Silken Threads (41 page)

“He wouldn’t come in.” Thomas coughed
hoarsely. “Said it was suicide.”

“Damn!” A leper and a cripple trying to
fight a raging house fire. “Is there another stairway?”

“Aye, I saw it earlier, but it’s in that
room that’s on fire.”

“These stairs are our only hope, then.”
Graeham returned to the room from which he’d stripped away the
leather curtain. He squinted through the smoke, trying to determine
whether he was seeing what he thought he’d seen.

Yes.
The walls were lined with
shelves, the shelves stacked with innumerable bolts of colorful
silks. Graeham hefted an armload and carried them to the
stairs.

“What are you doing?” Thomas asked as he
stamped on the flames eating through the leather curtain. The rags
wrapped around his feet were smoldering.

“Jesus, Thomas, get away from there! Your
feet are on fire.”

“I can’t feel it,” the leper said with
strange detachment.

“Here.” Graeham set the bolts of silk on the
burning floor and the bottom few steps and headed back for more.
“Help me. We need to smother the flames.”

Thomas saw what he was doing and helped,
although he could only carry one bolt at a time. Laid on the
burning steps, the densely wound bolts stifled the flames enough so
that the two men could walk on them.

Graeham cursed his broken leg as he climbed
the stairs, with Thomas right behind him, both struggling against
their infirmities.

Graeham swore rawly when they got to the
third level. The entire landing and the thatched roof above were on
fire. In the midst of the flames, two blackened ceiling beams
rested diagonally in front of the closed door, where they had
fallen, further barring the way. Black smoke roiled overhead.

“
Joanna!”
Graeham screamed from the
top of the stairs, then lapsed into a fit of coughing.

He barely heard her through the roar of the
flames and the closed door. “Graeham?”

“Oh, God, Joanna!” She was alive!

“Graeham, go! You can’t help us.”

“No! I’m not leaving you there. I’m coming
in.”

Another ceiling beam crashed down in front
of them; sparks exploded; thatch rained down in burning clumps.
Graeham backed up a step, flinching from the heat of the flames and
the knowledge of what he had to do.

He had to clear a path into the solar and
get them out.

There were three fallen beams blocking the
way, and that door
—
closed, but, pray God, unlocked. And,
of course, the flames that licked the floor, the walls, those
beams...

If he made it through to the solar at all,
he’d be massively burned.

“You’ll die,” Thomas said.

“Most likely.” But Joanna would live. Ada,
too, but Graeham had fixed his thoughts on Joanna as a way of
getting through this. He could do this. He
would
do this,
for her.

Graeham sucked in a deep, steadying breath,
but that only made him choke.

“You’ll never make it,” Thomas said. “The
pain will get to you.”

“
I’ve got to try!”
he screamed.
“Joanna’s in there!”

“I know.” Thomas took off his straw hat and
threw it down the stairs. He faced the burning landing with a look
of determination, pulled the hood of his cloak down over his
face.

Graeham grabbed the leper’s shoulder. “What
are you
—
”

“I don’t feel pain
—
not in my arms
and legs.”

“But, Thomas
—
”

“I’m going blind, Graeham,” he said, so
quietly Graeham almost didn’t hear him.

“Thomas...Christ.”

The leper smiled. “Wish me Godspeed.”

Graeham squeezed Thomas’s shoulder and
released it. “Godspeed, friend.”

Thomas hesitated only momentarily before
plunging into the flames and the smoke.

Graeham couldn’t watch; he closed his eyes,
crossed himself. He heard a thud and a hiss of sparks. Opening his
eyes, he saw Thomas moving through the flames like a dark ghost,
having shoved the first burning beam out of the way. He grabbed the
second with
—

“Jesu! Thomas!”

—
with his bare hands, his cloak on
fire now
—

“
Thomas!”

—
flames crawling up his legs,
flickering over him as he threw the beam to the floor and seized
the third
—

Graeham muttered a prayer as Thomas, his
cloak falling away in burning shreds, yanked on the
door
—

It opened. Thomas lurched into the solar, a
living torch, and shrugged off the remains of his flaming cloak,
but the rest of his clothes were on fire now, too, and his
hair...

