Templar's Destiny (9780545415095) (14 page)

We had to wait until lauds had finished, and the Princess had returned from the Queen's chapel with the rest of her ladies-in-waiting. Aine stood beyond the library door, watching for trouble as I slipped inside. I had little reason to be in this room alone, but the servants of the Princess adored her. Blind eyes were turned in my direction on the strength of her request.

The library was empty, and I moved quickly toward the shelves. The cracked spine of the old book crumbled a bit beneath my fingers as I edged it aside. The dust behind was thick. I felt it on my tongue and in my nose as I slid my fingers into the darkened space. The metal box was hard and gritty. And for a reason I could not fathom, a prickle of cold ran along my neck.

I slid the book back in place just as a door I had not known to be there swung open to my left. The space behind it was dark, and as she emerged it was as if light came into the room. “Princess,” I said, dipping low in a bow.

“You know who I am, but I do not have that advantage, monsieur.” She took my hand and drew me up from the bow. For an awkward moment I held her fingers, then dropped them as if they burned. She turned and moved toward the chair I knew her to be fond of reading in. Her dress was of the finest silk in a shade of green that made the white of her skin and the gold of her eyes glow. I found it difficult to look away but forced myself to do it. This was truly an uncomfortable situation to be in.

“Your name. Would you never have me know it?” she said.

I battled with myself and what I knew to be safe, but beneath her gaze I could do nothing but speak the truth. “I am Tormod MacLeod, my Lady. Just a fisherman's son from a land far from yer shores.”

“Tormod,” she repeated. “It is an interesting name. In my language would it have a different translation?” I was captivated by the way my name sounded coming from her lips.

“Thomas, I believe, my Lady,” I replied.

She nodded. “I prefer your language, monsieur, and the way you speak it. Yesterday you spoke of something.” She hesitated. “Something you saw of my life in the time to come.”

My heart raced, but I said nothing. “If I asked you to tell me more, would you?” she said softly.

“I don't believe that I would, my Lady,” I said. “In part for the reason that I canno' command the future to speak its knowledge to me, but also because 'tis, in my experience, no bargain to know what is to come.”

“And if I commanded it of you?” she asked, her golden gaze direct and compelling.

I returned the look with a smile. “I would beg to decline, my Lady.”

“If I could do a favor for you,” she said, “would you in return try once again for me?”

My heart nearly seized in my chest. “What favor?” I asked, breathless, knowing that it was for this I had come.

“Your brother. Give me his name and I will find out if he is being held here or anywhere near.”

I could not speak for the hope that suddenly soared within my chest. “And if he were, is there anything you could do to gain his freedom?”

She broke the lock of our gazes and looked off toward the door to the hall. “I cannot guarantee anything, but I will swear to you that I will try.”

I moved toward the chair that had swallowed her up and made her look small and innocent and had to remind myself that appearances could be deceiving. I did not know this lass and I had very little reason to put my trust in her. “Princess, 'tis very dangerous for my name to be known here a' court,” I said. “Can ye be discreet in yer inquiry?” I was beside her then, and my hand had somehow come to be on the arm of her chair.

“Tormod, what would my father have you arrested for? Why was your brother taken?” I was unsure what to say. “Does it have something to do with this ability you have?”

I could not answer directly. Too much was at stake. She was the daughter of my enemy and a powerful entity on her own. “I would be burned as a witch if you spoke the slightest word,” I warned.

Her soft hand closed over mine, and I felt the strength within her. “I would be careful for you. Have we a bargain?”

I turned my hand over and she clasped it, her fingers a soft caress in my own. “God help me, we do,” I said.

The Princess slipped behind the secret door and disappeared from sight just as Aine let herself into the room from the corridor. “Someone is coming,” she said, rushing to my side. “Pick up the tray an' act as if ye were returning to the kitchen.” She quickly moved to the chair of the Princess and began tidying the cushions. As her hand skimmed the arm of the chair, her body jerked and her eyes grew wide. I felt her song hang silent in the air.

Aine's mouth fell open and a swirl of hurt rushed through her. I saw the images she did in that moment, fingers entwined, standing closely together, and then as Aine turned to the shelves the memory echo of the kiss we had shared hung in the air between us. She gasped and her cheeks flamed. Hurt, denial, and anger all crashed within her.

I heard the footsteps approaching. “Come. Quickly, here.” I opened the secret door and pulled her, unresisting, into the darkness beside me. The odd passageway was close, and the dust we had displaced puffed up and slid inside my throat and nose. Aine was stiff beside me, trying her best not to have any part of my body touch hers. I normally would have taken her hand in a situation like this, but knowing what she had seen take place between the Princess and myself, I kept my arms leaden and by my sides.

I was unsure where the passage led, but still might have drawn Aine along, had I not known her temper as I did. With the Princess more than likely near the exit, I thought it a better idea to stay right where we were. Beyond the door, I heard movement in the library, the slip of feet on the stones of the floor and the click of the latch as the door closed.

“Have you secured the location of the Templar records? We need to know where all of the Order's gold and jewels are hidden.”

I pressed my ear to the door. The voice was de Nogaret's. “The Abbot is strong in his faith, my Lord Chief Counselor. He has as yet held out many of the secrets you asked us to retrieve.”

