The Beauty of the Wolf

V

One May morning, Lord Rodermere, out hunting with a party of friends, thought he saw in a thicket a vixen and set off after her until by twists and turns he became lost. He stopped and shouted out in the hope of one of his party hearing him. And all he saw and all he heard was the chanting melody of birds, quivering leaves, cooling winds, and shadows. The mocking echo of hounds and a distant horn confused his senses. A snake unseen slithered past and so startled his horse that it bolted, taking his lordship by surprise. It was all he could do to hold tight to the saddle and reins as his horse, wild-eyed, nostrils flaring, took flight. Low branches scratched his face and Lord Rodermere fought not to lose his ride.

He is conscious, perhaps for the first time, of how deep and far the forest stretches.

On and on they go, horse and rider, this way and that, he all torn and knocked about, unable to bring his horse under control for in the mind of the creature the snake follows faster than he can gallop. Into the darkness the horse takes his rider. He, too, wild with terror, for was that not the cry of a wolf? And all sight is lost and then it seems he has passed through some unseen curtain into blinding light. The ground beneath his horse is moss, soft moss, and from it rises an intoxicating perfume.

Lord Rodermere thinks to call out. He is rewarded not by the sound of the hunting horn but by a song that has such yearning at its heart that his horse becomes calm and he, enchanted, dismounts. Forgetting how he arrived here he follows the music which calls him on until he comes upon a clearing.

Through the trees, he spies a stream, and under a willow in the dappled light a maiden dressed in an apple blossom gown stands bare-footed in the shallow waters. He, all in wonder, lets his horse drink.

‘Maiden, do you know this forest well?’ he says. ‘Methinks I am lost.’

She takes no notice of him or his fine horse. She ripples the waters with her toes. Her silence intrigues him.

‘I am Rodermere,’ he says.

She glances up at him, her eyes as golden as the sun, her skin rose pink, her hair as black as midnight, her face an enchantment. She says not a word. She takes his hand and leads him into the stream.

‘No,’ he says, ‘my boots . . .’

And she lets go of him and walks out into the deep water where the stream whirls. Swimming away from him, her blossom gown floats free. The sight of her voluptuous nakedness, her loosened hair, flower filled, near undoes him. Disregarding his boots, his clothes, he wades out to her. But he is a cloven-footed lover whose grace lies in brutality. That, this sweet maiden does not allow and she casts him off.

Finding that his strength has no power over her, he follows her to the bank of the stream, desperate for his lust to be allayed, and there goes down on his knees and begs her to lie with him. She comes, puts her arms round his neck, kisses him softly on the lips.

If he had known anything of elfin ways he would have had the wisdom to climb fast upon his horse and ride free. For we are the stuff of dreams, void of time’s cruel passing. We are creatures of freedom that only brush against the world of envious man whose desires are made dirty with guilt.

It is one of the sorceress’s handmaids who now stands near-naked before him in all her ethereal perfection. Her strength will haunt him ere long he lives, the smell of her soft skin a perfume he will never forget or find again. She is what man wishes for in bed but freedom is her birthright: she will not be tied to hearth or home. She is mother, good, bad all in one and none is she. A friend, no friend of man be she.

The Earl of Rodermere is now tamed, unclothed, brought to his knees, and hers to do with as she will. No man has loved a faerie and lived whole to tell the tale. But such is the pleasure she gives him that long afternoon that there he stays in her arms, honey from her breast he drinks and all time lost.

The hunting party searched all that afternoon and into the evening until, exhausted, they returned home without Lord Rodermere. The next morning they went again to look for him. For a week the search continued but there was no sign of him. The parson prayed in the chapel for his master’s swift return. The following Sunday, the earl’s horse came home without its rider. Gradually, as the days become weeks and the weeks turned into months, the mystery of Lord Rodermere’s vanishing deepened. Those who lived near the great forest knew well he was not the first to be elfin taken.

Only his wife, Eleanor, Lady Rodermere, and his little daughter, Lady Clare Thursby, kept their hopes to themselves and their prayers tight on their lips for both wife and daughter prayed – prayed as they had never done before – that Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere, might not be found.

Wife and daughter dared to believe that their prayers had been answered. It had been a harsh winter when even the birds had fallen from the sky, frozen by the cold. Surely, Lady Rodermere told herself, no one could survive in the forest in such unforgiving weather.

