The Beauty of the Wolf

XII

The sorceress returns to her dwelling deep under her angel oak, whose veiny tendrils weave the domed roof of her chamber. Here stands her bed – raven black, the colour of dreams – with its canopy of stars. Fireflies light the room and gather, as do the moths, round one golden orb, a heavy pendant that swings slow across the chamber. She sleeps suspended between the streams of ages. Her spirit barely stirs to hear minutes passing. It is a parcel of time put to good use.

A moth’s wing flutters and almost seventeen years are gone.

XIII

Something gnaws at the edges of sleep. Not the rhythm of the days but her passion for Herkain, the King of the Beasts. It is not wise, she knows, to let herself visit him even in dreams for it brings her to the well of her own emptiness. He who had the sorceress’s very heart where all her love lay, who sunk his glorious teeth into its arteries, pulled it beating from her breast, left her heartless. He did not take her power, only her reason. She conjures the memory of Herkain’s tongue licking the flesh from her to reveal her pelt in all its lush resplendence. Once, she longed to return to him, ached to feel his prick deep inside her, to feel his strength contain her, the howl of his whole being released into hers. When they lay together they were one, she his dark, he her light.

Memory can disturb even the deepest sleeper with its incessant chimes upon the mind. Does the sorceress deceive herself when she dreams again of Herkain? Or is it the infant’s beauty that so enchants her that she cannot rest until she has the measure of the boy, knows what kind of fiend she has created?

Though he be half of faerie blood, all of him will be his father’s child. His beauty will corrupt him and the years will make a monster of the man.

And she wakes. By the lantern light she sees that the hem of her petticoat is torn, a scrap of the precious fabric gone, her very inner sanctum violated.

A tear in her petticoat is an unbearable weakness. It wounds her as if it is her flesh that is peeled from her for that piece of fabric is a charm that would give the thief power over her.

Who would do such a thing? No mealy mouthed mortal could part the watery curtain that divides the world of man from faerie. No spirit would dare come near her. Was this Herkain’s mischief? No, no, it was not he, of that she is certain. Then who?

Such was her fury, such was her malice, that she howled with the pain of it. And her faithful trees stayed silent and gave no clue as to who the thief might be. Her rage was uncontainable, she rocked the earth with it and heard winter shiver.

The sorceress dressed to hide the tear and against the season of snows she wore a gown made of summer gold, sewn with the silk of spiders’ threads, embroidered with beads of morning dew. Its rubies ladybirds, its diamonds fireflies, hemmed with moonshine’s watery beams; yet it was the tear in the hem of her petticoat that weighed her down for some mortal held its threads and by such stitchery, she was tied to them. She smelled blood, she smelled the shit and the fear of mortals.

She hardly noticed the cold or winter’s white mantle. Rage kept her warm and fury brought on a blizzard. Only in the icy breeze did her balance return to her. All was frozen, held tight against nature’s cruelties.

The Widow Bott, she will know. She will know who committed this crime.

She reached the clearing where the widow’s cottage stood. A papery yellow light glinted through the slatted windows. The wind whirled the snow as she knocked on the door.

‘Who is it?’ said a voice.

‘You know it is I.’

The widow unbolted the door that had never before been locked for she had no one to fear, not even the black wolf. She was wrapped as tight as her cottage, her clothes quilted against the cold. The fire flared in the draught of the open door and she closed it quickly, and moved to her chair.

‘So, mistress, you come at last,’ she said.

‘I told you it would be near seventeen years,’ said the sorceress, ‘and true to my word I am here. What is wrong, old widow?’

The widow’s hollow eyes as good as told her that something was amiss. She took the chair opposite her and the widow turned her face away. Where, thought the sorceress, was the widow’s bright, piercing stare that dangled challenge in its light?

She thought to ask a simple question.

‘The babe – what did Lady Rodermere call him?’

‘He is called Lord Beaumont Thursby, but all that know him call him Beau.’

‘He is now near grown, is he not? Ruined by the knowledge of his beauty and its power?’

‘If that was your design then you will be disappointed. He has grown to be the sweetest of young men. If his beauty has any consequence it is to those who look upon him for, man or woman, it makes no difference, all are enchanted by him.’

‘So, I am right,’ the sorceress persisted. ‘He uses his looks to make slaves of those who his beauty entraps.’

‘Again you are wrong.’

‘Impossible.’

