Claire Delacroix (45 page)

But thinking had naught to do with the life of his sister. It never had. She was a creature of passion and impulse, though so warm and charming that even Niall could forgive her many sins. Twice widowed, Majella and her brood would be virtually penniless - were it not for her brother’s consistent support.

’Twas a support he felt he owed Majella’s children, for there were no others forming a line to fulfill the duty. And ’twas not the fault of the children that they had no father.

’Twas also a support that depended upon Niall continuing to do the archbishop’s will. Even when he did not agree with it. He ground his teeth and did not trouble to hide his foul mood when he entered the guard’s antechamber.

“Number seven,” Odo declared without even glancing up from his ledger. The half-eaten round of bread resting beside Odo’s book prompted Niall’s innards to complain once more at their neglect.

Perhaps after this deed was done...

But Niall knew he would have no taste for a meal by the time he had looked into the eyes of a condemned woman. Sooner begun, sooner finished, he reminded himself. Niall retrieved the appropriate church key and stalked down the hall.

“Oho, and mind yourself, Niall.” Odo called after him, with a cheer that was far from welcome. “Do not be letting our witch cast a spell upon you! The archbishop intends to watch this one twitch in the wind himself.”

Niall grimaced at the choice of some folk in entertainment as he made his way down the fitfully lit corridor. Scrawny hands reached through grated openings in the cell doors, voices called in supplication. He swore he could hear the rats scuttling across the floor, and somewhere in the distance, something vile dripped with sickening regularity.

How Niall loathed this place.

How he loathed being dispatched to the dark for even a moment. He expected that most of these troubled souls did not even understand what they had done amiss, nor even how much time had passed since they stepped into these clammy shadows.

Niall suspected that few of them cared any longer.

He turned the key in the heavy lock upon the door of the seventh cell with purpose, anxious to return to the sunlight. He would not think upon the numbers here who would never feel that warmth again. He would not feel guilty that he did not share their fate.

At the sound of the key grating in the lock, the prisoner within the cell gasped. ’Twas typical enough. Niall nudged open the door, the hinges creaked bitterly at the movement, and the woman seated within glanced up and smiled.

Smiled.

Niall gaped, his boots suddenly rooted to the spot. He had not expected a condemned witch to be quite so young.

Nor indeed, quite so cheerful.

“Good morning,” she said in a most friendly manner. A delightful dimple deepened in her left cheek. “I had begun to despair that anyone would come at all.”

She was anxious to be put to a gruesome death?

The witch’s clean but simple garb was markedly at odds with the filth of her surroundings. Her face glowed with good health, though her skin was fair, her auburn locks were gathered with a ribbon tied in a pert bow. She stood and smoothed her skirt, the move revealing that she was both tall and graciously made.

Niall stared. She seemed a perfectly normal, if uncommonly pretty, woman.

“I had understood that I would be summoned at the dawn, and as you might well imagine, I slept nary a wink last night, thinking all the while of this morning.” A merry twinkle danced in the warm hazel of her eyes.

Niall’s arrival was never greeted with such pleasure and he was momentarily uncertain of how to proceed.

“I simply could not wait and must say that I am most pleased that you have finally arrived. I cannot wait to begin. Shall we go?”

Niall blinked, but her smile did not waver.

“Oh! Where are my manners? Why, I am Viviane and so very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

This was no social moment! The last thing Niall wanted was to befriend a woman on her way to the executioner’s block.

But she stepped forward, her smile unwavering. “You do have a name?” she asked with no small measure of charm.

Clearly, this woman did not understand the fullness of her fate.

“My name matters naught,” Niall said gruffly, disliking that he should be the one to grant her the sorry news. “If you would turn about, I must bind your hands behind you.”

That should remind her of the trouble she faced this morn.

But she simply smiled and complied, as though there was naught strange about the request. She crossed her wrists behind her waist and Niall found himself unwilling to even touch the roughened rope to such creamy softness.

But he did.

If not too tightly.

