Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR
AN: I deleted this. And then I decided, who cares? I like this fic, so it's going back up. Yay! for spontaneous bursts of… mind changing.
On another note. Eek! Exams next week! (And as ever I'm stooping to new and exciting levels of procrastination.)
And this is a founder fic, though you're unlikely to be able to tell from the prologue. I go where my mind takes me, blameth me not.
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Prologue-
The tiniest grains of glass, racing unchecked through the waist of an hourglass. Seconds watch the passing of thousands and life rages forward in a tidal wave of broken shards, until, with the slightest whisper, it falls. Fragile as the walls of the smallest capillary it splits, bleeding a river of sand until life has lived its last.
-
"Eight days, fourteen hours, thirty seven minutes and twenty six seconds."
A figure, female and slim, stands at the brink of an abyss. In her hand there is a thin branch, in her heart a graveyard's wealth of grief.
Somewhere beyond the darkness of night a clock is ticking.
Her breathing is quick and shallow, fingers clenching and unclenching while bitter thorns pierce her skin. Her hands shake and eyes cloud but her back is straight and shoulders proud, she will not allow them to get the better of her.
Pendulum swings back and forth, like the blade of an executioner's axe, certain and strong. Every blow rings true.
Her gown is deep violet, black, a sure sign of royalty; about her neck a circlet of gold catches the light. At her feet the precipice gurgles and rushes, darkness dulling awareness of space and time as she watches the invisible promise of the river below.
Zooming out, like a messenger's hawk rising on the winds. There is a town below, and a grandfather clock sitting in a pub, ticking time away while punters down tall glasses of strange ales.She's steeling herself, you can see it in her eyes. Steeling herself for something she's longed to have the strength to do for so long. Slippered feet shuffle, crisp velvet fluttering absently in the breeze. She bites her lip, concentration seeming set to draw blood. It doesn't.
Two men hunched over the bar, talking with hushed voices. One's cloak is green, the other red. Their eyes glance back, straight at her while the clock pounds in her ears. Through her they see a great castle and the red one smiles.The water, fathoms below, swirls and hisses, like an army of snakes, more than willing to take her in their arms. She remembers the dream and is more certain than ever that this is what she is meant to do.
The hag turns, glass eye boring into her, staring her down while wooden teeth leer. "Set you free, he will. Free as a raven, watcher of the dead." A death rattle of a laugh, blurring the dreamscape with its intensity. "Free and dark as a raven," the cackle rips through shadowing forms. Voice dancing with impish glee, "The snake will set you free…"
She unfolds her arms (black wings of a raven), wind rising almost to greet her. Hood cast back her face is young and fair.
Flying again. Shadows skate over a vast expanse of water, whispers in the forest and pale eyes watch on.
The trees creek behind her, a lonely spot, so far away from home and even the forest is unwilling to see her go.
A cloud of dust, spinning to rise and turn and fall at booted feet. Familiar booted feet. Her own?
Her horse, chestnut and gleaming with the exertion of running five miles swiftly, without rest. Hooves paw at the ground, impatient and oblivious. She hopes absently that he will not try to follow.
A great building, greater than anything she's seen at home, all the palaces of England cannot compare to the majesty of this fortress. (For it is a fortress, battlements and dormant power give away its true intentions.)Tears carve snakes of their own freely across her chalk white skin. She was the brightest in all the court and for that she finds herself damned. ("The daughter of Satan himself." They whisper it in dark corners and she does all she can to believe the deaths will come without her presence, that she alone is not the cause of her house's Curse.)
A voice can be heard above the creaking of the door (she strains and strains yet never has she seen past it), it whispers with the voice of prophecy: "Freedom in the arms of the snake, He alone will stop the curse." Shadows falter as she awakens.
And now, she shifts her weight onto her toes, ready to fall and make the sacrifice she knows must be made. She leans into the wind and as the air fails to hold her she feels her feet slip, only then does she allow the sob to ring out, only then will she scream the agony of guilt from her chest.
Blood rushes to her head and in the spilt of a second she blacks out, even before she tastes the water and its rocks.
-
"Well, who do you reckon 'e is?"
"Who?"
The barman leans over further, nodding towards the cloaked figure knocking back a shot of whiskey. "'Im. Come outta nowhere 'e did. One o' them traveller types."
"What? A pilgrim?"
The barman cocks his head, "You not from round 'ere either, then? We don't get pilgrims 'ere, sir, least not them of Christ…" He casts a shifty look over his shoulder. "Bad stuff 'appens in these parts you 'ear. Lots o' bad people set to do bad thin's." He nods again in the direction of the cloaked man. "'E'll be one o' them. A right baddun."
The barman's grubby hand reaches into his shirt, pulling out a carved wooden crucifix. "I wouldn't live 'ere for love nor money if it weren't for this." He raises the pendant to his lips. "If you're new 'ere let me give you a word of advice," he glances again at the cloaked man, "don't take nuthin' from the likes of 'im, 'n if you're claimin' sanctuary at that church up there, don't go a-wonderin' into those woods, you 'ear me? Bad stuff 'appens up there."
"I understand…Thank you."
"Not at all, sir." The barman stands back up, returning to rubbing a used tankard with a grey rag. "So, sir, where 'bouts you from?"
