Suzanne Robinson (3 page)

Pen glared at the figure trapped in the rocks. “I knew it. By God’s perfection, I knew it.”

She hesitated there on the outcrop. Every sense in her body screamed for her to turn her back and leave this castaway, leave him to chance and the elements. This,
this
was the peril of which she’d been forewarned. Hands clasped, fingers working, Pen scowled at the man caught in the rocks. She couldn’t do it. By God’s mercy, she couldn’t leave a man to die—even if she knew he brought danger. There, she’d made the decision. And despite her misgivings, her conscience felt lighter.

Hopping down from the rock, Pen ran back toward Highcliffe Castle. She was breathless by the time she reached the drawbridge. She waited there to regain her breath, put two fingers in her mouth, and let out a piercing whistle. Dibbler’s head appeared out of an arrow slit in the gatehouse.

Pen bent her head back and shouted. “I’ve found a man on the rocks below the south cliffs! Bring a litter.”

Without waiting for an answer, Pen raced back to the cliffs. There was a terraced stair to the beach, but she had to scramble over rocks until she came to those upon which the man was cast. Leaping from boulder to boulder, she stood on a flat stone, bent her knees, and jumped onto the black rocks.

She lodged her feet in a crevice. With reluctance, she slowly reached out and touched his hand. It was cold, and at first she thought he was dead. Her gaze drifted to wet hair blacker than the rocks upon which he lay. She lifted his head, and he coughed.

“Saints!” Pen’s hands slipped across his skin as the surf sprayed them. “Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

He muttered something, but failed to wake. With his long legs and the bulk of his muscles, he would be far too heavy for her to lift. Pen glanced over her shoulder and saw Dibbler and the youth Erbut carrying a litter along the cliffside.

The surf had drenched her. She moved so that she could support the man’s head in her arms and shelter against the rocks at the same time while she waited. Shivering, she felt the man lurch and flail his arms.

“No, keep still.” Torn between the desire to flee and to give aid, she stroked his head and shoulders in an effort to calm him. “Don’t move and hurt yourself further.”

Of course he didn’t hear her, but her caresses must have reached him somehow, for he stilled into her cradling arms. Pen shifted so that she supported his head against her breast. Glancing at the men carrying the litter, then looking back to her charge, she found herself staring.

She had never seen a man with perfect features. Mayhap not perfect, for the lips were those of an ascetic, a bit thin, and yet somehow in complete proportion to his nose and brow. A blue shadow beneath his skin told her his beard would be as black as his hair.

Why couldn’t he have been an old man? Why couldn’t he have been a leper? No, he had to be a young man. Young men were violent, they quarreled about trifles and then settled quarrels by drawing blood, by killing. Young men were unpredictable, rash, and they terrified her. And yet, this one …

Casting a covert glance at Dibbler and Erbut to assure herself that their attention was on the terraced stair, Pen returned to her perusal of the man. Caught between dread and fascination, Pen bit her lip and studied him. A little voice in her mind hissed to her,
Look, look now
,
while it’s safe
. This might be her only opportunity to see a man’s body. His shredded clothing left much of this one’s exposed. Much of it was bruised and scraped.

Pen was touching the hill of flesh that formed the muscle of his upper arm and wondered at the silken feel of his skin when it bunched and turned hard. The arm came up, nearly striking her as he moaned. Her body lurched with the power of that movement, but Pen struggled until she captured his arm. Murmuring reassurance, she tried to hold his hand. It was too large, so she held his wrist instead.

His head had turned in his thrashing, and she noticed the purple tint of the flesh beneath his eyes. Without
warning, his eyelids lifted, and she beheld eyes as startlingly black as his hair. His body writhed, and she writhed with it. Her warm body slithered over his cold one. His leg slipped between hers. Pen cried out at the feel of muscle between her thighs and scrambled away from the contact.

“Marry, I do believe the Lord has sent me a night-black leopard in the guise of a man. Be still, sirrah.”

Behind her, Dibbler and Erbut climbed over the rocks with the litter between them. Whatever spell his eyes had cast vanished with their arrival.

“Leave it there,” she called to them. “Help me lift him to it.”