“Of course, your name matters!” she chided as Niall scowled and knotted. “How on earth could I possibly have a conversation with you unless we are introduced?”

The omission did not seem to be interfering too mightily with that, Niall thought, but he refrained from saying as much.

“Truly! What would I call you? What would I say? There is absolutely no reason for this to be unpleasant..”

“Unpleasant?” Niall echoed, incredulity breaking his usual reserve. “You do understand that you are to die this morn?”

She glanced over her shoulder to him, her full lips quirking with mischief. “Of course, I understand that that is what people believe is going to happen, but I know that things will not come to such a dire end.”

Niall eyed her dubiously. “’Tis true then, that you believe you are a witch? You mean to enchant your way free of these proceedings?”

Her laughter pealed like a bell in the tiny chamber, the merry sound nearly enough to make Niall smile along with her. “Of course not!” She shook her head as though he was the one possessed of whimsy. “What a foolish thought. There is no such thing as witchery. ’Tis perfectly obvious that this is no more than a horrible misunderstanding and as soon as I have the chance to address the archbishop, all will be set in order.”

She smiled into Niall’s eyes and his heart took an unruly - and uncharacteristic - leap. Indeed, his mouth went dry.

When had he last glimpsed a woman so fair of face?

And when had such a woman smiled for him alone? Niall could not even remember.

It helped little that she made such good sense.

“Do not fear for my life, sir,” the lady murmured and wrinkled her nose playfully. “I do not mean to die this day.”

Niall was so disoriented by his own response to her smile, that his mood turned even more surly. “You may not have a choice,” he growled, then urged her toward the door.

“Oh, you take this far too seriously,” she charged, stepping delicately around a puddle of some nameless substance on the stone floor of the corridor. “My mother always declared that I had uncommon fortune...”

“’Twould seem to be less than that in this moment.”

“But that is only because details interfere and will be resolved in short order. That is why I could not wait for you to come, so we might begin.” Viviane leaned closer, her tone dropping confidentially. “Waiting has never been my strongest gift, I must confess.”

Niall harrumphed, uncertain why he felt so compelled to try to make her understand the full horror she faced. “You need not wait much longer for anything, from all signs.”

The lady mimicked his manner with a wink. “Such dire warnings! You, sir knight, are truly too glum for your own good. There is no point in fearing the worst until ’tis before you own eyes. That was what my mother always said.”

“’Twill be before your own eyes soon enough.” Niall trudged along the fitfully lit corridor, feeling even older in contrast to his companion’s light footfall.

Indeed, she nigh skipped. “Ah, but you do not know that I was born under a blue moon.”

Niall snorted at such suspicious nonsense. “And that will save you from death?”

The lady tossed her braid over her shoulder, apparently untroubled by his skepticism. “’Twill save me from any trouble that be might be sent my way. My mother said as much and my mother knew more than most.”

Something about her conviction caught Niall’s attention. “What do you mean?” he demanded suspiciously. “Did she believe herself a witch, as well?”

That laugh echoed again, the sound spreading a little sunshine in the dank corridor.

Niall completely forgot to limp.

“Of course not! You are a man looking for witches at every turn, sir!”

Niall’s ears burned at the charge, but he strode on stoically.

“She had the Sight,” his companion confessed as though there was naught preposterous about that. “She could see into the beyond like no one I have ever seen before.” The lady’s tone turned surprisingly wistful. “’Tis a rare gift and one that ensured we ate more often than we might have otherwise.”

Niall urged his charge forward, not liking how she suddenly turned silent. ’Twas evidently uncharacteristic and he had a strange urge to restore her good cheer.

For however short a time she might have left.

“She is dead, then?” Niall asked, realizing after the words left his lips that ’twas not the most uplifting question he might have concocted.

“Aye.” She smiled sadly for him, the smile not reaching her eyes. “She is.”

But the lady said no more and her shoulders sagged slightly. Niall’s footsteps echoed too loudly in the silent corridor as they walked. ’Twas only the fact that she was to die that troubled him, he knew it well.