The Widow Bott leaned forward and poked at the fire as if she had no desire to speak the truth.

‘His sister,’ continued the sorceress. ‘That toad-blemished creature: surely she is bitter with jealousy?’

‘Again, no. Powerful is the bond of affection between brother and sister. And tomorrow, their mother, Lady Rodermere, is to marry Gilbert Goodwin.’

‘But she is still married to Lord Rodermere, is she not?’

‘Not. The queen was petitioned to annul the marriage as Lord Rodermere has not been seen, alive or dead, for eighteen years come May. Please, mistress, I beg of you, let this be. Do not return Lord Rodermere to them.’

The sorceress looked at the widow more closely as she repacked her pipe and lit it, sucking in her sallow cheeks.

‘What are you not telling me?’

‘There is nothing to tell,’ she said.

She was lying, trying to hide her thoughts, the sorceress knew it. One name escaped the store cupboard of her mind. Sir Percival Hayes.

‘What are you frightened of?’ the sorceress asked. ‘Who is this man – this Sir Percival Hayes?’

The widow shivered. The sorceress caught her eye. ‘I am waiting,’ she said, ‘and I am not in the mood to be lied to.’

‘Sir Percival Hayes has an estate not far from here. Lady Eleanor is his cousin. When the earl vanished, Sir Percival went to the house and swore he would be found. He too had heard stories of people being elfin taken – it was a subject that much interested him. Cunning men and wizards made a path to the door of the House of the Three Turrets, promising that they had the charm, knew the spell that would release Lord Rodermere from the faerie realm. Two years of fools came and went, and for all their enquiries—’

‘Yes, yes,’ the sorceress interrupted. ‘Nothing was discovered.’

‘Mistress, let me tell this in my way.’

At last a spark of the woman she remembered.

‘After two years had passed, Sir Percival sent from London his own alchemist, Master Thomas Finglas.’

The old widow was silent awhile and then said, ‘He brought with him his apprentice, a lad whose skin was as dark as an acorn. They made a strange pair, the boy and the man. The alchemist, I was told, handed Gilbert Goodwin a letter from Sir Percival who wrote that Master Finglas was tasked to bring back Lord Rodermere from the faerie realm. You may well imagine that Master Goodwin was none too eager to welcome this guest. Near two years had passed, two years of managing his master’s estate, of loving his master’s wife, of sleeping in his master’s bed. The last thing he wanted was his master’s return.’ ‘The quest failed,’ said the sorceress. ‘The alchemist – you met him?’

The widow nodded.

‘What sort of trickster was he? Soaked in books, steeped in knowledge, lacking in wisdom?’

The widow looked her straight in the eye. ‘If you know all, why did you never come when I called for you?’ She gazed into the embers of the fire and said, ‘Master Finglas failed to find Lord Rodermere and his failure to do so turned Sir Percival Hayes against all such alchemy. He had me examined for witchcraft. He said there be reports of me dancing with the black wolf, he even accused me of casting an owl-hunting enchantment on Lord Rodermere. He said I worked with a familiar.’

‘What led him to think this?’

‘I know not. Sir Percival sent his steward here this Yuletide to collect proofs against me: cheese that would not curdle, butter that would not come, the ale that drew flat.’

The sorceress laughed. ‘As if we would be bothered with such domesticity.’

‘There is more,’ she said. ‘I be accused of bewitching Lady Rodermere’s maid, Agnes Dawse, and by doing so cause her death. But I did nothing, nothing. I never even saw her when she was ill.’

Sleep had made the sorceress slow. She should have known from the moment the widow opened the door that the spell that kept her safe was broken and age had taken its revenge. She had cast herself from the sorceress by the folly of her tongue. The sorceress should have been more circumspect. The tear in her dress was a weakness that pulled her imperceptibly into the mortal world. Time is the giver and time the thief.

‘You betrayed me, old widow. You spoke my name.’

Her fury rumbled the rafters of the cottage and she was in a mind to bring it down on the old widow and let it be her tomb.

‘Do you not care what happens to me?’ said the Widow Bott. ‘Be it of no importance to you?’

‘Some may think that a tear in their petticoat is of no importance.’ The sorceress showed her where the cloth had been taken. ‘If you can tell me where I might find the missing piece, I could be kind to you still.’

The widow peered at the hem and felt the fabric between her fingers. Snow thudded to the floor from a hole in the thatch.

‘I think I saw it – but I cannot be certain.’

