My father remained frozen for a long, long moment as the sound of the key turning in the lock echoed to nothing. Then he strode down the last few steps and in a burst of savage, furious energy, he tore down each of the wall hangings in turn, flinging them onto that wooden altar. He added those old bones and finally flung the wall torches one after another onto the pile, which flared up into a violent blaze.
He stood by the pile, too close, for so long that I was ready to run down and pull him away. But he finally stepped back from it and flung himself down at the base of the stairs, his face buried against his arms. His shoulders shook, and I realized that he was weeping as I’d never seen a grown man weep.
I crouched there for a long time while he sobbed, my mind in utter turmoil and my stomach sick with what I had just seen and learned. How could he explain it? How? But I would listen to him, I knew that. I would listen to what he had to say.
Finally the blaze sunk down to a red glow and my father’s tears ceased. He pushed himself up to a sitting position on the lowest step and turned his face towards me. There was a painful dignity in his refusal to wipe the tears away, and his face was composed, even while drawn with pain and grief. And shame.
“I know you’re there, child,” he said quietly, his voice tired and a little hoarse. “Come out.”
Unsurprised, I stood up and went down the steps, taking with me the lantern he must have abandoned there upon entering. I stopped and sat on a step a couple up from him, beginning to shake violently with cold and relief. He slipped off his chamber gown, which he had clearly not even stopped to tie, and held it out to me wordlessly. Pulling the gown around me gratefully, I noted that as I had feared, unnecessarily as it turned out, he was unarmed.
He wrapped his arms around his chest and looked at me in silence. I could tell he didn’t quite know what to say and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked very vulnerable. Raven coiled on my shoulder, and I stroked her in rather absent-minded gratitude. He might know them, but he could not be one of them. He couldn’t.
Finally, I said “Well?”
He drew in a long breath, as if he had been forgetting to breathe. “Will you hear me then? You who would never sell your soul for my gold?”
“I will hear you,” I returned just as softly.
“Very well,” he said quietly. “Then I will have to tell you everything.”
It hit me then, in a flash of dawning understanding. “This is about my mother, isn’t it?”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh yes. This is all about your mother.” He remained silent for a while, as if collecting his thoughts.
“After I was married... No, that’s no good, I shall have to go much further back to start this tale. My great, great grandfather lived on the family estate at Elfindale, which seems to be a place aptly named, for he married an elfin woman. Elfin female, I should probably say. It was true love, apparently, and neither regretted it, for they lived happily until finally life intervened with its usual lack of pity, and they were killed in a carriage accident.
“Leaving, though, my great grandfather to carry on our line. And he, of course, was half elfin himself.” He paused for a moment, looking at me thoughtfully. “Have you ever...felt things? Things that no one else seems to feel?”
I nodded eagerly. “Yes, I always have. And you do too, don’t you?”
The Duke nodded, a very faint smile flickering across his drawn face. “Alas, the acorns. I was careless. Yes, child, I feel these things too. My father did not, although his father did, but he taught me that I should never speak of it or let it be observed, by anyone. Although most scholars and clerics accept that creatures such as the Elfin are of nature, not of the devil, there are some who are less understanding.
“That, child, is the old slander I told you of. Our family’s elfin blood raised a lot of eyebrows at the time, for all they never admitted publicly that she was elfin; enough eyebrows that it has never quite been forgotten.
“This may not seem relevant, but it is. As well as this extra sense of ours, I was at one time visited by another elfin skill. I believe it was the sheer degree, the sheer power of my love for your mother that woke it, but I do not know so. We had been married for some years, and no child forthcoming, not that I minded, for your mother was young, and I am not a fool who will assume that a young woman who takes more than two years to conceive is barren. Far from it. I was happy to be patient.
“But the,” he broke off to laugh bitterly, “the gift, as they call it, of Foresight came to me. It began in dreams, but it got stronger, until I could see it all around her whenever I looked at her. That through some untimely accident or event, your mother was going to die. It drove me to distraction.
“I came to London—we lived at Elfindale, your mother and I,” he added, “did you know that? She liked the country. But I came to London to search for a cure to this doom. It seemed to me that if I could Foresee it, surely I could also prevent it.” He was silent again for a while. “It is possible to love too much, did you know that?” he asked at last.
“I suppose you can do anything too much,” I replied collectedly, though the talk of dreams sent a cold prickle down my spine, “although loving certainly isn’t what comes to mind as an evil.”