VI

Nine months have passed. It is midnight in the House of the Three Turrets. A servant sleepily attends to the fires before returning to his trundle bed. The cat, all whiskers and claws, sits watching the space behind the cupboard in hope of a mouse. The flea sucks on the sweet flesh of dreamers till he is ready to burst with blood. The distant church bells ring the hour. The dogs in the hall begin to bark.

Yes, this is the hour that will alter all the hours to come.

VII

The infant was brought to the sorceress at one of the clock, one minute after his birth, more beautiful than even she had imagined. There was no kiss upon his brow, no faerie wish to interfere with her curse, or so she supposed, for who would dare disobey her? So certain was she of her powers that she did not examine the babe – perhaps his beauty beguiled her but she took the word of his mother when she said she had not kissed the boy, that he was innocent of any wish.

What is done is done and one kiss would not have the power to interfere with the sorceress’s magic. But she had no notion of what a mother’s love in all its sticky gore was like. Only later did she discover that the faerie had lied and the sorceress was aggrieved that she had ever trusted her womb-ridden words.

Her task that morn was to make sure that Lady Rodermere took this infant as her own, to love and to cherish.

She placed the basket with the babe in it on the steps leading up to the great front door of the House of the Three Turrets. The dogs howled but the household did not stir; it was asleep, deep under her spell. She required only two people to be awake: Master Gilbert Goodwin, Lord Rodermere’s trusted steward, and Lady Rodermere, Lord Rodermere’s trusted wife.

Lady Eleanor was lying in her great bed, listening to the dogs. She watched the door and held her breath, every sinew in her body stretched to breaking. She stayed that way, suspended between sleep and wakefulness, taking short, sharp breaths until she could tentatively assure herself that there was no tightening of the air, no drowning of hope, no weighted foot upon the stair. Her husband had not returned. She lay back on the linen sheets, relished the chilly space around her, the warm island her body had made in the centre of that vast cold bed.

Lady Eleanor, unlike her lord, believes in the Queen of Elfame. She is certain that her husband has been faerie-taken and she prays that he might never be returned to the shores of her bed.

Through the large bottle-glass panes of the window a beam of moonlight falls accusingly on the carved wooden cradle. It has been in this chamber ever since Eleanor first wed Francis, Lord Rodermere. Three daughters born, one still lives. Over the years the cradle has come to represent her failure to produce a son, an heir for his vast estate. Tomorrow, she thinks, she will have it removed.

Her bravery wavers, for the dogs have not ceased their howling. She rises, puts on her fur-lined gown over her underdress, her feet bare on the chill oak floor, as cold as the fear in her heart.

Please do not send his lordship back, please do not.

Taking a candle, she opens her chamber door, listening for distant voices in that cavernous House of the Three Turrets. There are none. For a moment she wonders whether she should call for Agnes, her maid. Eleanor has always loathed the black whalebone beams of the long gallery, full as it is of oaken shadows. Hearing Agnes’s peaceful snores from the adjoining chamber, she thinks better of it.

At the main staircase Eleanor stops and looks over the banisters. The dogs are now whining; why, she cannot fathom. Only her husband’s steward is there. What could be the reason for the hounds to be so disturbed? She watches Master Goodwin. He is holding a basket, staring at its contents with a puzzled expression. Snow dusts his doublet and cakes his boots. The glow from the fire catches his face. A face to be relied on, she thinks, and in that moment she sees him for the first time, as if she had never noticed him before. Kind eyes, generous lips unlike her husband’s mean, hard slit of a mouth. She wonders what those lips might feel like if they were to kiss hers. One thought stitches itself into another forbidden thought and she finds herself imagining Gilbert Goodwin being a gentle lover . . . and in that instant she knows what she wants, what she longs for: to be loved without leaden cruelty.

So the sorceress’s magic begins to work, for tell me how does a cuckoo lay her egg in a magpie’s nest if not with the help of nature’s charms?

Lord Rodermere had never considered his wife to be a handsome woman but that night Eleanor is not without beauty – a slight frame, delicate. Her hair is tumbled, sleep has given her a soft glow. As she walks slowly down the grand staircase, holding on to the balustrade, her gown falls open. The outline of her body, her breasts, show through the muslin underdress.

Gilbert Goodwin is suddenly aware of her and sees, not the wife of his lord and master, but someone vulnerable, lost; finds himself moved by the very image of her.

