Fascination -and- Charmed (82 page)

“No luck, yer ladyship,” said the rosy-cheeked woman who quickly pocketed the coin. “Try again.”

“I suppose I shall simply have to forget that pretty little prize I wanted,” Pippa said, sighing hugely.

“What little prize?” Calum asked.

“Why, the fan of purple feathers, of course.”

Squinting, Calum scanned the prizes arrayed behind the board and located the frightful piece Pippa described. When he opened his mouth to say what he thought of it, she contrived to dig him hard in the ribs and shake her head.

“Her ladyship’s got fine taste,” the attendant said. “Prize of prizes, that is. Calls for four farthings on the twenty, it do. Try yer luck, yer lordship.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Calum,” Pippa said. “I shall simply have to—”

“Stand back,” Calum said, pushing his coat sleeves above his shirt cuffs and flourishing his elbows.

Pippa’s laugh delighted him. “You are impossible,” she said.

“You won’t say that when you hold the pretty purple fan in your delicate hands.”

She leaned against the booth and covered her face.

“Watch this, my lady,” Calum said. He held the coin as he would a rock for skimming on the lake at Kirkcaldy. With a flick of the wrist he sent it gently skimming up the sloping board to land just barely—inside the necessary square. “
One
farthing,” he announced.

“Ooh,” the toothless one said admiringly. “A fine ’and you’ve got, yer lordship.”

“You’ve seen little yet.” A second farthing found its mark.

Pippa clapped. “You are a marvel. I had no idea your talents were so advanced.”

He spared her a grin and said, “I assure you, lady, my talents are
very
advanced.”

The third farthing landed in the top left-hand corner of the square.

“I don’t believe it,” Pippa said. “And you use both hands.”

“I forget sometimes,” he said, pursing his lips. “I frequently forget the lessons of my schoolroom days.”

“They tried to stop you from using the left hand?”

“Naturally. Not quite the thing. Now, to finish this.”

“You cannot do it,” she warned him. “You are inflated with your success like a drunken pigeon. Give it up, and we’ll take the green clockwork mouse for three on the twenty.”

Calum took his coat off entirely and handed it to Pippa. He tugged at the hem of his waistcoat and assumed a pugilist’s stance. Amid bursts of the laughter he loved more than any in life, he shied a fourth farthing.

“Oh,” Pippa said, standing still, her hands pressed together. “Oh, oh, oh!”

The coin hit the board too low and slid slowly, slowly upward.

“Oh!” Pippa cried. She jumped up and down, clapping wildly. “You did it, Calum. Oh, you did it.”

Her eyes, her clenched hands, the forward incline of her body, held her pent-up longing to throw her arms around him. He took the fan from the crone and bowed. “For you, my dear one,” he murmured, outlining Pippa’s face with purple feathers made beautiful by the skin they touched. “Do not cry, love. Please, or I shall be undone, and
we
shall be undone.”

She shook her head and smiled—and the unshed tears glittered in her dark blue eyes. “Thank you, sir. I shall treasure this gift.” She took the fan and gave him his coat in exchange. “I wish we were…I wish things were different.”

“As do I. Come, let us see what else this madness has to offer.” He could not bear to part from her now. If an opportunity presented itself, he could be subtle in his questions.

They strolled from stall to stall. Pippa did not like to see the animals perform. She did not like to see children pressed into service as beggars and cajolers. He watched expressions pass over her clever, lovely face and began to feel he would surely die if he could not make her his own.

“Look,” Pippa said, engrossed in the scene. “Such a small child to be about at this hour and in this company.”

Calum looked. At first he saw nothing but the weaving people. Then he knew what she’d spoken of.

A child, apparently a boy of four or five, in a concoction of colored rags, made his way around one of the fires. In his hands he carried an iron pan by its handle.

“Begging,” Pippa said. “How does such a little one survive?”

“He survives,” Calum said automatically and went closer, reaching into a pocket for change.

“Fine show, ladies and gen’lemen,” the child said in a high voice. “Help the fine show.” He shook the pan and Calum saw that it was too heavy for the thin wrists that bore it.

He no longer heard Pippa’s words. Moving forward, he tossed a gold coin into the pan.

