Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  He said, “Perfectly satisfactory.”

  “In that case, I’ll be off,” said John, because there was no sense in prolonging the stay. The deal was concluded; Joanna had been conjoined and he could go back to his own home and see to the apple harvest. There was a good crop this year, damsons as well. Joanna’s mother would bottle the damsons; the apples would be stored under the roof where they would scent the house until next spring. He turned to go, and then bethought himself of something else.

  “Since you’re satisfied, Joanna may as well stay here. I’ll send her things over.” No sense in making a double journey.

  “Yes. Oh yes, you leave the pretty dear here,” said Muldooney, and a slow smile creased his face.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Joanna was in despair. She had managed to sponge away the sticky fluid with water from the ewer, and had scrubbed at her gown where it was stained. While replacing the ewer on the washstand beneath the window, she had seen her father drive away, clicking to Bess to pick up her feet, holding the cart’s reins with his left hand as he always did when he was feeling jaunty.

  He was leaving her. He was leaving her with a man who grunted like one of his own pigs, and who could not remember her name.

  That was the part that hurt most. Throughout the dreadful intimacy, Muldooney had not once called her Joanna. He had said “my pretty dear,” “my little dear,” “my pretty one.” Exactly as he would to a child or a plaything. Joanna, horror rising in her like sickness, thought: I am shut away with a man who will look on me as a plaything.

  She had the dreadful thought that in this house, conjoined to Muldooney, the real Joanna would eventually disappear; she would shrivel up and die for lack of recognition; so quietly that no one would notice, and in her place would only be Muldooney’s woman, nameless, rarely speaking, called upon to cook and clean and do with Muldooney the things they had done a short time ago. Every night, perhaps. In this room and on that bed. And he would have the right. He would own her. Joanna stared out through the windows to where her father was only a tiny moving speck on the cart track, and thought: I can’t do it.

  She could not. She could not stay here, shut away in this cold house with a man who would never use her name. She would do anything rather than stay here. Even though there was nowhere to run, still she would run away.

  The thought brought an overwhelming relief. I have decided that I cannot bear it. I have decided not to bear it. She would not ever again be called on to face Muldooney’s proddings and probings. She would not have to stay here in the comfortless bleak farmhouse.

  Where would she go? Home? No, for her father would certainly make her return and her mother would support him. Through Joanna’s mind there flickered the thought of Aunt Briony. An ally? Yes, Aunt Briony might just possibly be an ally. Only I must not involve her unless I have to, thought Joanna. Even so, the thought of Aunt Briony brought a faint far-off comfort. Aunt Briony understood. She knew that Joanna was meant for Flynn.

  Flynn.

  A smile curved Joanna’s lips. She reached for her cloak and unlatched the bedroom door.

  *

  The twilight was thickening as she slipped from the house, a silent shadow, unheard, unnoticed. The dusk was lilac-scented; Flynn’s father called it the Purple Time, this half-light, this odd mysterious dying of the day and emerging of the night. “A time when magic may be abroad,” he had said, and smiled, and Joanna had never been quite sure whether he was serious.

  She slipped across the fields of Muldooney’s lands and on to the track that would lead to Flynn’s house.

  She had hardly ever been out at night before, and she had certainly never been out at night by herself. The men went out; they went to Peg Flanagan’s to drink poteen, or they went farther afield into Cork, but the women were expected to stay at home.

  “Men’s business,” her mother had said, and Joanna had known a moment of rebellion. Had the Lethe women sat meekly at home while their men went off into the cities? Not for a moment! thought Joanna.

  Even so, it was a bit frightening to be out like this by herself. She thought she would not give in to the feeling of nervousness, because there was really nothing to be nervous about. If she said it several times, very firmly, she would begin to believe it.

  Tara’s Hill loomed to her left, a dark secretive mound, sprinkled here and there with trees and thickets which had escaped the Apocalypse’s blast. When Joanna had been very small she had thought Tara’s Hill was an enchanted place, a place where you might see anything in the world. But …

  “Fairy story nonsense,” her father said indulgently. “Not for little girls to waste their time on. You will do better to help your mother with the butter making.”

