The Beauty of the Wolf

What is this? Lady Clare laughs as he tosses a ring for her to catch and she is thinking that she would rather die than be without him, that the very notion of being parted from her brother is unbearable. And what does Lord Beaumont think? Nothing. His mind is blank parchment that the sorceress can easily write upon and shape his character to her desires.

Beau smiles at his sister, takes her hand and kisses it. He looks in the sorceress’s direction and seems to hold her gaze before he turns back to Lady Clare.

‘We have not spoken in that language since we were children,’ she says. ‘This house seems full of spirits today. Beau, did we dream what happened to us in the forest?’

He puts his finger lightly on his sister’s lips.

The sorceress waits to hear his reply expecting it to be cruel. And then she catches Clare’s thoughts – glimpses of a memory dance in her head, children running into the forest – then they are gone.

Lady Clare sighs. ‘We must put aside such childish nonsense. Alas, no one has the magic to alter what has happened.’

Speak, Beau. Let me hear your voice.

The sorceress goes to stand beside him lest she miss a word.

‘Do you believe,’ says Lady Clare, ‘that it is possible for our father to return after so long without the years marking his disappearance?’ Again Beau looks at the sorceress. ‘What is it?’ Lady Clare says, following his gaze. She drops her voice. ‘Is someone listening?’

‘These oak beams listen,’ Beau says quietly. ‘Have you seen our mother this morning?’

His is a voice a stream would envy, a voice that is neither low nor high but has a quiet command to it. Oh, Robin Goodfellow, look what she created in your honour.

‘Not yet,’ says Lady Clare. ‘But, Beau, tell me you will leave with us.’

Delight of delights. The sorceress sees a tear in her eye. All this love for an empty shell of an androgyne, a man for all desire, shallow as a puddle.

‘Sir Percival had the alchemist, Thomas Finglas, brought here from London last night,’ she continues. ‘He is locked in the turret with our father. It is hoped he may bring him to his senses.’

‘Then there is even more reason that you must be gone before Lord Rodermere wakes further from his trance and his temper rekindles.’

He takes her hand and walks with her down the long gallery.

She says, ‘He will not miss you, he does not know you. He does not believe you are his son.’

‘That was last night,’ says Beau, ‘but he is by all accounts an irrational man.’

He gives her a look of such tenderness. The sorceress sees how well he acts the part. Oh, beauty, what a beast you make.

‘What will I do without you?’ Lady Clare says. ‘Who will see me as you do?’

‘It will be for a short time only, I promise.’

And he turns round and looks straight at the sorceress.

XXIII

It must not happen. Young Lord Beaumont must not leave this place. His destiny is to murder his father as I foretold when I wrote my curse on the bark of that felled oak. If the death of Francis Rodermere means the death of his son, what care I. He is a puppet and I the puppet master, his strings are at my command.

The sooner the deed is done the better for there is a wildness calling me, a yearning to relish once more my powers as an enchantress. I needs must be free to find a new lover, to be ravished by him. I have almost forgotten the alchemy of sex. This mortal world has twisted passion into such a bitter coil that it makes soil barren, fills rich earth with sand. I must replenish myself, lest all of me withers. Still by my curse I am tied. Still by my hem I am caught. Let it be done, let it be over.

My mood is black, thick. And sticky is the rage that runs through my knotted veins. The boy unsettles me, his look unsettles me. Did his mother lie when she said she never kissed the infant? And if she did what gift did she give him? I shake the thought away. No, he is empty of soul, of feeling, he is but a pretty knife to pierce a heart.

Thomas Finglas is locked in the tallest turret where Lord Rodermere prowls about as would a wolf. It is not a small chamber and is encircled by windows. Leaning against the wall is a large collection of mirrors. Some have lost their frames, others broken. All the shards reflect Lord Rodermere in a bright light of fury.

Thomas is seated, head in hands, the very picture of melancholy, as Lord Rodermere rails a vomit of angry words. Such a din is it that it has nearly defeated Thomas. Where are your powers now, alchemist? The painting that was missing from the long gallery is propped against the wall. Francis Rodermere looks no different than he did when he sat for the portrait some eighteen years before and this is what he wants Thomas to explain.