Then the sorceress caught it – a fleck of a secret in the widow’s eye.

‘Be warned, old widow,’ said the sorceress, her anger a blood-red moon, ‘for I speak willow words that, if I so desire, can snatch your soul away, turn your good fortune to bad and bad to evil. My magic is eternal. What is it you are keeping from me?’

The widow shivered.

‘A scrap of your hem. He had it. The alchemist had it.’

Blinded by rage at what she had heard, such was her impatience to be gone that in all the Widow Bott had said the sorceress had missed the details. The truth, as tiny as spring flowers, lay unnoticeable beneath the snow.

XIV

That night, this night, midnight, the end of Christmastide. Father Thames has begun to freeze, so tight is winter’s grip. Silent, soft, canny snow begins to fall; thick is each determined flake that gathers unrelenting in its purpose to make white this plague-ridden, shit-filled city.

On such a night in Southwark, the bastard side of the Thames, by the sign of the Unicorn where the houses bow towards one another, their spidery beams made solid with salacious gossip. There the torches that would have lent light to the street have long been defeated, but one paltry candle burns in the cellar window of the house of the alchemist, Thomas Finglas. A vixen trots up the narrow alleyway, her soft pads leaving paw prints that are soon to vanish in a layer of crisp snow. She sniffs the night air and sees at the bars of the cellar window a creature, not of human shape. For a moment their eyes meet. Then, with a nod, the fox sets off once more, her brush proud behind her, her breath licked with flames. At the back door, the sorceress hesitates and listens. From the cellar comes an unearthly cry.

Herkain’s long-ago words return to her unheeded.

‘Pride, my love, is the Mistress of Misrule.’

Pride? she thinks. No, it is not pride that brings me here, unless pride be the essence of my being. She is here to retrieve what is rightfully hers, a piece of her hem, perilous, too powerful to be taken by a mere mortal.

Unseen, a ghost, she steps into the house and as she enters the threads from the stolen hem needle into her, pull her towards this unknown thief. Quite suddenly she feels her powers wane, her magic weaken. Surely it is impossible that a man could possess wizardry equal to her own?

Not a sound do her feet make on the stairs and there, in a tattered, long-neglected chamber, the alchemist lies on his lumpy mattress. The sorceress can hear his thoughts as she can with most mortals. In the flicker of troublesome dreams he notes the bluish light, the bitter cold, and longs for a peaceful sleep to rob him of all conscious thought. He thinks the cause of so much waking is a dry brain and his continual fears, he believes, account for his lack of sleep.

But it is the memory of his late wife, deep buried, that is the cause. He had hoped with her death would go all the bell, book and candle curses that had tortured his days, made barren his nights. Half asleep he stares up at the canopy of the bed. His disquiet mind frets at the shabby drapes until in the fabric he sees the face of his dead wife, hears her voice crab-clawing at him.

‘Nay, Husband. I would call you a murderer.’

And into the covers of his bed, he mumbles, ‘It was your curiosity that killed you, woman, not me.’

Her cackle was as thick as his blood and just as black. ‘Suspicion will always fall on you, husband. I made sure of it – a gift from my winding sheet. I might be dead and maggoty-eaten but the power of my mischievous tongue has outlived me, has it not, Husband?’

Thomas sits bolt upright in bed. He is a thin man, his eyes hooded by anxiety. He has lost the optimism that had once given him an arrogance that marked him out, as if he alone knew the answer to all the world’s conundrums. His mind is kept sharp with knowledge yet his wits are dulled by superstition and a terror of the power he has unleashed.

This dead wife of his is an indigestible piece of gristle. Her bitter words sit heavy on the right side of his stomach, a pain no remedy of his devising can ease. A cold wind moans into the chamber through the gaps in the glass. He hears the vengeful night conquering the current of the Thames, transforming water into ice. He hears with a heavy heart his late wife’s waspish voice prattle on.

‘I would call you an adulterer, a dealer in the Devil’s magic.’

He sinks back and pulls the covers up over him.

‘And you,’ says Thomas Finglas, ‘what brought you to our table apart from rumours and lies to make misery of my tomorrows? Never once an infant came from that barren womb of yours to comfort my days. Be damned, be gone.’

He thinks back to his mistress, his beloved Bess, her flesh so soft, her breasts so firm, her belly round. Her belly round that had given him his one and only infant, a secret to be protected from this cruel world and from his wife’s vicious temper.

