The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) (2 page)

‘You’re very kind, very kind,’ she said, taking the bowl from the woman and hungrily stuffing great chunks of mutton into her mouth. The man watched her.

‘And from the south I reckon?’

‘Aye,’ between mouthfuls.

‘’Tis a long journey.’

‘A very long one.’

The man continued to look at her and saw how she wolfed her food and didn’t stop eating until it was all gone. Then she wiped the bowl clean with her fingers and licked them carefully one by one. Brewster Driver laughed.

‘Give her some more Margaret, she’s famished!’

‘Nay,’ the girl said quickly. ‘I’ve had enough, thank you.’

She could see that the careworn wife was not best pleased at having to feed a stranger with scarce victuals, and she knew how women disliked her anyway, particularly when the lecherous look in their husbands’ eyes was clear for anyone to see.

‘Now some ale,’ Brewster said. ‘Alan, give her some porter.’

A tall youth, like the man in looks only beardless, got up and poured ale from an earthenware jug into a pot which he handed to the girl as reluctantly as his Mother had ladled the food. ‘Thirsty too, I see,’ Brewster said.

‘Yes,’ she wiped her mouth on her arm and handed back the pot. ‘Thank you, thank you very much.’

The girl glanced round at the faces gazing at her sullenly. She had the picture quite clear in her mind; it was so familiar. The lecherous, ill-tempered, heavy drinking father who burdened his wife with too many children and never made enough money to feed them. They all resented her; the children because she had eaten some of their food and the wife because she knew that all he wanted was to bed her.

Brewster got up, a huge man in shirt and breeches, the latter secured at the waist by a broad leather belt. From his pocket he drew a long clay pipe into which he carefully pressed tobacco from a leather pouch which hung on his belt. He lit the pipe with a spill taken from the fire and gazed thoughtfully at the girl through the smoke issuing from his mouth.

‘How do they call thee lass?’

‘I am called Analee.’

‘Gypsy stock, like us?’

‘Aye.’

‘Not that I’d have thought otherwise with thy dark hair and black eyes ...’

Margaret, thin faced and haggard of body, made an exclamation of annoyance and got to her feet clattering the dishes. ‘Black eyes indeed!’ she muttered.

‘Now Margaret,’ roared Brewster in a voice that instantly cowed his wife. ‘Let us have none of thy jealous spite. This girl is young enough to be my daughter. See here Analee,’ he pointed proudly around the fire, there you see my fine sons Alan, Roger and John and my daughter Nelly who will be about your age, eighteen she is; and my Jane who is thirteen, and the little ones playing over yonder, Peter, Agnes and Toby. Driver’s the name.’

He gazed fondly at his brood, momentarily the family man pleased with his achievement.

‘You’re very kind, Mr Driver, to share your food ...’

‘And wi’ so many mouths to feed an’ all,’ grumbled Margaret; but Analee thought, or imagined, that the young-old face of the wife had grown softer, the voice less harsh. Maybe she resented at first the generous impulses of her husband, or the reason for them, but relented after a while.

Analee, invigorated by the rest and the food, got agilely to her feet.

‘I must go ...’

‘Whither lass?’ Brewster’s eyes were speculative. Analee avoided them.

‘I must go on, from one place to the next.’

‘And how dost live?’

‘By a little of this, a little of that,’ she replied flinging back her head and gazing at him with that look which was meant to be defiance, but which men found so attractive. ‘On kindness such as yours in the big towns, from berries and nuts in the woods through which I pass; from the clear water in the streams. And then when I can I work. I can gut a rabbit or hare, aye and trap them too, wring a chicken’s neck or spear a fish. I can cook them, and also clean and scrub and make baskets of wicker, I can ...’

‘Cans’t ride a horse?’

‘Aye, very well. I was brought up on the back of a horse.’ Brewster’s eyes glinted.

 ‘Maybe I can give you some work.’

‘Here?’

Analee had a familiar feeling as to what the work would entail, and yet his tone was businesslike.

‘Aye. Appleby is famous for its horse fair; everyone comes to buy and exchange. A few days work with food and a pallet on the floor. Eh?’ Brewster was looking at her hard, calloused feet; between the toes brown, congealed blood. ‘Not so much wear on your feet, maybe. What say?’