  But Joanna had never quite lost the feeling that Tara’s Hill was a magical place, that there were other worlds to be discovered there, and even now, fleeing from Muldooney — oh would he have found her gone yet? — even running helter-skelter through the dusk, even like this, she could spare a glance for the Hill and its lure. Easy to imagine other worlds locked inside it; easier still to imagine those magical half-beast, half-human creatures Flynn had talked about. Had they existed, those beautiful cruel beings, or was it only a story?

  The countryside looked quite different at night. It felt different and it sounded different. Once an owl — or was it? — flew from a tree and hooted softly overhead. Once something moved in the bushes a little ahead of her, and went scurrying through the undergrowth in search of its supper or its mate. Joanna thought about the Hill coming alive, waking, and the night creatures coming out. The animals and the forest creatures had nearly all disappeared during the Great Devastation, but not quite all. Sometimes you saw them, if you were very quiet and looked very hard. Badgers and moles who would have been underground when the Apocalypse walked. Owls and bats and creatures of the night, and other creatures whose names had been lost, but who had somehow secreted themselves away from the Apocalypse’s fury.

  The countryside was beautiful. People said, “Oh, but it would have been breathtaking before Devastation.” But Joanna liked it now. There were still portions of the forest that had once sprawled half up Tara’s Hill, and within it huge patches of undergrowth. Not everything had died. Things had survived. Joanna would survive. Even out here, even in the dusk, with Muldooney and probably her father raising the alarm for her? Yes, even then. And I am going to Flynn, thought Joanna, and a tremendous delight began to well up inside her. It suddenly seemed completely right that she should be going through the lilac-scented dusk to Flynn. Ahead of her she could see the lights of the O’Connor farmhouse, oblongs of warm yellow colour. Then I am nearly home, thought Joanna, and smiled at her choice of word. But yes of course it was home. Flynn was there and it was home.

  It came as no surprise, as she rounded the curve in the path, to see Flynn coming towards her, his face pale in the dim light, his hair windswept, and his eyes glowing. How often had she come running like this, down the path with the briar thicket and the wild hedge rose in summer; past the great lilac bushes, and up to the wicket gate, only to see Flynn coming to meet her. She thought: he knows. Not what has happened, only that something has. He knows.

  I always will know, my love …

  Joanna quickened her pace, until she was flying over the rough ground, her hair streaming behind her, her mind alight and alive with delight. Oh how, sharing this with Flynn, this oneness, this awareness, how could I possibly have stayed with Muldooney?

  The wind stirred the lilac and the scent came round her like an embrace.

  Flynn held out his arms and Joanna ran straight into them.

  *

  Flynn had no defence against Joanna’s distress. The longings so firmly banked down and sternly quenched for so many years — “For,” he had thought, “they will never let me have her, and I would not cause her pain.” — rose up now to betray him, so that he pulled her against him, and began kissing her hungrily. An immense delight closed over him, of course t
his is how it is meant to be! This is what is missing with the girls down in the village, satisfactory for a half hour’s release, for a night’s drinking and bedding, forgotten as soon as they are out of sight. This is what the Letheans knew about, and what the survivors of Devastation tried to stamp out. And he cupped Joanna’s face between his hands and kissed her searchingly, but with such love and with such infinite longing that the night blurred about him.

  In Joanna’s mind there was no kinship between what had happened with Muldooney a few hours earlier, and what was happening now with Flynn. The cold, comfortless bedroom and Muldooney’s soft fat body had no place in this safe secret warmth where Flynn’s arms held her, and where the dusk was scented with its own magic — the Purple Hour! Oh yes, now I believe! — and where Flynn’s lips were soft and demanding and exciting, and where his body was hard and strong and gentle.