“Mind your head here,” Niall instructed, touching her shoulder so that she did not bump her forehead on a low doorway. To his delight and surprise, she smiled at him once more.

“You are so very kind,” she said in a low voice that made something melt within Niall’s gut. “’Tis uncommon in a man so handsomely wrought as you.”

“Hardly that,” he retorted briskly, hating anew his role in all of this, refusing to take pleasure in her compliment. “Down this way.”

Viviane stepped lightly along the way indicated, her footsteps whispering against the stone. “My mother sent me here, you know.” His ward tilted her chin proudly as though she feared Niall would challenge her word. “That is how I know that no ill can come to me here.”

“That is scanty guarantee.”

“And what kind of a mother would send her child to their demise?” the lady demanded brightly. She slanted a sharp glance in Niall’s direction. “Would your mother have sent you into any place that might have proven a threat to your welfare?”

“Nay,” Niall was forced to concede, recalling all too well his mother’s distress when he learned to handle a broadsword.

“You see?” she said triumphantly. “’Tis more than clear that no mother could do as much, mine being no exception. Nay, she sent me here for my own safety and protection, and I have only good faith that ’twill be so.”

Niall thought it tactless to observe that even a mother could be wrong. “Your mother sent you to the archbishop?”

“Aye.”

Niall could not help but raise a skeptical brow. “Then it seems her gift of Sight was somewhat limited.”

His companion’s eyes flashed in a most intriguing way as she spun to face him. “Surely you do not doubt her gift?”

Niall was certain that his one level glance supplied all the answer necessary. He thought ’twould be churlish to further draw the line between Viviane’s assertions and her current situation.

The lady tossed her hair. “You must never have witnessed such wonders,” she declared. “It cannot be your fault that you do not believe in the most obvious things, for you seem a most sensible man to me.”

Before Niall could consider what to say to that, Viviane cleared her throat. “You see, my mother told me, on her deathbed, that I should come here if ever I was to want for anything. And I must tell you, that matters have not gone well since her demise.”

“Have you no siblings?” Niall was surprised to find himself curious, no less that he asked a question without intending to any such thing.

’Twas foolhardy to become interested in those sentenced to die.

Though he most certainly was not interested in Viviane.

“Not a one. ’Twas just my mother and me, all these years.” A frown momentarily marred the lady’s brow. “She told me the tales, and truly, I would have had no trade without her.”

“You have a trade?”

“Aye!” The lady lifted her chin. “I copy manuscripts and sell them in the markets.”

“’Tis a labor of monks.”

Her expression turned arch. “But they do not inscribe the more interesting tales, the ones which people truly desire to read again and again.” Despite himself, Niall looked to her in curiosity. “I copy romances, those tales of quests and knights and ladies fair, of bold deeds and fearsome dragons.”

“And you earn your keep with that?”

Her delight faded and Niall felt a cur. “I did, for a while. But times are less than good and even those who admire my work have little to spare. I have traveled much since my mother’s death, visiting all the familiar towns again, but to no avail.” She shrugged. “In truth, the details matter little. Finally, I had no choice but to take my mother’s advice, and so here I am!”

She granted Niall an unexpected smile so sunny it warmed him to his toes. “As soon as the archbishop hears tell of this, I am certain that all will be set to rights.” She nodded with a confidence Niall found hard to match.

He frowned as he tried to follow her explanation. “Why should the archbishop provide for you?”

But the lady only smiled more broadly at the question. Her expression was wondrously feminine and launched a queer sensation around Niall’s heart. Indeed, it seemed to beat overfast. And he could not haul his gaze away from hers, at least until he saw the gemstone swinging from the chain around her neck.

’Twas a moonstone, its milkiness containing an ethereal sliver of blue blue light. A more superstitious man would have named it a witching stone. Niall had heard tell of such things, though he had never given credence to those tales.

This stone, though, was odd. It seemed to glow from within and just the sight of it made Niall deeply uneasy. There was something unnatural about its very blueness, as though a sliver of the moon had been trapped inside it. Niall tore his gaze away, finding the task more difficult than it should have been.