The Beauty of the Wolf. Wray Delaney

Thomas muttered.

      ‘Did I ask you to speak? No, I did not. I am talking, you are listening. After your departure I washed my mind clean of your nonsense, determined to meddle no more in the Devil’s Cauldron. From that day forth, my role at the court of Her Majesty would be to root out superstition, hunt witches and those who profess to deal with the Devil’s magic. In that, I have served Her Majesty faithfully. I cite you as an example of a cunning man, a mountebank, and from the reports my spies have gathered on you, I was right in my assertions.’

      Thomas was trembling. The question he wanted to ask came out in a low whisper.

      ‘Sir, why have you brought me here?’

      Sir Percival poured his third glass of wine.

      ‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘my cousin Eleanor, Lady Rodermere, was wed to Master Gilbert Goodwin. The service took place in the chapel and afterwards there was to be a feast for the guests in the banqueting hall. I was there as a representative of Her Majesty. I had argued on Lady Rodermere’s behalf that as Lord Rodermere had been missing for near eighteen years he should be considered dead and she free to marry again. So, tell me’, Sir Percival drained the third glass of wine, ‘did you pick a date at hazard? Or was it something you calculated on an astrological chart? Or was it decided on the throw of a dice?’

      Thomas feels the pit of his stomach to be lead.

       I watch you, Thomas. Beads of sweat pepper your forehead. You are caught in a quandary of your own making.

      ‘Have you lost your tongue, man?’ said Sir Percival. ‘I asked you a question.’

      Thomas mumbled and at last asked why is this important, why now is it so important that he should be dragged from his bed and bundled here?

      She is pleased that he has roused himself and still has some fight in him.

      Sir Percival stood and handed Thomas the scroll.

      ‘Read it,’ he commanded.

      Thomas did not need to. He knew exactly what it said. After all, he was its author.

      ‘Read it,’ said Sir Percival again.

      Thomas looked down on the grave of his own words. All that was written there was the date and the time of Lord Rodermere’s return.

      ‘Yesterday,’ said Sir Percival, ‘on the date, at the very time stated there, just as glasses were raised to toast the bride and groom, a dead man walked into the banqueting hall, a ghost at the feast. He looked not one day older than when he vanished. He was wearing the same garments; they were fresh, not a blemish to be seen. The intensity of the silence was so dense that you could hear the unsaid: “This is not possible.” Because standing in the middle of the banqueting hall was Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere, returned, as he told us, after one day – one day – in the realm of the faeries.’

XXI

       Mark me well – nothing good will come of my curse. I made sure of that when I cast it. If it had not been for the hem of my dress I would have no interest in this affair other than to hear of the death of Lord Rodermere at the hand of his beauteous son.

      Alas, by her hem was she brought here to watch and watch she did as Thomas Finglas was dragged by Sir Percival as he might a reluctant schoolboy, through the long gallery and up the spiral staircase that led to the chamber at the top of the tallest of the turrets.

      ‘If you want your freedom, Master Finglas,’ said Sir Percival, ‘then I advise you to conjure a rational explanation of what befell Lord Rodermere. Until you do, you will remain here as his physician.’

      Those words gave the sorceress satisfaction and she left Thomas to his fate. In truth she cared little for humankind whose minds perpetually worry at their days and whose actions bring naught but destruction upon our world. Her spirit is not one given to melancholy. It is an emotion that belongs to man, along with endless regret.

      The Widow Bott had given her a desire to see this young Lord Beaumont. It would surprise her not if she too had fallen under his spell for such beauty was designed to have the power to awaken desire in all those about it. The sorceress wondered, though, why the old witch was not wise enough to know this and thought she must remember the dire consequences beauty has had on plainer mortals. Once, not that long ago, the widow had searched out the sorceress with a request from a gentlewoman of these parts who owned a fine house and fine horses but felt her looks to be her one tragedy. She asked if she might not be given a potion to make her beautiful. Being less bitter then than the sorceress is these days she could see the folly of such a wish and told the widow to advise against it. But the gentlewoman paid a higher sum to have the widow ask her again and the sorceress granted it. And then such was her beauty that it awoke evil in the hearts of all the good women of her acquaintance who turned against her and their jealousy was to be her death.

      The sorceress judged that beauty in a young man would have the same potency as beauty in a woman. Impatient to find the boy, hither and thither she went and she heard the conversations and the thoughts of the household. Few of the servants remembered Lord Rodermere and those who did recalled him with no fond memory nor had a good word to say about him. All had heard stories of his debauchery and none doubted that he was a tyrant. There was not a young woman high born or low who had been safe from his lustful advances. The sorceress relished blowing on the dust of these old tales. She whirled them up on the winds of gossip so that by the afternoon there was not a settled mind to be found in the House of the Three Turrets. All wondered what was to become of their master, Gilbert Goodwin and his new wife, Mistress Eleanor Goodwin, of young Lord Beaumont Thursby and Lady Clare. The question weighed heavy in their hearts.

XXII

      She finds him in the long gallery by a tall window, juggling three wooden rings. He has the art of it well but it is his face – no, his whole demeanour – that steals her breath and makes her delight in her powers. His hair raven black, thick his eyelashes of the same colour framing golden eyes. His lips sensuous, full, made for pleasure, he possesses a natural allure that shines in him, a charm, she would call it, that bewilders even her. He is both male and female, united in one body.

      Up the three rings go as the sunlight that has failed to make an appearance all day breaks through the snow-filled clouds and casts him in a rose gold light. An artist would give his soul to paint him. He moves with a natural grace, the very air around him accommodates his being. Here is an ethereal creature who man or woman both would desire, would lose riches and reason for one night of passion. All then is as it should be. He is empty of emotion, of that she is certain. He is indeed almost perfect in every respect, his beauty but the mask of an unfeeling monster. Try as she might she cannot hear his thoughts; his is a shallow vessel, nothing inside his head but the mirror of his own perfection. The Widow Bott, blinded by his looks, had failed to see that nothing lay beneath the surface but her own imaginings. The sorceress is not so easily duped. Oh, she thinks, but this is too joyous – he will be the light of all men’s desire, he will be the heart that no woman can possess. Take pride in your work, enjoy what is about to befall those who enter his domain.

      Beau catches the rings and puts two on a side table. He turns and seemingly stares directly at her. That disturbs her. He cannot see her, no man can unless she wills it and to prove the point she moves but the point is unproven: his eyes follow her. Under her breath she whispers to the icy draught words that protect her from the gaze of human eyes.

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

      It does not ease her as it should.

      ‘There you are,’ he says.

      He is speaking to her in her language. This cannot be. She holds her breath.

      ‘Beau.’

      The sound