  When he drew away a little, she thought, oh no! He cannot stop now! I shall not bear it! But then Flynn was scooping her up in his arms, and after all they were still together, and the bond that had proved itself out here was not breaking. Then Flynn carried her into the farmhouse. The scents and the familiar feeling of the house closed about Joanna; old oak and polish and stored apples. The scents of welcoming. Of safety. Flynn murmured something; Joanna thought it was to do with his father being out in the barns with a sick animal, but she barely heard, because the blood was singing in her veins, and the world was slowing down to a soft slow heart-beat, and there was no one in the world but herself and Flynn, and there was nothing in the world to fear, and nothing to bother about, except this soft slow melting, this merging of one person with another.

  The windows of Flynn’s bedroom were open to the night air, and the lilac was there again, and the soft liquid notes of some night bird in the tree outside …

  The nightingale or the lark …? No, no, my love, it is yet the nightingale, and we have the entire night before us …

  She heard Flynn laugh softly, and then the sheets were brushing her skin, cool, scented linen on warm living skin; Flynn’s body was against hers, warm and insistent, and the nightingale was singing somewhere inside her head now …

  There was a moment of swift, secret pain, and then there was a whirlpool of delight, and the most complete sense of sharing, and Joanna took Flynn’s face in her cupped hands, and kissed him, because like this, like this, he was strong and gentle and infinitely precious, and he was somehow dreadfully vulnerable as well, and she could bear him being strong and gentle, but somehow she could not bear his vulnerability …

  And then the whirlpool took them on, upwards and inwards, and they clung to each other; Joanna thought she was crying but she could not be sure, and Flynn moved convulsively and cried out. Just as Joanna felt the world splinter into a cascade of purest delight that descended on them in a soft blanket.

  *

  Joanna awoke in the yellow and white bedroom and lay watching the oblong of dark grey sky, still star-spattered, begin to lighten. Odd how the new light gave you courage. Hadn’t there been a race, long ago, certainly before people began to record history, who had worshipped the sun, and who had believed that men drew strength from the dawn? It was a belief that Joanna found easy to understand. There you were, in the dark, somehow confused and unsure, and frightened, and then you saw the sky begin to lighten and become streaked with grey and then with pink, and you drew strength. There was something immeasurably comforting about its inevitability. After the dark the light. Had the people who had lived through Devastation found that? Or had the light disappeared altogether for a time? Endless darkness … I won’t think about it, said Joanna.

  Beside her, Flynn still slept, easily and noiselessly, his black hair falling across his forehead, a faint sheen on his eyelids. Tenderness welled up in Joanna, so strong that for a moment it hurt, and she wanted to reach out and pull him to her, and she wanted to shut out the world for ever.

  It could not be done, of course. The world was waiting to be faced; her father and Muldooney were waiting to be faced. And I must do it, thought Joanna, drawing confidence from the dawn light. It is something I must certainly do.

  She thought she could do it now. Now; warm and safe and drowsy from Flynn’s love-making, her mind and her body still singing with delight — “I shall never want to leave,” she thought, and smiled, because that was what she had said to Flynn, somewhere between dusk and dawn:

  I shall never want to leave …

  And I shall never let you go, my love.

  She need never go. She could stay here with Flynn in the comfortable whitewashed farmhouse, and nothing else could be contemplated.

  I shall never let you go … And I shall never want to go …

  There had been no need to say any of it because Flynn had known. He always will know said a voice in her head, and Joanna smiled.

  Muldooney and her father would certainly come after her. Probably they would come quite soon, because it was pretty certain that Muldooney had already raised the alarm. They would come here first. To the place where she had always fled as a child. Would they? Yes, she thought they would. She turned her head on the pillow again and regarded the sleeping Flynn. Not to be thought of that she should bring Flynn into danger. Not to be contemplated that through her Flynn — and his father — should suffer. Flynn could outface anyone, of course, and he could certainly outface her father and Muldooney. “With one hand tied behind my back, acushla,” he would have said. But it was not just those two that Joanna was worried about.