The little urchin bent over the pan in an almost comical manner. Slowly, his black-eyed face came up. “Thank-ee,” he whispered. “I never seed one o’ them in me pan.”

Calum smiled silently.

Nearby, the fire crackled.

Voices rose and fell.

“A fine show,” the child caroled.

Colored cloth. Stars in dark skies. Fires.

Pictures from the past mingled with pictures from this night.
The scent of smoke and the crackle of sparks. Costumes that swirled, red and yellow and gold.

Clinking sounds came from close by. A girl danced in a costume sprinkled with glass beads, her hands weaving above her head, the beads tapping together.

Coins on headdresses. And coins that clinked against metal in the pan he held. “You are young to be so sure of yourself, my boy.”

“See the show,” the child in front of Calum said.

“See how he holds himself? Like a prince strutting among
his subjects rather than a beggar-boy among his betters.”

“Calum,” Pippa said, startling him, “are you unwell?”

“No, no.” He managed to smile at her.

“Fine show, sir,” the little boy said, clearly still amazed by his golden prize. “See the snake man and his lovely lady assistant.”

The beating of Calum’s heart ceased.

“Come,” Pippa insisted. “We should not care for such a display.”

He took her hand and tucked it through the crook of his elbow. “A small look and we’ll move on. Experiences are broadening.”

The sound of silver bells had eluded him until now. Making a path for himself and Pippa, he found a place where they could watch as a weathered, brown-skinned man shook little bells attached to his fingers and marched in a commanding circle around the spectacle that held the onlookers in thrall.

“Calum,” Pippa whispered urgently, “surely this is dangerous.”

“No,” he told her. “Not dangerous at all.”

He did not explain that the snakes winding their way about the lovely body of a scantily dressed woman could no longer deliver poison to an enemy.

“Be still!” the brown man commanded, his jutting brows shooting up. The bells at his fingertips made a sound that was at odds with the threatening glide of the vipers’ sinuous bodies over their human host.

“She is not afraid,” Calum said of the woman whose mouth gaped with apparent horror as a snake drew back its head only inches from her face. “She has no reason to be afraid. It is all an act.”

“A horrible act.”

“I can’t do this again. I can’t, I tell you. You’ll have to find someone else.”

The new voice, female and tired, had not come to Calum’s memory before.

“We’ve got no choice. You didn’t ask enough gold for your efforts. Thanks to your foolishness, we’ve got another mouth to feed.”

A man’s voice now. Familiar. More familiar than the woman’s. And they’d been speaking about him.

“Please, can we go now? It’s over.”

Calum glanced down at Pippa. “Please be patient. There is something I must do here.”

She nodded and stood close beside him as the act ended and the crowd drifted on in search of fresh entertainment.

The snakes were peeled from the woman and dropped into baskets. Calum looked hard at the snake man’s assistant and silently cursed himself for his own stupidity. For a few moments he’d expected to recognize someone from his childhood. The snake man’s assistant was young, not more than eighteen. The Rachel he sought would be…she would be approaching at least her fiftieth year. Not that he had any recollection of her features or form.

“Calum.”

“Be patient, I beg you,” he told Pippa, waiting, although he knew not for what.

The snake man divested himself of his bells, tucking them into trouser pockets. Then he looked up, looked at Calum and frowned. “Another show in an hour, your lordship,” he said, bending his head a little to peer through darting light from the fire.

“May I speak with you?” Calum asked.

Pippa’s hand gripped his arm tightly.

Smoothing his hands on his full-sleeved yellow shirt, the brown man came cautiously nearer. “What do you want with me?”

The assistant called to the boy with the pan and they departed between two wagons.

“I must go,” the man said.

Calum looked into the face that had seen many winters and summers on the land, many travels by cart through weather most would hide from, and saw the features as they had once been.

“Calum?”

“Be patient.” He covered Pippa’s hand on his arm. “Do you remember me?” he asked the snake man. “Am I familiar?”

“Why should you be?” Another step brought them within feet of each other. “Why…” The man’s dark eyes grew unblinking and piercing.

“Your name, sir?” Calum asked.

“Yours?” was the response.

“Calum.” He breathed in with difficulty. “Calum Innes.”

