A Passionate Magic (8 page)

The land sloped gradually upward, so that
they were well above the height of Penruan’s tallest tower. Emma
was sure Sloan had posted a man-at-arms on the wall to watch over
them during their expedition. If any ill befell them, Sloan would
send a band of riders to their aid. It was an agreeable thought
that made her feel less alone in the vast, empty moor.

From where she stood Emma could see how
Penruan was built at the edge of the cliffs, where the land broke
off abruptly. Beyond the cliffs lay the sparkling sea. In other
directions as she turned, all was moor, the sweep of gently
undulating land dotted here and there by rocky outcroppings.

“That looks interesting,” Emma said, shading
her eyes with one hand and pointing with the other. “And not very
far away, either. Blake, I’m sure we have time to ride to that tall
rock and search around its bottom for plants, and still be home
before sunset.”

“No, my lady,” Blake said. “The light here on
the moor is confusing your sight. That’s Rough Tor you are looking
at, and it is more than half a day’s ride from Penruan. I know,
because I’ve been there. I rode and rode for hours, and still the
tor was as far away as it was when I first started. Some say it’s
magic, that the tors recede as you approach them, but Dain has told
me it is only a trick of the light.

“Besides,” Blake finished his argument with a
solemn glance into the distance, “the tors are where the outlaws
live, and there are other bands than the one Dain subjected to his
justice. Dain would hold me responsible if I took you there and
harm came to you. No plant is valuable enough to risk meeting a
brigand while gathering it.”

“No,” Emma agreed, shivering a little at the
thought of Robert, and of Dain’s grief for his son. “We don’t want
to meet any outlaws. Where has the sun gone so suddenly? Just look
at the fog rolling in from the sea!”

“In this country the weather changes fast,”
Blake said with a quick look at sea and sky. “My lady, we ought to
return to Penruan.”

Emma cast a final glance in the direction of
Rough Tor, which had grown dark and ominous-looking in the altered
light. Only one small outcropping from the main body of the tall
rock shone golden brown in a single ray of sunshine that somehow
managed to penetrate the thickening fog.

At the base of that sunlit portion of the tor
Emma noticed a flash of white. She stared harder, willing her gaze
to greater clarity, keeping silent so Hawise would not be
frightened. There it was again; a quick motion of white against the
background of glowing rock, as if a long, gauzy scarf was being
unfurled to catch the last glimmers of light. Suddenly the sunbeam
was gone, swallowed up by the encroaching fog. The white object was
gone, too, and a moment later Emma could not even see the tor.

The misty drizzle started before they reached
the castle. Emma did not mind it. There was no wind to chill her,
the moisture was soft and warm against her skin, and the torches
flaring at Penruan’s gate welcomed her home. Out on the moor,
whoever – or whatever – had run along the base of Rough Tor in a
swirl of white fabric was no doubt caught in the rain, too.

Emma did not speak of what she had seen. Once
she was in the stillroom emptying the baskets of plants and
lichens, cleaning and preparing the day’s findings for drying, she
began to wonder if that glimpse of flowing white was only an
invention of her imagination. Neither Blake nor Hawise had noticed
it. Perhaps, like the foreshortened perception of distance Blake
had mentioned, the object was only a trick of the light.

All the same, she was unable to erase the
memory of what she thought she had seen, and she tucked the image
deep into her mind, holding it there in case she should ever see
anything similar in the future. She looked for but did not see the
mysterious white object when she and her companions returned to the
moor the next day, nor did she see it on the day after that.

On the fourth day of Dain’s absence Sloan
informed Emma that he had chores for Blake to do, and Hawise was
complaining of a sore knee, so they did not ride to the moor.
Instead, Emma spent the morning working in the stillroom.

It did seem a shame to waste the fine weather
by staying indoors, so after the midday meal she decided to
discover what plants she could find along the cliffs. In answer to
her persistent questioning, Sloan had told her about a steep but
relatively safe path that led down the face of the cliff to the
beach. According to Sloan, the path was regularly used by the
lesser members of the kitchen staff, who were sent there to gather
mussels and seaweed for the cook, and by a few men-at-arms who
liked to fish.

