Darkwitch Rising Read online

  This book remembers John and Frederick Warneke, merchant and Gentleman of the Tower of London. I’ve met some strange people in London, but you two have proved the most surprising.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a very special book to me. Firstly, because when I began the research for this book, I never expected to knock on the door of the seventeenth-century Tower of London and find inhabiting there one of my German ancestors, and on the right side of the bars for once. So I gave him Ariadne. I thought he’d like her.

  Secondly, the book recalls for me a remarkable stillness in the most remarkable of cities. On Sunday 4th May 2003, I was in London, exploring the back alleys of the south-eastern quadrant of the City. The City was empty, as it usually is on a Sunday. I was walking up St Mary-at-Hill, following the steeple trail. To my right I saw a tiny laneway—Idol Lane—and I caught a glimpse of something intriguing lurking amid the warehouses.

  So I walked up Idol Lane, mildly curious, found an open churchyard gate…and walked through. I’m never one to refuse such an invitation.

  I found…No. I’m not going to tell you. If ever you’re in London on a sunny Sunday (don’t go there during a weekday when the City office workers will be enjoying the magic) eschew the lure of Buckingham Palace or the Tower. Instead take a packed lunch and a bottle of wine, and perhaps even some company, and walk up Idol Lane and through the open churchyard gate.

  You’ll find there one of the reasons I love London so greatly: a living piece of real London, and a very special silence.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Part Two

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Part Three

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Four

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Five

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Part Six

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Part Seven

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Part Eight

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  The Troy Game

  The Crucible

  The Axis Trilogy

  The Wayfarer Redemption

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Books By Sara Douglass

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Maps

  Facsimile of a mid-seventeenth century engraving of London, possibly by Wenceslaus Hollar, in Robert Wilkinson, Londina Illustrata, vol. I, 1819. (Labels added by Sara Douglass)

  [Full key to map can be found at www.saradouglass.com/drising.html]

  Idol Lane and Surrounds

  Detail from Richard Horwood’s Plan of the Cities of Westminster and London, 1792. The area surrounding St Dunstan’s-in-the-East and Idol Lane as it was in the late eighteenth century. The street layout has changed little since the Great Fire, although all of the medieval buildings surrounding the church have gone. Weyland Orr’s house would have been in St Dunstan’s yard just opposite no. 10, Idol Lane.

  Prologue

  Atop The Naked, in the Realm of the Faerie

  The two giants walked slowly and majestically up the gentle incline of the hill. Each was almost eight feet tall and five in girth, each wore long garments of chain mail, and each had wild long curls of reddish-brown hair that escaped from under their smooth, conical helmets, and thick, tangled beards. One grasped a spear, the other a sword.

  Although they moved smoothly and their limbs swung freely and their curls fluttered in stringy tangles behind them, each looked as though he had been carved from wood. If you came upon them in the dusk, when they were still and watchful, you would think them nothing more than massive tree trunks, denuded of their leaves.

  Their names were Gog and Magog, and they had once been Sidlesaghes. Now they were the legendary defenders of London, the sprawling seventeenth-century city which occupied the Veiled Hills, the sacred heart of the ancient land of Llangarlia. While the giants spent most of their time resting motionless in the Guildhall of the city, they remained true creatures of the Faerie, and it was to the Faerie that they came this night.

  After lying quiescent for tens of thousands of years, the Faerie was waking, and the creatures of the Faerie stirring. Eaving, the goddess of the waters, had been reborn, and soon her lover, Og, the Stag God, would also awaken from his long death.

  There was one other to rise back into warmth and life and breath—the Lord of the Faerie, the master of both Eaving and the Stag God, and all the creatures of the Faerie large and small. It was for news of him that the giants had left the Guildhall and entered the Realm of the Faerie.

