Entreat Me (27 page)

A tepid sponge bath followed by a slathering of yarrow ointment and two cups of cyser improved Louvaen’s mood from grim to anxious.  As much as she wanted to indulge in a bit of pacing and hand-wringing, she put forth her best impression of a calm demeanor for Cinnia’s sake.  The girl was doing enough worrying for two people.

“Do you think Gavin is feeling better now?” she asked for the fifth time in the past quarter hour.  She helped Louvaen strip the blood-stained linens off Ballard’s bed and pile them by the door.

“Maybe,” Louvaen replied patiently.  “We’ll know soon enough.”  Gathering laundry wasn’t the most interesting way of distracting her sister nor the most successful, but she needed something to keep her occupied and not pacing outside Gavin’s door.

Magda had sent them upstairs after Louvaen pulled her aside.  “I’ll ruin Joan’s fine tare if I try to spin, and Cinnia will drive us all to madness before noon with her misery.  There’s plenty to do here, but I want something harder than dipping candles to keep her mind off what’s going on in Gavin’s room.”

The cook gave her a knowing look.  “Just her?”

Louvaen shrugged.  “Me too, if you must know.”

“Hard toil does wonders for an idle mind,” Magda said with a faint smile.  “You can wash those sheets and clothing you and Ballard bloodied this morning.”

They yanked the last of the sheets from the mattress and bundled everything in a blanket to drag downstairs.  Louvaen kept a wary eye on the window as they made their way to the door, ready to snatch Cinnia and run if a thorny vine coiled through the shutter slats.

Magda had a barrel and bucket ready, along with a bucking cloth filled with ash.  Cinnia threw herself into the drudgery of rinsing, scrubbing and beating with gusto, only halting when Louvaen threatened to take the washing bat to her head if she didn’t stop long enough to eat Magda’s dinner of stewed chicken.  All the threats in the world couldn’t force her to do more than pick at her portion, and Louvaen didn’t push her.  Her own food grew cold as she pushed it listlessly from one side of her plate to the other.  She hadn’t expected Gavin to make an appearance, but she’d hope Ballard might.  She’d even welcome Ambrose’s usual censure of her if it meant learning more about this latest flux.  Unfortunately, only Magda kept them company, and she’d warned them no amount of charm, tears or demands would move her to divulge the household secrets.

Dusk crept over the horizon by the time they draped the last sheets across winter hedges set up in the laundry room.  Louvaen stretched her back and raised her hands to show Cinnia.  “Prune fingers,” she said.

Cinnia smiled weakly.  “This reminded me how much I hated the spring great washes.  I didn’t think I’d ever dry out afterwards.”  She glanced toward the kitchen and the stairwell beyond the screens.  Her smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.  “I can’t stand it, Lou.  I need to check on him.”

Louvaen didn’t blame her.  Hours had passed with only Magda and the maids for company.  Magda had left for Gavin’s room a few minutes earlier carrying a cup and bottle filled with dark liquid.  Cinnia watched her go with a longing gaze.  Louvaen took pity on her.  “Go on then.  I’ll finish here.”  The words barely left her lips before Cinnia flew out of the laundry room.

She desperately wanted to follow Cinnia, not so much to see Gavin but to find Ballard.  He’d looked knackered and fearful when he left her in the morning, his wide shoulders drooping when Ambrose told him his son had already taken to his bed, ill from the flux.  She put away the washing bats instead and headed for the kitchen.  She entered in time to hear the door to the buttery open and close—Joan or Clarimond to fetch ale or wine.  Something within her said otherwise, and she followed the sound, propelled by the certainty that the man she sought had just passed her and was descending to the well room.

Her instincts proved accurate.  Louvaen discovered Ballard in the cell he’d occupied when she first arrived at Ketach Tor.  The room had been scrubbed clean, and fresh straw carpeted the floor.  Someone had left a stack of neatly folded blankets against one wall.  Ballard stood inside, a length of chain coiled around his forearm.  He braced his weight and pulled, testing the bracket that attached the chain to the stone blocks.

She hovered inside the doorway and prayed her voice didn’t quiver as much as her insides did.  “Will it hold?”

