Fire Dance (39 page)

That they would find her, she knew. She merely must reach the Butter Tubs first. After that, well, she could not change her fate. She closed her eyes.

Dawn streaked the sky when she opened them again. She jumped, startled. She should not have slept so long. In a mere few hours, a good horseman could ride the entire distance she had walked. She must get to the Butter Tubs before they caught her, or the cloak would fall once again into human hands and continue to execute its deadly purpose.

She wolfed down chunks of the cheese, packed up her belongings, and urged her weary body to continue its quest. Seeing no sign of riders, she hurried up toward the ridge, where she might have a better vantage. Leaving the broad, rounded-bottomed valley, the fells suddenly grew steeper, and she battled fatigue desperately. She should not have been so tired, not so early. She was not a weak woman.

But she could not stop to rest. They would be on her too quickly. Only a moment, then. She knelt by a small rill and scooped up water in her hand to drink. She tasted bile as she drank, as her stomach revolted. Nay! She could not be ill. She had to do this. She struggled to her feet, and tried to force them to move. They seemed anchored where she stood. Her head swam. She fell to her knees, groped among the large rocks by the stream bed to regain her balance.

Gorge rose in her throat again, and she fought to hold it back, but lost the struggle. Gasping, she scooped water into her mouth to wash it clean. Surely it would pass, now. It was not the sickness that came with the cloak, and how could it be any other?

She tried to rise again. Nausea, black and red, swirled through her, overwhelmed her. A flash of purple against the whirl of colors.

Fyren! It is Fyren’s doing! Fyren comes!

Nay, he's dead. With the destruction of the cloak, I will end his hideous reign.

Again, the flash of purple. Black-red swirls.

Black. She fell to the earth.

CHAPTER 20

"Where did you find her?"

"South, on the eastern fells." Chretien, still in his saddle, lowered Melisande's limp body into Alain's arms, then dismounted. "She has not been conscious since we found her. Mayhap it was a food poison, as she had retched."

Alain adjusted the weight of his wife's slack body in his arms and started for the paired doors of the hall with Chretien at his side. "Yet it would not explain unconsciousness."

"It is true. I thought mayhap another poison, as well."

"An irony if so, as she is the mistress of poison."

"Alain, you do not truly think she poisoned you?"

"It was also an unusual illness, did you not say?"

"Aye. But if she meant for you to die, would she not have waited to see that you did?"

"And if she had cared for me as she said, would she not have waited around for me to live before she hurried off?"

Alain carried Melisande through the hall's doors, to the wooden stairs beyond the dais, still feeling the ravages of the strange illness that had sapped his strength.

"Let me carry her up," said Chretien.

"She is my responsibility. You have done enough by finding her." He labored up the stairs, wishing fleetingly that he had not put so much stock in his injured pride. It would have hurt little to allow Chretien the task.

But that was what had suffered most, his pride. To wake and find her gone, without a word. Mayhap she had hurried off to join some mysterious lover, the one he had so trustingly pretended did not exist. What a fool he was.

At the top of the stairs, he paused and caught his breath again before taking her into the private chamber that Lynet had hastily vacated. Chretien ran ahead and pulled back the down quilt, so that he could lay her down on the bed.

"Call for Nelda. Mayhap she will know what to do for her. At least, to get her in some clean garments."

"Aye. She is very cold, Alain. I think she had lain there a long time."

"Mayhap, as she was three days gone. Or she may have already accomplished whatever hellish task she was bent on, and was returning."

"Returning would mean an intent to come back to you."

"I do not doubt she thinks me that gullible."

"Could you not hear her story first, Alain?"

"How so, Chretien? She has deceived me from the beginning. What is the difference in one more story?"

"Only listen. I ask no more."

Oh, he would listen. He knew he would. But this time she would not convince him. For he had learned at last, she was as wicked as her father.

"Go for Nelda," he said. He watched the still figure of the woman who for such a little while had been his wife. Against his own will he reached down and stroked a finger across her cheek.

* * *

She had lain three days in her strange stupor, not even knowing how to swallow the drops of water Nelda squeezed into her mouth without someone stroking at her throat. Already she began to look thin. And Alain had stood and watched, waiting for change that it seemed would never come.

If she were awake and treating another, she would know what to do, but none here knew. Lynet and Nelda did whatever they thought might help, but they were as helpless as he. His throat tightened and ached. God help him, he did not want her to die.

She tossed about fretfully. Occasionally an odd word would come from her mouth, that seemed connected to nothing, like the strange utterances from her dreams. Her voice sounded dry and harsh. She must be horribly thirsty. But she showed some inclination to swallow now, and Nelda carefully increased the water, feeding it from a spoon.

