Lilah

by Gemma Liviero

  ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Are you really going away with Mama?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. And something in the way she scrutinised me, her gaze unwavering, made me feel uncomfortable. Could she perhaps read my thoughts? I had never stopped fantasising about Lilah as my partner.

  ‘What will your wife say?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you know of her?’

  ‘I hear people talk of her. They say she would be mad if she knew.’

  ‘I think, little madam, that you should stop eavesdropping on other conversations,’ and I tickled her tummy, which had the distracting effect I hoped. I did not like these comments that left me feeling that perhaps this trip was not such a good idea after all. Who was it I wondered, so hard and judgmental; casual comments by strigoi in passing perhaps, or had Oleander picked up their thoughts unwittingly.

  The look on Oleander’s face had suggested that she knew I would react to the comments. I decided not to mention this to Lilah and hoped that Oleander did not discuss things too openly with her father. I could not read the little one’s thoughts, already adept at masking them.

  I asked Lilah what her plans were for Oleander.

  ‘To take her away. She does not need that sort of life.’

  I was not really surprised. I had seen that the relationship, though comfortable, was unloving with a marriage based on tolerance and negotiation.

  ‘Lewis will never let her go.’

  ‘If you agree to become the master in his absence,’ she said carefully, ‘Lewis will go to the ground sooner and Oleander will be too young to make the change. I will persuade him not to convert her until after he awakens.’

  ‘And when he wakes?’ I asked. ‘You know he will find you both.’

  ‘Hopefully, I will not be living and Oleander will be married to a human with eight children. Perhaps that will put him off.’ And though there was humour in the comment, I did not detect any in her speech.

  ‘Lewis is not foolish,’ I said. ‘He will organise spies before he goes underground to keep watch and wake him in the event of such.’

  Lilah put her head in her hands. I touched her hand but she pulled away. She did not like these truths.

  ‘Then I will find a way to hide. Perhaps my family will help.’

  I did not take away the illusion; there were things she would find out about her family that only they should reveal. It was why I wanted to accompany her. I owed it to her father. I had not honoured her father’s wishes to save her from herself.

  The innkeeper guided us to our room and lit a fire. The cot had room enough for one, which was offered exclusively to Lilah. I pulled a chair close to the window as I did not like the warmth of the room. I ached for the cold but dared not leave her alone in this inn. Neither of us slept well, aware of the movements of one another.

  Lilah

  I fell asleep several hours before daybreak only to be woken by the rolling of beer casks along the cobbled streets and the shouts from the men with their delivery carts. Gabriel was still sitting by the window, awake and examining events outside. It was as if he never slept at all and I wondered if he had watched me sleeping. While I felt tired and drained of colour, he looked tall and handsome, his silken brown hair shining in the early morning sun.

  He left the room while I prepared for travel and we met at the front of the inn. A young stable boy brought our horses to the entrance. It would be two full days of riding and I was grateful at least for a cool and cloudy day with breezes.

  We followed the river, crossing the plateaus with grass burnt yellow from the frosts, and soon reaching grasslands bordered by ancient oaks and giant poplars. The grass became thick like carpet and the horses were happy with plenty to eat. At one point we encountered two bears, which at first I found frightening, but Gabriel laughed and reminded me that animals would not harm us. They can read our thoughts and believe us to be one of their own. Or, if Gabriel chose, he could disappear beneath their gazes so they were left to wonder what animal it was that moved at such a speed.

  Finally, we entered the lush forest and a delicious tangy scent overpowered my already heightened senses. The leafy canopies made our travels cool from the midday sun.

  Winter had been gone for several weeks and we drank from the thawing brooks where the water was clear over round and coloured stone. Once we stayed a while so that I could bathe in private while Gabriel searched for food. He returned with a stolen goat, and skinned and roasted it over the fire.

  Sometimes we cantered the horses and other times walked them slowly. A hare shot across the path and I suddenly thought of Oleander who did not easily startle, rather she would have viewed the animal with curious giggles. I suddenly missed her.

  Gabriel had seen the shadow cross my face. He never failed to sense my mood. ‘Do you feel anything at all for Lewis?’

  I was surprised by such a personal question and saw his slight regret after such a long pause.

  ‘Certain feelings have been necessary for the sake of Oleander,’ I said. ‘I cannot ignore the fact that he has been good to me.’

  He frowned at this response as if expecting something more contrary, as if he was hoping for another admission on my part. A sense of caution passed through me. My heart was still not mended and I could not let it distract me from my purpose: to not only find my family and receive the answers I had been yearning, but escape my strigoi prison.

  We came upon a small farmhouse. Gabriel seemed curious about the occupants and told me that he could hear their conversations in his head. He smiled as he revealed that the husband and wife were arguing over another young girl from a nearby village who came to milk for them and help on the farm. It seemed that the girl was now with child and the wife believed it was her husband.

  ‘Well, we won’t seek their hospitality then,’ he humoured.

  I turned to suppress a smile.

  ‘Don’t look for comfort for the night on my behalf. I am happy to sleep under the stars.’

