Awaken My Fire (50 page)

"Oh, no," Vincent said quickly, his hand still over Roshelle's mouth, her hands over his. Her blue eyes were wide with worries and fears and thoughts of death, his death, but he would listen to that no more. "I cannot, will not, listen to what the lady says. I've suffered enough for her madness, this peculiar French madness made of curses and death. Fortunately for her"—his voice lowered—"I want her despite this maddening proclivity for inane beliefs and superstitions." A fierce dark gaze studied the wide frightened one and he said in a whisper, "I want her with every breath I take, and so desperately that I would know a slow and tortuous death each day of my life without her." With feeling, he demanded, "Do you hear me, Roshelle?"

She felt the sweet force of his words, drawing her to him with a promise of the dream that could not be—a dream that would become a nightmare, her nightmare. Papillion had raised her to perceive the mystery of life and its magic, and that magic had laid too many still, lifeless bodies at her feet to doubt its power again. The struggle shone in her tear-washed eyes as she weighed two very different but equally devastating types of death.

"Roshelle, Roshelle," he whispered to her still, letting his lips drink of the sweet fragrance of her upturned face. The room quieted more reverently than with prayer as people strained to hear what he would say to her; the drama of this scene would be told for years to come. "I will take you by force if I have to—" The emotion he put to the words brought a sharp stinging pain up his leg and spine, followed by a breathlessness and small but growing pinpoints of gray light swirling about his vision, all of which he tried desperately to ignore to tell her. "If you were to separate your soul from mine in this life—"

Roshelle could not bear it. She tore his hand from her mouth and cried, "I have lived with it, the curse! I have witnessed so many dead and slain bodies laid at my feet because of the curse—"

Vincent shook his head, grimacing with a sharp riveting pain. The room spun. For a brief moment, he marveled at the spinning shapes, blurring, then darkening, and from far away he heard her call his name...

"Vincent!"

He fell to the floor and she fell on top of him. Wilhelm knelt at his side, too. "I need a cloth to bind this wound," he said. "And some hot water to clean it." Three guards rushed outside to do his bidding. "I daresay the duke left us here more from sleeplessness than from blood loss."

Roshelle's stared in shock. It was too late to save him!

She looked up, her tear-filled blue eyes pleading with Papillion's friend, Father Herve. "Please to God, I must save him! The holy vows—"

"Vows will not save him! If indeed he needs saving. You are wrong, wrong, wrong," Father Herve said, and urgently, too, adding, "You think you must say the holy vows to break the curse and save his life, but this is wrong—"

"Mother in Heaven, you do not know what you are talking about—"

"Oh, but I do, my dear, I do. I have wanted to tell you; I thought I would before you said the vows, but, but—"

He stopped, glancing at Gregory de Borne, who had rushed to the fallen man and now, kneeling, removed his vestments. Father Herve was so shocked by the bishop's benevolence, he quite forgot what he was saying. The bishop bundled the crimson cloth into a pillow and carefully placed the gathered material of his holy vestments under the duke's head. A man returned with a dozen rags and another with a bucket of water. Wilhelm removed a dagger and ripped the cloth from Vincent's wound, which gentle hands washed clean.

Roshelle reached for a cloth to help, first wiping her eyes so she might see, but it was no use. Still she tried. Blinded, she dipped it in the bucket and tried to wring the water out, but her hands trembled too violently. She dropped it with a distressed cry. "Dear Lord, my hands—"

She went very still with a thought. This was meant to happen. Vincent fell so he would not be able to prevent her from saying the vows. So she could save his life! 'Twas part of the magic, still working—

"Father Herve, please, now—"

"First you must listen to me. Please! Papillion himself would have insisted. And if you still want to say the vows when I am done telling you how I discovered there is no curse, you may—"

"Father Herve!" Bruce de Borne looked up with fury, his own thoughts traveling in much the same circle, except that instead of seeing the duke's fall as magic, he saw it as divine intervention meant to separate the girl from her fortune. For the holy church, of course. Yet now this bumbling fool would try to dissuade her! "You can believe I will give the lady her vows, if you will not—"

A dagger put to his throat stopped him cold; Wilhelm was quick. Shocked gasps sounded from the wide-eyed audience. The priests held still, nervously watching the red-haired giant's threat, but all Wilhelm said was, "I want to hear this priest wipe away the lady's madness, even if the lady does not. And I believe I would be willing to shed the blood of a bishop to do so." Meanly, he added, "Truth is, I would not hesitate."

Bishop Bruce de Borne stared down at the dagger. A slight shove made him nod. The dagger was drawn away.

"All words are superficial now, save for my vows," Roshelle cried, her hands clasped in prayer. "I will listen if I must, but hurry. Hurry, Father!"

Seeing the girl was listening and his superior silenced at last, Father Herve rubbed his hands together in excitement as if he were about to begin a feast. "Well, then, I suppose I should go on. Roshelle, please, look at me. I need to see your eyes. Yes. Very well. It all began recently when a friend of mine asked me to investigate this matter of your curse, and hopefully, to find the evidence necessary to prove to you its deception. You know of whom I speak."

Roshelle shook her head in quick negation, her eyes wide with tears and anxiety.

" 'Twas the duke's steward, Bogo le Wyse."

"Bogo?" Confusion changed her face. "But how can you know that good man?"

"As a matter of fact, I met Monsieur le Wyse many years ago at one of Papillion's lectures at the Sorbonne."

Roshelle remembered Bogo had mentioned he had heard Papillion lecture there. "I do not see—"

"Bogo never believed in your curse—"

"Aye, but belief does not alter its power!"