Eleanor and, she suspects, Gilbert Goodwin, knows there is another, invisible, presence watching them. This house of whispering oak seems always to be calling the forest closer, admitting its spirits.

‘What is it?’ she says.

Gilbert holds out the basket to her.

Her sad brown eyes take in the infant, fast asleep in the wicker basket, wrapped only in rabbit fur.

‘Is it faerie born?’ she asks.

‘I do not know, my lady,’ says Gilbert.

He does not think it an unwise question.

The babe lifts one small, perfect hand, nails as delicate as sea shells. She touches his finger and feels her heart being pulled towards the infant’s, knotted round his.

‘Have you ever seen such a beautiful child?’ she says.

‘No, my lady. There is a note.’

Pinned to the fur, written in the unmistakable hand of Francis, Earl of Rodermere, it reads, This is my son.

VIII

Later that St Valentine’s Day, when the snow had settled thick and white, covering the truth of earth and the lies of lovers, Eleanor wondered who it was who had entered the house that bitter winter morn, who it was who had been intent upon mischief. In the quiet of that afternoon, as the sun once more began to fail and the snow fluttered at the window, she shuddered with the joy of remembering and felt not one ounce of guilt.

Gilbert, Eleanor at his side, had carried the basket up the stairs, through the long gallery to her chamber. Neither of them had said a word, nor had the infant announced its arrival. Gilbert closed the door and they waited, hoping that none of the servants had heard or seen them.

She whispered, ‘My maid is asleep in there,’ and Gilbert Goodwin silently closed the door to the antechamber.

Still the infant had not cried out.

At the end of the bed was a chest where Eleanor had kept the swaddling clothes and the sheepskin bedding that her babes had slept in when newly born. She took out what was needed and wrapped the babe in the long linen cloth before laying him in the cradle to sleep. His hand fought its way free to find his mouth.

‘You will be needing a wet nurse, my lady,’ said Gilbert.

‘Not yet awhile,’ she said and sat to rock the cradle, to think what she should do, how she would explain the child’s sudden appearance. Could she claim the baby as her own? True, when she was with child, she had been slight, had never grown to the size of a galleon in full sail.

Back and forth, back and forth, the cradle rocks back and forth and with each gentle movement she feels a strange heat. It starts in her thighs and spreads up into her belly, into her very womb, up to her breasts. It is an overwhelming heat, the like of which she had never experienced before. She stands up abruptly and forgetting all about Gilbert, forgetting all about modesty, she throws off her fur-lined gown. Still her womb feels to be a cauldron of flame. She discards her underdress.

‘I am on fire,’ she says.

Gilbert sees her naked, her arms wide open and turns his face away.

‘My lady, shall I call for Agnes?’

She looks at him and he turns to her, his full lips parted. She leans forward, her lips touch his. It is kindling for the blaze.

Frantically, she undoes his doublet. He pulls off his shirt, her hand slips into his breeches, she is pleased to feel his cock is hard. On the bed he parts her tender limbs, kisses her lips, her neck. He nuzzles her breasts and gently enters her, not with the violence she is used to, nor is the act over with the pain of a few uncaring thrusts.

Gilbert whispers, ‘Slowly, my lady, slowly.’

He takes his time, waits for her. At each stile the lovers encounter he helps her over, and deeper into her he goes. Then, at the height of their ardour, when all appears lost, Eleanor gives a cry that wakes the baby, that makes the lovers pull away, she embarrassed by the completion of an act that she never knew could be so tender.

Gilbert climbs out of bed, picks up the infant and holds it to him. They wait for the knock on the door, for their sin to be discovered.

But there is not a sound, the house is still wrapped in an enchanting spell. The sorceress would not allow these two lovers to be disturbed. More needs to happen before the cuckoo is well and truly hatched.

IX

Eleanor looks at Gilbert, naked, holding the infant close to him and her breasts ache. They feel full, painfully full, just as when she’d had her own babes. Leaking milk, she takes the babe from Gilbert and begins to feed him. With each thirsting suck he assures his place in her affections. She looks up at her new lover.

‘Tell me what has happened to us – do you know?’

Tears fill his eyes.

When the infant had finished feeding, Eleanor searched hungrily for a mark upon him for she had no doubt that her husband had been faerie-taken, no doubt that this was his child.