Their combined strength got the man off his rock perch at last. Dibbler and Erbut lowered him onto the litter, and Pen searched for broken bones before covering him with a blanket. She waved at Sniggs and his son, Turnip, who were hurrying down the terraced stair to join them. At her feet, the man moaned and thrashed about as Dibbler tied him to the litter. Erbut was trying to lash his legs. He bent over the man’s boot, then straightened and held something up to Pen.

“Look at this, mistress. It were in his boot.”

Lying in the youth’s hand was a dagger. Not a yeoman’s dagger, nor even that of a gentleman. This was the weapon of a nobleman. A polished blade of steel with an evil edge to it. A hilt wrapped with gold and ruby enamel. A pommel inlaid with a faceted crystal. On the crosspiece above the blade, writhing gold snakes had been sculpted so that they curled in rich malevolence, staring at her with ruby eyes.

Pen stared at the dagger, and as she stared, the snakes began to twist and squirm. She stuffed her hands behind her back as Erbut tried to hand the blade to her.

“No!”

Erbut jumped at her sharp cry.

“I mean, put it in your belt and we’ll store it in the Saint’s Tower after we’ve seen to this poor man.”

Erbut gave her a confused look but did as he was told. Dibbler was stuffing the blanket tightly around the man’s body.

“That be a lord’s weapon, mistress.”

“Oh?” Pen clasped her shaking hands together, hardly listening. She’d almost touched the dagger. Dear God, she’d been right about the storm, right about this man.

“I seen plenty of them kind of blades in London town when I were in service to that cloth merchant. That there is a fine blade. And this boy here, he’s no sailor. Look at them hands. Palms got no calluses. Rough where he grips a sword. Got no sword, though.” He produced a belt and pouch.

“Dibbler!” Pen said. “No filching and picking, remember.”

“But we got to find out who he is.”

Pen snatched the items from him and pointed at the stretcher. Sniggs and Turnip had arrived, and the four lifted the litter. Pen followed them as Dibbler resumed his treatise upon their castaway.

“He’s a lord. Look at that shirt. Finest cambric, it is.”

“And how would you know cambric from a camp stool?” Sniggs asked.

“Probably stole plenty of them, by our Lady,” said Erbut.

Pen looked at the man on the litter. His head was turned to the side, exposing a gaunt jaw and a long, smooth neck. Somehow, regardless of her dread and apprehension, the sight of that exposed flesh turned her insides to custard. She studied the fan of black
lashes against his cheeks, stumbled, and nearly fell. Catching her balance, she glared at the backs of her men, but none of them had seen her foolishness. And that’s what it was, foolishness, near madness to allow the sight of a man’s neck to nearly break hers.

Pen stopped for a moment and watched the litter and its burden. The storm had brought him to her. Erbut stumbled, causing the man to moan, and Pen set her will against the urge to rush to him. She clamped her teeth together as she watched his body writhe beneath the bonds that held him to the litter. Though he was covered with a blanket, she could follow the movements of his legs, torso, and arms.

Suddenly he arched his back, and his hips thrust upward, nearly sending Dibbler and Sniggs to their knees. That movement, its violence, its suggestion, attacked her senses. She felt as if the storm of last night had suddenly entered her body, and that he had put it there. As abruptly as he’d begun, the man lapsed into stillness.

Pen blinked, then shook her head. “Saints. God’s patience. Holy Mother.…”

The storm had been a portent; she knew it. She knew it the way she knew so many things, things she usually didn’t want to know. Only this time, these presentiments—they were different, more disturbing. Alarm mixed with desire; fear and wanting; the urge to flee and the craving to touch; all of these beset her at once. And they remained with her rather than fading like mist. They turned her world to gold, diamonds, and black fire.

She shook her head again, then lifted it to glare at the prone man. He couldn’t do this to her. She wouldn’t have her refuge and her peace destroyed by a man.

Ah, but when the supply boat came, she would be rid of him.

Unfortunate that it wouldn’t arrive for weeks. But until then, she would be on guard. Her gift had warned her; now she must take heed of the warning. This man signified some unknown peril. She would be wary. Gathering up her skirts, Pen danced from rock to rock, following the lord the storm’s enchantment had brought her.

He woke to a haze of blue and to pain. Squeezing his eyes closed, he opened them again. The blue remained, as did the stabbing pain in his head and ribs. He tried to fix his gaze on one point above his head, and succeeded in making out a cherub. Confusion and the pounding ache in his head forced his eyes closed once more. He drifting into a realm where cherubs floated above his head.