‘If, as you say,’ he roars, ‘I have been lost for near eighteen years, why, tell me, have I not aged? I do not believe you. Neither do I believe that boy is my son.’

The sorceress has no wish to hear more of his meaningless curses. Sleep is the saviour of the insane, and she gives Lord Rodermere dreams of a May morn, of a stream, of a maiden. The first and last day of love. He flops onto the trundle bed and lies still.

Thomas looks up when the shouting ceases, startled by the abruptness of the silence. He stares anxiously round the chamber.

‘You did not finish your story,’ she says.

‘Mistress,’ he says, going down on his knees, ‘please show yourself. Please take me away from here and I promise . . .’

‘What then happened, Thomas?’

He rises, begins again.

‘Slowly,’ she says. ‘We will not be disturbed.’

‘She – my wife – caused the news to spread. An author, larding his lean words with thees and thous to make more of the story, printed a pamphlet claiming I had made a beast from a babe.’

‘And had you, Thomas? Had you made a beast?’

‘Bess begged me to revive the babe and I, confronted by so much grief, knew not what to do but to experiment with my elixir of everlasting life, a potion no more proven than any others. I poured it into the crucible, stirred it over the heat, my heart warmed by my love’s belief in me. I put in the feather of a bird, the wing of a bat, the hair of a cat, I anointed the infant’s lifeless body with oil of acorn to ward off noisome things. It was Bess who placed her into the mercury. Together we watched her vanish in the silvery water and I was bewildered when she rose again – alive, unrecognisable, an abomination. Three years we kept her safe from prying eyes. But the rumours and gossip did not abate and neither did the nagging of my wife. She took out her rage on Bess. As the child grew, the sounds from the cellar became louder and my wife became more terrified. She plagued me with questions and hearing no satisfactory answer, threatened she would let the whole world know that I had the Devil living in our house. Soon after this threat, John Butter found her at the foot of the stairs. She was dying and the physician called to attend her could not – to my relief – explain the marks he found on her body, nor fathom what animal could have had the power to tear flesh from her bones. Blame fell on me and the strange sounds that came from the cellar. I was arrested on suspicion of murder and wizardry and that night . . .’ He hung his head. ‘That night Bess vanished, never to be seen again. I near lost my reason. All I had for company in the darkness of my cell was the cackle of my dead wife. I heard her all the time. “As long as I be alive, as long I be dead, I will haunt the whore.” Why did I never hear my beloved Bess?’

He took a gulp of air.

‘Go on, Thomas.’

‘At the inquest my apprentice was asked where he had been the day his mistress died. He trembled on being questioned and appeared to be an idiot with little understanding. He stammered, tripped, fell and faltered over his words to such a degree that he was found to be incomprehensible and his testimony disregarded. But John is a wise soul. He knew I hoped to find peace at the Tyburn Tree. But it was not to be. The landlord of the Unicorn alehouse swore that I had been with him all morning until the time of the accident and no man, as far as he knew, could be in two places at one time. The charge of wizardry was unproven, the case against me dismissed. There was no relief. I have lived in torment ever since.’ Thomas paused then said, ‘Let me see you, mistress.’

She does. Abruptly, he sits, startled by the sight of her. She, the sorceress who time does not age, neither does her beauty fade. Her resources are various and plentiful and she will not be tied to any man, nor be his footstool or wishing bowl, to come hither, go thither. Now she will offer Thomas a way out of his troubles. If he accepts but fails to keep his end of the bargain she will bring such sorrow to him that his days will be unbearable. She smiles, feels light coming from her, her feet rooted once more to the ground. She will be glorious. Thomas is in awe of her. She takes pleasure in his surprise and watches his confusion turn to bare-faced desire.

‘Promise to give me back my hem,’ she says, ‘and I will have you home.’

She bends and kisses his lips, tastes his hunger. He puts his arms round her, holds her buttocks and softly weeps.

‘You do wish to return home, do you not?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes . . .’ And then as if remembering the reason he is locked up he turns to look at the sleeping lord. ‘But how? Tell me how.’

