Caress of a Witch, page 4
part #1 of Darkness Rising - Three Series
Time passed. She watched dinner being served. Great platters of venison and boar, sweet-spiced sparrows, tarts with sugared cream and rosewater, quince cakes and jellies. Soft white bread and spiced wines. The empty plates came back and she remembered she was hungry. Fear and excitement waned to a bored and weary lethargy. Twice, she made the decision to go home after all, and got almost halfway to the door before the desire to know hardened in her blood like a charm that drew her back once more and forced her to wait again.
By the time Isabella returned at last, Kate was sinking into drowsiness. She had dragged the stool closer to the wall so she could lean her shoulder against it, and she had begun to doze in spite of the racket of the kitchen all around her, dreaming strange bright dreams that were forgotten the moment she opened her eyes, leaving just a wispy trail of unease in their wake.
Isabella strode between the kitchen staff, her face stern, and Kate stood up with a slight dip into an instinctive curtsey. She was unsure of the relationship between them now – was she a servant now? A pupil? She should have asked more questions, the voice in her head scolded, before she set her fate in this stranger’s hands.
‘Forgive me for keeping you waiting so long; there was much to arrange. We sail on the evening tide,’ Isabella said, flicking a glance to the windows. The sky beyond was dark, night almost upon them. ‘So we must make haste.’
‘Sail?’ Something akin to panic flared through her body, breath turning ragged, heartbeat quick.
‘To London, to find your past.’
Of course, she thought. She should have realised. Isabella regarded her with a long cool look of appraisal, and Kate lowered her eyes, searching the flagstones of the kitchen floor for the strength to simply walk away.
She did not want to go to London, not like this, as a thief in the night.
Casting her mind across the small chamber in the attic at home where she had lived her whole life till now, her gaze slid over the bright counterpane and cushions sewn by her mother. Her brushes and mirror. Two books on herbs, the chest containing her skirts, and the little box that had been a gift from her father when she was just a girl, treasured all these years. In her mind’s eye she checked the contents: some beads, a bracelet, a small silver brooch. Her heart turned over with the thought she might never see those things again and for the length of a breath their call was almost strong enough to summon her home. She glanced across the kitchen towards the low servant’s door – a few strides would see her on her way, out into the evening, with the fortune teller and all she had offered put aside and forgotten. She swallowed, hesitating as her thoughts roiled with the possibilities – a different future, a life to be lived.
Her mother would be frantic, she thought, but still the knowledge was not enough to make her change her mind – she wanted to experience the world, and fate was holding out an unexpected chance she might never see again. How could she refuse it? She would write, she told herself, when she arrived in London, and set her mother’s mind at ease. Or find someone on the quay to take a message.
‘I have nothing to bring but the clothes on my back,’ she said.
‘I have clothes a-plenty that can be altered to fit,’ Isabella said, ‘and there is little else you need.’
Then, with a nod, she turned abruptly and Kate found herself following her across the kitchen towards the door and out into the bitter night beyond it, as if drawn by an invisible thread.
In the courtyard the air was frigid. A cold mist had seeped between the buildings and Kate’s breath puffed in little clouds before her face as she walked. She huddled deeper into her cloak but it made no difference; the chill air still crept inside the heavy wool and made her shiver. Isabella walked beside her and their boots rang on the cobblestones as they strode with purpose towards the docks. She did not allow herself to cast a look behind her.
At the quayside, the ships loomed large in the dark, lanterns casting a dim and eerie light that sent the shadows dancing across the ground. The vessels seemed so much bigger at night, and forbidding. Kate had never been on a ship, though she had often watched them come and go, trailing their possibilities of adventure.
Now, faced with the prospect of the voyage her blood quivered with fear. Was she willing to entrust her life so completely to this stranger merely to learn her family’s past? To go all the way to England and put herself so far beyond her mother’s reach?
She was truly leaving it all and, in spite of all her hopes of a journey, she had never thought she might leave like this – secretly, in the darkening night at the side of a stranger, with no chance to say farewell to everything she had ever known. The ball of doubt hardened again in her belly. It was not too late to change her mind, the warning voice whispered in her head. She could still turn back, go home, forget it. But she kept walking even so, striding towards her fate, boots slipping on the greasy stones underfoot.
Dark, faceless figures flitted through the shadows on unknown business, and Kate searched among them for someone who might deliver a message to her mother. But all of them moved with purpose, and she dared not disturb a single one of them. She quickened her steps to counter her fears and Isabella slid a glance towards her.
‘Which of them is ours?’ she asked, gesturing to the ships drawn alongside.
‘A little further.’
As they walked on, picking their way between the sheds and boxes and coils of rope, two men lurched towards them out of nowhere. Kate screamed in shock as one of them snatched at Isabella’s arm, but Isabella was too quick for him, twisting her body away, nimble and light.
‘Bitch!’ The man shouted. ‘Whores!’ They heard him hawk and spit on the cobbles as they broke into a run away from him.
