Darkwitch Rising

  “It has shrunk and somewhat declined,” said Weyland as they reached the top. Where the summit should have been there was a dip of some four feet, and then the blank grey water of a reservoir. “Now the hill is used by the London Water Authority as a holding station for water before it is pumped further into the city. Pity, really.”

  “A sad fate for a sacred hill,” said Skelton. “Did you plan it? Do it to torture Noah? To torture the land?”

  “Oh, it was done to torture the land,” said Weyland, then took another long drag on his cigarette. “Effective, too. There are drowned stones at the bottom of this reservoir, Jack. Murdered Sidlesaghes. Who now knows they are there, eh? Who cares, these days? But I didn’t do this, Jack. You know who did.”

  Skelton didn’t reply.

  “Stella tells me you walked about London last night,” Weyland said. Skelton grunted.

  “Did you see me, Jack? Parading about in all my bullish finery?”

  Skelton dragged his eyes away from the water to Weyland. “You’re far prettier this morning.”

  “I didn’t move from my bed last night, Jack. As you know, my bed holds far greater pleasures for me than chasing you through the cold, heartless streets of London. You spoke to…well, I’m sure you know who you spoke to. But it certainly wasn’t to me.”

  Jack Skelton stared at him, and then, with a muttered expletive, turned back for the cars.

  One

  Woburn Village, Bedfordshire

  NOAH SPEAKS

  Oh, the terror I’d felt when Asterion appeared outside the house, and ordered me through the ice and snow to his side. It was terror, not only at the thought of his presence, but also at the fact that when he’d called I had no hope of resisting. I could do nothing but mumble some inane excuse to Marguerite who sat with me, and walk outside into the frigid weather wearing nothing but a light woollen gown.

  There awaited Asterion, or Weyland Orr, as he now calls himself. He loomed before me, a tall figure wrapped in a heavy cloak, thick scarves about his neck, and with his hands hidden within such bulky leather gloves they appeared like mallets that he would turn against me at any moment. Then I saw his face.

  It was not what I had expected. Not in any manner at all.

  His eyes were keen, and sharp, locked on my every movement. I knew they noted my fright, and for that I hated him more than ever I had previously. Then I saw their colour, which was a soft hazel, and that disconcerted me, for I had never associated the concept of “softness” with Asterion at all.

  Weyland Orr’s face was, at first glance, all angles. A sharp, perceptive face to suit those eyes, but, like his eyes, it also had its softness. The line of his jaw was saved from angularity by its strength, his nose was saved from thinness by the regularity of its contours, and the inflexibility of his broad forehead was softened by a wisp or two of fair hair that fell forward and gave him, gods help me, a boyish air.

  He was handsome, but not immediately in any striking way. It was only after you’d studied him for a few minutes that his features truly impressed themselves upon you.

  His was a dangerous attractiveness, because it swept upon you unawares.

  We talked. He threatened, I evaded or agreed, as necessity dictated. I tried to keep calm, although I dare not believe I was very successful.

  He kissed me, and for some illogical reason Long Tom’s directive to heal wounds came to my mind as he pulled me closer and deeper into that kiss.

  He pulled the rug from his horse to keep me warm, and I wondered what terror he was trying to conceal from me with that action.

  He let me go, the greatest cruelty, for I knew now as never before that shortly I would be lost. Shortly Weyland would call me to him, and I would be powerless to resist.

  From this day on his face haunted my dreams, and hardly a night passed that I did not wake, sudden and terrified, staring into the darkness.

  Woburn village may not be the centre of English society, but we discovered most of what happened of note in the world. We heard the gossip in the market. We read the broadsheets that were sold for a penny apiece on Woburn high street. And John Thornton visited and spoke to us of developments in the wider world.

  Charles was to be restored. Parliament had worried to and fro about it for over a year until both public opinion and General Monck (at the head of his army) had forced their hand.

  Charles was to be restored, and he was to come home in glory and to acclaim.

  I could not help wondering how he felt about that, not only considering this life’s experiences but those of his previous lives as well. He would worry, surely, about what Weyland Orr might have planned.

  I tried as much as I could not to think of Weyland, but if he did not occupy my thoughts, then they were taken up with concern for my daughter—my strange, disturbing Catling. Oh, I had tried hard to love her. Sometimes, I almost succeeded. If, when I held her, I closed my eyes and rocked her gently and sang to her, I could believe she was a baby such as any other who desired only to be held, and fed, and loved and protected.

  But then her tiny mouth would close about my nipple, and she would feed from me, and I felt coldness and nausea grip my belly, and it was all I could do not to throw her away. If I looked down at her, as sometimes I steeled myself to do, I would find her blue eyes watching me unblinkingly.

  At those times I rose abruptly, and handed Catling to Kate, and asked that Kate feed her.

  My inability to love Catling troubled me greatly. Not merely because as a mother I felt I should love her, but as Eaving, I needed to love any child. I represented all mothers, the fertility of land and water and beast.

  I could not feel such coldness towards any offspring, let alone mine.

  Oh, gods, I wanted to love her so badly! She was my daughter reborn, and I could not bear to think that I had lost her in a previous life only to reject her in this one.

