The Ground She Walks Upon (12 page)

Ravenna of the
geis.

His scowl deepened.

She was baggage. And she shouldn't be allowed to wander through the countryside without escort. He thought of Chesham and the expression on his cousin's fool face when he set eyes on the girl. Chesham and his lackey friends were going to have to leave tomorrow; he would escort them out with an iron fist if need be. He wasn't going to be responsible for the girl being mauled. Hounds were not the only danger in Lir's fields. He'd been pretty loose about letting his cousin and his cousin's friends come and go about the castle, but only because Chesham was brilliant at the hunt. There was still one passion in the joyless Trevallyan existence, and it was chasing down a fox, galloping through the four fields of Lir as if the devil whipped at his back. But the hunt would have to be postponed, and Chesham and his friends encouraged to return to London. The girl Ravenna might think herself more than capable of taking care of herself, with her flashing, rebellious eyes, but an unprotected girl with no title or family was fair game, and no one loved a chase more than Chesham.

Against his will, Trevallyan again pictured the woman they'd found chased down by his hounds that afternoon. The night of her birth rang as clearly in his mind as if it had been yesterday. The mother, Brilliana, had been beautiful even in death, but it would be pointless to deny that the daughter was more beautiful by half. If in her living days Brilliana had been earthy and sexual, her daughter was the antithesis. It rankled to admit it, but now in his chamber alone with his thoughts, he could be truthful with himself. His first glance at Ravenna that afternoon had taken his breath away. She was beautiful. Unutterably beautiful. So lovely that in his mind she seemed a spawn of the heavens, unattainable and wild as the winds that blew across the
ogham
stones.

The valet used the whisk broom on his shoulders. He was finished. Niall looked at his face to see if any spot was missed. The damning lines had returned. The razor had taken away only the hair.

He stood, and his lips twisted in a smirk. It didn't matter. The
geis
would not rule him. He was beyond it; he was above it. It was inconsequential, and it would stay that way if it took all his strength and reason and will.

Then a darkness fell upon the land.

It was a time of druids and Celtic sorcery, and Skya's people, it was said, were blessed with magic, but only once in many a generation. Skya knew her grandmother had had the powers, yet, she knew also that magic had become the old woman's curse. Her grandmother had died alone, punished and exiled as a witch by the very peasants who could have benefited from her kindness.

One fine, frightening day, Skya knew she was indeed her grandmother's offspring, for she discovered that she possessed the powers, too.

It started in the Royal Garden. Skya and her sisters were admiring the carved yews, just after the harvest rain. They ran and laughed through the copse and delighted in each other's company. Hiding, Skya fled into the Royal Maze. Her sisters quickly followed, and soon, though they found much humor in it, the princesses could not find their way out. They turned one corner after the next, searching for an exit in the perfectly clipped hedge. But every end was a dead one.

Then the giggles quickly turned to screams. Skya was forced to pick up her heavy velvet kirtle and run to her sisters hidden from her in the yews. She found them huddled in one corner, terror etched on their lovely fair faces. Opposite
them, a small blue dragon chewed on the bushes, every now and then spewing fire from its long, pointed mouth to char the branches of the hedge, as dragons do, in order to make them more palatable.

"Save us! Save us!" the girls cried out to Skya.

"Begone, you horrible beast!" Skya cried at the dragon.

Her sisters' screams had gone unheeded, yet at the sound of her voice, the creature looked at her.

Skya stared at the dragon, noting everything about it, in hopes that it might give her a clue as to how to rescue her sisters. The creature kept its head below the hedge-line so as not to be seen by a knight who might slay it. The heavy coat of slime on its back marked it as young and healthy, a terrible curse for those who sought to escape it. Its scales glistened iridescent azure blue beneath the transparent slime. Blue dragons were the smallest and least dangerous. Still, they were quite capable of eating young princesses, and Skya knew if she did nothing, her siblings would perish.

"Begone, you most wretched of creatures!" She stepped forward, thinking that if she could divert it, her sisters might flee.

The dragon inched forward until she could feel the heat of its unlit breath. Terror gripped her, and in a mindless moment of panic, her hands unhooked her chatelaine and swung it over her head in the manner of a ball and chain. "Begone from here!" she screamed, knowing her heavy gold chatelaine was a puny weapon against such a powerful beast. Still, she flung it at him, hoping her sisters could find escape while the dragon turned its wrath upon her.

She cringed when the chain and keys lay upon the dragon's jade-colored nose. The creature would be angered and surely take her in its angry jaws.

But then the magic happened.

Sparks flew from her chatelaine and covered the dragon's body. The creature glowed as if on fire. In a second, the sparks were gone. And it was the dragon's turn to cower in the corner of the hedge.

"Wh-what?" Skya murmured, her mind unable to comprehend what had taken place.

"Save us, Skya. Save us," her sisters whimpered from another corner, their blue eyes huge as they watched their sister battle the dragon.

The chatelaine had fallen to Skya's feet. She picked it up and wondered how such a mundane article could hold such powers. Turning it over and over in her hands, she thought to throw it again at the dragon, but the creature appeared to be hurting, and she could see the whites of its eyes as it watched her in terror.

"Begone!" she screamed, hoping it would now flee at just the sound of her voice. She threatened with the chatelaine, but the creature didn't move, it remained cowering in the corner. "I said be off with you!" she commanded with a lordly finger. To her shock, sparks flew from her fingertip and hit the dragon anew. The creature made a growling, hissing sound, then it broke through the hedge and fled.

