‘How does she know that?’ said Beatrice.
‘I can feel it,’ said Arrudiya.
‘Why is she here?’ said Beatrice.
‘Because God sees things in threes,’ said Styliane, ‘and God is three.’
‘Moon, earth and underworld,’ said Arrudiya, ‘past, present, future. Father, son, spirit; virgin, mother, crone.’
Beatrice didn’t want to hear any more. She sat, waiting for the brazier’s light to weaken. It didn’t take long, and soon it was reduced to glowing coals, a tight cluster of light buried in the great darkness.
Eventually the old woman came to her. She poured something from a flask onto her hands and anointed Beatrice’s eyes.
‘Water from a shipwreck,’ she said.
She took out another flask and put it to Beatrice’s lips.
‘Drink,’ she said.
Beatrice did as she was asked. The drink was honey water but with a bitter musty taste behind it.
‘What is this?’
‘Kykeon, as our forebears drank,’ said the woman, ‘made with Syrian rue.’
Then the two other women sat down around the fire, equidistant from each other and Beatrice, and intoned in a low drone:
‘Wherefore they call you Hecate, many-named, air-cleaving, night-shining, triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced, triple-faced, triple-necked, and goddess of the three ways, who holds untiring flaming fire in baskets three, you who protect the spacious world at night, before whom demons quake in fear and the gods immortal tremble. Subduer and subdued, mankind’s subduer, and force-subduer; chaos, too. Hail, Goddess.’
Beatrice hated the invocation. She concentrated on prayer, on calling Christ to protect her, to save her soul. But she did not move; she wanted revelation.
The old woman threw a handful of something onto the coals and they flared. ‘I burn for you this spice, goddess of harbours, who roams the mountains, goddess of crossroads, nether and nocturnal, and infernal goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one.’
Beatrice found she was repeatedly crossing herself.
‘You who have your meal amid graves, night, darkness, chaos deep and wide, hard to escape are you. You are torment, justice and destroyer. Serpent-girded, who drinks blood, who brings death; destructor, who feasts on hearts.’
Beatrice coughed and fell forward on to her hands. Her nose was streaming and her throat was dry.
‘Flesh eater, who devours those dead untimely, and you who make grief resound and spread madness, come to my sacrifices, and now for me do you fulfil this matter. Shall we speak about the things not to be spoken of? Shall we divulge the things not to be divulged? Shall we pronounce the things not to be pronounced?’
The fire was suddenly bright again and Beatrice tried to get up, but her body seemed fixed to the floor.
‘Grant us revelation,’ continued the chant, ‘open our eyes and chase away the night, wandering lady, bright Selene.’
The moon had come out from behind a cloud, full and bright — much brighter than it had ever been, she thought — as if it resented its long time cloaked in black and was redoubling its light in joy at its release.
When she looked back down again, she was no longer on the rooftop. She was in the place by the river she went to in her dreams but not on the path by the wall; she was in the deep wood beside it. Styliane and Arrudiya sat on the ground next to her, each holding a small candle. Something crashed and bumped in the woods. A creature, she thought. A weird sense between hearing and touch, not quite either, had sprung up in her and the presence of the creature seemed hot and snuffling, as if hot and snuffling were the same thing.
‘How do I find my answer? How do I find his purpose?’
Styliane and Arrudiya gave no reply, just sat staring ahead.
Beatrice had a very strong urge to get out of those woods. The blundering thing wasn’t the only presence in there. She stood. She saw nothing but trees and darkness; the moon was caught in the branches, her own hands glowing pale in its light. She walked forward, pushing away branches and briars. Something was behind her. She turned. Nothing. She wanted to get onto the path, to go to those little candles in the wall and see they still burned. That was unaccountably very important to her.
Ahead the river shone like a silver road. She headed for it, her clothes tearing on the brambles, her skin scratched and cut by thorns.
She heard rustling in the woods behind her. She pulled and tugged her way forward, the baby heavy inside her even in the dreamworld.
You are going to the well. The voice was in her ear, more a whisper of the trees than anything human.
‘I will resist my fate.’
You are fate. Say your name, Verthani.
‘I do not know that name.’
Three wise girls come from the hall beneath the tree.
One is called Urdr, Fated so men call her;
Another Becoming, Verthani is her name;
Skuld — Must Be — is the third. Together
They carve on tablets of wood the fate of men.
Something stirred inside her and it was not the baby. That symbol. It crawled and writhed, gnawed at her like a wolf in her guts.
She made the path. Footsteps were coming the other way. It was a boy, a youth — the one who had visited Loys in their chamber.
He was walking towards the candle wall but he stopped when he saw her.
‘You are here, lady,’ he said, gesturing to the wall. ‘Shall I snuff you out?’
All around the boy, like things glimpsed at the end of a dream, half-seen, coming into existence, fading and returning like sleep spectres, symbols shone and span. She recognised them — Norse runes of the sort some of her father’s men liked to carve though these were things of air and light and fire and darkness, not designs in wood.
‘Who are you?’
‘I don’t know. I know what I do here but I don’t know who I am.’
‘You are the one who came to my husband in our chambers.’
‘Yes, Snake in the Eye. That is certainly one of my names, though I begin to suspect I have others.’
‘How so?’
‘There are things inside me, living things. They woke up when I turned to Christ. I am baptised now. They bathed me in the waters and then I baptised myself again in the priest’s blood to be doubly holy. Am I not holy?’
‘I am here to seek answers. Who is the man my husband took from the Numera? What is the meaning of the black sky? And the deaths?’
‘Three questions. A suitable number for a god. I only know one answer.’
‘What is it?’
‘The deaths have no meaning. I find them pleasing, that is all.’
‘You are their cause?’
‘Yes. I come here in my fancies and I blow out the lights. Men die. I see four here, one little one for your child. There are others with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Reveal them to me.’
‘They are in the wood.’
‘Who?’
‘Two women. They brought me here.’
‘I don’t suppose I need to see them to kill them. Here!’ He leaned into the wall and blew out one of the candles. Then he put his hand to his ear. ‘Heard no one fall. I’ll blow out another and you listen. Unless it’s you who falls, of course. I wonder if I kill the baby whether it’ll kill you. Hmmm.’
