The Swan Kingdom (4 page)

“I beg your pardon,” I said with some dignity. “But I know who I am. I’m Lady Alexandra, youngest child of the king and Lady Branwen the Wise.”

She smiled, amused. “I like that. But just wait…” She reached out her hands and placed them on either side of my head, thumbs resting above my eyebrows. “Just close your eyes.”

I looked into her face and found myself obeying. My lids suddenly felt incredibly heavy and they closed almost involuntarily.

For a while, there was nothing but the quiet sound of our breathing and the whistle of the wind. Then something seemed to shift inside me. It felt as if my skin were humming; then I thought I was spilling out of myself, dissolving; and there was light, a pure white light…

The next moment I was falling back into myself, convulsing with pain. The world seemed to blur around me; Angharad and I both fell off the edge of the earth mound. I staggered up and cried out as pain stabbed my back and shoulder, running up my neck until I was half blind with it.

“No!” I only dimly heard Angharad’s anguished voice.

Suddenly women’s arms surrounded me – not just Angharad’s but those of six more women. Dark and fair, tall and short, beautiful and plain, each woman seemed to cradle me. Seven sets of fingers stroked my face.

“We are sorry. So sorry.”
They whispered together.
“It’s too late. We cannot help you anymore. We cannot keep you here. You are needed in your own place and time.”

There was an almighty jolt. I must have screamed but there was no sound. The light around me, the faces of the women who held me, winked out. I was engulfed in blackness, crushed by it, suffocating – then I found that I was merely lying on the dirt floor of the earth chamber and I struggled forward.

As soon as I emerged, dazed and gasping, into the shadowy clearing, I knew something was wrong. It was not what had happened in the Circle, nor the shadow of pain in my shoulder, that told me – I could smell it. Pain and fear hung in the air with a heavy stench like burnt flesh.

“Mama?” I whispered.

My voice seemed to evaporate in the darkness and my ears strained against the silence. I took shallow sips of air, hardly daring to move. I could not see her, but I could feel her presence, a ripple in the enaid, somewhere among the trees. I could feel something else too. Something rotted and black. Something that yearned and hated. Something that … slithered. I gagged at the touch of it against my awareness.

Then there was a sharp, high scream, cut off abruptly.

“
Mama!
”
I yelled, throwing myself into the forest.

I crashed into the blackness of the dense trees, and headed blindly for my mother’s voice, forging a path through the whipping leaves and low boughs.

I stumbled over her. She was crumpled on the forest floor, face down. Her shoulder glistened with dark liquid in the dim light. I by her side, my arms going round her to lift her against my chest. She groaned softly, her eyelids flickering.

“No … heart…” she whispered. “Go … must … please…” She was barely conscious. I could feel the warmth of her blood trickling through my fingers and pooling around my knee. There was a rush of movement in the forest behind me. I snapped around, twisting as far as I could without releasing Mama, and caught a glimpse of something low to the ground and gleaming dark red as it flashed through a gap in the trees. An instant later, I caught another flash of chestnut and a terrifying blur of teeth in the undergrowth to my right.

The thing was circling us.

Mama groaned with pain, and terror raked down my spine like claws. The dreadful warm wetness was seeping through my shift. There was another glint of chestnut, this time to my left and much closer.

In my panic and fear I did something – I’m still not sure how – somehow reached down into the earth and pushed it away, flung Mama and myself forward. The claustrophobic darkness of the forest, the looming shadows and the creature that moved among them disappeared; a screaming, flailing wind seemed to tear them away, and thrust another landscape into their place.

Dizzily I looked up. It was near dawn; the sky was blushing a delicate silver behind the Hall. The beautiful, familiar shapes of my mother’s plants and trees were all around us. We were home.

I started screaming.

It was a few minutes before the first members of the household found us. Those minutes were the most excruciating I have ever lived through. At first it seemed that my screams went unheard. Nothing moved; there was no reply – and fear that somehow I was alone made me scream all the louder. Then came the first stirrings, the first sleepy voices, and the first flickers of light as tapers were lit. There were running footsteps, doors banging open, and at long last someone came.