She ran out of the trampled hedge after it. "Begone!" she screamed, shooting sparks at it as it trundled through one of the kingdom's fields of rye. When it was no more than a speck of blue in the distance, she held her finger in the air and stared at it in wonder, amazed at the discovery of her new powers.

"Witch!"

A cry sounded behind her.

"Witch!" Another came from afar.

She spun around in the waist-height grass and found some of the kingdom's field peasants beginning to surround her, suspicion and fear turning their faces ugly.

"Witch!" they chanted again and again, encircling her as if she were a creature they had hunted down.

Skya looked at the finger she held in the air. One little finger. But it had saved her sisters.

And yet, not herself.

Her grandmother's fate now loomed ahead for her. The peasants feared the powers of the Otherworld more than they feared the king. So the girl that loved to laugh and sing
and dance with her sisters would either burn as a witch or choose, as her grandmother did, to live alone in exile for the rest of her earthly years.

"I can't wear this. It's so dark, so... dull," Ravenna lamented in the mirror. She wore her old blue wool dress with the black scratchy collar. There was no passementerie on the sleeves, no lace accenting the basque. Nothing but coarse dark wool from neckline to hemline, with no dressmaker's touch to break the monotony.

"When ye return from the castle, we'll have Fiona make ye a really fine gown," Grania told her reflection in the bedroom mirror.

Ravenna spun around and faced her, her expression one of horror. "There's no need for that. I won't be going back to the castle. I'm sure Lord Chesham is only a guest of Trevallyan."

"Mayhap, but I think ye'll be seeing more of the castle with or without Lord Chesham."

Ravenna looked at her grandmother in exasperation. She was only going to this dinner because she'd been foolish enough to let Trevallyan anger her into a quick response. Now she dreaded the evening ahead. It would be so much more pleasant just sitting by the fire, spinning further tales of the Princess Skya. If she relented and went, she knew she'd feel as at home in the Big Lord's castle as a beggar would. It wasn't worth putting herself through the agony of it.

She raised her hands to her nape and unhooked the top hook of her dress. She wouldn't go. It was best. She would tell the coachman when he arrived that she wasn't feeling well and to give her sincere regrets to Lord Chesham for his kind invitation.

Resolved to do just that, she unhooked another hook until she felt Grania's hands on her back.

"Ye must go tonight, child. 'Tis important that you face the lion."

"Trevallyan is no lion," she answered.

"Sometimes lions lie within." The old woman laid her gnarled hand where Ravenna's heart beat.

Ravenna turned around and held her grandmother with all her might. When she pulled away, Grania's tears matched her own.

"I don't want to go. You know I don't, but I can't let him win. He sent me away, Grania. 'Twas a just and deserved punishment perhaps, but I've paid my ounce of flesh. I'll never bow to him again."

"Trevallyan waits. The coach is here."

Ravenna heard the squeal of iron carriage wheels as they halted. She glanced at Grania and shook her head. The old woman's eyesight was poor, but her hearing was excellent, almost as if she heard things that no other person could hear.

" 'Tis Lord Chesham who invited me to dinner, Grania, not Trevallyan. As far as I'm concerned, Trevallyan shall be invisible to me tonight." She stared at her reflection in the mirror one last time, dread filling her bosom. She inspected her hair for stray, unruly wisps, and was relieved to find none had escaped the tight, unforgiving bun at her nape. Still, she was less than pleased with her appearance. Her unfashionable hairstyle had no sausage curls, and the plainness of her gown made her feel bland and grim. There was no gaiety in her appearance at all. The night would be torture, as the years had been torture at the Weymouth-Hampstead School. She would feel churchmouse-poor and shabby.

She should not go.

But she would go, she thought with a gleam of determination in her eye. She grabbed her black wool shawl, kissed Grania on the forehead, and climbed into the lacquered carriage before she lost her nerve. They might laugh at her, but she would hold her head up proudly, as she did in the dark carriage with only the swing of the carriage lamps to cast away the gloom. She would go forth with confidence— not because she fit in at the castle, but because she had to show up Trevallyan. He had tried to belittle her, and she had thwarted him. No one had been more displeased at her acceptance of a dinner invitation than he had that afternoon. She was going to the castle because he had thrown down the gauntlet.

Ravenna arrived at the castle a little past eight. The carriage pulled up in front of the lichen-covered entrance to the great hall, where not a torch or lantern burned to welcome her. The driver helped her from the carriage and escorted her to the ancient doors framed by a moldering Gothic arch. Without a warning of her arrival, all at once the doors were thrown open from within, and she met with a rigid, stern-faced butler.

He took her gloves and rigolet with utter efficiency, but she couldn't help think he was an odd sort of fellow to be butler to the Trevallyans. The man was stiff and dignified and possessed a certain English-butler stare that went right past her, as if the fingerprints on the windowpanes were far more interesting than her appearance at the castle. He also had his eccentricities. To begin with, he lacked one arm. She hoped she had done well to hide the shock on her face when she realized the sleeve of his black wool coat was empty, for it was unusual, to say the least, to find a man such as he holding the position of butler. But yet another oddity assailed her. While the man almost pointedly refused to look at her, she could have sworn he
was
looking, for they seemed to be playing tag with their eyes—with the old man looking away at the precise moment she turned her gaze toward him—until she felt cross-eyed.