The Huntress

by Susan Carroll

  A harbinger of evil. Both astrologers and holy men agreed on that. The comet signaled some cataclysmic change, some dark destiny. Meg only prayed it wasn’t hers. She lowered the spyglass and settled back on the window seat, releasing her breath with a tremulous sigh.

  Her destiny…

  “From the moment of your birth, nay, even before, you were singled out for greatness. The daughters of the earth will topple thrones and strip all men of their power. You are the one fated to lead us to this new age of glory, Megaera. A queen among queens, the most powerful sorceress the world has ever known.”

  Meg drew her knees tight to her chest and pressed her face against them, clutching her hands over her ears to shut out the memory of her mother’s voice.

  “Forget, forget, forget,” she chanted. It was what Papa wanted her to do above all things. Well, next to becoming a proper English gentlewoman who knew nothing of poisons, syringes, or the Book of Shadows. She longed so desperately to please him, but why did it seem to be getting harder instead of easier to do all that he asked?

  “It is not that easy, forgetting the past, trying to deny who you are deep down in your bones. A wise woman learns to be true to herself,” Cat had told her.

  But what if who you truly were was evil, someone pre-destined to be a dark and powerful sorceress, the Silver Rose?

  Meg shivered, feeling a surge of anger against Cat. She and Papa had been doing just fine before that Irishwoman had ever turned up here with all of her unwanted advice and dire warnings.

  Now Maman’s voice was back in Meg’s head again. And Papa was so worried, Meg doubted he’d ever let her set foot out of the house. It was all Catriona O’Hanlon’s fault, and to add insult to injury, that upstart Irishwoman had dared criticize Meg’s good and gracious Queen Elizabeth.

  She wished Cat had never come here. She wished the sea had opened up and swallowed Cat before—

  No. Meg checked the thought with a tiny whimper. Peering past the top of her knees, she glanced about the room, fearing some malevolent spirit might have overheard her wish.

  “I take it back. I take it back,” she whispered fiercely, trembling as she remembered Aggie’s story about the poor man who had died of an evil thought.

  Just like Maman…

  A light knock at the door startled Meg, her heart banging against her ribs. She scrambled off the window seat. She had barely enough time to hide the spyglass in the folds of her night rail before Cat entered the room.

  Cat hesitated on the threshold. Ever since Martin had left for his banquet, the girl had avoided Cat, even taking her supper in her room. Cat had allowed her to do so.

  She was so exhausted by the hostility of the rest of the household, she had not been up to the task of dealing with a sullen Mistress Margaret as well. Cat had hoped to find the girl asleep, not hovering by the window like a phantom child who had just drifted in from the night, her eyes as wild and wary as a badger trapped in a thicket.

  “May I come in?” Cat asked, closing the door behind her. “Looks like you already did,” Meg grumbled. “Papa said this is where you are to sleep so you can keep watch over me without scaring the servants. He doesn’t want to be waked by any more broomstick battles.”

  With a long-suffering sigh, the girl pointed to the pallet that had been arranged for Cat before the hearth. “I doubt you will be very comfortable.”

  “I have slept under worse conditions in caves and under thickets, in cattle byres and abandoned clochan huts.”

  Cat’s remark raised a brief flicker of curiosity in Meg’s eyes as Cat had intended. But the girl suppressed it, a stony expression settling over her face as she marched over to her bed.

  “I learned to be more comfortable on the hard-packed earth than on the finest feather bed.” Cat leaned up against the mantel. As Cat removed her shoes, Meg made a great show of drawing back the counterpane and plumping her pillow.

  Cat added casually, “Although I admit, I’d rest a sight easier tonight if I knew what it was you were trying to hide under your pillow.”

  Meg froze and then gave a scornful toss of her head. “It’s not the witch blade if that’s what you are worrying about.”

  “It’s good to know what it isn’t, but perhaps you had better show me what it is.”

  Cat strode toward the girl and held out her hand. Meg regarded her defiantly for a moment. Cat held her gaze with steady patience until Meg surrendered.

  Meg delved under the covers and produced a metal cylinder that she slapped against Cat’s palm.

