Kissed by Starlight (12 page)

Worse than these checks and annoyances was the fact that though Blaic had entered the grotto only two steps ahead of her, she could not catch up. She found it maddening. Furthermore, neither Clarice nor Blaic answered her repeated calls. She could imagine them, pressing hard up against a rock, laughing at her increasingly apprehensive pleading.

She made so much noise in her progress that even if someone had followed her from the house, she’d never hear them until they were stepping on her heels.

Then she became aware that ahead of her a faint glow filled the air. It looked very familiar. Had she been in some kind of labyrinth, turning around and around until it unfairly dumped her once more at the entrance? She shouted again for Blaic and Clarice. The sound echoed flatly off the narrow stone to either side of her.

“This is too bad of you....” She walked forward, fully intending to give the miscreants a withering scolding, but her wonderment kept her looking everywhere but at them.

The grotto was no more than eight feet deep. She must have passed through it in the first few seconds after she entered. The maze was not part of the grotto she knew; neither was this.

A room like the inside of an onion-dome, rising to un-guessed heights, was filled with thousands of green, growing things. The smell of the earth filled her with every breath. Small pockets in the roof and walls supported the plants, long trailing fronds dripping starlight.

Of course, it couldn’t have been starlight. There was no skylight in the roof. She double-checked, casting her gaze upward. The light came from the plants themselves, dripping off their leaves like water and falling with ceaseless precision into the pool at Felicia’s feet.

This pool had collected starlight for thousands of years. The light was not hot. It did not glare and burn her eyes, though she could, for the moment, do nothing but stare down into the clear, brilliant depths. It glowed like the heart of the night sky itself, the very center of space drawn here to this place.

As Felicia looked deeply into the “pool,” she saw that it swirled about very slowly, like a whirlpool of light. She felt in her soul that if she watched long enough, she would see down to the very beginning of time, down to the very moment when God lifted His hand over the void and proclaimed the world.

Without knowing when she’d begun, Felicia realized that she was swaying in time to the movement of the light. She was not certain what made her at last raise her eyes to search for Clarice. She had only the vaguest memories of who she was or why she had come. The star-pool seemed to have drawn all fear and trouble from her.

Blaic stood on the brink of the pool, holding Clarice high against his shoulder. Her eyes looked dark and dazed as she stared down into the wonder before her.

“Is it your will that I do this thing?” Blaic asked.

Felicia answered for her sister. Her voice strangling, she said, “Yes.”

With a spring of his powerful legs, Blaic leapt into the pool. Felicia heard a shout of fear, not from Blaic or Clarice, but from behind her.

She spun about. Whether from dizziness or some other cause, she slipped and fell. The light around her winked out and she felt the rushing of the cold night air over her body. In the time it took to blink her eyes, everything changed. When she looked up, only the cold light of a few, distant stars met her gaze. The blazing beauty of the night had dimmed away to this.

She heard voices and was vaguely aware of people rushing to and fro through the garden, some shouting for blankets, others for hot wine. She heard Lady Stavely’s voice, harsh and demanding. It came to Felicia that Lady Stavely was desperately frightened, and she thought, “How odd.”

Then she remembered everything.

“Clarice!” She sprang to her feet. Nearby, in the obscure light of a smoking torch, a small crowd of people huddled around something lying on the grass. Someone moved aside and Felicia caught a glimpse of a pair of feet lying flared out unnaturally. “Clarice...”

She ran to her sister’s side, only to find herself blocked by Mr. Varley’s broad chest. The butler looked absurd with his late master’s dressing gown gaping open over his nightshirt. Even more ridiculous was that he’d clapped his wig on his head, yet his hairy legs were innocent of breeches.

“Stay back, you!” he growled, catching her by the upper arm.

“What do you mean by this?” Felicia demanded, struggling.

Then Lady Stavely was in front of her, her eyes huge with rage. Without a word, she slashed at Felicia with raking fingernails. Unable to jerk back due to the butler’s grip, Felicia felt the sting along her throat. She gasped and tried instinctively to hit back. That too was impossible.

