Nemain, with a mixture of exasperation and amusement, turned back toward the room and said, “I’m after thinking you told me everything about men, and sure you gave me a mort of advice about them, but not that they were as thick as the door to a keep.” She turned to Hob. “If I’m off my meat, ’tis your fault.”
“My fault—” said Hob, and now he noticed that Molly was laughing behind her hand, and Jack was suppressing a grin, and his heart began to lift, ever so little.
“Your fault, and your bairn’s,” said Nemain, and then Molly and Jack burst into laughter at the sight of him, sitting there staring and his mouth actually open. He shut it with a snap and was up from the table and at the window in a moment, lifting her to her feet, to his hug, to his kiss.
He reached back to the table and retrieved his goblet of honey beer and set it on the broad windowsill, and sat down in the window seat, and pulled his young wife to his lap, the better to kiss her and tell her how happy she had made him, and just to grin and beam at her. And there he sat, content, smiling on the world.
She said to Molly, “Sure he’s slow of understanding, but you’ll grant me he has a lovely smile.”
“He has that,” said Molly. She said to Hob, “ ’Twill be a daughter, you know.”
“How can you know that, Mistress?” he asked.
“Our firstborns are always daughters,” said Nemain. “Our wise women—in this case, Herself—arrange it so, by studying the wind riffling the water, the movement of the stars around the hinge of the sky, birdcalls at dusk. Seanmháthair gave me the signs to watch for—a shaft of the late sun, and yourself speaking of the sun falling into the Western Ocean out beyond Erin.” She looked down, suddenly a little shy. “Do you not recall that day in York?”
It came back to him: “That day in the stables? With Milo?”
“The very one, and ’tis on that day that you’re founding your tribe there in the straw.”
Hob sat there, his mind whirling, his heart full; in memory’s eye he could see again the boards of the loft above him, and the wisps of hay, and that sentinel spider.
“Your firstborn,” said Molly, “and a queen also.”
“She will be a queen?” asked Hob.
“In our tribe it passes down the female line,” said Molly. “You will be the vassal of a queen; you will be the husband of a queen; you will be the father of a queen; but yourself will never be a king.” She took a deep drink. “On the other hand, you will be the founder of a dynasty, and you will be Robert the Englishman, and those are no small things.”
At this point Jack took his goblet, peered into it, and realized that it was empty. He filled Molly’s goblet from an earthenware jug that Sir Odinell’s servants had provided, and then refilled his own. He stood by the tableside, a man who might have been a model for some pagan war god, and he looked deeply embarrassed. He squared his shoulders, faced Hob and Nemain, raised his goblet, and said, “Gorh ble’ zhou bo’!” and drank.
Nemain—who, even as a little girl in the first days that Jack came to live with Molly, was the one who could understand Jack best—translated: “God bless you both.”
Everyone applauded, and Jack sat down—Hob suspected that, had Jack not been so swarthy, he would have been seen to blush—and then Molly rose, and lifted her goblet, and said, “Health and safety to you both; increase to your family; death to your enemies.”
Hob, drinking to the pledge, thought this a little grim for so early in the day, but Molly’s thoughts were on the future, and in the future was Erin, and in Erin were people who would happily see Nemain and her child dead, and so, Christian or not, he echoed Molly: “Death to our enemies!”
Nemain stood, indicated her mint tea a bit ruefully, drawing a smattering of laughter from the others, and, turning to Hob, said, with all seriousness, “To our bairn.”
More applause, and they all drank.
Hob pulled Nemain down again on his lap. His arm was around her waist; his hand rested on her still-flat abdomen, with its precious passenger. The wind blew into the room, and he could smell salt mingled with the scent of Nemain’s hair, and he thought of Father Athelstan, who would often say that all life was a miracle.
He considered Nemain: when they were children they would play long games of hide-and-seek, and pelt each other with balls of snow, and here sat this woman—dangerous, beautiful, powerful: an adept of the Art. And now, from Nemain and himself, and this new game that they played, came this third person, who would be a little girl at play one day, and then some other day would herself be a beautiful and dangerous woman. In what way was this not some form of miracle?
He realized that they were waiting for him to pledge another drink. Suddenly he thought of Molly’s explanation of the Mόrrígan. “It reminds me of what you told the monsignor of your . . . Patron,” Hob said, unwilling as a Christian to say the word goddess.
He kissed Nemain again and grinned at the company; he raised his goblet of honey beer.
“To three queens in Erin!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the pleasures of introducing a new book is the acknowledgment of those who’ve been such a help and support during its writing. Let me pause this hour to thank them:
Emily Bestler, my astute and very supportive editor, and her assistant editor, the always helpful Megan Reid; my excellent copy editor, Jaime Costas; George Hiltzik, agent extraordinaire; and many dear friends, especially Patricia and Michael Sovern. Thanks go to Hilary Mhic Suibhne (Glucksman Ireland House, New York University) for help with the guide to the pronunciation of Irish words, and my thanks as well to reader Marie Botkin for suggesting the inclusion of such a pronunciation guide.
