The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1)

by Bolton, Ani

  “Who will look after my garden and my birds?” I offered lamely. “The doves will quite perish--”

  “You will go.” Sarah cut across my objections ruthlessly. “I cannot hold back the interest that your money is beginning to generate among the yokels of the district. I’ve had inquiries from Squire Hardesty about you . . . you may remember, he’s a widower with three children under the age of five. I’ve also fended off less tactful requests to meet you from the schoolmaster and the curate. Country bumpkins! Damon Penwyth is young, he’s handsome if his mother is to be believed, and he’s fresh from Europe.”

  She pinned me with her hawkish eyes that used to fill me with trepidation, but that now filled me with something else, something elusive that I could not quite grasp.

  “Go to Cornwall, Persia. Do your best to please.”

  And then I had it.

  It was hope.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The speed in which the two sisters worked stunned me. A favorable reply had been sent to Cornwall by Express Rider, and such was the wonders of our kingdom’s new turnpiked roads that Lady Penwyth’s acknowledgement was being read out to me by my stepmother at dinner five days later. Within a fortnight I found myself riding by private conveyance southward, flying over the gleaming Tamar River after a week-long seasoning in the bustle of posting-inns and horse changes.

  Sarah Eames insisted on the extravagance. “I don’t wish to live in fear of you boarding the wrong stage,” she snapped at my rare objection to any plan of hers.

  After two days on the road I learned to appreciate the relative luxury of my form of travel, especially after listening to the abuses endured by those in the post-coach. My private conveyance marked me out as a Person of Consequence. Though I detested the bowing and scraping of the innkeepers, I was thankful for my private chambers, away from the malodorous smoke-glazed common rooms and curiosity of inebriated day laborers and their screeching women.

  Private conveyance, however, could not insulate me from the miseries of summer travel: flies, stenches, shocks to the spine, and stifling heat. As we moved southward down the western lip of the Cornish peninsula, the climate changed. Savage summer sun now slid through puffs of sea mists, but the flies, smells, and jolts still continued unchecked, and no anodyne could remove the headache always feathering along my temples.

  At the Three Lions in Hayle, where I gulped a dish of bubble-and-squeak brought to me by the innkeeper’s daughter, the inn buzzed with talk of the impending pilchard run, spoken in a soft drawling English very different from the chopped Northern dialect used to my ear. “Any day now, the fish will drive into Godrevy Point, and oh, miss, so many of them!” the innkeeper’s daughter gabbled at my query, cheeks pinkening. “Fair takes ‘ee’s breath to see so many flashing and slapping in the water, and you think they’d never all be eaten, but ‘ta, they are by April, and then we wait for the next run. They be God’s minder that He loves the Cornish!”

  After I stiffly climbed back into the coach, I could not suppress a steady increase in nervousness creeping through my stomach as Coachman Bobbet and his sun-creased partner, pistol at the ready should a highwayman dare menace, guided the horses onto the turnpike bound for St. Ives, as per Lady Penwyth’s direction. St. Ives was the sea-side town where I was to be met by a member of their household--perhaps Damon himself, Sarah Eames hinted--for the final stage of the journey. The unmarked Cornish roads, Lady Penwyth wrote apologetically, crisscrossed and double-backed without warning; any stranger would get hopelessly lost, even with explicit direction.

  My feelings about the entire enterprise were mixed. The haste in which my stepmother packed me off gave pause. But I had buried my doubts when a sensation of liberation had filled me as the coach rolled away from the Great House. I harbored no illusions about my welcome by the Penwyths, however. To them I was a rich bridepiece for their son, welcome for my money rather than my company.

  The sordid flavor of the visit was mitigated by a flame burning inside the dark anxiety of my heart. In Cornwall, no one knew me as the daughter of Ioanthe Eames, the Witch of Little Ithlington, and I intended to keep it hidden. At home, both my rank and a healthy dose of fear that my stepmother had ladled liberally over the villagers kept me from suffering the same fate as my mother. I would have to take great care here never to expose myself to the godly who hated my kind. Leaving the environs of Little Ithlington, as much as I was beginning to warm to the idea, presented me a risk.