  The smooth-grassed hill Gog and Magog climbed was one of many. It rose some three hundred feet from the valley floor to a smooth flattened peak. To either side, and to the north beyond the valley, rose many similar hills, although these were all wooded. Mist drifted in the valleys between the hills, scarlet and blue birds dipping languidly in and out of its billowing vapours. It was a tranquil scene, but only at first glance. If one looked closer, as Gog and Magog did when they paused for breath ten or so paces from the summit of the hill, flashes of movement could be discerned amid the trees of all the surrounding hills: creatures of the Faerie, converging on the hill which the giants climbe
d. This hill was the only one clear of all vegetation save grass. For this reason it was known among the Faerie as The Naked.

  The Naked was one of the holy sites within the Realm of the Faerie, for it was here that its lord sat his Faerie throne.

  Tonight, the Faerie who gathered atop The Naked hoped to hear the news for which they’d been yearning for ten thousand years: that the Faerie throne, so long bare and cold, would soon be filled again.

  Gog and Magog halted as they attained the summit, looking about. Despite the fact that the hill was relatively small, the summit appeared roomy enough to hold several ten thousands of the Faerie folk.

  The giants were not the first to arrive. They were greeted by a small, dark, fey woman who walked over to them, her hands outstretched.

  “Gog, Magog,” she said, reaching up to kiss each one on the cheek (a feat which had to be aided by Gog, who lifted her up so she could kiss Magog’s cheek, and then his, before he set her down). “It has been so long.”

  “Mag,” rumbled Magog. “We are glad-hearted that you are here.”

  “I, and all my sisters and predecessors,” said Mag, the once goddess of the waters of the land.

  “Is it…” Gog could not finish, for emotion had choked him.

  Mag smiled, her face gentle and serene. “Aye,” she said, “it is time. The Lord of the Faerie approaches.”

  The giants each drew in deep breaths of joy.

  “Where?” said Magog. “When?”

  “Not here,” she said. “Not yet, but before too many more years have passed.”

  She stood back, and the giants saw that now many thousands of creatures thronged the summit: Sidlesaghes, water sprites, snow ghosts, wood sylphs, grey and black lumpens who were the souls of the mountains, badgers and moles (the most mystical and royal of those animals who trod the mortal world), moon shadows and sun dapples, and the strange low, pallid-skinned creatures who inhabited the caverns of the land, but who, since the beginning of creation, had refused to tell anyone their names.

  Most of the Faerie simply called them cavelings.

  One of the gathered Sidlesaghes walked towards where Mag stood with the giants. It was Long Tom, the Sidlesaghe who best knew Eaving, the new-born goddess of the waters. The giants greeted him cheerfully, for Long Tom had once been their brother.

  “Is it true,” said Gog, “that the Lord of the Faerie shall be returning to us?”

  “Yes,” said Long Tom. He stood back a little, and gestured eastwards.

  The creatures that thronged the top of the Naked stepped back at his command, and the giants had a clear sight through to the eastern aspect of the summit. There stood a carved throne of faerie wood, known to mortals as burr elm.

  On the seat of the throne rested a crown, made of twisted twigs and sprigs of red berries, and as the giants stared a beam of light illumed the crown of twigs.

  “Do you remember the day that Eaving sat atop Pen Hill?” said Long Tom.

  “Aye,” said Gog. “That was when Harold came to her, and the beam of light crowned him.”

  Long Tom’s smile grew broader, and his eyes twinkled. Mag stared at him.

  “No!” she said. “Truly?”

  “Oh, aye,” said Long Tom. “The Lord of the Faerie shall re-awake in Coel-reborn, for he has proved himself a great man, a fair king and, most important of all, a man of true faerie-heart.”

  Mag closed her eyes briefly. “I am so very glad,” she whispered.

  Part One

  THE GATHERING

  London, 1939

  Major Jack Skelton checked his tie one last time in the mirror of Frank and Violet Bentley’s drab spare bedroom, then grabbed his bag and, as Frank sounded the motor’s horn outside, ran lightly down the stairs.

  Violet stood at their foot, her pretty face uncertain. “I hope you enjoy your stay in England, Major,” she said as Skelton stopped before her.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve come to prepare for war, Mrs Bentley. It’s not an enjoyable business.”

