Darkwitch Rising

  But to this Weyland Orr demurred. “Those Puritans who sit in Whitehall would throw me in Newgate for such a liberty,” he’d say, “and then what would you do with your evenings over your ale in the Pit and Bull?”

  Weyland enjoyed these hours, but they left him feeling empty. On this night he did not tell any of his tales, claiming a headache, but sat back, sipping his ale as one ear half-listened to the chatter about him, and sank into his own thoughts. Over the past year or two he’d become increasingly unsettled within himself. His life in his house on Idol Lane left him progressively more irritated. Jane, as well as Elizabeth and Frances, was terrified of him (and most particularly of what he could do to her), but that didn’t stop her cold insolent silences, or her glances of sheer disdain. Frances was merely terrified, and almost literally shrank into a hunch-shouldered piece of insignificance whenever he was about. Elizabeth…Elizabeth was outwardly compliant, but Weyland sensed a great distance within her, as if she had managed to push him from her conscious world. The kitchen of the house was now entirely a woman’s world, with the three women who haunted it forming a coterie whose walls Weyland could not penetrate.

  This should not have bothered him. After all, he kept these women within Idol Lane only to use them. Jane he needed to teach Noah the skills of the Mistress of the Labyrinth (and she damn well would teach Noah, or Weyland would flay the skin from her body piece by soft, resisting piece), and Elizabeth and Frances were there to…well, to create atmosphere, if you will. When Weyland dragged Noah from whatever false, comforting world she currently inhabited into his den, then he needed to debase and degrade her as quickly as possible so that he might work her to his will.

  When he managed to drag Noah from her false, comforting world…Weyland was impatient to move, yet was concerned that any precipitous action would ruin, once more, his chance to snatch those kingship bands. He’d caused Cromwell’s death, thus setting in motion the process by which Brutus-reborn could return to England, but that process looked as though it might stretch out over months, if not years. Damn this modern preoccupation with politenesses and considerations! In any former life Brutus-reborn could simply have invaded and quelled; now he needed to bend knee and solicit.

  Charles’ re-entry to England dictated that moment when Weyland would take Noah. Weyland was certain that Charles would know the instant Weyland took her, and, as wary as he was of Charles, Weyland was not going to leave himself open to…well, to whatever Charles might be able to throw at him. So he intended to leave it until the last possible moment to rope Noah in.

  Besides, snatching Noah just when Charles might think her safe meant the greatest possible pain for Charles. The triumphant returning king would think she was out of harm’s way, and then, just as he entered London…well, Weyland had something very special planned for Charles as he made his triumphal re-entry (yet once more) into London.

  Weyland smiled into his ale, causing one of his companions to remark that he must be thinking of one of the women waiting for him at home.

  “A woman,” Weyland replied, “but not one that awaits me in Idol Lane.”

  Once he had Noah, then he had the bands. She knew where they were, and Weyland was certain he could force her to retrieve them. Once he had both the bands and Noah, and Noah had been trained as his Mistress of the Labyrinth, then he had the Troy Game.

  And then, he had the world.

  It all sounded so simple, and yet Weyland knew that such a prize could not be gained through simple means. He’d been outwitted twice before. He would not allow it to happen again.

  Back in Idol Lane, Weyland glanced into the kitchen—Elizabeth and Frances had gone back to their tavern for the night, and Jane was asleep—then took the stairs two at a time to reach the top floor and his Idyll.

  He was in a reasonably buoyant mood, due largely to the effects of the ale, and he whistled as he moved about his sanctuary. He stripped naked, admiring his body—at least in this life he had a body that was slim, unlike the dreadful flab he’d had to carry about as Aldred—then stood before a mirror, running his fingers through his thick fair hair to comb it flat.

  Suddenly he froze.

  A woman had appeared in the mirror, standing a pace or two back from him. She was dressed in the ancient Minoan fashion, with a full red silk skirt and a golden jacket left undone to display her breasts. She had long, curly black hair and a face of exquisite beauty, marred only by her expression of vicious hatred. Flames licked at her feet, as if she had emerged from hell itself.

  In her arms she held a very small baby girl, naked and squirming.

  Do you know what it is you lack in this false Idyll? she said, her plump red mouth moving in a slow, exaggerated motion, as if this were a dream. Do you?

  Weyland stared at her, unable in his shock and horror to respond.

  You lack a companion, Weyland. You are alone. You are unloved. I never loved you. I only pretended.

  And then, as Weyland started slowly to turn about, she hefted the child in her hands, and tossed it squalling into the flames at her feet.

  You are alone, Asterion, as always you were, and as always you will be.

  “Ariadne!” he cried, reaching for her (or was it for the baby?) as he completed his turn about, but she was gone, and Weyland was left standing in his Idyll, gazing at nothing but emptiness.

  He stood there, staring, for what seemed to him to be hours. Ariadne. Where had she come from? And what was it she had said: You are alone.

  They bit, those words, but Weyland would not allow them any truth. Alone? He had always been alone. It had not troubled him up to this point, and Weyland refused to believe his solitariness could start to trouble him now. If he was troubled and irritated, unable to settle or relax within his Idyll, then it was because he was impatient for the Game to begin anew in this life. Impatient for events to occur which would enable him to get his hands on the kingship bands of Troy.

