“What about you, mistress?” he said after a while.
She had taken various unrecognisable dark objects out of a box and was now adding them to the pot above the fire. She paused and fixed him with a questioning stare.
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t your outer clothes wet? I mean, don’t you need to dry yourself too?”
She burst into a cackling peal of laughter.
“One of those, are you? Like it if I stripped off, would you?”
“I didn’t mean that!” Raoul exclaimed hotly, his palms sweating at the thought of such an awful prospect. “I only meant – so that you don’t take a chill.”
“You put your mind at rest, boy. Old Meg’s a tough ‘un. She doesn’t come to any harm, whatever the weather.”
Still shaking with ribald laughter, she pulled another strange object from the box, picked up a large black-handled knife and began to pare off strips of it. These too she added to the pot. She then pulled up another stool and sat opposite, occasionally stirring the mixture with a blackened stick. She seemed to have forgotten about her visitor as she sang to herself and mumbled from time to time in the same language as before. Raoul wasn’t sorry to be ignored. He sat quietly, waiting warily to see what would happen next. He looked round at the doorway from time to time just to check that the wolves showed no inclination to return. There was no sign of them.
After a while, steam started to rise from the caldron and a strange sweetish aroma was added to the stale smell of the hut.
“That’s done then,” she said in Breton, lifting the pot down from its hook and pouring the contents into two earthenware bowls. “Here.”
She handled one to Raoul who took it dubiously. Meg lifted hers to her lips and sucked up a mouthful with audible relish. As there didn’t seem to be a spoon, Raoul supposed he had better do the same. If she was eating it, it couldn’t actually be harmful, could it? He took a cautious sip; it didn’t taste too bad.
“What’s in it?” he asked her.
“A bit of this and a bit of that. It’ll stiffen up your sinews, boy, that’s for sure.”
After a few more noisy slurps, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and set down the empty bowl. She then reached up to the beam above and broke off a few flowers and leaves from several of the bunches hanging there. These she put into a small pot. She then returned to her stool and started to pound and grind them with a smooth round stone.
As soon as he felt he could, Raoul surreptitiously set down his own bowl. He did not exactly dislike the stuff; he just mistrusted it – and her. Was she a witch? She certainly looked like one. Almost as if she had read his thoughts, she paused in her work and glared at him.
“Witch, wise-woman, it’s all the same,” she said. “There’s plenty who are glad of my brews, I can tell you, even if you’re not.” Raoul shifted uneasily on his stool. She continued, spitting out her words in contempt. “They all come to me! Silly girls who’re in trouble, faithless wives, old men who can’t do it any more, boys who don’t know how! They all find their way to Barenton Fountain. And what about you? Nothing as simple as a love potion for you, boy, eh? You want your heart’s desire, is that it?”
He hesitated, unsure what to say.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Got some money, then?”
He looked at her in surprise.
“You want me to tell your fortune, don’t you? That’s why you came.”
“Well, I...”
“You may GET your destiny for free but you have to pay to find out about it.”
“I’ve only this,” Raoul said coming to a rapid decision and holding out a small copper coin. “Can you tell my fortune for this?”
“I shall just have to try, shan’t I?”
Meg took the coin and dropped it in a jar nearby. She lit two more rush lights which she placed in metal holders then she fetched a stack of square tiles and a small wooden box. Finally she added more fuel to the fire.
“Sit on the floor facing me,” she told Raoul, lowering herself to the ground. “But first, put some of this on the flames.”
She opened the box. Raoul took a handful of the soft, sand-like substance and did as she told him. There was a sudden blaze of blue-green light which brightly illuminated their faces before it died back again to a reddish glow. The old woman’s was gnarled and wrinkled like one of the forest oaks, Raoul thought. Only her eyes seemed young, alert and alive. He sat down as she had told him and waited for her to begin.
After a while, she held her hands high in the air then began softly to chant some words, invoking the spirits, Raoul assumed. While she spoke she was arranging and re-arranging the order of the tiles.
“The first tile is your past,” she said after a few moments, selecting one and setting the others aside.
She placed it between them and Raoul peered at its surface. It seemed to show the figure of a grand and noble lady but her feet were towards Meg and her head towards Raoul. Meg regarded it with a frown.
“What does it mean?” Raoul asked.
“With the picture reversed it means your courage and strength have deserted you,” she said. “You know what you want but your way is barred. You are weak and afraid. If it had been up the other way, it would have been very different.”
Raoul nodded. He could see that what she said might be true. He wanted to be a knight but there was no way at present to realise that ambition.
“What’s next?”
She chose another and set it beside the first. As she identified it she gave a toothless grin. Raoul saw that the figure represented was a buffoon or a clown, this time with its feet towards Raoul.
“This shows the present,” Meg explained. “Here is a silly young fool, blindly stumbling into the big wide world, excited at the thought of an exciting journey.”
Raoul reddened and she gave a cackle of laughter.
“Next we have the instincts which drive you from within,” she said, laying down the third tile.
It showed a crowned king in a long robe.
