Then one night, while the ancient prince slept, a long-fingered imp, a malevolent sprite from hell, came to the prince’s chamber and stole away the diadem.
The imp took the diadem to the Devil, trading it for favours from the satanic prince. Above, in the realm of the Old People, the prince awoke to find his diadem gone. He could smell the lingering odour of the imp, and knew to what dark master the thief would have ferried the diadem.
The prince could think of only one way to recover his diadem. He took himself down to hell, and, over the centuries, worked his way through the ranks surrounding the Devil until he became the Devil’s trusted confidant.
It was not something I could do overnight, the earl had said to his lady.
Yet still the prince did not know where the Devil had hid the diadem.
Then one day, horribly, the Devil cried that his diadem had been stolen, gone! Taken to the mortal world! The Devil hatched a scheme where the hounds of hell would scent out the diadem and, of the deepest irony, sent his favourite captain — the prince of the Old People in his disguise — into the mortal realm that he might be the one to carry the diadem back to hell.
But the prince, masquerading as the Earl of Pengraic and by now wed to a fair lady he loved beyond life, meant to trick the Devil. He endured the horror that the Devil unleashed on this mortal realm and followed the trail the horror laid down until he came to the diadem’s resting place. He retrieved the diadem, his lady present at his side, and it remained only for him to retreat into the ancient world of the Old People with his lady for his task to be complete.
But his lady refused to go with the prince. He begged and pleaded, but she refused, for she believed him only an angel of the Devil, and could not understand his true nature.
And he could not tell her, for the words would carry straight to the Devil, and neither would be safe until they were within the realm of the Old People.
I can write this, but my lord of Pengraic could never say it to his lady, for that would have jeopardised both of them.
And my Lady Maeb could not read.
My lady wept when she showed me this tapestry. I think the knowledge of what the earl had truly been almost destroyed her.
She wept until I thought she would do herself harm, but after a time she wiped her eyes. She laid trembling fingers on the final panel of the tapestry.
It depicted the castle of Pengraic, and again it showed the prince of the Old People and his beloved lady … but exactly what it showed I will not say.
Not yet.
Chapter Six
Thus, finally, I come to the end of my testimony. I have been the most stupid of women. The blindest.
But what would have happened if I had gone with Raife that night? If I had trusted him?
My son Hugh would have been born into a very different life, true, but one that now I think he has not missed out on entirely. What he has hinted to me over the past days has been extraordinary.
I would have foregone thirty years with Edmond, and I regret not one moment of those thirty years. I loved him and he me, and together we had three beautiful daughters who have made good marriages and have given us grandchildren more than we could have hoped.
No, I do not regret not going with Raife that night.
But I do regret not trusting him.
Tomorrow I will make preparation to return to Pengraic Castle. The journey there may likely half kill me with fatigue, but that no longer matters. I am dying and I need to return to Pengraic. My son Hugh will come with me.
Thus ends my life, thus ends my testimony.
Owain may write the final words if he wishes.
May God forgive me for what I am about to do, and may my soul find rest. Owain, I wish you a blessed life, and peace, and I thank you with all my heart for writing down these, my words.
Do with them what you will.
May the gods of the land and the seasons have mercy on my soul, and may sweet Jesu forgive me that my soul shall not be his.
The Testimony of Hugh De Mortaigne, Earl of Wessex,
Known as Hugh the Wolf
This my testimony, writ the week after my beloved mother’s death. I have abandoned Pengraic Castle and am currently resident in Glowecestre. I have left my brother Geoffrey’s fool wife Erheld to wonder where my mother’s body is. She will not bother to wonder long. She will just be glad the old woman is dead, finally.
All I wanted to do was to get out of Pengraic Castle on that dawn following my lady mother’s passing. I’d had enough — of Erheld, of the damned castle, of the emptiness of my life. I had only wanted to stay long enough to secure this my mother’s testimony, order my horse saddled, and then leave.
Can you imagine if Geoffrey had read this? Sweet saints, he would have burned it and then spent the rest of his life trying to cleanse the sin out of Pengraic and the stain out of his own soul.
Of course, that might have been quite amusing to watch, and would have provided me with no end of humorous ways to needle him.
But it is far better he never know the entirety of his parents’ lives.
My mother wanted Owain to write this epilogue to her testimony. But Owain is dead, and it is up to me to recall my mother, and speak as witness to her passing.
What will I do with this testimony then? Pass it to my favoured child, I suppose. I can entrust Guietta with this.
My mother, Mistress Maeb Langtofte, Countess of Pengraic, mistress of King Edmond, mother to five children. I loved her. Deeply. My lady mother spoke of her love for me in her testimony, but little of what I felt for her. I have never loved another woman like I loved my mother. I have never loved another person like I loved my mother, although my love and esteem for Edmond came close. I was fortunate to have been raised under Edmond’s parentage. I don’t think either I or my real father would have lasted more than a year without one of us killing the other if we’d been forced to inhabit under the same roof.