Analee followed his gaze and looked at her feet – as brown as leather and almost as hard from walking. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and gave a deep sigh.

‘But where are your horses?’

‘Ah,’ Brewster said with a cunning look, lowering his voice, ‘we have to find them.’

It was not the first night that Brent Delamain had kept watch by the side of his dying grandfather. Since he had been so hastily summoned home from Cambridge he had taken turns with his Mother, his sister and his elder brother to see the old man through the night.

But Sir Francis Delamain was stubborn, a fighter. He had been long in the world and he was reluctant to leave it. His still bright blue eyes gazed unseeingly at the wall, but his chest rose rhythmically though his breathing was harsh.

A solitary candle guttered in its holder as Brent sat staring at the old man and pondering his own future. The death of his grandfather would make a vast different to his life, all their lives. George was the heir. George who had been groomed since childhood to succeed to the vast Delamain estates. George, the good one, the sober, clever, industrious one, the obedient one ... whereas Brent. Well, everyone thought that Brent was a disappointment.

Brent’s stay at Cambridge was considered to be a passing visit. All the Delamain sons went to Cambridge, it was a tradition. But how long they stayed depended on their scholastic ability, and everyone knew that Brent had none.

Brent had a fine record as a boxer, a rider, a hunter and a fighter. But where did that get a man? Especially a younger son who seemed to have no aptitude for anything except chasing women and killing foxes, and losing money he hadn’t got at cards. It was even rumoured that Brent had fought a duel because there was a long thin scar on his cheek which he swore he had got merely fencing.

Sir Francis Delamain who had increased the family fortune, already considerable when he inherited it, three-fold by his thrift, financial acumen and industry, had no time at all for Brent. His charm may have worked on a lot of people, but it didn’t impress his grandfather. Old Sir Francis was a canny northerner, and he couldn’t abide to see people idle or wasting money. Brent showed no interest in the land, except for hunting over it, or the army or navy in which his grandfather would gladly have purchased him a commission. He had no appreciation of how to acquire money, or even how to keep what little he was given. He had certainly no aptitude for the study of the classics or history. What was to become of Brent, no one knew.

Now George, his brother ... why there was a fine fellow of a man. Keen, industrious, a good scholar and what was more, he had given up the great chances he had to shine in London, in politics or the university, to help his grandfather run his estates. And what a success he had made of that! How quickly he had mastered the arts of animal husbandry, forestry, and estate management.

No, George was like his grandfather, a true Delamain, and Brent was too like his father Guy, another reckless ne’er do well who had carelessly thrown his life away for the Stuart cause, leaving Francis to care for his wife and children and bear the shame, into the bargain, of having a son who was disloyal to the lawful government of England.

Brent knew all this and more as he gazed at the withered face of a man he had respected and feared but never loved. When he was dead George would have all. Though he did not fear him, Brent neither liked nor respected his brother. Where would Brent fit in when his grandfather finally breathed his last? Nowhere.

The candle flickered and went out. Brent cursed and got to his feet. It was a cold night for June and he went to shut the window that he had opened to try and get rid of the stench of death, before finding a tinder to relight the candle. From the window of his grandfather’s room he looked down on the courtyard, across the outbuildings with the stables and the bakehouse, onto the meadows stretching as far as the river which gleamed like a ribbon of silver in the moonlight.

The whole of the Delamain estate, or what he could see of it from here, was bathed in clear, golden light and Brent thought how beautiful it was, how dear to him, and how much he would miss it when, as was inevitable after his grandfather’s death, he would have to go. For George had made it clear that he thought it was time he got married, and that when he did his family would have to make room for the huge number of new Delamains that he intended to breed. Mother was to go to the dower house in the grounds with their sister Emma; the middle brother Tom was a monk at Douai and safely out of the way, and Brent ... well it was time he found gainful employment, anyway, George made clear, and now was no concern of his.

