Lilah (33 page)

We followed the river, crossing the plateaus
with grass burnt yellow from the frosts, and soon reaching grasslands bordered
by ancient oaks and giant poplars. The grass became thick like carpet and the
horses were happy with plenty to eat. At one point we encountered two bears,
which at first I found frightening, but Gabriel laughed and reminded me that
animals would not harm us. They can read our thoughts and believe us to be one
of their own. Or, if Gabriel chose, he could disappear beneath their gazes so
they were left to wonder what animal it was that moved at such a speed.

Finally, we entered the lush forest and a
delicious tangy scent overpowered my already heightened senses. The leafy
canopies made our travels cool from the midday sun.

Winter had been gone for several weeks and we
drank from the thawing brooks where the water was clear over round and coloured
stone. Once we stayed a while so that I could bathe in private while Gabriel
searched for food. He returned with a stolen goat, and skinned and roasted it
over the fire.

Sometimes we cantered the horses and other times
walked them slowly. A hare shot across the path and I suddenly thought of
Oleander who did not easily startle, rather she would have viewed the animal
with curious giggles. I suddenly missed her.

Gabriel had seen the shadow cross my face. He
never failed to sense my mood. ‘Do you feel anything at all for Lewis?’

I was surprised by such a personal question and
saw his slight regret after such a long pause.

‘Certain feelings have been necessary for the
sake of Oleander,’ I said. ‘I cannot ignore the fact that he has been good to
me.’

He frowned at this response as if expecting
something more contrary, as if he was hoping for another admission on my part.
A sense of caution passed through me. My heart was still not mended and I could
not let it distract me from my purpose: to not only find my family and receive
the answers I had been yearning, but escape my strigoi prison.

We came upon a small farmhouse. Gabriel seemed
curious about the occupants and told me that he could hear their conversations
in his head. He smiled as he revealed that the husband and wife were arguing
over another young girl from a nearby village who came to milk for them and
help on the farm. It seemed that the girl was now with child and the wife
believed it was her husband.

‘Well, we won’t seek their hospitality then,’
he humoured.

I turned to suppress a smile.

‘Don’t look for comfort for the night on my
behalf. I am happy to sleep under the stars.’

And that is what we did. We lay beside each
other as the near full moon rose. The nightingales sang and I whispered to the
horses not to wander during the night.

‘Is my father a good man?’

There was pause from Gabriel before he
answered. ‘Yes.’

‘Will he like me?’

‘He never stopped loving you.’

This time I did sleep well and woke to the sun
stretching cautiously towards us through the gaps in the trees. We continued
our travels a few miles further to come upon a village. The air smelled strange
and Gabriel told me that it was the salt air from the Adriatic Sea.

At the market stalls Gabriel introduced me as
his wife and talked easily with a vendor. He bought some smoked meats and a
bowl of milk and barley. With my stomach full I was ready for the remainder of
our journey.

We rode for the whole day and arrived in
Dalmatia at nightfall.

Gabriel

She looked surprised. I had said too
much.

‘I thought it was my father’s place you were
taking me to.’

‘It was,’ I said. ‘Here you will meet your
grandmother and learn of your past.’

‘Was? You mean I will not see him here?’ Her neck
and cheeks flushed with anger. ‘I don’t understand why everyone has to keep
secrets from me.’

We slowed our horses; there were matters I
needed to tell her. I chose not to disclose too early into our journey for she
would worry and, selfishly, our journey would have been miserable. I was both
grateful and surprised that she had not questioned me too much until now.

‘The rest of your family lives elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere?’ She
reigned
her horse to face me directly. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘This isn’t easy for me
either. I am breaking a promise I made to your father many years ago.’

‘I don’t understand. You said he loves me. Why
wouldn’t he want me to return?’

‘Please Lilah,’ he said. ‘I sent word to your
grandmother. She is expecting us and she will tell you everything.’

It was cowardly but I had left much unsaid.
This lack of information alarmed her and led to frostiness and, once again our
tenuous relationship had returned.

We came to a field and just above the trees I
espied Beatrice’s castle, former wife of King Andrew, now spurned, accused by
her dead husband’s brother of being an adulteress and a liar; her son a
bastard. She would have killed them all but instead chose to take her son,
Stephen, to safety
;
the son who should have ruled the
Kingdom of Hungary. I could never understand the human need for power and
privilege but did not understand what it was to lose something as Beatrice had.

Several years later, her husband dead and
Beatrice now in exile, she sought out Lewis to convert to the strigoi. Though
ever restless, she quickly broke away from the coven, preferring danger and
independence. Because of her desertion she would no longer be welcome at any
coven.

Her castle was surrounded by water for
protection and we crossed a bridge towards the entrance. It was not as grand as
Lewis’s, with only two levels, and without the spires and turrets, but had many
small balconies so that she could see across the vast farming lands on the
river and beyond that to the sea. Stone sections of various colours had been
added over the years. Here Beatrice had held dinners with high profile
supporters who would see the end of Laszlo our king, but all those efforts had
amounted to nothing after all. It was another point of contention with Beatrice
that Lewis did not grant her wishes to intervene with Laszlo’s reign, and allow
her son the crown.

I remembered the day Stephen showed me his new
daughter. I was here at the castle. I had met Beatrice in my hunt and was
instantly infatuated, so confident and knowledgeable was she on all matters. I
was fresh from my sleep and living in my age-reduced
seventeen
year old
body and eager for company. Beatrice was just the one to ease
me back into the fold.

