Ashes of the Elements Read online

  He realised that the Domina was watching him. She said, ‘The mother had care, Outworlder. The best care. Do not imagine that she would have fared better out there in your world, some man’s chattel in one of your great houses.’

  He dropped his head. ‘I apologise.’ Fool! he berated himself. First, for forgetting about this Domina’s skills with herbs and potions, which must surely far surpass those of some peasant midwife. And second, for overlooking her clear ability to read his thoughts.

  ‘Only one child was needed by the tribe,’ the Domina continued. ‘By our laws, if such an event occurs, the choice must be the elder child. Selene remained with us, Caliste was given away.’

  ‘Caliste!’ The Abbess breathed. ‘That is what she calls herself!’

  The Domina looked mildly surprised. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But—’ Josse knew what the Abbess was thinking. Sure enough, she went on: ‘But how did she know? She was but a babe when she was lain on Alison Hurst’s doorstep! And they – Alison and Matt – named her Peg!’

  ‘Peg,’ the Domina repeated tonelessly.

  ‘I know, it’s not a very lovely name,’ the Abbess agreed, ‘especially when compared with the child’s real name. But they didn’t know the real name! And I cannot understand how the child did, either.’

  ‘She wore her name around her neck,’ the Domina said.

  ‘But—’ The Abbess frowned, then her brow cleared. ‘The piece of wood!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, I remember Alison Hurst showed it to me when Caliste wanted to come and join us.’ She turned to Josse. ‘The baby wore a leather thong round her neck, on which hung a pendant made of wood, carved with strange marks.’ Wonderingly she turned back to the Domina. ‘Was it some sort of code, which only Caliste understood?’ she asked softly.

  ‘It was our script,’ the Domina said.

  ‘How could she interpret it?’ Josse demanded. ‘She was only an infant when you left her with the Hursts, so where did she find the key to the code?’

  The Domina was eyeing the Abbess. ‘You have manuscripts in your Abbey?’

  ‘Yes. We do.’

  ‘Tomes on natural lore?’

  ‘I – Yes!’ Excitedly, she went on, ‘I remember now! Peg – she was still called Peg, when she first came to us – particularly liked the tree lore manuscript!’ She turned her eyes up to the Domina. ‘And it was after she had discovered it that she asked to be known as Caliste.’

  The Domina nodded, unsurprised. ‘She found the key to the script,’ she remarked, in a tone that seemed to say, naturally!

  ‘What did it look like?’ Josse asked. ‘The script?’ He had been thinking hard.

  ‘It was a series of notches, cut into the sides of the pendant,’ the Abbess told him.

  ‘Aye.’ He glanced up at the Domina. ‘The ogham alphabet.’

  She shrugged. ‘Call it what you will. It is our way of recording the sounds of things.’

  ‘She always loved to spend her time out of doors,’ the Abbess said. ‘Alison Hurst told me how, even when Peg was tiny, she made her own little garden.’ She looked at the Domina. ‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? Given whose child she really was.’

  The Domina shrugged again. ‘All of my people understand their brothers and sisters in nature. They are all the Great Mother’s children.’

  The Abbess was nodding. ‘Human people, too,’ she said eagerly. ‘Caliste has the healing touch, Domina. Recently I have put her to nursing duties, and, in her care of the sick, she shows a true natural ability.’

  For the first time, the Domina gave a faint smile. She said, ‘Caliste is her mother’s daughter.’

  Josse had been aware of a steadily growing irritation in himself. All very well and good to speak of Caliste and her abilities so proudly, but had this Domina any right to pride? Look what she subjected Caliste’s twin to, only last night!

  Again remembering, too late, the Domina’s telepathic skill, he tried to make his mind turn to some other subject. Something innocuous – the flowers, perhaps, the trees …

  But she had overheard his thoughts, picked up his anger. In a cold voice, she said, ‘You criticise our ways, Outworlder? You, who have not the least knowledge or understanding of forest life?’

