NOAH SPEAKS

Oh, the terror I’d felt when Asterion appeared outside the house, and ordered me through the ice and snow to his side. It was terror, not only at the thought of his presence, but also at the fact that when he’d called I had no hope of resisting. I could do nothing but mumble some inane excuse to Marguerite who sat with me, and walk outside into the frigid weather wearing nothing but a light woollen gown.

There awaited Asterion, or Weyland Orr, as he now calls himself. He loomed before me, a tall figure wrapped in a heavy cloak, thick scarves about his neck, and with his hands hidden within such bulky leather gloves they appeared like mallets that he would turn against me at any moment. Then I saw his face.

It was not what I had expected. Not in any manner at all.

His eyes were keen, and sharp, locked on my every movement. I knew they noted my fright, and for that I hated him more than ever I had previously. Then I saw their colour, which was a soft hazel, and that disconcerted me, for I had never associated the concept of “softness” with Asterion at all.

Weyland Orr’s face was, at first glance, all angles. A sharp, perceptive face to suit those eyes, but, like his eyes, it also had its softness. The line of his jaw was saved from angularity by its strength, his nose was saved from thinness by the regularity of its contours, and the inflexibility of his broad forehead was softened by a wisp or two of fair hair that fell forward and gave him, gods help me, a boyish air.

He was handsome, but not immediately in any striking way. It was only after you’d studied him for a few minutes that his features truly impressed themselves upon you.

His was a dangerous attractiveness, because it swept upon you unawares.

We talked. He threatened, I evaded or agreed, as necessity dictated. I tried to keep calm, although I dare not believe I was very successful.

He kissed me, and for some illogical reason Long Tom’s directive to heal wounds came to my mind as he pulled me closer and deeper into that kiss.

He pulled the rug from his horse to keep me warm, and I wondered what terror he was trying to conceal from me with that action.

He let me go, the greatest cruelty, for I knew now as never before that shortly I would be lost. Shortly Weyland would call me to him, and I would be powerless to resist.

From this day on his face haunted my dreams, and hardly a night passed that I did not wake, sudden and terrified, staring into the darkness.

Woburn village may not be the centre of English society, but we discovered most of what happened of note in the world. We heard the gossip in the market. We read the broadsheets that were sold for a penny apiece on Woburn high street. And John Thornton visited and spoke to us of developments in the wider world.

Charles was to be restored. Parliament had worried to and fro about it for over a year until both public opinion and General Monck (at the head of his army) had forced their hand.

Charles was to be restored, and he was to come home in glory and to acclaim.

I could not help wondering how he felt about that, not only considering this life’s experiences but those of his previous lives as well. He would worry, surely, about what Weyland Orr might have planned.

I tried as much as I could not to think of Weyland, but if he did not occupy my thoughts, then they were taken up with concern for my daughter—my strange, disturbing Catling. Oh, I had tried hard to love her. Sometimes, I almost succeeded. If, when I held her, I closed my eyes and rocked her gently and sang to her, I could believe she was a baby such as any other who desired only to be held, and fed, and loved and protected.

But then her tiny mouth would close about my nipple, and she would feed from me, and I felt coldness and nausea grip my belly, and it was all I could do not to throw her away. If I looked down at her, as sometimes I steeled myself to do, I would find her blue eyes watching me unblinkingly.

At those times I rose abruptly, and handed Catling to Kate, and asked that Kate feed her.

My inability to love Catling troubled me greatly. Not merely because as a mother I felt I should love her, but as Eaving, I needed to love any child. I represented all mothers, the fertility of land and water and beast.

I could not feel such coldness towards any offspring, let alone mine.

Oh, gods, I wanted to love her so badly! She was my daughter reborn, and I could not bear to think that I had lost her in a previous life only to reject her in this one.

I tried to keep my discomfort from Marguerite and Kate. I know they wondered that I did not laugh and sing with her very often, and many times passed her to Kate to feed.

When we spoke of it, as we did occasionally, I blamed my discomfort on Catling’s rapid growth.

This was amazing (and, aye, disturbing) enough to satisfy Marguerite and Kate’s curiosity as to my apparent lack of bonding with Catling.