The infant fell asleep and Gilbert wrapped him warm and snug and laid him in the cradle. And as he did so, the steward felt that time had gathered itself in quick, aching heartbeats, each beat becoming a month, the months becoming nine. This faerie child was as much his and his mistress’s – born in a flame of a desire – as ever it was his master’s.

Gilbert awoke only when there was a tear of light in night’s icy cloth. Eleanor had the babe at her breast once more.

She reached out towards her lover and whispered softly, ‘I will not give up the child. He is ours. What will we say? What should we do?’

Gilbert kissed her.

‘Leave that to me,’ he said.

In a basket near the bed lay a heap of bloodied sheets. Blood spilt on the floor, jugs of water, pink in colour, clothes and all such stuff to dress a stage for a woman who had given birth.

When Agnes finally stirred she was confused first by how late the hour was, then mystified at the sight of her mistress propped up on pillows with a newborn babe.

‘Oh, my lady,’ said Agnes, ‘why did you not wake me?’

‘I tried,’ said Lady Rodermere, ‘but you were fast asleep and it came so quick upon me.’

‘Was no one with you, my lady?’

Not a beat did Eleanor miss.

‘Yes – Gilbert Goodwin.’

After all it was the steward’s duty to make sure that any child born to Lord Rodermere’s wife was no usurper.

‘I am most truly sorry,’ said Agnes. ‘The thought of you being on your own, and you never knowing you were with child.’

Eleanor felt the smile deep within her and kept her face solemn as she said, ‘If asked, perhaps it would be best that you were to say you were with me all night.’

‘Willingly,’ Agnes said.

And by doing so is caught in the nest of lies.

X

It was Gilbert Goodwin who after the infant’s birth sent for the Widow Bott. The widow had delivered many a changeling child and watched them fade as bluebells in a wood when the season has passed. For the truth is, there are few children who have a mortal and a faerie for a parent and those that are born always have a longing to return to our world rather than stay in the human realm, and who can blame them. Changeling children, instead of being plump and round are sickly things that hang on to life as does a spider swing on a thread in a tempest. These changeling babes, left behind unwanted by the goblins, are placed in cradles where newborn babes lie and when no one is looking they take the child’s form as their own. But not this half-elfin child. He was born to be the sorceress’s instrument of death.

Lord Rodermere had often decried faeries as diminutive creatures made of air and imagination. But we are giants for we hold sway over the superstitions of humankind. I have hunted the skies, chased the clouds in my chariot, I have seen wisdom in the eye of a snake, strength beyond its size in an ant, and cruelty in the hand of man. Our sizes, our shapes, our very natures are beyond the comprehension of most. We are concerned with pleasure and the joy of love, we use our powers to shift our shapes, to build enchanted dwellings, to fashion magic objects and to take dire revenge on mortals who offend us. But for those we protect, such as the Widow Bott, we ensure their youth and health.

She has a far greater understanding in the knowledge of herbs and plants and their properties than many an apothecary, much more than the quack wizard, or so called alchemist, hoping to turn lead to gold, to cheat men from their money.

So it was important – nay, I would say it was a necessity – that Gilbert called for her, for she alone could sway all incredulity, she could assure any doubters that the sheets held the evidence of a human birth, not the blood of a slaughtered rabbit. In short, she would give weight to the child’s arrival, confirm that he was indeed the son of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.

XI

The sorceress had no desire to remain at the House of the Three Turrets that morning. It pained her to see her trees used that way, their branches bent, carved into unforgiving shapes. Instead she went to the widow’s cottage and waited by the fire.

It was dark by the time the Widow Bott returned. Wrapped against the cold, her cloak caked in frost, snow and she came in as one. Putting down her basket, she fumbled for a candle to light. The sorceress lit it for her, set the fire to blaze and the pot upon it.

‘I should have known that you would be here,’ said the Widow Bott. ‘Well, I am not talking to the air. Show yourself, or be gone. I am tired and it shivers me when I cannot see you for who you are.’

For some reason she was out of sorts.

‘You always know when I am near,’ said the sorceress, to comfort her.

‘Tis a pity that a few more folk are not as wise as me to your ways,’ said the widow, dusting the snow from the hem of her dress and taking a chair by the fire. ‘What mischief have you been up to?’

The sorceress laughed. ‘So you saw the child?’