  Supposing her father invoked his powers as an Elder of Tugaim? Supposing — just supposing — that he rallied the men of the village to search for her? Joanna thought that this was very likely indeed. John Grady was not especially popular — “Too prosperous!” he would have said with one of his complacent smiles — but he had his supporters. You might call them flatterers — Joanna did call them flatterers — but put them all together and rouse them up a bit and they would form quite a considerable bunch. And daughters, such useful pawns, were valuable.

  “Grady’s girl?” they’d say. “By God, has Grady’s girl disappeared? Won’t we go out at once to search for her?” And off they’d go.

  And worse.

  “Conjoined?” they’d say. “Isn’t that a terrible way to behave? Every man out and start the search!”

  Joanna could visualise it all very clearly. She could certainly visualise that the first place any of them would think of to search would be the O’Connor household.

  “Michael O’Connor’s farm,” they’d cry. “For isn’t the Grady girl forever with Flynn O’Connor, and the pair of them as close as sheep in a fold! If she’s anywhere, she’ll be there!” And out they’d come, a loud shouting mob, not violent, because nobody in Tugaim — well anywhere really — was violent these days. Violence was something that the survivors of Devastation had stamped out, and there would be no thought of it in the minds of the mob that John Grady would summon.

  The violence would be in John himself.

  And Flynn might be hurt.

  Joanna lifted herself cautiously on one elbow and looked at Flynn again. Unbearable to think of Flynn in the hands of an angry crowd of men, led by her father, who was certainly capable of violence, who had a side of him that nobody but Joanna had ever guessed at.

  What I must do, thought Joanna, is hide away, just for a day or two, just until everything has died down. Just so that when they come here, as they surely will, they will not find me. It would not be difficult. She could manage it all quite easily. Food and water. Her warm cloak. Yes, she could do it.

  As to where she should go — a smile curved her lips again. Where in all of Tugaim was the one place where no one, and least of all John Grady, and Brian Muldooney, would venture?

  “Never build on Glowing Lands” said the old warning. And alongside the warning, ran a fear, a superstitious, deeply buried, race-memory dread of the Lands.

  But I shall be perfectly safe, thought Joanna, and went quietly down th
e stairs into the silent scullery.

  She thought that neither Flynn nor his father would mind her taking food — only enough for a couple of days — a fresh loaf and a rich round cheese. There were some slices of cold meat — ham, was it? Yes. Very sustaining. There were dishes of apples and early pears from the O’Connor orchards. She would take those as well. And one of the large leather water sacks. She could fill it from the pump if she was very quiet. Or perhaps milk would be easier — there were two large covered jugs of milk sitting on the cold marble slab. She tipped one up carefully and heard it run into the leather sack.

  Last of all was a note for Flynn. “Only until the fuss and flurry has died down … they will search here first, and I could not bear to bring such violence into your house … ” Oh yes. “This way is safer,” wrote Joanna, “and they will not think to look for me where I am going …” Would Flynn guess where that was? Joanna smiled and slid the note under the nearer of the milk jugs where it could not possibly be missed, and then she was ready.

  *

  The countryside was grey and silver in the dawn light; it was scented in a way she had never noticed before. From here you could see nearly all of Tugaim spread out below you like one of the old tapestries she had read about. There was Flynn’s farmhouse, and over to the west was her father’s. No lights burned. Then I am still safe.

  Just ahead was the belt of Glowing Land. Then she was still on O’Connor land, the thought was comforting. The important thing now was to summon up her courage to actually go into the centre of the Lands. Did she dare? In the farmhouse kitchen with the new sunlight filtering in it had seemed quite an easy thing to do. It had seemed rather trivial to worry about the Lands. Out here, in the thin, raw dawn, it was not trivial at all. Joanna hesitated, watching the incandescent light that rose into the sky. The Lands were beautiful, but they were frightening as well. You felt a great power emanating from them. People said they would glow like that for a thousand years, but other people, older people, said they were dimming, and that in another few generations they would be like everywhere else.