And I must thank, for their help and support, the Fairy Bride, Theresa Adinolfi Nicholas, and the delightful Tristan, who, despite his distant Yorkshire origins, actually came from a kennel in faraway Hungary, and from thence straight into our hearts.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KELLY MERCHANT
DOUGLAS NICHOLAS is an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in numerous publications, among them Atlanta Review, Southern Poetry Review, Sonora Review, Circumference, A Different Drummer, and Cumberland Review, as well as the South Coast Poetry Journal, where he won a prize in that publication’s Fifth Annual Poetry Contest. Other awards include Honorable Mention in the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation 2003 Prize for Poetry Awards, second place in the 2002 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards from PCCC, International Merit Award in Atlanta Review’s Poetry 2002 competition, finalist in the 1996 Emily Dickinson Award in Poetry competition, honorable mention in the 1992 Scottish International Open Poetry Competition, first prize in the journal Lake Effect’s Sixth Annual Poetry Contest, first prize in poetry in the 1990 Roberts Writing Awards, and finalist in the Roberts short fiction division. He was also recipient of an award in the 1990 International Poetry Contest sponsored by the Arvon Foundation in Lancashire, England, and a Cecil B. Hackney Literary Award for poetry from Birmingham-Southern College. He is the author of Something Red and its sequel, The Wicked, fantasy novels set in the thirteenth century, as well as Iron Rose, a collection of poems inspired by and set in New York City; The Old Language, reflections on the company of animals; The Rescue Artist, poems about his wife and their long marriage; and In the Long-Cold Forges of the Earth, a wide-ranging collection of poems. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife, Theresa, and Yorkshire terrier, Tristan.
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ALSO BY DOUGLAS NICHOLAS
The Wicked
The Demon (A Novella)
Something Red
Iron Rose
The Old Language
The Rescue Artist
In the Long-Cold Forges of the Earth
GLOSSARY OF IRISH TERMS
a chuisle
pulse, heartbeat [uh KOOSH-la] (direct address; literally: “O pulse”—that is, the one so addressed is as important as life itself to the speaker)
arracht
monster [are-OCHT] (plural: arrachtaí) [are-OCH-thee]
a rún
love, dear [uh ROON]
claírseach
Irish harp [KLAUR-shock]
conriocht
werewolf [kun-ricth] (even emphasis) (plural: conriochtaí) [kun-ricth-thee]
draíodόir
wizard [DREE-a-duhor]
Faoi cheann bliana
one year; in a year’s time [fwee kheawn BLEE-uh-nah]
geasadόir
enchanter, spellbinder [GAYSH-a-duhor]
Mavourneen
my sweetheart (Irish: mo mhuirnín) [muh VOOR-nyeen]
mo chroí
my heart [muh KREE]
mo mhuirnín
My sweetheart [muh VOOR-nyeen]
ochone
an exclamation of sorrow; woe (Irish ochόn) [och-OWN]
seanmháthair
grandmother (literally: “old mother”) [shan-VAUGH-er]
spalpeen
rascal, layabout (Irish spailpin, itinerant laborer) [SPAL-peen]
stόr mo chroí
treasure of my heart [STORE muh KREE]
Tapaidh
speedy (Irish: tapaidh) [TOP-ee]
uisce beatha
whiskey (literally: “water of life”) [eesch-uh BAH-ha]
GLOSSARY OF ARCHAISMS AND DIALECT TERMS
boohter
butter; Derbyshire dialect
coney
a rabbit
coom
come
culver
a dove (term of endearment)
Gammer
Grandma
gie
give
John Lackland
King John I of England; so called because of losses of his territory in France
Mahomet
Mohammed
Mahometan, Mussulman
Muslim
Marroch
Morocco
mort
a great deal, a great many (lit. “death”; a mortal amount)
nowt
nothing
oot
out
owt
anything
rissom
a small amount; Derbyshire dialect
scran
food
sennight
a week (seven-night)
sithee
see thee: As a question: “Do you see?” “Do you understand?” As a command: “Look” or “Look here,” as in “Look, I’m willing to [etc.].”
staunchgrain
thin white paste of lime, flour, egg whites, milk; used to smooth and whiten parchment
theer
there
unco
strange [adj.]; very [adv.]
weel
well
yon
over there, yonder; but also as pronoun: that [one]
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Nicholas
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicholas, Douglas.
Throne of darkness: a novel / Douglas Nicholas.—First Emily Bestler Books/Atria Paperback edition.
pages cm
1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—John, 1199–1216—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.I3375T48 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014036008
ISBN 978-1-4767-5598-4
ISBN 978-1-4767-5600-4 (ebook)
Throne of Darkness: A Novel Page 23
