The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) by Nicola Thorne Read Free Book Online Page B

Then she crept stealthily from the tent, all the possessions she had in the world wrapped in a small bundle.
    And by the time dawn lit the slumbering camp the dancers were on the road.
     

3
    ‘Go forth, oh Christian soul, from this world ...’
    A single candle burning by the bedside of the dying man cast upon the stone walls the sepulchral shadows of those who were gathered around his bedside.
    Sir Francis Delamain, so long near death, had suffered a fatal seizure and the life slowly ebbed from his body as the priest uttered the majestic words urging the Christian soul on its long voyage from this life. It was a solemn group that surrounded the bedside of old Delamain, a solemn and divided group. There were those who thought he should be ushered from the world by a priest of the old religion – Brent thought so, and his Mother, Susan, thought so. She was a member of the Allonby family, staunch Catholics, who had been steadily dispossessed of their lands and titles over the years for their faith. His young sister Emma thought so too as she fearfully gazed at her grandfather whose face and closed eyes already looked like an image carved from a tombstone.
    But the heir, George Delamain, who stood some distance from the body of his family as though to emphasize his separateness from them, listened with satisfaction to the awesome words delivered in good strong English and not the devilish Latin tongue of popery. The eldest Delamain had always been on the side of the establishment, and George was no exception. The eldest Delamain had sided with King Henry against the Pope; with Queen Elizabeth against Mary Stuart, and with Cromwell against the Royalists, then when the tide turned, welcomed Charles II back to the throne. Delamain loyalty doubled about again when James II was sent into exile and the Prince of Orange and his wife Mary, James’ daughter, were invited to take the throne of England. It had supported the Hanoverian Succession in 1714 and had helped fight against the Pretender, Prince James, in 1715.
    And so the Delamain lands and properties flourished while the Allonby family, always on the side of opposition, had lost power and worldly wealth.
    ‘In the name of angels and archangels ...’
    Brent was aware of George standing apart – his proud firm stance proclaiming that he was within a heartbeat of being the head of the Delamain family. George seemed already to have assumed the mantle of authority and responsibility bequeathed to him by his dying grandfather as though, in parting, the old man had assured the line of continuity by the survival of his eldest grandson. Had Guy Delamain been here in his place, Brent thought, how very different things would have been.
    Brent had no recollection of his handsome, brave father who had died when he was seven, worn out by illness, misery and poverty – the lot of an exile. But the stories told by his Mother built a vivid picture in his mind; stories which enthralled Brent and Emma and Tom, but to which George always turned a deaf ear, stepping aside, determined not to listen, in order to preserve his own fixed idea of his father as an outlaw.
    From a very early age George had shown himself in every way to be a complete member of the Delamain establishment. He had abhorred the memory of his father, disliked his Mother, despised his brothers, tolerated his only sister and developed a firm – no one could tell if it was sincere or not – affection for his grandfather.
    Now George was to come into his own – the inheritance for which he had striven for so long; the vast possessions and great acres of the Delamain estate.
    ‘In the name of Seraphim and Cherubim ...’
    The candle nearly died, then the flame leapt in the air, blown to gigantic proportions by the keen wind which whistled through a door gently opened and quietly shut. The shadows on the wall rose and shrank with the flame and then they were joined by a fifth shadow which stood by the door as the family