The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga)

by Thorne, Nicola

  But to see Brent alive, even if he looked far from well ... And to hear the part played by Lady Falconer, of all people. But Fiona was sworn to secrecy, that was a trust she would never betray. Like many Scots people near the border she had heard of Lord Falconer’s sudden marriage to a fascinating gypsy – the Falcon was a law to himself, so everyone expected him to do something different. But a gypsy! How would she be received at the court of George II?

  Fiona had taken to the new bride immediately, sensing her warmth and concern for the Allonby family. She had also trusted her. There was a strength about Analee that had convinced Fiona that if anyone could pull off the audacious coup she could. Mary jokingly said she was a witch but would not admit it.

  Seeing Brent now among them and hearing how it was carried out, of the forged letter and the risky plan that had succeeded, Fiona was convinced Analee was a witch. How otherwise could she possibly have succeeded?

  What was more the Marchioness, despite her beautiful clothes, was not the one to stand on ceremony. She knew that the Macintochs were poor and what servants there were patrolled the grounds of the house. Her ladyship set to in the kitchen and insisted on helping Fiona prepare the dinner while Mary, still shocked, rested in her room and Brent was put to sleep in the priest’s hole after his sore leg had been bathed and his chains cut off, with some difficulty, by McNeath.

  ‘My lady, I insist you should not come into the kitchen.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Analee said. ‘You know I am a simple gypsy woman?’

  Fiona, a bonny girl of nineteen with auburn hair smiled.

  ‘I have heard it said, your ladyship. I do not know I believe it.’

  ‘’Tis true,’ said Analee, ‘now tell me what I have to do and I will do it. Do you have meat to carve? Bread to cut?’ She stared at Fiona noting her amazed expression.

  ‘I see you do not think I am a gypsy. Is not my face dark and my eyes black? If I could show you my feet through these fine stockings you would see that I spent most of my life barefoot. It is the one thing my lord complains of, the scratch of my feet in bed. He says it is as though I wore boots!’

  Fiona threw up her hands and laughed.

  ‘Oh, Lady Falconer ... you are very droll. Still Mary did say that you were a gypsy; she saw you as one. She says you have magical powers.’

  ‘I have not; but we gypsies have a certain ... way with us, you know. Maybe it is that. Now let us eat, girl, for I must be away at first light to my husband. You will see that Brent and Mary go on from here?’

  ‘That is the plan. They will travel on horseback to Cockermouth where Mr Rigg has agreed to give Brent shelter until a boat may be found to take him to Ireland. Mary will stay for a while with Mr Rigg and her sister ...’

  ‘Mary must go with her husband,’ Analee said firmly. ‘I will speak to him about it.’

  At dinner Brent could not take his eyes off Analee; everyone noticed it, especially his wife. Yes it was his Analee, the same. But married to another ... Her gypsy husband had died and she had married the scourge of the Jacobites ... the Falcon himself! It was incredible! But he still loved her; he always would. He looked into her eyes unaware of Mary next to him, unaware of anyone except Analee ... But Analee seemed unconcerned and ate heartily as though she had spent a tiring day which in fact she felt she had. She spared Brent no special glances and entertained the company with stories of her wandering life as a gypsy and how his lordship had found her at last and taken her into his home.

  ‘And do you miss the life, Lady Falconer?’ Fiona, very much taken by her guest, had listened, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes shining. To her it sounded like a fairy story.

  ‘I can’t say I miss it now,’ Analee replied truthfully. ‘It was a hard life; but sometimes, yes. I look about me and see the trees burgeoning and the hard winter earth breaking open with life. Then I recall that special kinship with nature that I had when I was not the wife of the Marquess and a very different sort of world is now before me.’

  ‘But how did you come to be up here?’ Mary said, also caught by Analee’s spell, ‘so far from home? What made you come to the north?’

