Winterwood, page 7
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“There was an incident. The magic I thought I’d kept hidden manifested in such an obvious way. Luckily it happened at home and not in public, but it changed everything in an instant. I realize why, now. If she was hiding her own magic.”
“What did she do?”
“She tried to beat it out of me and pray it out of me. And when that didn’t work she made me promise to keep it hidden. That was good advice in retrospect.”
“And am I like you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Show me your magic.”
“I can’t do anything.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never tried to use it.”
At length he said, “I’ve made fire. Twice.”
“That’s natural magic. How did you know you could do it?”
“I felt it.”
“And what happened?”
“The first time I nearly burnt the house down.”
“And the second time?”
“I did burn the house down.”
Christ on a pig! Was I planning to take a firestarter on to a wooden ship? My skin went clammy at the thought. I tried to keep my voice even.
I stood up and moved away from the overhanging branches of the oak tree. “All right. Show me a small flame.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He held out his right hand, palm upward and looked at it.
Nothing happened.
“Well?” I asked.
“I . . . I might hurt you.”
I moved over and stood right behind him, figuring it was the safest place to be. With my hands on his shoulders I said, “Clear your mind and think about where your magic comes from and what brings it closer to the surface.”
“No spell words, then?”
“It’s thoughts that count, or at least it always has been for me. Did you need words before?”
“Not really, I thought hard about fire, and—”
A sharp blast spun us both around. The world canted over crazily, and I hit the grass hard. A fireball the size of a house flared overhead and vanished. I felt the searing heat for a split second and heard an intense roar and crackle that died away in an instant, leaving only a smell like burning metal, charcoal, and blood.
My cheeks stung as if I’d been out in the sun all day. Green spots danced in front of my eyes. David lay sprawled across my legs on his back. The light was somehow different. I rolled David to one side and sat up cautiously.
The oak tree had gone.
Completely.
Where it had been there was now only a circle of scorched earth and a mound of fine, gray ash already beginning to blow away on the westerly breeze.
“God’s ballocks!” I took a deep breath. “As a demonstration that was . . . very effective, but less than ideal.” I got unsteadily to my feet and held out my hand to David. “Come on.”
He sat there, eyes wide open and blowing out his cheeks.
“David!” I dusted down the backside of my breeches and held out my hand again. “You’ve got to give it another try. There’s no way I’m taking you on board the Heart unless you can control this.”
“What? Again? After that?”
“You’ve got to get rid of some of that excess power and learn to control what’s left, otherwise I walk away from you right now. I learned to tame mine, and so must you.” I could hear my voice shaking. I hoped David couldn’t.
Reluctantly he reached out, and I hauled him to his feet. His hand trembled.
“I can’t teach you what to do,” I said. “Magic isn’t a precise science.”
“You said Philip dabbled in magic,” David said. “Did you mean dabbled, or is he good at it?”
“I didn’t have time to ask for details.”
“Did you tell him about me?”
“I didn’t tell him anything. What he doesn’t know he can’t tell under duress.” I tried to push away the idea of Philip’s poppet being tortured by Walsingham. My brother might die tomorrow and I would never know.
“I expected that real magic would be like ‘eye of toad and blood of bat,’” David said.
He looked so glum I couldn’t help but laugh. “In fairy tales.”
“What if the Lady was right about dark magic? What if I can’t control it? What if I hurt somebody?”
Sometimes David seemed very young, and at other times when I looked at him there was an old soul looking out from behind his eyes.
“You won’t. I won’t let you.” If all else failed I had my blade at my hip, and, brother or not, I would use it, presuming I wasn’t a little pile of gray ash. “First of all, let’s bleed off that energy.” I walked him to the edge of the cliff and pointed him to the empty air. “All right, do that again.”
“Stand behind me,” he said. “No, right behind me. Don’t let me get turned around.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. He took several deep breaths and pointed out to sea. I thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to succeed, but suddenly a fireball even bigger than the first erupted from his fingertips. This time I was ready for it and held him steady so we neither spun nor fell.
“Again,” I said.
He took three quick breaths and shot another gout of flame out from the cliff edge. This time I fancied it wasn’t so huge.
“Again.”
The next flame he produced was much smaller, but I still had him make another three fireballs before I was satisfied that he’d drained his energy to a manageable level.
“Try a small flame now.”
He pointed his hand out toward the cliff edge, but nothing happened.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s completely gone.”
“Yes, you can. Think about how you called it before. Do the same again, but more gently. Put a limit on the size of the flame you want to produce. Visualize it, soft like a candle instead of roaring like a bonfire. How did you do it before?”
“I thought of fire and what fire feels like: the heat and the flames and the sound.”
“You need to focus on something small. Like when I’m making a witchlight. I have to imagine how much light I need and focus on what I’m trying to create.” I made another softly glowing light ball and held it on the tip of my index finger for a few moments before I let it fade. “Try again and this time don’t think about fire, think about a single flame.”
“All right, but stand behind me again.”
