Alys Clare - The Enchanter's Forest

Joanna, who had been prepared for such a demand, smiled to herself in the faint light of the nightlight candle that they had left burning beside the bed. She turned on to her back, made herself comfortable and, supporting her head on her crossed arms, said, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘For a start,’ Sabin said, ‘what happened to your son?’

Joanna sighed. She had not been in Ninian’s happy company for three years now, although not a day went by that she did not think of him and send her love and her blessing to him. He would be nine years old this year. He was turning into a fine-looking boy; tall and with the promise of breadth and strength in his chest and shoulders, with his father’s brilliant blue eyes and penetrating, discomfiting stare. His hair, glossy and grown almost to his shoulders, had the colour and sheen of a ripe chestnut.

Joanna knew what her son looked like for she used her scrying bowl regularly, enduring the terrible, nauseous headache that always followed because it was worth the pain to watch her son growing up.

‘I gave my son into the care of strangers,’ she said baldly. ‘A place was found for him in the household of a good man, a knight to whom Ninian is page until the time comes for him to begin training as a squire.’

‘Why did you give him up?’ Sabin asked. ‘I know it’s quite customary for well-born boys to be raised in other men’s households, and I only ask because it’s quite clear how much you love your daughter. Loving your son equally, how could you bear to part with him?’

‘I had no choice!’ In her fervour Joanna spoke too loudly and Meggie stirred in her sleep. Reaching out to stroke the child’s forehead with a gentle hand, Joanna went on more quietly, ‘When I fled from Brittany I went to England, to seek out my — to find a woman who had looked after me when I was little, a servant in the house of my kin in England. She took me in and cared for me and taught me to live as she did.’

‘She was a wise woman?’ Sabin breathed.

‘Yes. That was the name given to her by those who live in the outside world. She was one of the forest people; as I have since learned, one of their Great Ones.’

Sabin was nodding her understanding. ‘And you became one of these Forest Folk too; that is why you look and seem so strange. Oh! I am sorry! That was very rude.’

Joanna was chuckling. ‘Rude but true,’ she acknowledged. ‘I had discovered what my destiny was; I think I had always known, although I did not set my foot on the path that was meant for me until I had lived for more than twenty years in another life, a very different one. But the life of a forest dweller was not right for my son, in whose veins flows royal blood.’

‘Whose?’ whispered Sabin.

Putting her lips right up against Sabin’s ear, Joanna told her and watched with amusement as her eyes widened. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. Then: ‘Does Ninian know?’

‘No, and nor will he, for almost all of the people who know the secret are dead.’ She shot Sabin a quick look. ‘You and I know, of course. .’

‘I won’t tell!’ Sabin shook her head vigorously.

‘I know,’ Joanna replied serenely. ‘That’s why I told you.’

‘In time, then, your son will grow up and become a knight,’ Sabin went on, apparently unaware of how great a compliment Joanna had just paid her, ‘and — will you know how he turns out and what he does when he’s a man? Have you — can you see him?’

So Joanna explained about scrying. Again, Sabin’s astonishment was wonderful to watch. ‘I have heard tell of such things,’ she said wonderingly, ‘but never thought to meet and share my bed with one who can actually do them.’

Joanna knew what Sabin would say next before the words were uttered.

‘Can you do some magic now?’ she asked in an excited whisper.

‘What shall I do?’ Joanna whispered back. ‘Conjure a spirit? Turn you into a badger? Make a flying potion so that you and I can fly high over Dinan and watch the good people settle down in their beds for the night?’

‘You can do these things?’

Joanna laughed, and the tension broke. ‘No. Well, I could make you believe that I was doing them, but that is not quite the same thing. They’re just tricks, Sabin. The true power is saved for when it is really needed and it comes at a heavy price.’

‘You saved the Abbess!’ Sabin exclaimed. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? There was a lot of talk about this mystery woman who came in the night and brought Abbess Helewise back from the dead.’

‘She wasn’t actually dead,’ Joanna murmured.

Sabin was looking at her with deep admiration. ‘I’m honoured to be with you,’ she said simply.

Joanna, embarrassed as she always was when the subject of her strange powers was discussed, paused for a steadying breath and then said, ‘Sabin, the honour is mine. Your quick thinking and your courage saved my life this evening. If ever you are in need, remember that you have a friend out in the forest. You’ll be living quite close once you are settled in Tonbridge and all you will have to do is go to the Abbey and ask for me; there are those in the community who know how to get in touch with me.’

‘I shall not forget.’ Sabin’s voice was husky with emotion. After a pause — it was as if both of them needed a moment — she said, ‘Meggie must have been born after you began your life in the forest.’

‘Yes. She was born in the little hut deep within the shelter of the trees where I live.’

‘You bore her alone?’ Sabin sounded horrified. ‘Weren’t you very scared?’

Joanna smiled. ‘I was scared, yes, as I believe all women are in childbed. But I had good friends with me and they reassured me and braced me when the pain seemed too much to bear and my courage was low.’

‘Women of the forest?’

‘One was an elder of our people; the other was a nun.’

‘From Hawkenlye?’

Joanna chuckled. ‘Of course.’

They had been hedging round the question that Joanna knew Sabin burned to ask. But when it came, it was not in the form that Joanna had expected. Perhaps it was the intimacy of lying in the half-darkness together; perhaps — and this, Joanna thought, was the more likely — it was just that Sabin was a woman who spoke her mind.

She said, ‘Meggie is Josse’s child, isn’t she?’

Joanna hesitated only for an instant. Then she said quietly, ‘Yes.’

‘Yet you do not make your lives together and, when in each other’s company in public, you behave civilly but distantly towards each other as if you were mere acquaintances.’

‘It is because. .’ Joanna paused to think. Then: ‘Josse and I lead such different lives. We could not make one another happy, for to live together one of us would have to give up the life they have chosen.’

‘Is there no compromise?’ Sabin asked.

‘There’s- No.’ Joanna spoke with finality.

‘Does he know that she’s his child?’ Sabin’s voice had dropped as if she feared the sleeping Meggie might overhear.

‘Yes. He found out last year, when the sickness came.’ Turning to look at Sabin, she said, ‘How did you find out?’

Now it was Sabin who laughed. ‘It’s obvious, for they are so alike. Not that I realised immediately — for a long time I was in awe of you and did not like to stare at either you or your child, enchanting though she is. I suspected one day on the Goddess of the Dawn when I heard Meggie laugh, because she sounded like a treble version of Josse. Then tonight, when she sat on his lap and he made that little stick man for her, they had their heads close together and they were both intent on the plaything. I saw that their eyes are the same shape and colour — that particular sort of brown with golden lights in it, like sunshine on peaty water. Then I knew for sure.’