Fire Dance (7 page)

"He would not? As I recall, he has a vivid dislike for the beasts."

"Surely not."

"Surely so. They make him sneeze."

The girl turned, frowned as if impatient, and moved on. He smothered the smirk that wanted to wiggle onto his face. She had no inkling that he teased her.

She led him farther into the darkness, the torch's bright flame trailing backward. She stopped and pointed at a crude wall of coursed rubble.

"Behind the barrels," she said.

Alain grabbed the casks by their rims and rolled them away. Two thick wooden planks stood against the wall, and Alain raised each one with little effort. To this point, the bolt hole had both the remoteness and ease of access it should have. Also the greatest danger.

"Easy access for an enemy, right into the tower of refuge. Did Fyren not consider this?"

"It leads to a cavern," she replied. "No one goes into the caverns."

"Hobs?" he guessed.

She looked at him as if she could not understand why he even asked.

"Mayhap Normans do not fear them as the local folk do."

"Then they would quickly learn their error."

The coolness of the air within the hole ahead seemed to pull them inward, and the darkness laced about them like a cloying garment. Like Thomas, he had no fondness for dark places. He looked back over his shoulder at the young woman and her torch, then reached out his hand. Her upper lip thinned minutely as she gave over their only source of light. But it illuminated nothing but more darkness.

"This is the cavern?" he asked.

"Aye. Here, it is narrow, but it widens out. It comes out near the river. Have a care going in."

Alain wished she had said that sooner, as he barked his shin and stumbled at the unexpected first step.

"Mayhap I should go first, lord."

"Nay." He held the torch lower, so that he might see where his feet should go.

Only a little way in, the cavern leveled, and he stopped, holding the rush light high. Grotesque columns, parodies of those more perfect ones of the stone tower, rose to a ceiling high above, beyond the torch's dim light. Cascades of stone curtains dribbled down toward the cavern's rough floor. A fine, gritty sand crunched against the stone at his feet when he walked.

"This is the way she left, then?" It occurred to him the prospect of encountering a hob did not seem to bother her.

"I would think so."

Alain didn't. He looked back at the footprints he had made, and hers behind her, but saw no others leading down. He held the torch high up to the slanting walls to examine them. One might be able to climb them and get out without leaving tracks, he supposed, but why bother? Mayhap the lady had dragged something behind her to obscure her footprints? Yet the sand showed no sign of such disturbance.

Satisfied, and yet not, Alain handed back the rush torch. They returned to the small entry, where he lowered his head to pass. He again took the torch and held it while Edyt stepped through. Some instinct caused him to reach out to assist her before he recalled she was a servant. It was not proper.

"I will see the lady's chamber, now," he said next.

She cocked her head to the side with a puzzled frown. "It is but a bedchamber, lord."

"In itself unusual. Few but kings and queens have such luxury as a private chamber. But I vow, I like the idea. I would see it."

He thought more on that as he followed Edyt's lead out of the understory of the stone tower. Anything to keep his thoughts from the lithe, swaying motion of the enticing hips. There were many things in this castle that were very unlike things as he was accustomed to them. Even as it was now, the castle was immense. The lord's chamber was more spacious even than that of Rufus' in his hunting box at Waltham Forest, its furnishings at least as elaborate. Like the elegant purple cloak he had removed from the earl's body, the castle's opulence seemed incongruous with this wild and rustic country.

Edyt walked ahead with her smooth, lightly swaying gait back through the bailey and hall to the unusual wooden staircase and balcony at its far end. She reached for the keys that dangled from the hemp cord at her waist, and inserted one in the lock.

"Why the lock?" he asked, for there was none on the lord's chamber.

"It has always been there," she replied, and pushed open the heavy door. Answering, but telling him nothing.

This chamber, too, was smartly fitted, with a pair of shuttered narrow windows and yellow plastered walls, in conspicuous contrast to the remainder of the somber castle. A curtained bed with feather mattress stood by another wall, with a door that led to the middle chamber. By the windows, a large chest, intricately painted, with fittings of brass.

"Open it," he said, pointing to the chest.

"Open it? But lord, it is of little consequence."

"I would see it anyway."

"It is locked."

"Unlock it." As she had the key on her person, he wondered why she objected. Mayhap she felt her mistress' privacy was being invaded.

She turned the key, lifted the lid, and stood away. Inside, the garments, of a good quality but more serviceable than fine, lay in neatly folded stacks, precisely fitting the chest's dimensions. Except for those on top, which were wadded into a careless ball. Silk kirtle, linen chemise, girdle. A wimple of soft silk, of a pale yellow.

A metallic flash caught his eye as it tumbled into the fabric, and he probed among the folded garments after it. A ring. Gold, in an interlaced, twining pattern common to the area, yet quite old. Celtic, mayhap even a Norse design.

"Tell me of this." Alain held out the ring for the girl to see.

She seemed impassive except for her subtly gripped hands. "It is a gold ring."