“No man can endure the torture of the King's dungeons. Use all of the instruments at your disposal. I want a complete list. Every holding. Every land. Every coin. To the last,” he said. “Above all, I want the Vessels of Holiness. The Abbot knows their location. My buyer is most insistent that they be delivered to him before the King will have the support that he requires. Get that information at all cost.”

“Yes, my Lord Chief Counselor.” The door opened and closed once more and Aine and I stood as still as stone waiting for sound from beyond. Footsteps murmured on the stones close to the shelves. Listening hard, I heard the scrape of volumes as they were drawn from the shelves. The breath in my chest felt as if to seize.

Then from beyond the door came the sound of another. “Come, Beatrice. I long for a good tale and the peace of my chair.” The creak of the door sounded as the Princess and her ladies trooped inside.

“What business have you here, de Nogaret?” Her derision was plain and, I thought, dangerous.

“Good day, Princess,” he said pleasantly. “Just looking for a book for your father. It was such a relief to hear from your betrothed, wouldn't you say? Just think, by spring you will be wedded in bliss … in a foreign land.” The last bit he said in a flat and unyielding manner.

No response came from the Princess, just the sound of the door latching shut behind him.

“Follow me,” I whispered to Aine. The walkway was tight and twisting and led away deep into the heart of the castle, its passage as black as night and as cold as a crypt. Aine was silent, but I felt the quick warm brush of her breath on my neck and the occasional hand to my shoulder, when I moved faster or slower than she anticipated.

My mind was a blur. We had just heard de Nogaret authorize the torture of the Abbot. If Torquil was here, what had he already been through? I expected Aine to read my anxiousness and somehow make it better, but she was as if a ghost to me. She spoke not at all and from the moment we had entered the passage her shields had become impregnable. I didn't know what to say to her. Should I try to explain what had happened? Should I tell her what I had seen of the Princess's future or of the conversation we had?

Moments stretched and I was no closer to answers when the corridor came to an abrupt halt. We stopped and listened, but beyond where we stood there was no noise at all. I took a breath and held it as I pressed against the wall before me. Slowly, it eased forward and I crept beyond with Aine a sliver of shadow at my back.

The room was dark but for the flicker of two small candles beside the statue of the Lady Mother. It was a high-vaulted room with a small wooden altar carved lovingly with many kinds of bird and beast. Fine tapestries hung to the right and left of us, filling the walls with the muted colors of the forest. Crisp white linens covered the altar and the base of the statue, and the dark smelled of recently burning herbs.

The Queen's chapel. Of all the spaces in the castle, this one provided me with a sense of peace and goodness that I had not found anywhere else. Aine wandered from my side and stood transfixed, staring up at the statue. “Tormod,” she whispered suddenly, gripping the altar's edge. “Does this remind ye o' anything?”

I approached slowly, a strange prickle of awareness sliding over my skin and making me shiver. “She looks like the carving,” she said softly. The air seemed to leave my body in a rush. I had no idea how it was so, but Aine, who had only seen the ancient relic through the memory of my visions, was right. And her assessment brought a strange wonder and excitement to my entire being. I had been so close to it that I had never guessed, never truly seen, but the clues had been there all along.

The visions had shown me a young man, a carver, who had made a likeness of his mother and gifted her with it. Who more than a carpenter's son, would have the artistry and the capability to carve such a likeness? The carver had been our Lord Jesus and the carving made in the likeness of Our Lady.

I could see in my mind the real woman, who had come to me sometimes through the visions. Her hair had been a deep and vibrant chestnut that curled in waves about her face. Her eyes had been a brilliant brown, like the bark of a rowan tree, and in them I had seen warmth, compassion, and love.

I stared with rapt attention at the statue before me. The likeness between the woman, the original carving, and this full-size statue was astounding. I wondered how many inspired and sacred images of Our Lady there were in the world. Did each have some essence of the woman's spirit inside? I dropped to my knees, and Aine joined me there.

Our Lady full of grace
… I made no excuse or apology to Aine for my sudden devotion. She, too, was moved to add her voice to my prayers. In my head I called to Her.
My Lady, Mother o' the Lord, what would Ye ask o' Yer servant?

I could sense nothing from the wooden statue before me, but along the bond between the carving and myself, I felt a sudden flare of heat. The need to hold it once more was like a hunger that came on quickly and churned within every inch of my body. At once the chapel faded and I found myself in the darkened space below the ancient broch that Aine and I had stumbled upon in Scotland. The hard surface of the polished table was beneath my knees and before me lay the odd, deadened space that I remembered feeling in that place before.

The vision faded as quickly as it had come, leaving me with an answer of sorts, but one I was not at all certain about. I stood and held out my hand to Aine. And with a gaze filled with wonder, she took my fingers in her own and rose.

“Ye saw it as well?” I asked in a whisper.

“Aye,” she replied. “Ye must bring the pieces there.”

“But how will I get the carving back from Gaylen?” I asked.

“I don't know, but perhaps the Lady will help.” Her words were cryptic, and I wondered if she meant the carving or the Princess. She dropped my hand then and moved in the dark toward the door, once again as far from me as she had been in the corridor between the walls.