  Analee drew from her bosom where it rested between her breasts the talisman of her husband’s love, the ring of Falcon gold, twisting it thoughtfully in her fingers as she often did. Yes, today she was dressed like a marchioness with a corset and hoop, underclothes of lace and fine cambric and a one piece gown made of crimson brocade. She glanced at the rings on her fingers, the diamond and sapphire Angus had first given her and a rich ruby on her little finger. Although she had not married him for them she loved fine things. She’d fingered silks and baubles on the market stalls of the town through which she had passed whenever she had the chance. She remembered the vision she’d had that one day she would be a grand lady.

  She knew they were looking at her and admiring her, the set of her hair, the elegance of her dress, the glitter of her jewels. The ring of Falcon gold was like a lucky charm to her and she rubbed it between finger and thumb. What should she say? The truth? At last?

  She looked at the young faces gazing at her – Rory Macintoch and Brent Delamain who had fought in battle, Mary and Fiona who had known suffering and deprivation and the agony of waiting for their men to return. Maybe she did owe them something, the knowledge that out of much misery happiness could come, that victory could take the place of disaster.

  She leaned her chin on to the palm of her long brown bejewelled hand which glistened in the light of the guttering candles so that the audience knew not which dazzled them more, the diamonds and rubies on her fingers or the blazing dark eyes set in the imperious, beautiful face.

  ‘I will tell you,’ Analee said at last sighing deeply, ‘though it is a secret few know. Not even my husband knows, though of course I will tell him in time. I tell it you now because you all have suffered much in recent times – you have gambled and appear to have lost. You, dear Mary and Brent, will be exiles in a foreign land, maybe forever. You Rory and Fiona – who knows where you will be in a twelvemonth? I tell you this little tale because it may give you hope and show that out of bad times good times can come, as I pray they will for you.

  ‘It so happened that I was orphaned at birth and brought up by my grandmother. We were wandering gypsies, part of a nomadic southern tribe, not stationary as were the Buckland gypsies, into whom I eventually married. We rested sometimes for days, sometimes months and, from being a maid, I knew that I interested men a good deal and they me.

  ‘My grandmother wanted to preserve my purity and marry me to a good gypsy boy because she could see, even at fourteen, how developed I was, how interested in love.

  ‘But I was wilful and didn’t heed my grandmother. I flirted with the boys and teased them and earned a name for myself for fickleness and inconstancy. I loved to dance and enjoy myself as young girls do; but I liked all the boys who admired me, and my grandmother despaired.

  ‘My grandfather was already dead and then one day when I was seventeen my grandmother took a chill and died, and I found I was on my own. I had no near relations and no one really cared for me or was concerned about me, and I passed many months in despair until one day I met a gypsy boy who was far more serious minded than any I had known before. He was a fine horseman and taught me to ride expertly, and he had many skills which he wanted to develop only he lacked the education and means to do it. Oh he was such a fine, handsome, proud young man only a little older than I, and with such promise. He taught me really how to love and he cared for me and I was his woman. That was how it remained until one day we met up with another crowd of travelling gypsies and among them was a brilliant dancer with whom I discovered an immediate affinity. He was taller and more beautiful than my man and such a wonderful dancer that whenever I was with him I felt lost to the world.

  ‘We continued with this group on the road and I soon realized I was in love with two men, or fancied I was. I was happy with both. My lover, by whom I was now expecting a child, became
savagely jealous and this only spurred the dancer to flirt with me anew although he merely did it to anger my love.

  ‘I know not what got into me at the time. I was young, and although I loved my man best and wanted his child, some devil in me made me pay more attention to the dancer and I flaunted myself in front of him, pretending to prefer him to the other.

  ‘One day my lover, insane with jealousy though I was too blind to see it, asked me outright if he was indeed the father of my child. I smiled and played and teased and then shook my head and, before I knew what had happened, my love had drawn a knife and plunged it into the heart of the dancer who, even then, was looking incredulous at what I had said. For we had never even lain together, and deep in my heart I had kept constancy for my man.

  ‘I shall never forget the look in his eyes as that beautiful youth lay dying, the bewilderment and the silent way he rebuked me, for he was incapable of speech. And then, turning to my love and seeing the jealousy and hatred die and turn to remorse, I threw myself into his arms and said I had merely teased him.

