Sanctuary of Roses (35 page)

“Aye.” Tricky rocked on the stool, side to
side, and managed to tip herself over. She rolled on the floor and
Madelyne could not tell if she was successful in grasping a piece
of broken crockery. Silence reigned but for the grunts and groans
of exertion from her maid.

The sound of voices and heavy footsteps down
the stairs caused Madelyne’s attention to sharpen. “Tricky…they
come! Can you right yourself?”

Gasping, Tricky rolled herself back to where
she’d been and struggled to right her stool. The door flung open
again, and Fantin and Tavis strode in, arguing.

Their loud voices, angry and shrill, sent
greater shivers up and down Madelyne’s spine. Where was Seton? Was
there aught he could do?

“There is no sign that Mal Verne has entered
the keep—he is no where to be found.” Tavis spoke in an urgent
tone. “You must concentrate on your work, Master Fantin…your time
is so close!”

He flickered a look in Madelyne’s direction,
then, as his gaze swept back, it was distracted by the sight of
Tricky on the floor, still attached to her stool. He trotted over,
standing above her with his hands on his hips. “And where are we
going, my little coquette? Surely you do not wish to miss our
little demonstration anight?”

Roughly, he yanked her upright and reached
to fondle her breasts. “Ah, such sweet rewards await me!” With a
lascivious smile, he turned back to Fantin.

“Master…no one can enter this keep now
without our knowledge. Mal Verne’s one man gained entrance, but if
there are others, they will be stopped by the extra guards we have
posted. Mal Verne must still be jailed, awaiting trial for
attempted murder of the queen.”

“Aye,” his master chuckled. “Even our king
is not so foolish as to allow him loose in the wake of his little
gift to that whore.” Fantin appeared to be placated, and he swept
over to Madelyne, fluttering his robe dramatically. He reached to
touch her face, smoothing his cool hand lovingly along her
cheek.

“Madelyne, dear daughter, feel you ill, or
do you feel the strength of your cleanliness returning to you? The
potions we have given you are only for your own health. We must
eradicate the seed of that bastard Mal Verne if you are to attain
your innocence once again.”

Holding her breath, Madelyne turned her face
away, afraid that even the little she knew would be betrayed on her
face. God willing, Seton had found a way to bring Gavin’s men into
the keep….

Suddenly, the door to the laboratory burst
open, and even through her haze, Madelyne recognized Seton de Masin
as he pitched into the room, nearly falling to his knees. Blood
smeared his face, and where he held his left arm with his right,
more redness colored his fingers and clothing. He was followed by
the priest, the white-faced, man with dark circles beneath his
eyes. The latter prodded Seton with a sword to the back.

“Lord Fantin, you have a traitor in your
midst,” announced the priest as he stood proudly at the base of the
stairs. Madelyne’s head went weightless. Nay!

“What is this?” Fantin turned, his words
soft, but the touch of his hand on Madelyne’s skin turned heavy and
still.

“This man has been feeding your daughter,
and whispering with her whilst you work to rid her of the evil
within her. He is destroying your ever chance of cleansing
her!”

“De Masin, what is the meaning of this? Is
this true?” Fantin whirled from Madelyne’s side and faced his man,
hands on his hips.

“Lord Fantin, ’tis not his only trespass,”
Rufus continued. “He strode from the keep and spoke with a man near
the oak tree—in secret.”

Madelyne dragged in a shaking breath, her
body overcome with tremors. Oh nay…!

Fantin left her side as if propelled,
leaving a force of shifting air in his wake, and a deep fear
chilling her bones. “What are you about?” her father roared,
snatching a gleaming sword from one of the tables, whirling to face
his man.

“Your work will never come to pass,” Seton
told him, standing tall, though pain marked his face. “You seek to
use Madelyne as the conduit for your work with God, but she will
never fulfill that role.”

“You know naught of what you speak,”
shrieked Fantin, his eyes wild and desperate. He swiped out with
the wide blade. In his fury, he swung too wide, and Seton easily
leapt out of its path…but the priest was not so fortunate.

Before Madelyne’s eyes, her father’s blade
sliced through the neck of the little priest, leaving a deep, thick
red line across his throat. He gurgled and slumped to the floor as
Fantin stared in disbelief.

