The Beauty of the Wolf. Wray Delaney

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.

XVI

      But the sorceress cannot leave. Not now, not until she knows what it is that the alchemist has hidden in the cellar. Crude curiosity pulls at her and to the house she returns.

      Still no one had stirred. Then she heard it, the frantic flapping of wings and scratching of talons, and she perceived a smell – pungent, musty, animal. Determined to see the creature she was at the cellar door when she heard a call.

      ‘Master, master – is that you?’

      A young man stared at her and through her to where the back door had swung open letting in the raw cold. Dark of skin and dark of eye, this, then, is the alchemist’s apprentice. Unlike his master his thoughts were guarded and he kept them close to him. The sorceress found it hard to fathom what he was thinking other than the obvious. The footprints in the snow increased his fears. She followed him as he took the stairs, two at a time, to his master’s chamber, cursing under his breath. One glance at the disarray of the bed clothes, enough to tell him what had happened.

      In the apprentice’s ebony eyes she saw the heat of the sun from an unknown world, the place from whence he was stolen. He knows better than his master the power of magic, knows it possesses a life force that not even death can defy. He survived the seas where the battle with the waves had been fought. The wooden boat, weighed down with the thief’s treasure, ill-equipped to deal with the fury of such a tempest, had been tossed as if it were a child’s plaything and, limping into port, had brought