Darkwitch Rising

  Long Tom smiled very slowly. “I want you to do more,” he said. “There is something you need to accomplish. Something which can aid Noah, and heal the greatest wound of all—that between her, and you, Brutus-reborn. Listen.”

  Long Tom talked for a long time, explaining to them what they must do on the night of the summer solstice—one of the most powerful nights of the year—which was the next time, within the annual cycle of seasons, that they could form the Circle. He talked for so long, and what he said both so disturbed and so excited the group, that their power was almost all gone by the time Long Tom was done. There was no chance to see Noah, nor send her their support.

  “She will know there has been good reason you could not do so,” said Long Tom as he prepared to leave.

  “She will worry,” said Marguerite.

  “She will know there was good reason,” the Sidlesaghe repeated. “Besides, she has a lover, John Thornton, to keep her company and to give her comfort.”

  Complete silence met this pronouncement.

  “What?” said Long Tom. “You thought you could take your pleasure in your shared bed, and in the comfort of your shared intimacies, and she not?”

  “We have sent her our support,” said Charles, his voice tight.

  “She is a living, breathing woman,” said Long Tom. “She needed more than the knowledge that you were all having a good time and wished her well.”

  To that, no one had anything to say.

  The group was very subdued as they first folded the emerald cloth then handed it into Marguerite’s hands, where it became once more the piece of crumbled turf. She put this away in its box, and stowed the box in one of Charles’ chests.

  Then she rejoined the other three on the bed.

  “I wish we had seen Noah,” she said.

  “Aye,” said Charles. He looked exhausted, for it was mostly his power which had held the Circle together, and he rubbed at his eyes and forehead, as if he could soothe away his tiredness.

  “Charles,” said Louis. “We need to—”

  Charles gave him no chance to finish. He caught Louis’ eye, and gave a small nod. “I know. Wait a moment.” He rose from the bed, and gave Marguerite and Kate each a kiss. “Go to sleep,” he said. “Louis and I shall be with you shortly.”

  The women looked at each other, then at Charles’ face; they pulled back the coverlets and slipped beneath them.

  “Do not be long,” said Kate, and fell into sleep almost immediately.

  Louis smiled and, leaning over the bed, tucked in the coverlets about her shoulders. He straightened and looked at Charles, who tipped his head towards the door.

  They stood by a shadowed window, speaking in whispers.

  “I do not care for what Long Tom has told us,” said Charles. “I for one cannot countenance the thought that we must sit idly back and watch Noah go to Asterion.”

  “I am with you,” said Louis.

  Charles held Louis’ gaze. “We must prevent it.”

  “Aye. How?”

  “One of us must—”

  “How?”

  Charles put a hand on Louis’ shoulder. “Ah, my friend. I am too weary to hold a single thought in my head. I cannot think of the ‘how’. Not tonight. But a ‘how’ you and I shall find. We must.”

  Louis relaxed a little. “After what Long Tom has told us tonight, after what he has told us we must do, we have no choice.”

  Charles’ hand tightened a little. “We will not tell Marguerite or Kate of our plans. It would only worry them.”

  Louis nodded. “I wish…”

  “We have wished on the stars and the moon and the sun for over two and a half thousand years already, my friend. I am sick to death of ‘wishes’. Now, we must act.”

  Three

  Idol Lane, London

  Weyland brought two new girls to Idol Lane. They replaced the three who had worked for him since he’d first moved into this house, and who had slowly over the past six months grown so tired and dispirited that Weyland had let them go.

  Each had walked out the front door, their heads low, their faces wretched, with nothing but enough coin to keep them fed for a week. Weyland felt he owed them nothing more. They had the skills to earn themselves more coin if they so desired, and there were enough men in the city who would take in a girl willing to exchange her body for food and a roof over her head.

  These two new girls were the best Weyland had ever found. Both from Essex, and from neighbouring villages, they’d separately come to London seeking work in one of the great mansions of the Strand.