Alban sighed and hung his head. “It can work as much ill as any evil. The only hope I could find for your mother was sorcery.” He glanced at me. “That does not seem to surprise you.”
I snorted. “Strangely, it doesn’t.” I threw a sharp look in the direction of the smoldering heap.
“No, I suppose not,” went on the Duke, heavily. “I was half mad with love of your mother and fear of losing her. I say this to explain, not to excuse, for though I would not have been driven to it otherwise, there is no possible excuse. I learned from the sorcerers I finally managed to contact that it was indeed possible to avert such a doom; that there was a sorcery that could do this.
“Once I decided to take such a course, and in my madness the decision was quickly made, I followed their instructions. I prepared this horrible place for them, let them consecrate it with their animal sacrifices. It was an ice house, before, you know, one of the first in London. And when all was ready, I performed the sorcery. Which I suppose I must explain to you.
“The initial ritual cast the sorcery, which would prevent any accident befalling your mother for nine years and, if the sorcery was completed within those nine years, for the natural span of her life. If it was not completed by the end of the nine years, then she would die.
“But as one never gets anything from the evil one without paying at least double for it, there was to be a security as well, so that even if the sorcery was not completed in time and your mother died, the evil one was to get a price of sorts, this price being the security. Five years were allowed after the time of your mother’s death, for the sorcery’s completion, before this security would also be taken.”
He hesitated, and I knew he was coming to the crux of it, not that I expected it to be much of a surprise after what had just happened. “I pledged myself for the security,” he said quietly, “and I pledged a child of my blood as the payment that would complete the sorcery. However, your mother joined me suddenly in London, having grown weary of my absence. She found out enough that I had to confess all to her.”
His face twisted in pain. “She left; she would not stay another moment. I think perhaps I now know why she was in such a hurry,” he said, looking at me. “She did not betray me to the authorities, but that was all the mercy she had for me. And that, really, was no mercy at all. For when I understood that I had truly lost her it was only then that I really realized fully what I had done. The two combined...
“I was hard put to keep from doing myself harm,” he confessed very quietly. “I left to travel around England, to seek distraction enough to keep me sane and in one piece. Your mother sent me a letter after a time. She said that if she found herself living beyond the nine years, she would know that I had made the sacrifice and she would no longer hold her tongue. But the threat was unnecessary by then. I knew what I had done. The scales had, metaphorically, fallen from my eyes. I could never have finished the sorcery.
“If I could actually ever have gone through with it,” he added, his mouth twisting, “There is a great difference between the idea of a babe, even one’s own, and the squalling reality. But it never came to it, so I will never know, which is a blessing and a curse at once.
“The problem was, while your mother lived, there was this tiny glimmer of hope. It wasn’t a real hope, not by then. There was no child, or so I thought, and even so, it was irrelevant. My connection with sorcery was completely at an end. But your mother lived, and I still loved. When she died, however terrible this may sound, it was in a way a relief. Sometimes it is easier to have no hope at all.
“All the same, the British Isles were not large enough to contain my grief, so I went to the continent, again seeking vital distraction.
“Eventually I was emptied out and weary with the travel, and I wished to return to my childhood home and live quietly and with what peace I could for what time was left. And when I got here, a grimy urchin girl leapt aboard my carriage, which shows that God is indeed merciful, to send such comfort to even a damned soul. Although in truth, He was probably thinking of your need for my money. Which will all be yours,” he added, and was silent.
I regarded him narrowly. Money? I was hardly interested in his money at a time like this. But I caught the faint glimmer of fear in his eyes as he watched me, and suddenly understood. He was waiting for me to draw away from him, to revile him, to hate him. To leave him. So afraid of it that he could not help offering his worldly wealth to tempt me to stay.
How could he expect me to stay just for his wealth? He was my father! He was human, he had sinned very badly and he had been repenting of it ever since, I could see that quite clearly. It was not as if he was a sorcerer or had ever actually been a sorcerer as such, and saw no harm in it. He saw the harm all right. How could he think that I would leave him?
My mother left him, I realized. That’s why. He loved her enough to give his soul to save her, foolish as it might be, and she didn’t love him enough to try and save him from himself. Oh, it was clear why she left so quickly, she was already pregnant and dared not let him know. But she could still have tried to save him once her baby was safe. But she didn’t. She just left him.
My mother was pregnant with me. I looked at my father, who still watched me with the guarded eyes of a dog that has been beaten so badly it no longer hopes for love, or perhaps, feels that it deserves it.
