The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (summer reads txt) 📗

opened it, and a crack of lightning lit the sky, striking a tree just beyond the clearing in front of the cottage. The roll of thunder shook the walls.

“Are you coming?” the woman called.

Isabella looked at the rain outside, now a veritable deluge. She could not imagine finding her way back to the carriage in the dark, let alone in a storm such as this. Hesitantly, she closed the door and turned toward the basement.

Was it to be the place whispered about town? A cellar of potions and spellcraft? If it were, ’twould be exactly the spot Isabella had to come to find. She held her breath, then let it out in a single, long stream.

“I come,” she said.

Chapter 3

The ladder descended into a large cellar lined with round stones and supported with thick, wooden columns. Light issued from a dozen candelabras, illuminating coin-sized gemstones of every shape and color along the walls, though not even this was the room’s most dazzling feature. About the ceiling were thousands upon thousands of colored strings. They wove round one another in beautiful, intricate patterns, intersecting to form pictures in the squares between ceiling joists. There were images of the stars and the heavens, of the fields and cliffs, of the streets of Annapolis, and the ports of the northern cities. Isabella once again found herself taken with wonder, spinning about the enclosure as if she were once more a little girl in the market square.

She looked at the woman. “You’re the Lady of the Hill.” Saying it so baldly brought another twinge of fear, but she had made her choice the moment she chose to descend the ladder. There was no turning back.

The woman leaned against one of the columns, dark, and beautiful, and somehow ageless in the dancing light. Her right hand was now visible, draped against the column to display its true character. It was a mangled, grotesque thing.

“I was questioned about my proclivities some years ago by a priest of His Royal Majesty, King William. It was a mistake I do not wish to repeat, which is why I live up here in the wind.”

“What are your…proclivities?” Isabella asked, not all sure she wanted to know. In the corners of her village, it was whispered the Lady was a healer. ’Twas also said she could end a man’s life with a flick of her wrist, and that she shared her bed with demons and incubi.

The woman smiled. “You haven’t told me why you’ve come, child.”

“Haven’t I?”

“Ah, yes, your father. You said he was ill. Tell me of him.”

Isabella found herself unsure how much she wanted to reveal. Then she realized how foolish a thought this was, if she were to have any hope of completing the task at hand. “He is an educated man. From Oxford. The only lawyer this side of the Chesapeake, he tells me. He is the head of our town council. He is a partner at the saw mill, the one in our town. In Blackfriar.”

“I know the one. Tell me of his illness.”

“We have a chicken coop in the yard. Just half a dozen hens to help with the vermin. He was out feeding them one evening, and he fell. I couldn’t wake him. I tried to get the doctor. I ran across town to get him, pounded on the door, and Doctor Moberrey wouldn’t wake up. So I went back to our yard, and my father had risen on his own. He seemed hale enough, if a little confused. But he’s been getting these pains in his head. Sometimes he can’t remember things. Sometimes he doesn’t get out of bed until midday. Madam Huxley says—Madam Huxley, she helps run the mill—she says he can’t perform his duties anymore. That maybe he doesn’t have long. And my mother’s gone, it’s just my father and me. Old Widow Maribelle says I should pray, and I’ve been praying, but it’s not enough. He’s getting worse, and I…I don’t know what to do.”

All the while, the woman moved about the room, collecting various things from tables and shelves. The leaf of a small plant here, a sprinkle of powder there. She had withdrawn a thumb-sized vial of brown liquid from her robes and placed each ingredient into the top. When Isabella stopped speaking, she paused. “You are a thoughtful child to come this far.”

“I cannot allow this illness to take him. You must save him. You must help me, please.”

“Must I?”

“Please,” Isabella said.

“And what if I were to tell you he may yet die, regardless of whether or not the sickness takes him?”

“We all die,” Isabella said promptly, “but let him not suffer this illness. I’ve come so far.”

The woman considered, then took a knife from her gown. She reached up to a tapestry and snipped a small piece of thread. She inserted it into the vial, replaced the stopper, then held it for Isabella to take. “Place two drops in his meal each night until it is no longer needed.”

Isabella stared at it, not daring to hope. “And then?”

“And then the illness will trouble him no more.”

Isabella reached out to take the vial, then stopped. “What of payment?”

“Payment?”

“They say you have conditions. That you ask for something when you give aid.”

“Is that what they say?” The woman seemed amused. “Call this a gift among friends. You have given me company on a dark and dreary night, and I have not had company in such a long while.”

Isabella took the vial. Relief washed through her. “I cannot begin to tell you what this means to me. Thank you.”

The woman leaned against a nearby column, and when Isabella didn’t move, she regarded her guest with a knowing smile. “Now for the other thing.”

The smile faded from Isabella’s lips. “The other thing?”

“You care for your father, I can see that, but it is not the only reason you came. What is it you seek? A love potion, perhaps? A tincture to seduce a young man?