Darkwitch Rising

  Almost as if she knew how I felt, my daughter leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Are you walking the land tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then know that the other imp lies quiescent tonight.”

  There was a movement behind the imp, my imp, and, yes, there stood another one, his expression dark and cross, and I knew that my daughter had been playing cat’s cradle with both.

  Again I shivered. What dark sorcery was going on within my womb that my daughter could summon that other imp hence?

  “Genvissa-reborn—Jane Orr—lies alone,” said my daughter, “with no one to love her. Go to her, mama, for you shall both need to be friends if you are to learn the arts of Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

  My smile felt frozen. Dear gods, what did she not know? Tentatively, I touched her cheek again, then gathered her into my arms and hugged her tightly. “Be safe!” I whispered even as she wriggled in my embrace, and then both she and the stone hall and its impish inhabitants faded.

  “You saw,” Eaving said as she stood once again atop the hill.

  “Yes,” said Long Tom.

  “We all did,” said Marguerite.

  “She is very knowing,” said Eaving.

  “She is your daughter,” said Long Tom, “and as such you should love her, no matter.”

  Eaving shot him a sharp glance. “I wanted…” she said, then turned her head aside, as if she could not bear to continue.

  “What is this cat’s cradle?” said Marguerite to Long Tom, a little too brightly.

  “A version of the Troy Game,” said Long Tom. “She creates the winding path of the labyrinth between her fingers in red wool, and then challenges the imps to find their way from the heart of the labyrinth to its exit. They can’t, for they are evil incarnate, and the Game’s very purpose is to trap all evil within its heart.”

  “But what is my daughter doing engaged in this trickery?” said Eaving. “She should be just a child, a baby, innocent of all that has gone before.”

  “Eaving, do you not recall what I said to you earlier?” said Long Tom. “You should love her no matter what, even if she is not quite what you expected.”

  To that Eaving made no reply.

  Eventually Marguerite spoke. “Will you go to this Jane?” she said. “To Genvissa-reborn?”

  In the stone hall the girl stood, staring at the space where her mother had vanished. The two imps stood at her shoulders, also staring.

  “I wouldn’t trust that one, if I were you,” said one imp.

  “I have no intention of trusting her,” said the girl, “for she carries not only the seeds of my victory, but those of my destruction as well. She shall have to be carefully managed.”

  She sighed, and, after a moment, the two imps followed suit and sighed as one, their black, bony shoulders heaving exaggeratedly.

  Nine

  Idol Lane, London, and Woburn Village, Bedfordshire

  Jane had taken to sleeping on a pallet close to the hearth in the kitchen. Weyland had made no objection. No doubt he found that amusing—look to what the great MagaLlan and Mistress of the Labyrinth had been reduced!—but Jane actually quite enjoyed it, as much as she could enjoy anything in this life. The kitchen was the warm heart of the household, and Jane found comfort there alone in the deep of the night that she found nowhere else.

  Tonight was much as countless preceding nights had been. The two girls, Elizabeth and Frances, had finished their day’s duties close to midnight, and had gone home to the tavern’s cellar rooms, shoulders hunched against the memories of the day. An hour after they’d departed, Weyland had gone upstairs to his den for the night and Jane was left in peace to go to her own bed.

  But she hadn’t slept.

  Instead her thoughts had been given over to the Feast of Ingathering, and the memories that invoked. Here, in this life, she was trapped within a city, but even so the feel and smell, and even the sights of the land, were never far away. The celebration of the harvest had always been a huge festival during the age of Llangarlia, and one in which the MagaLlan, as the living representative of the mother goddess, Mag, had always played a large part. Harvest time was Mag’s triumph: fertility come to fruit, life for the coming year.

  Jane wondered if anyone remembered Mag now, or if Christianity had somehow managed to persuade people that no one but God, His Son and all His saints were responsible. How sad if that were true, Jane thought, and she didn’t even pause to think how extraordinary it was that she, once Mag’s implacable enemy, should consider such a thing.