‘I will return Francis Rodermere’s missing years. Then the question of where he has been will be his own to answer, not yours. Sir Percival will claim that he lost his memory and has only recently recalled where he lived or who he was, but, alas, has no idea where he’s been.’

‘You would do all that?’

She pulls back his gown, lifts his night shift, his cock already hard and of a goodly shape and her hand slips up and down the length of it, peeling back the skin.

He groans with pleasure. She stops. He opens his eyes, tries to take her hand.

‘I promise,’ he says. ‘I promise that when we are in London . . . I promise on my child’s life . . . I will return your hem.’

She lifts her silken gown above her belly and lowers her cunny onto his weapon, wet at the point.

XXIV

She enjoys such carnal acts and Thomas’s desperation has a tenderness to it. He is not, as she would have supposed, a greedy lover. But she is in control, not he and her mind is elsewhere.

She is thinking it would be wise to trust the power of her curse and let it work its fatal magic. And yet she cannot for a maggot of a thought niggles at her: she fears the boy was faerie-blessed.

Lady Clare’s deep love for her brother goes back to infancy. Her memories trouble the sorceress. She had willed Lady Clare to return to them but she did not, her mind flooded with thoughts of being so soon parted from her brother. Has the sorceress been too quick in her judgment? For it appears from the affection Lady Clare holds him in that he possesses a true beauty: he has kindness, love, intelligence. Not one ounce of his bastard of a father shows in him at all. When Beau smiles, it is a smile that would bring a queen to her knees. That is as it should but not the rest. Could it be that he as yet has no knowledge of his power? Lady Clare is not in one small part envious of his looks. The sorceress had imagined that she would loathe her brother, resent his beauty. Surely that is the pattern of human nature: to be shaped by jealousy, to be broken by envy. It shivers her to think she had been so unwise as to believe that her powers were incorruptible. She comforts herself with this thought: Lord Beaumont has many chambers of his soul yet to grow into. If he is not corrupted now there are years enough for him to become so.

No one interferes with her curses.

‘Where are you going?’ says Thomas Finglas. ‘Stay, I beg you.’

Invisible once more, she is gone.

XXV

Mistress Eleanor Goodwin, still dressed in her bridal gown, was seated staring into the embers of the fire. Her husband Gilbert stood opposite her.

He was silent, immovable. It appeared that both had said all the words they had to say.

But Eleanor returned to the round. ‘I will not leave, not without him.’

‘My love, Lord Beaumont is right,’ said Gilbert. ‘If you stay, what will become of you? Of us? Remember what Lord Rodermere did to you? Think what he might do to Lady Clare.’ Gilbert’s voice softened. ‘If Beau is seen to leave with us and Lord Rodermere decides he wants his son then our fates are sealed – he will come after us.’

‘But to go abroad, to leave him here to that monster’s mercy, how could you think of such a thing? You who love him as a son.’

‘He will follow. You and Lady Clare must have time to escape and when you are safe, I will send a message and then he will be with us again.’

‘Could we not stay in London and be closer to him?’

Eleanor looked up to see her son and daughter in the doorway.

‘Is the the carriage ready?’ Beau asked and his voice had a note of calm authority to it.

Gilbert nodded as if saying the words might reawaken the argument that had occupied their wedding night.

Beau knelt beside his mother.

‘My lady, to stay here would be folly. You are married to Master Gilbert. Best by far you leave today and go abroad. Take my sister away from here. It is what you have long wanted. Sir Percival has advised you to do as much.’

‘Only if you come too,’ she said.

The sorceress has to admit surprise at this young man’s elegance of language, his careful argument. She can see his speech holds weight. And she is wondering how she might make them stay here a while longer until the deed is done. But one look at Master Goodwin tells her it would be his knife, not Beau’s, that would pierce the earl’s heart and that would never do.

The wind whirled, the chamber door flew open and in the sudden breeze the fire flared.

Beau glanced up to where she stood as if to say, ‘You are still here?’

Beau’s words seemed to shake Mistress Goodwin into action. Her husband called for a servant.

‘Bring the carriage and my horse to the front of the house,’ he said, and he helped his wife to her feet.

