The Silver Rose (41 page)

M
IRI LINGERED
in the barn, giving Jacques final instructions about keeping watch over Elle tonight. The horse seemed to be getting stronger by the moment and Miri had no apprehensions now, but just in case, she left instructions for Jacques to come and find her should Elle show any signs of relapse. Then she left the stables to go in search of Simon.

As soon as he had been sure that Elle was going to be fine, he had disappeared. Now that the crisis was over, she feared that maybe his attentions had returned to Carole, to questioning her. Miri believed that his anger was spent, but she was determined to place a shield between him and the frightened girl if necessary.

But when she emerged from the stables, she was surprised to see Simon sitting on the wooden bench at the edge of the pond, watching the last of the daylight spread fingers of light across the shimmering water.

She approached him tentatively, feeling that he had come here for the same reason she had last night, that this was Simon’s way of restoring his harmony, too. The man may not want to believe it, but they did have so much in common.

But as she approached, he did not look as though he was finding any peace. He was staring down at the syringe that had both brought great harm to Elle and saved her life.

At Miri’s approach he looked up, placing the implement carefully to one side. He glanced up at her anxiously. “Is Elle still doing all right?”

“She’s doing just fine. As a matter of fact, the whole incident seems to have left her starving. I believe that she is trying to charm old Jacques out of an extra measure of oats.”

Simon gave her a smile. “She’s good at that.”

Miri settled beside him on the bench. She reached up to brush back a tangle of hair from his brow. “At the moment, I am more concerned about how Elle’s master is doing.”

He grimaced. “Not very well. I’ve been trying to sort through some things, trying to make sense of . . . well, I guess my entire life, for that matter. Long ago, when Le Vis came into my village and he rescued me, I wasn’t exactly grateful. I really wanted to die. I wished I was dead. I couldn’t understand why I alone out of my whole family and my entire village, had been the only one spared. Le Vis told me that the reason I had survived was to fight against evil. The kind that had destroyed my family, so that others might not suffer the same fate. For so many years, that’s the belief that has sustained me, governed my life. But I’m not sure of that anymore, Miri. I’m no longer sure of anything I’ve ever done, anything I’ve ever thought I understood. I almost feel like my entire life has been nothing but one long mistake.”

“Oh, Simon.” Miri curled her hand around his.

“I, better than anyone, realized what Le Vis was. But I was always so determined that I would never lose myself in his madness. That I would not become like him. But when I think of some of the ways I’ve behaved, when I went after that poor girl, and I look down at myself, at my reflection . . .” Simon’s gaze turned down to his image shimmering in the water below. “It’s Le Vis’s reflection that I see staring back at me.”

Miri clasped his hand tighter between hers. “That’s not what I see, Simon. That’s not what I’ve ever seen. When I’ve looked at you, I’ve seen a good man, despite all your wounds and your hurts. A good man struggling to survive. Trying to find his way back to the light.”

Although he responded by entwining his fingers with hers, he continued to stare bleakly into the pond. “For so many years I truly have been blind in my bitterness against the Comte de Renard, so convinced he was a sorcerer, but now I know I owe Elle’s life to his knowledge.”

Simon swallowed. “I think this anger that I’ve harbored against him from the very beginning was just a product of my own guilt. I keep remembering when he charged in with his sword to attack the brethren of our order of witch-hunters. That day, Le Vis was planning to put you through the ordeal of the trial by water. I should have been grateful to Renard for saving you. Maybe the reason I was angry was because he was the one who saved you and it should have been me.”

“Oh, Simon, you were no more than a boy at the time, as confused and frightened as I was.”

Simon only shook his head darkly. “Even that time later in Paris when I attacked Renard, when I came to seek vengeance against him for killing Le Vis—”

“It wasn’t him. For so long, I tried to tell you that. It was the Dark Queen’s doing. At the time of your master’s death, Renard was a prisoner at the Bastille.”

Simon nodded bleakly. “I should have believed you. But it was so much easier to blame him for doing what I wanted to do myself.” He vented a heavy sigh. “I never finished telling you the rest of the story about St. Bartholomew’s Eve.

“I was half out of my mind with rage, my knife clutched in my hand. But—but it wasn’t the Huguenots I wanted to destroy. It was Le Vis I wanted to kill . . . the man who had saved my life. I came so close to rushing after him and—”

Simon raked his hand through his hair, his gaze full of anguish. “I felt so torn and confused, Miri, so broken inside. That is why time and again I have tried to drive you away from me.”

