The Devil’s Diadem by Sara Douglass

‘It tells an amazing story,’ he said.

‘The story of my father.’

Of Edmond? I smiled at him, thinking him the precious man to do this for me.

Hugh leaned closer, and his green eyes became vivid, bright, compelling. ‘But before you view it I beg you to remember something my father told you many, many years ago. Speak not the word, for remember that the wind shall carry your word to all the corners of the earth, as also to the ears of God and of the Devil both.’

I went very still, utterly shocked. Raife had said that to me, not Edmond. Hugh knew that Raife was his father?

Hugh’s eyes were still fixed on mine. ‘I have always known, my lady,’ he said, softly.

‘I have known everything. Remember what my father told you.’

I could scarcely breathe. Hugh had known?

‘Mother,’ he ground out, ‘will you remember it?’

I managed a nod. ‘Speak not the word,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will remember it.’ I said it, and I promised I would remember it, but I had no idea why he told me this.

And then my brain came out of its shock enough to piece together what Hugh had said. This tapestry told the story of Raife?

Speak not the word, Hugh mouthed at me, and again I gave a nod.

Then he assisted me to rise, and took my arm, and led me over to the table by the window on which rested the tapestry.

I studied it for a long time, and then suddenly I understood what it meant, and I understood what Raife, the poor doomed man, had been attempting to do that day he tried to show me the drawings on the vellum pages that the imp had tried to snatch.

I had refused to trust him, when I should have trusted him, when I had promised to trust him, and in the refusing, I had committed such an act of betrayal that I could not now bear it. It was all too much, and the events of thirty years ago rushed forward and enveloped me, and I gave a loud cry, and fainted.

I came round after a short while.

Hugh had carried me back to my couch, and was holding my hand, chafing its cold flesh between his two warm hands.

‘What have I done?’ I whispered.

‘Sweet Jesu, Hugh. Sweet Jesu …’

‘Remember,’ he said, and I nodded. Speak not the word.

Hugh gave a lovely, soft, gentle smile. ‘It would have been so much better had you learned your letters,’ he said.

Oh, yes, because then Hugh’s father could have written it for me, because to speak it was to alert the Devil to what was really happening, and that Raife could not do. But because I did not know my letters, Raife could not write the truth. Instead he, like Hugh now had, had drawn it for me, but I’d not had the time to understand before the imp tried to snatch the pages and Raife had destroyed them to save himself. If the Devil had seen what was on those pages … oh, sweet God, Raife would have been utterly undone.

All Raife could do, then, was to implore me to trust him.

To simply trust him.

And I hadn’t. He had tried so hard, but I would not trust him, nor even try for a single moment to understand what he really was.

Then Hugh leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth — a lover’s kiss.

I stared at him.

‘That was from my father,’ he said, ‘who thinks you are nothing but a dear, sweet trouble, and who wants you to know that he loves you very much.’

And now, twelve days after that day, I am going to ask Owain to write a little in the voice of his pen, because I cannot speak the words.

Chapter Five

Owain’s Testimony

My lady, the countess that was, wishes me to relate now the tale worked into the tapestry. Because I have sat here these past days and writ down each word of her testimony, and given my own knowledge of the myths of the Old People, I could easily understand the tapestry when she showed it to me yesterday.

It depicts a story from the Old Times, the pagan times when the Old People lived upon this land, before the Celts came, and before the Anglo-Saxons came, and before the Viking raiders or their cousins, the Normans, lived here. It depicts those peoples I was long familiar with, both from the legends of my youth in Crickhoel and from the strange figures depicted on the walls of the chapel in Pengraic Castle.

It depicts the Old People, to whom I owe even more loyalty and honour than I owe to our sweet Lord Christ.

The tapestry initially tells the story of a mighty prince of the Old People, resplendent in his citadel in the ancient mountains. On his head he wore a magnificent and enchanted diadem, fitting symbol of his rank and power, a diadem worked by the ancient forest magic of fairy hands. About its crown danced the sun and the moon and the stars of the heavens drawn in jewels that, as the countess that was, once said, were more glorious than diamonds.

Then one night, while the ancient prince slept, a long-fingered imp, a malevolent sprite from hell, came to the prince’s chamber and stole away the diadem.

The imp took the diadem to the Devil, trading it for favours from the satanic prince. Above, in the realm of the Old People, the prince awoke to find his diadem gone. He could smell the lingering odour of the imp, and knew to what dark master the thief would have ferried the diadem.

The prince could think of only one way to recover his diadem. He took himself down to hell, and, over the centuries, worked his way through the ranks surrounding the Devil until he became the Devil’s trusted confidant.

It was not something I could do overnight, the earl had said to his lady.

Yet still the prince did not know where the Devil had hid the diadem.

Then one day, horribly, the Devil cried that his diadem had been stolen, gone! Taken to the mortal world! The Devil hatched a scheme where the hounds of hell would scent out the diadem and, of the deepest irony, sent his favourite captain — the prince of the Old People in his disguise — into the mortal realm that he might be the one to carry the diadem back to hell.

But the prince, masquerading as the Earl of Pengraic and by now wed to a fair lady he loved beyond life, meant to trick the Devil. He endured the horror that the Devil unleashed on this mortal realm and followed the trail the horror laid down until he came to the diadem’s resting place. He retrieved the diadem, his lady present at his side, and it remained only for him to retreat into the ancient world of the Old People with his lady for his task to be complete.

But his lady refused to go with the prince. He begged and pleaded, but she refused, for she believed him only an angel of the Devil, and could not understand his true nature.

And he could not tell her, for the words would carry straight to the Devil, and neither would be safe until they were within the realm of the Old People.

I can write this, but my lord of Pengraic could never say it to his lady, for that would have jeopardised both of them.

And my Lady Maeb could not read.

My lady wept when she showed me this tapestry. I think the knowledge of what the earl had truly been almost destroyed her.

She wept until I thought she would do herself harm, but after a time she wiped her eyes. She laid trembling fingers on the final panel of the tapestry.

It depicted the castle of Pengraic, and again it showed the prince of the Old People and his beloved lady … but exactly what it showed I will not say.

Not yet.

Chapter Six

Thus, finally, I come to the end of my testimony. I have been the most stupid of women. The blindest.

But what would have happened if I had gone with Raife that night? If I had trusted him?

My son Hugh would have been born into a very different life, true, but one that now I think he has not missed out on entirely. What he has hinted to me over the past days has been extraordinary.

I would have foregone thirty years with Edmond, and I regret not one moment of those thirty years. I loved him and he me, and together we had three beautiful daughters who have made good marriages and have given us grandchildren more than we could have hoped.