He didn’t startle at her presence.  The chain clattered into the straw.  “It should.  If it doesn’t, I’d still have to kick or claw my way out, and Ambrose will have the door so ensorcelled, I’d challenge a dragon to gnaw its way through.”  He turned to face her, and Louvaen bit back a gasp.  His earlier pallor had worsened, and shadows carved gaunt hollows beneath his cheekbones and eyes.  Those were the least of his troubles.  His pupils were no longer round; they glittered elliptical and black in irises as bright as saffron moons.  The pathways of scars etched into his face shifted, crawling under the skin until they mapped new roads over his nose and into his hairline.

“Behold the beast, my beauty.”  He grinned, flashing incisors grown more curved and pointed.  His mirth never touched that reptilian gaze.

Louvaen breathed slowly and locked her knees against the urge to flee.  Here stood a predator of terrifying aspect, a being unnamed and unknown.  She could weather the sight of fangs, writhing scars, even the serpent’s eyes, but if he flicked a forked tongue at her she’d lose the last speck of courage she possessed and succumb to the bone-deep revulsion every creature that walked on legs had for those which slithered on their bellies.

Ballard’s mocking grin dimmed.  He raised an eyebrow at her continued silence.  “I must truly be grotesque to render the outspoken Louvaen Duenda speechless.”

She crossed her arms and adopted a severe expression.  “I looked like you once.  The morning after Thomas and I attended Beatrice Cooper’s handfasting, and the wine flowed a little too freely.  Thomas hurled himself out of the bed in fright at his first sight of me.”

His empty smile disappeared altogether.  “You’re amused by this?”

“No one here is laughing, my lord.”  She reached for his hand, holding tight when he tried to pull away from her.  The tips of his claws scraped her knuckles.  “I’m not laughing, and I’m not running.  I won’t lie either.  You’re a chilling sight to behold.  I’ve had nightmares of monsters prettier than you.”  She stepped closer and raised her other hand to thread her fingers through his hair.  This time he didn’t flinch away.  “But you’re still you under all this flux nonsense.  Only a fool of a woman would run from such an extraordinary man, and I am no fool, Ballard de Sauveterre.”

To her relief, he closed his eyes and enfolded her in a tentative embrace.  She went willingly, hugging him close and resting her head on his shoulder.  He felt the same as before, smelled the same.  If she closed her eyes, she pictured him as he was the previous night—still scarred but so much more human.  The pointed claws drawing designs on her back through her dress reminded her this new day brought a grimmer reality.

“You shouldn’t be alone down here,” she said.  “I’ll bring my spinning wheel and keep you company.”

He stiffened and shrugged out of her arms.  She didn’t think he could appear any bleaker than he already did, but he managed.  “I don’t want you here, Louvaen,” he said flatly.

Louvaen bristled, stung by his abrupt refusal.  “Why not?  I’ve seen you in the midst of the flux before.”

He shook his head as a wry smile curved his mouth.  “No you haven’t.  That was ebb tide when the worst was over.”

She remembered the filthy cell and the hunched beast screeching its torment to the walls.  Everything within her recoiled at the knowledge that greater suffering awaited him.  She fidgeted with the laces on his tunic.  “My affections for you will remain the same, Ballard.”  She’d nursed Thomas through the horrors of the plague—the task had left scars of its own inside her.  “I’m not a weak spirit.”

He stroked her arm from shoulder to wrist.  “No, you aren’t, but I’m not human during the flux’s peak.  And I still have some shred of pride.”  Remnants of the shame he’d revealed the night before flickered in his yellow eyes.  “This is for me, Louvaen, not you.  I beg your indulgence.”

Louvaen thought her eyes would pop out of her head from the effort it took not to cry.  She latched onto anger instead and let it burn.  This curse no one would talk about was a treacherous thing, inflicting not only pain and madness but robbing its victim of dignity.  She fisted her hands in her skirts and took deep breaths until the tight bands inside her chest loosened, and she could speak without gasping.  “You have been very generous with the warming pan lately, my lord,” she teased gently.  “I think it only fair I grant you this indulgence.  But don’t get used to it,” she said in her sternest voice.

He took her into his arms a second time and bent his head.  Louvaen closed her eyes, relief surging through her when he brushed her bottom lip with his still very human tongue.  They held each other for several minutes, trading kisses and soft endearments.