Suddenly Brent stiffened, seeing a movement by the trees which began the Forest of Delamain at the end of the water meadow, the great forest – one of few in a mainly agricultural area – that stretched almost as far as Penrith on one side and Appleby on the other. Maybe it was the moon playing tricks, the shadow of a branch waving in the breeze. Brent peered out again, just to be sure. No. he had been right – it was a distinct, stealthy human movement: not a movement of the horses in the paddock there ... and suddenly it was joined by another. There were two! There were at least two people in the meadow by the river, maybe more. By the height of the moon Brent knew it to be well after midnight, and all the castle servants long in their beds.

Brent opened the door and ran silently along the stone corridor to his Mother’s room. Always alert, as anxious for her son and their future as well as he, she rose as soon as the door opened and hurriedly put on her robe.

‘Your grandfather?’ she called abruptly.

‘No, Mother, he is still alive; nothing further ails him. But hurry. I want you by his side. I have seen strange movements by the river.’

‘Movements!’ his Mother grasped his arm – the arm of this dearest, most favourite son.

‘Horse thieves, Mother, if you ask me. They’re from the fair at Appleby I doubt not. I told George that he should lock his new yearlings up and not have them loose in the field, but of course George knows everything and I nothing. First rouse the servants for me, Mother, and George and I will hasten down before they escape with all the stock.’

‘Oh, Brent ...’ eyes full of love followed him. So gentle and gallant and like his father; so warm and passionate, such a good friend. If only Brent had been born first instead of George ... ‘Take care,’ she didn’t want to let him go, ‘they might have weapons.’

‘Mother, I’ll take care; that’s one thing I can do. Even George says that.’ And he kissed her lightly on the cheek, squeezed her arm and sped down the steps of the great majestic staircase that led into the long gallery. The moonlight was bright enough to show the way, though Brent could have found it blindfold in this beloved place. Every inch of Delamain Castle was dear and familiar to him.

He strode through the kitchens, the cockroaches scurrying away from him on the stone floor, and let himself through an outhouse into the yard where he paused and listened, his nose sniffing the air for the scent of disturbance. Brent was a countryman and knew you could smell danger before you could see it. But no, the air told him nothing. Had it, after all, been merely shadows?

Quickly he ran across the yard to the stables. Ah, yes. Here he did sense danger; he could hear the sounds of restlessness within, a few snorts and whinnies. But it would not be the thoroughbreds, the hunting mares, that the thieves would be after. It would be the young yearlings in the field, half-tamed, unshown, unknown.

Brent listened for sounds from the castle that George and the servants had stirred; but there was nothing. He would have to act himself. He grasped a stout staff that stood against a shed and opened the door of the stall of his own stallion Marcus, who had brought him home only the week before. He made a gentle familiar noise so that Marcus should recognize him and not alert the thieves on this still night. There was no time for a bridle but Brent was an expert rider and, clasping the horse’s mane, sprung lightly on its back and gently urged it forward into the yard. He turned towards the field and, jumping over the gate, thundered across it.

Then it was as though hell had erupted. Simultaneously from the house came cries and the sound of many feet, whereas from the edge of the forest shadows materialized into running people, and riderless horses tethered together or single were driven into the direction of the far gate which was open. The running figures sprang onto the horses and urged them at a gallop across the field.

Pandemonium reigned. Some horses threatened to trip over the rest and the leader, who was near the gate, was cutting the riderless horses loose and urging the others to do the same.

‘Break loose! Break loose!’

But already several were beyond the gate, having cut loose already. The released horses shot back towards Brent and he had to avoid cannoning into them himself.

‘Hurry!’ shouted Brent over his shoulder, but already he knew it to be too late and cursed when he saw the useless gaggle of servants rush into the field waving staves and sticks.

A fierce hatred of the horse-thieves possessed Brent and he dug his heels into Marcus’s flanks. Although it was not his property they had been after, it was certainly not theirs.

Now all the riders were away, and Brent after them, but the riderless horses still tethered together got in his way. He pulled Marcus to a halt, dismounted and tried to seize the rope that hung from the neck of the leader of a riderless group when suddenly a mounted figure swept up to him and tried to snatch the rein from his hand. Helpless as he was, and disadvantaged, being on the ground, Brent caught at the wrist that had snatched the rope from him and held it in a vice-like grip, hearing a sharp exclamation of pain.