Daughters of Le Fey Part 30

This is the story I've been editing. I reached the end of the work in progress and I've had inspiration to continue the story.

Thank you for following me as I edited it. I hope you'll continue to follow as I now enter the writing stage.

The links to the previous episodes are all listed in this Post. Please feel free to catch up there, then, Part 29

All images are from Google Free to use search

On with the story.

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She returned to the courtyard and was drawn to a woman with a distended, pregnant belly.

Katherine didn’t approach the woman, something, some instinct held her at bay.

The woman’s head and shoulders were huddled under layers of cloth. One filthy woollen wrap pulled over her head and hair, hiding her face, and another held tight around her shoulders, clutched under her chin, obstructed any view of the woman’s face.

Katherine watched as the woman made her way across the courtyard. People watched her with suspicion and fear and moved out of her path, pushing others in their attempt to get away from the swaddled woman.

Once she had passed them, the people invariably crossed themselves or made signs of protection at the woman’s back.

Silence dropped over the crowd close to the woman and not one whisper could be heard. Katherine grew curious and she followed the woman out of the courtyard.

Katherine concentrated once they were away from the people in the courtyard and she heard or felt a great seething mass inside the woman’s belly. The thoughts coming from the child invaded Katherine’s mind and she drew up protection around herself whilst still sending out investigative tendrils of her own mind to see what it was all about. Surely an infant could not be so powerful as the one carried by the woman.

The woman stopped and turned in the road. She looked toward Katherine and for a moment, the spirit believed she could be seen by the woman.

The woollen wraps folded around her shoulders as the woman pushed them back from dirty, matted hair. Craggy faced, wisps of hair growing from moles on the woman’s grime-encrusted skin and missing teeth in amongst the blackened stumps, the woman looked like Fairy-tale illustrations of the wicked witch.

Katherine gasped. The woman appeared ancient and far too old to be pregnant, yet the distended belly and the movement inside the womb spoke of a pregnancy almost to term.

Katherine watched the woman, she was not certain that she couldn’t see or at least sense Katherine.

The woman rubbed her hand across her belly, over the top and around the front and under. She smiled and looked down at it. “Soon, my son. You shall be here soon.” The woman cackled and every one of Katherine’s senses railed in alarm.

The woman was not looking at Katherine, but back up the hill to the enclosed yard of the large manor house where the executions were held.

She turned away and stumbled down the slope, into the woodland beyond the path. A footpath wound into the wood and Katherine could do nothing else, but follow the crone.

Katherine listened as the woman began talking to herself.

“They laughed when I said I could get rid of the rats, yet I did it. They never paid me. The payment was that they didn’t burn me at the stake. I was young then, and beautiful…” she paused.

“Yes, I was! I had many suitors! Don’t be spiteful!”

Katherine realised there was a conversation going on and again she concentrated. A buzzing sound, like angry wasps emanated from the woman’s belly and Katherine became worried and then frightened. If she tried too hard to hear what the buzzing sounds meant, whatever was making the sounds could possibly connect with her too.

But she had to know.

Katherine drew close to the woman and the smell coming from her reminded Katherine of something. Death, disease and corruption, a waft of the air over London during the great fire. Pestilence, the spirit that Katherine had fought with had returned to the world of man.

The buzzing sound stopped, though the woman prattled on.

“I will teach you my ways, the ways of the Healer. I shall help you to become as powerful as any man has ever been…”

Katherine’s blood ran cold. Could the woman be carrying Dominic’s next incarnation? She was becoming more intuitive to his presence and perhaps that meant she appeared close to where he would be born next. Katherine gave up a silent prayer of thanks to Morgana for her help.

The woman stopped her murmuring and clutched her belly protectively. Katherine stopped trying to listen to the buzzing noise and watched the woman.

She looked around her and cocked her head as though listening.

“What is it? Why are you quiet? I have been listening to your ramblings for days now and suddenly you are silent? What it is my baby? Tell me and I can protect you!”

The old woman shambled off faster than Katherine could have imagined possible for such an old woman to move through the dense undergrowth.

She ducked down and dodged sideways, under an overhanging branch and disappeared.

There was no escaping Katherine, of course, she found the woman’s lair, expertly hidden in amongst deadfall and ivy.