  Still, a secret corner of my soul whispered, perhaps, just perhaps Damon Penwyth, who would know nothing of my mother or my own affinity to the earth, would fall madly in love with . . .

  I then remembered my clubfoot. I swallowed over a sudden constriction.

  “Be thee sick, miss?” said Hazel, the maid my stepmother sent to accompany me on the journey. She braced herself on the other side of the coach as far from me as possible.

  I took a deep breath. “No. I am thirsty, that is all.”

  “Eh.” The syllable dropped from thinned lips. Grinding toil and a fondness for muggety leached the emotion from Hazel, and it was her lack of imagination that allowed Sarah Eames to choose her to escort me on the journey. She knew that Hazel wouldn’t put up with any of my nonsense.

  Hazel handed me a bottle of gingered ale. Politely I sipped the warm liquid as I turned my attention from the monotonous brown wastes of the Cornish peninsula to the birdcage at my feet. Sarah let me bring one of my precious birds with me, and I chose a bright canary, his little eyes alert, his song so cheerful.

  I lifted the cloth shroud draped protectively over the bars and peeked inside. The tiny creature looked the worse for wear, drooping on its swinging perch. I assured it that the ordeal would soon be over.

  Hazel’s compressed lips disappeared altogether. Her prune-black eye, speculative and hard, raked me.

  Witch spawn.

  Settling the cloth back around Pretty Peter’s cage with casual haste, I fished two books out of my carpetbag. The first, Moore’s Fables for the Female Sex, a conduct book given me by my stepmother, I rejected in favor of The Divers and Fantasticall Legends of Land’s End by the Reverend Sprull, Don at Christchurch College. This book sat unread for many years in my grandfather’s library--the print date was 1637--but the morning after I learned I was to go to Cornwall I stumbled over its cobweb-shrouded spine as it inexplicably lay in the middle of the hallway floor.

  A blast of sea-soaked air pummeled the coach, carrying the scent of brine into the cabin. The finger-thin line of silver gilding the horizon had widened into an arc of blue where the Irish Channel dissolved into the Atlantic Oceans and the utter reaches of the other side of the world.

  I leaned back into the squibs. The faint rush of crashing waves melded with the thud of hoofbeats, and I clutched the book to my lap--the swaying was too great for comfortable reading-- and fought the sensation that I was driving forward into the past. Whispers flew thick in this air, and memories floated like a miasma over its surface. This land felt stoppered in time, and fiercely resisted incursion.

  With an effort I brought my mind to what I had already devoured out of the Reverend Sprull’s treatise: that it was said that King Arthur ruled England from his Cornish seat of power, and that Merlin still roamed Cornwall’s warren of bogs and moors awaiting Arthur’s return. Tristan met his Isolde here, while sea creatures called merrows were thought to swim disconsolately through the halls of the sunken kingdom of Lyonesse. The Duchy itself was divided into districts called Hundreds, and I shivered to find that the Penwith Hundred was also known as the Bloody Hundred because of many ancient battles fought over its rich tin mines. I wondered if the present family either took from, or, more improbably, gave its name to the Hundred.

  The whispers crowded my ear. A land soaked in blood, a people bred in violence.

  I shook my head to clear it. Dreamily I gazed out to the bouldered landscape running toward the encroaching sea, and to reorder it, fixed my mind on the meager information Sarah Eame
s shared about the family I would live with until Lady’s Day when the roads dried from their winter’s mire. Or, perhaps, forever.

  “The Penwyths are a very old Cornish family,” she told me over our last dinner together, a cold collation and the Rhenish wine suddenly made fashionable by the advent of our new German-born king. “Jocasta married Sir Grover when she was sixteen; she was a famous beauty in her day, and Sir Grover was everything a good match could be. He has property, and is held in high regard in the district for all he comes from the cadet line of the family. A rising man in politics, too. He stood for MP in the last election. Unfortunately he lost that contest, but has gained the support of the Godolphin family for the next, Jocasta says, which should secure the win.”