William Beech interposed himself between Lady Stavely and Felicia. “There be no cause for that,” he said roughly. “Leave t’constable to deal with ‘er. Or the parson. Don’t rightly know if t’is church or law’ll have their way with ‘er.”‘

“Some bawdy house in foreign parts more like,” Mr. Varley said, giving Felicia a shake. “If they don’t hang her.”“

Felicia saw now that Clarice lay limply on the ground while the maids, ignoring the commotion around them, put hot bricks on her back and chest. Liza looked up, her wizened face a witch’s mask in the smoky light. “Best if we’m take her to a warm bed, then, mistress. Half-drownded, she is. She’m won’t last the night, as I reckon.”

Lady Stavely rounded on Felicia. “If she dies ...,” she hissed. “If she dies ...”

Still disoriented by the sudden change from the radiance of the grotto pool to the dark slime of the streambed, Felicia had no words to answer. She noticed vaguely that Blaic was not there, and wondered if he ever had been.

“What has happened?” she asked.

“As if you don’t know! Don’t play the zany, girl.” Varley tightened his already painful grip. For a man with rheumatism, he was capable of remarkable strength when angry.

“Please, William Beech, you tell me.”

“I don’t rightly know. Mistress raised the house when she found her missin’.”

“That’s enough,” Varley said. “She know well enow what she has done.”

Aware that the blood running down her neck must make her a shocking sight, Felicia tried to speak calmly. “Pray continue, William Beech.”

For whatever reason—a love of gossip, a love of justice, or just that he had once found her desirable—William Beech did continue. His thick-witted brother, Harry, gaped at her over his shoulder. “Like I say, she roused the house and zent the boot boy off to wake me ‘n’ my brother. We’m zearched the garden high an’ low afore meetin’ up with the house lot down by stream. Just in time to zee you’m push her under.”

Chapter Seven

“This is intolerable!” Felicia said for approximately the fifteenth time that day. The village clock showed a trifle after noon. The clock resided in the tower of the town hall, an elegant building constructed only a few years ago. The ornate face of the clock was all that could be seen from the single window of the town gaol. It seemed, somehow, to add insult to injury that the prisoners could see so little except that clock, ticking off the weary seconds of their incarceration.

“Constable Richards,” Felicia began. “How do you expect the eight people in this cell to feed themselves on two plates of... of whatever this revolting mess is called?’’

Constable Richards acted very differently now that Felicia was under his “care.” He’d used to tug his forelock to her when she was out riding in the gig and always spoke most respectfully, whether or not she was with her father. Now, however, he spat during his speeches and his red face had a hard, shiny finish.

“Snatch and grab,” he said in answer to her question. “You don’t see them turnin’ their noses up at it.”

Her fellow inmates had already taken it all, fighting and snarling in the corners like beasts. Even those who’d come in together slapped at each other to be the first to plunge a dirty fist into the vaguely greenish “stew.”

Forcing down her rising gorge, Felicia said, “No, indeed. But, culinary skills aside, you are not overgenerous in your portions, Constable.”

“The county don’t pay me to feed you gaolbirds well. We’d have half the poor in Devon ‘ere stuffin’ their faces if the grub was good.”

“I promise faithfully not to tell them,” she said.

Constable Richards edged his girth a little closer to the open door. His thick fingers looked like bloated sausages as he reached out to stroke her shoulder. Felicia leaned away. He showed rather rabbity front teeth. In a lowered voice, he growled, “Is that friendly? You know what to do t’have zum proper food. What’d you do for a mouthful o’ white bread, zay? Or an apple? Hey? I be glad to show you a trick or two you maybe ain’t learned.”

Felicia turned away, flushed hot despite the freezing temperature of the gaol. “When I am released, Richards, I’ll not rest until you are dismissed from the post and a man with some humanity is given your position!”

“Fine words, your ‘ladyship’! But you ought to tike what you can while you can. You’ll be danglin’ zoon as the assizes are over, niver you fear! Them judges make short work o’ them as come up afore ‘em with a murder charge over ‘em!”

“My sister is not dead!” Felicia flung back.

“Not yet...no thanks to you!” He slammed the solid wooden door, setting up a clanging of echoes in the cell.