  I tried to keep my discomfort from Marguerite and Kate. I know they wondered that I did not laugh and sing with her very often, and many times passed her to Kate to feed.

  When we spoke of it, as we did occasionally, I blamed my discomfort on Catling’s rapid growth.

  This was amazing (and, aye, disturbing) enough to satisfy Marguerite and Kate’s curiosity as to my apparent lack of bonding with Catling.

  Indeed, as we could hardly hide the baby from the village, her growth was the talk of all Woburn.

  Catling had sat up at two weeks, had crawled at three months, was walking at six months, and talking at seven. Now a year old, Catling was as accomplished as a five-year-old both in quality and quantity of speech, and as tall and agile as any four-year-old.

  This daughter of mine wanted to waste no time on childhood. She rushed towards maturity.

  Catling and I rarely talked, and then only to discuss the most mundane of daily chores. What gown would she prefer to wear this morning? Did she wish to attend the market with us? Would she prefer a plum or a pear with her morning breakfast?

  She played happily with Marguerite’s and Kate’s children, and she appeared to do that which was required of a child (the giggles, the laughter, the tears when she fell over and grazed a knee), but she did other things also, most unchildlike.

  She sat in corners, and sang to herself, softly, as she played cat’s cradle with a length of red wool which she had begged from Marguerite.

  She challenged the local vicar at length about the writing of the gospels, claiming they were nothing but the fictionalised ambitions of a coterie of ruthless priests, until he was red-faced and discomforted. Eventually he asked me to please keep her apart from the other children.

  She asked me once if the imp troubled me during my monthly menses, and said that if this was so, she could ensure he did so no more.

  This was the one occasion we managed to bypass the mundane and almost talk of what truly troubled or motivated us.

  “Can you really control the imp that greatly?” I asked her.

  “Of course,” she replied, her
eyes on her fingers as they twisted the red wool this way and that.

  “What are you, Catling?” I said.

  At that she raised her eyes, flat and emotionless.

  “Your daughter,” she said. “What else?”

  I said nothing, and so she continued with the inevitable, hateful question. “Do you love me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, too quickly.

  Her mouth twisted slightly. “Will you do anything I ask of you?”

  I opened my mouth, but could not form the words. I sensed a trap here, so deep that if I fell in I might never manage to crawl out. So instead of answering her, I started, and looked towards the door. “Hark,” I said, “is that Marguerite calling?”

  And I hastened off, and thus did not have to witness the undoubtedly cynical smile that would have marred my daughter’s beautiful face.

  During this first year of Catling’s life Marguerite, Kate and I often formed a Circle and walked the Faerie. These were times of great joy for me, and comforted and compensated me for the loss of what I had expected in my daughter. Sometimes Long Tom asked after Catling, but the water sprites never did, and I noticed that they backed away whenever Long Tom spoke her name. I remembered how they had frowned when they had touched my belly when I was carrying Catling.

  I asked them one night of this, and of what they had felt.

  The sprite with the brightest copper hair replied, somewhat obliquely, “We revere you above all others, Eaving. We trust you above all others. Not her.”

  This comforted me, and I laughed and embraced them, and they pretended to hate the embrace, and sprang away to dance joyously about me.

  That was an enchanting night.

  Apart from my disquiet about my daughter, life in Woburn was good for me. The village had come to accept my presence, as that of Marguerite and Kate and their children. We acted as seemly as we could. We made no fuss in the village, acted in a most decorous manner, and enticed none of the village men into our house. The gossip abated, and soon enough the women of the marketplace began to natter cheerfully to us whenever we appeared among them, and share with us the joys and hopes of their lives.

  We enjoyed that, Eaving and her Sisters, very much, and sometimes one or another of us would walk the meadows with some of the village women, and show them some of the wonders of the land. We would open their eyes, just very slightly, to the possibilities of the ancient ways, so that when the time came for one of the meadow dances held on the solstices, or at the harvest festivals, they would better appreciate—and far better participate—in the natural rhythms of the cycles of earth, regeneration and rebirth. In our own way we returned the women gently back to the natural reverence of the land of ancient times and they, in turn, influenced their husbands and children.

  John Thornton continued to visit. He told me that the land rose to meet him now more than ever, and I was happy for him. Furthermore, when he told me that he had won the hand of a local squire’s daughter, a woman named Sarah, then I was even happier, and wished him well in his marriage. His eyes were sad, but I knew that in time his memories of me would fade, and he would grow to delight in his wife.

  Then, as if it was a god’s blessing, word reached us in May which pushed to one side all my worries about Weyland Orr and Catling.

  Matilda-reborn would shortly be joining with Charles, and then, gods willing, with us.

  Two

  Lisbon, Portugal, and The Hague, Holland

  The Infanta Catharine of Portugal, better known in European circles as Catharine of Braganza, paused directly outside the closed door to her parents’ drawing room, then gave a tight nod to the valet who stood waiting to open it for her.

  Oh, please God, let this be the news she’d spent her life waiting for!

