Darkwitch Rising Read Free Page A

lover when you were Genvissa. He’s reborn, and growing contentedly in a queen’s womb. Not a bastard, this life. Tell me, pretty Jane, do you think he’ll want you? Do you think he’ll ever stoop to love you , dirty street urchin, Asterion’s whore?”
    More tears flowed, and the boy nodded slowly. “Aye. You know he’s back, and you know he’ll never touch you. So sad, pretty Jane.”
    She spoke, this tiny girl, with the voice of a child much, much older. “Let me go, Weyland.”
    “Never,” Weyland whispered. “You’re mine, now. You and all your talents.”

Paris, France, and St James’ Palace, London
    O n the 29th May in 1630 Helene Gardien went into labour at daybreak, delivering her child six hours later. Her lover, Simon Gautier, the Marquis de Lonquefort, was in residence at the Parisian townhouse where he’d installed his mistress, and visited Helene two hours after he’d been informed of the safe delivery of their child.
    This was his first child, and he was curious, if somewhat apprehensive, and more than a little annoyed. All he’d wanted from Helene was sex, not responsibility.
    “Well?” he said as he inched up to the bed.
    “A boy,” Helene said, not looking up from the child’s face. “See, he has neither your eyes, nor mine, but those of a poet.”
    Neither your eyes nor mine . Lonquefort instantly seized on her words. Could he claim the child wasn’t his? Not his responsibility?
    Then he looked at the baby, and was lost. The baby’s eyes were indeed different, for while both Lonquefort and Helene had blue eyes, this infant had the deepest black eyes Lonquefort thought he’d ever seen in a face. But it wasn’t their colour that immediately captivated Lonquefort. The boy’s eyes were indeed those of a poet, Lonquefort decided, for they seemed to contain knowledge and suffering that stretched back aeons, ratherthan the two hours this boy had lived in this painful world.
    “He will be a great man,” Lonquefort pronounced, and Helene smiled.
    “I will call him Louis,” she said, then hesitated. Poet or not, the boy was a bastard, and Helene was not sure whether she should name him for his father.
    But who was his father , she wondered as the awkward silence stretched out between them. Lonquefort, or that strange beast she’d envisioned riding her in the forest ?
    “Louis,” Lonquefort said, then he grinned. “Louis de Silva, for the forest where we made him.”
    Helene laughed, her doubts gone. The forest had made him, indeed, and so he should be named.
    “I shall settle a pension on him, and you,” said Lonquefort. “You shall not want.”
    “Thank you,” Helene said softly, and bent her head back to her poet-son.
    As Helene relaxed in relief, another woman, far distant, arched her back and cried out in the extremities of her own labour.
    Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, lay writhing in the great bed draped with forest green silk within her lying-in chamber off the Colour Court of St James’ Palace. About her hovered midwives and physicians, privy councillors and lords, all there either to ensure a safe delivery or to witness the birth of an heir.
    Elsewhere within the palace Charles I paced up and down, praying silently. He was riven with anxiety, more for Henrietta Maria than for concern over the arrival of a healthy heir. Over the course of the past nine months, as his wife’s body had swelled, so also had waxed Charles’ regard and love for her. Now he could not bear the thought that she might suffer in childbed.
    As the palace clocks chimed noon, one of the privy councillors hurried towards Charles.
    “Well?” demanded Charles.
    “You have a healthy son,” the man said. “An heir!”
    “And my wife?”
    “She is well,” said the councillor, and Charles finally allowed himself to relax, and smile.
    “A son,” he said. “He shall be named Charles.”
    “Of course,” said the councillor.
    Charles went to his wife, assured himself that she was indeed