Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass Page A

Marguerite.
    “Born my younger brother,” Charles said.
    “James?” said Louis. “The Duke of York?”
    Charles nodded. “Aye.” He paused, and looked at Louis steadily. “He calls me Brutus, and hates me.”
    Louis’ mouth slowly dropped open. “He doesn’t—?”
    “No,” said Marguerite. “He lives with his mother in France, and has taken greatly to Catholic priests.”
    If possible, Louis’ jaw dropped even further open. “Christianity? Loth ?”
    “Charles and I think,” Marguerite said, taking Charles’ hand, a gesture that Louis did not miss, “that perhaps he has lost purpose.”
    “Or has had it lost for him,” said Charles.
    “What do you mean?” said Louis.
    “That perhaps the Game has no more use for him.”
    Louis raised his eyebrows, blowing out the breath slowly from his cheeks. “I still cannot reconcile the idea of Loth taking to Christianity.”
    “Is that idea any stranger than what some of us have taken to?” asked Charles with a grin, and Louis smiled back.
    “No, I suppose not.”
    Charles waved Louis to a chair, then sat himself down on the chest under the window, Marguerite beside him. “Genvissa?” he said once Louis had seated himself.
    Louis shrugged. “I have no interest. I cannot bear the thought of her. I do not know where she is, or what her estate. I imagine that she has found herself a comfortable magnate to take her as wife, and that she lives somewhere in London, in comfort, and plotting with…well, with whoever suits her purpose for the moment.”
    “We are merely glad she has not yet touched our lives,” said Marguerite.
    At that Charles leaned forward, changing the subject, and thus they sat for many hours, talking of this and that, renewing friendship, and staying away from the one subject that ate at all three of them: Cornelia, where was she? How was she?

Elizabeth Castle, Jersey
    M arguerite tossed in her sleep. It was a warm night, and Charles more than half lay over her, but neither the oppressive heat nor her lover’s weight caused her restlessness.
    Instead, Marguerite dreamed of Pen Hill, where, during her last life, she’d spent so much time as prioress of St Margaret the Martyr.
    At least, Marguerite thought this was Pen Hill.
    It was of a similar height and aspect, with the same gentle rounded grassy knoll ringed by the standing stones (Sidlesaghes). But the hill did not overlook London, as had Pen Hill, and there was something very different about the stones, and Marguerite knew she had to concentrate on them.
    Pen Hill had a score or more of stones on its peak, but now that Marguerite focussed, she saw that this hill only had two stones, standing on opposite edges of the summit. Marguerite could feel the wind rush through them, and she knew she was being shown the rushing of this wind for some reason.
    Something changed. A third stone materialised at the edge of the knoll, and the two stones already there somehow shifted their position so that there was now an equal distance between each of them.
    The wind no longer rushed through.
    The dream stilled, and Marguerite knew that at this point an understanding was being demanded of her.
    The wind no longer rushed through…
    Where two stones had formed no barrier at all, the presence of a third had formed a barrier.
    The wind no longer rushed through, but was contained within the grassy knoll.
    Contained within the circle of the stones.
    Two cannot form a circle.
    Three can.
    The wind was power…held within the Circle .
    Marguerite gasped, her body jerking in its sleep so that Charles murmured and shifted.
    Now something was happening within the Circle on the hill. Something momentous.
    Something in the grass.
    Something in the turf .
    A face was forming…a girl’s face on the verge of womanhood.
    Marguerite woke with a half-shriek, sitting up so abruptly that Charles rolled away to the other side of the vast bed.
    “Gods, Marguerite…what’s—”
    “Get Louis,” she said. “Get him