  And that is what we did. We lay beside each other as the near full moon rose. The nightingales sang and I whispered to the horses not to wander during the night.

  ‘Is my father a good man?’

  There was pause from Gabriel before he answered. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will he like me?’

  ‘He never stopped loving you.’

  This time I did sleep well and woke to the sun stretching cautiously towards us through the gaps in the trees. We continued our travels a few miles further to come upon a village. The air smelled strange and Gabriel told me that it was the salt air from the Adriatic Sea.

  At the market stalls Gabriel introduced me as his wife and talked easily with a vendor. He bought some smoked meats and a bowl of milk and barley. With my stomach full I was ready for the remainder of our journey.

  We rode for the whole day and arrived in Dalmatia at nightfall.

  Gabriel

  She looked surprised. I had said too much.

  ‘I thought it was my father’s place you were taking me to.’

  ‘It was,’ I said. ‘Here you will meet your grandmother and learn of your past.’

  ‘Was? You mean I will not see him here?’ Her neck and cheeks flushed with anger. ‘I don’t understand why everyone has to keep secrets from me.’

  We slowed our horses; there were matters I needed to tell her. I chose not to disclose too early into our journey for she would worry and, selfishly, our journey would have been miserable. I was both grateful and surprised that she had not questioned me too much until now.

  ‘The rest of your family lives elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere?’ She reigned her horse to face me directly. ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘This isn’t easy for me either. I am breaking a promise I made to your father many years ago.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You said he loves me. Why wouldn’t he want me to return?’

  ‘Please Lilah,’ he said. ‘I sent word to your grandmother. Sh
e is expecting us and she will tell you everything.’

  It was cowardly but I had left much unsaid. This lack of information alarmed her and led to frostiness and, once again our tenuous relationship had returned.

  We came to a field and just above the trees I espied Beatrice’s castle, former wife of King Andrew, now spurned, accused by her dead husband’s brother of being an adulteress and a liar; her son a bastard. She would have killed them all but instead chose to take her son, Stephen, to safety; the son who should have ruled the Kingdom of Hungary. I could never understand the human need for power and privilege but did not understand what it was to lose something as Beatrice had.

  Several years later, her husband dead and Beatrice now in exile, she sought out Lewis to convert to the strigoi. Though ever restless, she quickly broke away from the coven, preferring danger and independence. Because of her desertion she would no longer be welcome at any coven.

  Her castle was surrounded by water for protection and we crossed a bridge towards the entrance. It was not as grand as Lewis’s, with only two levels, and without the spires and turrets, but had many small balconies so that she could see across the vast farming lands on the river and beyond that to the sea. Stone sections of various colours had been added over the years. Here Beatrice had held dinners with high profile supporters who would see the end of Laszlo our king, but all those efforts had amounted to nothing after all. It was another point of contention with Beatrice that Lewis did not grant her wishes to intervene with Laszlo’s reign, and allow her son the crown.

  I remembered the day Stephen showed me his new daughter. I was here at the castle. I had met Beatrice in my hunt and was instantly infatuated, so confident and knowledgeable was she on all matters. I was fresh from my sleep and living in my age-reduced seventeen year old body and eager for company. Beatrice was just the one to ease me back into the fold.

  Stephen, Lilah’s father, and Tomasina, his wife, once lived with Beatrice. When Lilah was born, Stephen had asked me what I thought and I had seen straight away. Stephen said his mother had refused to tell him but he had to know.

  I told him what he did not want to hear.

  ‘I cannot let this happen.’

  ‘But it will be her destiny as a witch.’

  ‘If that were all. Mama will encourage the dark practices. I cannot allow it. She was disappointed that I have turned my back on such arts and she will see the skill resurrected in her granddaughter. You must take her somewhere pure.’

  I was shocked at the desperation in his voice.

  ‘But what about your wife? What does she want?’

  ‘It is not about that. She will be disappointed, of course, but she has spurned my mother and it will only be a matter of time before she will treat her daughter also with much scorn, once she sees the truth of her. She is a religious woman like myself. She will choose God over her own blood.’

  At that point Tomasina came into the room to take her tiny daughter. Her eyes were red and she carried another baby in her arms, less robust than the girl whose skin was rosy and eyes so bright. I could see that the boy would not have the skill.

  ‘Tomasina,’ I pleaded. ‘You must talk sense with your husband. You must not forsake your own child.’

  ‘I have pleaded with him but it is to no avail.’ She darted a look at her husband. ‘But ultimately he is right. I cannot live wondering if she will end up like her vile grandmother and you.’

  It was clear she did not like me but it was not unusual. To her I was untamed. She thought of us as unscrupulous beasts: our treatment of humans as those who served, or those who served as supper. She did not know that I respected her kind as well.

  ‘Please don’t talk like that Tomasina,’ defended Stephen. ‘Gabriel is a friend.’

  ‘Exactly why I shouldn’t trust him,’ she had said and it is only now having known Beatrice that I can fully understand what she meant.

