The Bastard, page 7
Except that it wasn’t the ground at all. It was a pile of corpses, and I was kneeling on the face of one of my fellow condemned prisoners.
“I told you already. You have been partially dead. Although I didn’t expect it to damage your brain quite so much.”
The old woman–Meghan, I reminded myself–reached out a hand to help support me. And then she muttered, “Should have known there would be a risk of that. Maybe I should just let him die for real and move on.”
At this, I shook my head, and then immediately regretted it. “No,” I said. “I’m good. Just… give me a moment.”
“Fine. But keep your rat dragon under control. Damn thing tried to snap at me a moment ago.”
For some reason, I found the thought of Sir George protecting me against this old woman hilarious. Lacking the strength to give it full voice, though, my laugh came out as a weak giggle.
There I was, kneeling on a pile of corpses in the rain. I’d been partially dead, whatever that meant, and this old woman was trying to help me. And there was Sir George doing his best guard dog impression, trying to keep her away.
“It’s okay, Sir George,” I managed. “She’s trying to help. I trust her.”
And, surprising as it may seem, I actually did trust her. If she was who I thought she could be, I owed her everything. I wouldn’t have had even the slightest chance of surviving the hanging if it weren’t for her and the medallion.
Eventually, with the old woman’s unsteady support, I made it to the cart. At the end of my strength, I collapsed onto it as if it were a copper bathtub, with my feet dangling over the end. “Now what?” I asked.
“Now, you go back to sleep, and I’ll get us to where we need to go.”
I lacked the strength to argue even if I’d wanted to. I’d reached the end of my endurance, and my consciousness soon faded again.
I woke inside a candlelit cottage. There was a fire burning in the hearth and a delicious smell of warm stew in the air.
I stretched painfully, recognizing that I lay on a proper bed, complete with fresh sheets.
“You’re awake then, are you?” the old woman said. “Try to sit up, if you can. The enchantments are doing their job. If we can keep them going long enough to convince your body that it is indeed still alive, then we have half a chance. To do that, we have to get it back to normal working order. Which means you have to eat.”
With a gargantuan effort, I did as she asked, sitting up and leaning against the dull, cottage wall. But my arms were too weak to even reach for the bowl she offered.
“Hmph,” she said. “Should have expected as much. Here, I’ll feed you.”
It had been a long, long time since anyone had fed me by hand. It was a slow, awkward process, made even worse because I seemed to have forgotten how to chew. But I managed a few mouthfuls, enjoyed the flavor, and started to feel a little better by the end.
Meghan seemed disappointed at my lack of appetite. “Maybe we’ll try some more later,” she said.
I nodded weakly, and for the first time, had a proper look around.
It wasn’t a large cottage. Just a couple of rooms by the look of it. With herbs drying in the rafters and walls of wattle and daub, the place had the feel of an underground cave. But it was warm and cozy, and there was only thing missing.
“Sir George?” I asked.
The old woman grunted. “Your pet rat dragon? You named him?”
I nodded again.
“He’s around here somewhere, don’t fret. I might even allow that he’s already dealt with a bit of a rat problem I might have had, despite the various enchantments I tried.”
It wasn’t the first time she had mentioned enchantments. I knew from experience that some in the city claimed such powers, and I had seen proof of it many times in the past. I studied Meghan as closely as I could in my weakened state, trying to look past the old woman visage to whomever it was beneath.
She certainly looked the part. Dressed in layers, her walking staff resting against the wall, and shelves half-filled with potions and powders, parchments and candles.
I looked at her closely. “Who are you,” I asked her again. “Really?”
15
“I’ve already told you my name,” the old woman said. “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
I shook my head but didn’t elaborate, leaving it to her to decide how to answer.
The old woman took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Some call me a witch,” she said. “Others, an enchantress. It matters little what name they give me, if the result is the same. There’s a power within me and a few others like me, that I do my best to control. With it, I am able to work some small magics in contrary to the natural order of things.”
“Small magics?” I asked. “You think bringing me back to life is small magic?”
The old woman snorted. “I told you. You were only partly dead. Bringing you back to life for real would have been impossible. But when you broke your amulet, it enclosed you in a bubble of magic designed to hold reality at bay, if only for a short time. You were in stasis, held just outside the realms of normality. So, when you were hanged, you were dead, but also still alive.”
She shrugged. “My efforts since then have been about drawing you back into this world more fully, but without having to deal with all that death nonsense.”
Much of what Meghan le Fay said was meaningless to me. But I thought I understood the gist.
“Even that doesn’t sound like a small magic to me,” I insisted, trying to smile.
“But it is. The magic is small. But that isn’t to say that the effect isn’t much grander. And I’ll admit, it’s a fiendishly difficult enchantment to enact.”
“Either way, thank you. I didn’t really want to die today.”
The old woman gave a surprisingly broad smile. “You are welcome,” she said.
“But that isn’t really what I meant,” I said. She looked at me again, and I drew a deep breath, trying not to think about how much effort it took to do so. “I meant, is this who you are?” I asked, feebly gesturing toward her. “Or are you the other woman I saw in your face. The younger one?”