Stephen, Lilah’s father, and Tomasina, his
wife, once lived with Beatrice. When Lilah was born, Stephen had asked me what
I thought and I had seen straight away. Stephen said his mother had refused to
tell him but he had to know.

I told him what he did not want to hear.

‘I cannot let this happen.’

‘But it will be her destiny as a witch.’

‘If that were all.
Mama will encourage the dark
practices. I cannot allow it. She was disappointed that I have turned my back
on such arts and she will see the skill resurrected in her granddaughter. You
must take her somewhere pure.’

I was shocked at the desperation in his voice.

‘But what about your wife?
What does she want?’

‘It is not about that. She will be
disappointed, of course, but she has spurned my mother and it will only be a
matter of time before she will treat her daughter also with much scorn, once
she sees the truth of her. She is a religious woman like myself. She will
choose God over her own blood.’

At that point Tomasina came into the room to
take her tiny daughter. Her eyes were red and she carried another baby in her
arms, less robust than the girl whose skin was rosy and eyes so bright. I could
see that the boy would not have the skill.

‘Tomasina,’ I pleaded. ‘You must talk sense
with your husband. You must not forsake your own child.’

‘I have pleaded with him but it is to no
avail.’ She darted a look at her husband. ‘But ultimately he is right. I cannot
live wondering if she will end up like her vile grandmother and you.’

It was clear she did not like me but it was not
unusual. To her I was untamed. She thought of us as unscrupulous beasts: our
treatment of humans as those who served, or those who served as supper. She did
not know that I respected her kind as well.

‘Please don’t talk like that Tomasina,’
defended Stephen. ‘Gabriel is a friend.’

‘Exactly why I shouldn’t trust him,’ she had
said and it is only now having known Beatrice that I can fully understand what
she meant.

He turned to me. ‘I have only known you a short
while but even though we have chosen different pathways, we are bonded by blood
and I also feel I can trust you. You are different from many: strigoi, witch
and human. For instance you choose to listen. Many of your kind are too vain to
do so.’

It was only a few short weeks later that I came
to collect the baby. Tomasina did not wail or cry this time. It was Stephen who
found it hard to let her go.

‘You must protect her. You must not let her
become one of you.’

It seems strange to me even now for I like who
I am. Stephen had forsaken the skill in every way, praying at church to his God
for forgiveness, believing that he was a descendant from hell. Another strigoi
may have tossed the baby in the river, so insulted by this man. But I tolerated
his ignorance, his piety, and the fact that he had only ever shown kindness
towards me, albeit at a safe distance.

I had taken Lilah to the church in Güs. And
just as she is now she did not complain once during the journey but watched me
with her eyes, so full of questions that could not yet be articulated. I had
watched the nuns bring her in from the steps and then I left for many years
before returning to find her thriving beside the lovely Arianne. Lilah’s
location at the monastery was kept from Lewis, who was keen to convert many
witches at the time.

To be enamoured by the fair young Arianne had
not been in my plans. But when
Lilah was cast out by those
humans to whom Stephen entrusted her safety, and thrown to a miserable fate, I
felt compelled to bring her to the castle; and the door was then open to
release Arianne as well
. At the time, nowhere else seemed safer. I found
some peace knowing that Lilah was strong enough not to succumb to her father’s
worst fear for her. But that she had borne Lewis’s child – the child of a
strigoi – Stephen would be turning in his grave.

Across the moat, the castle doors loomed below
many small windows built into two-foot thick walls of stone and I sensed that
Beatrice was watching us.
We were ushered inside by a footman
:
another human soul destined to serve us for the entirety of his life.

Marble columns etched with Egyptian
hieroglyphics lined the entrance, and Roman paintings of the crucifixion and
other religious celebrations covered the walls and ceiling. I laughed at the
irony for Beatrice had tried very hard to fit in as a human her entire life,
even marrying one. She had felt the weight of her husband’s death, not from the
loss of his company but with the end of her royal role, and it was her son whom
she had cared about most.

Seated on plush velvet covered cushions we
waited for what seemed like an hour. Beatrice made a dramatic entrance, with
the double doors opening in unison, and several maids and servants in tow. She
wore a fitted black velvet gown with puffed sleeves off the shoulder, and a
train at the back. Her hair was pulled sharply to the back of her head. Green
crystal hung from her ears and around her neck. Her beauty was renowned and she
looked younger than I remembered. She had not long come from a decade of sleep
in the ground.

I bowed in greeting.

‘It has been a long time,’ she said.

‘Where is your personal assistant?’ Beatrice
had a young companion with her the last time I saw her, before she went in the
earth.

‘Dead. He was too old to keep up with me and
requested that I send him to what he foolishly believed was a better place.
Humans and witches are such strange creatures believing that life beyond this
earth will be better.’

‘We cannot know for certain,’ I said. ‘Our own
strigoi history says that we are originally from heaven.’

‘Well if there is a heaven, why would anyone
want to float around with angels? It would be dreadfully boring and too much
goodness would be impossible to live with.’

I laughed at Beatrice; she had not changed. She
answered to
no-one
.

We embraced and her exotic herbal perfume hung
in the air around us. ‘You look younger,’ I said

‘You look older,’ she said

‘Beatrice, this is Lilah, Stephen’s child.
Lilah, after so many years I know you will want to meet your grandmother.’

Lilah’s eyes did not hide her surprise.
Beatrice looked barely older than her granddaughter. But the resemblance was
clearly there. Though Beatrice wore much makeup and high penned eyebrows, the
long angular cheeks and almond eyes showed their kinship.