  The door swung silently open, and Catharine entered in a quiet, graceful manner, showing none of her nerves. At twenty-three she was a small woman, barely five foot tall, delicate of build and of face, with fine white skin, large and widely spaced dark brown eyes, and heavy black hair, which Catharine thought her best feature. Diplomats and ambassadors, in describing Catharine, always ignored the hair and argued that her substantial dowry—Bombay, Tangier, and several million gold crowns—was indisputably her best feature. The dowry was certainly her best selling point to various princes about Europe.

  But to all of them Catharine had said no. There was but one man she wished to marry, and until this year, it had seemed highly unlikely her father would ever allow it. Indeed, he had refused her lover’s suit on several previous occasions.

  But now…

  The audience room was empty of all save Catharine’s parents, King John IV and Queen Luisa de Guzman, and one man standing at the windows so that the light hid his features.

  He bowed as Catharine entered, but as they had not been introduced Catharine ignored him for the moment. She walked to where her parents sat side by side in chairs by the hearth—if the occasion had been more formal, or their visitor anyone but their daughter, the king and queen would have been sitting on their thrones on the dais.

  As it was, a small table to one side of Queen Luisa held the remnants of the tea of which Catharine’s parents had been partaking, and sharing with the as yet unknown man standing by the window, if the third cup was any indication.

  “My lord father,” Catharine said, curtseying deeply. “Madam mother.”

  She stayed deep in the curtsey until her father waved a hand, granting her permission to rise.

  “Sir Edward Montagu,” he said, indicating the man standing at the window. “The Earl of Sandwich.”

  Please, dear God, let the earl not be here on some dreary trade delegation! Catharine prayed, again hiding expertly her inner turmoil as she held out her hand. The earl walked forward, bowed yet again, and kissed the backs of her fingers.

  “Infanta,” the earl murmured, and Catharine noted with renewed excitement how he regarded her speculatively.

  “The earl and we,” said John, “have been engaged in some discussion, first through our respective ambassadors, and latterly in person within this our palace.”

  “I had not known of your presence here, good sir,” said Catharine, “else I should have made myself better known to you, and wished you well.”

  “You shall be pleased to hear of the nature of our discussions,” said the king.

  Catharine briefly closed her eyes, her hands clutching deep within the folds of her silken skirts. Please, God, please…please…

  “It seems most apparent,” her father went on, his voice languid, almost bored, “that the King of England in exile, Charles, shall no longer be very much in exile.”

  Please, God, please, please…I beg you…

  “The earl,” the king continued, “has brought to me reassurances from General Monck—you have heard of him?”

  Catharine inclined her head.

  “The General,” said John, “has assured me that Parliament has set in motion the procedures necessary for restoring Charles to his throne. It shall not be many more months before Charles may enter England, not as a fugitive, but as its rightful king.”

  “Princess,” said Sandwich, “Parliament, as well as many notable private citizens of my country, have sent to King Charles a significant sum of money—”

  “Sixty thousand pounds,” said Queen Luisa.

  “—as a gesture of goodwill and a true indication of their honourable intentions towards the king.”

  “Where once Charles languished in threadbare breeches,” said King John, “begging money from every prince and duke in Europe to pay for his laundresses, he now lolls in silks and satins, threaded all about with seed pearls, and the princes and dukes of Europe line up to do him honour. Thus, I find myself quite prepared to reconsider King Charles’ offer for your hand.”

  “Indeed, the earl’s presence here,” said Queen Luisa, “indicates, as I am sure you must by now be aware, that these negotiations have, on our part at least, been most truly successful. It
only rests for you to—”

  “Yes,” said Catharine, in such a hurry that the word stumbled thickly from her mouth. “Yes, I agree. I wish to be his wife.”

  The earl grinned, and Catharine smiled back at him, her face dimpling prettily and relieving her of her usual aura of cool gravity.

  “My queen,” he said, and bowed more deeply before her than he had heretofore.

  Bombay, Tangier, several million crowns, and a pretty smile as an added gift, he thought. My lord king shall be a happy man indeed.

  “You have, perhaps,” murmured Charles II, soon-to-be-restored King of England, “some idea of how long I have waited for this moment.” He had Catharine’s hand in his, and raised it close to his lips as he spoke, but neither had regard for that movement, nor that kiss, but only for each other’s eyes as they met.

  Around them, the audience chamber in Charles’ temporary palace in The Hague was packed with members of Charles’ court, statesmen and their wives of the States-General of Holland, and the court of Charles’ sister, Princess Mary of Orange (her recently deceased husband, Prince William of Orange, had been among the most influential of Dutch noblemen).

  The Hague was in a festive mood. After years of ignoring Charles, years of asking him to move on, years of denying him monies for basic housekeeping, years of wishing that the exiled brother of the Princess of Orange would just go away, now the Dutch could not get enough of the suddenly wealthy and influential King of England. Monies, flatteries, fruits and significant measures of gold were thrown his way as if Charles and his plight had never been found the least bit irritating.

  Neither Catharine nor Charles had any thought for what was going on about them. Instead, both felt the profoundest sense of relief. Catharine, the last of the inner circle of Eaving’s Sisters, was almost home at last.

  All they felt was relief and, as they gazed into each other’s eyes remembering what they had felt for each other in their last life, a not unexpected desire.