Then, as if some great power seized him,
Fantin clenched his fists, flinging his arms wide and raising his
face to the wooden ceiling above, and shrieked before launching
himself at Seton. “You have killed him! My priest!”

“’Tis no matter, Fantin. Your work will come
to naught,” Seton told him, jumping gracefully from his path. He
pivoted toward Madelyne, breathing heavily against his pain.
“Madelyne cannot fulfill the role you have made her as your
daughter. She is not of your seed.”

Madelyne froze as Fantin screamed again.
“
You lie
! She is my flesh, my only flesh and she was created
with the woman God has chosen for me! She is my destiny!”

“Nay, you have been fooled all these years,”
Seton continued, taunting him, dancing around the table as his eyes
flashed with purpose. “Madelyne is
my
daughter.”

Thirty

The time had long come and since passed for
Seton de Masin to open the small, side gate as he’d avowed he
would.

Gavin pushed all emotion from his mind. He
focused only on that gateway lit by flickering torches—watching the
weathered with age, gray wood that kept him from his beloved—nay,
he would not think on that.

Look only on the door. Wait for it to open.
Count the knots, study the texture and grain of the wood.

It did not open.

Stare in the dim light at the splinters that
form each plank.

It did not open.

His nerves screamed and yet he looked only
there. He didn’t hear the shuffling of his men. He didn’t see them
watching him.

He did not look at the night sky, studded
with stars and a low moon. He knew only stillness, black stillness
within—rage simmering beneath, struggling to erupt.

He did not allow it. He stared, grasping the
hilt of his sword and still he waited.

And still the gate remained closed.

* * *

“Nay!” Fantin shrieked, freezing with his
sword in the air. “Lying whoreson!”

Madelyne saw her own shock reflected in his
face. Her body shook with chills and disbelief, yet something
surged warm within her. She carried no madness in her veins. Her
love to serve God came wholesome and from her heart…not from the
twisted, skewed need of Fantin de Belgrume.

Seton continued to move, holding his arm,
taunting Fantin. “All of these years, I have known she is of my
blood and she has lived safely out of your reach. I have made
certain it would be so. Why do you think I have stayed in your
service for all these years?”

“Nay! ’Tis not true!” Fantin’s voice reached
a shrill pitch, then cracked into dryness. “Nay! Lady Anne would
never have lain with one such as you…and you tell me tales with no
truth, Seton de Masin! You will not sway me from my purpose, for
I am chosen
!”

Seton yanked up the sleeve of his tunic,
baring his wrist, still dancing, moving ever closer to Madelyne.
“See you here, Fantin—’tis all the proof you need. She and I have
the self-same wrist-markings that my mother and her father have had
before us. She is of my flesh. Madelyne is not your daughter, and
she will not remain here under your care to live in the darkness of
your world. I shall see to that.”

With these words, Seton launched himself
over the table, knocking bowls and dishes askew as he thumped to
the floor next to Madelyne, banging into Tricky’s stool and
upsetting her onto the floor.

Seton reached for a long wooden broom and
whipped it around, missing Fantin by only a whistle of air. He
shifted his grip, settling the pole like a lance at his side, when
something flew across the room and, with a dull thud, Seton dropped
to the floor next to Tricky.

Madelyne screamed weakly when she saw the
small, black ball that had smashed into her new-found father’s
forehead, and looked over to see Tavis, holding a leather
sling.

“Master!” he shouted, horror crossing his
face as he stared at Fantin.

Turning to look, Madelyne saw that her
father had metamorphosed. While before, he had been animated, with
fervor, and with eyes that glowed…now, his face curdled, darkening
and shattering. His brows knit together and his eyes were slitted
into angry black slashes. And his mouth…Madelyne swallowed when she
saw the way his lips twitched and yanked, played as if a tiny
thread tugged at them—as if they were controlled by some puppet
master.

A thin stream of saliva leaked from the
corner of his twitching mouth as it seized up and around in this
silent, eerie movement.

At last, the mouth opened and a shriek of
ungodly rage spewed forth, filling the chamber with such force that
the bowls rattled. Fantin’s face blossomed red and purple and his
hands clutched at his middle as though he were trying to tear out
his insides even as his feet stepped and jumped and danced on the
stone floor.