  No sooner than the thought had crossed her mind Jane went rigid as a soft voice spoke into the kitchen.

  “The people know in their souls. They know when they walk the country lanes and feel wonder at the sight of the flowers and the fragrant hedgerows and the waving grasses and the branches of trees rich with fruit. That is enough for me, that such a sight still cheers them, and lifts cares from their hearts.”

  Jane, who was lying facing towards the hearth, fought to control her panic. She knew that voice so well: Cornelia, Caela…and Mag, all in one.

  Mag! Mag! Cornelia-reborn was the goddess reborn!

  It hadn’t been Damson, pitiful, clumsy Damson, at all.

  It had been Cornelia-Caela. All this time.

  Summoning all her courage, Jane slowly rolled over.

  A woman stood on the other side of the room. She was stunningly lovely, as much in presence as in form and feature.

  “I know you well,” said Jane, amazed that her voice was steady. “And I saw you with Brutus. Why have you come?”

  The goddess smiled. “You saw me with Brutus?” She put a hand to her belly, and Jane could see now its gentle roundness.

  She was pregnant.

  “I am Noah in this life,” said the goddess. “Once Cornelia, once Caela.”

  “Noah is not your goddess name.” Jane very slowly inched herself into a sitting position.

  “No. Do you want to know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It will give you great power over me.” Jane’s mouth twisted. “Not enough to destroy you.”

  “You will tell Weyland,” said the goddess. “That would be dangerous.”

  “I will not tell Weyland.”

  “No? Why should I believe that?”

  “Because knowing your goddess name, and not telling him, will give me some power over him.”

  “And you need that badly, I can see.”

  Jane’s cheeks flamed, for she knew that the goddess referred to the frightful disease pocks on her face.

  The goddess walked over to Jane, then sat gracefully on the flagstones of the floor by Jane’s pallet.

  “What are these marks, Jane?” she whispered, putting a hand to Jane’s face.

  Jane flinched away from Eaving’s hand. The pox, you sanctimonious bitch! she wanted to scream, but instead the terrible truth came sliding over her tongue.

  “They are the marks of my past.”

  The goddess tipped her face on her side, considering. “My name is Eaving,” she said finally.

  Jane drew in a slow breath. Eaving—the unexpected shelter, the god-sent haven from the tempest. Then she remembered what Caela had said to her in their previous life, the final time they’d met: Swanne, if ever you need harbour, then I am it. If ever you need a friend, then I am it.

  Dear gods! She had been Eaving then, too. Who would have suspected it? Poor, mewling queen…

  Jane opened her mouth, and, instead of all the hatred and vileness that she was used to pouring out at this woman, said, “Be careful, Weyland sleeps above.”

  “If he wakes then I will go.”

  “He will call you in. Gods, woman, you carry more in that womb of yours than Brutus’ child!”

  “I know I am to be Asterion’s whore,” Eaving replied.

  “If you knew the full horror of it,” Jane said, “you would not speak of it with such equanimity.”

  “Well, then, I am sure I shal
l know it soon enough.”

  “Why do you not sound fearful?” said Jane. “This,” her hand indicated the weeping sores on her face, “awaits you.”

  “Neither of us knows what truly awaits us,” said Eaving, “and do not worry overmuch about the imp in my womb, nor even yours. They are otherwise occupied this night, and Asterion will not know I was here.” She paused. “Jane, you saw me with Brutus?”

  “Aye.”

  Eaving smiled a little, tenuously. “And yet you do not berate me for it.”

  “I appear to have lost my touch.”

  Now Eaving smiled more genuinely. “Jane, there are many wounds which need to be healed. Yours and mine prime among them.”

  “You want me to do penance?”

  “It is not what I ask.”

  “I have no interest in healing, Eaving.”