It was Robin. When he saw us he went white as bone and almost fell down beside me, his shaking fingers hovering over Mother’s face as he added his voice to mine, shouting for help.

After that everything became a blur. The rest of the household arrived, crying out and asking questions, prising my mother’s limp body from my hold, and carrying her into the Hall. I stayed with them, refusing to let go of Mama’s hand when we reached her bedchamber and she was gently laid down on the bed.

My father appeared beside us and dragged me away, his fingers gripping my shoulder hard enough to bruise. “What happened, girl?” he demanded. “What in the name of the Ancestors happened?”

“I … I don’t know.” I couldn’t tell him the truth; I couldn’t tell him of the sacred Circle of Ancestors. “We – we went for a walk. In the forest. Something attacked us.”

“What attacked you? Who?”

“A thing – an animal. I never saw. It was too fast,” I stammered.

He shook his head in disgust and released my shoulder to bend over Mother’s prone form, his jaw clenched. The women of the household fluttered and fussed around us.

For a few minutes I simply stood there, exhaustion and the daze of shock fogging my mind. Then the inane, frightened chatter of the women penetrated my consciousness. They plucked at her bloodstained clothes, tapped her face with shaking hands, while my father looked on helplessly.

My mother was the one who cared for the sick, who was strong when there was a crisis. There were two cunning women here, but they were used to Mother directing their small gifts. Without her they were all lost, even my father.

I snapped back into focus, my mind sharpening into a spear point of determination. I waded through the crowd to the bedside.

“Quiet!” I shouted. My voice was shrill with urgency and they obeyed instantly. I gathered my thoughts, then spoke again, pointing at a serving woman. “You – fetch me water, but make sure it is well boiled first. Rosabel and Elswyth, go to my mother’s workroom and bring me her book – the large brown one – her pestle and mortar, the glass jar with the picture of a spider on it, and all the bandages you can find. Melle, take a basket and go into the gardens, you will see a tall leafy plant with small yellow flowers. Pick both the flowers and the leaves, at least three handfuls. You will see also a circle of small fragrant plants with silver leaves: pull one up and bring me the roots. And bring a handful of berries from the dark green bush that grows along the south wall. Be quick!”

The women, still shocked but grateful for something to do, fled. The two cunning women remained, along with four men and my father.

“You two” – I pointed at the women – “you can help me here. The rest of you must leave; we need space and quiet to work.”

My father opened his mouth as if to protest. I glared at him, daring him – almost willing him – to try to gainsay me. He shut his lips, his jaw clenching; then his gaze dropped and he turned and strode from the room, the other men at his back.

With the help of the two cunning women I turned Mama over, and cut away her ruined gown. The women made worried noises at the amount of blood around the wound. I used the ripped remains of the gown to apply pressure to it, but I was less worried about loss of blood than the awful carrion stench coming from the injury. It was the smell that had hung in the air in the forest.

A moment later the other women, flushed with running, arrived back with the ingredients I had asked for and Mama’s book. It was time to clean the wound. I peeled off the wad of cloth and braced myself for what was to come.

The gash was a ragged semicircle in the top of Mother’s shoulder. It was not very wide – not even the span of one of my hands – but it was extremely deep. So deep that I knew nerves and muscles must have been severed. Mother might never use this arm again. My hands, busily grinding crowberries, fell still as horror seized me. Ancestors – she could be crippled for the rest of her life. I had no idea how to prevent it. I couldn’t do this! I gritted my teeth and forced the panic from my mind. I
had
to do this. There was no choice.

The first time I cleaned out the bloody, gaping wound, something burst inside it – a sac of foul yellow-green poison that ate through the bandage like acid and filled the air with a smell of rotting flesh so intense that I gagged. The women helping me leaped back with dismayed cries. I dropped the bandage but stayed where I was, grimly pouring more water into the gash and probing deep into the wound until all the poison had gone. Then I got up, washed my hands, went back and cleaned it out again.