The veins in his neck grew, swelling to blue
and then black, as he screamed the cry of a dying man.

For Madelyne, in a moment of pure black fear
and icy hopelessness, realized that his insides were dying…that he
had naught left for himself, and that his mind died because his
dream had been taken from him by Seton’s taunting knowledge. She
could barely comprehend that Fantin was not her father—it was
unimaginable how shattered
he
should feel, learning that she
was not of his flesh.

Fantin swept to her side, then, and before
she could draw a breath to scream again, had the tip of a knife at
her throat. His eyes bored into hers, burning, and his pupils were
no longer pinpricks of black, but huge black saucers.

Madelyne closed her eyes, swallowing, and
felt the tip of the knife cold on her throat as it constricted. She
would meet her God now. The God
she
knew, not the one her
father—nay! her father no longer!—not the God Fantin had
fabricated.

Then the coolness withdrew.

She opened her eyes and found Fantin’s face
very close to hers, still crumpled with the destruction of his
dreams, rasping a harsh breath from flared nostrils. “Nay.” His
single word, whispered, puffed on her face, stale and moist. Then
he spoke, again, slowly, as though the words formed like perfect,
single drops of water, dropping, one at a time, in his mind: “I
loved your mother. She betrayed me.”

He pulled away. The rage seemed to have
subsided and though his eyes remained wild, his movements smoothed
and slowed. “Nay,” he said again, as if needing to convince
himself. “She betrayed our God.”

Those simple words, that coolness, caused a
great, icy, fathomless fear to billow in her. Fantin’s rages had
always been a source of great horror and pain…but this—this
calmness, this studied calmness, laced with purpose, caused her to
shake with terror as never before.

If Fantin believed his God had been
betrayed, then nothing would save her now. She held back a whimper.
Nay.
She did not live a life without hope.

And then hope, in the form of Tricky, seized
her attention.

Madelyne saw her maid moving on the floor,
wriggling, somehow no longer attached to her stool, no longer
bound.

Quickly averting her eyes, she raised them
to meet Fantin’s. Mayhap….

“Fath—my lord,” she said, struggling to keep
her voice calm. “My lord, may—”

“Silence!” he shouted, spittle flying into
her face. Madelyne reared against the stones, away from the sudden
recurrence of rage.

He seemed to consider her for a moment.
“What is it you wish to say?”

“The queen….”

Those were the only words necessary. “The
whore! She yet lives, or so I hear from Rohan, my faithful man.” He
slammed his foot into Seton’s unmoving body upon those words.

Madelyne’s unspoken question was thus
answered. “Why did you poison the necklet?” she asked, using every
last vestige of energy to force the words from her lips, seizing
upon anything that might keep Fantin’s attention from the figure
that slinked under the tables. A quick glance showed Madelyne that
Tavis had not noticed Tricky’s movements.

Nay, blessedly, he stared, enraptured by the
exchange betwixt herself and Fantin.

“She is the greatest of all whores,” Fantin
told her. “She must die—’tis God’s will. She must be purged from
this earth, just as Mal Verne must be, just as his slut of a wife
was, and as you shall be!” Red veins burst in the whites of his
eyes as he screamed these last words at her, and Madelyne struggled
to keep from bursting into tears.

He whirled from her, and Madelyne’s heart
froze. If he saw that Tricky was near the door and the stairs….Nay,
he did not! He whirled back around with the same bloodied sword
that had sent the priest to his death. She recoiled when he rose
toward her, the silver blade glinting and dully blooded in a
macabre pattern, and drew it back to swing.

She tensed, closing her eyes.

“Master! The girl is escaping!”

Madelyne’s eyes snapped open in time to see
the blade swipe past her, slicing harmlessly through her skirts,
and clashing into the stones behind her.

“After her!” Fantin shouted at his man, who
had already mounted the stairs. He turned to glare at Madelyne. “Do
you not find hope in this,” he sneered, “for she will not make it
to your husband. If indeed he lurks about, she will find no way to
allow him into the keep. You are safe here with me,” he added, and
laughed…that self-same laugh that came with his madness.