Winterwood, page 36
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“Intending to stay there all night?”
He jumped, startled. “I tried the hammock. It’s a little strange. Surrounded by so many people.” He shrugged. “I dare say I’ll get used to it, if I have to.” There was a long pause. “Do I have to? Am I your prisoner, now?”
David had asked me almost the same question. I squatted down beside him.
“Prisoner? Philip, you’re my brother. We might not always have been kind to each other as children, but we’re family.”
“Sumners.”
“Yes. How much do you know?”
“I know we represent the greatest threat to this nation that it has ever faced.”
“You make it sound dramatic.”
“It is. Can you imagine what it would do to this land if old magic was released into it again? If the Fae regained power?”
I shuddered, and not just with the cold.
“The Fae already have power, but they’ve not used it outside of their own realm in centuries. Why would you think they would want to use it now?” I found myself arguing counter to the fears I already harbored. “Our ancestor, Martyn the Summoner, took power not from the Fae, but from the rowankind. It’s to them the power must be returned, otherwise they’ll never be free.”
And what then? I asked myself.
“Is that what they told you?” Philip’s face twisted in a wry smile. “Walsingham tells it differently, and I’m inclined to believe him. He’s no reason to lie, no family or wife or wide circle of friends to impress. The Fae made the rowankind for their own use. They made them from dryads, tree spirits, willing or not, mated with them, and begot a whole new race. The power of the rowankind came from the Fae, and to the Fae it will return. Don’t you see, Ross? The Fae only want to free the rowankind from human bondage so they can enslave them again.”
“You’re wrong.” But this echoed my own fears, and part of me believed him.
He put a hand on my arm. “You say we haven’t always been kind to each other, Ross, and that’s true. More especially there were times when I was mean to you, and I’m sorry for it. I was a child, then. I’m a man grown now, and I would set things right between us.”
Philip’s eyes held an earnestness I had not expected. His regret tugged at my heartstrings. I found myself truly wanting to believe that this was Philip written anew, another brother I could love. “I’m listening.”
I settled down to sit on the cold deck and crossed my legs, putting up a small witchlight so I could see his face, pinched and pale.
“Walsingham—yes, he was my captor, but he taught me a lot. He was not unkind. He was a dedicated man, to be sure. You might even call him driven, but he was true in his purpose.”
“And that purpose was to kill me.”
“I know this is hard to believe, but he held no malice against you, not personally, I mean. It was only what you stood for that put you on opposite sides. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. I believe he felt sorry for me. He told me many times over that I was deluded. Explained carefully what had happened all those years ago at the time of the Armada, even showed me the records left by all the Walsinghams. He’s not . . . he wasn’t a monster. All his magic was used in the service of the Crown, not for himself.”
“You admired the man.”
“I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
I thought about Aunt Rosie’s injuries and wondered where admiration stopped and cooperation started, but before I could ask the question I didn’t want to hear the answer to, he continued.
“He took me to see the king, late one night, in his private apartments at St. James. We were admitted privately. They say King George is mad, but if that’s so he showed no sign of it that night. He’s a very great man. He has a keen understanding of magic. The only oddity was that he called me Mr. Summoner, but he asked me if I knew what might happen to Britain if the realm lost the labor and the goodwill of the rowankind, or what the repercussions might be if that race were freed and magic restored.”
I felt myself going a little light-headed. These were fears I’d had myself.
“And then the king asked if I would swear allegiance to him. To the king, direct. Of course I said yes, and promptly dropped to my knees and did so. He thanked me for my vow and shook my hand.” Philip raised his right hand and looked at it. “So I ask you to consider, Ross, your duty to the realm.”
I swallowed hard. “I will consider it, Philip. Believe me, I have been considering it already, but right now I need to know whether Walsingham’s hellhounds carried any sort of poison in their claws. Corwen is sick and it’s more than just the wounds.”
He shook his head and examined his own fingernails. “I don’t know. Walsingham used spell-craft, but I wasn’t privy to the workings.”
I disliked the way he avoided my eye when he said that, after what had seemed like refreshing honesty when he’d spoken about the king.
Corwen slept restlessly while I dozed in my threadbare old armchair. As dawn crept sluggishly through the thick glass of my window, I woke and rose to see if I could get him to take some water. As soon as I put my hand on his forehead I knew I’d slept too long. He burned with fever, and when I drew back the sheet his claw marks almost glowed with heat. The inflammation had spread outwards from the edges of the wound.
“Corwen!” I tried to wake him, but though I think he heard me he didn’t react coherently. “Corwen, you’ve got to change. Change to wolf and then back again.”
Holding a cup to his lips only soaked both of us as he shook his head violently. I doubt he swallowed any of the bitter liquid containing willow bark and feverfew. I dripped water laced with brandy and sweet cordial between his lips, anything to get liquid inside him.
I flung open the window as far as it would go to reduce the temperature in the cabin and left wet cloths on his forehead and around his wrists at pulse points. Pulling back the sheets I sponged him down—face, arms, chest, belly, legs—too worried to dwell on his nakedness.