Felicia sat down in the dirty straw. This was only her first day in Hamford Gaol and already she did not know how much longer she could bear it. As a child she’d dwelt in a kennel like this, but since then she’d known nothing but gentility and cleanliness. Her father had never let her speak of her nightmarish childhood and with time, all had faded. She’d lost the perspective of the poor.

Her fellow prisoners did not suffer from this shrinking of the flesh. They huddled in their corners, conserving what warmth they could find. Their breath was like smoke when they spoke or coughed. They were only known to her by vague reputation.

Morris the poacher and his wife (famous for ribbon-stealing) sat in one corner. If convicted, they’d both be hung, for it was far from either’s first offense. He’d just cuffed her across the head for not being quicker at grabbing the food.

Dale and Choate had been taken up for being in possession of smuggled goods. If convicted, they’d never see Devon more, nor indeed any part of England, unless it be from the deck of one of His Majesty’s ships. Every day, their wives, mothers, and children would come and shout through the single opening in the wall. It was a melancholy scene, though the two bawds who also shared this spacious accommodation were of the opinion that it would not be long before the women joined in their antique profession.

One bawd nursed a babe at her breast, while the other was obviously not far off her day of travail. They dressed, even the pregnant one, in an exaggerated form of the present mode, tossed over with greasy ribbons and dirty bits of lace, while their wigs were teaseled within an inch. Felicia had seen each of them trade to the constable some tawdry bit of finery in exchange for a tankard of gin.

At first, Felicia had gagged on the stench of the open pot in the corner of the cell. She had not, as yet, brought herself to use it. The food did not tempt her, and she had only sipped from the common water jug. The water had probably not been changed in several days, and, moreover, the jug did not look as though it had ever been washed out. If it had not been for that, she would have bathed the scratches on her throat, which felt hot and stiff whenever she turned her head.

After a night and half a day, she no longer gagged, except once in a while. She’d already resigned herself to the fact of lice, after watching the two bawds comb each others’ wigs. As for her hunger, she remembered this gnawing within from her childhood. It would fade soon, hardly troubling her, before it returned tenfold. She could stand it until then.

Felicia closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. She’d not slept the night before, sitting bolt upright against the wall, filled with terror and loathing. So far, the others had ignored her, even when she was quarreling, at least partly on their behalf, with Constable Richards.

She felt something crawl along her arm and slapped at it.

“Ow!” cried out a voice not her own.

The poacher’s wife had sidled up to her and had tried to steal Felicia’s pin-lace from her very bosom. “Give it me,” Mrs. Morris whined. “T’feed me poor children. They going  to be left orfangs once him an’ me has our necks stretched.”

“Don’t you believe ‘er!” the pregnant prostitute called out. “She ain’t got no manner nor mean of child in this whole world.”

“Go away,” Felicia said tiredly. “If I’m hanged, I’ll make you my heir.”

“Leave ‘er be,” growled Dale, or perhaps it was Choate. He was a big-bodied man with curiously thin legs. Though not more than thirty, his hands trembled like an old man’s. “She’s for the long hop, she is, so you leave her be.”

“I be for it too,” Mrs. Morris said proudly, like one asserting her right of seniority.

“Ah, you’ll plead your belly,” Choate, or Dale, said in his high piping voice. “They’ll put off your stretch for three months. She cain’t do that. She be quality.”

Grumbling, Mrs. Morris went back to her husband, who gave her another clout over the ear. She wailed for a time, then dropped into a repeated and offensively liquid       sniffling.

“Niver you mind, dearie,” the pregnant woman said. “You have yer sleep. We’ll watch out for her.”

“You’re very kind. Maybe I’ll make you my heir instead.”

“Now, there’m no cause fer that kind o’talk. Young and pretty like you be, they’ll niver hang you. Transportation, as Gawd’s me witness. Me Jerry; he been transported to Barbados. I reckon even slavery’s better than hangin’. An’ one day, he’ll come back, drippin’ with pearls and gold, like as not! Zumtimes they do come back.”

“That they do,” said the other, patting her friend on the shoulder. “I’ve heard tell of lots as come back. Pirates, even. Them what they don’t hang.”

When Felicia awoke, the gilded hands of the town clock had wound around past three. She did not remember her dreams, except that they had been pleasant. It made waking to this squalor all the more difficult.