A woman screamed, and Graeham saw them
through the curtain of flames on the landing, two dark forms on the
floor amid the burning thatch and embers drifting down from above.
They had a blanket over them. As Graeham watched, Joanna rose and
threw the blanket over Thomas as he crumpled to the floor.

Graeham drew in a smoky lungful of air and
held it, shielded his face with both arms and hobbled across the
burning landing, wishing to God he could run. He felt the scorching
heat of the flames, hot stings on his arms and back; by the time he
entered the solar, his shirt was on fire. He whipped it off and
threw it aside, grateful that his heavier braies were spared.

“Graeham, your hair!” Joanna whipped off her
veil as she leapt to her feet and patted Graeham’s head with
it.

There came a groan of splitting wood,
followed by a thunderous crack as first one rafter, then another,
came smashing down at the rear of the solar in a spray of sparks. A
red hot ember landed on his bare shoulder; he flinched

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Looking
around wildly, Graeham saw that the narrow bed against the wall was
untouched by flames. Limping over to it, he hauled the mattress
off, dragging it through the doorway and onto the landing. “Come
on! We haven’t got long.”

“Thomas can’t walk!” Joanna said. “Neither
can Ada.”

“I can make it,” Ada said weakly, struggling
to her feet. She looked so young, so frail, but very
determined.

“Joanna, you help Ada,” Graeham gasped out
as he wrapped the listless Thomas in the blanket. “I’ll take care
of Thomas.”

“Leave me,” Thomas moaned. His face was
charred and blistered, his hair burned off.

“I can’t do that, friend.” Hauling Thomas
onto his shoulder, Graeham herded Joanna and Ada through the
doorway, over the mattress and down the stairs, following with
halting steps. From behind came a deafening crash, and another, as
the roof of the solar caved in.

As they stumbled down the two flights of
stairs, Graeham heard voices and the splashing of water. At the
bottom, he found the front door open, and some of the neighborhood
men throwing buckets of water on the fire.

The men helped them into the street, where
they collapsed on the crumbling paving stones, gulping lungfuls of
fresh air. Ada lay curled on her side, her eyes squeezed shut,
coughing raggedly. Thomas lay still as death except for his chest,
which rose and fell with every rattling breath.

Amid the mayhem of men running with buckets
and shouting to each other, Graeham gathered Joanna in his arms,
trembling in the wake of a tide of feeling that squeezed his throat
until he could barely speak. “I was so afraid for you,” he
whispered into her hair, his voice hoarse, his heart pounding. “Oh,
God, I...”

I love you. I love you so much. Too
much.

He mustn’t tell her, he knew, mustn’t give
voice to that which he had no right to feel. He could offer her
nothing, promise her nothing. To declare his feelings under the
circumstances would be a cruel self-indulgence that would only end
up hurting them both.

The knowledge that she had a right to the
truth about Phillipa and Oxfordshire, that he was honor-bound to
tell her, weighed heavily on him. He should tell her to her face,
but he doubted he’d be able to summon the strength for that. The
less painful
—
albeit more shameful
—
option would be
to write her after he returned to Normandy.

She whispered something against his shoulder
that he could barely hear over the chaos surrounding them. “I love
you.” Was that what she said, or was it merely what he wanted her
to say, despite his better judgment?

He didn’t answer her, just held her tight,
wishing he never had to let her go.

* * *

Rolf le Fever, strolling through the central
aisle of the cavernous silk traders’ market hall, deserted for the
midday dinner hour, thought he smelled smoke.

It was a common enough smell in London, what
with the close-packed dwellings roofed in straw and reeds and lit
with open flames. And if the weather was dry and the wind strong, a
fire that might otherwise have consumed but one or two houses could
sweep through the city with demonic speed, destroying whole wards
before it was brought under control.