  He stood up, suddenly humiliated by sitting obediently at her feet like some schoolboy. ‘I do criticise,’ he said baldly. ‘You took a young woman into that clearing last night, you held her down naked on a log and stood there watching while five men raped her! Would not anybody criticise that?’

  The Domina’s face changed. The deep, dark eyes seemed to light up with a bright flame, and, as her lips drew back from her strong, even teeth, she hissed like an angry snake. Josse, standing his ground, felt briefly as if flame were scorching up and down his body; a stab of primeval terror pierced him, and it was all that he could do not to fall, screaming in fear, begging for mercy, at her feet.

  But, as quickly as it had come, her attack eased off.

  And, in a voice that sounded quite gentle, she said, ‘There was no rape. Selene went willingly to the ritual, knowing full well what would happen. She has long been aware that she would be the chosen one. And I myself administered the potion that would both arouse her and moisten her – did she not look eager, Outworlder? Did the ritual not end in a more glorious climax for her than for any of the males? And besides’ – the harsh lines of the face softened – ‘why should I wish to harm her?’

  She paused, looking from Josse to the Abbess and then back again.

  ‘Why, indeed, should I inflict pain or harm,’ she repeated, ‘on the child of my own daughter?’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Helewise, watching Josse, felt a wave of pity for him. He does not understand, she thought. It was as though he were still on some upper level of comprehension, where things were merely what they were, with no more profound or symbolic meaning.

  But I understand, she realised wonderingly. For all that she had lived her life in the narrow worlds of, first, the homes of knights and, second, within the walls of an abbey, she knew, at some deep place in her mind, what the essence was of this strange, archaic, parallel world into which she and Josse had stumbled.

  For a moment she felt a brief return of last night’s trance state, and, as if she were dreaming while awake, she seemed to see a circle of women, chanting, creeping apprehensively through dark underground passages, emerging into some rock womb of the earth where, at last, the ultimate mystery was revealed …

  To them. To the women.

  With a start, Helewise shook her head violently – sending shock-waves of pain from her wounded forehead – and dismissed the vision. I am a nun! she cried silently. I worship the one true God and His holy son Jesus Christ, and I live my life of service and devotion in an abbey dedicated to the blessed virgin, Mary!

  What have I to do with the Great Mother?

  From somewhere deep within herself – or possibly from the older woman standing so still, so tense, at her side, there came the beginnings of a reply. ‘We are all to do with the Great—’

  But Helewise said aloud, ‘No,’ and the soft inner voice was stilled.

  Josse was speaking. Bringing herself back to the present – not without difficulty – Helewise listened.

  ‘… another reason for killing Hamm Robinson?’ he was saying, directing a ferocious frown at the Domina.

  Unperturbed, she said, ‘Hamm Robinson? Who is he?’

  ‘The man you stuck through with a spear!’ Josse cried.

  ‘Ah. You wish to know whether he was similarly an uninvited witness to a secret ceremony.’

  ‘Aye.’

  A faint sneer crossed the smooth pale face of the Domina. ‘He was. He stood there at the edge of the holy grove, and I could see him drooling at what he saw. His life was already forfeit because he had killed the oak in the silver fruit grove. However, we would have slain him twice over, were that possible, for his double offence against us. Yes, Outworlder. The man Hamm was witness to that other
procreation ritual, which took place in the grove two moons ago.’

  ‘You mean,’ Josse said slowly, ‘that the poor lass had to go through that twice?’

  ‘Still you do not understand,’ the Domina observed, her tone a few degrees colder. ‘Selene is aware of the honour of her role. It is the epitome of forest life, to be selected as preserver of the elemental essence of all that we are. And, naturally, she knew that, if the first seed-sowing were unsuccessful, then there would be another.’

  ‘You mention only one other ritual,’ Helewise said. ‘Why was there not one last full moon?’

  The Domina turned her deep eyes to Helewise. ‘Because—’ she began.

  But Josse did not let her finish. ‘There was!’ he shouted. ‘I was in the forest that night, I stood in the clearing with the fallen oak trees, and I heard your damnable chanting! You were there, I know full well you were!’