The witch, enchantress, whatever she was, saw through me with ease. Her smile became knowing. “You want to know if I am a young, beautiful woman who pretends to be old, or an old woman who can become beautiful at will?”
I couldn’t help but grin in response. I’d been sprung. “Something like that. But also–are you the one who gave me my amulet?”
Meghan lowered her dark eyes away from mine. “As to the last, yes. That was me. I hoped it would protect you when I no longer could. Although, given how long it has been since I gave it to you, I was starting to wonder if you hadn’t lost it, or even if you’d been killed before managing to use it. And as for the first part of your question, don’t you know how rude it is to inquire as to the age of a lady?”
I knew she was teasing, but still wanted to know. “It was rude of me to ask, and I apologize. That said, which is it?”
I’d always had a way with the ladies. I knew just how to pitch things so they would laugh rather than take offence. And my instinct didn’t fail me now, either, as bruised and bloodied as I was.
Meghan le Fay did laugh, but she didn’t give in, either. “That’s my secret,” she said. “Maybe one day, I’ll let you find out. But until then, you’ll just have to guess.”
I accepted my failure with good grace.
“For now, it’s time for you to sleep,” she said. “Your body will take time to recover its full strength. You’ll have to learn how to use it again. After all, you’ve been partially dead for much of the day.”
16
Over the next several weeks, I did as Meghan le Fay suggested. I ate when she cooked, slept many more hours than normal, and gradually recovered my strength. During this time, I spoke to the enchantress often. At first, our conversations were largely practical.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked.
“A little stronger,” I replied.
“Hold your hands out straight, and keep them there as long as you can,” she said.
I did so, and despite the apparent simplicity of the task, I couldn’t do it for long without my entire arm beginning to shake. Yet it seemed I was making good progress. Each day, I could hold my hands out a bit longer than the day before.
“Good. You are improving,” she said. “Now, eat and rest.”
That seemed to be Meghan’s answer to everything. The first time I tried to stand up, I clung to the bed for all I was worth so I wouldn’t collapse onto the floor.
“Good,” the enchantress said. “Here, eat this. Then rest.”
Crossing the floor of the cottage was my next trick. But I had to rely on Meghan’s support to stumble back to the bed because I lacked the strength to get there under my own steam.
“Good,” she said. “It’s a start. Eat and get some rest.”
After nearly a fortnight, I could sit, stand, and go for short walks around the inside of the cottage without fear of falling. I could even dress myself after a fashion, although I lacked the fine motor skills necessary to run a comb through my hair.
“Good. We’re getting there. Now, eat this and get some rest.”
Finally, by midway through the third week, I felt strong enough to walk all the way to the outhouse and back. Up until then, I’d had to use the chamber pot, which, to my abject humiliation, Meghan then emptied for me. Upon my return from my first successful trip, Meghan had given a sharp nod of approval.
“Well done,” she said. “Now, there’s bread, cheese, and a cut of dried meat. Chew slowly, and when you are done, try to get some sleep.”
Only slightly less humiliating than the chamber pot was our sleeping arrangement. Meghan le Fay, enchantress or witch, depending on who you asked, had only the one bed. She could have asked me to sleep on the floor, or on the low couch she used when relaxing or mixing different tinctures and powders. Instead, she let me sleep in her bed and simply climbed in next to me each night when she slept.
It was far from the first time I’d shared a bed, but Meghan le Fay must have been more than eighty years old. It felt awkward at first, and I wondered again if this was her true form, or if that was the younger, more beautiful version of her. Or even if both were an illusion or enchantment of some kind, and her true form was something different altogether.
The first night I’d been conscious of her climbing in beside me, she’d sensed my uncertainty.
“I’m not going to eat you,” she said, offering me an old woman’s grin. “Although I might try a taste, when you’re up to it. You’re not a bad looking fellow, if you look past the bruises and such on your face.” Then she sighed. “But for now, I am tired. You’ve eaten. Try to get some rest.”
The awkwardness grew worse.
The enchantress wore nothing more than a simple shift to bed, and even though I tried not to look–really tried not to look–I couldn’t help but catch a glimpse or two of the forbidden flesh underneath.
By the end of the fourth week, I was starting to feel much like my former self, and it didn’t go unnoticed. Meghan le Fay awoke next to me in the morning and looked me up and down with a speculative gaze. Her lined face crinkled even more as she scrutinized me. Then, she touched the central bead on the ornate, dark necklace she never seemed to take off.
Suddenly, instead of lying next to an eighty-year-old woman, I was lying next to the beautiful young lady of my half-remembered dreams.
My heart skipped a beat. In my mind’s eye, she had always been gorgeous. But in the flesh, she was spectacular. Seen in the morning light that filtered through the shutters, Meghan’s hair was a curious mix of nearly black, with hints of deepest red as well. Her skin was as pale as milk, and her eyes, surrounded as they were by dark designs, seemed almost to glitter with power.