‘The docks are not a safe place for women,’ Isabella said, as they slowed their pace once again, and Kate cast a glance behind her. The shadows flickered with unseen danger, and men’s voices, disembodied, drifted on the air. She had never been afraid of the dark before, enchanted instead by the possibilities it contained. Fear of it had always seemed to her to be a weakness but now she had to set her shoulders and swallow down her disquiet.
‘I am not afraid,’ she said, and Isabella gave her a smile.
They came at last to a three-masted barque where final preparations to sail were under way.
‘The Fortune,’ Isabella said, slowing to a halt close to a gangplank that rang with the footsteps of men shouldering loads, hurrying. Above them the deck seemed alive with voices, shouts passing from one man to another. ‘Come,’ she said, and Kate followed her aboard. The men threw surly looks their way – few sailors liked to have women aboard – but there was no time for more than cursory glances, and Kate was glad.
She set her gaze seaward. Far out from the shore in the distance, faint lights flickered, hovering. Other ships, Kate guessed, leaving on the tide, and excitement began to chase away the residue of fear. She smiled at her companion, who was watching her with an appraising eye. They found themselves a place at the rail close to the gangplank, watching as the walkway was cast back to the quay and the ropes were tossed from the mooring posts. Shouts rang out as the sailors leaned into the capstan and the ship began to inch away from the dock. Kate turned to watch the men straining against the slow turn of the wheel as the deck lurched beneath her feet, and tightened her grasp on the rail as the wind snapped in the sails being unfurled further forward. Men clambered over the masts and rigging above her but she paid them no mind, her thoughts shoreward, watching the city slowly diminish, taking on a different aspect. Lights flickered, and the shadows merged together until she could no longer make out the individual buildings. Then a gust of wind caught at her hair and as she lifted a hand to brush it back, she was conscious of Isabella’s gaze on her face. It was a look she was more used to getting from a man but she took pleasure in the other woman’s admiration, aware of her own beauty. Turning with a smile, she met the other woman’s eyes, intense even in the gloom, and suddenly alive with a light that Kate no longer recognised. A flicker of warning flared again through her blood and she shivered.
‘You’re cold,’ Isabella said. ‘Come, let’s go below.’
Kate left the deck with a sense of reluctance in spite of the chill. The open sea beckoned, ripe with the unfamiliar tang of new-found freedom, and she wanted to laugh with the awareness of the thrust for life inside her: she could have frozen half to death in its contemplation and barely noticed. But the fortune teller had grasped her arm and was steering her towards the stairway as the deck began to roll under their feet. Kate braced the muscles in her legs and belly to keep her balance, and followed Isabella to their cabin.
Inside, it was cramped and airless, shadows stretching and shifting with the rock of the ship, boards creaking. A bed, a trunk, a lantern that swung from a hook on the wall. There was no window and her head brushed against the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance a bell tolled, and now and then a man’s half-heard voice drifted through the walls. Someone had left them a tray of simple food. Bread, cheese, smoked fish and a jug of ale, and Kate remembered she was hungry.
They ate, speaking little, but the silence was comfortable enough. There would be time for all her many questions later and for now she was still marvelling in the knowledge of her flight, surprised by her recklessness and savouring the sense of adventure. She closed her mind against the image of her mother’s distress and the warning bell that still tolled at the edges of her thoughts. The decision had been made and it was too late now to change her mind. She felt light-headed, and the rocking of the ship only served to heighten the sense of strangeness. It was like a dream, unreal and soon to end, so that she half expected to wake up in her attic bed at home.
‘We should sleep,’ Isabella said, when they had eaten their fill. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Kate nodded in agreement. The movement of the ship and the food in her belly had made her drowsy but still, she was reluctant to bring the day to an end. Tomorrow would bring a new reality, when she must face the consequences of her flight in the harsh light of the day. For now, her life seemed full of wonder, a new world opening before her.
‘Let me help you,’ said Isabella, standing up.
Kate got to her feet and stood, feet braced against the movements of the ship, as the other woman untied the laces of her bodice, their faces close. The taint of an unfamiliar scent clung to Isabella’s hair – a bittersweet spice, exotic and intoxicating. She inhaled, and the fortune teller looked up with a smile that Kate could not quite read. But she smiled in reply, enjoying the brightness of Isabella’s attention – it was surely a light to savour. Then, stepping out of her skirts, she climbed into the narrow cot they would share. She doubted she’d sleep well: she had slept alone for most of her life and it was many years since nightmares had taken her to the safety of her parents’ bed.
From her place in the high berth she observed Isabella as she moved about the small cabin like a seasoned sailor, unworried by the rolling motion of the ship. Kate’s eyes followed the fortune teller’s movements, watching the fingers that were deft with the ties of her bodice before she laid her skirts and petticoats across the single chair. The shift she wore was of the finest linen and the seamstress in Kate smiled in pleasure at its quality. But Isabella’s outline beneath it was clear to see in the wavering light of the lantern behind her and Kate observed her, noticing the narrow hips and slim legs, the small, upturned breasts. Like her own body, Kate realised, boyish and lean. She had always wished for more curves before but now, observing another woman much like herself, she saw the beauty in the clean, lithe limbs, a strength, and she ran a hand across her own flat belly in appreciation.
