Return to

Home Page

NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE

 

 

 

6M

p12

The Gift Therein

By

Alcyone

 

Synopsis

Set in a world reminiscent of the turbulent city-states of Europe in the fifteenth century, The Gift Therein is a novel about the unintended consequences of human actions and of courage in the face of these consequences.

 

In the city of Bergfoss, once ravaged by religious and civic strife but now prosperous above its neighbours, Arnice, a young woman endowed with magical skills, is preparing to take revenge on the powerful duke of Quedlin. She chooses two men as her unsuspecting instruments – a modest scholar named Quentin, and the duke’s attractive and presumptuous librarian, Guido. At the end of her game, Guido is dead, and Quentin, exposed as a thief by his own college, is condemned by city authorities and then pardoned by the duke on the spur of the moment. But events take a more sinister turn when two years later Quentin returns to Bergfoss as an inquisitor, sent by the fanatical archbishop of Scelta to search for sorcerers and witches.

 

His arrival and his mission is unwelcome news not only for Arnice, already repentant of her past actions, but also for the duke, who is carefully concealing and denying his own magical gift. Attempting to trick the inquisitor by bringing confusion into the laws concerning magical crimes and into the administration of justice in the city, he relies solely on intellectual efforts and on the loyalty of his closest allies, unaware that Quentin is not so picky in his choice of weapons.  

 

Cultivating the fear of sorcery in the simpler folk, and driving his victims to mutual betrayals and denunciations, Quentin comes close to have his revenge on Arnice. But the unravelling of one of the cases he presents to the courts, concerning the mysterious disappearance of the duke’s illegitimate son, leads the others to explore the nature and motives of real magical crimes happening in the city.

 

Confronted by increasing resistance from those whom he hoped to manipulate, Quentin falls into his own trap when Arnice joins her efforts and shares her fragmentary knowledge of ancient magic with the very man on whom she tried to have revenge in the first place.

 

Told in turns by its two main characters, Arnice and Beroald, duke of Quedlin, The Gift Therein deals with the questions of magic, superstition, power and compassion, alternating between a sceptical outlook where the role of faith in a polity is concerned and a compassionate outlook whenever it touches upon the themes of weakness, fear and error.

 

Part I. Setting Traps

Arnice

I wake up and it is still dark, not a ray of cold morning sunshine creeping under the shutters. The warmth of the thick blanket envelopes my body, yet I know that as soon as I leave my bed, the illusion of comfort will disappear. The fire in the hearth has died hours ago, and if I do not wait for Gerda to get up and rekindle it, I will have to spend an hour or two in biting cold. But the prospect of falling asleep again is more threatening.

Striving not to leave the warmth of the blanket completely, I reach for the tinderbox on the little shelf to the right from the bed, and try to light the remaining candle that is left from last night. After some time spent in the effort, I have my way, and the light of the candle comforts my senses for a while. In this early hour on the tenth day of  January, in the year of Our Lord 1456, in my room in the city of Bergfoss, I realise that a great change has happened in my life.

Until now, falling asleep again in the darkness of a cold winter morning would not have frightened me. Indeed, there were few things that would, for I knew the reason why I was here, or rather two reasons, and now none are left to me, and it is strange to ponder what is there to be done with the remaining years. One reason was my brother, but he is a man now, no longer in need of my protection. The other reason was revenge, and that I have tried to have.

Amitie says I could still marry, but that is unlikely, and life in a convent does not appeal to me either. Cuddled here with the light of the only candle as my comfort, I envy Gerda, and Amitie, and all the other women earning their bread with their hands, or helping their husbands to do so. I envy the nuns of St. Leonie, for they would be up at this hour, praying together in the convent church, none of them left behind to ponder the goal of her existence. And is not the goal itself clear to them?

For the first time in my life, I envy men, for they would not have this sort of question stirring in their minds, as bent as they are on fighting, on power and wealth, on lust and pleasures, and on having all things their way. I even envy court ladies for their vanity. I envy my brother Stephen, my sweet Stephen, for his passion that has led him to the Isle of Scelta, and that will in due time make him a learned doctor, delighting in the pursuit of knowledge. And finally, in this hour of grim despair, I begin to envy my lord of Quedlin, who is now as sleepless as I am, in his chamber in the ducal palace, unable to get over the pain I caused him – because his grief will pass. And his librarian Guido, who was my weapon – because he is dead.

I am safe, despite what I have done, and all the days that remain to me are mine to dispose of, and being only twenty-three years of age as I am, those days might be many. My body is safe, no retribution is possible, or at least I know it is not coming. And as to my soul, it has always been so different from those of other men and women, that perhaps there was no hope for it from the very beginning, or at least so many people think, and some of them have not shrunk from saying it to my face.

For I am, in this city of merchants and tradesmen, of courtiers, soldiers and beggars, of public women, ballad singers and thieves, a true rarity – a strange beast that many would like to catch but that few have seen. Or rather, I am two of such things at once. I am a virgin and a witch.

There are people who think that witches are old women, selling strange powders made of the ashes of white cockerels, burnt at midnight, and if you put those ashes into the pillow of a young man disillusioned with his love, and into his cup, he will forsake his new sweetheart, and come back to the woman that needs him so badly. And there are people who think witches make figures out of white wax and black tar, and pierce them with daggers, or that they keep toads in earthenware pots under their bed, and poke at them with iron spikes in order to inflict bodily harm on their victims. Or worse still, there are people that believe that witches are young and attractive, and that they dance in the full moon with the devil himself on the hilltops of Meriath, and submit to his lust. Thence, they say, comes those women’s power to influence the elements, to cause showers and draughts, and to cure those who pay them from terrible diseases which are pronounced hopeless by all physicians.

All of these things are nothing but the fruit of people’s imagination. Or rather, there have been many women who have given their last coins for a handful of powder to put in a love potion, or for a spell to kill a husband that tormented them, but I have not heard of a single one that had truly reached what she desired in this way. And as to toads and white cockerels, those are the most unfortunate creatures on earth, falling victim to the vain attempts of would-be sorcerers.

I do not do love potions. Nor do I dance naked with the devil or any  man for that matter, nor do I pierce wax dolls or torture toads. For nothing in the world can bring a man that has ceased to love back to his old paramour, or perhaps God’s miracle could, but God has not shown such miracles in our day. And if it had been possible to cure a hopelessly ill person by calling the devil on the hilltops of Meriath, surely my lord of Quedlin would have paid someone to do it for his wife, when she was dying of the plague four years ago, or for his little daughter.

Such things are beyond the reach of mortals, or at least they are beyond my reach, and I know no person alive who could help against those evils. But when it comes to mending a broken heart, or making the pain of loss less terrible and acute; when it comes to reading a person’s soul and seeing whether the sentiment that moves them is love, or ambition, or fear; or when, at last, it comes to overwhelming them with doubt and despair, if they do not keep their guard – of those matters, indeed, I know a thing or two. And yes, I have caused a storm once. But that was long ago, and I have no idea, how I did it.

Reading in people’s hearts is a distressful business, and if I could avoid doing it, by Heaven, I would – except, perhaps, for this one time when I read Guido’s heart to destroy him. For there was an old debt that I had to pay – not to Guido, though he brought this upon himself, nor even to our duke, for he had, after all, been kind to me, but to the man from whom I inherited my gift.

They call me the sorcerer’s daughter, but that is not true, for my father had never been a sorcerer. He was a prophet.