I had known plenty of women in my short life, and some of them had been truly stunning. But that morning, none of them could compare to Meghan le Fay. Not even Anwen, who for some reason still held a special place in my heart even though she had very nearly been the cause of my death.
But Meghan’s face wasn’t the only thing that had changed. I could sense her body through the thin fabric of her night shift. Gone were the wrinkles and the aging, gray flesh. In its place were soft curves, sweet mountains and valleys, firm and tight and tantalizing in every possible way.
Taken by surprise at young Meghan’s sudden appearance, my breath caught in my throat. At the same time, I was confused. Was this real? Or not?
And did it matter?
Even though her face had grown younger by perhaps sixty years, some things about Meghan le Fay remained the same, she still gave me the same wise, knowing smile.
She looked me up and down once again, her eyes lingering here and there, pausing for the longest near my waist.
I realized that my body had betrayed me, and I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud.
“I see you have regained much of your vigor,” Meghan said with a throaty little laugh.
I wondered if she intended to make use of that vigor and couldn’t have said one way or the other how I felt about it. Then she touched the beads at her neck once again, and I was looking once more at old Meghan.
My vigor quickly faded, and the enchantress breathed a disappointed sigh.
“It may still be a little early for that,” she said. “But you’re doing very well. You can help me make breakfast before you get some more rest.”
As I grew stronger and spent more time with the witch, our topics of conversation broadened. I learned that she earned her coin as a healer, mixing potions to remedy all sorts of ills, from arthritis and asthma to indigestion, consumption, gout, toothache, and hives.
As often as not, she did this without any magical enhancements, relying on an extensive knowledge of herbs and natural remedies.
But when it came to the memories I had of her and the questions about my own past, she grew more cautious with her answers.
“Ahh, yes. You remember it correctly,” she said sadly as she sat on her low couch mixing powders. “I took you from your mother, who was dying. There was nothing I could do for her at the time. She had a wasting illness that was beyond all my skills. I looked after you for as long as I could and gave you that medallion when I couldn’t.”
From this, I learned that even in her younger form, Meghan must have been older than she looked. Whether that meant she was actually in her eighties, I couldn’t know, but she had to have been at least in her late thirties, if I’d done my math right.
I followed up with questions about why I remembered a castle, and what happened that meant Meghan could no longer look after me. And, most important of all:
“Why did you give me the amulet? What was so special about me? Who am I to you?”
But these were the very questions Meghan le Fay chose not to answer.
“All in good time,” she would say. “For now, eat up and get some rest. You still have a way to go to recover your best strength.”
It was beyond frustrating. I felt like there were things she knew about me, where I came from, important things I needed to know, and she was keeping them just out of reach. It began to burn in me, to make me feel slightly restless whenever there was a lapse in conversation.
But I couldn’t feel ungrateful. The enchantress had literally saved my life.
As I regained my strength, though, I thought less of what Meghan knew of me and more of what I would do after I was fully recovered. Because another side of me began to burn with anger at Rolf’s betrayal, and shame that I was in this position at all. For a while, though, I didn’t mention this to Meghan, keeping the angry thoughts tucked away and letting them simmer.
Throughout my days and weeks of recovery, Sir George stuck firmly by my side. At first, Meghan thought of him as no more than a scaled, winged pest, and showed her frustration whenever he got under her feet.
But as the days passed, she grew to accept him, and even started to laugh at some of his antics.
At one point, a large moth made its way into the cottage. Sir George launched himself into the air and proceeded to fly in tight circles around the poor moth, spitting small puffs of smoke at the insect before catching it and tearing it to pieces.
Another time, I caught Meghan watching Sir George as he slept, curled up around a single copper coin on the floor, a real miniature dragon, right down to the wisps of smoke coming from his nostrils as he protected his hoard.
The old man in jail had known what he was talking about. Sir George proved his loyalty again and again. I never tried to stop him doing whatever he wanted, and for hours on end, he would disappear through the cottage door or make his way between the shutters.
The first time he did this, I wondered if I would ever see my green and gold miniature dragon again. But then, hours later, sometimes with his snout flecked with blood, he would return, sated and happy, and curl up again on my lap.
At times like that, I imagined that I could sense what he was feeling. Contentment. Joy. But it was more than likely my own imagination.
I was just happy he returned.
17
One unusually sunny day while I was sitting outside, Meghan came out of the cottage and put her hand on my face. I turned to look up into her dark eyes with the dark paint around them, and she studied me.
“It’s seems that your body has indeed been tricked into living, Mordie,” she said softly.
I snorted. “No thanks to Rolf, the executioner, and the King’s Justice.”
Meghan motioned for me to scoot over, and I did, allowing her to sit beside me on the small bench. “What are you planning to do when you have regained your strength?” she asked.
My mood darkened. From the moment I found myself still breathing, I’d thought long and hard about that very idea. At first, I’d had no true answer for her. Just a nebulous sense of anger and rage, and a desire to set things right.