  Cat studied the object, her brow creasing in puzzlement. “What is it? Some sort of wee cudgel?”

  “No! Is everything some sort of weapon to you? It’s a looking device. You have to hold it up to your eye.”

  As Cat raised the cylinder, she saw that there were pieces of curved glass fitted into either end of the hollow tube. Cautiously she lifted one end to her eye. Squinting with the other eye closed, she looked through the tube.

  The bedchamber flipped upside down, the dragon woven into the tapestry seeming to fly at her in a dizzying rush.

  “Holy Brigid!” Cat gasped and yanked the tube from her eye. “What devilment is this?”

  “It’s just a spying glass,” Meg said impatiently. “Only I couldn’t figure out how to make it work so things are right side up. But it doesn’t matter if you use it to look up at the heavens.” She gestured to the window.

  Cat walked over to the open casement. Lifting the tube to her eye, she risked another look, training the spyglass on the waning moon. To the naked eye, it looked as though half of it had gone missing, cleaved in twain by some gigantic sword.

  But with Meg’s device, Cat could see the part of the moon lost in shadow and the entire surface was pitted like a round face marred by the pox. Her breath catching in her throat, Cat shifted to observe the rest of the sky, the stars so brilliant and close, she half-reached out with her other hand to touch them.

  And the comet…Seen through the lens, it was even more awe-inspiring and terrifying, a burning sphere trailing behind it a dragon’s breath of fire.

  Cat lowered the tube and sank down upon the window seat, staring at Meg in amazement. “This thing is incredible. And you say that you made it?”

  Meg gave a cool nod. But as she came to reclaim her possession from Cat, her pride in her achievement would not allow her to remain silent.

  “I read about the spyglass in—in a book somewhere. I told a friend—well, Aggie, what I needed and she made the purchases, giving the glassmaker my particular instructions about the lenses. But once I had the parts, I had to fashion the device all by myself.”

  “How clever of you.”

  Meg’s smug smile revealed that she thought so too.

  Cat handed the spyglass back to Meg, doing her best to conceal her troubled thoughts. There was only one ancient text that she knew of that detailed such unusual devices and powerful weapons, knowledge that had been long lost to the present world.

  The Book of Shadows. Martin was adamant that neither he nor his daughter knew what had become of the text after Cassandra’s death. Cat believed Martin didn’t. She was not as sure about Meg.

  While Meg was busy, returning the spyglass to the trunk at the foot of her bed, Cat strolled past the shelves that held Meg’s collection of books, scanning titles. They were a strange mixture of scholarly works and whimsy, the esoteric and the practical. Books such as Plutarch’s Lives rested side by side with texts such as The Gardener’s Labyrinth by one Didymus Mountaine. Meg’s hungry mind seemed to range in all directions, devouring anything in its path.

  The spine of one book looked more battered and well-worn than the rest. Cat tried to ease the book out to examine the title, but it was wedged firmly between two larger tomes.

  As Cat tugged at it, she was arrested by the sound of Meg’s voice.

  “If I did have the Book of Shadows, I would hardly leave it about in plain sight.”

  The girl cocked one brow in such an im
itation of her father, Cat nearly smiled in spite of herself. She folded her arms across her breasts and reminded Meg, “You promised upon your honor not to be reading my eyes.”

  “And what if I don’t have any honor?”

  “Then I suggest you acquire some.”

  Meg glowered at her and then gave a disdainful shrug. “I did not have to read your eyes. Your face is like a looking glass, reflecting everything you are thinking.

  “You can search my entire room if you like, but you won’t find any Book of Shadows. It was lost in Paris and I am glad of it. As for that book you are eyeing so suspiciously…” Meg stalked to the shelves and yanked the volume free, tapping one short blunt finger upon the title.

  The Secrets and Wonders of the World.

  Cat winced. It was not a comfortable thing when an eleven-year-old girl was able to make you feel like a bit of a fool. She took the volume from Meg to examine it more closely.

  “This book is very lovingly worn,” Cat remarked. “It must be your favorite.”