You may wonder how much of my mother’s testimony has been Owain’s voice, how much of him filtered through his pen into my mother’s words. Not much, I have to say. This document was my mother through and through, from her extraordinary inability to understand how lovely she was (and what power that could give her) to how sweetly foolish she was to not understand those about her, from my father to me.
How she ever thought that I really believed Edmond was my true father I do not know. I kept up the pretence, but I thought that she would surely have realised that pretence. She kept her innocence, and her innocence of vision, until the day she died. I also cannot believe that I fooled her completely into thinking I had forgot that day when I was six, and I met Stephen and Uda for the first time on the falloway. How can any mature woman be so misled by a child? My mother, saints bless her!
Oh, how I loved her. I twisted her around my little finger all the days of my life and she never knew it. But I never caused her harm nor hurt. Not her. Not Edmond. They were the two I never hurt. Everyone else has been game for the hunt.
My mother I watched over until the moment of her death. I was her salvation, bred by my father partly for that purpose.
But more of that later.
I am grateful Geoffrey was not at Pengraic Castle when we arrived. We had enough trouble with his wife Erheld. The thought of what may have happened had Geoffrey been there appals me.
Few people like or respect Geoffrey. They might respect his power and station in life, but they do not respect the man. Not my lady mother Maeb. Not Edmond, not Geoffrey’s own somewhat pathetic wife, not even King Richard, sitting pretty on his new and much-anticipated throne. People only tolerate Geoffrey for his wealth and his rank. Otherwise Geoffrey is a boorish, self-absorbed, self-important, talentless cunt, existing only on the strength of his father’s name and his mother’s notoriety. Jesu Christ forgive me such language in this the epilogue of my mother’s life. God knows how either my mother or my father bred him. I have always held the suspicion one of the imps had a bit of a hand in the ma
king of Geoffrey. It can be the only thing that explains him.
I will not tolerate him. I piss on him. I actually did it once, too, when I was eight, and got beaten for my trouble. Not by my lady mother, mind, nor Edmond, nor even by Geoffrey himself, but by some groom Geoffrey paid to do it. That’s the kind of man Geoffrey is, even when a boy.
As for my sisters. Well, they are just women, and of little importance. They made good marriages. They claim to be happy. They have modest lives. None have died in childbirth yet. I see them rarely.
My mother, as Uda had spoken the words to her, called me the Falloway Man. I doubt she really knew what that meant — another thing my mother ignored in all her sweet innocent blindness was the fact that she, like me, was full blood of the Old People. It didn’t matter that her father didn’t have a drop of the old blood in him. The only thing Sir Godfrey did well was to make off with the Devil’s diadem from under the noses of the Templars (I chuckle whenever I think of it — Godfrey bumbled his way through life until he did the one sensible thing of his existence by pinching something the Templars wanted very, very badly). It was Maeb’s mother who counted, the forgotten Leorsythe, the parent who bequeathed Maeb her bloodline. I note in my mother’s testimony that she said several times the only thing her father left her were rags and a bloodline.
Nay, sweet mother, he left you rags only. It was your mother Leorsythe who left you the bloodline that counted.
I, of course, had the old blood handed to me by both my mother and my father, and my father a prince of that line, too. I have considerable power in the mortal realm, partly because everyone assumes me Edmond’s son, partly because of the lands and titles I hold, partly because of my own beauty and what my mother called my magnetism (I have used that beauty and magnetism well; by the time I was five and twenty I had seduced half the court, men and women, to my ends), and partly because I command the falloways.
I could walk this realm at night from border to border if I wished and no one would know. I could seduce who I wished, murder who I wanted, and yet be hundreds of miles away by dawn and no one the wiser. It is a fabulous power, but I try not to misuse it. I respect the falloways and all they lead to.
Stephen, my older brother, taught me the ways of the Old People. I first met him when I was six, as my mother related, and from then until I came into my majority as a man I travelled with Stephen on the falloways once or twice a week. He was all of the old blood, too, and probably meant to be the falloway man of his age, but the plague put an end to that. Instead, after his death, he watched over my mother from the falloways and protected her as much as he could.
He was the reason she did not die from plague and hemlock. It was his horse that pushed her back, his wolves that snapped and snarled her way back into life.
I noted my mother prayed over Stephen’s grave in the chapel at Pengraic Castle. She never realised that his body was not there, although Owain knew. My father gave Stephen’s corpse back to the falloways, as I did my mother’s. Gilbert Ghent’s body was never found (he was another man of the old blood, although he was not permitted into that first falloway down which he lost my mother). Ghent’s body, too, had been given back to the falloways — probably by the bears, as there was no one else there to do it.
I travel the falloways, sometimes with the wolves, sometimes with the bears. They are both my friends.
Once, someone found me rubbing the cheeks of a wild wolf while on a hunt. Now they call me Hugh the Wolf. It amuses me — it also adds to my aura and thus my power. But I need to be careful. As my mother truly stated, I have inherited her propensity to make enemies, and in John and Geoffrey, perhaps even Richard, I have very dangerous enemies indeed.