“This means that you will not be content to serve others,” she told him, “you must be the ruler, the dominant one. You may look like an innocent youth but you’re a hunter, a seducer, sexually potent.”
He flinched as she eyed him hungrily, too interested to interrupt her but squirming under her avid gaze.
“Ah.” She turned over the fourth tile and set it by the others. It showed a man hanging from a gibbet. “This shows the obstacles that you face,” Meg explained. “You are at a low point in your life now but you must be patient. The Hanged Man shows that there is hope for the future – there will be rebirth and regeneration.”
She picked up the next tile and set it in line then burst out into a peal of mocking laughter. It showed a pair of naked figures, a man and a woman. Like the first, they were upside down, their heads in Raoul’s direction.
“You’re a wicked boy,” she said gleefully. “Full of lust and sexual appetite. You’ll gobble up your pleasure and you’ll leave ‘em panting for more.”
“What if the figures were round the other way?” Raoul demanded. “They’re the wrong way up – can’t I change them?”
“No, no, you leave them where they are! The other way means true love and spiritual union. That’s not for you. You’re full of lechery and passion, using your sexual skill to get you what you want, trampling over those who get in your way.” She rubbed the figures in the picture with a wrinkled finger before reluctantly moving on to the next tile, the sixth. “Now here’s your future, your destiny.” She put it in its place. Only one final one remained. “Well, well, well. You don’t see this often. How interesting.”
The picture showed a great wheel.
“It’s the Wheel of Fortune,” Meg explained. “You will have the chance to get all that your heart desires if you take the opportunity when it’s offered. Whether you succeed or not depends on what the seventh tile shows.”
Raoul’s heart swelled wit
h joyful anticipation. Perhaps he could become a knight, win a fortune, regain his inheritance, become Lord of Radenoc after all. She had told him that at present he was in a lull, a low ebb in his fortunes but that he had the power and drive to succeed – even if it did mean using any available methods, however ruthless. What would the last one be?
She set it carefully in line. Raoul looked down at it and blenched, all the excitement instantly draining away. He glared across at her, seeing with horror her gleaming malicious eyes and evil grin.
“You don’t have to explain,” he snapped. “It’s obvious it means. Now show me where I may sleep.”
What other explanation could there be? The picture was clear enough: the figure of a skeleton, holding a scythe. It showed everyone’s eventual destiny: Death. Who could hope to defeat that? The Grim Reaper would put an untimely end to all his hopes.
The old woman shrugged and got with difficulty to her feet.
“If you think you know, I won’t try and change your mind,” she said. “Though things are not always what they seem.”
She poured water into another pot which she hung on the tripod over the fire.
“You can sleep over there.” She pointed to the heap in the corner. “It’s just bits of clothes and stuff. Quite comfortable, quite soft.”
“What about you?”
“It’s All Hallows Eve, remember. I’ve got things to see to yet. You don’t need much sleep when you’re my age. And I reckon you can think of better things to do, judging by what the tablets say about your appetites!”
“I don’t believe a word of it. It’s just heathen nonsense.”
She chuckled.
“You can believe what you like,” she said, “but I know what I know.”
She shuffled across to collect the pot in which she had crushed the herbs earlier. Raoul went to the corner that she had pointed to, folding and laying out the various garments and pieces of fabric until he had contrived a reasonable looking bed. He then lay down on it, determined to ignore any further comments she might make. He shut his eyes. The image on the fateful seventh tile sprang immediately into his mind. He opened his eyes again with a groan and sat up.
“Drink this.” Maeve hobbled over with a steaming bowl. “It’ll help you sleep.”
He sniffed it warily. She seemed to be having none herself. This time she might really be trying to poison him. The brew smelt fragrant and aromatic rather than unpleasant. Well, if Death was going to thwart his hopes anyway, it might just as well be now as later. He drained it in a single draught and handed back the bowl.
Chapter Nine
Raoul was dreaming. He was walking over a hot dusty plain in brilliant sunlight. His throat ached with thirst and around him lay the mail-clad bodies of his companions, dead and dying. He staggered on until he felt too weak to set one foot in front of the other, then he felt himself spinning out of control, falling, falling.
The scene changed. He was in a tower room. Somewhere far below was the sound of surf breaking on rocks. From beyond the narrow windows came the cries of wheeling sea birds. Raoul was lying undressed, propped up against the pillows of a bed whose covers had been long since discarded. He felt replete with satisfaction and sensuous pleasure. Across the room from him was a girl, slender, naked, her dark red hair cascading down her back. When he looked at her shapely body he felt a thrill of desire but also something more – tenderness, love. She reached for her clothes and began to put them on.
It was later. It was the same room and the same girl but she was dressed now and so was he. She was speaking urgently to him, imploring him to do something, go somewhere. Now she was unfastening from her dark blue gown a strange silver brooch wrought in an intricate Celtic pattern. Now she was pressing it into his hand.
“Don’t argue, Raoul, for the love of Heaven,” she said in a low, slightly husky voice, gazing beseechingly up at him with huge, dark lashed chestnut eyes. “Just go! Go!”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, feeling her pliant body clinging passionately to him before she dragged herself away. And now he was climbing vertically downwards in pitch darkness, every nerve alert for some sound which he expected, yet dreaded to hear.
