“Your mother’s blood was far more noble than his,” the old woman cut her off with a dismissive little scoff. “Her line reached back to ancient days before the druids came to the southern lands of Britain, when the Normans were still nothing but savage pawns of Rome.” She leaned forward to take Isabel’s chin in her gnarled and wizened hand. “You come from druid stock, sweet girl. You are a child of the grove.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?” she demanded. “What good is that to me, or anyone else?”
Mother Bess let her go with a sigh. “Ruined… go on then, Brautus.”
“No one expected your mother to conceive a child, druid blood or not,” Brautus said. “But when she did, she had a dream, a vision, she called it. She said her child would be the champion of her ancient line, that the child in her womb would avenge her race and overcome the wolf.”
“That sounds horrifying,” Isabel said dryly, though in truth her show of not caring was losing strength by the moment. Simon had changed himself into a wolf. “What does it mean?”
“The stories say that in ancient days in the first lands of the druids, one of their women was taken by the gods and gave birth to a demon,” Brautus explained, handing her the scroll. She unrolled it, but the crumbling page was covered in the same strange text as everything else in the catacombs; she couldn’t read a word.
“It is no story, old man,” Mother Bess said with a bitter laugh. “This demon grew to manhood hating the druids and his mother’s people. He cursed them, using his immortal power to murder all of those who opposed him and make slaves of the rest. And his favorite form was that of the wolf.”
“So he changed,” Isabel said, looking up from the scroll. “He could change.”
“Oh, yes,” the old woman nodded. “But he was not all-powerful, as he believed. Some of the priests managed to escape him and come south, and they brought their wisdom with them, and their sacred blood. They wrote what they remembered of the wolf as a warning to their progeny, for they knew that someday he would find them and use all of his cunning to destroy them.”
“And you think Simon is this person—this demon wolf?” Isabel said, hardly crediting her ears.
“Simon?” the old woman said, looking at Brautus. “That young man…” She looked back at Isabel. “Dear Christ, can it be so?”
“He is a vampire,” Brautus nodded. “He said it himself.”
“But what is that?” Isabel demanded. “You act as if you know—”
“I do know, love,” he cut her off. “A vampire is a cursed creature that can only live in darkness, feeding on the blood of the living.” He looked more pale than ever. “Your father and I had heard such tales at war, and I saw enough to know that they were true.”
“The demon drank the blood of his victims, and his children did the same, mortals that he poisoned with his own immortal blood,” Mother Bess said. “No weapon could harm him; he could not die.” Her eyes glittered in the firelight. “But neither could he live.”
“I stabbed him, poppet, remember?” Brautus said, taking Isabel’s hand. “He did not die. He did not even bleed.”
“The druids wrote that their gods could not destroy the wolf because he was one of their own,” Mother Bess explained. “But they drove him from their forests and across the sea, and they cursed him for all time, condemning him to live in darkness, to never see the sun.”
Isabel stared at them, aghast. “There is but one God in heaven,” she said, standing up as if she’d heard enough.
“He could not live as mortal men,” Mother Bess went on, relentless. “He could taste no meat nor drink anything but living blood. He was the vampire.”
“Your father believed as we do, poppet,” Brautus said, putting a hand on her arm, pressing her back into her chair. “He loved your mother very much, but he would not believe these pagan tales of demons and druids and gods.”
“No more do I,” she answered. “I will not believe it.” God Himself has banished me from the light, Simon had told her at their first meeting. He had never eaten so much as a crust of bread or drunk so much as a sip of water in her presence; he spent the daylight hours buried underground. He said himself that he was a vampire; she had seen him transform himself into a wolf. But he loved her; he had said that, too. He was barely older than she was herself; he could not be some ancient pagan evil. He had been at Charmot for weeks; he could not mean them harm. “I believe in Christ, in the grace of God Almighty.” But what in Christ’s teachings explained how Simon had transformed himself into a wolf before her very eyes?
“And so do we, my lady, and so did your lady mother, I do swear it on my life,” Mother Bess said, taking her hand. “But she believed in the old ways as well, that there was good and evil in the world tha
t God knew well but perhaps his priests did not.”
“She did not argue with your father, but she trusted in her vision,” Brautus said. “She was certain that this wolf or vampire or whatever he was would be coming to Charmot and that the child she carried in her womb would be the one to vanquish him. She made your father promise to protect the wisdom of the druids in their catacombs, and she began this tapestry. It became a kind of joke between them.” He unrolled the weaving and held it out to her. “We always assumed the maiden was meant to be Lady Caitlin herself, that the wolf was bowing down to the son in her womb. Then when you were born a girl, and Lady Caitlin died…” He looked at Mother Bess. “Some people thought they knew better.”
“Knew the truth, you mean, and so we did,” the old woman answered. “Caitlin knew it herself. She just feared to frighten her pigheaded husband with the knowledge that his daughter would be faced with such a task. She never expected to die; she thought she would have time to teach her daughter who she was, to prepare her for what she would become.”
“After she died, your father refused to hear any more talk of a prophecy that would endanger his child,” Brautus said. “And I agreed with him; I thought it was all a lot of peasant nonsense, more than he thought it, in fact.” He glared at Mother Bess. “Despite what some would tell you, he had great respect for the wisdom of the druids, Christian that he was. He just did not wish to give them his daughter. He refused to believe that you, his precious child, were meant to battle some demon—you were a girl, for pity’s sake. He searched the catacombs all of your life for some evidence of some female warrior who had attempted such a thing in the past, but he never found a word to support it.” He stopped, taking a deep breath. “What else he might have found, I cannot say.”
Isabel’s blood had run so cold, she felt numb. “Do you mean to tell me I’m supposed to murder Simon?” she said, her voice sounding hollow in her ears.
“Slaughtering a monster isn’t murder,” Mother Bess said grimly.
“Your father thought your husband would fulfill the prophecy, if somehow it really was true,” Brautus said. “That was why he was always so concerned that you should marry a man who could protect Charmot. That, he believed, was your true destiny.” He smiled with sadness in his eyes. “I believe it as well. That is why I became the Black Knight.”
Isabel looked down at the tapestry, the tiny redhaired maiden and the wolf with his head laid in her lap, gazing up at her in love. I love you, Simon had said, on his knees before her, weeping tears of blood. “No…” She looked back at them, the knight and the peasant crone, both of them waiting for her to say she would do what they wanted, that she would kill her love to save Charmot. But how could she? Even if she had the strength, even if she knew how to kill a demon who could not be killed, how could she kill Simon? You cannot kill me, the demon in her father’s shape had told him. The second demon…