“Corwen, change.” I rolled him on to his side, facing me, and dropped a light kiss onto his brow. He managed to draw his knees up to his belly. “Yes, that’s it.” I stroked his arm from shoulder to fingertip. “Change! Change! Change!”
I repeated it, still stroking, until it became a chant and gradually his breathing deepened and silver-gray fur appeared beneath my hand, like down at first, but then thicker, stronger.
“Yes, that’s it. Change. Heal yourself.”
It happened so slowly that I feared he might stick halfway between man and wolf, but eventually the transition was complete. He wouldn’t have the strength to return to human straightaway.
He blinked at me, eyes glazed, and I sponged him down again, soaking his fur. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and he panted, but there was no snarl this time.
“Rest a while, then we’ll try again. I love you, Corwen.” I kissed the top of his furred head, between his ears. “Don’t give up on me.”
He managed to thump his tail twice on the bed, and I left him to sleep.
I took breakfast on deck: yesterday’s bread and a milky oat porridge, sweetened with honey and served up with crisp apples, a luxury for sailors who spent long months at sea out of sight of cows and orchards.
Philip poked at his bowl listlessly.
I sat down beside him and started to spoon mine. “You’d be grateful for that if you were used to a seagoing diet.”
“I could never be a sailor.”
“You once said you wanted to be a pirate.”
“Did I? Childish fancies.”
I smiled.
“And look at you,” he said. “You practically are a pirate. What happened to you, Ross?”
“Mother happened. Magic happened. Will happened.”
“Where is Will? Who’s this Corwen?”
“Will died.”
“But Tremayne’s reputation . . .”
“That’s me. Captain Ross Tremayne.”
“So why come inland and get mixed up with magic? Don’t you like life here on the ocean?”
Another question David had asked, but with the opposite intent.
“I didn’t intend to get mixed up in anything. Mother summoned me. She thought you were dead and knew she was dying, so she passed the box on. Maybe it was one last gesture to the life she might have had if it hadn’t been for the Walsingham family.”
“Walsingham family?”
“It was an older Walsingham who killed our grandparents, and was, in turn, killed by them. I assume your Walsingham was out for revenge. I hope he has no son to follow him.”
“There is no Walsingham family.”
“What?”
“Walsingham’s not a name, it’s a title. He’s a government man who reports to Sir George Shee, the king’s spymaster. Walsingham and his agents deal with magic. And they dabble in magic themselves.”
I shuddered at his use of the word. Those creatures had been made by more than dabbling.
“They’re not part of the Mysterium?” I asked.
“You’d think they should be, wouldn’t you, but no. The Mysterium deals with small magic, the licensing of hedge-witches, many of them charlatans. Walsingham’s men are so secret that their organization doesn’t even have a name. It was set up over two hundred years ago, when Queen Bess realized what Martyn the Summoner and his like could do if they were against her rather than with her. Grateful as she was for the defeat of the Armada, she believed Martyn to be responsible for the failure of her expedition to Spain. When he disappeared so suddenly, Sir Francis Walsingham, her spymaster, was sent to hunt him down, but Martyn proved elusive, and by that time Walsingham was old. When Walsingham died, a man called Nicholas Fellows took his place and his name. He believed—they all believe—that giving your real name to a witch is dangerous. There’s always a Walsingham, but they’re never related, and their real name is never Walsingham. When one falls, another takes his place. The organization has the support of the Crown, financially and in every other way. In turn Walsingham reports back, though never to Parliament, only to the spymaster and His Majesty.”
“Government agents, just for us.” I blinked twice. “It seems excessive.”
“Not if we can truly do what Walsingham believes we can.”
“The Fae believe we can, too,” I said.
Philip was silent.
“Mother never told you anything about it, did she?” I asked. “I thought she might have, you being her favorite.”
He shook his head. “I realized when I was still at school that I had magic, but I’d already seen her anger when she saw your magic manifest for the first time.”
“She was scared.” I didn’t tell him what Larien had told me. Even now I couldn’t think of it without trembling.
“Scared?” He gave me a look of frank astonishment. “Of course she was scared. Were you so wrapped up in your own head that you didn’t see it at the time? Scared for you and for the whole family.”
“I never . . .”
“That’s exactly right, Ross, you never thought of anyone but yourself. It was all about you.”
I felt my jaw drop. Was he right? I’d been young and had possibly handled the whole thing badly. I thought Mother hated me for my witchcraft. If I’d known about her and about the family maybe I’d have seen how terrified she was that my magic would lead Walsingham to her—to all of us. Walsingham had destroyed the Sumners, had caused her to lose Rosie, the only family member she had left. Yes, she’d been harsh with me. Had I deserved it? Couldn’t she just have told me? Was it her silence that led to our estrangement, or my intransigence?
Philip continued. “When I saw you could do magic, I wanted that for myself. Oh, how I wanted it. I tried and tried to stir up the wind. But that wasn’t to be my power. My magic didn’t come to me until I was away at school. By that time, I was prepared. I decided I wouldn’t give her the opportunity to do to me what she’d done to you. I never told her, of course. Even when I registered with the Mysterium, I never brought my magic home.”
