The Beauty of the Wolf. Wray Delaney

a beat did Eleanor miss.

      ‘Yes – Gilbert Goodwin.’

      After all it was the steward’s duty to make sure that any child born to Lord Rodermere’s wife was no usurper.

      ‘I am most truly sorry,’ said Agnes. ‘The thought of you being on your own, and you never knowing you were with child.’

      Eleanor felt the smile deep within her and kept her face solemn as she said, ‘If asked, perhaps it would be best that you were to say you were with me all night.’

      ‘Willingly,’ Agnes said.

      And by doing so is caught in the nest of lies.

X

      It was Gilbert Goodwin who after the infant’s birth sent for the Widow Bott. The widow had delivered many a changeling child and watched them fade as bluebells in a wood when the season has passed. For the truth is, there are few children who have a mortal and a faerie for a parent and those that are born always have a longing to return to our world rather than stay in the human realm, and who can blame them. Changeling children, instead of being plump and round are sickly things that hang on to life as does a spider swing on a thread in a tempest. These changeling babes, left behind unwanted by the goblins, are placed in cradles where newborn babes lie and when no one is looking they take the child’s form as their own. But not this half-elfin child. He was born to be the sorceress’s instrument of death.

      Lord Rodermere had often decried faeries as diminutive creatures made of air and imagination. But we are giants for we hold sway over the superstitions of humankind. I have hunted the skies, chased the clouds in my chariot, I have seen wisdom in the eye of a snake, strength beyond its size in an ant, and cruelty in the hand of man. Our sizes, our shapes, our very natures are beyond the comprehension of most. We are concerned with pleasure and the joy of love, we use our powers to shift our shapes, to build enchanted dwellings, to fashion magic objects and to take dire revenge on mortals who offend us. But for those we protect, such as the Widow Bott, we ensure their youth and health.

      She has a far greater understanding in the knowledge of herbs and plants and their properties than many an apothecary, much more than the quack wizard, or so called alchemist, hoping to turn lead to gold, to cheat men from their money.

      So it was important – nay, I would say it was a necessity – that Gilbert called for her, for she alone could sway all incredulity, she could assure any doubters that the sheets held the evidence of a human birth, not the blood of a slaughtered rabbit. In short, she would give weight to the child’s arrival, confirm that he was indeed the son of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.

XI

      The sorceress had no desire to remain at the House of the Three Turrets that morning. It pained her to see her trees used that way, their branches bent, carved into unforgiving shapes. Instead she went to the widow’s cottage and waited by the fire.

      It was dark by the time the Widow Bott returned. Wrapped against the cold, her cloak caked in frost, snow and she came in as one. Putting down her basket, she fumbled for a candle to light. The sorceress lit it for her, set the fire to blaze and the pot upon it.

      ‘I should have known that you would be here,’ said the Widow Bott. ‘Well, I am not talking to the air. Show yourself, or be gone. I am tired and it shivers me when I cannot see you for who you are.’

      For some reason she was out of sorts.

      ‘You always know when I am near,’ said the sorceress, to comfort her.

      ‘Tis a pity that a few more folk are not as wise as me to your ways,’ said the widow, dusting the snow from the hem of her dress and taking a chair by the fire. ‘What mischief have you been up to?’

      The sorceress laughed. ‘So you saw the child?’

      ‘Yes. He is more beautiful than any mortal babe should ever be. He has already won the heart of Lady Eleanor.’

      The sorceress seated herself opposite the widow. ‘You should be in better spirits,’ she said.

      ‘And what of Gilbert Goodwin?’ asked the widow.

      ‘What of him?’

      ‘Never has a man been more lovestruck.’

      ‘And Lady Eleanor?’

      ‘The same. Do you intend to return Lord Rodermere? For he is not missed at all, especially not by his wife who trembles at his very name.’ The widow stood, took a long clay pipe from a jug that sat on the mantelpiece and kicked a log with the heel of her boot, before sitting down again in her rocking chair. ‘You have made a mistake if you think Lord Rodermere is of any importance.’

      ‘He has dented my forest.’

      ‘Will you put a curse on every man who fells a tree?’ snapped the widow. ‘Perhaps it would have been best if you had travelled further than the forest and seen what is abroad before you laid your curse, for there are many roads that lead now to the city and news travels both ways upon the Queen’s highway.’

      ‘Tell me,’ the sorceress said, ignoring her jibe. ‘Did you examine the infant?’

      ‘Lady Eleanor would not let me hold of the babe. She seems as devoted to it as if it was hers and she has no need of a wet nurse. Though she did ask about the star that be on his thigh.’

      The sorceress stood. ‘What star? The child was blemish free. Did you see it?’

      ‘No, for the infant was swaddled.’

      ‘She is mistaken.’

      ‘I think not,’ said the Widow Bott.

      ‘What did you tell her?’

      ‘That such a mark . . .’

      ‘Such a mark,’ the sorceress interrupted, ‘was not upon the child.’

      The widow never once had been frightened of the sorceress. She shrugged her shoulders.

      ‘I have no need to argue with you,’ she said. ‘If you say there is no star then what I say means little.’

      ‘What did you say to Lady Eleanor?’

      ‘That such a mark shows him to be of faerie blood and the star, a gift. She asked what kind of gift and I told her that only his mother could answer that question. She blushed when she realised that she had unwittingly confessed that the child be not hers, milk or no milk. She begged me never to say a word. She showed me the note left pinned to a fur and I assured her that her secret was safe.’

      ‘Good, good. But there is no mark.’

      ‘If you say so,’ said the widow. ‘But Lady Eleanor knows more of your ways than her husband did. She asked if the babe be a hollow child for she has heard of women who give birth to changelings and having no appetite for life, they mock a mother’s love and fade away. I promised her this be no such child. Was I right?’

      ‘Yes. Yes,’ the sorceress said again and all the while the thought of the star worried her.

      ‘You should not toy with us as if we be puppets,’ said the widow.

      ‘Come, that is unfair – I do not.’

      ‘But you do. Look how many lives will be changed by your curse. You would be wise to leave it be, not have Lord Rodermere return to plague his wife, to accuse me again of being a witch. Let the good of his disappearance be your comfort.’

      ‘No, what is done is done and cannot be undone.’

      The sorceress watched the Widow Bott as she relit her pipe.

      ‘So you know how all this will play out? How Lord Rodermere will meet his end?’

      These questions