  He turned to me. ‘I have only known you a short while but even though we have chosen different pathways, we are bonded by blood and I also feel I can trust you. You are different from many: strigoi, witch and human. For instance you choose to listen. Many of your kind are too vain to do so.’

  It was only a few short weeks later that I came to collect the baby. Tomasina did not wail or cry this time. It was Stephen who found it hard to let her go.

  ‘You must protect her. You must not let her become one of you.’

  It seems strange to me even now for I like who I am. Stephen had forsaken the skill in every way, praying at church to his God for forgiveness, believing that he was a descendant from hell. Another strigoi may have tossed the baby in the river, so insulted by this man. But I tolerated his ignorance, his piety, and the fact that he had only ever shown kindness towards me, albeit at a safe distance.

  I had taken Lilah to the church in Güs. And just as she is now she did not complain once during the journey but watched me with her eyes, so full of questions that could not yet be articulated. I had watched the nuns bring her in from the steps and then I left for many years before returning to find her thriving beside the lovely Arianne. Lilah’s location at the monastery was kept from Lewis, who was keen to convert many witches at the time.

  To be enamoured by the fair young Arianne had not been in my plans. But when Lilah was cast out by those humans to whom Stephen entrusted her safety, and thrown to a miserable fate, I felt compelled to bring her to the castle; and the door was then open to release Arianne as well. At the time, nowhere else seemed safer. I found some peace knowing that Lilah was strong enough not to succumb to her father’s worst fear for her. But that she had borne Lewis’s child – the child of a strigoi – Stephen would be turning in his grave.

  Across the moat, the castle doors loomed below many small windows built into two-foot thick walls of stone and I sensed that Beatrice was watching us. We were ushered inside by a footman: another human soul destined to serve us for the entirety of his life.

  Marble columns etched with Egyptian hieroglyphics lined the entrance, and Roman paintings of the crucifixion and other religious celebrations covered the walls and ceiling. I laughed at the irony for Beatrice had tried very hard to fit in as a human her entire life, even marrying one. She had felt the weight of her husband’s death, not from the loss of his company but with the end of her royal role, and it was her son whom she had cared about most.

  Seated on plush velvet covered cushions we waited for what seemed like an hour. Beatrice made a dramatic entrance, with the double doors opening in unison, and several maids and servants in tow. She wore a fitted black velvet gown with puffed sleeves off the shoulder, and a train at the back. Her hair was pulled sharply to the back of her head. Green crystal hung from her ears and around her neck. Her beauty was renowned and she looked younger than I remembered. She had not long come from a decade of sleep in the ground.

  I bowed in greeting.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Where is your personal assistant?’ Beatrice had a young companion with her the last time I saw her, before she went in the earth.

  ‘Dead. He was too old to keep up with me and requested that I send him to what he foolishly believed was a better place. Humans and witches are such strange creatures believing that life beyond this earth will be better.’

  ‘We cannot know for certain,’ I said. ‘Our own strigoi history says that we are originally from heaven.’

  ‘Well if there is a heaven, why would anyone want to float around with angels? It would be dreadfully boring and too much goodness would be impossible to live with.’

  I laughed at Beatrice; she had not changed. She answered to no-one.

  We embraced and her exotic herbal perfume hung in the air around us. ‘You look younger,’ I said

  ‘You look older,’ she said

  ‘Beatrice, this is Lilah, Stephen’s child. Lilah, after so many years I know you will want to meet your grandmother.’

  Lilah’s eyes did not hide her surpris
e. Beatrice looked barely older than her granddaughter. But the resemblance was clearly there. Though Beatrice wore much makeup and high penned eyebrows, the long angular cheeks and almond eyes showed their kinship.

  Beatrice pulled Lilah towards her in a showy embrace but the younger was reticent, unable to reciprocate the gesture. She appeared slightly intimidated as most are the first time they meet Beatrice.

  ‘How lovely,’ said Beatrice admiring her granddaughter. ‘Marco will show you to your rooms. You must be tired,’ she directed at Lilah.

  Lilah did not answer. She looked around her at the large paintings on the walls and the smaller portraits above the mantelshelf, hoping for another window into her past. One such portrait caught her eye, depicting Andrew, Beatrice’s husband.

  ‘That is your grandfather my dear,’ she said, indifferently. ‘He did not inherit his father’s witchcraft. Very unlucky.’

  Lilah looked at Beatrice warily.

  The portrait showed Andrew on a throne wearing a jewel-encrusted crown and a blue tunic. He looked as I remembered him, cold and distracted. I could not see why Beatrice married such a man, other than fame and royal connections. I have suspected for years that the king’s former wife may not have come to a natural end. By any means, Beatrice often achieved her aim. Andrew’s other sons, from this previous marriage, distrusted Beatrice, which may have been for good reason.

  ‘Have a look at the next portrait my dear girl,’ said Beatrice huskily.

  Lilah stared at the face of her father. She bore some resemblance, though Stephen was much fairer like his father.

  ‘My father,’ she said with solemn acceptance.

  ‘You are thinking that he abandoned you.’