This parting causes each of them great sorrow and it appears as genuine in Beau as it does in the others. Surely, thinks the sorceress, this is an actor playing his part, nothing more.

‘How will I find you?’ said Mistress Goodwin to her son. ‘When will I see you?’

‘I promise, soon,’ said Beau. ‘Now, my lady –’ he kissed her hand ‘– the quicker you are away from here the nearer you will be to seeing me again.’

An hour later saw the carriage containing Mistress Eleanor and Lady Clare leave the house, accompanied on horseback by Gilbert Goodwin. The three cloud-capped turrets stared down on the walled forecourt to the gatehouse where the porter and other outdoor servants lived. It was they who ran out to open the gates, to wave farewell. The rooks cawed against the oncoming darkness as the carriage disappeared onto the main road. Beau stood bare-headed on the drive and only when it was lost from sight did he turn and walk back to the house.

I am torn. For this boy is everything he should not be and despite of it I am enchanted with him and his girlish looks. At the grand door where once I had come with a basket he stops, turns to look at me and holds the door open as if waiting for me to enter.

I am born from the womb of the earth, nursed by the milk of the moon. Flame gave me three bodies, one soul. In between lies my invisibility.

XXVI

Thomas was watching from a window in the turret as the carriage departed. He wondered why the young Lord Beaumont was not inside it, for there would be no point in the boy staying, no point at all. His heart missed a beat when he heard the door to the chamber being unlocked.

He turned and was about to say that he needed more time, when Sir Percival said, ‘What have you done?’

Thomas, without looking at Lord Rodermere, replied, ‘He sleeps.’

‘Sleeps?’ repeated Sir Percival. ‘Yes, sleeps – and he has aged. Alchemist, I much underestimated your talent. This is indeed a remarkable transformation.’

Now Thomas looked at Francis. And indeed a miracle of sorts had taken place: the ravages of time had collided with him. Gone was the youthful man and in its place a withdrawn creature whose prick had aged more than the man himself so it would in future be an impotent thing that would cause him much frustration and not one ounce of pleasure. Lord Rodermere looked nothing like the portrait, the two images hardly reflected each other.

The sorceress’s one regret is that she had not the chance to be there when young Lord Beaumont confronted his father. She would have chosen it to be different but Sir Percival was intent on having Thomas Finglas gone as soon as possible, regardless of the fact it was now night and the roads barely passable. A horse was brought that looked as reluctant to leave the stable as Thomas was to leave the warmth of the house.

‘If, Master Finglas, you mention one word of what has happened this day and your part in it, I will not hesitate to have you charged with sorcery,’ said Sir Percival.

He nodded at a servant who took from Thomas the gown he was given on his arrival. Thomas, in his nightshirt, sat astride the horse.

‘But, sir, I will freeze to death.’

Sir Percival said nothing and the great door closed behind him. Snow was falling on horse and man as they made their way on to the impassable road.

Thomas will remember nothing of his journey and only come into himself again as he crosses London Bridge and its tongue-tied waters. There, numb with cold, he will urge on his horse until he finds himself haunting his own back door.

‘Be I alive or be I dead?’ he asked.

His conclusion, dull as it is, was that he was dead. There is something so pathetic in man’s desire to know what state his flesh be in. How could he not feel the pulsing of his blood, the beating of his heart? And it strikes the sorceress that in all she has seen of him he possesses very little magic. He jumps when he hears her voice.

‘I have kept my part of the bargain, now you must keep yours.’

Again he asks, ‘Am I dead?’

Night had reached the hour when it wraps itself starless in its frozen cloth. The door was locked, the house in darkness. Thomas knocked with his fist. He knocked again. His teeth were chattering, his breath a white mist and these bodily signs comforted him and proved he was made of living parts. When still there was no reply he cursed his nick-ninny of an apprentice: was he deaf as well as stupid? Then his courage wavered as an altogether more terrifying thought came to him: what if his daughter had escaped and murdered again? Once more, Thomas raised his fist, ready to feel his knuckles hard upon wood, then stopped as the door all by itself opened into an abyss.

‘John?’ he called.

There is no answer but from within comes that high-pitched yowl.

