Nine moons pass when Hermione's labour is upon her at long last. She is near to death as she delivers a male child unto her lord.
William wastes no time in claiming her newling, much to her mother's pleasure. It is, Hermione knows, a precaution in case Louis dies.
As her lover takes their boy away, he gives Hermione an approving, warm glance. The door closes behind him with finality, and she feels a chill pass through her, so huddles deeper under the furs.
~.~.~.~.~
A month passes, and it is autumn once more. The leaves outside Hermione's bedroom window turn their glorious colours as they die off, and the village prepares for winter harvesting.
Her body has been slow to recover from childbirth. Her courses have finally stopped, thanks be to God, but her belly continues to bloat and there is a sharp pain in her side when she sits up too quickly or walks too fast. Her breasts are large, heavy, and tender, and the pegs the priest has dictated she wear to obstruct her flowing milk ache as they clamp her nipples. She is allowed relief of their weight once a day, to empty them of their life-giving fluid into ritual bowls, which the priest blesses and then sends to the homes of the faithful women who are barren, hoping to make their wombs fruitful once again so they may multiply.
Hermione endures, but poorly. Her continued confinement has made her waspish of mood at times, and at others, she falls into a dark melancholy and fits of weeping. Often, she is scolded for these tempers by her mother, who visits her chambers more than Hermione would wish.
Her fear of her future grows daily, as William does not visit her bed. She has seen little of him since their child's birthing, and she has not a single time seen her son since the day of his advent into the world. He's been given to a waiting-woman to wet nurse and they stay to the nursery on the other side of the castle, per custom.
Chambermaids and a lady-in-waiting attend her, mostly, and bring her needlepoint to embroider to pass the time. None of them stay long enough for good conversation, none bring her new manuscripts or letters, and none will pass gossip. All seem nervous and agitated, as if guilty of an unnamed crime, but Hermione cannot convince them to speak of it.
As time passes, so she feels suffocated by her in-between position, with not even bowls of burning lotus to soothe her nerves.
~.~.~.~.~
As September turns to October, Hermione has had enough of molly-coddling and evasion. Dressing her creaking body, which has weakened from lack of exercise, she combs her hair back, slips into her shoes, and makes her way out of her rooms, determined to head for the Great Hall.
She stops at the landing above the open chamber, hearing raised voices. Hiding behind a curtain once more, she eavesdrops on the conversation below.
William's brothers are back with an announcement of Frederick's intent to marry a lovely, young maid named Angelina, daughter of the Earl of Pembrook's personal seamstress. The couple were introduced years earlier through Frederick's fostering to the earl and, according to the man it was love upon first sight. Per custom, the groom must have his lord's permission to marry, however, and so he has come appealing it.
From her vantage point, Hermione hears and sees much and recognises the gleam in William's lusty wolf eyes at the mention of a young, unspoiled maiden entering his household. He agrees to the union a little too easily and with a sly smile, especially as the maiden comes forth to be presented to him.
As Angelina curtseys in a courtly fashion at William's feet, Hermione fears that she is soon to be displaced.
~.~.~.~.~
Frederick marries Angelina upon Samhain, in the same ancient Celtic tradition as she, herself, had known. Hermione is not invited. She has been ordered to her quarters by William, in fact, so she may not spoil the surprise awaiting the new bride come the witching hour.
From down the hallway, she hears all, however.
After the ceremony ends and the new bride is escorted to her chambers to prepare for the anticipated bedding by her husband, she hears Lady Weasley's soft voice explaining Droit du seigneur and Angelina's angry rejection at the duplicity of her host-family. Hears the woman's rage eventually melt into tears as she pleads with her new husband not to allow William his rights as Lord, and hears, eventually, Angelina's bed put to use as the woman's protestations are ignored and the Baron Cranmere exerts his influence upon her.
Under the furs in her own room, Hermione cries with profound unhappiness. William's betrayal stings deep and she questions his reasoning for this action. Has she not done what has been required of her, despite the injury to her soul and the ruin of her marriage? She has surrendered her virtue to her lord, produced an heir for him, should he have need, and even well-satisfied William's dark desires many a time upon the mattress.
Yet, tonight, as she listens to Angelina's cries and William's low moaning, and the familiar sounds of a wooden frame creaking under stress, she knows that her many sacrifices and her descent into debauchery and sin have all been for naught.
She strokes over the scar that lingers at her throat, the imprint of William's teeth from that first night when he'd come to her and claimed her.
"The mark of our mating. Proof that you are one of mine, Hermione. My first consort…"
First consort.
Why had she not considered his words more carefully? In plain speak he had divulged his nefarious plans to take each of his brother's wives for his own, and that she was no more than a number to him—no better than any of Lycaon's consorts had been to the mighty King of Arcadia.
She has been simply a means to an end for William: to breed sons, to create a pack of loyal soldiers, to assure his legacy.
But to what ultimate end? Will he attempt to become the Lycaon of legend and become a King as well? Mayhap his ambition extends higher into the Heavens, even?
O, fool! O folly!