  Meg hunched her shoulders but as Cat flipped through the pages, she was unable to maintain her indifference. She crept closer, gesturing to the illustration of a dragon in flight.

  “The book says that the dragons in Ethiopia are very amiable.”

  “I have always believed so.” Cat smiled.

  Meg leaned closer still, turning the pages herself to one that she had dog-eared…the sketch of some monstrous huge creature with tusks and a tail at either end, one of them long and thick, extending where its nose should have been.

  “Oliphants, on the other hand, are quite fierce. Have you ever seen one, Mistress O’Hanlon?”

  “Thankfully, no.”

  “Apparently, the only way you can fight them is to tie their tails together so they trip each other.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Cat replied solemnly. Meg glanced up at her, half-starting to smile before recollecting herself.

  She snatched the book from Cat. Leaping up on her bed, she tunneled under the covers and propped herself against the pillows with her book.

  Cat followed, perching on the edge of the bed. Holding the book in front of her face, Meg studiously ignored her.

  “So you are not liking me all that much, I’m thinking,” Cat remarked.

  Meg risked a peek over the top of her book. After a moment she replied, “I like your voice. It has music in it.”

  “Well, that’s something at least.”

  Meg disappeared behind her book, turning another page. “Papa used to have music in his voice too. Before he started trying to be English.”

  “You don’t approve of that?”

  “I am fiercely proud of him,” Meg blazed, but after a moment she admitted, “but I liked it better when we first came to England and we traveled about with Master Roxburgh’s company. Papa laughed more then and he made every day seem so exciting, like a grand adventure. But everything changed after Finette found us.”

  “Finette?”

  “She was one of the sisterhood. She was a nasty, sly, dirty creature who smelled bad. I never liked her. I don’t know how she was the one who managed to track me and Papa. She was never all that clever.”

  “But somehow Finette found you,” Cat prompted when Meg fell silent. “What did she want?”

  “What all of the sisterhood want. Me,” Meg said in a sad little voice. “They all expected such unreasonable things of me. That somehow I would possess the magic to make them all beautiful, wealthy, and powerful. That I would be able to bring back people who they had loved and lost from the dead.”

  Meg shrank down farther. Cat was tempted to reach for the book. She wanted to be able to see the girl’s face. But Meg seemed to find it easier to speak of such painful things from behind the shield of her book.

  “Finette was—was a complete madwoman when she overtook us on the road. She was so angry with my papa. She said that when he took me, he had stolen away all the sisterhood’s hopes and dreams. She tried to stab Papa with the syringe. They wrestled and Finette ended up sticking herself. She died from the poison.”

  The girl fell silent again.

  “And then?” Cat asked gently.

  “Finette was buried in a pauper’s grave in this little village near York. No one knew who she was or how she died, except Papa and me. He hugged me so tight and said we both must forget it had ever happened, never speak of it again. He got rid of the syringe, threw it in the pond near where Finette had attacked us. But the water wasn’t as deep as Papa thought and I was able to fetch it later. I thought we might need it for protection.

  “It was after Finette that my papa changed. He started acting like the world was full of oliphants and they were all after me.”

  Meg heaved a huge sigh. “And now that you have brought us this warning from the Lady of Faire Isle, I’ll probably never be able to leave the house again. I’ll never see the queen.”

  She shifted her book enough to steal a resentful glance at Cat. “Not that you would understand or even care.”

  “I’d like to be able to understand,” Cat said, resolutely suppressing her loathing for Elizabeth Tudor. “What is it you so admire about the woman?”

  Meg studied Cat suspiciously as though unsure her interest was genuine. Whatever she saw in Cat’s face must have satisfied her because she said, “There is a great deal to admire about Her Majesty. She is so wise and accomplished. She can speak six different languages and she plays the lute and the virginal. When she was a girl, she barely managed to survive. She had so many enemies who wanted to destroy her and just as many who wanted to use her just like—like…”

  “Like you?” Cat filled in.

  Meg disappeared behind her book. Her voice dropped so low, Cat had to lean closer to hear.

  “Queen Elizabeth also had a mother that everyone thought was evil and she can’t ever speak of her.”