  No, that vision had not been Ariadne. That had been the Troy Game, trying to unsettle him yet further. Weyland bared his teeth in a silent rictus of bravado. The king was returning; thus the Game struck out in pre-emptive threat, hoping to clear the king’s path.

  What Weyland didn’t want to contemplate was how the Troy Game knew about his daughter.

  Eight

  Woburn Village, Bedfordshire

  The harvest was in, and the people celebrated with the Festival of Ingathering. A parade wound its way through Woburn village on the weekend, and villagers danced in the field and went to church to lay sheaves of grain on the altar as thanks to God for their bounty.

  Noah—Eaving—and her sisters celebrated in an entirely different manner. This was a time of great power for Eaving. Pregnant herself, she blossomed as the land ripened into harvest and as the creatures of field and meadow and forest dropped their young.

  On the night of the Festival of Ingathering, Noah, Marguerite and Kate gathered in their bedchamber. Marguerite’s two children were asleep in their bedroom, while Kate’s baby was fed and laid down between them to sleep.

  The three women sat in a circle in the midst of the bed. They were naked, their hair unbound, their eyes thoughtful and introspective. This would be the first time they had formed their own Circle.

  “Will you go to…” Marguerite asked of Noah.

  “Brutus-reborn? No. It is too dangerous. You have told me how Weyland has used the Circle once to confront him. I do not want to risk that happening again. Tonight we will walk the Faerie, using the power of the land and of the waters which river it. That is magic foreign to Asterion. With luck, we will stay safe from him.”

  Marguerite raised her eyebrows and nodded at Noah’s belly, now gently rounded with the child she carried. The imp?

  “I will risk it,” said Noah. “I am not willing to allow this imp to entirely control my life.”

  At that Marguerite reached for the box she had brought with her from the continent, and she placed it before her.

  “When Charles
was fifteen and forced into exile,” she said, not raising her eyes from the box, “he took with him a small piece of the land. It was instinctive, that snatching, but powerful.”

  She opened the box, and withdrew from it the dried piece of turf that had, until so very recently, accompanied Charles in all his travels while in exile. Charles had given it to Marguerite, saying that he and Louis would not form a Circle on their own, and that it was best that the turf return home. “I think we shall not be long following it,” Charles had said.

  Now Marguerite held the turf cradled within her hand. Then she reached out and gave it to Noah.

  Noah raised her eyes to Marguerite and Kate. “From now, until the ending of the Circle,” she said, “I live and breathe and speak as Eaving.”

  A subtle change came over her as she said this. Her bearing and demeanour became both stronger and gentler; her eyes transformed from their normal deep blue into a dusky sage green shot through with lightning flashes of gold. Her thick, richly coloured hair, flowing down her back and over one shoulder, almost snapped as a surge of energy ran through it.

  Her skin, so pale, now glowed in the darkened room, as if it were the moon itself.

  Marguerite and Kate both took a deep breath, and bowed their head and shoulders to their goddess.

  “Eaving,” they said as one.

  Eaving lifted her hands, and tossed the turf into the air. Magically, as it always had for Marguerite, it transformed into the shimmering circle of emerald green silk, but then, unlike what it had done for Marguerite, it fluttered down towards the three women much larger than previously.

  Just before it settled over their heads, Eaving spoke.

  “Let us greet the land as it rises to meet us.”

  They found themselves beyond the bedchamber, standing atop a grassed hill in gentle sunshine. All about them rolled many hundreds of forested hills, as if into infinity.

  They stood within the Realm of the Faerie.

  No longer naked, all three wore very soft, almost diaphanous, sleeveless loose-fitting robes of ecru, cream and silver, the colours all merging and shifting as each wearer breathed or moved. The material flowed down from the women’s shoulders, draping softly over breast and hip, to a calf-length hemline that seemed to fade rather than to actually end. At one point the material was still visible, at the next it appeared to dissolve, and at the next point it had vanished altogether.

  “Welcome, Eaving,” said a voice, and Eaving turned to see Long Tom standing a few paces distant.

  Eaving smiled, and Long Tom came to her and kissed her briefly on the mouth, before greeting Marguerite and Kate in the same manner. Then, as he turned back to Eaving, the other two women gasped in surprise, for they found their little group surrounded by a crowd of the most magical creatures they had ever seen.

  They were of similar colours as the women’s gowns, and they were thin and very short, the tops of their heads coming only to the level of the women’s waists. They had very fine, copper-coloured hair, and round eyes the same sage green as Eaving’s.

  “Water sprites,” said Eaving, and touched individuals gently on the crown of their head as they crowded about her, murmuring their names. Several reached up delicate hands and stroked her rounded belly, but as soon as they had touched her they turned away again, frowning.

  Eaving frowned herself at this, and would have spoken of it, but Marguerite spoke first.

  “Where do we stand?” she said, looking about her in wonder.

  “We stand within the Faerie,” Long Tom said. “It wakes around us as its gods move towards rebirth. This hill is The Naked, and it is the heart of the Faerie.”