If it were possible, skin as brown as saddle leather grew paler. “I am Guido. We have never met.”

“Guido?” Was the name familiar? “
Do
you know me?”

“Why should the likes of me know the likes of you?” Guido backed slowly away, but Calum followed. “What is your business with me?”

“I need your help,” Calum said. “Please. You have no need to fear me. Only tell me if you see something in me that reminds you of a child you once knew.”

Guido stood still and his lips parted. Suddenly he looked right and left. “Your mind is unbalanced, sir. You are not yourself.”

“Am I not? That is not your concern, is it? I asked you a question and I think I have my answer. We met before, didn’t we? You knew a small boy, much like the one who works for you now. That other boy was brought to you by Rachel.”

Alarm flashed so instantly in Guido’s eyes, and in the tense set of his body, that Calum felt a rush of triumph. “Help me. I came to you first in this place. Many years since. I could not help myself then and you would not help me. Change that now.”

“Get away,” the man hissed. “You are wrong, I tell you. Wrong.”

“I am
right,
and I will follow you until you admit as much.”

“I told her we would suffer,” Guido moaned. Then he seemed to collect himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do. You’ve admitted as much.”

“I’ve admitted nothing. If you had proof, you wouldn’t be here this night.”

“I shall not cease to persecute you until I have my proof,” Calum said. “I shall follow you for the rest of your life if I have to.”

The man swept his arms wide in a gesture of defeat. “I am innocent, I tell you. Ask
her.
”

Triumph became a burning thing in Calum’s breast. “Only tell me where I may find her, and I’ll gladly ask.”

Guido wiped a sleeve over his sweating face. “She’s gone,” he said.

Calum’s gut curled sickeningly. “You just said I should ask her.”

“I am muddled. The one you seek is no more. Go to the fortune teller.” He pointed an unexpectedly elegant hand into an aisle lined with tents and stalls. “Go to Sybel and ask what she can tell you. Tell her I sent you.”

Calum snorted and shook his head. “It is not my future I seek here, friend.”

“Go to her, I tell you,” Guido said, backing away. “She who tells the future must also know the past. First she must determine where you came from, or she cannot tell you where you are going.”

Pippa was frightened. For Calum and for herself. The man who stood beside her, his face stark, was a man suffering in some place where she could not reach him.

She shook him gently. “The fortune teller must be this way,” she said, trying to pull him along.

“You should not be here,” he said, sounding as if he were barely aware of her. “Where I have to go you cannot come. I will return you to the castle.”

“But I will not go,” she told him, planting her feet apart on the sawdust-strewn ground. “You are not ready to tell me what this is all about and I shall not ask. But I will go to that fortune teller and you will come with me.”

“No.”

“You want to.”

“My God!” He turned his face up to the night sky and shut his eyes. “You cannot know what I want or do not want. I want
peace.”

She felt full to bursting with a desire to press him for explanations. “Humor me, Calum, and in return, I shall ask you nothing. Come to the fortune teller. Now.”

Like a man exhausted from hard labor, he let his head fall forward. He said not a word, but set off in the direction the snake man had indicated. On the way they were often stopped by capering revelers who made lewd gibes and demands. Calum seemed to notice none of them.

Once, Pippa caught sight of the duke, but he appeared drunk and absorbed on the one hand with Lady Hoarville and on the other by Henri St. Luc. Of Sable or Max there was no sign.

“Here,” a husky voice said from the shadowy entrance to a small tent. “Here, Calum Innes. Guido has told me you need my services.”

Pippa looked at him. “This is the place.”

“You cannot come with me,” he said.

“I cannot remain out here alone,” she reminded him.

He appeared to give up the argument. Holding her around the waist, he entered the tent.

A woman dressed from head to foot in dark green silk seated herself behind a small table. She raised her veiled face and indicated for Calum to sit in a chair facing her.

When Calum paused, Pippa urged him forward, waited for him to sit down and stood at his shoulder.

“You may call me Sybel,” the woman said. From the narrow space between the draping shawl over her head and the veil stared eyes as black as any Pippa had ever seen. Eyes that were both young and incredibly old. “Move closer where I can see you,” Sybel instructed Calum.