The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) (29 page)

When she got back it was obvious that Nelly’s foot was swelling and she was feeling a degree of pain now that the reaction had set in. Although she smiled bravely she was pale and Mary could see a glimmer of tears bravely held back.

‘You must go to bed,’ she said immediately, ‘and rest your foot. I shall give you some laudanum to ease the pain.’

‘Bed?’ Nelly said faintly.

‘Yes a bed, to lie in and rest. When you are recovered you can be on your way to where you are going. Not before.’

She looked at Analee, who, she saw, was fascinated by the room and the view of the lake from the long low windows overlooking it. She had turned from Nelly and was gazing across at the forest of Lodore, and her face was temporarily transfigured by a look of sheer elation.

‘Very beautiful to live here,’ she said softly, ‘always within sight of the lake and the fells.’

‘Yes, we love it,’ Mary said gently. ‘Would you like to come up with your friend? Nat will carry her and you could help her into bed.’

Nelly stopped struggling and Analee gave in. Besides, she liked the house; it was not the sort of alien place she longed to get away from as she did most times when she was indoors. She felt a welcoming here, almost as if in some way she belonged to it. She was glad they were staying at least for today.

She followed Mary up the stairs into a beautiful room that overlooked the lake. In it was a four-poster bed and furniture that sparkled and shone from age and care. Analee loved the room immediately.

‘There,’ Mary said, ‘we had another invalid here and he recovered, though he was much more badly hurt. He said the view of the lake soothed him. Would you come downstairs and eat with us when you have finished ... What is your name?’

She looked at Analee awkwardly, the sentence incompleted.

‘Analee, I have no other name,’ she said simply, ‘just Analee the gypsy, and this is Nelly.’

‘I’m Mary, and my brother is Stewart. Now we know one another. Pray come and eat. There is a chemise in the drawer for Nelly and the sheets are clean and aired.’

She smiled and shut the door behind her. Analee and Nelly gazed at each other.

‘I don’t think I ever slept in one of these,’ Nelly said looking doubtfully at the bed, ‘why is it so high?’

‘So the rats don’t clamber up,’ Analee said laughing. She was suddenly possessed by a feeling of light-heartedness, an irrational sense of happy anticipation as though something nice were going to happen, ‘and this chemise is not for over your skirt. You take it off and put this on.’

‘Altogether?’
said Nelly incredulously. ‘I don’t remember when I last bared my skin.’

‘The
gadje
do it every night – yes, they change their clothes and lie in a bed like this.’

‘And these drapes,’ Nelly said wonderingly.

‘Sheets – one on top and one underneath.’

‘Well, I never.’

‘It may be the only time you will sleep in a bed,’ Analee said, ‘best make the most of it. Here, stretch out and I’ll help you.’

Quickly Analee divested Nelly of her clothes and assisted her to put her head through the long white chemise; then she drew back the sheets and helped her inside. Once or twice Nelly winced but finally there she was, covered by a sheet, propped up against the white pillow. She looked so ill at ease, so comical that Analee burst out laughing again. She gathered up Nelly’s things from the floor and put them across a chair. Then she took her cloak off and looked at herself in the mirror.

Analee hardly ever saw herself, being unused to mirrors in her wandering life. Occasionally she saw her face in the shiny surface of a tin or the clear waters of a lake when she leaned down to drink or wash.

She was surprised now, as she looked in the mirror, to see how unfamiliar her face had become. It looked to her much older, and more knowing in the ways of the world, since she had seen it last. But the sight did not displease her. She saw the way her hair shone and the healthy glow in her face. She bared her teeth and they were even and white, and when she smiled her full red mouth dimpled at either side.

She stroked her bust with her hands and noticed how firm it looked, much smaller now that the milk had gone. For days after leaving the baby she had to pump herself dry twice a day, for the pain was unbearable and her breasts were swollen and hard. But then the milk had dried up and now her breasts were as they had been before Morella was born.

The contemplation of her breasts reminded her of her baby, her loss, and Analee’s face became solemn. She lost interest in the sight of herself in the mirror and turned away. She saw that Nelly’s eyes were closed. Sleep would do her good.