On this sunny afternoon there was no one else
on the cliff or on the path. Emma kilted her skirt up above her
knees, tucking the extra fabric into her belt and pulling the belt
tight to secure it. Picking up the basket that she was making a
habit of carrying whenever she left the castle walls, she stepped
onto the path. She was wearing her sturdiest pair of boots and she
went down the path with surefooted grace.

When she reached the beach she discovered the
sand was soft and white, in stark contrast to the rather sinister
black height of the towering cliffs. Above her on the left rose the
walls of Penruan Castle, seemingly carved out of the cliff itself.
Gazing up at it, Emma marveled at the imagination of the architect
and the skill of the builders. From where she stood she could see
the double windows of the lord’s chamber and, directly below the
castle, the jagged rocks on which the surf pounded without ceasing,
the sound that filled her ears each night.

At the moment the sound of the waves was
muted, for the tide was low and a wide strip of wet sand was
exposed. Shells and long strands of seaweed lay scattered across
the damp area. After being washed in fresh water and dried in the
sun, seaweed could be stored for months. Later, it could be boiled
and used in making jellies. Emma decided she would gather some of
the green sea-plant to give to the cook. But first, she wanted to
explore.

The cliff curved inward from the headland
where Penruan Castle stood, the curve forming the sandy cove where
Emma was. To her right the high black rocks turned toward the sea
again. Emma struck out for the point that jutted closest to the
sea. It wasn’t far away and she quickly reached it. When she peered
around the point of rock she discovered another cove, deeper and
much narrower than the one directly below Penruan. This second cove
boasted a stream that ran from the bottom of the cliff and flowed
across the beach and into the sea.

Looking northward, beyond yet another
out-thrust point of high cliff on the far side of the cove, Emma
could see a long, gleaming white beach. A few small boats were
drawn up on the beach and several more boats were in the water.
Figures in the boats were doing something with a net.

“Fishermen,” Emma said aloud, realizing that
Trevanan village must lay over there, behind the longer beach.

Not being certain when the tide was going to
turn, she decided against walking to Trevanan on the beach. She
would go there another day, using the narrow road along the top of
the cliff, for she was determined to meet the healer, Agatha. For
the present, the little cove with the stream was remarkably
interesting. She was sure the plant she saw growing near the base
of the cliff was golden samphire, which was valuable for pickling
and for preserving food. There was more of the same plant growing a
bit higher on the cliff face.

Emma hurried forward and began to scramble up
the rocks, plucking the samphire as she went. Soon she discovered
other herbs. She scratched her hands, broke two fingernails, and
scraped both of her elbows, but she hardly noticed. Like the place
Blake had shown her on the moor, this particular cove was a
treasure trove of useful plants. Before long her basket was almost
full. She set it down on the sand so she could slip into a crevasse
in the rock and better reach one last, well-grown specimen of
samphire. She squeezed a little farther, stepping into deep shadow
and the cold water of the stream, and suddenly she was in a
cave.

Light filtered through the opening, and there
was more daylight ahead of her shining from somewhere deeper in the
cave. Evidently the stream in which she was standing had created
the cave by the action of its water over many years, for the stream
ran along one side of the cave before gushing out under the rock at
the entrance. Emma stepped from the stream onto a floor of damp
sand. All around her the smooth rock walls of the cave gleamed with
moisture.

Beyond a bend of rock just ahead of her, Emma
could see daylight reflecting in the water. She could not resist;
she had to find out what lay in the next chamber. She moved quickly
along the upward-sloping rock.

The inner chamber was much larger than the
outer one, the roof much higher. It was well lit from a natural
opening in the rock far over her head. Emma decided this part of
the cave must be above the high-tide line, for the walls were dry
and dry sand covered the floor.

There were footprints in the sand. A single
line of prints led from the shallow streambed directly to the rock
wall, and there they stopped. It was as if the person who made the
footprints had arisen from the water to walk right into the
rock.