Ah, I have digressed when all I intended to do was write the ending of my mother’s life and of what happened then. But I will add one last thing to my mother’s testimony, make one further observation.
My mother Maeb tried desperately to protect my father through her testimony. Having discovered the reason why my father could never tell her who he really was — the words would reach the ears of the Devil, and thus ruin my father’s chances of stealing back his own diadem — my mother then tried very hard throughout her testimony not to alert the Devil herself.
She failed, of course (I smile as I write this, for it is but another example of how my mother’s innocence lasted to her very end). I am sure that if the Devil had been listening to her somewhat extended testimony then he would have understood quite well what Maeb tried so hard not to say.
But the Devil, of course, would have known who my father was the instant my father put that diadem to his head. From that moment he was beyond the Devil’s reach.
Since that night, my father has wanted nothing else but to have my mother back at his side. If people, including myself (I learned the true tale very early from the mouth of Stephen, who one day took me to a dark place far beyond the falloways to tell me), have kept our mouths shut then it was to protect Maeb herself. We wanted her to be reunited with my father, but were not sure if the Devil was still interested in her, or interested in revenging himself on her, so we were careful — thus, my rather tortured effort with the tapestry I had caused to be stitched. Someone had to let her know the truth, somehow.
Ah, if only she had known her letters, how much easier it would have been. A scribbled line or two from my father and all would have been sorted!
Would she have jumped with my father that night if she had truly understood?
I don’t know. As my mother said herself, she has never regretted those thirty years with Edmond. She loved both men.
None of it matters now.
I will finish in a moment by relating the tale of my mother’s passing. Then I will return to my mother’s estate of Remany, collect my daughter Guietta (yes, even Gytha was one of my youthful conquests) and take her to one of my estates … perhaps not Rosseley at which I have installed my wife and legitimate brood of children.
I will give Guietta the testimony to keep; for her children, perhaps.
Guietta is of the old blood, too, like her mother, and like Owain. None of my other children bear the blood.
So, to the tale of my mother’s passing. Forgive me if I mix tears with the ink on this page.
Gytha, Owain and I took my lady mother back to Pengraic. It was a relatively short journey, but Maeb was already so ill it almost killed her. We arrived late one night, I desperate to get my mother inside and at some rest, only to be met by Geoffrey’s wife, Erheld.
She did not appreciate the fact we had not asked her husband’s permission — Geoffrey currently being at court, thank the saints, or else we may have been left out in the cold.
Our party waited just outside the wicket gate, she stood just inside it, whining.
I didn’t have time for Erheld.
I dismounted, pushed past her, and shouted to the guards to open the gates. They obeyed me instantly, further darkening Erheld’s temper. The moment we got my mother’s litter inside I picked her up (sweet Jesu, she was as light as a child) and carried her into the great keep, shouting ahead to the servants to make ready the privy chamber for her.
Erheld would have to sleep elsewhere.
Mother Maeb was not long for this world. Once she was comfortable I stood with Owain and Gytha in the solar.
‘It will be tonight,’ I said, soft, lest Erheld sitting in her chair by the fire overheard.
Both Owain and Gytha nodded.
‘How will we …?’ Gytha said, looking pointedly at Erheld, and then at the servants standing about.
‘All will be well,’ I said, and again both Gytha and Owain nodded. Then they glanced at each other.
‘My lord,’ said Owain, ‘Gytha and I have talked. We wonder if … if it is possible that …’
‘You want to go with her?’ I said.
Gytha’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Yes, my lord. We will not leave her.’ I studied them a moment.
‘You know what this means?
’
‘Yes, my lord. We trust you with the task,’ Gytha said. Then, ‘Guietta will need her father now, my lord.’
‘I will take care of her, Gytha. But, Owain, Gytha, I must ask this one last time. If I do as you ask then you will turn your back for all time on God and his saints. Is that what you wish? Owain, even you?’
‘I have loved God and his Son and saints,’ said Owain, ‘but not so much as I have loved the Old People. I have always had a foot in both worlds, my lord. You know that. Now I would step fully into that world where my blood lies. And where my loyalty lies — to your mother and father.’
I nodded at him, then looked to Gytha, raising my eyebrows.
‘I love your mother as much as you,’ said Gytha.
‘My life, and my eternity, will be empty without her. Even the blessing of sweet Christ Jesu cannot fill that void. I will follow Lady Maeb. Please, my lord, allow me this.’
I gave her a nod, too, and a small smile.
‘Owain, Gytha, thank you. You have been better family to my mother than,’ I tipped my head toward Erheld, the gesture also taking in the absent Geoffrey, ‘her own family. My brother and sisters well knew how ill my lady mother was, and yet you two are the ones standing here, not they. Be ready then, for those hours before dawn.’
I did not sleep. I sat by my mother’s side, watching her grey face, hearing her labour for her breath and waited for the castle to quieten. Owain and Gytha also sat in the chamber on the other side of the bed.
Deep into the night I rose, looking at Owain and Gytha.
‘You are certain?’ I asked one more time.
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