Finally, Ballard set her from him and gestured to the stairs.  “Time for you to go upstairs, my beauty.”  The black claws that could easily slice her to ribbons sketched butterfly patterns down her neck and over her collarbones.  “I’ve a comfortable cell, and Magda will bring me dinner later.”  He patted his flat stomach.  “I’ll be in no danger of starving.”

Louvaen grasped his hand and kissed his bony knuckles.  “You’ll call for me if you need me?”

“No.”

She glared.  “Ballard...”

He glared back.  “I won’t know you, woman.  I’ll be lucky if I can garble out words instead of growls.”  He returned her gesture and kissed her hand before unclasping her fingers and retreating farther into the cell.  “If you want to succor me, help the others with Gavin.”  His eyes flared like newly lit torches.  “My son is why I breathe, Louvaen.”  He turned away from her.  She stood there for several moments, staring at his back before leaving him to his solitude.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She found Magda at the kitchen hearth, turning a spit of meat.  The cook indicated two pitchers on a nearby table with her chin.  “Ale or cyser?”

Louvaen fished a goblet from one of the cupboards lining the walls.  “Both,” she said.

The rest of the day moved at a crawl.  By evening, Louvaen’s mood had blackened, and she listened so intently for any sound from the well room her ears began to ring.  The atmosphere at supper had all the joviality of mourners in a graveyard.  Ambrose stared off into the distance, worrying his lower lip between thumb and forefinger while his food grew cold.  Cinnia, eyes almost swollen shut with tears, sniffled so often that Louvaen had to switch places with her on the bench so Magda, annoyed, wouldn’t stab her with her eating knife.  Clarimond and Joan had wisely chosen to eat by the hearth and away from the tension hanging around the others thicker than the stew no one was eating.

Only Louvaen came to the solar afterwards, and only because she didn’t want to cart her spinning wheel back to her chambers.  She spun far into the night, with the clack of the treadle keeping her company.  The room had grown so dark that she guided the flax onto the flyer using a practiced touch instead of sight.  At dawn, the first agonized screams from the well room drifted throughout the castle, and her fingers began to bleed.  She continued spinning, teeth clenched and fingers burning, until Cinnia entered the solar with a torch in hand.  The light clasp on her shoulder brought her out of her stupor.  She lowered her foot from the treadle, vaguely aware of a numbness in her calf and thigh.  The spinning wheel slowed and finally creaked to a stop.

Cinnia set the torch into a nearby bracket and crouched down by Louvaen’s knees.  “You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?”  She grasped her sister’s wrist and raised her hand to the wavering light.  Blood slid down her fingers to run between her knuckles and coat her palm, streaming from the countless lacerations abrading her fingertips.  “Oh Lou,” Cinnia crooned in an anguished voice.  “I’d hoped never to see this again.  Why didn’t you stop?”

Louvaen shrugged.  “I didn’t notice.”  The distaff was nearly empty and the spindle nearly full—not with linen thread spun from the basket of flax tow at her feet, but with wire as fine as thread and sharp enough to slice flesh.  The last time she’d spun flax into steel, Thomas had lay dying in their bed.

Cinnia rose and urged Louvaen up with her.  “Come on.  We’ll go downstairs, treat those cuts and get your hands wrapped.  No spinning for you the next few days.  You’ll have to take up the fine arts of pacing and sniveling with me.”

Clarimond manned the kitchens for the morning.  “Mam is upstairs tending to Sir Gavin.”  She winced at Louvaen’s hands.  “I’ll heat water for you, mistress, and bring honey and bandages.”

An hour later, Louvaen held up hands slathered in honey and wrapped in linen bandages.  She turned to Cinnia, noting the dark circles under the girl’s eyes, her bedraggled braid and wrinkled clothing.  She wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep the previous night.  “I can manage cleaning my teeth, but you’ll have to...”  A tormented scream barreled up from below, vibrating the floor beneath their feet.  Louvaen closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again to Cinnia’s ashen features.  “...lace me once I change clothes,” she continued in a hollow voice.

“He sounds so much worse than last time.”  Cinnia grabbed frantically for the cup an equally pale Clarimond handed her and downed the drink.  “I wish we had something stronger than the ale.”