  “I cannot think you truly mean that.” Then Eaving bent forward, laid her lips gently against the worst of the sores on Jane’s face, and the next instant was gone.

  Jane sat until dawn, sleepless, wondering that she had just spent a few minutes in a reasonably civil conversation with the woman she had hated bitterly for almost three thousand years.

  What she found difficult to accept, what was astounding, was that Jane had to confront the truth that she no longer hated Noah.

  Ten

  Woburn Village, Bedfordshire

  On Christmas Day of 1658 John Thornton knocked at the door of the house two up from Woburn church. Noah answered the door, and smiled gently.

  John Thornton stood with his hat in his hand, looking uncomfortable.

  “A merry Christmas to you, Noah, and to you, ladies,” he said, as he saw Marguerite and Kate appear behind her. “I hope the season brings you joy.”

  “And to you also, John,” Noah said. “I thought you would have celebrated Christmas with the Bedfords, in their private chapel. They always do it well.”

  “I, uh, I wanted…” I wanted to come here, to see you.

  “You should forget me, John,” she said gently.

  “I cannot.”

  At the agony in his voice, Marguerite stepped forward. “John Thornton. We have a goose simmering in a sweet, fragrant sauce on the hearth. Will you join us for Christmas dinner?”

  “Marguerite…” Noah said in a low voice.

  “You would send the poor lovelorn man on his way with no warm food in his stomach?” Marguerite said, raising her eyebrows archly. “What harm can it do to feed him?”

  “None, I suppose,” said Noah and she stepped back and waved Thornton inside.

  They ate in the warmth of the kitchen. John Thornton realised that he had never enjoyed a meal such as this. The Christmas fare was traditional, but somehow tasted as if it had come to fruit in heaven’s fields rather than those of Woburn’s acres, while the company was extraordinary. It was as if the women shared a companionship so deep and so mystical that every glance, every movement, every word held far deeper meaning than John could ever understand. This strange underlying meaning did not perturb him, nor make him feel as if he were an outsider. It was, rather, an added warmth to the dinner, an added depth, an added colour. John Thornton felt as if he had been invited into a slightly different dimension, a deeper and vaster world than any he had ever known. It was almost as if the world he knew and understood was only a faded relic of a far older and far more brightly-hued world, one with which these women were strangely familiar.

  Noah looked radiant—even more beautiful now in mid-term pregnancy than she had ever been when she’d been in his bed, and John found it difficult to look away from her.

  He envied, desperately, the man she loved.

  When the meal was done, and the children had run laughing into the front parlour to play at some game, Noah came to sit next to John. She smiled at him, then reached out, took his hands, and put them on her belly.

  “Feel her?” she said. “She twists and turns, awaiting her birth.”

  John had never before touched a heavily pregnant woman. At first he felt embarrassed and hesitant, then the wonder of the moving child within Noah’s body overcame him, and he pressed his hands tighter to her belly.

  He raised his eyes to Noah’s, then froze, transfixed by her eyes.

  Their dark blue had faded, and now they were a soft green, streaked through with rivers of gold.

  “My God,” he whispered, “who are you?”

  “She is Eaving,” said Marguerite. “She is the fertility of the land, its waters and rivers, its breath, its soul. You have lain with her. Surely you have felt this?”

  “Aye,” he whispered, his eyes once again on his hands, still splayed over Noah’s belly. “In her arms I have felt the land rise to meet me.”

  “If we have need of you, John Thornton, will you aid us?” said Kate.

  “You are witches all,” he said, and sat back, removing his hands from Noah. “You are everything I have been taught to hate.”

  “And yet you do not hate us,” said Noah. “How are we bad? How are we harmful?”

  He did not answer, only looking between each of the women in turn.

  “I cannot live without you,” he finally said to Noah.

  “I cannot be yours,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

  He looked away, keeping silent for a long time. Eventually he sighed, and spoke. “I will aid you, if you ask,” said John, and Noah smiled, and leaned forward to kiss him softly on the mouth.