  Helewise, amazed at the sudden profanity, was momentarily afraid of the Domina’s reaction. Slowly the older woman turned, until she was facing Josse, and, even from where she stood, Helewise felt the malevolence. But then, perceptibly, the Domina relaxed, and she said calmly, ‘We were there. I do not deny it. But there was no ritual that night.’ Pointedly she turned back to Helewise, as if to say, only another woman can understand these matters. ‘We believed Selene to have conceived, following the first ritual,’ she said. ‘Hence there appeared no need for a second. However, what had been within her slipped away. Her womb did not hold new life.’

  Helewise, amid everything else, was struck with the incredible skill of anyone who could tell, so early on, whether or not a girl was pregnant. ‘It’s very hard to judge,’ she agreed, ‘in the first weeks. The symptoms are quite slow to show up.’

  The Domina was looking at her with amusement. ‘Symptoms,’ she repeated.

  ‘How else?’ Helewise asked simply.

  The Domina moved closer to her, eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘There is life, or there is not life. And life sends out its own emanations.’ She held out an arm, the hand outstretched so that the thumb and fingers spanned a rough circle. ‘The aura of a newly conceived infant is faint but detectable, from the very moment when its life begins.’ She must have noticed Helewise’s incomprehension, for, lowering her hand, she said, ‘Ah, well. Perhaps, like so many other things, it is a skill that Outworld women have lost.’

  Incredible, Helewise thought. Quite incredible. If she understood right, the Domina was claiming that she had known straight after the first ritual that Selene had conceived, but, as often happened, the new pregnancy was not sound, and had soon failed. Now, two months later, the girl had been impregnated again …

  ‘Is she pregnant now?’ she asked.

  The Domina smiled. ‘She is. And, this time, the new life is vibrant and strong. It is a male child,’ she added.

  Josse, apparently, had endured enough of this. He said, stubbornly returning to the matter uppermost in his own mind, ‘Why were you chanting, then, that night? If there was no ritual, what were you doing?’

  Steady! Helewise wanted to say. We are on the Domina’s ground, and it is neither diplomatic nor prudent for us to interrogate a woman possessing powers such as hers!

  As if the Domina had heard, she turned and said to Helewise, ‘Do not be distressed. I will answer the man.’ Then, to Josse: ‘There were Outworlders in the grove that night.’ A faint smile crossed her face. ‘Outworlders other than you, man. We were there to observe.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘Not to kill?’

  ‘Not to kill,’ she confirmed. ‘The Outworlder who bled like a stuck pig on to the forest floor did not die at our hands.’ She fixed Josse with piercing eyes. ‘We kill cleanly. And, as you are well aware, Outworlder, that man took a time to die.’

  Josse, Helewise noticed, was nodding. ‘Josse?’ she whispered. ‘What does she mean?’

  He shot her a compassionate look. ‘I heard him,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’ He heard a man die! she thought, horrified. Heard the screams of a long drawn-out death. Oh, dear God!

  ‘We saw you, too,’ the Domina said to Josse. ‘As I think you are aware. We knew you visited the grove, both that night and the night before.’

  Josse gave a brief grin, which looked more like a grimace. ‘Yes. I know. I felt eyes on me, both times.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You did not harm me,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ the Domina agreed. ‘Of all the Outworlders in our realm that night, you had some faint sense of what the forest element means.’

  Josse nodded slowly. ‘Aye.’

  ‘You stood by the fallen trees, and you mourned for the life that was no more.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Helewise said tentatively, ‘Josse?’

  He turned to her. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ he said, an apology in his voice. ‘I – it – oh, it’s just not something I knew how to put into words.’

  ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I see that.’

  He was looking at the Domina. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why did you not harm me?’ he said. ‘I wondered then, and I wonder now. Wonder, indeed, why you are here with us, answering our questions, tolerating our presence, when you have demonstrated quite clearly before that you do not welcome strangers.’

  The Domina pointed to his pack, lying on the stream bank where he had thrown it. ‘That is why.’

  ‘The pack?’

  She gave a soft sound of impatience. ‘No, Outworlder, what is on your pack.’