"Don't," she had said, several times. And once, "Don't touch it."

What awful thing did she dream of now? Was it still those macabre terrors of dark, cold places? Or of fires where demons danced, and Fyren came up from Hell? Whatever perfidy might be hers, he could not persuade himself that she had invented those horrors of the night to draw him in. Mayhap he had been wrong. Mayhap she really had been possessed by demons all this time.

"Please! Don't let him!"

He turned to look at her again, her face flushed and feverish, her throat parched, gravelly. Almost as soon as her body had warmed, the fever had come upon her.

"Come now, love, just another spoonful, there's a girl."

Nelda cajoled another bare mouthful of moisture into Melisande's mouth.

"Don't let him touch it," she said.

"I won't, sweeting, don't you worry. Now, take some more."

Again she gulped a spoonful, then fell back to the pillow, her head to the side, eyes closed. He had never seen an illness like this one. It was certainly not the same as whatever had infected him. Sweet Jesus, he would make any bargain with God for her life. He ached so deeply within himself, he thought he might turn inside out with the pain.

He left the chamber and the hall, and trudged up the steps to the top of the curtain wall, where he stood on the allure and surveyed the construction in progress. But he seemed to see nothing. Or nothing held his attention.

"What news of Rufus?" he asked Chretien.

"He is delayed. The heavy rain has bogged down his carts. But he meets no resistance."

"It is too easy for him," said Alain. "He will be bored."

"Aye. Supply problems cannot be compared with a good battle or two, not for Rufus."

He leaned on the wall, staring out over the countryside, where everything carried the bright impression of a fine spring. True, the rain had muddied the roads, but roads in this part of the isle were too primitive to be of much use, anyway. The crops prospered, however, and the apple trees bloomed.

"How fares the lady?" asked Chretien.

"Restless. Nelda has been able to get some water into her."

"The fever?"

"Still there."

"I think whatever it is, she is also ill from exposure."

"Mayhap. But we can do naught else but treat what we can see. Nelda has some knowledge of the lady's methods."

"What will you do with her, Alain?"

"I know not."

He did not want to continue the conversation, so turned to continue his walk on the allure. Chretien walked for a while with him, then went about his duties.

Eventually Alain returned to the chamber, to watch a little longer.

"Don't let– kill him," she said.

"Don't touch– " or "Don't kill– ", she said, later.

But never anything that made sense. He wondered briefly if she had made a pact with someone to kill him. Dougal, mayhap, or Malcolm. The opportunities had been there.

And why the cloak? Did it have some mysterious power? Was it a sorcerer's tool of some sort? Her obsession and revulsion had been puzzling from the beginning.

Was she a witch? He remembered Anwealda's dying word.

He sighed and once again left the chamber.

* * *

Melisande sat on the narrow sill of the double-shuttered window of her chamber and idly observed the movement of soldier and villein in the lower bailey. There seemed to be a greater bustle about than usual. She deduced that Rufus would come soon.

For her, the war was over. Cyneric and Anwealda both dead, following Fyren into Hell, and Dougal chased off. The Norman held her castle and people. He was a good lord, and for the time he had left would see to their welfare along with his own, and administer his justice fairly. But she could not save him now. Only the truth remained now, and he would not believe it.

She heard the key turn in the creaking lock. The door opened to admit Lynet, anxious and tentative.

"I am glad to see you well, lady," said Lynet, and hastened to her side.

Melisande tried to manage a smile, but could not find one. "Aye. Well enough for what comes."

"Oh, lady, I do not think you a witch. Nor does Gerard."

"It does not matter what you think, or I. The accusation itself is enough."

"Gerard refuses to leave. He says he will demand a trial by combat, for he must defend your honor."

Melisande startled. "Oh! He must not. You cannot let him."

"I cannot stop him," said Lynet, shaking her head.

"But you must. Tell him I demand it."

"He will not listen to you this time, lady. He is determined."

"Nay, Lynet. He must not. Do you not understand? If he defends me, he must fight Alain, and one of them will die. I could not bear it."

"I will tell him what you say, but I know he will not change his mind."

"Send him to me, then."

"The lord will not allow it. Only Nelda or I may see you."

"Lynet, then you must find a way to persuade him. Think on this, that what I wanted has come about, and there is someone to replace Fyren who is worthy. Fyren's evil is gone, at last. But if they fight and one dies, there will be a division, and the Scots will overrun us again. All will be lost. None has ever been vindicated from a charge of witchcraft, Lynet. Gerard must not waste himself on something he cannot change."