Rolf had been five years old the last time
London had been ravaged by such a fire. For the next decade, his
family had lived in the undercroft beneath the charred remains of
what had once been one of the finest homes in London while his
father worked at rebuilding his silk business
—
for every
last bolt of his stock had burned up with the house. To be reduced
to living in a cellar after knowing such prosperity had deeply
shamed his parents, and the shame had rubbed off on him. As a boy,
he used to dream of riches and respectability, of the grand life he
would enjoy when he grew up and became a mercer
himself
—
the fine house, the elegant clothes, the jeweled
saddles and furnishings, and most important, the right kind of
wife, a girl of noble blood.

He was successful now, by God. He had
everything he’d ever wanted...except, of course, for the right kind
of wife. That lying dog Gui de Beauvais had cheated him out of that
which he’d most longed for, God damn his soul to eternal
torment.

Rolf paused and unfisted his hands, took a
deep breath. He mustn’t think of all that now. This was
his
time of day, his special time, when the mercers and their customers
went home for dinner and he had the entire hall to himself. He
relished having this quiet time to wander up and down the aisle and
admire the dazzling silks hung like overlapping pennants in the
booths to either side of the vast enclosure.

Noontime sun streamed into the booths
through small windows high in the stone walls, highlighting the
satin sheen of the richly-hued samites and the coinlike seals woven
into the ciclatons. The sunlight particularly enhanced the gossamer
beauty of the sendals, airy and translucent as the wings of
faeries, and the orphreys, shot through with gold and silver
threads.

Rolf paused at his favorite booth, that of a
Florentine merchant who specialized in silks dyed the sumptuous
shades of red for which his region had become renowned. These were
the silks he’d most admired as a boy, and they still struck him,
every time he laid eyes on them, as almost wickedly beautiful, as
if they’d been soaked in the blood of angels. They hung in all
their vivid splendor from the ceiling rafters to the floor of
beaten earth, dozens of them in shades of scarlet, rose, violet,
vermillion and every possible variation. He glided his hand from
one to the other, watching them ripple and quiver as he stroked
them.

“Rolf.”

He turned, not expecting to hear a woman’s
voice in the empty market hall and surprised
—
nay,
astounded
—
at who that woman turned out to be. “Elswyth?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. She’d put on
weight, and...

Jesus Christ, was that a sleeping shift she
had on? And a filthy one, at that.

“What the devil are you wearing, Elswyth?
What are you thinking of, going out dressed like that?”

She had a wineskin looped across her chest.
Ducking her head, she lifted it off and uncorked it. “I’ve come to
toast our future together.”

He snorted. “Our future? Our future? What
are you talking about, woman?”

“Our future. You and I.” She held the
wineskin out to him, her eyes as oddly shiny and fixed as dark
little glass beads.

“You and I?” The woman was bereft of her
senses; there could be no other explanation. “Elswyth, you and I
have no future together.”

“Then why did you tell me you wanted to
marry me?”

Did he? He couldn’t remember; he said that
sometimes, to soften them up. “‘Twas a long time ago, Elswyth.”

“‘Twas but a year ago, Rolf. You told me you
wanted to marry me.”

Rolf sighed. “Well, then, I’m sure I did at
the time, but sometimes things don’t work out as one
—
”

“I gave myself to you.”

“Yes, well
—
”

“Because you told me you wanted me for your
wife.”

“Elswyth
—
”

“And then, not two weeks later, you left for
Paris. And when you came home, it was with her.”

He laughed bitterly. “Believe me, my dear,
I’m no more pleased about that particular turn of events than you
are. ‘Twas a mistake, and I regret it with all my heart.”

“Verily?” Her eyes lit with human animation
for the first time.

“Would that I’d never met the woman, much
less married her.”

“She stole you from me.” Elswyth stalked
toward him; he backed up into the floating silken banners. “I was
devastated.”

“‘Twas...complicated,” Rolf hedged,
remembering how eagerly he’d negotiated the union with Ada, sight
unseen, so excited was he at the prospect of being wed to the
daughter of a baron.

“She was young and beautiful,” Elswyth
persisted, showing her little yellow teeth, “but unscrupulous. She
stole a man who was promised to another. She tempted you. You
couldn’t resist her.”