The Beauty of the Wolf. Wray Delaney

dreads and it is louder, more urgent than ever before. As he runs down the stairs, his thoughts, the ones she catches, have an energy to them, his whole being is more alive than the alchemist’s. She listens hard. He hopes his master’s secret is not to be discovered, he knows he must calm the creature in the cellar. She is in the passage when she hears a creak on the stairs and a young maidservant appears.

      ‘Oh, lord,’ she says, ‘Master Butter, what has happened?’

      Master Butter speaks with a stammer and he is careful not to trip over his words. He knows that his stammer is especially pronounced in the presence of a pretty girl. He does his best to sound commanding.

      ‘Go into the kitchen, Mary,’ he says. ‘Stay there until . . .’

      To his surprise she looks at him in a direct manner that has little fear in it.

      ‘Do you want me to help you?’ she asks, following him to the small cellar door at end of the passage.

      For one moment he thinks he might laugh, the notion is so ridiculous.

      ‘No,’ he says.

      The sorceress can see that Mary is new to the household and that she has never before met anyone like Master Butter. The colour of his skin, darker than the beams of the house. His eyes are darker still. He is tall. He turns to look at her as he takes his master’s key. Her presence gives him courage.

      ‘Be still,’ he says into the darkness of the alchemist’s cellar.

      He opens the door, turns to make sure Mary will not follow and in that instant the sorceress slides in before him.

XVII

       You are not from my realm, Thomas Finglas, and your magic confuses me. You confuse me, for I saw what it is that you keep locked in your cellar and she is not of this world. Did you steal her from Herkain’s realm? No, it is impossible for any mortal to pass through that watery curtain into the kingdom of the beasts and return alive to tell the tale for the flesh of man is the sweetest of all meats. There is something more worth knowing. Perhaps she was sold to you, this winged beast. She would not be the first – the unicorn, the griffin made the journey and survived. But no and no again. And methinks that if a ‘no’ was a brick then a wall I would build with them. You go against the wool of me and muddle my thoughts. How is this possible, what potions, what magic charm did you use to create her? Was it by the hem of my petticoat or have you stolen more from me?

      A knot of human making pulled becomes more impossible to untangle and yet the sorceress, knowing all this and more, cannot let it be.

       Who are you, Thomas Finglas? You who possess power enough to rob me of myself, to flood my mind with your narrative. Who are you? There is trickery here. By what means did you find my chamber? Was it with a knife you cut my petticoat or did you pull the fabric from me? And why did I feel nothing? The cloth is as good as my skin. The pain alone would have woken me and yet I was numb to you. How can that be? These questions enrage me. Never before have I not listened to my instinct. It has ruled me. In the depth of my ancient being my wisdom echoes loud: return to your chamber, sleep and dream. Let time take care of the curse, not you. Not you.

      Her excuse is the beast. And so she follows the barge which looks to her eye as a black slug does that leaves a slime trail in the thin surface of ice and snow. She has no choice but to stay close to this Thomas Finglas for he holds the answer to the many questions that sit, crumbs upon her lips.

      The alchemist was conscious by the time he was helped up the steps at the watergate of the House of the Three Turrets, his mind making a mosaic of his broken thoughts that the sorceress furiously pieced together to find an answer. There was none. Overriding everything was his simple anxiety to be home. Now she listened far more attentively to all that the moth of his memory brought to the light.

      He thinks his apprentice will not know the right words to calm his child. The thought of her escaping into the streets fills him with dread. She will be hunted like an animal, torn apart. She is still only a child, he thinks. Only a child.

      And the sorceress thinks, she is no child of this world.

XVIII

      It was a bitter dawn and snow illuminated the grounds. The light made beard shapes of trimmed hedges and in the distance, looming large through unnatural angles of bush and wall, the three turrets rose, each spire impaling the sky’s tapestry. Surrounding all, the forest cast its shadows. The sorceress heard its familiar, deep, slow heartbeat. This was a place Thomas had never wanted to see again and he had a feeling – no, a surety – who it was who had sent for him and to know it made his bones cold as stone.

      Two servants each took one of his arms to guide him lest he should slip. In defiance he pulled away. If death be waiting for him then he will meet it with dignity, not being handled as if he be a criminal.

      One had to admire his courage and, in spite of herself, she did. The sorceress followed him up the steps to the great door where near seventeen years ago she had left a basket, certain of her powers. Where fifteen years ago Thomas came, certain of his powers. He is taken to an antechamber with no fire, no candle and there in the darkness he is left, the door closed, the key turned.

      And then he says her name into the darkness of that worrisome chamber. How does he know her name? Fury rises up in her – and sinks back. It is never wise to trust a witch.

      ‘You are here,’ he whispers. ‘I cannot see you but I feel your presence. I know it is not my Bess. I am right, am I not? It is you who have been watching me, listening to my very thoughts. Did you come for your hem? Return me safe to London and I will give it to you.’

      ‘Where is it?’

      Thomas jumps when she speaks. That at least she finds satisfying.

      ‘Where are you?’ He turns wildly this way and that and he cannot see her. ‘Help me, mistress, I must return to . . .’

      ‘To what? What is it – what is she – who you must return to?’

      Here he stumbles.

      ‘You saw her?’

      ‘Yes, I saw her.’

      ‘I beg of thee. She cannot – must not be discovered. She would be . . . John Butter will not know what to do to calm her. I must return home.’

      ‘Tell me the truth of how you came by this winged beast and perhaps I will help you.’

      He says as he might a prayer, ‘She is my daughter.’

      This cannot be, the sorceress thinks.

      ‘Tell me how.’

      And from the liquid dark of the chamber his wife is once more conjured, her voice set to nibble away at his paper-thin sanity.

      ‘Yes, Thomas, tell her. Tell her of your whore and the beast.’

      ‘I am listening,’ says the sorceress. ‘Tell me about the beast, Thomas.’

      Again he floods her with his misery, his loss, the torn pieces of unstitched memory, a misleading patchwork of thoughts.

      ‘I loved her,’ he says.

      ‘But she was not your wife,’ says the ghost of Mistress Finglas whose tongue is blacker than Hell’s back door. ‘It was I who was your wife.’

      ‘Quiet,’ he shouts. ‘Quiet, woman, stop plaguing me. What more do you want?’

      No one comes to see what is wrong. The silence thus disturbed takes time to thicken upon them once more.

      The sorceress hears then a crackle, a laugh.

      ‘I want my house, my furnishings, my garden,’ says Mistress Finglas. ‘You went away to find an earl and came back with a whore, did you not, Husband?’