  “The land,” she said, “shall always rise up to meet you.”

  The girl had led the imps out of the stone hall and back into the twisting maze of alleyways. Now she directed them to a particularly dank corner. Here she sat, and indicated that the imps should do likewise.

  “I said that I had the power both to trap and to free you,” she said as the imps sat, crossing their spindly limbs neatly, their bright eyes watching her with the utmost suspicion. “I said that I had the power to earn your love. Do you doubt any of this?”

  “Of course,” said the imp who sat to the girl’s left. “We don’t trust you at all. We know what you are.”

  “Ah,” said the girl, her tiny face screwing up as if in thought.

  “Your mother, on the other hand,” said the imp sitting to the girl’s right, “thinks you are a sweet little thing.”

  His brother giggled, a hand over his mouth to hide his pointed teeth.

  “My mother shall love me well enough once she truly knows my purpose,” said the girl. “Now, to that purpose which is, of course, to destroy you, and your current master…as he thinks he is. I shall have the greatest pleasure in wrenching Weyland apart, for he has caused me innumerable troubles, but you and I can come to some small accommodation.”

  “Won’t that destroy you?” said the imp to the right.

  “Nay,” said the girl. “I have grown way past such minor details. I am far different than ever I was, or was planned to be. Now, do you want to hear my proposition, or not?”

  “We wish to hear,” said the imps as one.

  “Firstly,” said the girl, “I want you to continue to obey Weyland. I don’t want him suspicious.”

  The imps glanced at each other, relief clearly etched on their faces.

  “I want him to have no reason to know of me,” said the girl, “so for the moment you may continue to dance to his orders.”

  “What is this proposition, little girl?” said the imp to the left. The last two words he spoke with a decided edge.

  “You do my will, all of it, and when that will is done, you may be free. Completely free. To be and do what you will.”

  “But doesn’t that contravene all that you are?” said the imp.

  “It contravenes all that I once was,” said the girl, “but not who I am now.”

  At that she smiled, and it was the coldest expression either imp had ever seen.

  The imps looked once more at each other, then both looked back at the girl.

  “I think we might have an agreement,” said the imp to
the right, while his brother nodded vigorously.

  “A deal!” said the girl, and sounded that strange chilled laugh of hers. “A deal!”

  “A deal!” cried the imps, and laughed with the girl until the sound echoed up and down the alley, frightening the rats rummaging about in the refuse.

  “A deal!”

  Eleven

  Bruges, Flanders

  Charles sat sprawled in a large chair under the window in the parlour of the agreeable house he occupied on the Rue Haute in Bruges. Outside, the late February weather threw sleet against the window, but for once, Charles didn’t particularly care. He’d actually had enough money to pay for firewood this winter. In his right hand he held a letter.

  Across the room Louis stood, waiting, very still. He hadn’t wanted to disturb Charles until he’d read the letter. But, by the gods, it had been a quarter of an hour since Charles had opened it. What did it say?

  Unable to wait any longer, Louis spoke quietly. “Well?”

  “General Monck is receptive to the idea of my return,” Charles said as Louis walked out of the shadows. “He is pleased that I have been conducting myself in the manner of a king. With dignity.”

  Louis laughed softly. “He has heard that you have removed your mistresses…but not that you’ve sent them to Woburn, or with whom they now reside.”

  “But…”

  “Ah, I knew there was a reason for this silence.”

  “He counsels that it may be many months yet before I can return by invitation. He hopes that disappointment won’t make me think to invade. He reminds me of his military command, and their experience.”

  “If only he had half your experience,” Louis said.

  “What is past is past,” said Charles, “and should remain so.” He sighed, finally holding the letter out for Louis to read. “I should have known. My thirtieth birthday is yet many months distant. Fate, or the Game, or whatever, shall conspire to keep me from England’s green shores a while yet.”