‘What is it you want?’
Beatrice was no fool and realised that by going behind Loys’ back to this woman she was taking a great risk. Lady Styliane had said she herself knew ‘a little’ of magic and pagan practices, which Beatrice recognised as a coded invitation to talk about these things.
‘My husband is greatly burdened by his task of office.’
‘It is no surprise. The waters of this court seem still to the outsider but they teem with dangerous currents.’
‘Quite so. But there has been a development.’
Could she trust the lady? She had no one else to turn to. The Church? The priests of this place were strange and did not speak her language, and anyway she had always needed to be dragged to church by her maid. It was not her instinct to confide in holy men but in other ladies.
‘What sort of development?’
‘Someone has come looking for us.’
‘You are under my protection, and in the palace no one can harm you.’
‘I just need your advice. Your husband made a study of demons.’
‘He wrote a book on them before he died.’
‘Is it possible a demon can come out of hell to walk the earth as a man?’
‘Demons are full of tricks. I think it might be.’
‘I have dreams. I have always had dreams, and they concern something that is looking for me. In the dream it is a wolf but it is also a man at the same time.’
‘Half man, half wolf?’
‘No, not exactly. It appears as a wolf but in the dream I know it to be a man, or it appears as a man but he has a violence in his eyes that tells me he is a wolf.’
‘This is the development?’
‘No. My husband’s friend came here to warn us of an assassin stalking us. The friend was cruelly imprisoned. I had never seen this man before he came here but I know him. He is the one from my dreams. He is a wolf and a man at the same time.’
‘Your husband released the scholar Azemar from prison as a quaestor conducting an investigation. I have no power to put him back in there.’
‘It was you who imprisoned him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘ “Why?” is not a question guests of the palace address to great ladies.’ Her face was stern in the candlelight.
‘You are angry he has been released?’
Again the lady said nothing. Beatrice needed to confide in her.
‘I left my home to get away from him. I had a fever that nearly cost me my life, and in it I saw him, in terrible dreams. I wonder if Loys’ investigation into these magical abuses hasn’t called him forth by error.’
‘When one gazes into hell, hell gazes back at you,’ said Styliane.
‘Exactly,’ said Beatrice, ‘so is it possible hell regards Loys as an enemy and is moving to stop him?’
‘I thought this man was his friend. He has done nothing to hurt him so far.’
‘Demons are in no hurry, so my nursemaid told me.’
The lady thought for a moment.
‘My brother’s choice of your husband seemed at first to me to be a political one.’
‘In what way?’
‘He is a foreigner and an outsider. Difficult for a man like that to make any progress here. Lady Beatrice, your life is under many threats; to add one more would seem only a small matter.’
‘I don’t understand you, lady.’
‘If I confide in you and you betray my trust — to anyone, including your husband — then you will not live to see the dawn, should it ever come under this black sky.’
‘I am trustworthy.’
‘I find it interesting my brother chose your husband. I find it interesting this man you perceive to be a wolf has come.’
‘He is working for your brother too?’
‘There are greater bonds in the world than those of money, or of duty or of kin.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The wolf is important to my brother. It’s something he spoke of many times when we were growing up. Is it possible there is a magical bond between my brother and your wolfman?’
‘How so?’
‘Well, there’s the question. It might be useful, given you seem central to all this, to ask some questions of you, to explore why this man has troubled your dreams.’
‘Any there are, I will answer gladly.’
‘It is not easy, though it could be done tonight if you are willing.’
‘What done?’
‘What do you believe of God?’
‘In one God, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God-’
Styliane put up her hand. ‘Spare me the creed. In God, Jesus his son and the holy spirit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you find it possible to believe God was worshipped in this way for many years before Christ?’
‘No, because Christ was born one thousand years ago. He could not have been worshipped in that way before.’
‘Perhaps the Bible is only one telling of a much longer story. It is not so much about people and things — how Jesus was sent by Pilate to die — but of the fundamental nature of eternal God. How the divine nature is threefold, how God suffers for his power.’
‘I am not a philosopher, lady.’
Lady Styliane raised an eyebrow. ‘But you know sacrilege when you hear it?’
Beatrice bowed her head. ‘I only want an answer to why I feel such dread when I look at the man my husband has rescued.’
Lady Styliane put her hand on Beatrice’s.
‘I am willing to help you. I have examined that man before. I saw him coming here too. It is no surprise to me he is free. Imprisonment was only ever a temporary measure. What to do? What to do?’
‘How did you see him coming here? In dreams?’
‘In something like them. It is possible to choose to dream if you know the way. When I was brought to this palace I was three years old — a child of the slums. I was raised correctly and in the ways of Christ. There are other ways and ideas here. My brother arranged for me to be adopted by a noble family, but perhaps the chamberlain, arranger of fates, was himself arranged. I was taken in by one of the city’s oldest families. They were Christian people but their slaves had been with the family for generations. They had come from Egypt years before and kept some old traditions in secret. I was raised to understand the things my mother would have taught me, had she lived.’
‘Your mother the sorceress?’
‘Hardly. Just a woman of insight who kept the old ways, from what I’m told. I heard the rumours about our family. When I came of age my family’s maid took me to the hillside and under the sickle moon she showed me the rites I had been denied by my adoption.’
Beatrice crossed herself.
‘So it is you who is in league with devils?’
‘No. I believe in Christ, who died for our sins but I know God cannot be limited to one form or one expression. So I know too he walks with the moon as his lamp in the form of Hecate, goddess of the gateways, lighting the way to the lands of the dead, lighting the way from the lands of the dead.’