And she, an unwilling accomplice to his greed, had been the first casualty…no the second, behind William's dead wife, Fleur. Now Hermione knows she has served her purpose, and has been usurped by his next victim. She plays the part of the duped whore—a black harlot, whose prayers for salvation from this madness will not be answered by Heaven's angels, for she has fallen too far from grace to be heard.
A sudden, choking fear creeps along her heart. What of her son, the boy christened 'Hugo William' a month ago? Is he even alive? She has been forbidden to visit the nursery, kept from doing so by servants and soldiers who bar her path and turn her about when she approaches that end of the castle.
What if he is already dead?
Worse, what if he is still alive, kept under guard for the sole purpose of using him as leverage against her?
What sort of crib death will be her little one's fate should his father find him dispensable?
This night marks an end for her, one way or another. William has destroyed her life on a whim, and now that he has a new amusement, he will surely cast her out into the road and keep her son...or he will simply arrange for both to meet an unfortunate death, much as he had her husband...or he will chain her to this household for life and make an Ottoman harem slave of her, as promised.
No matter his intentions, it is a thing unquestioned that her future is set for sadness.
For the first time, she wonders if William's dead wife, the Lady Cranmere, had truly expired of illness, as he has ever claimed, or if she had met a more nefarious end. Perhaps something to do with poisoning by an exotic herb brought back from Crusade, for instance. As the daughter of a physician-chiurgeon, Hermione is well aware that there are certain flowers and roots and nectars that can be gathered and ground into fine powder, or that can be distilled into tinctures and tonics, or that can be burned like incense to slowly envenomate a victim. Had William dispatched his wife, Fleur, in such a manner?
If so, what will Hermione's fate be, for she is no wife. She is naught more than a consort, without even a written agreement between her and William to see to her care-taking. Will he murder her to make way for Angelina? Or will he keep her and Angelina both, exerting his rights as Lord of his family to annul Angelina's marriage, too? And what of when he loses interest in Frederick's wife? Will the cycle repeat with each of his brother's wives? Will he make a pack of them, all bitches in heat for his use?
Anger such as she has never known boils her blood and reddens her vision. Her lover truly is Lycaon the Deceiver, a wolf wearing a man's face, preying upon innocent lambs.
She cannot allow him to get away with such evil!
...But she is no soldier, like the Weasley sons.
What power has she, a mere woman—
The thought gives her pause. All her life she has been told that hers is the weaker of the genders, but such is not true. She has read of the mighty Penthesilea, who took up sword against the unbeatable Achilles, and of terrifying Nox, mother-creator of Thanatos, bringer of Death. Even the Christ Saviour was born of woman, conceived with no man's help, but requiring a mother to come unto the world.
And like the great goddesses of Olympus, Hermione can do things unnatural...things William cannot, things that make him and all men like him envious, indeed.
She is not powerless a'tall.
She rolls onto her back and lifts her hands to the sky, summoning forth energia. It crackles like blue lightning from her fingertips, leaping unto life as easily now as her name falls from her lips. Over the last year, she has grown comfortable with its dark pull, with the way it tickles her skin, begging to be used.
In sooth, she often uses it as a distraction from the boredom of her existence, turning spun thread into ribbons for hair and into string to play cratch-cradle with herself, to keep her room dust free and to freshen her clothing, to summon owls to her window from nearby trees at night, and to keep the potted lemon balm and mint plants in her room watered and neatly trimmed. A'times, she plays with fascinating tongues of light, fashioning them into a child's ball and rolling it between her palms.
Why again had she feared this gift?
She cannot recall now, for it seems as natural a thing to her as the talent to sew, or to brew potions under her father's instruction.
Recalling the way she'd used it to appease William's curiosity and to heighten their bed play, and the way the room spun and changed as her grieving for Ronald nearly tore her bleeding heart from her chest, she realises at last: here, then, is her strength to defeat William's scheming.
"You are a daughter of Hecate, goddess of magic…"
All the things she can do now, after so many days alone and much practise in secret, why has she never considered using such a thing before to escape or to improve her lot?
"It is a thing of evil," the parish priest's voice whispers in her head, as if in warning. "You will burn in hell, o' consort of Satan! O' damned witch, the fires of perfidy await ye!"
…From down the hallway, Angelina's sobbing can be heard echoing. It is the heartbroken sound of a woman abused.
I am aright hell-bound for breaking my vows—for laying with a man not my husband, and for allowing my body to be bred by a monster. I did not speak my suspicions to authority when my beloved was betrayed to his death by his own kin. I have forsaken myself, and now there is nothing left for me to fear, she thinks, resolved to her course. If I am to burn in liquid fire for eternity, if such be my fate…then I'll take the bastard Baron with me.
She prays then for the strength to do what she must, and hopes her son, if he lives still, will someday forgive her for what she plans for his father.
Her prayers are not sent to Heaven, however, but to a more primordial place that dwells deep within the secret heart of all women—to a place that speaks of justice in terms of vengeance and of death as a new kind of freedom. Man's God may have abandoned her to a terrible, unwarranted fate, but Hermione's new Goddess will not.
Great Hecate, the Queen of Witches, protects her own.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes:
So it begins - Hermione's plans for revenge...
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