With a sigh he lets go of all the fragments of his memory for the sorceress to knit together.
Some fifteen years before he and John Butter had returned from the House of the Three Turrets, bringing with them a maid to work in the house. Upon seeing that the maid Bess was quickening with child and no father to its name, Mistress Finglas, the good, Christian woman that she was, insisted that Bess be thrown out for her ungodly ways. Thomas forbade it. In revenge she had hagridden the girl with that venomous tongue of hers. The babe would be cursed by the hellwain, born boneless, horns on its head, fur in its mouth, a tail in its breeches.
Five months later, Bess began her labour. Not even the pain of the oncoming infant was allowed to interfere with the main meal of the day. Betwixt two courses the babe slipped slithering, bloody, between her mother’s legs, and not a cry did either make. Bess held her close, and there they sat, tied together by the cord. She was baffled by the newborn’s silence as liver-like, the placenta slopped onto the stone floor. She cut the cord with the carving knife, wrapped the creature and warmed her by the fire. Then served roast chicken and with the gravy quietly informed her master of their daughter’s birth. Pushing back his chair hard he rose abruptly as it fell backwards. The noise of it startled his wife. She looked up from her plate, mouth wide open, stuffed with chicken meat, so that all the chewing and her few black teeth could be seen.
She said, ‘What is it, Husband?’
And he, repulsed by the very sight of her, felt himself on the precipice of declaring a truth, the truth that was well known to all three of them.
Like the newborn babe he remained silent, even when his wife asked, ‘Husband, where go you?’ and gravy rolled down her double chins.
Downstairs in the kitchen Bess wept and showed him their newborn, eyes closed and silent, her tufted hair red like her mother’s.
Mistress Finglas, puffing and hefting herself after her husband, demanded to know what all the fuss be about.
Then seeing the babe so still, wax white, said, ‘I told you, I told you so I did, the pucklar would come and steal the bastard.’
Good, kind Bess, by then at her mind’s end, screamed, ‘If she be dead. So be me.’
Master Finglas gathered mother and child into his laboratory and closed and bolted the door against the fury of his wife. Mistress Finglas, knees bent, praying that wood might become parchment, stayed there cursing less the child should think to cry its way back to life.
‘I hear a crow croak from the next roof, and you know what that means, Husband,’ she shouted. ‘A coffin in the ground, a coffin in the ground. Serves you both right.’
No answer came and on the second day, the door still barred to her, she took to boxing the ears of her husband’s apprentice, demanding he open it.
‘I . . . I . . . I cannot,’ stammered the terrified boy.
Having beaten John Butter until the worst of her rage had subsided, Mistress Finglas left him curled in upon himself outside his master’s door, lifted her skirts high and crossed the stinking alleyway to the house of her neighbour. She huffed up the narrow stairs and there she stayed by the window and talked away the hours in unwise words. She knew, she said, what they be doing, her husband and the whore, they be eating the flesh of the unbaptised babe. Her jealous imaginings gave birth to rumour, its midwife being gossip that to this night still haunted the alchemist’s good reputation.
On the third day, in desperation, Mistress Finglas cut up her husband’s fur-lined cloak. The wanton waste of such a necessity gave her untold pleasure. She wondered what her scissors, razorsharp, would feel like plunged into the heart of her cheating husband. On the fourth day she went to church, fired by the idea of Hell’s vengeance and all the demonic winged beasts to be found there.
On the fifth day, the door to her husband’s laboratory opened. Bess returned to the kitchen, her husband to his business, and neither had a word to say about the baby.
‘Where is it?’ demanded Mistress Finglas.
‘Where is what?’ asked her husband.
‘The babe.’
‘There is no babe.’
‘You jest, Husband. I saw it with my own eyes.’
A key turns in the door, candlelight falls on the tormented face of the alchemist. A servant, carrying a gown, enters to find Master Finglas arguing with his dead wife, on the brink of losing his mind. The gown, which is far grander than any the alchemist has ever owned, pulls him back to the present. The sudden warmth that envelops him feels like the arms of his Bess, tears sting his eyes at the memory of her loving. He stands straight, rubs his hand over his bare head. He is escorted through the long gallery with its rows of paintings of the Rodermere family from the first to the present. He notices that one is missing, a shiny patch of wall marks out the square space where it used to hang. It was not a large portrait, yet he had considered it the finest there. It was of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere, his hawk at his wrist.
The sorceress slips her hand into his. He stiffens, stops breathing for a moment, then squeezes her fingers gently. He is mystified by the softness of her skin. What did he expect? Scales? As much as she hates to admit it, by the hem of her petticoat their fates are tied to one another.
‘Do not leave me,’ he whispers as a door is opened.
The chamber they entered was hung with tapestries all depicting a hunting party. The riders looked out at Thomas; the hounds were running for the fox who, like the hunters, stared out at the viewer unconcerned, or so it appeared, by the nearness of danger. And in front of a roaring fire stood Sir Percival Hayes, Thomas’s old master and benefactor. Whippet lean, his clothes extravagant; a ruff of Dutch lace that could be valued in acres of land was gathered round his neck. The effect of the ruff was to disjoint his head from his body as if the two were different domains serving different masters. His face was by far the more sinister. He had hooded eyes, a long nose, lips too full. He could be taken for a younger man yet look closer and the fine lines that wrinkled his skin gave away his age. He was known at court as the Badger for his dark hair had a white stripe through it. Once head and body were joined as one his whole appearance spoke of menace.
Fifteen years, thought Thomas, can so change a man. When he had been in Sir Percival’s favour his master’s face had been open to the world. Now it is closed, iron conclusions have crushed the dreams of the younger man, made him an unmovable force of convention.
In those distant days, Sir Percival wanted to know the mysteries of alchemy and more. He had sought out Thomas Finglas. Having sieved through all the cunning men and quacks in London who pretended knowledge of the chemical theatre, Thomas stood apart. He was learned, spoke Greek, Latin, French and German as well as he spoke English. His interest was not in what he considered the cheap trick of turning lead into gold, but in the faerie realm for he believed if its power could be harnessed then all the secrets of nature would be at man’s command. Thomas had been with his master two years – in which he married, realised his mistake, and was able to do nothing but be bound to it for better or worse – when he had been sent here to return Lord Rodermere to the House of the Three Turrets.
Sir Percival Hayes poured a goblet of wine, took a sip and helped himself to sweetmeats from a dish before him. He ate with a ladylike delicacy then slowly took out a fine linen handkerchief and wiped his fingers. At last he turned to Thomas.
‘Do you remember, Master Finglas, when you came back to London from a summer of bedding a nursemaid and had the audacity to tell me that your work had been successful? And you produced this?’ Sir Percival waved a scroll at Thomas. ‘I dismissed you as a fraud, did I not? Threw you out of my house, along with that shrew you married. These days, I believe, your practice deals mainly with pimps and whores and