“Me,” I said at last. “You were going to sacrifice me.”
He bowed his head, covering his eyes with his hand. “Yes,” he whispered, “it would have been you. But consider, child, while the wrong is the same, the doing is a little easier with a tiny babe that has no personality or name. As I said, I might not have been able to do it, even then. I pray not. But what is certain, Serapia, is that since you appeared in my carriage, I have not once thought of sacrificing you, not even in the darkest corner of my soul. That was all over long ago, though I dare say the punishment keeps still.
“I will say, though,” he added, “that since I met you I have ceased to regret that your mother did not hand me over for my rightful punishment. You make every long year worthwhile.”
I was touched by this quiet, sincere confession, but I recoiled from the idea that he could have wished for punishment. “They would have burned you!”
“They still could,” he said calmly, then went on, without a trace of self-pity, “it would have been a few minutes of physical agony, which might have gone some way to mitigate my future punishment. Instead, I have suffered anguish like hell fire licking at my soul for years, and who knows if that even counts?”
I gave a dismissive snort. “Of course it counts. Pain is pain, isn’t it? I may have said it dismissively before, without any idea of what I was talking about, for which I apologize, but I say it again now, in much fuller knowledge; I’d wager quite heavily that your soul will be fine.”
He shook his head quietly and made no reply.
“What?” I said in frustration. “True repentance equals forgiveness, and if you don’t truly repent then no one does.”
He just shook his head again. “There is no forgiveness for me,” he said softly. “You see, when I first engaged upon the sorcery, in my half-mad state I committed a much worse sin: I thought to myself that it didn’t matter if what I did was wrong, I could always repent later. How do I escape that?”
“By repenting it, which you clearly do!” I cried furiously. And then, because I obviously wasn’t getting through to him, I shuffled down two steps and put my arms around him. He remained still in my tight grasp for a long moment, as if even now disbelieving that I could forgive him and love him still. Then, finally, he wrapped his arms around me and held me close. He is getting rather bony, I thought to myself, I must see he eats more. That was when it really hit me. I jerked backwards so I could see his face.
“Pa,” I said in something of a gasp, “what did you mean? What did you mean about the security?” My voice cracked in sudden fear.
He turned his face away, as if unable to look me in the eyes. “I’m sorry, child,” he whispered.
“No! I must have it wrong, tell me!”
He sighed heavily. “I was the security for the sorcery,” he said, almost under his breath. “If the sorcery is not completed five years after your mother’s death—and rest assured, it shall not be—then, I too, will die.”
“No,” I whispered numbly, my mind racing. “No!” I cried more vehemently, “that’s March this year. No!”
“Peace, child.” He gathered me in his arms again. “I have known the outside limit of my days for many years. It does not trouble me, though I do regret that I must leave you. But you will want for nothing.”
“Nothing save a father,” I sobbed, “who I would rather have without a penny than not have with all the money in the world!”
He seemed hard pressed to answer that and simply held me tightly for some time, before finally rising and lifting me in his arms to carry me back to my bedroom.
~+~
I sat on the bed while he cleaned the wounds on my wrists and ankles. He also gave me a piece of raw meat from the larder and I pressed this gratefully to my swollen nose. I knew he was feeling bad, because as he dabbed my wounds with brandy, he didn’t even make any comment about getting his own back. When he had bandaged everything carefully with strips of clean linen, he left me to sleep.
But sleep was impossible. Everything that had happened, everything that I had learned in the last few short hours, churned through my head, and while I knew that I would never be able to settle it all into sense in my mind without sleeping on it, sleep evaded me. But I had not been twisting and turning for long when I heard a soft tap on my door, and at my ‘enter’, my father came back in.
He held a teapot and a pair of cups, which he set on my bedside table, where my dagger would have been if I had not slipped it under my pillow.
“I made you a cup of tea,” he said quietly. He still evaded my eyes, and I very much hoped that that would wear off by morning. “It will help you sleep. I fully intend to drink whatever you leave. It beats getting falling down drunk, come morning,” he added under his breath and rather to himself.
“What’s in it,” I asked, sniffing.
“Hops, cloves, chamomile, valerian and ginger.”
“I’ll have some,” I said, so he poured two cups and sat by the bed companionably as we drank, albeit a very silent, bow-headed, floor-studying companion.
When I had finished and refused another cup, he departed, looking a rather forlorn shadow as he went, teapot in hand. I lay down again and eventually I slept, for the next I knew, it was morning.
~+~