  They had, of course, found no work at all, for they had few skills and no experience, but they had found each other and, in time, Weyland had found them—sheltering under one of the small bridges crossing Fleet River, cold, hungry and destitute.

  Willing to do whatever they needed in order to survive.

  They were called Elizabeth and Frances. They had surnames, but Weyland had forgotten them as soon as he’d heard them. Surnames were of no importance to whores. What was important was that they were pretty enough, young enough and, within an hour or two of being taken back to Idol Lane, terrified enough to do whatever Weyland told them.

  At fifteen, Frances was the younger of the two by a year. She had a strong, lithe body and abundant red hair: Weyland could use that to market her as a firebrand, although less a firebrand Weyland thought he had yet to meet. Her face was round and pretty with pale, creamy skin, lightly spattered with freckles. Those who didn’t like firebrands could be tempted with her sweet innocent air.

  Weyland found Frances somewhat dreary, but the other one, Elizabeth, attracted him markedly. She was tall and slim, with fine dark hair, elegant features, translucent skin and pale green eyes. Elizabeth had an exotic look about her which bespoke a fathering by one of the dark, quiet men who wandered the country’s highways and byways, and whose bloodlines stretched back many thousands of years into England’s ancient past. As attractive as Weyland found these mysterious looks, there was something else about her…Weyland wasn’t entirely sure what it was, although he wondered if it might be her intelligence, for Elizabeth had a wit about her that most of the girls Weyland brought to his house completely lacked. Unlike Frances, Elizabeth had been a virgin when she entered Idol Lane.

  Weyland made certain that she lost that virginity within the hour.

  Elizabeth had wept, and afterwards curled up about herself. Jane had gone to the girl, and wrapped her arms about Elizabeth, and tried to comfort her, all the time shooting Weyland dark looks that, had they been arrows, would certainly have seen Weyland skewered in forty different places.

  But looks didn’t touch Weyland, and the next day both girls were hauled upstairs, and set to entertaining the men who came to the front door.

  Within a week both Frances and Elizabeth had acquired the hard, blank facial expression of all whores, and somehow Weyland found that disquieting. Especially whenever he regarded Elizabeth.

  At odd moments, when he was alone in his Idyll, Weyland regretted the fact that he’d set Elizabeth to whoring so soon.

  Perhaps he could have brought her here, to the Idyll.

  Perhaps she could have been a companion for him.

  Perhaps…

  When his thoughts drifted this way, Weyland found himself yearning for that something, that one, small, insignificant thing, that he needed to complete his Idyll. No matter how hard he’d tried, he’d never managed to identify the Idyll’s lack. But when he thought on Elizabeth, and thought on bringing her to the Idyll, then somehow…perhaps…maybe even…

  Ah! It was just out of his reach.

  But Weyland kept thinking of Elizabeth, and he began to spend more of his time in the kitchen when he knew that Elizabeth would be there.

  Three weeks after Elizabeth had come to Idol Lane, Weyland came down the stairs, walked through the parlour into the kitchen, and there found Elizabeth alone, sitting at the table.

  Elizabeth looked up, and a strange
expression came over her face as she saw him standing there. To his discomfort, Weyland realised it was fear.

  Why did that realisation discomfort him?

  “Where are Jane and Frances?” he said.

  “Gone to Smithfield,” she said. “Jane said we needed meat.”

  Weyland nodded, and sat down next to her on the bench.

  She smelt fresh, as if she had just bathed. The fact that Elizabeth was not staled with the sweat of men made Weyland feel extraordinarily cheerful. It made him think of the Idyll, and then of its incompleteness.

  “Are you happy?” he said.

  She looked at him in disbelief. “I want to go home,” she said.

  “This is your home, now.”

  To Weyland’s deepening discomfort, Elizabeth’s beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Home to my village,” she said. “Home to my sister, and her husband.”

  “You need to earn to pay your way.”

