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Lady Clare, the boy addressed and the sorceress anticipates that she is about to see the nature of young Lord Beaumont. His sister’s thoughts she can hear clearly and she will tell her her truth of him for the sorceress is beginning to think he has no soul. A pity about her face. If it was not so blemished the sorceress would say she was a striking young woman. She is of twenty-two winters with an enviable figure and holds herself well. The sorceress thinks she was a fool to worry that she might be visible – Lady Clare cannot see her.

      What is this? Lady Clare laughs as he tosses a ring for her to catch and she is thinking that she would rather die than be without him, that the very notion of being parted from her brother is unbearable. And what does Lord Beaumont think? Nothing. His mind is blank parchment that the sorceress can easily write upon and shape his character to her desires.

      Beau smiles at his sister, takes her hand and kisses it. He looks in the sorceress’s direction and seems to hold her gaze before he turns back to Lady Clare.

      ‘We have not spoken in that language since we were children,’ she says. ‘This house seems full of spirits today. Beau, did we dream what happened to us in the forest?’

      He puts his finger lightly on his sister’s lips.

      The sorceress waits to hear his reply expecting it to be cruel. And then she catches Clare’s thoughts – glimpses of a memory dance in her head, children running into the forest – then they are gone.

      Lady Clare sighs. ‘We must put aside such childish nonsense. Alas, no one has the magic to alter what has happened.’

       Speak, Beau. Let me hear your voice.

      The sorceress goes to stand beside him lest she miss a word.

      ‘Do you believe,’ says Lady Clare, ‘that it is possible for our father to return after so long without the years marking his disappearance?’ Again Beau looks at the sorceress. ‘What is it?’ Lady Clare says, following his gaze. She drops her voice. ‘Is someone listening?’

      ‘These oak beams listen,’ Beau says quietly. ‘Have you seen our mother this morning?’

      His is a voice a stream would envy, a voice that is neither low nor high but has a quiet command to it. Oh, Robin Goodfellow, look what she created in your honour.

      ‘Not yet,’ says Lady Clare. ‘But, Beau, tell me you will leave with us.’

      Delight of delights. The sorceress sees a tear in her eye. All this love for an empty shell of an androgyne, a man for all desire, shallow as a puddle.

      ‘Sir Percival had the alchemist, Thomas Finglas, brought here from London last night,’ she continues. ‘He is locked in the turret with our father. It is hoped he may bring him to his senses.’

      ‘Then there is even more reason that you must be gone before Lord Rodermere wakes further from his trance and his temper rekindles.’

      He takes her hand and walks with her down the long gallery.

      She says, ‘He will not miss you, he does not know you. He does not believe you are his son.’

      ‘That was last night,’ says Beau, ‘but he is by all accounts an irrational man.’

      He gives her a look of such tenderness. The sorceress sees how well he acts the part. Oh, beauty, what a beast you make.

      ‘What will I do without you?’ Lady Clare says. ‘Who will see me as you do?’

      ‘It will be for a short time only, I promise.’

      And he turns round and looks straight at the sorceress.

XXIII

       It must not happen. Young Lord Beaumont must not leave this place. His destiny is to murder his father as I foretold when I wrote my curse on the bark of that felled oak. If the death of Francis Rodermere means the death of his son, what care I. He is a puppet and I the puppet master, his strings are at my command.

       The sooner the deed is done the better for there is a wildness calling me, a yearning to relish once more my powers as an enchantress. I needs must be free to find a new lover, to be ravished by him. I have almost forgotten the alchemy of sex. This mortal world has twisted passion into such a bitter coil that it makes soil barren, fills rich earth with sand. I must replenish myself, lest all of me withers. Still by my curse I am tied. Still by my hem I am caught. Let it be done, let it be over.

       My mood is black, thick. And sticky is the rage that runs through my knotted veins. The boy unsettles me, his look unsettles me. Did his mother lie when she said she never kissed the infant? And if she did what gift did she give him? I shake the thought away. No, he is empty of soul, of feeling, he is but a pretty knife to pierce a heart.

      Thomas Finglas is locked in the tallest turret where Lord Rodermere prowls about as would a wolf. It is not a small chamber and is encircled by windows. Leaning against the wall is a large collection of mirrors. Some have lost their frames, others broken. All the shards reflect Lord Rodermere in a bright light of fury.

      Thomas is seated, head in hands, the very picture of melancholy, as Lord Rodermere rails a vomit of angry words. Such a din is it that it has nearly defeated Thomas. Where are your powers now, alchemist? The painting that was missing from the long gallery is propped against the wall. Francis Rodermere looks no different than he did when he sat for the portrait some eighteen years before and this is what he wants Thomas to explain.

      ‘If, as you say,’ he roars, ‘I have been lost for near eighteen years, why, tell me, have I not aged? I do not believe you. Neither do I believe that boy is my son.’

      The sorceress has no wish to hear more of his meaningless curses. Sleep is the saviour of the insane, and she gives Lord Rodermere dreams of a May morn, of a stream, of a maiden. The first and last day of love. He flops onto the trundle bed and lies still.

      Thomas looks up when the shouting ceases, startled by the abruptness of the silence. He stares anxiously round the chamber.

      ‘You did not finish your story,’ she says.

      ‘Mistress,’ he says, going down on his knees, ‘please show yourself. Please take me away from here and I promise . . .’

      ‘What then happened, Thomas?’

      He rises, begins again.

      ‘Slowly,’ she says. ‘We will not be disturbed.’

      ‘She – my wife – caused the news to spread. An author, larding his lean words with thees and thous to make more of the story, printed a pamphlet claiming I had made a beast from a babe.’

      ‘And had you, Thomas? Had you made a beast?’

      ‘Bess begged me to revive the babe and I, confronted by so much grief, knew not what to do but to experiment with my elixir of everlasting life, a potion no more proven than any others. I poured it into the crucible, stirred it over the heat, my heart warmed by my love’s belief in me. I put in the feather of a bird, the wing of a bat, the hair of a cat, I anointed the infant’s lifeless body with oil of acorn to ward off noisome things. It was Bess who placed her into the mercury. Together we watched her vanish in the silvery water and I was bewildered when she rose again – alive, unrecognisable, an abomination. Three years we kept her safe from prying eyes. But the rumours and gossip did not abate and neither did the nagging of my wife. She took out her rage on Bess. As the child grew, the sounds from the cellar became louder and my wife became more terrified. She plagued me with questions and hearing no satisfactory answer, threatened she would let the whole world know that I had the Devil living in our house. Soon after this threat, John Butter found her at the foot of the stairs. She was dying and the physician called to attend her could not – to my relief – explain the marks he found on her body, nor fathom what animal could have had the power to tear flesh from her bones. Blame fell on me and the strange sounds that came from the cellar. I was arrested on suspicion of murder and wizardry

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