“But you have been slowly mending. It was not any madman like Le Vis who risked his life to save the Maitlands or rescued Madame Pascale and Yves. Or sought to protect and spare me time and again. Your spirit has been struggling to resist the darkness, but you are so tired, Simon.” Miri gently stroked his hair back from his tormented face. “Let me love you. Let me help you.”

Although he pressed a fervent kiss against her palm, he said, “I can’t, Miri. I am so afraid. You have been the one good, the one constant thing in my life. If I were to infect you with my darkness . . .”

“You won’t,” she cried. “I can be strong enough for the both of us, more than I ever knew myself before. All you have to do is open your arms and let me in.”

Simon stared at her for a long moment, his dark eye roiling with the battle between his fears and his longings. The longing won, and he slowly opened his arms. As Miri fell into them, he crushed her to him. Miri buried her fingers in his hair, hungrily seeking his lips.

Lost in the passion of their embrace, neither of them noticed the solitary man silhouetted in the doorway of the stables. As Miri surrendered herself to Aristide’s embrace, Martin le Loup watched all his dreams turn to dust.

His heart quietly breaking, he crept inside the stables to fetch his horse.

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE RECENT RAIN
had left the streets slick and muddy, but it had done much to cool the air and tempers of the city. The relief from the heat was cause for celebration. The sounds of laughter and carousing could still be heard spilling from some of the taverns even at this late hour. But along the rue de Morte where Martin le Loup crept, all was dark and silent.

Under other circumstances, he might have been tempted to join in the revelry. As hard as his life had often been, the struggle to survive in the streets, he had always loved the great city of Paris and the noise, the bustle, the teeming humanity, the towering houses, the thrum of life that had made his own veins quicken with excitement. But swallowed up by the dark, he felt cowed by the sinister shape of the house looming ahead of him.

The Maison d’Esprit.

In his youth, like so many others in the city, he had crept past, making the sign of the cross. Even then, the house had had an evil reputation as a place where witches had once dwelled, the curse ready to fall upon anyone who entered there. And in those days, Martin had had a great dread of anything dealing with the supernatural.

He could see that the house was in better condition than it had been then. The windows were repaired, the breaks in the wall mortared over, but to him the place still held a sinister brooding aspect, carrying him back to the night so long ago when he had first stood outside here with his Captain Remy, warning the man that this was a place best avoided. A warning he now wished they’d all taken heed of. Especially Gabrielle Cheney. Then they would have known nothing of Cassandra Lascelles. She would have played no part in their lives.

Peering through the iron gates, Martin thought the house still looked like a place of ghosts, curses, and secrets. And now one of those secrets might very well be his, if Carole Moreau had been telling the truth. He still hoped somehow to find out that the girl had been hysterical or was wildly mistaken about this Silver Rose only being a little girl, the witch’s child. And very possibly his. One night. One time. That’s all Martin had lain with the woman. Surely that wouldn’t have been enough. But he knew better.

Carole had described this child to him as being remarkable, almost an angel, but the things that she had told him about this Meg chilled him; that she had actually brought a child back from the dead, that she had eyes that seemed like they could reach right inside of you and touch your heart. Mon Dieu, that sounded far more like a witch to Martin than any angel.

As he leaned outside the gate staring in, he knew he’d never rest until he knew the truth. Perhaps he had been rash to take off from the farm that way, only leaving word with the boy, Yves, but he hoped that he would somehow make it back there before morning. In any case, he thought bitterly, reflecting on his last sight of Miri, locked in Aristide’s embrace, he wondered if she would even notice he was gone.

Perhaps it was just as well they were preoccupied. He wasn’t eager for either Aristide or Miri to learn his shameful secret. Martin had never told anyone about the night he had been seduced by a witch. His very flesh had felt tainted by the contact with the woman. He remembered kneeling on the pavement retching his guts out afterward, feeling as though he was somehow cursed, tainted for all time.

If it did turn out to be true, may God help him; he wondered how Miri would react to finding out that
he
was the father of this Silver Rose, this devil child. It might even be enough that she might turn away from him. But she already seemed lost to him, and entertaining such bleak thoughts when he was alone in the dark, contemplating doing something as dangerous as setting out to spy on a witches’ coven, did nothing to bolster his courage.