‘Yes. He is more beautiful than any mortal babe should ever be. He has already won the heart of Lady Eleanor.’

The sorceress seated herself opposite the widow. ‘You should be in better spirits,’ she said.

‘And what of Gilbert Goodwin?’ asked the widow.

‘What of him?’

‘Never has a man been more lovestruck.’

‘And Lady Eleanor?’

‘The same. Do you intend to return Lord Rodermere? For he is not missed at all, especially not by his wife who trembles at his very name.’ The widow stood, took a long clay pipe from a jug that sat on the mantelpiece and kicked a log with the heel of her boot, before sitting down again in her rocking chair. ‘You have made a mistake if you think Lord Rodermere is of any importance.’

‘He has dented my forest.’

‘Will you put a curse on every man who fells a tree?’ snapped the widow. ‘Perhaps it would have been best if you had travelled further than the forest and seen what is abroad before you laid your curse, for there are many roads that lead now to the city and news travels both ways upon the Queen’s highway.’

‘Tell me,’ the sorceress said, ignoring her jibe. ‘Did you examine the infant?’

‘Lady Eleanor would not let me hold of the babe. She seems as devoted to it as if it was hers and she has no need of a wet nurse. Though she did ask about the star that be on his thigh.’

The sorceress stood. ‘What star? The child was blemish free. Did you see it?’

‘No, for the infant was swaddled.’

‘She is mistaken.’

‘I think not,’ said the Widow Bott.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘That such a mark . . .’

‘Such a mark,’ the sorceress interrupted, ‘was not upon the child.’

The widow never once had been frightened of the sorceress. She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I have no need to argue with you,’ she said. ‘If you say there is no star then what I say means little.’

‘What did you say to Lady Eleanor?’

‘That such a mark shows him to be of faerie blood and the star, a gift. She asked what kind of gift and I told her that only his mother could answer that question. She blushed when she realised that she had unwittingly confessed that the child be not hers, milk or no milk. She begged me never to say a word. She showed me the note left pinned to a fur and I assured her that her secret was safe.’

‘Good, good. But there is no mark.’

‘If you say so,’ said the widow. ‘But Lady Eleanor knows more of your ways than her husband did. She asked if the babe be a hollow child for she has heard of women who give birth to changelings and having no appetite for life, they mock a mother’s love and fade away. I promised her this be no such child. Was I right?’

‘Yes. Yes,’ the sorceress said again and all the while the thought of the star worried her.

‘You should not toy with us as if we be puppets,’ said the widow.

‘Come, that is unfair – I do not.’

‘But you do. Look how many lives will be changed by your curse. You would be wise to leave it be, not have Lord Rodermere return to plague his wife, to accuse me again of being a witch. Let the good of his disappearance be your comfort.’

‘No, what is done is done and cannot be undone.’

The sorceress watched the Widow Bott as she relit her pipe.

‘So you know how all this will play out? How Lord Rodermere will meet his end?’

These questions annoyed the sorceress.

‘My curse will come to pass. What befalls the players on the way has little to do with me.’

‘I think you are mistaken. You are dealing with our lives.’

The Widow Bott pulled at the sorceress. But no one talks that way to her and she turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ said the widow. ‘Wait. You know there is a reward for anyone with information about Lord Rodermere that would lead to his safe recovery?’

‘They will never find him – of that I have no worry.’

‘You may have no worry, but I do. They may never find him unless you will it but what you have done this day will bring to leaf a tree of questions that fools and mountebanks will try to answer, their brains baited by the riddle of the boy’s unholy beauty. I will be marshalled and again accused of witchcraft. The monks feared nature’s beauty, seeing it as a seducer, a tormenter of men. Even in the soft petals of the rose, they thought they saw the face of evil. Do you believe this child will go unnoticed, that his very looks will not be brought into question? How far do you suppose the news of his birth has already travelled?’

The sorceress said, ‘Your word is enough, I am sure, to confirm that the child is the son of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere. No one will question his parentage.’

‘Again, you are mistaken.’

The sorceress had no interest in this. What concerned her was the star.

‘Keep yourself to yourself, widow,’ she said, ‘and you will be safe.’

‘Perhaps. But for how long?’

‘Near seventeen years,’ said the sorceress.

She was in no mood to contemplate consequences and as she lifted the latch on the door, she congratulated herself that her powers had not waned.