  “I would crawl there on my hands and knees, if you would but let me go.”

  Weyland didn’t know what to say. He lifted a hand, and gently touched Elizabeth’s cheek.

  She flinched.

  “Elizabeth,” he said. “I wish…”

  She tensed, and Weyland wondered if she was terrified.

  The thought gave him no joy, and that unsettled him more than ever.

  He thought again of his Idyll, waiting upstairs, and of Elizabeth’s sweetness and intelligence. Without thinking, Weyland slid his hand behind Elizabeth’s neck, holding her head still, and leaned forward and kissed her. She tensed even further, but then managed to relax a little, and that gave Weyland hope.

  His free hand now picking at the buttons of her bodice, Weyland kissed Elizabeth ever more deeply. He ran his hand beneath her bodice, and caressed her breasts.

  A moment later he lifted her onto the kitchen table, pulled up her skirts, fumbled at his own breeches, and then slid contentedly into her.

  “Elizabeth…” he whispered, working his hips gently, wanting to tell her how much he liked her, how much he was attracted by her, and how much he wanted to invite her into his Idyll, so that they might—

  “Finish and be done,” the girl said, her face now averted from him, her voice harsh. “I wish not to share my hell with the likes of you.”

  Her words hit Weyland with the strength of a woodsman’s mallet. He lurched backwards, pulling himself free from her, and awkwardly closed his breeches.

  She lay there on the table, not moving to cover her bare flesh, her face still averted from him.

  He remembered another woman, long ago, who had rejected him. Who had taunted him with a new lover. Who had laughed at him, and then set her lover to murder him.

  How could he have ever thought of bringing a woman into his Idyll? How could he forget Ariadne, whom he had loved and trusted, and who had betrayed him?

  Not once, but three times. Once when she set Theseus to murder him, and again when she plotted to resurrect the Game against all promises to the contrary.

  And once, the very first time, when Ariadne had taken from him that one thing he loved above all else.

  His child.

  Ariadne had been a whore, too. That’s all women ever were.

  Whores.

  How could he have forgotten that? Furious now with remembered betrayal rather than at what Elizabeth had said, Weyland reached forward, grabbed one of Elizabeth’s ankles, and pulled her off the table so hard she cried out in pain as she hit the floor.

  “Cold-hearted bitch,” Weyland said, and then left the kitchen, retreating up the stairs to his haven, his desperately incomplete sanctuary.

  Four

  Antwerp, the Netherlands

  “Louis.”

  Louis turned. Charles had entered the small walled garden of their house, and now stood a pace or two away. Louis had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even heard him enter. He tried a smile of welcome, and, failing, turned back to the apple tree at which he’d been staring sightlessly before Charles entered.

  Charles stepped close and put a hand on Louis’ shoulder, making the man turn back to him. “Louis, I know how you feel.”

  “Sweet gods, Charles, we must find a way to save Noah from Asterion…this Weyland.”

  “Louis, what can we do? The instant I step foot back in England Asterion will seize Noah and—”

  “Then let me go to England. Let me save her.”

  Now it was Charles whose gaze hardened. “And what will happen if you set foot back in England, eh? What happens then? We lose everything. In our peculiar circumstance, my friend, your foot is as dangerous as mine.”

  Louis finally dropped his eyes away from Charles’ face. “There must be a way.”

  “Then if there is, we shall find it. Louis, I do not like what Long Tom had to say. I do not want to see Noah made Asterion’s whore.”

  There was silence for a few minutes, both men walking to a bench and sitting down.

  “What about James?” Charles said eventually.

  Louis grunted derisively. “James might aid her. Might. But I do not trust him. Besides, I do not think he would be able to act secretively. The entire nation would know James, Duke of York, had returned to England within the hour of his so doing. After that he would not be able to secrete away a mouse, let alone Noah.”

  “Nay…And if I sent another? A man experienced in the arts both of action and most secret diplomacy?”

