Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

The imp raised a blackened, clawed finger and traced yet again the route from the centre of the pattern to the exterior gate.

But, as always, his finger stalled at this dead end or that, or lost itself amid the myriad twisting paths of the pattern.

“You cannot find your way out,” said the little girl.

“A moment more,” snapped the imp.

“You cannot find your way out.”

“It is tricky!”

“Yes. This was designed to trick and trap. And, see, you cannot find your way out.”

“It is a tricky little game for such a little girl!”

She smiled, apparently truly delighted. “So,” she said, “do you acknowledge your defeat?”

“Aye, you have bested me,” he grumbled, venting his frustration by twisting his finger about in the red wool until it was thoroughly tangled. “I don’t know what your mother has been murmuring on about…it’s not as if you need any protection.”

The girl laughed, the sound a beautiful rill within the stone hall.

“I win!” she said. “Again.”

The imp pulled his finger free, and glared at her. “I have a brother,” he said, “bigger and nastier than me.”

“Of course you do,” said the girl.

“He shall be able to defeat you.”

The girl raised an eyebrow, the expression on her face that of a much older and experienced person than a six-year-old girl. “Shall we ask him, then?” she said.

The next night I went to John Thornton. I had not been to him, been with him, for almost three months, not since that night Long Tom had appeared to us in the park. A great coolness had sprung up between he and I, for which I was very sad. I liked John greatly, and had a vast respect for him, and I knew I had treated him poorly. He had come to love me, and even so I had let our affair continue when it would have been better and kinder to have stopped it before he came to feel too deeply for me.

In my hands I carried a sealed letter.

He was asleep, for it was very late, and he jerked awake with a start when he realised my presence in his chamber.

“Noah? Lord Jesus, Noah, what do you here?”

“May I sit on the bed for a while, John?”

He sat up, propping the pillows behind his back. “What do you want?”

Ah, how sad. Just those four short words. What do you want? Well, what I wanted would hurt him immeasurably, and I could hardly bear to do it.

I sat down. I drew in a deep breath, took one of his hands, and rested it on my belly. “I am carrying a child,” I said, and then regretted the words the instant I saw the look of wonder and hope in his eyes.

His hand tightened about my belly, and he leaned closer to me. “My child?” he said, and although he had phrased it as a question, I knew it wasn’t. John truly thought that this was his baby—and what else should he have thought?

“No,” I whispered, then winced as he flinched back from me, his hand snatched back as if it had been touching evil.

“Who else have you been whoring with?”

“I’m sorry, John. I—”

He had started to cry, and nothing could have made me feel worse. “What have I done to you, Noah, that you should treat me this way? What have I done, that I must be punished by your presence here, resting my hand on your belly, and saying you carry another man’s baby? My God, Noah…” His voice broke, and now I also began to weep. “My God, I had wanted you to be my wife.”

Suddenly wild hope shone from his eyes. “Is that what you want? A husband, to save you from the shame of a lover who has deserted you?”

“No, John,” I whispered.

“Then what do you want?” he said, his voice horribly hard. He used one of his hands, which shook badly, to dash away the tears from his cheeks. “What do you want?”

I raised the hand in which I held the letter. “I need you to help me send this to…to…” Gods, how to say it?

“To the child’s father?”

I nodded miserably.

He gave a hollow laugh, riddled with anguish. “Send it yourself. If you could find him well enough to get that baby in you, then you can find the wherewithal to send him this hateful piece of correspondence!”

“He is out of my reach, now. John…John, he is in Antwerp.”

There was a silence. Then: “At King Charles’ court?”

I nodded. No need to make it any worse for him with added information.

“Who?” he snarled. “Who?”

“It does not matter,” I said.

“It matters to me!”

“A man who I love more than life itself.”

That broke his anger, finally. He gave a harsh sob, and turned his face away from me.

“I do not know the means to get correspondence to Charles’ court,” I hurried on. “In Cromwell’s Commonwealth it is death to send it publicly. But I know the earl has contacts with the court, and I thought you might know how…” I drifted off. John was no fool. He would know what I meant.

There was a far longer silence than previously.

“Will you allow me to help you?” he said, eventually, and I knew he meant far more than the letter.

I nodded.

He reached out and took the letter from me, holding it between forefinger and thumb as if it were Pilate’s death warrant for Christ.

“I will not read it,” he said.

“I know that,” I said.

He put it to one side, then he shifted forward in the bed, wrapped his arms about me, and rested his face in the hollow of my neck and shoulder.

I could feel his tears wet upon my skin.

“I will never stop loving you,” he whispered.

“I know.”

One of his hands crept around to my belly. “How I wish this were my child.”

“I know.” My tears were flowing again. Gods, I hated hurting this man!

“If it helps,” he said, a terrible hope in his voice, “I can tell the Bedfords that this is my child. Once they discover you’re with child, they will ask you to leave.”

“No,” I said. I needed to stop this now. He wanted to claim the child, knowing the earl and countess would force me to marry him. “No, John. We will not say this is your child. I will face them myself, and I will not mention your name. This is my burden, my child, and I will carry all responsibility for it.”

“Whatever you want from me,” he whispered, “ask. I will give you anything you ask for.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.”

We sat in silence for a while, then he sighed softly.

“I hope this child is everything you want it to be,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “she will be. I have wanted this daughter…oh, for so long.”

“Daughter? You know it is a daughter?”

How to explain? I hesitated, then decided to speak as much of the truth as I could. John deserved that much, at least. “I carried a child many years ago, John. When I was seven months pregnant, a woman who wished me much harm forced the child from me, and murdered her. This child is my daughter reconceived, a second chance for her to live, and for me to love her.”

Again, a period of quiet before John spoke. “A child you carried many years ago? How can this be? You were a virgin when first we bedded. My God, you were thirteen when you came to Woburn Abbey. When did you manage a child?”

How could I explain that to him? Once more, I spoke the truth. “I lost my daughter in a life I lived many, many years past. This child’s father…I loved him then, too.”

John was still upset enough that he ignored the reference to a past life. “Then what have I ever been to you, Noah, if all this time at Woburn you have been doing nothing but pining for this lover and, apparently, his daughter?”

“You have been my lifeblood, John,” I said. Then I rose, kissed him once, gently, on the mouth, and left.

The imp sat with the girl, his finger tracing a painfully slow path through the labyrinthine tangle of red wool before him.

To one side sat his brother, his wrinkled blackened face bright with hope that his sibling might succeed where he had failed.

But the second imp had no more luck than the first, and, after this, his thirty-third attempt to reach the outer gate of the labyrinth of red wool stretched between the girl’s hands, he snatched his hand away and spat on the floor.

The girl, unperturbed, raised her eyebrow in that peculiarly mature expression of hers.