The hair on the back of Emma’s neck began to
prickle.

Within a heartbeat she was in the outer
chamber again, hurrying across it, squeezing past the rock at the
entrance, tearing her gown in her haste to be away from the cave.
She stumbled into daylight, into bright, clear sunshine, and she
fell to her knees on the beach, gasping for breath.

When she was able to stand again she saw that
the tide was noticeably higher. If she delayed in returning to the
beach below Penruan Castle, she would very soon be trapped in the
little cove, stranded there until the next low tide with whoever –
whatever – had left those footprints in the cave.

Grabbing her basket, she raced for the strip
of sand surrounding the outermost tip of rocks, sand that grew
narrower with every wave that broke upon it. She was almost at the
seaward point of the rocks when she heard a seagull screeching.
Pausing in her flight, she looked up. The seagull wheeled far above
her, screeching again as if to mock her irrational fear. For she
was being irrational. No one was in the cave; perhaps no one had
been there for years, or for centuries. She had sensed no living
presence in those silent rock chambers.

She took a deep breath of fresh sea air,
chuckling at herself for her foolishness, and glanced up at the
gull again, watching as it winged its way over the cliff, heading
inland.

There on the cliff top, perched dangerously
near the edge, was a figure clad in white. Ghostly white draperies
blew out around it, streaming on the wind. Something gleamed blue
and silver in the sunlight, as if the figure was wearing a talisman
on its breast.

Emma could not tell if what she saw was male
or female, but she experienced the oddest sensation that the
creature was looking directly at her. As if to prove the accuracy
of her instinct, the figure on the cliff lifted one slender arm in
a gesture.

Emma did not stay to discover what the
gesture meant. A wave rushed shoreward, swirling around her knees,
filling her boots with icy seawater. Shocked back to her full
senses and to her precarious situation by the sudden chill, she
turned and ran from the hungry sea, splashing through the receding
water, through the next incoming wave, and the next one, running
for the cliff path and the safety of Penruan.

Emma reached the top of the cliff in a
breathless state, with her gaze directed toward the place where she
had seen the mysterious figure in white. There was no one on the
cliffs. Not a single person. No one in all the wide vista that
stretched upward toward the high spine of Cornwall until the
moorland met a horizon broken only by the rocky projection of Rough
Tor. With Penruan Castle at her back, Emma scanned the landscape
until her ears detected a soft footstep on the grass behind
her.

“Oh!” She spun around, and when she saw who
it was she took so hasty a step backward that she nearly fell over
the cliff. Some of the precious samphire tumbled out of her basket
and bounced down the face of the rock. Before her loomed a tall,
decidedly masculine figure in a blue tunic.

“Have care, my lady,” Dain said, catching her
arm. “Come away. You are too near the edge.”

“You startled me. I didn’t know you were
home.” His eyes were the same marvelous blue-green shade as the
sunlit sea below them. The wind lifted a lock of his close-cropped
hair, the sun on it turning it to silver. Emma clutched her basket
tightly while she fought against the urge to lay her head on his
broad chest. She wasn’t sure whether the sudden weakness in her
knees was the result of her mad rush through seawater and up the
face of the cliff, or whether it was caused by the unexpected
presence of her husband standing so close and looking so
formidable.

“What is it?” Dain asked. Her face was
remarkably pale, devoid of the soft bloom of color he recalled
seeing in her cheeks, and her eyes were wide with alarm, the brown
irises heavily flecked with purple. Something unfamiliar and
painfully sweet twisted in Dain’s chest as he searched the
expression in Emma’s long-lashed eyes. He seized on the first
reason that came to mind for the fear he saw in those eyes. “If you
are afraid of heights, my lady, then you ought not to try the cliff
path again.”

“It’s not the height. I foolishly stayed on
the beach too long and, as you can see, the tide is coming in fast.
I got wet.”

“The water only reaches to the lower section
of the cliff path when there is a bad storm,” he said, wanting to
put her mind at ease. “Otherwise, there is always dry sand at the
bottom of the path. You were in no danger.”