  “I would be best!”

  “Aye, but…” Charles allowed his voice to drift away, and again silence fell between the two men.

  “Charles…” Louis said after a moment.

  “Aye?”

  “The problem is that you and I are so closely connected that if either of us set foot in England Weyland would know and seize Noah before we could get to her.”

  “Aye. So…”

  “What if I set foot in England a day or so before you? Just a day or so, hid amid all the excitement generated by your imminent arrival. Would Asterion then realise my presence? Would he think what he felt was just your impending arrival?”

  Charles’ eyes narrowed as he thought. “Maybe, Louis. But, dear gods, you’d have to move fast. You’d have a day, perhaps two. Anything more and Weyland would be able to tell that what he felt was not only my impending arrival. You’d have but a breath in which to snatch her.”

  “A breath is all I would need.”

  Charles thought, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “Charles, let me do it, I beg you! A day or two, and I would have her. Damn it! We know where she is! Even if Weyland does summon Noah, then I could find her on the road to London, or even as she enters London.”

  “Gods, my friend, we’d have to time this so carefully.”

  “Charles…” Louis almost growled the word.

  Charles finally nodded, and sighed. “If we fail…”

  “I will not fail.”

  Clearly troubled, Charles stared at Louis, then nodded again. “You will need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

  Louis grinned, relieved. He put a hand on Charles’ shoulder. “I will rescue her, Charles. Have no doubt.”

  Five

  Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire

  The Reverend John Thornton walked very slowly behind and to one side of Lady Anne Bedford and Noah Banks.

  It was a beautiful late spring morning. The sun beat down with an unseasonable warmth, and the air had a languid quality about it, as if it contained all the heaviness of midsummer instead of the usual sprightliness of spring. Those deer and rabbits that saw the walkers moved away only sluggishly as if they were too exhausted to be bothered with panic.

  The women wore broad-brimmed straw hats against the sun and light summery clothes. Thornton guessed they’d spent half the morning finding and then airing last summer’s bodices and skirts. But Lady Anne had been insistent; the moment she’d looked out upon the sun-swathed park she’d proclaimed that the day was too beautiful for anyone to spend indoo
rs.

  His position to one side and slightly behind gave Thornton the opportunity to study the two women.

  Lady Anne, now in her sixth month of yet another pregnancy, looked drawn and tired, and Thornton wondered why she’d insisted on this walk. The day was beautiful, yes, but she might have been better instructing one of the footmen to set a chair on the lawns for her leisure rather than insisting on this meander through the parklands.

  On the other hand, Noah looked as lovely as ever. She was a special woman, as he had every reason to know. For the past nine or ten years she’d been his lover, gracing him with her body and presence on two or three nights a week. He was in love with her. Worse, he was addicted to her. Whenever they lay together he embraced not only Noah, but also the land.

  Always, when they made love, Thornton could feel the land rise up to meet him.

  Do you feel it, John Thornton? she would whisper to him, and he would weep, and hold her, and say, Yes, I feel it.

  Thornton had lost count of the number of times he’d begged Noah to marry him. He was desperate for her, and he was plagued by nightmares of losing her. Marry me, he would beg, marry me, and never leave me.

  She cried whenever he said that, and laid a hand to his cheek. I cannot, she would say. I must leave, eventually.

  Thornton was not sure how their love affair had kept itself secret for so long. He wondered if the countess suspected; she certainly knew Thornton loved Noah. She had once asked him directly if he held a “special affection” for Noah. He replied truthfully that he did, but that she would not have him.

  Noah later told him that the countess had taxed her with Thornton’s apparently unrequited love, and that Noah had told the countess what she so often told Thornton.

  She could not marry him. She could not marry any man, for she would eventually have to leave.

  The countess was perplexed as much as Thornton was increasingly desperate.

  He studied Noah now as he strolled along, hands clasped behind his back, eyes heavy-lidded against the sun.