"I find you exasperating in what you do not say, Edyt. Mayhap you could tell me something I do not already know?"

"It belongs to the Lady Melisande. It was a gift of her mother. And I think it is very old."

"Ah. Now I have learned the lady had a mother. How enlightening. Begone, Edyt. I see I shall have to solve the puzzle alone."

He saw the fleeting look of a woman slapped and knew he had taken his teasing too far. She was hardly like Chrétien, whom he could bait endlessly. He wished he had not said it. But he would not retract it.

"Edyt."

"Aye, lord?"

"Draw me a bath. I have had enough of the dust of the road. Before supper. I like it hot."

"Aye, lord." She made the merest of curtsies, before she turned and left the chamber.

* * *

You see? He will kill you!

Aye, kill you, you fool! Flee!

Melisande glided away, carefully forcing each step to perfection to conceal her rampant fear. From the moment he had ridden in, and all through this hideously long interrogation, she had quaked inside, desperately schooling her face and forcing her hands to be still.

As she left the hall, she gripped her hands together so tightly her knuckles whitened, to curb their trembling. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it might beat itself to death against her chest.

Christ's blood, how had he gotten the cloak? She'd sent it with Fyren to the grave! She had wrapped it about the body, herself!

There! Leave it! Let him die of it!

Be still, she told the demons. I will not listen.

This time, she would not let them goad her into hysteria.

She needed the Norman lord alive. She could not think of herself.

CHAPTER 4

The devil voices pummeled her with their screams. She would not listen. Still, fear showed in the trembling of her hands if it did not in her eyes. She did not want to die. But the Norman's black hawk-like eyes probed her, seeking out her every weakness, finding it, lunging for it. Somehow, she must control herself. If he even sensed her fear, he would jump at it.

She had been so sure the wretched thing was at last gone, buried safely out of anyone's reach. And now, he wore it about his shoulders as if he had been gifted with it personally. She would never wish such a gift on anyone, and now it was in the possession of the man she needed most to live.

How long would it take to do its deed? Her mother had died within a fortnight of receiving it. Enthralled with its beauty and enraptured with the sudden, kind attention of the cruel husband who had ignored her so long, she had wrapped herself in it, and grown weaker by the day as the dye's poison seeped insidiously into her skin. Poor mother, again so trusting, discounting all the years of abuse, as if they had never happened. And Fyren had used his own daughter to deliver that carrier of death. How he had bragged, laughed at Melisande's gullibility.

How long would it take, this time? She didn't know. Arsenic absorbed through the skin, but the process was passably slow. Only when the poison went through the mouth did it act with such frightening speed. If a person handled the garment, then handled food, could it not go more swiftly? Could the poison possibly be on a person's hands, even though it could not be seen? She could take no chance. She had to get it from him, destroy it permanently this time, without anyone knowing.

She must be, as she had always been, solitary and secretive. None could be trusted. Not even the most loyal of her people would fail to connect her with Fyren's sorcery, and she would burn for it.

Fyren was dead. She had seen him die. Yet he still reached out to haunt her, and his demons sucked her soul dry. She had been a fool, and like a fool, she had thought him finally harmless and given him the purple cloak for his shroud. Believed he merely sought to be buried in it, a symbol of his many evil triumphs. But even dying, Fyren had schemed, and knowing his enemy, had placed the malevolent garment precisely where it would tempt the Norman most. Fyren had known the Norman would take it as symbol of his victory. And if it was true, as Fyren had claimed, that the cloak was charmed with a compelling spell, then the Norman could not resist. The man seemed fond enough of it.

Even in dying, Fyren had to win. It was as if his hand reached out from the grave and snatched another victim.

Never. She would not let Fyren win this time.

More immediately, she had to keep her own skin. So she'd best see to the lord's bath, and quickly, lest he grow suspicious of her slothfulness.

Melisande found Nelda in the kitchen, beyond the hall.

"The lord wishes a bath before supper, Nelda. And he likes it hot."

"Aye, la– "

Melisande hissed her to silence. "Be more careful. Say nothing if you cannot trust your tongue."

"Aye."

Nelda's shock at her lapse hung on her face. Melisande patted her friend's shoulder to show her forgiveness. It would happen in just that way, she was sure. Someone would forget, call her by name or title. She wished she could flee.

Then how was she to save the Norman from the poison of the cloak, yet save herself from him? She did not want to die. Before, she had thought it did not matter greatly. But now, suddenly it did, and she could not say why. And even more, she did not want him to die. She could see no answers. Yet, somehow, she must find a way.

* * *

The small bath house had been Fyren's pride. Built of yellow sandstone like the hall, amidst a group of grey stone and whitewashed buildings, the little one-room structure had a hearth built to one side and a deep wooden tub, like an oversized barrel. Kettles of water steeped over the fire, and one after another were poured into the great tub until the water was at last suitable for a lord's bath.