The Beauty of the Wolf - Wray Delaney

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the oncoming darkness as the carriage disappeared onto the main road. Beau stood bare-headed on the drive and only when it was lost from sight did he turn and walk back to the house.

       I am torn. For this boy is everything he should not be and despite of it I am enchanted with him and his girlish looks. At the grand door where once I had come with a basket he stops, turns to look at me and holds the door open as if waiting for me to enter.

       I am born from the womb of the earth, nursed by the milk of the moon. Flame gave me three bodies, one soul. In between lies my invisibility.

      Thomas was watching from a window in the turret as the carriage departed. He wondered why the young Lord Beaumont was not inside it, for there would be no point in the boy staying, no point at all. His heart missed a beat when he heard the door to the chamber being unlocked.

      He turned and was about to say that he needed more time, when Sir Percival said, ‘What have you done?’

      Thomas, without looking at Lord Rodermere, replied, ‘He sleeps.’

      ‘Sleeps?’ repeated Sir Percival. ‘Yes, sleeps – and he has aged. Alchemist, I much underestimated your talent. This is indeed a remarkable transformation.’

      Now Thomas looked at Francis. And indeed a miracle of sorts had taken place: the ravages of time had collided with him. Gone was the youthful man and in its place a withdrawn creature whose prick had aged more than the man himself so it would in future be an impotent thing that would cause him much frustration and not one ounce of pleasure. Lord Rodermere looked nothing like the portrait, the two images hardly reflected each other.

      The sorceress’s one regret is that she had not the chance to be there when young Lord Beaumont confronted his father. She would have chosen it to be different but Sir Percival was intent on having Thomas Finglas gone as soon as possible, regardless of the fact it was now night and the roads barely passable. A horse was brought that looked as reluctant to leave the stable as Thomas was to leave the warmth of the house.

      ‘If, Master Finglas, you mention one word of what has happened this day and your part in it, I will not hesitate to have you charged with sorcery,’ said Sir Percival.

      He nodded at a servant who took from Thomas the gown he was given on his arrival. Thomas, in his nightshirt, sat astride the horse.

      ‘But, sir, I will freeze to death.’

      Sir Percival said nothing and the great door closed behind him. Snow was falling on horse and man as they made their way on to the impassable road.

      Thomas will remember nothing of his journey and only come into himself again as he crosses London Bridge and its tongue-tied waters. There, numb with cold, he will urge on his horse until he finds himself haunting his own back door.

      ‘Be I alive or be I dead?’ he asked.

      His conclusion, dull as it is, was that he was dead. There is something so pathetic in man’s desire to know what state his flesh be in. How could he not feel the pulsing of his blood, the beating of his heart? And it strikes the sorceress that in all she has seen of him he possesses very little magic. He jumps when he hears her voice.

      ‘I have kept my part of the bargain, now you must keep yours.’

      Again he asks, ‘Am I dead?’

      Night had reached the hour when it wraps itself starless in its frozen cloth. The door was locked, the house in darkness. Thomas knocked with his fist. He knocked again. His teeth were chattering, his breath a white mist and these bodily signs comforted him and proved he was made of living parts. When still there was no reply he cursed his nick-ninny of an apprentice: was he deaf as well as stupid? Then his courage wavered as an altogether more terrifying thought came to him: what if his daughter had escaped and murdered again? Once more, Thomas raised his fist, ready to feel his knuckles hard upon wood, then stopped as the door all by itself opened into an abyss.

      ‘John?’ he called.

      There is no answer but from within comes that high-pitched yowl.

      Thomas Finglas enters his house with shaking steps, fearful of stumbling over the remains of his apprentice and the serving girl whose name for the moment escapes him. He turns to where he supposes the sorceress is. Look at this learned man, this tormented Thomas Finglas. He does not possess one ounce of power. Now he searches for the sorceress as might a child, frightened of the dark and it occurs to her that the magic she feels in this house belongs to another. Thomas is shaking with cold or with fear, it is hard to tell the difference. In mortals both have a smell to them. In the passage he fumbles for a candle and then searches in vain for a tinderbox with which to light it. Not far from him is a scratching, talons on wood.

      The sorceress lights the candle for him and he nearly drops it. His hands are shaking so violently that he is forced to use both. As he goes towards his cellar the back door slams behind them and the candle is extinguished.

      ‘Did you do that?’ he asks.

      She did not.

      Try as she might she cannot relight the candle. Now she is equally alarmed for the very air is filled with menace. Does the creature have the strength to play with her?

      The laboratory door flaps, half off its hinges, and light spills from the hearth but there is no one to be seen. Thomas stares in at the chaos of this chamber, usually an ordered place that he keeps meticulously clean. It is in disarray; all his precious notebooks torn to shreds, the vials of chemicals smashed, his crucible overturned.

      ‘Where are you?’ he says wearily. ‘Show yourself, Randa.’

      In the silence the only answer is the breath of another – but where is she?

      His thoughts are whirling about his head, all wrapped in guilt that he hopes the sorceress does not understand but she does and she fears that whoever is hidden in the shadows can hear them as well as she.

      Anger at the meaningless destruction of all he holds dear causes him to spit out his curses.

      ‘You, the bringer of my ruination, are you my punishment for the sin of adultery? This, my life’s work, ripped asunder. Do you know what you have done? Where are you, you child of malice? Where is Master Butter?’ he shouts. ‘Where is Mary? Have you killed them as once you killed the mistress?’

      Instantly he regrets what he said. He tries and fails to suck the words back into himself. He picks up papers, bunches them in his hand. He is whimpering. ‘All my work, my books . . . they are irreplaceable. Monster! Yes, monster, a monster of my own making.’ His thoughts, now unstoppable, reveal in their brutal honesty the truth of his feelings and fuel his tongue. ‘I should have left you dead. I am disgusted that I had any part in the making of you. Half-human, half-animal – you have never shown any sign of intelligence, you cannot talk, nor do you comprehend what I say. My life has been ruined by you, ruined by the burden of a deformed imbecile who must be kept secret and restrained for as long as she lives – if only I can find chains strong enough to bind her. You have grown beyond my control.’ And now he is shouting, shouting, ‘What will become of me if you are discovered? What will become of you? Oh lord above . . .’

      And all the pity for himself, for Bess, collides into a single thought: what will become of Randa when she is fully grown? The idea that this beast, this thing he calls child, might have physical desires he can hardly bear to contemplate.

      ‘I should have left nature to take its course,’ he says into the darkness. ‘I should have let you die.’

      In the shadows the sorceress sees a human eye, green as an emerald. She is listening, just as the sorceress is, to every mean, mundane word and thought that this pathetic man has. Near weeping with exhaustion, defeated by all he sees, he recites his charm to calm her. To calm himself.

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