  Was there a trace of envy in her voice when she related this information? The corners of her mouth deepened slightly.

  “The cadet line?” I asked, having little interest in Sir Grover’s political future. “What does that mean?”

  A gesture of impatience. “It means that another family of Penwyths resides in the district. At some point in the past, two sons split the line, and the main estate went to the eldest. Sir Grover’s line is from the younger half. That was long ago, however, and time and prudent living erases such divisions. I have no idea if the other set of Penwyths holds a greater fortune, but my father seemed very satisfied with Sir Grover’s.”

  “And what of Jocasta’s children?” I asked.

  “You will address her as Lady Penwyth. I know very little about my niece and nephew that I haven’t already told you. I believe Susannah rides a great deal, and that Damon is fond of music. I daresay you and Susannah will become fast friends and spend all your time gossiping.”

  I brightened. That seemed a pleasing prospect.

  “Only . . .” Sarah Eames began, and then stopped.

  “Only what?”

  “It’s nothing.” She moved the pewter spoon forward of her plate at a more precise distance. “Pray remember that Sir Grover and my sister are well regarded in the district, and their property, the Hermitage, is quite the center of the county’s social whirl. You can be assured that entertainment will come your way, even in the wilds of Cornwall.”

  She went on to lecture me about my comportment and behavior, and I listened dutifully with half an ear. Entertainment usually meant dancing, and though my master was persistent with regard to my impediment, I still shifted clumsily through the figures. I passionately hoped that despite his regard for music, Damon did not care to dance.

  The mild sea air, rich in moisture, and the worries finally dulled my mind. I believe I dozed. When I awoke, I found the landscape changed. Fertile fields swaying heavy with ripening hay now became starved clumps of browned furze and gorse.

  Coachman Bobbet gave a shout as we rose over a hillock where the road swung closer to the cliffs. Before us stretched the vast blue swath of the sea, sparkling with tiny glimmers. Off in the distance, I saw a pretty rounded harbor encircled by colored rooftops--St. Ives, picturesque and charming, just as I imagined a Cornish sea-side town to be.

  I caught my breath at the beauty, stupendous colors of blue ocean, red rooftops, whitewashed, softly plastered buildings, oh, lovely! It was as if I had lived in gray all my life and the sudden burst of color brought my senses alive.

  Then, without warning, a wrench of homesickness engulfed me.

  As I stared out over the painfully blue sea where dots of white sails trawled like snails over its surface, a flash of silver blinded me.

  I blinked. A figure on horseback, a man, was cantering easily along the treacherous path paralleling the road, and which ran along the cliff’s edge. The unusual black-and-white coloring of the animal delighted me. I had never seen a white horse splashed with black before. It lifted its feet with disdainful ease.

  Up from the land whispers swarmed fast and thick; I had no time for them now so I crushed them out.

  The horseman was only a quarter furlong away and supremely unaware of the coach, close enough for me to see a profile etched on the horizon. My eyes moved, without volition, lower, to the lithe body moving in harmony with his mount in supple strength. His coat and waistcoat were discarded; he wore good-quality dun breeches and a white shirt that gaped open at the neck to expose a strong brown column. Neither hat nor wig covered his head, allowing a golden wave of hair to riot about his shoulders. Something in the way the rider held himself, a pride that matched his mount’s, suggested that he would never cover his head while the wind might rip unhindered through his hair. Magnificent silver spurs--the flash that first needled my eye--encircled ankles encased in surprisingly shabby, mudspattered jackboots.

  With a shock I then realized that the horse wore no tack, no bridle or saddle. The man rode it quite freely, as if the animal had consented to allow him on its back, a concession granted by a magical beast. Perhaps, my overdeveloped imagination murmured, the horse was really a unicorn shorn of its horn, its white coat dissolving into black as it disguised itself from mortal scrutiny. And that would make its rider . . .

  Without any overt signal, the horse shot forward in a fluid gallop. The man stretched over its neck, gripping fistfuls of mane for balance. My body rose in response to the beautiful sight, man and animal fused, a centaur racing out of mythology to beguile me.