XXVII

Thomas Finglas enters his house with shaking steps, fearful of stumbling over the remains of his apprentice and the serving girl whose name for the moment escapes him. He turns to where he supposes the sorceress is. Look at this learned man, this tormented Thomas Finglas. He does not possess one ounce of power. Now he searches for the sorceress as might a child, frightened of the dark and it occurs to her that the magic she feels in this house belongs to another. Thomas is shaking with cold or with fear, it is hard to tell the difference. In mortals both have a smell to them. In the passage he fumbles for a candle and then searches in vain for a tinderbox with which to light it. Not far from him is a scratching, talons on wood.

The sorceress lights the candle for him and he nearly drops it. His hands are shaking so violently that he is forced to use both. As he goes towards his cellar the back door slams behind them and the candle is extinguished.

‘Did you do that?’ he asks.

She did not.

Try as she might she cannot relight the candle. Now she is equally alarmed for the very air is filled with menace. Does the creature have the strength to play with her?

The laboratory door flaps, half off its hinges, and light spills from the hearth but there is no one to be seen. Thomas stares in at the chaos of this chamber, usually an ordered place that he keeps meticulously clean. It is in disarray; all his precious notebooks torn to shreds, the vials of chemicals smashed, his crucible overturned.

‘Where are you?’ he says wearily. ‘Show yourself, Randa.’

In the silence the only answer is the breath of another – but where is she?

His thoughts are whirling about his head, all wrapped in guilt that he hopes the sorceress does not understand but she does and she fears that whoever is hidden in the shadows can hear them as well as she.

Anger at the meaningless destruction of all he holds dear causes him to spit out his curses.

‘You, the bringer of my ruination, are you my punishment for the sin of adultery? This, my life’s work, ripped asunder. Do you know what you have done? Where are you, you child of malice? Where is Master Butter?’ he shouts. ‘Where is Mary? Have you killed them as once you killed the mistress?’

Instantly he regrets what he said. He tries and fails to suck the words back into himself. He picks up papers, bunches them in his hand. He is whimpering. ‘All my work, my books . . . they are irreplaceable. Monster! Yes, monster, a monster of my own making.’ His thoughts, now unstoppable, reveal in their brutal honesty the truth of his feelings and fuel his tongue. ‘I should have left you dead. I am disgusted that I had any part in the making of you. Half-human, half-animal – you have never shown any sign of intelligence, you cannot talk, nor do you comprehend what I say. My life has been ruined by you, ruined by the burden of a deformed imbecile who must be kept secret and restrained for as long as she lives – if only I can find chains strong enough to bind her. You have grown beyond my control.’ And now he is shouting, shouting, ‘What will become of me if you are discovered? What will become of you? Oh lord above . . .’

And all the pity for himself, for Bess, collides into a single thought: what will become of Randa when she is fully grown? The idea that this beast, this thing he calls child, might have physical desires he can hardly bear to contemplate.

‘I should have left nature to take its course,’ he says into the darkness. ‘I should have let you die.’

In the shadows the sorceress sees a human eye, green as an emerald. She is listening, just as the sorceress is, to every mean, mundane word and thought that this pathetic man has. Near weeping with exhaustion, defeated by all he sees, he recites his charm to calm her. To calm himself.

‘In the name of God be secret and in all your doings be still.’

She will not reply. She has never before answered him.

When she does speak her voice is deep and haunting and he is so stupefied by it that he loses his footing, stumbles backwards, feeling each word of hers as a blow.

‘I am not still,’ she says. ‘I never will be. And whatever your God of retribution might say, I will no longer be secret.’

She screams a scream so piercing it shatters windows, sets dogs to howl. Now the sorceress sees the shape of the beast, she sees the glint of her talons. She hears the flapping of her immense wings. She hears Thomas Finglas cry out in agony. There is a rush of air and the beast is in the snowy garden and the sorceress is in time to see her silhouetted against the night sky, a magnificent winged creature who does not belong to the world of man. The sorceress watches enchanted as the creature tilts her head and inhales the thick, foul breath of the city. She opens her mouth and tastes the snow, stretches her wings to their full extent and swoops out over the river. And she is gone.