Robert Silverberg - Lord of Darkness

I trembled and shrank back and threw up my hands, and cried out, “God’s death, woman, are you a sorcerer now?”

“Andrew—” cried my stepmother, afraid. “Andrew, what ails you?”

The girl, in fright at my wild outburst or perhaps at my rough looks, did back away most timidly, she who had been smiling a moment before.

“How can this be?” said I in a thick and fearful voice. “She is unchanged, in one-and-twenty years! What nganga- work is this, what wizardry?”

My stepmother, understanding now, came to me and said in a sharp short voice, “The sun has addled your wits, boy! D’ye take her for your Anne Katherine?”

“She is the very image.”

“That she is. But it’s folly to take the image for the reality. Girl, tell him your name.”

“Kate Elizabeth,” answered she in a tiny voice, but sweet.

“And your parentage?”

“The daughter of Richard Hooker and Anne Katherine Hooker, that was Anne Katherine Sawyer before.”

“Ah,” said I. “Her daughter! Now is it made clear! But you are just like her, Kate Elizabeth!”

“So it is often said. Only they tell me she was beautiful, and I think I am not so beautiful as she was.”

“Was?”

“Aye,” said the girl, “my mother is long dead.”

“Ah,” said I. I came a little closer to her, and looked, and said, “I thought you were her image, but it is not so. For you are even more fair than your mother, girl.”

Color blossomed in her cheeks, and she looked away. But she was smiling. And excited, for her breasts did rise and fall most swiftly beneath her frock, as I could not help but see.

“And when did your mother die?” I asked.

“It was seven years Michaelmas.”

“I will visit her grave. You know, that she and I were once betrothed?”

“I heard tell, there was that sailor she loved, that went to America apirating.”

“I was that sailor.”

“Yes,” she said. “That I know.” Her shyness and her fear of me were melting swiftly. She touched the pearl and said, “My mother often spoke of you, when I was a child. She said you gave her this, and promised to come back from the Spanish Main with caskets of doubloons, but that you were lost at sea, and perished in some raid against the Brazils.”

“Ah. So it was reported, eh?”

“She would not believe it, when they said you were dead. She waited long for you, looking toward the sea, hoping you would come in from Plymouth some afternoon.”

“This is true, Andrew,” said my stepmother Cecily. “Every day did she go down to the water, and look, and pray. And she was urged to marry, but she said she would not. Until at last it was certain you must be dead, and then she did at last bestow herself to Richard Hooker, the lawyer’s son.”

“I think I recall him. A dark-haired man, very brawny, with a gleaming good smile?”

“Aye, that was he!” cried the girl.

“I trust he cherished her well, then.”

“Aye, he was a most loving husband. And he gave her two sons and a daughter, and then she died, and he was sore bereft. Which I think led to his too early death as well.”

“Then he is also gone. I see.”

“These three years past.”

“How old are you, girl?”

“Fifteen, sir.”

“Fifteen. Aye. And you keep the household yourself, as the eldest?”

“That I do,” said she.

Fifteen. Well, and then Anne Katherine must have waited three or four years in hope of me, and then had yielded to Hooker’s suit in ‘92 or ‘93, if this girl had been born by ‘95. So I did calculate. Well, and that was as good a display of love as anyone need make, to wait those many years. And I was not grieved that she had married at last, for had I not done the like, with my Kulachinga and my Inizanda, and also my Matamba and my Dona Teresa, that never were my wives, but might just as well have been?

I said, “This gives me great pleasure, to see that my Anne Katherine is reborn in you, with all her grace and beauty unaltered, or perhaps enhanced.”

“You are very kind, sir.”

My stepmother said, “Kate, have the goodness to go outside a moment, will you, girl?”

She curtseyed and departed; and when she was gone, Mother Cecily did say, “It is almost like sorcery, is it not, Andrew? She is Anne Katherine come again, indeed. I comprehend now why you looked so amazed when I fetched her.”

“Aye. The same age, even, as when first I fell in love with her mother.”

“She is fatherless, and bears the toll of keeping her house.”

“So she just has said, aye.”

“And you are far from young, and newly returned from great adventures, and I think would settle down and spend your years quietly.”

“So I would, Mother Cecily.”

“Well, then—”

I looked to her in utter amaze. “What are you saying?”

“Is it not plain?”

“That I am to take her as wife?”

“Ah, you are slow, Andrew, but you do find the answer in time.”

I scarce believed mine ears. She was altogether serious. I blinked and gaped, and imagined myself in the marriage bed with that girl, the old leathery hide of me rubbing against her tender bare skin, and my hand that had groped so many strange places probing her maiden fleece, and my yard that had warmed itself by Jaqqa loins and so many others gliding into her tender harbor—aye, it was tempting, but it was also monstrous, was it not, such a mating of April and November! I played the idea in my mind as I had played the bringing of the nun Sister Isabel to England, and found it just as impossible. And shook my head, and turned to my stepmother, and said softly, “She is not Anne Katherine. And I am not the Andy Battell of five-and-twenty years ago, that gave Anne Katherine that pearl. I do love this child, but not as my wife, Mother Cecily. I could not ask that of her.”

“I told her you might ask it, when I went to fetch her.”

“You did?”

“She is of an age, almost. You would be husband and father to her at once. I thought it was a good match.”

“And did she?”

“So I believe. Though you dismayed her a little, with your wild hair and beard, and that cry you made, when she came in. But you were taken then by surprise; and the hair can be trimmed.”

“Nay,” I said. “It is beyond thinking.”

“She would do it.”

“So I know. But I could not. It would not fit my sense of the Tightness of things. But I have a different idea. Summon her back, Mother Cecily.”

Which she did, and the girl came into the room, and I saw the fear still in her eyes; for I knew she would marry me if I asked, since she needed a man’s protection, but that she did not greatly crave so old and worn and rough a seafarer as I.

I said, “Kate, I have come home to live, and I am weary by my adventures, and I would not live alone. Will you dwell with me, and be my daughter?”

“Your—daughter?”

“Aye. The child I might have had by Anne Katherine, had fate treated us another way. For I have no one else, save old Mother Cecily and this black boy my servant. And this world of England now is greatly strange to me. So we can aid one another, you and I, in facing the mysteries ahead, for that I have some hard-won wisdom, and you have youth and vigor. If you share my house we can share our efforts and our strengths. Shall we?”

“Your daughter,” she said in wonder.

“Stepdaughter, let us say. I will adopt you as mine own. Will it be thus, Kate Elizabeth?”

“Aye,” she said. “Aye, let us do that, for I like it very much!”

And her eyes did glow with happiness, as much, I trow, of relief as of joy.

Thus have we lived, these three years past, in the old house of the Battells: Kate Elizabeth in her bedroom and I in mine, and Mother Cecily in her own, until death came for her last Easter quietly in her sleep. Kate Elizabeth cares for me, and I for her, and we both for her two young brothers and my blackamoor Francis, who serves us well. And to the world we are father and daughter, and so shall we be until some swain comes and takes her from me. Which I suppose will be any month now, so much courting does she do.