He told himself the most prudent and sensible thing to do was to return to the inn where he had stabled his horse, see if he could find some of his old cronies from his street thief days and perhaps approach the house by the light of day. Even then, Martin thought, what was he going to do? Just march boldly up to the door, knock, and say, “Excuse me, any chance that a dreaded witch lives here that I might have gotten pregnant ten years ago?” No, his only course was to go over that wall himself. And as for being prudent and sensible? Martin shrugged. Well, he hadn’t been particularly prudent in any time during the past twenty-eight years of his life. Why start now?

Taking one more nervous glance at the house before his courage failed him, he edged close to the stone wall. The surface was rough enough that he was able to get foot- and toeholds, and he scrambled over quickly. He had changed his brighter garb for a doublet of black velvet and trousers that helped him blend in better with the night. As he landed in the garden, he tensed, looking about him for any sign that anyone might have spied him coming over. He remembered that at one time the witch had kept a fearsome dog, but from what young Carole Moreau had told him, there had been no dog, just a houseful of witches. But the grounds seemed quiet.

Where there had once been weeds and moss-blanketed fountains, he now saw well-tended beds of roses. There was something all the more disturbing about the contrast of all that innocent beauty and the brooding house that towered above him. The place looked entirely dark. He crouched down a moment, uncertain what to do next, when he heard sounds that seemed to come from the back of the house. Creeping carefully through the shrubbery, he made his way around to where he could see light spilling through the windows.

One of them had been left open a crack, to draw in the breeze that the recent rain had brought. Crouching down, Martin made his way there stealthily, so that he was just able to peer into the window. He found himself looking into the kitchen of the great house.

It was lit by candlelight and at least three of the witches were there. He could only see one clearly, a small, dark, elfin-looking woman. There was another, scrawnier one whose back was turned to him. These two were pouring out glasses of wine and gleefully engaging in some sort of toast. A third also stood nearby, holding a cup of wine, but she looked strangely out of place with her beautiful silk gown with her farthingale. A petite blonde, she wore one of those court masks that women used to shield their complexions. Strange that she seemed reluctant to remove it even indoors, continuing to shield her identity.

The other two witches paused in their toasting to peer into some cauldron that simmered over the hearth, and Martin sniffed, crinkling his nose. Whatever they were brewing, he was damned sure it wasn’t any stew. A rather foul, pungent odor emanated from the pot, drifting out the window.

The smaller of the two, the elfin one, said, “Do you think it’s supposed to look like that?”

The scrawny wench with the dirty hair said, “How would I know? It’s not like I’ve ever brewed up a miasma before.”

Martin stiffened. Miasma. He had heard that disturbing term before. It was the potent magic that the Dark Queen had supposedly loosed on Paris to induce the terrible madness of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Mon Dieu, were these wretched witches plotting another such bloodbath?

The scrawny wench reached in with a poker. “It seems to be hardening against the pot. That can’t be right.”

“According to the Silver Rose, that’s what it’s supposed to do,” the elfin one replied. “After it hardens, then we can grind it into a powder. It will become a dust and then when it’s breathed in—”

“The Dark Queen will run mad.” The scrawny witch giggled. She sounded more than a little drunk. “She’ll destroy the duc de Guise.”

“Then the citizens of Paris will turn on her and her son, and that will be the end of the House of Valois,” the elfin one cried. “Oh, I wish I might be the one chosen to deliver the miasma to the queen.”

“The Lady will not entrust such an important task to anyone. She means to do it herself. However, as her longtime servant and friend, she will allow
me
to accompany her,” the scrawny one boasted. She raised her glass. “Here’s to the coming of revolution!”

“And the rise of our Silver Rose.”

The two clicked their glasses together and then they turned to the third one.

“Mademoiselle Harcourt, why do you not join us in our rejoicing?”

The woman smiled wanly, but she didn’t offer to clink her glass against theirs. Instead she took a quiet sip. “I won’t be able to rejoice or feel easy until the deed is actually done.”

For the first time, the scrawny creature turned around and Martin got a good look at her face. Memory stirred in him and his heart sank. He knew the woman. What was her name? Francine? Fabrianna? No. Finette. That was it. She had been Cassandra Lascelles’s maid all those years ago. Martin had gotten one of his friends to seduce and distract her so that Martin had been able to steal into the chamber where Cassandra had waited for Remy.

He shrank back a little, knowing that where Finette was, her mistress would not be far behind. But he’d come too far, and he had to find out what these damned witches were up to and he needed to find out about the Silver Rose. Could the little girl actually be in on this horrible plotting?