“How is Gavin?”  Louvaen was almost afraid to ask.  This was the first time in the past twenty-four hours she’d seen Cinnia dry-eyed.  She prayed her question wouldn’t start another crying jag.  She was too preoccupied with the tenant in the well room cell to be much comfort to her sister at the moment.

“Not suffering like his father, thank the gods.”  Cinnia clapped a hand to her mouth.  “I’m sorry, Lou.  I don’t mean I’m glad de Sauveterre is hurting.  I’m just saying...”

Louvaen chucked her lightly under the chin.  “Don’t be a goose.  I know what you meant.”  She rose, thanked Clarimond for her physicking and refused the offer of breakfast.  Her stomach was knotted worse than her hair.  If she tried to eat, she feared she’d retch.  She nudged Cinnia.  “Come with me.  I have to dress and need your help.  You could use a little tidying yourself.”

They readied themselves for the day, serenaded by a cacophony of tortured cries.  The flux had swelled and would continue to rise for the next few days before receding, turning Gavin into a bed-ridden invalid and his father into a bestial revenant.  Louvaen wondered if by the end of the tide, they might all join Ballard in his madness.  She left Cinnia at Gavin’s door, wringing from her the promise that she’d fetch Louvaen if she needed her.

Cinnia paused with her hand on the latch.  “Where will you be?”

“Cleaning the buttery.”  Louvaen stared at her sister, daring her to argue.

The girl gazed at her in silence for a moment.  “Be careful, Lou,” she said and slipped into the chamber where Gavin rested and Magda comforted him.

Louvaen waited outside, listening to the murmur of voices—Gavin’s weak and raspy, Cinnia’s falsely cheerful.  She shook her head and went downstairs, never stopping for broom or mop in the kitchen.  The door between the buttery and the well room was closed and barred.  Beyond the barrier of wood all was silent.  She sat down on one side of the top most step, arranged her skirts and leaned back against the wall to wait.  She did as Ballard asked and stayed out of the well room, but she’d keep vigilance here, out of sight.  He might not see or hear her, but she’d be there just the same.

She sat for hours, sometimes smothered by the quiet, other times with her bandaged hands over her ears as Ballard threatened to bring the roof down.  The guttural howls were terrible, testament to his assertions that he wasn’t human during the flux.  The whimpers were worse—broken noises as if the pain were so bad, it hurt too much to scream.  Twice, Louvaen stood up and prepared to march down the stairs, throw the door wide and check his cell.  Only her promise to leave him some illusion of gravitas stopped her.  She plopped back down on the step, propped her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands.

“If you sit there much longer, your backside will freeze to the step.”

Louvaen looked up and scooted over to give Ambrose room beside her.  He settled his robes around him and tucked his hands into his voluminous sleeves for warmth.  “I thought I might find you here.”

She shrugged.  “Where else would I be?”

“With your sister.”

“I was with her earlier.  She doesn’t need my company at the moment.”

His spectacles reflected back her features, effectively hiding his expression as he scrutinized her.  “What happened to your hands?”

She almost tossed off a flippant response, some meaningless excuse about clumsiness and distraction.  She discarded the notion.  Ambrose might not have sought her out specifically, but he sat beside her holding a conversation which didn’t involve the exchange of barbed remarks.  Maybe if she revealed something in good faith, he might return the favor and tell her of the curse that burdened the de Sauveterre men.

She held out her hands as if to admire Clarimond’s handiwork.  “As much as I’d like to, I can’t always deny my mother’s legacy.  When I’m upset, I spin.”

One of his eyebrows rose to crinkle his forehead, and his lips twitched.  “That’s surprisingly harmless.  I’d imagine you preferred pitchforking people.”

Louvaen scowled.  Had Cinnia told
everyone
the Farmer Toddle story?  “I do that for sport,” she snapped.  She ignored his chuckle.  “Cinnia once mentioned that our father joked I could spin straw into gold.  I haven’t mastered such a profitable skill yet, but if I’m angry enough, or grieving, I can spin flax and wool into wire.”  She tucked her hands into her lap.  “Makes a bit of a mess.”

