Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

“A physician came. Mistress Thanet sent him.”

I frowned. “A physician? An uncommonly good one, then.”

“Yes.”

Something in John’s face worried me. A flatness, both to his features and to his voice.

“What was his name?”

“I cannot remember. I was concerned for you, and that filled my thoughts.”

Perhaps, but strange nonetheless. I knew John’s intellectual capacity intimately; that he should not remember a name was highly unusual. “Describe this man to me,” I said.

John thought. “Well,” he said eventually, “he was tall, and pleasant enough. He had keen eyes, and…ah, I cannot remember.”

Tall, pleasant enough, and with keen eyes. It was not a description I could use to pick someone out from a crowd.

A horrible thought suddenly occurred to me. “John! Mistress Thanet thought only that I had a headache. What will she think now, when the physician tells her that he cured not my painful brow, but my mauled back?”

“Do not worry. He came so late at night that I doubt he went from this bedchamber to discuss the details of your condition with Leila.”

“But…” There were too many buts. Leila Thanet had sent for a physician but had not accompanied him into the chamber, at the very least to introduce him to John. And all this had occurred in the middle of the night. Leila Thanet may well have sent a servant riding for the physician if she thought there was some life-threatening emergency, but for all she knew I had only a painful headache.

And this strange, secretive physician with keen eyes had healed my back. At best, physicians soothed. They did not heal open and deep wounds. Not overnight.

Who?

I lay back thinking, and after only a moment the answer came to me. It must have been one of the Sidlesaghes, or even Charles, come from so far away in spirit. He would have been secretive, for he would not have wanted Weyland to know of his presence. I relaxed, relieved.

“There was one thing,” John said.

“Yes?”

He coloured slightly. “He asked if you brought me bliss in bed. He asked if you were, ahem, delectable.”

I stared. That surely was no question a Sidlesaghe would ask, and I could not imagine Charles asking it, either. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine who could have asked such an intimacy. “And what did you say?”

“I said you made the land to rise up and greet me.”

My throat choked with emotion and I had to swallow so that I might speak. “And he said?”

“He said nothing, but his eyes hardened, and he vanished.”

Not left. Vanished. I was still worried about this stranger’s identity, but at least my fears regarding Leila Thanet knowing the true nature of my affliction eased. This was, most certainly, not someone Leila Thanet had summoned.

I smiled at John, and squeezed his hand. “What this physician did was as nothing to what you have done for me over the past days and nights. If not for you…John, if not for you then I should be in despair. Despair cannot be healed as easily with power as can a few torn wounds. What you have done for me takes something far greater than the mere application of an unnatural power. I thank you.”

He gave a nod, and a small smile, but he did not say anything, and I knew he had wanted so much more from me.

In the morning we rose, dressed, breakfasted, then took our leave of the Thanets (most apparently completely unaware of the physician’s visit), and rode the fifteen miles or so south-east into London.

To Weyland Orr.

At one point, a mile or so south of Langley Hall, John reined the horse to a halt, and said to me, “Noah, is London the safest place for you? And this…this creature within you…dear God, beloved…how can I—”

“John,” I said, “be at peace. This woman I go to, Jane Orr, she is afflicted in the same manner as I. Individually we have no hope, but together we can overcome this dark trouble. I know it, and so does she. And I have many other friends in London. Marguerite and Kate shall join me soon, as yet others. Deliver me you must, and then you must leave me. If you do that, then one day I shall return, carefree and unburdened. If you do not, then I am lost.”

“But you will never love me,” he said.

I said nothing, and dropped away my eyes.

Twelve

London

Louis de Silva lay awake most of the night, spending half his time worrying about Noah and the other half feeling London rising up through the timbers of the inn and the straw-filled mattress of his bed. The city felt like a wondrously familiar old friend, which Louis supposed that, indeed, it was. Land and London were now so well known to Louis, and he to them, that there was no sense of any discontinuity since Louis’ last time in this land and this moment. Six hundred years had passed, and yet it felt like only an hour or so ago that he had ruled as king over this land and it, and the city, had submitted themselves to him. Along with the land, Louis could feel faint echoes of his blood, as well as Charles’. In their previous life both had left children, and now Louis felt the faint heartbeat of hundreds of their descendants. Most of them—even William and Matilda’s children—had gravitated to the south-east of England. Even though they were so close to London, Louis realised they had no part to play in the game that had ensnared their ancestors. They were well, and for that Louis was pleased, but he did not concern himself overmuch with their presence.

What Louis truly wanted during this long night was to set out and search the city, to be doing, but he knew that was pointless. For one, both the night and the storm meant Noah would hardly be out traipsing the streets. Secondly, Louis doubted Noah had yet had enough time to get to London from Woburn village. It would normally be a ride of two or three days: say three, as the storm would have kept her trapped for at least a day. Presuming she was within a day of London, and presuming also the storm eased, she would likely be here today.

Knowing from where she came, Louis reasonably expected Noah would approach London via Holborn Road, entering the city through Newgate…but then she might come via Smithfield, entering via Aldersgate…or even Cripplegate, if she got lost amid the twisting maze of streets about the dogleg in the city wall.

Damn! Louis lay there as dawn poked light through the shoddy shutters on the window of the chamber and decided that a reasonable idea wasn’t going to be good enough. Worse, he had no idea where she would go once she got to London. Vanish in the western parts of the city, or somehow thread her way into the crowded eastern quarters?

Or would the ground somehow rise up and swallow her the instant she got to the city walls?

Louis rose as soon as it was light, washed his hands and face, then threw on his breeches and doublet, hose and shoes, grabbed his hat and cloak, and slung his bag over his shoulder, trying to think optimistically. Noah wouldn’t be hard to spot.

How many single women carrying a baby could there be entering London on this day?

Weyland was up the same time as Louis, driven by a similar impatience. Noah was near. He could sense every step closer that she came. Unlike Louis, however, Weyland had no intention of wandering the streets looking for Noah. She would come straight to him. There should be no need to go looking.

“Wake up,” he said with more good nature than usual as he entered the kitchen. “This shall be a day to remember. Your worst enemy is about to become my thrall as much as you.”

Jane said nothing. She rose, straightened her bodice and skirt, and briefly laid a hand on her belly as she walked stiffly to the hearth to see to the fire. She was very pale, her eyes enormous in her increasingly cadaverous face, the sores on her forehead more prominent than normal.

Weyland sat down at the table, watching Jane as she set water to boil then poured him a beaker of ale. She set it by his hand, then went to a cupboard, and pulled forth bread, cheese, a platter and a sharp knife, which she also set by Weyland for his breakfast.

The knife had a most oddly twisted horn handle; it was the same wicked instrument that Asterion had first fashioned three thousand years earlier from the horns of his Theseus-murdered body, and it was the same wicked instrument with which Cornelia had murdered Genvissa, and later used on herself, and which Swanne had used to murder Damson. It was now tired and worn, but Weyland kept it by him as a reminder of all that had passed.