I stood behind him with both hands on his shoulders. “Don’t try too hard. It shouldn’t take an enormous effort. Just a little willpower.”
He held out his arm and pointed his finger upward. I could feel the tension in him as he concentrated . . . and concentrated.
Nothing.
His shoulders slumped. “I’ll never get the hang of this.”
“You will. Try again.”
This time there was a shimmer, and a tiny flame burned steadily from the end of his finger.
“Well done.” I called up a stiff breeze to blow away the last of the oak ash. “Come on, it’s probably well past breakfast time. Let’s go back down to the village and find out if anyone knows what’s happened to the old tree.” I raised one eyebrow. “It looks like it got struck by a bolt of lightning.”
In the afternoon David and I walked along the cliff path to the south of the village, talking about anything and everything, touching on his life and mine. He was eager to know more details of how and when my magic emerged. Some of the memories were painful, almost too painful for me to deal with. I’d locked them away a long time ago and didn’t want to bring them out again now, but maybe he needed to know that it wasn’t easy for me either.
“I was fourteen. It all started with an argument. You never knew my father. He was away such a lot I hardly knew him myself, but I loved him blindly. I was his little sweeting when he was at home, and I missed him so terribly when he was at sea. He and our mother were a cold couple. Maybe living apart so much meant they didn’t really know each other anymore. My father was a visitor in his own house, welcomed like a hero when he returned from a voyage, but within a day or two the arguments started. Mother would save up grievances and trot them out. I never heard Father raise his voice to any servant, and he was always gentle with me and Philip, but behind closed doors he and Mother would rage at each other. This particular time, he’d lost a cargo of rum brought from the Americas. His ship had run onto a sandbar off the Lizard in a storm. He got every single sailor safe ashore, but by morning the ship was in two halves and the cargo was gone. Lloyds of London paid out insurance for the ship, but on a technicality, not for the cargo. Mother berated him constantly for his fecklessness, but he only said he’d rather lose a ship than her crew.”
I’m fourteen again and watching it all unfold. My skin goes clammy and my heart seems to pound every time the two of them argue. She digs at him at every opportunity. He puts up with just so much before he finally snaps back at her and slams the drawing room door, taking himself off to his study and pouring a large glass of brandy, not his first. She leaves him alone for a couple of hours then finds a reason to go in and it all starts again.
I sit halfway up the staircase, listening, my face pressed between the turned baluster rails. There’s nothing new, the same arguments over and over.
Philip hurtles out of the kitchen with a huge lump of fruitcake in his fingers, laughing and stuffing it into his mouth, trailing crumbs along the hallway. Evy shrieks after him and he calls her a name I’m not supposed to know, but I’ve been down to the harbor with Father and sailors don’t mind their language for anybody. I know Philip’s bad behavior is entirely down to Mother’s overindulgence. Someone should say no to that boy, but every time I try she overrules me, and Father is so rarely home to see the way of it.
I hear voices raised still further. I’ve always had good hearing, but even if I were deaf I’d hear Mother’s voice scream, “Privateering? That’s not for a gentleman.”
Father drops his voice and I can hear how tired he is. “We’re close to the edge. With only three ships now, and all the trouble with France, I can hardly keep us afloat. There’s prize money to be had.”
“Our reputation will be ruined!” My mother’s voice rises to a shriek again. “I’ll not be sneered at. Think of your children. How will I ever find a suitable match for Rossalinde if her father’s little better than a pirate?”
“I’m going to be a pirate when I grow up.” Philip comes down and crouches on the stair above me. He’s big for his age, having had a recent growth spurt.
“Father’s not a pirate, he’s going to be a privateer. It’s different. Privateers are gentlemen. Pirates are scum.”
“It’s attacking ships for the prize money, and taking their treasure, and cutting the throats of the crew, or maybe casting them adrift in an open boat without oars or compass. How’s that different from being a pirate?”
“A privateer has letters of marque from the king and he only attacks the king’s enemies. In this case France and Spain. It’s respectable, whatever Mother says.”
“Is there fighting and killing?”
“Some.”
“I heard how pirates tie their prisoners to the mast and make a little slit in their belly here.” He points to his own belly. “And they hook out a man’s guts.” He does the actions in graphic detail. “All rubbery and shiny like a string of wet sausages. Next they tie a cannonball to the end and roll it along the deck so that his guts unravel right out of his belly. Did you know there’s more than twenty feet of guts in a man?”
“No I didn’t,” I say, looking away.
“When his guts are all unraveled one of ’em will kick the cannonball clean over the side. I wonder how long a man can live with the guts ripped out of his belly.”
I turn my head back and see he’s grinning. Horrible child. He’s made all that up to disgust me.
Mother’s voice is raised again. She’s almost incoherent with rage. The study door opens and Father storms out.
“Don’t you dare walk out on me, Teague Goodliffe,” she screams.
“Madam, this conversation is over. I have made my decision.” Father’s voice is icily polite. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. She doesn’t even realize. Mother’s shrieking is almost normal, but Father’s cold anger terrifies me. I feel myself trembling and tingling inside, my heart is fluttering like a bird.