Ambrose stared at her as if she’d just transformed into a winged cat.  “Well, well.  Who knew?  Your magic comes through when you lower your guard.”

She nodded.  “I spun baskets of wire after Thomas died and wore bandages on my hands for weeks.”

“Why do you hate magic so much?”

“You ask me that when the roses outside will shred a man to bloody bits, and your lord screams his agony while chained to a wall?”

“Not all magic is so pernicious, mistress.  Don’t play the hoddypeak with me.  You know it’s true.”

Louvaen’s jaw dropped.  Instead of thinking she was a dimwitted turnip, he now admonished her for acting like one.  They’d come a long way in the space of a few moments.  He still hadn’t revealed a thing about the curse, and here she was spilling more of her family history to him.  If he tried to get away with another load of innuendo and ambiguous hints, she’d kill him.

“When Abigail—Cinnia’s mother—lay dying, my father called in every hedgehag and conjurer to save her.  Those with a true skill were honest most times and told him there was nothing to be done.  The others though—they poured every kind of vile nostrum and slipper-sauce down her throat, chanted nonsensical spells over her, burned her skin with hot spoons and bled her blue to release the demons fighting for control of her spirit.  I don’t know which killed her first, her sickness or their cures.”

They lapsed into silence until Ambrose clasped his fingers together and stared at his shoes.  “I’m sorry for what happened to your stepmother, but what you witnessed was nothing more than base trickery.  You’ve seen true magic at Ketach Tor.”

Louvaen nearly choked on a bitter cackle.  “I have.  It tortures Ballard so badly he no longer possesses his mind.  You’ve used it to gull my sister.  I can’t abide magic because all I’ve seen is the misery it causes and the lies it perpetuates.”  Her lip curled in disgust.  “I want no part of the stuff.  If I could find a way to rip it out of me, I would.”

“Then your hatred is misplaced,” he said sharply.  “You detest the tool, not the wielder.”  He removed his spectacles to clean the lenses on his robes.  He blinked owlishly at her before setting them back on his nose.  “You guessed right when you said Ballard and Gavin suffered from a curse.  Isabeau cast her bane before she died, though I don’t think even she realized how deeply her hatred would take hold or how great the power of her words.”

She sat quietly as Ambrose told the story of Ballard’s marriage to Isabeau, his inheritance of her valuable dower lands, his slaying of Cederic of Granthing and finally of the bane, spun off the bloodied lips of a dying woman who thirsted for vengeance instead of peace with her last breath.

A low pitiful groan spilled from the well room followed by Ballard’s voice, now raspy and gasping.  “Mercy, Isabeau,” he said.  “I beg you.”

“Mercy, Isabeau,” Louvaen and Ambrose repeated in unison.  They stared at each other, Louvaen wide-eyed and sick to her soul; Ambrose paler than milk.

Ballard’s brief remarks about Isabeau had hinted at an enmity between them.  Still Ambrose’s tale stunned her.  Not because Isabeau had cast the curse against Ballard—plenty of spouses hated each other enough to wield curses, knives and skillets against each other—but against Gavin as well.  “She hated her own son.”

“Just as much as she hated her husband—which was a lot as you can tell.”

“How old was Gavin when the curse manifested?

“Twelve and fostering with a lord’s household a few leagues from Ketach Tor.  He was still a page and eager for the day he’d become a squire.”  Ambrose ran a hand through his spiny hair.  “The curse took him without warning, turned him into a beast both cunning and violent.  He killed two men before he changed back to a boy—bloodied, terrified and a prayer away from being put to the sword.  Only Ballard’s long friendship with the fostering lord saved him.

Louvaen shook her head.  “My gods, that poor child.”

Ambrose sighed.  “Indeed.  Ballard paid
blot wite
to the slain men’s families and took Gavin home, but word passed swiftly and soon everyone from the borderlands to Waleran’s court heard that the only child of the Margrave of Ketach Tor carried a curse.  The curse struck again a fortnight later.  We had to tie him to his bed and post guards at the door.  After that, people left Ketach Tor.”

Another round of shrieking swelled up from the bottom of the stairs.  When it stopped, Louvaen thought she’d need an iron crow to pry her clenched teeth apart.  “Is there nothing you can give him to ease his suffering?”