  ‘’Twas too late. The authorities took him and hanged him and no one pleaded his cause. I waited by the gaol, but I was not even allowed to see him again, beg his mercy. We gypsies have always been treated as a low form of human life.

  ‘Meanwhile the winter came on and I was alone and friendless, big with child and prey to a remorse that all but killed me. Would that it had, I thought at the time. My baby was born before term and died immediately for lack of care, and I had no one but a strange woman to comfort me and take away my dead child ...’

  Analee paused, her eyes glistening with the sharpness of the memory. She saw that Fiona was silently weeping; that Mary had her eyes on the table, and Rory gazed at the floor, the muscles in his jaw working. Only Brent, who still loved her, met her eyes, gazing at her with the stormy jealousy she had once seen on the face of her lover, the one who had hanged. She had, he now knew, borne another’s child – what if he knew she had borne his, too? She gazed at him tenderly and smiled.

  ‘So I wandered on, forever trying to rid myself of the dreadful memory of what my wanton flirtatiousness had done. Two men cut off in their prime on account of me. I often dreamed that my lover came back and asked the truth, but however much I told him that the child was his he did not believe me and he would vanish, crying reproaches in the wind.

  ‘Because it is my nature to love and to want to be admired I consoled myself with other men, in time. Randal Buckland who forced me to marry him I did not love at first, but I grew attached to him and grieved on his death.

  ‘And now at last I have found my true love; my husband, Lord Falconer. I did not marry him for his title or wealth, but because we too had grown to know and love each other through suffering shared after he was nearly mortally wounded at Falkirk. I knew his reputation but he is not a bad man. He is a soldier and an aristocrat. A strong man. The man for me.’

  Analee looked at Brent, saw the pain and suffering in his eyes, and then at the gentle unloved Mary, so long denied the bodily joys for which she yearned, which she had a right to expect from her husband.

  Analee felt with all her heart that she wanted to make things go well for them before she returned to her own life of happiness with the husband who so anxiously awaited her at Falcon’s Keep.

  After dinner Analee indicated that she would like to speak to Brent alone. The table was cleared and they were left in the dining-room, one on either side of the fire. Already rested and in fresh clothes Brent looked better. He would soon be the tall, upright, well-built man she remembered.

  ‘Analee ...’ he said to her as the door closed and came quickly to her side, but she put out a hand to stay him and he was surprised by the distant expression on her face.

  ‘Come no nearer Brent Delamain.’

  ‘But Analee ... you did this for me. Took this risk.’

  ‘I did it for your wife, for Mary and the Allonby family whom I love.’

  Brent dropped his arms, extended to take Analee, and turned away.

  ‘She is not my wife. I cannot love her. I have tried but I think only of you. You bewitch me Analee. Even though you have told this tale tonight of your love for another man – I speak not only of Lord Falconer but of your first love – even though you emphasize that you have lain with so many of whom I am merely one, I still love you and want you, and I always shall. You pretend you are a strumpet but you are not. You are my Analee! Thinking of you prevents me from even performing the act of love with anyone else.’

  Analee sat down and placed her hands in her lap. She pursed her beautiful full mouth into an expression of severity and looked at Brent.

  ‘Why sir, I am surprised to hear that a vigorous man like yourself is unable to give pleasure to a woman even if his thoughts lie with another. But, Brent, you must get over this fixation you imagine you have for me. I confess that for me you were not someone casual; you were someone very special, Brent, and always will be.’

  She remembered their blonde daughter and her eyes momentarily clouded with thoughts of a happiness that was now lost but which might have been. Yes she did love Brent; he was part of her. Morella was part of them both, but it was a love that lay in the past, encapsulated in time. She wanted to take the stricken man in her arms and tell him how much she had loved him, what she had done for him, suffered for him. Instead she gazed at him, her imperious head, beautifully coiffeured, tilted to one side, her eyes masked to hide her true feelings.