“Don’t!” I want to shout it, but it comes out close to a whine.
Father looks up at the sound of my voice. From out of the study door a vase comes flying. It crashes at Father’s feet. She’s actually thrown something at him.
“Mother, don’t!” I’m yelling too, now. I pick up my skirts, cursing them, and run down the curving staircase. Father takes two steps toward me and is felled by another object flying out of the study, an oil lamp this time. Father and the lamp crash to the ground. The spilt oil ignites upon him, insidiously small flames across the thick woolen cloth of his jacket. I don’t know what to do. I need something to smother the flames with. I feel the fear fizzing through me, as if I’m in the middle of a whirlwind.
I’m moving the air, swirling it around the hall, sucking it away from the flames so they’re dying. I shake my father’s shoulder and I don’t stop until he shudders and comes around, dislodging me as he turns over. He looks pained and groggy; blood trickles from a scalp wound.
Suddenly it goes quiet.
Mother’s standing by the study door, an expression of horror on her face. I assume it’s horror at what she did, but she’s looking at me. I see her mouth move, and the word she doesn’t say out loud is: witch.
Up above on the stairs I hear a chuckle. It’s Philip.
“And was your father all right?” David asked.
“Eventually. He called for Larien to harness the carriage, went down to the quay and spent the night on the Heart.”
“And what about you? Your father didn’t take you with him?”
“He hadn’t seen what I’d done. I’m not sure if he even realized his coat had been on fire. Not right then, anyway. He was still confused from the bash on the head. Mother went into a swoon as though she was the one who’d been injured. I was left to puzzle it out for myself.”
“No one helped you?”
“Ruth. Later that night she came up to my room. She didn’t seem to mind about the magic, just said there were things in the world that we’d never be able to understand, so we just had to accept them as part of God’s will. Ruth was always like a mother to me. I guess I took her love for granted, but it wasn’t her love I craved. I cried myself to sleep in Ruth’s arms because I knew Mother would never love me now.”
7
Heart of Oak
THAT EVENING THE TAVERN FILLED with locals, including Walter with the Widow Heath, and Hookey with his Maria, now dressed in a respectable skirt and a low-cut blouse. With her hair hanging loose rather than jammed under a canvas cap, her face looked tanned and handsome rather than hard and weather-beaten.
“Is it true what they say about a sailor having a girl in every port?” David sounded hopeful.
“If it is it’s because the girls have a sailor on every ship.” I laughed as he worked out the implications.
As the ale flowed and the air in the room thickened, one of the villagers brought out a roughhewn fiddle and started scraping a tune. Within minutes tables had been pushed back and a space cleared for dancing, with the men vying with the women for fancy stepping. Hookey had enough ale inside him to volunteer a hornpipe, and not too much ale that he couldn’t manage it quite creditably.
The night dragged on past midnight and though some of the fishermen who were sailing on the morning tide took themselves home to sleep, a few stalwarts hung on for the pleasure of good company. After my early start that morning I was tired, so I made my excuses and went to my room, leaving David to fend for himself. If he got tired, no one would mind him curling up and sleeping in a corner.
The following morning I came down early to find one of last night’s revelers lying straight and stiff on a settle, arms folded across his chest and snoring fit to waken the dead. David was sitting cross-legged, straight-backed, almost in the hearth, staring into the glowing embers of the fire.
“David?”
“Ross, quick, put another log on, I can’t hold it for much longer.”
I did as he asked and the flames began to lick up around the wood. I heard him breathe out and saw his body relax. “What did you do?”
“I needed to understand fire, so I watched it all night. When it started to go out I took it and held it and kept it burning, even though there was nothing left to burn. By the time you came down it was my fire in the hearth.” He smiled sheepishly at me. “And now I’d like to sleep.”
His eyes were already closing. I walked him up the stairs as if he was in a daze, and rolled him into the bed I’d so recently vacated. He’d kept the fire alight and not burned the inn around our ears. Well, it was a start.
I’d called the Heart as soon as we’d set sail from Bideford, and on the fourth day a sail appeared around the headland and a cry went up. Sailing sweetly into view, as pretty as a picture, came the Heart of Oak, and I flushed with pride. She’s beautiful: a two-masted topsail schooner with a deck length of only ninety-three feet and a bow that cuts the waves like a hot knife through butter.
“Oh.” I heard David catch his breath beside me.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” I couldn’t help it, the pride always showed in my voice.
“I expected her to be bigger, and armed to the teeth with cannon. She’s tiny.”
“She’s fast and maneuverable, and she can beat to weather better than any vessel afloat.”
“In the stories she sounds so fearsome.”
I heard Hookey come up beside us and choke back a laugh. “Fearsome is as fearsome does, Davy boy. There’s many a Frenchie skipper who’s wet hisself when he’s seen her on the horizon, for though she only carries eight guns it’s the speed of her closing and the mettle of her crew that frights ’em the most. She can make a good four knots faster than the best ship in the Frenchie fleet, which is a good thing, all considered.”