  “You can speak of your mother to me.”

  “Papa wouldn’t like it.”

  “Then it would have to be another one of our secrets.” Cat plucked the book from Meg’s hands and set it aside. “Your papa is a good man who only wants to protect you. But I don’t think he understands that if you keep some memories trapped in your heart too long, they can swell in importance, become darker and worse than they actually are.”

  Meg swallowed hard, the girl’s huge green eyes hungering with the need to express thoughts she’d buried for so long. Still she hesitated before confessing, “Sometimes it feels like my heart is going to burst.”

  “We would never want that to happen.” Cat touched the girl’s cheek. “So tell me about your maman.”

  Meg lowered her gaze and curled her fingers into the bedclothes.

  “I know that most everyone thinks my mother was truly wicked and she did do many evil things that I don’t even like to think about.” Meg’s lip quivered. “Anyone who ever opposed my mother just disappeared, like my first nurse, Mistress Waters. Maman destroyed her enemies, using the poisoned roses and the syringe described in the Book of Shadows. Things that I helped her to make.”

  The girl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t want to, but Maman could be terrifying when she was angry. She knew how to use her power to hurt me.

  “She lost her eyesight when she was young, but it was the darkness in her heart that frightened me. She could see into a person’s soul with a touch of her hand. But she was never able to see me, never really touch me. All she saw was the Silver Rose.”

  A wistful look crept into Meg’s eyes. “That was why it was so amazing when Papa found me. For the first time, I had someone who really saw me.

  “But I don’t think he does anymore, only the lady he hopes I will become. Someone noble and gentle like Lady Danvers. I am not sure I can be that.”

  “You are a daughter of the earth. You should not have to be anyone but yourself.” Cat rested her hand over Meg’s. The girl didn’t draw away, but she tensed beneath Cat’s touch.

  “What if that means be
ing someone truly evil? Maman said I was destined to become a sorceress so powerful, the entire world of men would tremble and bow down before me.”

  “Your mother was wrong, Meg. Your destiny is in your own hands.”

  The girl looked up at Cat, the longing in her eyes showing how desperately she wanted to believe that. She gave a sad shake of her head. “It was the great seer Nostradamus who told Maman about me.”

  “That isn’t possible, sweetling. Nostradamus has been dead for years.”

  “Maman raised his spirit. I watched her do it.”

  Sweet heaven! Cat shuddered. Was there no end to the horrors Cassandra had inflicted upon this poor child?

  “And if I am not destined to become this sorceress, why am I the only one who has ever been able to read and understand the Book of Shadows?” Meg asked.

  Cat hesitated, hardly knowing how to answer. She was troubled by Meg’s uncanny ability, as were many other true daughters of the earth. But the girl looked so apprehensive herself, Cat squeezed her hand.

  “It—it just means you are extraordinarily clever. But what you choose to do with that cleverness is entirely up to you. I know you would never want to harm anyone.”

  “I already did,” Meg whispered, hanging her head. “I killed my mother.”

  “Merciful heavens, child! Where did you ever get such a notion? Cassandra fell into the Seine and drowned. It was no fault of yours.”

  Meg looked up at Cat with great haunted eyes. “Yes, it was. I—I wished her gone.”

  The girl looked far too young, too fragile to be carrying such an enormous burden of guilt. Cat’s heart ached for her. Stroking her fingers back through Meg’s hair, she said, “Oh, Meg, no matter what you have been told, people don’t die from evil thoughts. If that were so, my own mother would have shriveled up and turned to dust.”

  Meg tipped her head to one side, regarding Cat with wonderment. “You—you did not get on well with your mama either?”

  “I was the bane of my mother’s existence. Irish ladies are supposed to be sweet of speech, skilled with the needle, and full of feminine wisdom. I could curse with all the fluency of my da, was far more adept at hunting than I was at sewing, and the only wisdom I possessed was the lore of the earth that I had learned from my old gran. My mother hated and feared all of the ancient learning, as did my stepfather. When he accused me of being a witch, she never said a word in my defense. She just turned away.”