  “And as the land wakes about us,” Eaving said to Marguerite and Kate, “so is the Lord of the Faerie rising. Soon he will walk among us again.”

  Marguerite, rarely lost for words, hung her mouth open most unbecomingly.

  Kate stared also, and although her brow creased she managed to keep her mouth in working order. “Who?” she said.

  Eaving looked at Marguerite.

  Marguerite’s face cleared and she clasped her hands before her in a gesture of utter joy. “Of course,” she said. “Coel. Coel-reborn. I should have known. Ah, no wonder he is so powerful in this life.”

  “Can he be with us here, tonight?” Eaving asked Long Tom.

  “No. He will not come back to the Faerie until it is time for him to be crowned, and that cannot happen until he sets foot on the land. Now,” he said in a graver tone, “where would you go this eve?”

  “I would visit my daughter,” said Eaving. “I long so much to see her as you cannot imagine. Long Tom, is this possible? Can I use the Faerie to touch her?”

  “You are not afraid of the imp?”

  “I would visit the imp, as well, I think.”

  “Eaving, your daughter may not be what you expect.”

  “Marguerite said she would be different,” Eaving said, “for she has been to the Otherworld and back, but she is my daughter, Long Tom, and I want only to love her.”

  “Will you love her whatever she might be, Eaving?”

  “Of course I shall love her!”

  “The dead don’t always return as you think they might,” said Long Tom.

  “She is my daughter!”

  Long Tom sighed. “Very well. I can take you into the stone hall to your daughter.”

  He looked at Marguerite and Kate. “Sisters, would you watch?”

  They nodded, each reaching out to touch Eaving as if in reassurance, then Long Tom took Eaving’s hand, squeezed it, and said, “Walk down The Naked.”

  The girl and the imps were rounding a corner, walking from one maze of laneways across a narrow street into yet another maze, when the girl lifted her head.

  “My mother!” she said, her voice hard. “She comes for a visit.”

  The imps started, and looked anxious.

  “Do as I lead,” the girl said to the imps, then her face assumed a look of complete innocence, and she grabbed an imp’s hand in each of hers, and tugged them towards a nearby open doorway.

  I did as Long Tom said. I walked down The Naked and soon meadow grass and flowers turned to marble underfoot, and the vast space of the land was replaced with the smaller, if still vast in its own right, space of the stone hall.

  As I drew near to the central portion of the hall beneath the great golden dome, I saw two figures sitting cross-legged before each other in the heart of the patterned floor.

  One was a stumpy, knobbled, blackened creature. My imp. I shivered, for this creature marred the beauty of the stone hall.

  The imp sat as if deep in thought, his chin cradled in his hand, his brow furrowed, looking at the hands of…

  My daughter.

  I shivered again, but this time with happiness. There she sat, her hands spread apart before her, red wool twisted between them—and it was at the pattern this wool made that the imp stared.

  The wool was nothing…but, oh, my daughter! She was so beautiful, a true amalgamation of Brutus and myself. Black curly hair tumbling down her back, ivory skin, my dark blue eyes, a touch of her father’s carriage, and his pride.

  I slowed my steps, trying to calm my eagerness lest I scare her. As I approached she raised her face, turning it towards me. “Mama!” she cried, and, allowing the red wool to fall from her fingers, leapt to her feet and ran to me.

  Ah! At first she felt wonderful in my arms. Warm, alive, complete. Love overwhelmed me.

  She wriggled a little, and I let her go and dropped to my knees before her, so that she should not have to crane her sweet face to look at me.

  “What game is that you play, sweeting?” I asked, for want of anything better to say.

  “Cat’s cradle,” said my daughter. “Don’t you know it?”

  Of course I did, for Lady Anne’s daughters had often played at it. But I had a feeling that the game Lady Anne’s daughters played and what my daughter played were very, very different.

  Suddenly the
feeling of warmth and love that had enveloped me when I first held my daughter abandoned me, and I felt hollow, and a little confused.

  “Aye, I know it,” I said to my daughter, trying to smile at her. “Are you teaching it to your friend?”

  “Friend”. I had no idea what to call that dark hatefulness which now stood a pace or two away, peering intently at us. Friend was a somewhat uncomfortable compromise.

  She turned a little and looked also at the imp. “Not truly,” she said. “I challenge him to best it.”

  “And can he?”

  She looked back to me, and grinned, and my heart thudded in that expression, for it was Brutus’ mischievous smile, that which he used when he felt most sure of himself.

  “Not yet,” my daughter said.

  “I came because I have missed you so much,” I said, wanting to turn the conversation from the imp.

  “I will be born this time,” she said. “Don’t you believe it?”

  I stroked her cheek, and felt hurt when she moved away her face. “Yes, I believe it. I just want you to be safe.”

  “It is far more important that you be safe.”

  I felt more uncomfortable than ever. This was no child speaking at all.

  “Be careful of the imp,” I said, wanting only to mother her.

  “The imp does not bother me,” she said, rejecting not only the imp, but the mothering as well. Again I found myself fighting away that strange, uncomfortable feeling.