“What’s your ready-magic?”
“Divination. I see spirits, ghosts, whatever you want to call them. It’s easier to hide. Not as obvious as creating a whirlwind in the hallway. Mine’s a pretty useless talent, really, except for gleaning money from the pockets of the recently bereaved. There’s quite a decent living to be made once word gets around, mediating in conversations between the living and the departed.”
“And Walsingham found you?”
He shrugged. “I got careless. And in my own defense, I was ignorant of all that I know now. He taught me a lot. I’d never considered that magic could truly be evil, but I began to see, under his tutelage, that in the wrong hands magic could destroy the realm.”
“And did you never doubt him? Wonder if he was trying to indoctrinate you? You know I’m a loyal subject of the Crown. Why should Walsingham believe me a threat?”
“I was wary of him, of course. He had the poppet, and that ensured my compliance, but I never doubted that he believed absolutely in everything he said. He wanted the box. He said it was dangerous. I didn’t even know what he was talking about at first. Do you have it, Ross?”
“Yes.” I took it out of my pocket and unwrapped it, knowing Walsingham was gone.
“Ah.” He hissed out a breath, reached for it and then drew his hand back. “May I?”
I nodded.
He turned it this way and that, looking at it from all angles and running his fingers over the winterwood to feel for any openings. “Such a small thing. How does it work?”
“I don’t know. The Fae believe it will take all of our mother’s children together to open it.”
He tossed it back to me quickly. “Then we could open it now?”
“Not without David.” I wrapped it again.
He gave me a puzzled look. “The scrawny houseboy with the big eyes?”
“Our half-brother,” I said. “David is our mother’s son, Larien’s his father. Remember that time Mother went traveling? Well, she had a good reason to vacate Plymouth for half a year.”
“He was there one time when I came home for the summer. I never knew where he came from, never cared enough to ask to be honest. Mixed blood?” His mouth turned down. “How could she? With a bond servant?” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I have a half-rowankind brother. That’s unnatural.”
I thought of David as I’d last seen him in all his Fae glory.
“Even if that were true, it would have been no one’s business but Mother’s, but as it turns out there was more. David’s not half-rowankind, he’s all Fae. Larien is Fae. You’d better hear all the rest.”
I told him the bare bones of what had happened to me since that last visit to my mother. I watched his face carefully as I spoke, wondering if he’d give anything away by his expression, but he remained impassive until I spoke of Aunt Rosie’s injuries.
“Walsingham made me,” he said. “When it was obvious she couldn’t tell us anything he told me to kill her and left me to do it. It was like looking at Mother, Ross. A rounder, softer, kinder version of Mother. I couldn’t do what he wanted me to do, but I told him I had. Is she . . . Does she live?”
“She does.”
I so wanted to believe that he wasn’t responsible for her torture that I didn’t press him further. I went on with my story.
He listened without interrupting and then said, “The Fae have only their own interests at heart, Ross. I don’t want anything to do with this. Put me ashore, please. Let me take the box and disappear quietly.”
I shook my head. “The box always comes back to me. I tried to throw it into the ocean and it washed up on an island beach halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, the Fae will always be able to find you. Dantin left me in no doubt that they’d be willing to kill you so that David and I could open the box alone. Better to face them together.” I put my hand out and touched his arm. “I’ve only just found you again, Philip. I don’t want to lose you. There’s been too much estrangement in this family. If you’d seen the devastation at the Sumner house, you might have more sympathy. Even now the ground is barren. Our grandparents, our great aunt, all of them killed except for the girls.” I felt tears welling up. “Can’t we forget our childhood differences and make a new beginning? I still don’t know what to do for the best. If we all decide not to open the box, there’s not much they can do about it.”
“I guess David wants to open it.”
I nodded. “More than anyone. He’s lived as a rowankind. He knows what it’s like.”
“And I don’t want to open it. So that leaves you with the final decision. Think on it, Ross. You’re not stupid. I know you can make the right choice.”
I headed back to check on Corwen. I had hoped that sharing the information with Philip would give me some insight into what should be done, but I was no nearer to knowing whether it was right to free the rowankind and risk the consequences for humanity or whether I should refuse.
Corwen was no better. He might even be worse.
I knelt by the bunk and whispered, “Change, now. Come back to me.”
He opened his eyes, cool gray, but there wasn’t much behind them.
“Come on, Corwen. Change and heal.” I ran my fingers through his ruff. “You can do it.”
As before, the change was a long time coming, and even then it was slow. The claw marks were even more livid against pale skin. I went to the door and shouted for Lazy Billy to bring more boiled water—hot this time—and the kaolin powder. I mixed the powder to a muddy paste and smeared it on linen strips then pressed it hot on to Corwen’s claw marks in sections, building up a poultice that I hoped would draw out the infection. He moaned slightly and then settled.
“How does that feel?”