‘You never knew the truth, woman,’ he says into the hollow silence.

The sorceress is intrigued.

‘Tell me, Thomas,’ she says. ‘Tell me the truth.’

‘Bess . . . is that you? Bess . . .’

Sleep takes him, exhausted, in its kind embrace. And just as he dreams of Bess’s round bottom, her soft cheek, just as he feels her lips upon his, downstairs something heavy falls.

‘The cat,’ says Thomas sleepily.

He cares little, for only Beelzebub now will make him rise from this floating warmth of oblivion, from the tender-breasted Bess. All else can go to the Devil.

‘The cat,’ he says again, his eyes heavy, his mind at last clear of the past.

But it is no cat.

XV

There are two men in the house, heavy of build but nimble of foot, the stench of the river and the tavern on them, mercenaries in search of any paid work. Kidnapping, assault, murder, all arts they are well-versed in as long as they are paid and can own their own boots. Each step they take in hope of waylaying their prey.

Thomas’s apprentice, John Butter, does not wake at the sound of the intruders. He is asleep in the kitchen. He, unlike his master, sleeps the deep sleep of youth. Walls may crash, trees may fall and still he would dream on.

Thomas wakes with a start. He tries to gather his dreaming wits and fails.

‘Bess?’ he calls into the darkness. ‘In the name of God, show yourself.’

Swift are the two men. He has no chance to scream before he is muffled in a cloak, wrapped and strapped.

His two assailants are big-built, battle-dented men. Thomas is an easy customer. The knife held to his side tells him they mean business.

‘Keep quiet and no harm will come to you. Make a sound and the knife will find its home in your heart.’

He is bundled from the chamber. The vixen slips out unseen before them.

The garden gate creaks back and forth in the wind. Thomas struggles to free his face from the cloak, shaking his head vigorously. From the low window of his cellar comes the high-pitched yowl and the vixen sees there again the feathered creature who stares out through the bars, eyes glinting; a halo of light outlines its shape, talons scrape at the glass. The image is disjointed by the round panes so there appears more than one and behind all a shadow of wings looms great. The sight seems to torture Thomas.

Under his breath he whispers, ‘In the name of God be secret and in all your doings be still.’

Momentarily, the sound stops his assailants.

‘What’s that?’ says one, lifting his lantern.

He points at the cellar window. The sound sends a shiver down their hardened spines. Not even in war, when the battle was over and men lay wounded and dying, had these two heard such a cry.

‘Let us be gone from this cursed place,’ says the other and pulls Thomas into the alleyway. And in that moment, not fully able to see his enemies, he tries to make a fight of it. His reward for his effort is a sharp blow to the head. He stumbles and loses consciousness.

The mercenaries take hold of an arm each and carry Thomas with all haste towards the river. If anyone had the gall to stop them they would say they were helping an old drunk home. But no one is about to see them and only their footsteps tell which way they are bound. By the water steps, not far from the Unicorn alehouse, they drag Thomas to where a barge is waiting. On board is a gentleman, dressed in black, his jerkin slashed through with red taffeta, a fur-lined cloak speaks of a wealthy master.

‘What is this?’ he says, seeing Thomas unconscious. ‘Is he alive? I am not taking a dead man to the House of the Three Turrets.’

‘He is not dead. He will recover soon enough. Now, where is the money?’

The knife glitters in the darkness. Neither party wants an argument. A purse of coins is handed over and Thomas is dragged into a curtained cabin.

The oarsmen push off and out into the slushy water towards the middle of the river where a ribbon of mercury is all that is left of the fast-flowing tide, for the Thames has by degrees begun to turn white. Behind the barge London Bridge looms monstrous high, and an army of buildings, a fortress to remind England’s enemies that this country is ruled by a queen with a lion’s heart.

When the river freezes it speaks; fragments of ice crackling with confessions of the murdered and the lost. On the ill-lit bridge the sorceress alone sees the frosted ghost of a young woman, a group of drunken men laughing, jostling her. She loses her footing and slips, tumbles unnoticed into the icy, churning waters. The voices of the dead bring an eerie sense of solitude to this usually frantic thoroughfare. Among them Thomas hears his Bess.

‘Not long, my love, ’til we embrace again. Not long, my love.’

The river is near deserted. The oarsmen battle on, sweating even in the cold of this grievous night. Slowly the city disappears, past Westminster and out into the pitchy black darkness of the countryside.