  ‘Brent,’ she said slowly, softly, ‘I am married to the Marquess of Falconer, a man of fascination who dominates me body and soul. What happened between you and me is in the past and will never occur again. Let us remember it as a beautiful moment, captured forever in the moonlight. My husband is a masterful, jealous man and expects much from me. Compared to my love for him my feelings for you were like that of a young infatuated girl. Angus and I have a very deep bond. See ...’ She took the chain around her neck and showed him the ring of palest gold with the head of the falcon engraved on it. ‘Angus gave me this as a symbol of our enduring love – a ring of purest gold, Falcon gold it is called. Our love is binding like this gold, eternal like the ring.’ Analee dropped the ring back into her bodice and folded her hands on her lap. ‘You and I are not for each other, Brent, whatever you say. If I ever thought it, I think it not now.’

  ‘You may think what you like,’ Brent said. ‘If the Falcon has captured you now, so be it; but it will not last and when it ends I will be waiting for you as I was meant to do, as I should have done before. My life of suffering these past months has made me realize what a fool I was to give you up, to put someone’s happiness before mine. Not only was I not happy; but I made Mary desperately unhappy.’

  ‘I know,’ Analee said quietly, ‘but listen, you are a fugitive and are bound for Ireland and, Brent, I want to ask you this and tell it you at the same time. Be a husband to Mary. Forget me, for you can never have me again. Like Mary nursed you, I nursed Lord Falconer back to health and that way my love for him was cemented. I love Angus much more than I ever loved you. I can’t tell you why but ‘tis so, and now ...’ Analee crossed her hands meekly over her stomach and gazed at Brent, ‘I am carrying his child and his blood runs with mine. It is final ... It is settled. It is done. We are to raise a family and I am to become a fine lady with a house in London.’ She smiled mischievously.

  ‘My husband is teaching me nice manners, how to conduct myself like a lady and how to read and write. You might not believe it, but I have taken to the life far better than I expected. Although I am always Analee the gypsy, nothing can change that, I am also the Marchioness of Falconer – and nothing can change that either, or will.’ Her ladyship patted her stomach and gazed complacently at Brent.

  Brent’s face, still contorted, was more livid than ever.

  ‘I don’t care whose child you are carrying or how many more you have!’ he shouted. ‘You are my Analee ... my gypsy and you always will be.’

  A
nalee lowered her eyes and felt a sickening moment of defeat. She got up and walked slowly to the door turning at the threshold, her hand on the doorknob. ‘I will see you no more, Brent, and I can say no more; but if you love me then do as I ask. God bless you.’

  She saw that tears had come into his eyes, as there were in hers, as she quietly shut the door behind her. Then she went to find Brent’s wife. There was only one thing left to try and do.

  Mary had heard everything. Even down the corridors Brent’s shouts had penetrated. She wept as Analee came to her room, sat on her bed, took her hand.

  ‘It is no good, Analee. He has eyes only for you.’

  ‘Now listen,’ Analee said practically. ‘I have done all I can; there is still something you can do.’

  ‘I? What can I do?’

  ‘Well the only thing left is a gypsy spell ... oh I know I have denied magical powers; but some things are passed down in gypsy lore and I have known them since I was a little girl, they came from my grandmother, who was foreign. Whether they work or not depends often on the intention of the one who wants to win the man’s love. You must believe it. Well, Stewart was successful was he not?’

  ‘Yes, but you said ...’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong? Maybe it was the spell? We can only try. Now listen, this is what I want you to do. It is simple and you must repeat it after me. Will you do it?’

  ‘I will do anything to win Brent’s love.’

  Analee squeezed Mary’s hand and leaned forward.

  ‘Now when you have your woman’s time I want you to take some of the blood and add it to the powdered pips of apples and pears, quinces and berries, and fruits you have in your sister’s garden or wherever you are. These you must previously have burnt and ground to a powder. This you add to the little phial of blood you have procured and then you get some pieces of Brent’s hair or, if you can, parings from his nails and add these to the mixture which you must then put in his food. Oh do not wince ... It sounds unpleasant but ‘tis tasteless if the food is well flavoured. You can add this mixture to his food up to three times, after that ...’