  She flushed, her hands twisting a little within her floral apron. Skelton knew she couldn’t wait to be rid of him.

  Outside, Frank sounded the horn once again, but Skelton didn’t move, nor shift his eyes from Violet’s face. “I’d move from London, if I was you,” he said. “Hell lies just around the corner, and if you don’t have the taste for that kind of thing—” now his eyes travelled slowly about the garish, cheap furnishings of the hall “—I suggest you find yourself a quiet corner somewhere far from London.”

  “Major,” Violet whispered, her eyes now huge, “Frank’s waiting. You’ve got to go.”

  Skelton’s mouth twitched. He lifted his hand, and Violet shook it too quickly, her grip clammy and soft.

  Skelton touched his cap, and then he was gone.

  Frank Bentley had the motor of his small car turning over and he gestured impatiently out the window when he saw Skelton emerge from the front door. “Come on, old chap! We’re late as it is!”

  Skelton paused halfway down the path, looking at the house next door. The curtains in the bay window parted, and for a moment Skelton had a view of the two women within: Mrs Ecub and Mrs Matilda Flanders, watching.

  Again he touched his hat, but this time his eyes twinkled, and a small smile lifted his mouth.

  “Major!” Frank yelled.

  I’m off to war, Skelton said to the two women.

  We know, Matilda replied. We’ll hold a Circle. Be well.

  For an instant Skelton’s mind was overwhelmed with memories of the Circles he’d held with these two women, with the intimacy, both sexual and emotional, and his eyes softened.

  Then he was gone, running down the path towards Frank and his motor.

  One

  Gog Magog Hills, Cambridgeshire, and Oatlands Palace, Weybridge, England

  Simon Gautier, Marquis de Lonquefort, gripped the armrests of the wildly rocking carriage and grinned lasciviously at his current mistress, Mademoiselle Helene Gardien, sitting across from him. She was sixteen, with the face of an angel and the body of a temptress, and she was squealing with feigned terror, although whether at the wild movement of the carriage or at the wanton expression on his face, Lonquefort didn’t particularly know—nor did he particularly care. Outside, the driver had whipped the team of horses into a frenzy, and they plunged recklessly down the forest track, their hooves and the abused wheels of the carriage marking each dip, each hole and each rock that pitted their way.

  Lonquefort was a man who disdained sedateness, in every aspect of his life.

  His uncle, and his guardian since the death of his father, had sent Lonquefort for a season to the austere colleges of Cambridge in an effort to wean him from the fleshly delights of his native Paris.

  Lonquefort was a man not to be outwitted and in July of this year of our Lord 1629 he arranged for the passage of Helene across to England. She was young, pliable, tender and fresh, and she shrieked delightfully whenever Lonquefort buried himself within her pleasures, which explained why Lonquefort had hired carriage and driver for this day expedition to the Gog Magog Hills, four miles south of the university city: the Cambridge dons were starting to complain about the noise. What better way to calm their shattered nerves and to indulge his own desires than to take Helene in the centre of some stubbled field, or on the incline of some gentle hillside slope, where she could scream to her heart’s content and he could…

  Oh God, he was going to have to stop the carriage soon!

  As Helene pursed her sweet lips for yet another cry, Lonquefort glanced outside. He’d been told the Gog Magog Hills were gentle rolling slopes cleared by years of grazing, yet the view which met his eyes contradicted all reports he’d heard.

  Forests crowded about, thick and dark.

  Lonquefort frowned.

  Helene squealed.

  Lonquefort looked at her.

  She gave another cry and jumped slightly in her seat, her breasts jiggling just enough that her nipples slipped briefly
, tantalisingly into view above the frothy lace of her bodice.

  Lonquefort forgot the strangeness of the forests.

  “Stop!” he cried, his voice so thick with desire he could barely manage the word. “Stop, I command you!” He lifted his cane, banging its golden head against the roof of the carriage.

  The driver swore as he hauled on the reins in an effort to stop the violent plunging motion of the horses.