  He looked. As he turned back to the Domina, Helewise knew, before he spoke, what he would say. ‘The talisman,’ he whispered. ‘You saw the talisman.’

  ‘It is ours,’ the Domina said.

  ‘Who put it on my pack?’

  The Domina smiled. ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Caliste,’ he said, an answering smile creasing his face. ‘It was Caliste.’

  ‘It was,’ the Domina agreed. ‘You must have made a favourable impression, Outworlder,’ she said, with gentle irony. ‘Caliste understands our signs, and, by putting the amulet of the Sword of Nuada on your pack, she was saying, as plain as light, do not harm him.’

  ‘Dear Lord,’ Josse muttered. Then, as if a new thought had occurred to him, he glanced at Helewise and said urgently, ‘Does that still hold good?’

  For a long moment the Domina did not answer. She stared back at Josse, then turned her steady gaze to Helewise.

  It felt, Helewise thought amid the fear, as if her very brain were being penetrated. By two thin beams of white light, which seemed to emanate from the Domina’s extraordinary eyes and pierce through Helewise’s pupils.

  It was a ghastly sensation.

  But, just as she was beginning to feel that she could endure no longer but must cry out for mercy, it stopped.

  The Domina said, gazing innocently out over the stream, ‘By ancient law, you should both be put to death. It is not permitted for Outworlders to live, having shared in our secrets.’ Briefly she looked again at Helewise. ‘But you, woman, have taken to yourself one of our own, and she speaks for you.’ Bless Caliste for that, Helewise thought swiftly. ‘And you, man,’ the Domina turned to Josse, ‘bear the sacred talisman.’ She indicated the little sword on his pack. ‘Its protective magic overrides the death penalty. I could not slay a bearer of the Sword of Nuada, even if I wanted to. Not,’ she added softly, almost to herself, ‘without great difficulty.’

  Helewise felt her rigid shoulders relax. Josse gave an audible sigh.

  But the Domina hadn’t finished.

  ‘No harm shall come to you, for now!’ she cried suddenly, her raised right hand pointing threateningly at Helewise, at Josse. Then, more calmly, ‘For now, I release you back into your world. But you will not speak of what you have witnessed. Ever.’

  ‘No!’ Helewise agreed.

  ‘Never,’ Josse echoed.

  The Domina was watching them, frowning as if deep in thought. Then, her expression lightening, she said,
‘If either of you break faith with me, I shall know. Have no doubt, I shall know.’ Helewise was quite certain she would. ‘And, should that happen’ – the Domina walked over to Josse, staring into his eyes for a moment, repeating the process with Helewise – ‘should that happen, whichever one of you has spoken of our secrets, I shall kill the other.’

  In the shocked silence that followed her words, a single thought rushed into Helewise’s head: how very clever!

  One of them, she or Josse, might have yielded to temptation, and, one dark night, whispered of what they had seen into some sympathetic ear. After all, it was human nature to confide, and, from King Midas’s poor barber onwards, the torment of carrying a marvellous secret, of keeping it for ever to oneself, was well known.

  Yes, one of them might have felt it was worth the risk. Had it been merely their own safety that they were thereby putting in jeopardy.

  But for each other, Helewise thought, looking across at him, that big, kind, strong man whom she had come both to like and admire. But for each other! Oh, dear Lord, I would not dare take the risk!

  And neither, she knew equally well, would he.

  The Domina was nodding in satisfaction. Knowing what Helewise was thinking, no doubt what Josse was thinking, too, she had, Helewise reflected, every right to be satisfied.

  The Domina raised both hands, holding them palms-outwards towards Helewise and Josse. ‘Leave the forest,’ she intoned. ‘Do not come back to our deep realms. We go from here now, but we shall be back.’

  She was backing away, the soft, subtle colours of her cloak seeming to merge with the undergrowth and the rich green foliage behind her. She was becoming hard to make out …

  Her voice floated softly out from the trees: ‘Go in peace.’

  Helewise and Josse stood by the stream for some time. Breaking the silence that had fallen around them, eventually Helewise murmured, ‘We wish the same to you.’