“I had been earning my modest keep as a teacher to the children of the fishing village, and living alone in the spare, two-room schoolhouse that they built for me. I’d had chance enough for suitors if I wanted them. But I did not, could not think to put myself through such pain again. And though I loved them well enough for the simple, hard-working folk they were, but for my John I never met one as stirred the embers of any true romantic feeling. Of course the men of the distant gentry wanted no part of me, a dowerless widow who had shamed her family and married beneath her class. They were not all so heartless, and I kept a good deal to myself. But the truth remains that none ever cared enough to overcome the obstacles, and learn what lay hidden in my heart.
“So the years went by and I found myself at thirty. My mother had died, and my brother taken Anne for a wife, who had borne him a child. So at last I swallowed my pride, and thinking to be useful, went back to the big house that still haunted my dreams. Both Bryan and your aunt were kind enough in their awkward, Christian way, and did what they could to make me feel welcome and at home. But as Michael continued to grow---yes, child, who else would it be?---they naturally began to feel a tight bond of family that did not include me.....
“But here the way becomes less clear. It is never a single incident, nor even a closely knit series of events that makes us what we are, but a lifetime of broken promises and shattered dreams. They say that hope springs eternal, and I dare say that’s true. More’s the pity, since it must always end in disillusion, and finally, in dark and lonely death.”
She felt her daughter’s hand grasp her own, and saw that there were standing tears in her eyes. As if a veil had been drawn aside between them, she saw at last the terrible loss the girl had already suffered, and was suffering still, in the form of an impossible love for a man three years dead. Yes, thought the dark widow to herself, she deserves to know the truth.
“I began to feel the need for solitude, and a place to dwell on the long chains of thought that had taken root inside me. So I made this place my own, and spent long hours, whole days and nights here, learning. For I had been shown three books of Druid lore during the first year of my mourning, by an old Welsh woman who lived in the village, my only real companion. She taught me the ancient tongues, and asked me to copy them out in English, along with other tales and spells which she knew only in her mind, that they might not be lost at her death. Yes, Mary, she was a witch, though that name need not mean all that fear implies.” She paused.
“A priest has a kind of power over men, because he appeals to the angelic, or 'right' side of the soul---all filled with yearning for the light, and the fear of God. The witch works through the left, no less powerful, because its roots lie in corrupted instinct: vanity, unclean desire, treachery and violence. And to the weak and abusive, men such as my father, it is only that much harder to deny. The daughters of Lug cast no darkness of their own, create no evil that does not already exist in a man, but only turn that inner blackness to his own undoing.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. These words are attributed to the great God of Christian and Jew alike. But what men cannot see, because their simplicity demands a single being to worship and fear, is that the One God is divided into many facets, wholly separate beings, with moods and purposes all their own. I have chosen the god Dagda, as He has chosen me. His passion is for retribution against the violent---the axe-wielders and plunderers, the outwardly strong. It is He who spoke through the prophet long ago.”
“Mother,” said Mary. “Please don’t be angry, but you’re frightening me. You know I don’t pass judgment, and that I’m trying to understand. . . and love you. But this isn’t what I want, what I need to know.”
With this the old woman, whose eyes had lost their focus and begun to stare off into space, came back to herself. “Aye, lass, I hear what it is you're telling me. I was only trying to give you a glimpse of that part of myself which cannot be shown in outward events. You’ll be wanting to know about the circumstances of your birth..... About your father.”
At this the cold eyes gleamed with unspeakable malice, and with a shiver of stark insight Mary discovered the source, the burning heart of her mother’s hatred. It was as if all the bitter rage she felt for the world of men, every grudge, even blame for the war itself, had been focused upon this one man as the symbol, the living embodiment of evil, and sole object of revenge. And with a second shock, and full knowledge that had somehow eluded her, she realized that this him, this monster her mother wished to destroy, using her as a vehicle, was the first, the original Lord Purceville. Her father, who formed half her living flesh.