opening each petal, and black velvet roses, dew fresh. I could smell soft puffed downy pillows and crisp white cotton sheets and someone in the bed beside me who breathed my name and searched gently for me with his wish filled hands.

  Then as I melted into dreamlessness, Vespasian’s gift of sleep healed my memory and my mind.

  Vespasian brought me back again. His voice cut through the soft pink shadows and I opened my eyes. “It’s time to go,” he said. “The glade is falling around us and the world is creeping back.”

  I was on the ground, still wrapped tight in his cloak, with his supporting hand behind my head. My chestnut tree had gone and so had the yew. A march of dark spruce lined their points between me and the sky, returning reality. It was quite light though I felt little warmth from the sun. Vespasian was kneeling beside me, watching me intently, reading my eyes, deciding whether I was stronger, or failing. Then I realised beneath the fur and velvet swathes of his cloak, I was now dressed. I wondered what I was clothed in and decided I could feel Vespasian’s own woollen shirt, still warm from his body, though ripped where he’d been wounded. Above this I was covered by the long tunic he’d stolen for me before Samhain. I was wearing loosely laced hose but they were not my own gartered stockings, being too long and too thick and the feet, instead of being tucked into shoes, were around my ankles in creases.

  “Am I,” I peeped up at him, “wearing your clothes?”

  The tucked dimples of his smile were barely controlled. “The fit is hardly a perfect one,” he said, “but your own were destroyed. We face a long journey. I’ve the power to increase a horse’s stamina but not indefinitely, so I must change horses twice at least. I’ve small inclination to carry a naked woman through the countryside or into the posting taverns.” He’d started to smile after all. “Something I’ve not tried before, but I imagine it might confuse the
innkeepers.” He flicked my damp hair back from my face, approving my appearance perhaps. “I had no wish to embarrass you with the clothes of our dead enemies,” he murmured, “blood stained and foul with their disgrace. So I gave you mine. Thick with my blood of course, and sweat, and the stains of battle. But I had no others to offer you.”

  So the dead had returned. Now that the sacred grove had paled into mundane reality, the bodies remanifested, rotting flesh in undug graves, strewn for the wolves and the ravens.

  “So you mean to travel naked yourself?”

  “I think you will notice,” he said and the smile hovered, “that I am dressed, though not, I admit, very attractively. I’ve taken what I needed from the slain, those of my size. I can change once we reach my own home.”

  “Which home? London? The forest?” I hoped it would be the forest.

  He shook his head. “I’m taking you to my hunting lodge in the west country, part of the de Vrais estates,” he said, “where you have never been. It is many years since I lived there myself. The land was confiscated by the crown but the people remember me and my return is already prepared. We will stay there while I reclaim what’s mine. Now that Arthur is dead, I shall discredit his accusations easily enough.”

  I could hear horses snorting and looked up. Gerald had come from between the trees, leading the black and grey hunters by their bridles, the two horses which had brought us to the glade. I had forgotten about them. “I never saw them, during the fighting,” I said.

  “You would not have,” said Vespasian. “They were excluded. I had them tethered beyond the circle of magic. Now, are you ready, my child?”

  I had no idea. “Yes,” I said, “I can ride.”

  “Since you did not know how to ride before,” he said, “it’s highly unlikely that you can do so now. I was asking merely if you have the strength to be lifted, and to travel. I shall take you up before me.”

  Gerald, smiling at me with what he thought was sympathy and encouragement but which looked more like boyish excitement, mounted the grey. Vespasian carried me and set me carefully on the tall stallion’s saddle where I clung, trying to ignore the dizziness and nausea. Vespasian quickly mounted behind me and took the reins. I leaned back against him, calming both stomach and head. The horse tossed his mane, snorting and rolling his eyes as Vespasian tightened his thighs and turning, headed for open ground. Then the trees were behind us and the grove was just a tiny blur in the distance, a small mistake in the passage of time.

  We went slowly at first, walking steadily through open woodland, careful of rabbit warrens and ditches and the sudden startled flush of pheasants. It was well past midday and the sun was wintry and low without heat. I tried to close my eyes but the steady jolt of the horse kept me alert. Then, with a blast of fresh air in my face and Vespasian’s words in my ears, “Hold on. Now we must make more speed,” the whole horizon opened up and the horses sprang directly from walk to Canterbury canter and from canter suddenly into a wild, free gallop.

  I heard the vibrating thud of Gerald’s mare behind me and the wild beat of the horse I rode, deliciously exhilarating though the cold wind stung my eyes. I extricated one tentative arm and tugged Vespasian’s hood over my head, warm silken fur on my cheek. The passing miles became as much an incantation as the spells in the grove. At one time, miles turning into hours and time into space, I thought I slept. Vespasian’s voice had murmured through my thoughts like a song of enchantment and carried me away into long lost lands. But I returned again to pain and bilious wakefulness.

  It had been autumn when I entered the sacred nemeton, the last day of October, Samhain and Lilith’s nightmare. Now I became aware of winter. The passage of the seasons had been swallowed and thrown aside. I saw the muddied slick of old snow in the shallow gullies and the horse’s hooves splashed through slush, sleet and briar before heaving up again to ice hard ground and the glower of a pasty, rain heavy sky.

