Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

‘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?’

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 …