Isabella finished undressing and climbed into the bed beside her. They could not help but touch, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, and Kate turned onto her side, facing away. The lantern still burned and its glow swayed across the cabin, shadows looming and falling as the ship rolled and swayed. She was grateful for its light.
As the other woman settled herself at Kate’s back in the narrow bed, Kate was aware of the movement of Isabella’s legs against her own as she fitted her body around the curves in Kate’s, conscious of the press of the other woman’s breasts against her back, a hand resting on the muscle of her arm. Briefly she tensed, unused to such contact, before she forced herself to quell her unease and the unexpected rise of anticipation. Where else was Isabella to lie?
‘Good night.’ The whispered words were close enough to Kate’s neck that she could feel the warmth of them against her skin before Isabella turned abruptly away to lie on her back, withdrawing the tantalising promise of her embrace. Despite her misgivings, Kate was surprised to feel the emptiness of disappointment.
She murmured a reply, unsure of her feelings any more. She had never thought to be looked at by a woman the way Isabella looked at her. Had never thought she might bask in such attention. But she had been certain of the pleasure it brought her, the sensation delicious, and a smile caught at the corners of her lips at the thought of it.
It had been the strangest of days, but now, lying drowsy and warm in the soft bed beside Isabella at the start of a new life, she was content to let sleep claim her.
And that night, not a single dream came to trouble her.
5
Those strong knots of love
Mary waited as suppertime came and went but still there was no sign of her daughter. The tailors closed up the shop and left, and Mary did not notice them go. Not so long ago, she had awaited the end of the work day with eagerness, listening for Toby’s step on the stairs, anticipating his smile as he ducked through the low door of the first-floor chamber. It was those moments she missed the most since he had gone, she realised, the small and precious daily things that make up a life together. His head on the pillow next to hers in the morning, his nod of thanks for the cup of ale she brought to him in the shop, evenings spent before the fire, content in each other’s company.
She missed him far more than the infants that had come and gone, though their deaths had once threatened to unravel her. But in those days Toby had been by her side and they had weathered the grief together, secure, loved. Now she felt unutterably alone. Her daughter had become a stranger, and there seemed to be nothing to hope for in her life any more but the swift release of death so that she might be with Toby once again.
Standing now at the window, she stared down at the street where the shadows seemed alive in the flickering lanterns that burned at the doorways. Above the rooftops a silver slice of the waning moon peeped from behind scudding clouds but it cast scant light across the scene below. Sarah used to pray to the moon, Mary recalled, dancing in its light. Perhaps she, Mary, should do the same, though God knew it had brought no great good fortune to Sarah. Had she found her happiness in the end? Mary wondered. Was she resting in peace at last with Tom? She hoped so. Whatever the truth of Sarah’s relationship with Tom she had only ever been kind to Mary, even when she was just a Bankside whore that Toby had taken pity on.
With a sigh, she turned from the window and went to the hearth. The fire was almost out – she’d paid it no attention all through the hours she had been waiting, her thoughts wholly taken up with worry for Kate. More than eight hours had passed since her daughter fled from the house in a fury and she had not yet returned. She had never stayed out so long before, and Mary’s blood quivered with unease. Shivering, she squatted to throw on another log, poking at the half-dead embers, stirring the life back into them, drawn to the brightness and warmth.
The sound of a footstep on the road outside the house made her turn her head to listen but she knew straight away that the tread was not her daughter’s. Sitting back on her heels she stared into the flames as they began to lick at the new wood, feeling the heat touch her face before she lifted her head to the window once again. Should she go out and search? Try to find this fortune teller? Or perhaps she should scour the taverns she knew Kate had begun to frequent since her father’s death, finding comfort, Mary guessed, in the arms of strange men. A better mother might have been able to stop it but in the throes of her own grief Mary had been powerless against her daughter’s defiance, and so she had lowered her eyes away and pretended not to know.
When the church clock three streets away tolled the hour of ten, Mary decided at last she could wait no longer; now that she had made the decision, her movements took on an urgency, fuelled by the sudden fear she had left it too late, that she should have gone hours before. After scrawling a hurried note in case Kate should return ahead of her, she lifted her warmest cloak from the hook by the door, lighted a lantern from one of the candles, and stepped out into the night, where the sudden chill almost took her breath away. Hunching her shoulders, she set out with quick and automatic steps towards the palace.
She had thought movement might help ease her worry, but after the torpor of the hours of inactivity she was seized now with a panic that she had waited too long. By the time she stepped into the square before the Binnenhof she was almost running, sweat collecting in the pit of her back in spite of the cold.
The palace windows were still ablaze with light and Mary was glad. The streets she had passed through on her way had seemed ghostly and forbidding, and the sense of life before her now was a welcome sight. They would still be celebrating Christmas, she thought, the last of the twelve days of revels and festivity. She swallowed, her mouth dry, and set her steps towards the entrance that Toby used to take. For herself, she had never been inside before, though there were many within its walls who wore her needlework. But she had often come this far with Toby for the pleasure of the walk in his company before he left her at the threshold – master tailor to the exiled nobility of England.