  The horse pranced to a halt on a craggy rise some yards ahead. Its rider’s face was turned out to the sea, his silvery hair now wild from the reckless gallop and blowing like a cloud of milkweed.

  He gazed raptly out where the periwinkle sky met the sapphire ocean, his spine straight, attention riveted. By the impending pilchard run, most likely, I told myself. But the snare of legend would not easily let me go. Imagination demanded that I see the rider as a Cornish hero. He was Tristan, or King Arthur. Merlin.

  The rumble of my coach seemed to penetrate his consciousness slowly. He looked over his shoulder.

  The rider and I stared at each other as I rolled by, and I, imprisoned in my conveyance, felt the blood drain from my face.

  A scowl twisted his mouth in an expression of pure hatred. Empty hollowness I recognized as longing also haunted those features, and more, too, the blight of despair. His eyes, however, unnerved me, a color so light that from a distance they seemed nothing more than a flash of moonlight. Savage unhappiness darkened the edges of those orbs narrowed against the sun.

  This was no Tristan. More like King Mark, Isolde’s betrayed husband, suffering the doubled anguish of a faithless love and perfidious nephew.

  Awareness dawned in him as he focused upon me. And then I was blasted by the full force of unconcealed hunger.

  My heart began to thud sickly against my chest. I had the uncomfortable sense that I had intruded upon a man contemplating a private hell. I shrank away from the window, into the darkened safety of the coach’s interior. I wanted nothing to do with this fallen angel.

  ###

  We roared into the courtyard of the St. Ives’ posthouse, chickens scattering before the hooves of the sweating horses.

  I made a show of gathering my travel possessions, but a wave of panic froze my fingers and made my hands stiff as I reached for my birdcage. Was Damon Penwyth standing in front of the posting inn at this moment, as Sarah Eames hinted, awaiting me with cynical, measuring eyes? What would he think of this crippled offering from the North?

  The door of the coach clattered open in a billow of dust.

  I flexed my clubfoot anxiously to massage the stiffness out of it. My lower limbs felt like blocks of wood after seven hours of travel, and a sudden cold assailed me.

  “Go on, miss,” Hazel hissed as I struggled to rise. “I’ve got to piss. I’ll attend to the bird, if that’s what’s worrying thee.”

  Another effort set me on my feet. I took Coachman Bobbet’s outstretched hand for support and gingerly felt for the step. The scent of rotted fish and an overripe manure pile pinched my nose, and I hesitated again, searching for firm footing with my bad foot. At that moment, the horses
, impatient for their fodder, lurched forward. I wobbled, and fell.

  The fall tore my guard away. As my cheek made contact with the earth, I saw it all: Roundhead boot, smithied horseshoes of a gallic conqueror, the trail of a hermit’s hairshirt, bared soles of the tribe’s sheildman--

  I picked my head up from hawked-up gobs of spit and pulverized horse droppings, and fought the reaching fingers coming up from below. Shocked titters had followed me down to the ground.

  A chink of metal abruptly hushed the snickers. Two scuffed boots appeared in my line of vision.

  I stared at them. Spurs, generous with silver, enveloped the ankles, and I recognized them instantly. Merciless hands gripped my armpits. I was ungracefully hauled up, the past settled mournfully back to where it belonged, and I was set on shaky feet.

  And then I gawped into the face of an Angel embittered by his Fall.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He would have been sinfully handsome if not for two frown lines scoring between gilt brows, and a mouth downturned in a moody glimmer. Guinea gold hair, wild before, had been wrenched back, and he had shrugged carelessly into a coat tailored from expensive claret-colored Bristol cloth frogged with silver filé buttons.

  He must have ridden like Lucifer to arrive ahead of me, I thought, and when I told myself to have done with the satanic metaphors, he himself roared:

  “What the devil do you mean standing there while this lady has fallen?”

  If his features were handsome, his voice was doubly so, the burred timbre as arresting as the first sip of amber malt.

  I blinked into a gentleman’s neckcloth; a small tear rent the priceless lace fall. Farther up, eyes fiery with anger blurred inside a sudden smarting of tears in my own.