Quietly Analee tip-toed out of the room.

There was an atmosphere in the house that Analee couldn’t comprehend. She who hated walls and stone and wood felt at peace here. She came down the staircase and into the broad hall. No one was about. She wandered into the long room overlooking the lake and stood gazing at the portraits of the family, hanging on the walls. There was definitely a strong family resemblance that ran through the line. But in the place of honour over the mantelpiece was a portrait of a man with dark beard and moustache, black piercing eyes. It was head and shoulders only, and the head was turned towards the painter so that the full force of his gaze, the sad expression in his eyes, made the viewer almost painfully aware of great, inexpressible suffering.

Analee stared at the portrait for some time, almost spellbound by it. But the sad man bore no resemblance at all to the tall, well built, blond Allonby ancestors.

‘It is Charles the Martyr,’ a gentle voice said behind her. ‘King Charles who died on the scaffold.’

‘Oh.’

Analee knew little about kings and politics, and nothing about Charles the Martyr.

‘We are supporters of the Stuart Kings of England here. It is King Charles’ great-grandson, Prince Charles, who has landed in Scotland to reclaim the throne.’

‘Oh?’ Analee looked at her with the interested expression of one always willing to learn. ‘I know naught about kings, and take care to keep clear of the law.’

‘Well,’ Mary said taking a seat by the window, her eyes looking alternately at Analee and the portrait on the wall, ‘England was ruled for a long time by the House of Stuart after King James VI of Scotland came to be James I of England ...’

‘He was from Scotland?’

‘Yes, but he was related through his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, to Queen Elizabeth I of England who had just died. It was ironical because Queen Elizabeth had Mary beheaded to keep her off the throne. Elizabeth was not married and had no heirs of her own body, or others close enough to succeed her. ‘Twas her aunt, Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII of England, who married King James IV of Scotland and their son James V of Scotland was the father of Mary Queen of Scots.’

Analee was listening intently. Mary, had a very musical voice and her grave expression and earnestness somehow compelled attention.

‘Thus!’ Mary laughed, ‘if you will pardon the history lesson, it was that the Stuarts came to the English throne in 1603. Ever since the Norman conquest our kings have always been succeeded by heirs of the body and so it continued until in 1688 there occurred a revolution in our country and the rightful King, James II of England, brother of Charles II – the merry monarch they called him – and son of our martyr King, fled abroad. I need not trouble you with the reason for the revolution, Analee, for ‘twas complex. King James sympathized with the Catholics, like all the Stuarts, but ever since Henry VIII and the Reformation the Catholics have been persecuted in this country and no monarch was allowed to be a Catholic ...’

Analee looked at the picture on the wall.

‘Oh King Charles I was sympathetic to our faith and they say Charles II converted on his deathbed. But King James was very influenced by his mother Henrietta Maria of France and he openly advocated that the Catholics should have the same rights as everyone else.

‘Well he was succeeded by his daughter Mary, a Protestant, and her husband William of Orange and they in turn by his second daughter Anne. Queen Anne was the last of the Stuarts, for Parliament had passed a law decreeing that only Protestants should ascend the English throne so that the Catholic Stuarts should be excluded, and the nearest heir was a fat old German prince called the Elector of Hanover whose mother had been a daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I of England and sister of King Charles I. So you can see how far back it went, how tenuous was the connection. The Prince could neither speak nor understand English and came with all his court to occupy the throne of our country ...’

Mary was near to tears, and Analee moved over to her but feared to show too much familiarity by touching her.

‘’Twas a scandal. King James II had died, but his son who was born here and was openly a Catholic living in France was the rightful heir to the throne of England, and we who supported him call him King James III.’

‘And is he still there?’ To Analee it did not appear right at all; gypsy rules of succession were very strict too.

‘Yes, an old man now, living sadly in Rome because even the French kings who used to support him would do so no longer. He it was who took part in the glorious rebellion of 1715, in which our family suffered so much, and it is
his
son Prince Charles Edward who has come now to act as regent and fight for his father’s throne!’

‘Oh may he succeed!’ Analee cried clasping her hands. ‘I can see it is so right!’