As Gillian Harcourt sipped her wine, refusing to join in the other two’s gleeful celebration, Finette gave a sniff. “Humph. Looks like milady of the court is above our company, Odile.”

Gillian retorted, “No. Milady has just learned to be really cautious. I’m the one who’s been in servitude to the Dark Queen all these years. I know much more about how dangerous she is than the rest of you do.”

“Oh, yes. Poor thing,” Finette sneered. “What a terrible life she’s had, living all pampered in the palace and seducing all those handsome men at the Dark Queen’s command.” Finette lasciviously licked her lips.

But the one who had been referred to as Odile looked more sympathetic. “I can’t think that it would be all that pleasant a life.”

Gillian shrugged her shoulders. “It was, sometimes. But, yes, I’ve always been very much at the Dark Queen’s disposal. I had to seduce whoever she commanded me to.”

Finette scowled. “I even heard tell that you were the mistress of that witch-hunter for a while.”

What? Martin tensed.

“Yes. For a time. But that is why I am also nervous about Simon Aristide. You can’t discount him either.”

“Oh, I assure you,” Odile smiled, “he is being taken care of this time. The Lady sent Ursula and Nanette after him, and Ursula might not be good at some things but she is great at killing.”

“I hope you are right,” Gillian said, “because I haven’t slept easy since I realized that Simon Aristide and the Dark Queen are working together. The Dark Queen gave him complete authority to do whatever he pleases. Which means if he discovers where we are, we would all be at his mercy. And I can tell you now that the man has none.”

Martin’s breath hitched in sharply. He had to clap his hand over his mouth to smother his outraged oath. So Simon was in league with the Dark Queen after all. He’d almost started to listen to Miri after the man had saved his life. He’d begun to change his mind about Aristide, but once more, as usual, the bastard was betraying Miri’s trust and she was going to be hurt by him. And in more ways than one.

If this woman was telling the truth, and she had been Aristide’s mistress . . . Martin took a step back from the window, torn between wanting to uncover the truth about the Silver Rose and wanting to get back to Miri. He had left her alone with that bastard Aristide. But before he could decide what to do a twig snapped behind him. He whirled around, but it was too late. He found himself facing the point of a drawn sword wielded by a small, fierce-looking woman. The tip rested at his throat.

“Don’t move,” the creature hissed fiercely, “or I’ll run this straight through your throat, splattering your blood everywhere, all over the windows.”

Another voice echoed out of the darkness. “And that will make me mighty unhappy since I was the one who had to wash them the other day.”

Martin raised his hands, saying, “Forgive me. I wouldn’t want to put any of you ladies to great inconvenience. I realize my appearance here must occasion some alarm.” His gaze darted between the two as he spoke, trying to judge his chances of whipping away from them and getting to his own blade, but before he could react, a third appeared and seized hold of his arms.

He could hardly make out their forms in the darkness except for the fanatical, almost ratlike gleam of their eyes. But he could tell they were all armed to the teeth with swords and knives. Why couldn’t the woman have still been guarded by a dog? He would have much preferred a dog to these half-mad creatures.

He tried to summon up a charming smile. “Ladies, I realize how bad this must look, but I assure you I have merely—I was looking for the house of Pierre Tournelles. I believe I must have the wrong place.”

The one who had accosted him first flashed her teeth in a gleaming smile. “Well, as long as you are here, monsieur, you might as well come inside and join the party.”

Martin’s arrival brought the revelry in the kitchen to an abrupt end. He found himself thrust into a chair, his hands tied behind his back, his feet bound together. Silently cursing his own stupidity, he hoped that word never got out that Martin le Loup, one of Navarre’s cleverest agents, had allowed himself to be captured by a pack of women. Though, if he didn’t keep his wits about him, he thought, neither word nor anything else about him would ever be heard from again.

He noted that the court beauty, the witch-hunter’s erstwhile mistress, had nervously taken her leave as soon as he had been dragged inside. Besides the one fierce guard who had first attacked him, the only two who were left were the elfin woman who was called Odile and Finette, Cassandra Lascelles’s maid, who had never had a pleasant odor. It was worse now that she was reeking of whiskey. She paraded around Martin, trailing her dirty fingers over his face.

“So, we have captured a spy. What do you suppose we should do with him?”

“Cut out his eyes,” the guard offered.

“Or perhaps we should lop off his ballocks,” Odile suggested.