Indeed, as we could hardly hide the baby from the village, her growth was the talk of all Woburn.

Catling had sat up at two weeks, had crawled at three months, was walking at six months, and talking at seven. Now a year old, Catling was as accomplished as a five-year-old both in quality and quantity of speech, and as tall and agile as any four-year-old.

This daughter of mine wanted to waste no time on childhood. She rushed towards maturity.

Catling and I rarely talked, and then only to discuss the most mundane of daily chores. What gown would she prefer to wear this morning? Did she wish to attend the market with us? Would she prefer a plum or a pear with her morning breakfast?

She played happily with Marguerite’s and Kate’s children, and she appeared to do that which was required of a child (the giggles, the laughter, the tears when she fell over and grazed a knee), but she did other things also, most unchildlike.

She sat in corners, and sang to herself, softly, as she played cat’s cradle with a length of red wool which she had begged from Marguerite.

She challenged the local vicar at length about the writing of the gospels, claiming they were nothing but the fictionalised ambitions of a coterie of ruthless priests, until he was red-faced and discomforted. Eventually he asked me to please keep her apart from the other children.

She asked me once if the imp troubled me during my monthly menses, and said that if this was so, she could ensure he did so no more.

This was the one occasion we managed to bypass the mundane and almost talk of what truly troubled or motivated us.

“Can you really control the imp that greatly?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she replied, her eyes on her fingers as they twisted the red wool this way and that.

“What are you, Catling?” I said.

At that she raised her eyes, flat and emotionless.

“Your daughter,” she said. “What else?”

I said nothing, and so she continued with the inevitable, hateful question. “Do you love me?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, too quickly.

Her mouth twisted slightly. “Will you do anything I ask of you?”

I opened my mouth, but could not form the words. I sensed a trap here, so deep that if I fell in I might never manage to crawl out. So instead of answering her, I started, and looked towards the door. “Hark,” I said, “is that Marguerite calling?”

And I hastened off, and thus did not have to witness the undoubtedly cynical smile that would have marred my daughter’s beautiful face.

During this first year of Catling’s life Marguerite, Kate and I often formed a Circle and walked the Faerie. These were times of great joy for me, and comforted and compensated me for the loss of what I had expected in my daughter. Sometimes Long Tom asked after Catling, but the water sprites never did, and I noticed that they backed away whenever Long Tom spoke her name. I remembered how they had frowned when they had touched my belly when I was carrying Catling.

I asked them one night of this, and of what they had felt.

The sprite with the brightest copper hair replied, somewhat obliquely, “We revere you above all others, Eaving. We trust you above all others. Not her.”

This comforted me, and I laughed and embraced them, and they pretended to hate the embrace, and sprang away to dance joyously about me.

That was an enchanting night.

Apart from my disquiet about my daughter, life in Woburn was good for me. The village had come to accept my presence, as that of Marguerite and Kate and their children. We acted as seemly as we could. We made no fuss in the village, acted in a most decorous manner, and enticed none of the village men into our house. The gossip abated, and soon enough the women of the marketplace began to natter cheerfully to us whenever we appeared among them, and share with us the joys and hopes of their lives.

We enjoyed that, Eaving and her Sisters, very much, and sometimes one or another of us would walk the meadows with some of the village women, and show them some of the wonders of the land. We would open their eyes, just very slightly, to the possibilities of the ancient ways, so that when the time came for one of the meadow dances held on the solstices, or at the harvest festivals, they would better appreciate—and far better participate—in the natural rhythms of the cycles of earth, regeneration and rebirth. In our own way we returned the women gently back to the natural reverence of the land of ancient times and they, in turn, influenced their husbands and children.

John Thornton continued to visit. He told me that the land rose to meet him now more than ever, and I was happy for him. Furthermore, when he told me that he had won the hand of a local squire’s daughter, a woman named Sarah, then I was even happier, and wished him well in his marriage. His eyes were sad, but I knew that in time his memories of me would fade, and he would grow to delight in his wife.

Then, as if it was a god’s blessing, word reached us in May which pushed to one side all my worries about Weyland Orr and Catling.

Matilda-reborn would shortly be joining with Charles, and then, gods willing, with us.