  Then we were under trees once more, a web of bare branches in an endless spindly flurry above my head, a waving delirium, an eternity of passing cloud, blurred by speed. Either side of us were fields all grey in the deepening twilight, their ploughed furrows like dark drains, slick with collected water and flecked with white, drenched from recent rain and hail and snow. A partridge, frightened from its roadside cover, dashed suddenly across our path and another rose up, wings struggling for height, and flew off into the increasing shadows.

  Beyond the hillocks and the bushes and the stretched farmlands, a village snuggled warm in its hollow, safe sheltered from the wind. I saw a cosy neighbourliness of thatched roofs and first candle flicker behind the parchment windows, all clustered around their church spire and faith in a safe God.

  We slowed to a tired trot and clattered into the village as the sun dropped a final slanting light and the crescent moon came up behind the clouds. It waited to rain until we were under the tavern’s porch and then tipped down with an echo of thunder and sleet. Vespasian dismounted and lifted me down, signalling to Gerald to support me. I could barely stand, but I thought Gerald fairly unsteady too. It had been a long, long time in the saddle. The ostler came to take the steaming horses while Vespasian spoke to the innkeeper. Then we were led directly inside to a backroom with a big curtained bed, two pallets and a blazing fire on the central hearth. Vespasian took three candles, lit them from the fire, and replaced them in their sconces. Then he took me from Gerald’s guiding arm and helped me at once to the bed.

  I sat propped against the pillows which he wedged behind me. I couldn’t lie flat or the nausea pitched in. I heard the steady strum of the rain pelting outside and then the draught whistled down the chimney hole and all the smoke from the fire gusted back on us. I coughed, eyes stinging. I felt wretched and rising bile made me heave. Vespasian came instantly to my side, his hand to my forehead. He’d brought a bowl. I was violently sick. He leaned over me as I retched, carefully holding my hair back from my face. Then he turned to Gerald and spoke quietly. “Fetch water and the best hypocras. Afterwards go to the hall and order food for yourself. I know you’re tired, but you have to eat and I need to be alone with Tilda for a while. When you can’t keep your eyes open, you may come back and sleep on the far pallet. I’ll wake you early tomorrow morning.”

  Vespasian turned back to me. I was shivering uncontrollably though I saw the fire, high scarlet flames and felt the heat. The sour stench of vomit invaded the bed. “You’ve ruined my good shirt,” he said with an unexpected grin. I felt ridiculously comforted.

  Gerald came bustling back with a pitcher of aromatic spiced wine, a bowl and a heap of linen strips. Behind him a small grubby boy shuffled and staggered with two buckets of warm water. The child peeped at me with curiosity but dared not speak. Vespasian dismissed him with a nod. Gerald crouched beside the fire, watching me. “You’re not going to die, are you?” he asked encouragingly.

  “She is not,” said Vespasian. “But she’s going to be extremely sick for another hour at least, and no doubt she’d prefer you not to be her audience. There’s nothing more you can do to help.” He looked back at me briefly with the remains of the smile. “Probably she’d prefer I wasn’t part of the audience either, but she hasn’t the strength to throw me out and I’ve no intention of leaving.”

  “Then I’ll go and eat,” said Gerald. “There’s roast pig, piping hot, and cabbage boiled in milk. It smells amazing. Well, you haven’t fed us the whole day, have you! Shall I bring some for you and Tilda?”

  Vespasian shook his head and the sheen of his black hair reflected scarlet flames from the fire. “She’d never keep it down,” he said, “and I’m not interested in food as yet. You may eat enough for all of us. Clearly you’ve forgotten the discipline of hard living and fighting on an empty stomach. Once you get full royal recognition and your title back, you’ll have to start your knight’s training. That’ll include a regimen of starvation all over again.”

  “You’ll be my trainer, I hope,” said Gerald with a tentative boun
ce. “Yes, I know, you want me out of the way now. I’m going. But I have to keep this damned hot cloak round me or everyone will stare. My clothes are all torn and bloody.”

  “And very little of it your own,” said Vespasian, “so go and look after yourself for a few hours and leave me to me look after Tilda.”

  I had a blinding headache. My stomach churned, my eyes saw only stripes and sparks and I felt utterly broken. “I think,” I managed to say, though my voice sounded a long way off, mumbling like a drunkard’s, “I’m going to be sick again.”

  When it was over, and my head, bathed in warm water, seemed to settle and my eyes saw just one of Vespasian’s frowns, he indicated the rank and spoiled clothes I was wearing, and his own cotte, all rich blue velvet and gold trimming ruined, first with blood, and now sticky with my vomit.

  “This has to go,” he said, and shrugged the sleeves from his arms, pulling apart the torn lacing and flinging the pearl broach from the shoulder. Beneath it, neither the bliaud nor the shirt were his own. Both were too tight. He ripped them over his head, and quickly sluiced down his chest and forearms in clean water. He remained in his borrowed hose, their points now unlaced and falling loose around his hips. His left arm was striped with wounds still partially open and bleeding. A hundred other injuries patterned his body but he gave them no attention as he washed the sweat, blood and vomit from his torso. Leaning back weakly on the pillows, I watched him from half closed eyes. Strangely, in all the years that Tilda had known Vespasian, she had never before seen him stripped even to the waist. I found him extraordinarily beautiful.

  He came back then and sat on the bed beside me. “Now it is your turn,” he said. “I’ll buy some serving girl’s clothes for you tomorrow morning but in the meantime you must sleep naked. Can you raise your arms? Then I’ll help you undress.”

  I bit my lip. “Can’t I stay as I am?”