There is an uncertain pause in which the cloaked man wipes his mouth, oblivious to the scrutiny of the barman and his customer. "Not from around here," the man says finally face twisting into a wry smile.
"Really, sir? An' where you 'eaded?"
He shifts on his stool, "Into Town. I have a few errands to make in Westminster."
"Westminster, you say? Not far from 'ere that isn't. Other side o' the river mind… Bin there once or twice. Looking for anythin' specific, like?"
Odd smile returning the man nods, "You could say that."
The barman looks up, eying the dark clothed stranger. "Where you from, anyway?
"Like I said, it's not around here."
Warily the barman asks, "An' you got a name?"
Silky smile, baring unnaturally white teeth, "I would tell you," he leans in, voice dropping to a dramatic whisper, "but then I would have to kill you." Smiling at the horrified look on the other man's face he pulls out a bag of coins. "Any idea when the next witch burning is around here?"
Chuckling nervously the barman points out the window. "You'd 'ave to ask up there, sir. Father Paten'll know." He pauses, looking thoughtful, "They took a girl the other day, the Avery's child, down the 'ill. Them are bad folk, them are. Believe in allsorts, but they were never a problem 'til tha' little girl got up an' burnt poor Missus Mason's 'air. Put 'er right on fire she did."
"Well, isn't that something…" Turning back to the bar he drops a number of small gold coins onto the counter. "For your troubles, sir, best ale I've had since I left the continent." And with a curt nod he turns to leave, boots clicking across the floor, cloak snapping around the door after him.
Eyes wide the barman watches. Shaking his head he mutters, "From the continent 'e says, 'ave to kill you… Up to no good that'un. 'E'll find 'imself swinging up at the city with talk like tha'… 'ave to kill you indeed…"
-
My Dear Matilde,
There are so many things that do not fit together. I've tried to the very best of my abilities to make sense of the confusion that so frequently plagues me, but it seems as though I will wait forever for the mist to clear, for there to be any semblance of light in this sweeping darkness.
I confide in you, my dearest of cousins, friend and ally, in these bitter times, ever hoping to find an ally in a war I feel as though I fight alone. I look at what I've written now and realise how strange it must sound, but you, you know me as well as anyone and well enough to know it is not the world I speak as though I am up against, but the very nature of my current position, this 'Curse' that seems to follow me about. I have tried. I promised you that I would but it was all for nought.
My parents seek only to help me, to find me a husband worthy of a princess. They try and they find the best of families, noble and rich with great expanses of land to their names, but the men, they are all pigs. Arrogant and altogether too proud. They think too much of their assets and not nearly enough of the feelings of others. But for all my disgust. For all my shameful anger and doubt, I promise you I never meant for this to happen.
A boy died today. The same state as the others and his image haunts me even as I write. There was so much blood.
I feel I will never be clean. I feel I will never be whole. I feel I will never be safe with the others around me, that I cannot trust what my anger may unleash upon them.
I apologise. My writing is so ill structured, I imagine you find it quite a chore to read, but I beseech you. For all my faults, my sins and my failures. Please forgive me.
I have gone so far I will never be rid of it. It is not self hate or self-pity, it's like something burning so deep within me that is not even a part of me at all. It has a will of its own and if I were to lose control any further it would consume me entirely. I know that as long as I stay here no one will be free of this plague. Please know. I do what I do out of sheer desperation and a drive to cure the ills I have brought upon the people of my house.
Death is not something that should be taken lightly. I understand this and it is for that reason I am driven to take the actions you will no doubt hear of. All I want, my dear Matilde is to be free of the guilt. To be free of the suffering of other people. I wish… to escape.
I ask of you now to understand in yourself that nothing would sway my decision, all choices I have made have been planned and played over and over in my head until I could think of nothing else. Dreams and omens and even the travelling mystic coincide to one message, one path. The arms of the Snake. I must be strong and allow the river to take me. To wash away my hurts and guilt. To make it better. There is no other way for things to be.
When I am found the life will be gone from my body but you all will be saved from the Curse, if I burn for all eternity in a lake of red flame then I will suffer duly. This is my intended path and I will follow.
It is with a heavy but determined heart that I leave you, and as I sign 'Good Bye' my eyes are dry and resolute.
Yours most sincerely and eternally,
Isabella Rowena Catherine Beaufort
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Five miles east of the river locals named 'the Snake', there was a dark castle. High towers and thick walls, it was originally built on the border of the realm, a watch tower, a fortress with only one intention, but now, in times of dubious peace, while the barbarians that lived in the rugged lands north were suitably subdued, it housed a rich family, favoured by the King. Three floors up a steep staircase, facing the rising moon through uncommon glass paned windows there was a velvet four-poster. At the side of the empty bed a dark haired young woman allowed a sheet of parchment to fall from elegant white fingers. Silence echoed off stone walls until with a strangled gasp of a sob she fell heavily to her knees.
"What have you done?"
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AN: I was bored with all my other fics and I wanted to read something with the four founders in but no one seems to have gotten any further than the fist few chapters on anything really worth reading. And yes, I'm a filthy hypocrite and this is not exactly historically accurate or brilliantly constructed, but it was fun to write.
If you've read it please review it.