Gasping, he opened his eyes and sat up, heart pounding. Where was he? His nostrils caught the warm stale odour of Meg’s hut. This was real. He was awake. He lay back, forcing his breathing to slow and his panic to subside. What had been in that potion to create such vivid dreams? He tried to conjure up comforting, reassuring thoughts and images, then began to drift back into sleep.
But what was that? There was a rustling sound. Something was out there. Was it the old woman – or had the wolves come back? The hair on his scalp tingled and he stared in dread at the far side of the room, at the gap in the thatch which was the entrance to the hut. As he watched, a darker shadow filled the opening and came inside.
“Is that you, Meg?” he said, his voice sounding strained and harsh.
There was no reply but something or someone was moving about. There was a scraping noise and the embers of the fire glowed as if they had been stirred, then a spark flared in the darkness. Dimly at first and then more strongly, a soft radiance grew. The light moved closer and rested on the ground between Raoul and the fire. Its source was a bowl or a gourd, half full of liquid, with a floating wick. Behind it, still in the shadows, a figure stood. At least it was human, Raoul thought in relief.
It came forward, into the light. Raoul caught his breath; surely he must still be dreaming. Except for the pale oval of its face, the being was totally enveloped in silver grey fur. It approached the bed, gazing down at him with strange amber eyes which, apart from the fact that they lacked the animal’s luminosity, could easily have belonging to a wolf. Then, in a single fluid movement, the fur was sloughed off. In its place was the beautiful naked body of a girl.
Still regarding him with those alien unblinking eyes, she tugged with slim pale fingers at her heavy braids and shook out a cascade of silver-blond hair. She then stepped towards him and knelt by his side.
“Who are you?” Raoul asked in a tremulous whisper, gazing at her in awe.
She said nothing; she merely lifted her hands to push back the silken curtain of her hair so that it shimmered in the flickering light, the action lifting and accentuating the thrust of her small pointed breasts. Then she ran a moist tongue over her parted lips and leaned provocatively forwards as if offering herself to him, while uttering a low whimpering cry.
Raoul reached out a tentative hand towards her shoulder and touched it, hardly expecting her to be real. Her skin was smooth and warm. He ran his hand downwards towards her breast, then cupped it, his fingers gently pinching the rosy nipple. She moaned and moved closer, her hands searching for the buckle of his belt and once she had unfastened that, reaching for his nakedness beneath the robe.
Uncaring whether this was a dream or not, he revelled in the exquisite sensations provoked as she kissed and caressed every inch of his body. Once he had entered her, he seemed to have the potency of ten men. Driven on by her insatiable appetite, for what seemed like hours he hovered on the brink of his release, only for it again and again to elude him. Whatever she did, in whatever position and with however much urgency they coupled, he rose higher and higher towards the pinnacle of ecstasy but couldn’t quite seem to reach it. Finally, thrusting violently into her like an animal, from behind, and with an overwhelming convulsion that seemed like the ground bursting open on the Day of Judgement, he shuddered to a climax and simultaneously sank into virtual unconsciousness.
It was light. Raoul lay still, recalling with horrified clarity the extraordinary dreams of the night. He opened his eyes cautiously and looked round the hut. No-one was there. A draught was blowing in through the open doorway and he shivered, only then realising that he was naked. He sat up in alarm. Surely it couldn’t have been real. He gingerly examined himself. His body ached all over as if he had been in a fight or a race. It must simply be the effect of the long
walk to the Fountain, his subsequent terror and whatever Meg had put in that concoction…surely? To have a sexual encounter with – a wolf-maiden? a goddess? was hardly probable. He swung his legs stiffly off the bed and stood up. Where were his clothes? Oh yes, hanging on the brushwood over there.
He moved towards the hearth and nearly stepped on something. What was this? He crouched down and picked it up. On the floor by his feet was a little clay bowl; inside it was a burnt length of wick. He dropped it as if it had still been hot, his heart pounding, and crossed himself in superstitious fear. He hadn’t dreamt it. He, they, had really done everything that he remembered! His gorge rose. Unlike on the occasions with Félice, the thought of their coupling had no power to stir him sexually. His member was so shrunken and limp it almost felt as if he would never be aroused again. Nauseous, he shuddered at the thought. Perhaps she had been a demon, a succubus, who had drained his manhood dry.
In something close to panic, he grabbed his still damp clothes, dragged them on and plunged outside where he took great gulps of the clear, cold morning air. The storm clouds of the night before had all blown away and the sky was a pale luminous blue with a faint tinge of pink lingering in the east. A chorus of bird song rose from the woods all around and from somewhere near at hand came the pure trilling notes of a thrush.
After a few minutes Raoul felt a little better. The fresh wind dried the sweat on his forehead and his heart-beat slowed to a more normal pace. Now he must look around and try to get his bearings. He certainly did not intend to spend another night in this accursed place.
The Rightful Heir Page 13