The next time he woke, his vision had cleared, but the cherubs were still there. He lay on his back, head and shoulders supported by bolsters, and contemplated the sky above his head. This time he was able to recognize that the sky and cherubs were part of a fresco painted on the vaulted ceiling of a chamber. Angels and cherubs leaned over a circular balustrade with the sky above their heads, creating the illusion of a ceiling open to the heavens. Puffy clouds floated above the onlookers, while a peacock stared down at him in witless curiosity.

Suddenly, another face appeared above him, one surrounded by a mist of light brown hair streaked with gold. It had golden eyes to match, and an angular delicacy that drew his attention and kept it, in spite of his growing dizziness, and a pain in his head so severe as to make him fear puking. The arresting little
face frowned at him. He thought he perceived apprehension in those honey-colored eyes. Yet those eyes held him anchored, supported him in the midst of a sea of pain. He stared, but finally lost the battle with pain and shut his eyes.

“How are you today?” asked the creature above him.

Such few words for so much ease to come from them. No, it was the voice, chimelike, magically soothing. In but a moment his very being seemed to acquire a craving for the sound of that voice—the voice that banished the torment of his body. Its owner gifted him again with its music.

“Have you forgotten me again? I thought so. Still, you seem better, and should be after six days’ rest. Can you tell me your name this time?”

His eyes flew open again. His name. He searched within himself, swallowing against nausea, and found nothing. God’s breath, he didn’t know his name! He searched again, and found a void, blank as foolscap, washed clean. He licked his lips and tried to lift his head. The jarring pain defeated him.

Hands pressed him deeper into the cushions. A damp cloth passed over his brow.

“I feared it would be so, my lord.”

Grimacing, he latched on to two words. “My lord?”

“Well, we think you’re a lord. Dibbler says you’re one because of your clothing, and I agree. Even Sniggs thinks it true, and Sniggs never agrees with Dibbler. And then there is Twistle, she thinks it as well, and Erbut and Wheedle.”

His brain filled with nonsense names, which caused his head to hurt all the more. “Please.”

The pain receded a bit, and he risked looking at his visitor again. This time he saw the same fragile angularity of face and body, the same gold-tinged hair
and eyes, and a mouth blessed with a full lower lip. She was seated on the edge of a stool next to his bed, her perch precarious, as if she would take flight if he moved. Her body reminded him of some fragile water bird. There was about her a brittle slimness blessed with unexpected curves that drew even his suffering attention.

Gazing at the young woman who sat so near and yet seemed somehow unreachable almost made him forget that he didn’t know who he was. Almost. The horror of blankness threatened to overwhelm him for a moment.

Again the angel-choir voice called him back from confusion. “Don’t distress yourself, my lord. Twistle says you’ll remember eventually. Marry, if Twistle says you will, it’s a certainty. And we have a name for you anyway—Tristan.”

He must have looked at her without comprehension, for she rushed on.

“After all, we must call you by some name, and I was reading, and—”

“I should be grateful you refrained from choosing Lancelot.”

She didn’t smile, nor did she answer. As they gazed at each other, he watched uneasiness flit across her face and vanish. Her gaze faltered.

“Know you if you’re English?”

He tried to think, but ended up wincing.

“The reason I inquire is because I’ve tried speaking to you in French, and you respond in French. If I speak to you in Italian, you respond in Italian.”

“But I think in English.”

“
Bien
,” she said,
“parlez français.”

“Pour quoi?”
He stopped and stared at her as his thoughts began to flood at him in French. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “God’s blood, don’t do that!”

“You see,” his visitor said in a tone that held suppressed agitation. “The same thing happens in Italian, which is why we think you’re a nobleman, or a clerk. But then—” She paused to look at him and blush. “You don’t have the shape of a clerk.” Then she shifted topics again without warning, causing him more confusion. “But if you dislike the name Tristan, we can choose another.”

He was beginning to know her, this young woman who was his only link with the world, and yet the more he discovered, the less he seemed to understand. For his hostess possessed a temperament more changeable than that of a monarch. She feared something, but tried to conceal her fear. And, ill as he was, he perceived that she found him as compelling as he did her. A complexity.