I nursed my mother day and night. I used every healing potion I knew and a few I invented, applied poultice after poultice, and poured draughts and tisanes down her throat on the hour. I used every healing charm I could remember or imagine. I reached into the tides that flowed through the Hall and drew as much from them as my skin could hold, then poured it out into Mama’s body. But I had a worrying feeling that the power was simply seeping out of her; I had no Great gift to anchor it there.

I refused to leave her side, even for a moment. My father and brothers came and went, each taking a turn to be with Mother and I. Robin coaxed me into eating and tried to make me rest. Hugh came and told jokes, inappropriate and feeble, to try to make me smile, though his own lips never curved and his gaze never left Mother’s face. David had nothing to say, but he was always there to help me hold Mother when she thrashed and struggled on the bed. My father did nothing but stand at the foot of the bed and watch us, his eyes despairing and his fists clenched.

I knew they were suffering too, that they loved her and feared for her as I did. I knew they also worried about me. But I saw them only peripherally. I had to concentrate on Mama. Tending to her drove me to the very end of my strength and I had nothing to spare for them.

Something had happened in the forest that I did not understand. Mama had been attacked by … something … and she had lost a lot of blood, yes. The wound had also been poisoned or infected. But still – I had stopped the bleeding, and cleared out the poison. A wound of this kind was dangerous but surely not life-threatening – especially not to someone of Mother’s vibrant health. Everything I knew, everything the book told me, said that Mama should be mending.

She did not mend.

That first day she stirred a great deal, opening her eyes to speak to me. She was confused, seeming to think that we were still in the forest, urging me to run and trying to get up. The second day she became less lucid, rambling and fighting us, calling out my name and those of my father and brothers. On the third day she quietened, and though she mumbled and cried out she did not wake. Her always pale skin had become translucent, the veins standing out like snaking bruises.

On the fourth day I woke from a restive doze and lifted my head from the pillow of my arms where I sat slumped over the bed. It was barely dawn and I was the only one in the room. My mother was quiet. The sun had swept golden fingers over her face, giving it a rosy glow. I gazed at her, feeling a flicker of hope in my heart. She looked peaceful.

Tiredly, I reached for the echo of her life to reassure myself. I couldn’t feel it.

She was not breathing.

That night, as the sun sank behind the hills, we burned my mother.

Robin stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders. David and Hugh flanked me, each holding one of my hands. They crowded close, not just for comfort, but to keep me from falling. Father stood on the other side of the pyre, his eyes on the flames. He was nothing more than a pale-faced smudge in the deepening night.

The world was a muddle of black shapes limned in fiery orange. As the sparks spiralled upwards, I wanted more than anything to follow them away into the cool numbness of the sky. I felt hollow inside, scraped out and aching, and my eyes were gritty and dry. I had no more tears left.

My mother was dead.

Part of me refused to believe it, even as I watched the fire crackle and leap. And yet somehow it was as if it had always been true, as if all my years had been lived in that one day, and I had been born already crying with grief.

As the sun slipped away, the fire died down. When it was dark, my brothers led me back to the Hall. Robin came into my room with me and, as if I were a baby again, he found my nightgown for me, and brushed and braided my tangled hair. When I climbed into bed, he tucked the blankets around me. For a few moments he sat on the edge of the sunken bed, looking away from me. The quiet seemed to swell around us, heavy with unshed tears.

At last he rose and lit a candle to leave burning beside me, though that darkness had never held fears for me before. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, whispered, “Sleep well, dear one,” and went, closing the door behind him.

Then I found that there were tears left in me still.

The days that followed the burning were bleak. The servants and people of the household wandered about like ghosts. We were lost.

David was twenty by then, and Hugh eighteen, but they joined Robin in looking after me, spending all their time in my company without a word of complaint and seeing to my needs with the dedication of nursemaids. In truth, I believe that their concern for me gave them something other than grief to dwell on, and an excuse to cluster together; for we craved one another’s warmth in the coldness that seemed to have sunk over the Hall.