‘Yes it is, it is! We will drive these odious Germans back to Hanover from whence they came. Oh, Prince Charles is but twenty-four years of age, so bold and handsome, it is said. He came with only seven men and now all Scotland has flocked to him, and so will all England when he crosses the border and marches to London.’

‘Will he not be resisted?’

‘Oh, there will be some resistance,’ Mary said casually, ‘but they say that his charm and skill and also the fact he is undoubtedly the rightful heir will carry the day.’

Analee looked at the picture and suddenly there was a whirring sound in her head and she closed her eyes. She could hear the clash of swords, the sound of musket shot, the rasp of cannonballs. There were screams and cries ... she put her hands to her ears.

‘What is it, Analee?’ Mary grasped her arm, her face pale with concern, ‘are you ill?’

Analee swayed and the sounds abruptly stopped. She was looking steadily at the face of the King, as though nothing had happened. Then she turned to Mary and said gravely: ‘There will be much suffering ...’

‘Because of him? The Prince?’

‘Yes. For a moment I seemed to hear the rage of battle, cries and screams ...’

Mary gazed at her guest with wonder – this tall, strange gypsy woman with the bare feet and proud eyes.

‘Can you see into the future? Can it really be true?’ Analee shook her head.

‘I sometimes can see things, foretell them; but I am not
cohani,
that is a gypsy witch or woman of magic. But things that I often feel strongly about come true ... in my vision just now I seemed to see much distress for our own people, the gypsies.’

She put her hands to her face and looked at the picture again.

‘He was a good man?’

‘Oh, he was. Some say a foolish one, a stubborn one; but far far better than any Hanoverian.’

Analee smiled at the young girl, noting the set of the mouth, the hint of passion in her eyes. She was beautiful, and the brother was handsome, too. Analee wondered about the brother and sister living apparently with so few servants in this large house.

‘Would you like to walk by the lake?’ Mary said. ‘I can see it fascinates you.’

‘Yes it is very beautiful; and the mountains ...’ Analee looked across the water to Wella Crag. ‘You see I normally see everything from outside, not from the point of view of being inside a house. If you are always out of doors things look very different. That window is like ...’ she pointed to the pictures on the wall, ‘well, as though that scene is framed like one of those.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean. Like a picture.’

Mary led Analee into the hall and out of the wide front door. Almost immediately they could see the lake between the firs. It sparkled as though a handful of jewels, diamonds and sapphires, had been thrown carelessly into it and Analee shaded her eyes against the glare. It was a beautiful day; calm, gentle, serene, no cloud in the sky, not like autumn at all.

‘You live here alone with your brother?’

Analee was reluctant to appear curious and glanced at the girl walking beside her.

‘No, we have an elder brother John, who is not here today. He will be back soon. Our father died a few years ago. My mother when I was born ...’

‘Oh.’ Analee stopped and looked directly into Mary’s face. ‘My mother, too, died when I was born. You know I felt a strange harmony with you as soon as I saw you. Now maybe this is the reason. We have never known the love of a mother.’

Mary gazed at her strange companion and clasped her hands.

‘Oh, do you think so? Is it possible? Tell me about yourself, Analee, why you lead this life. There is something about you that is ... unexpected. You are not, for instance, like Nelly.’

‘I
am
a gypsy,’ Analee said simply, ‘a wandering gypsy woman. I have nothing special or secret about me. Maybe I have travelled more than someone like Nelly.’

‘Are you from overseas?’

Analee paused and looked towards the water; it was a question that people often asked her.

‘I? No. I was born here in this country. But as my mother died so young I was brought up by my grandmother and, yes, they came from overseas, from some far distant country – I know not which.’

‘From Spain or Italy. That is why you are so dark-skinned.’

‘Maybe,’ Analee smiled.

‘I have spent all my life by the shores of this lake. I never went further than Carlisle and that only once. I cannot comprehend what it is like to wander. Don’t you feel afraid?’

‘Afraid? No. I feel safer among nature than my own people ...’

Analee’s eyes were tinged with bitterness and her voice faltered. Mary sensed a sadness, but also a withdrawal on the part of Analee, as though she did not want to speak further about herself.