"I am not so sure. You see, when Bogo begged me to investigate, I, too, despaired of finding anything new to tell about it. I daresay more words have been put to explain the curse than any number of biblical passages these days. Yet I did manage to find Sergio's—"

"Sergio? He is long dead, I know he is dead! 'Twas Sergio's deathbed that Papillion was attending when the cardinal's soldiers arrested him, many years ago now. Sergio is dead, my Grace."

"Yes, yes." Father Herve nodded quickly in acquiescence. "But I spoke with his wife, who is getting on in years but who remembers well the events in question. She remembers Sergio talking about that fateful night Papillion spoke the famous words of your curse. It seems Papillion had the whole thing perfectly planned out from the start. He knew of Rodez's plan to force Louis to give you in marriage to the Duke of Normandy; Papillion always had a number of spies and informants. He knew he had to do something to save you and he began devising his strategy, but now here is the point, my dear: there was no magic in his preparation. You see, Sergio's wife remembers Sergio spending several months training a dove to drop a poisoned pellet into a designated goblet."

There, he had said it. Smiling now, rocking back on his heels, Father Herve waited for her enlightenment.

Roshelle wiped her eyes as if seeing could possibly help her confusion, much less the agony of her desperateness. What was he going on about? What did that matter?

Vincent stirred with a dream and she gasped.

Dear Lord, she had but minutes left before he woke and forced her away; and then he would die, like all the others, he would die—

Roshelle looked around, seizing on the nearest help. "Wilhelm! Help me. I must-"

"Listen to him, milady, listen." Strictly, he cautioned, "I do not want to have to exercise this force Vincent spoke of using."

"Do not you see, milady?" Father Herve asked, it seeming so obvious to him. "There was no magic or curse. Papillion knew words never did have the power over life; words are but vessels for ideas, no more, and poor ones at that." With an exasperated sigh at her confusion, he repeated, "Do not you see? Papillion knew better than anyone that the words of your curse were utterly meaningless unless he made it real. So he did. He had that bird drop a poisoned pellet into the Duke of Normandy's cup." With emphasis, he declared, "There was no magic to it!"

Father Herve did not think to say the rest of what the old woman had said. Apparently, Papillion had many times tried to kill Rodez as well, knowing it was the only way to keep Roshelle Marie safe from that man's revenge— alas, without success. Sergio's widow claimed her own husband's death was the result of Rodez's revenge upon surviving the last failed attempt, that Rodez poisoned Sergio and then alerted the cardinal to the presence of Papillion at his deathbed.

The black vestments blurred in Roshelle's mind as she stared up at Father Herve. The beautifully embroidered gold crosses in between the large gold buttons became a backdrop for her rapidly spinning thoughts. Papillion could have done that; he would no doubt have done anything necessary to save her from the fate of being the Duke of Normandy's wife. She had left the hall just before Papillion had appeared, but she remembered well the story of the four gray doves landing on the goblets on the dais. The Duke of Normandy was famous for the amount of drink he could consume; no doubt he finished the contents of that drink.

What did it mean, though, if Papillion had seen to it that the Duke of Normandy drank a deadly poison to make the curse come true? Did it mean what Father Herve claimed? Did Papillion have no faith in the power of the curse because, because it was only so many words ?

Oh, Papillion ...

"But the others? My second husband?"

"Did he not die on his way to battle, some significant amount of time after he spoke the marriage vows to you? And, does not the curse specify 'men who attempt to lie with you'? It said nothing about marrying, did it? And I believe much has been made of the fact that he never, ah"—he struggled to find the delicate words to describe the act—"made the attempt, did he? 'Twas a coincidence. As was each death that you choose to examine. Should I go through each one, or is it enough to point out you are not a milking maid or a cotter's hussy? Rather, you are a revered lady of the French court, and there are grave consequences to harming or violating your person, are there not? One cannot assault you with impunity, my dear. It stands to reason most, if not all who dared would meet a violent end.

"Yet the point is, the only point to think of is that Papillion himself did not believe in the power of the curse. He only meant to save you from a particular unpleasant fate as wife to that godless man. And, listen to me, my dear! I know Papillion never meant you—of all people!— to say the holy vows. I know he never meant to keep you from a life of love and happiness."

Timidly, afraid of finding a flaw in his logic, she let herself consider the idea that the curse was little more than empty words, Papillion's clever trick to save her from her first marriage only. Her thoughts traveled over each and every death and mishap attributed to the curse, as she had so many times before, except now with the light of a much harsher scrutiny: Edward was drunk and he might have just fallen; Vincent might have saved her from those five awful brigands for no more rhyme or reason than to provide a knightly, noble answer to a maid's screams sounding through a dark night. She supposed it could just all be a terrible coincidence...

Yet the last time Vincent had almost convinced her the curse was nothing but words, an assassin's arrow had pierced his head and side, and then just as the man tried to rape her, Wilhelm had killed him. Struck him dead. Would the same thing have happened without the curse?

A difficult question. It was possible, she supposed. Rodez had sent the assassin and Wilhelm had been worried over the sighting of a strange man in the woods. Wilhelm might have been out in the forest to rescue her and Vincent. It was possible, she supposed.

As she struggled with all her heart to believe this, she slipped her hand into Vincent's. Even in his unconscious state, he clung to it as to a lifeline. She wanted to believe it was true, that there never was a curse; she wanted it more than anything in this world.

The people around her held very still, afraid to breathe as they waited and watched the effect of Father Herve's words on the lady.

"Tis just so hard to believe after witnessing death at every turn and—"

"And yet your vision has been shaped by your belief in the curse.'' When doubt remained in her eyes, he hastily added, "My dear lady, reflect! Think, my lady, this was exactly what Papillion hoped to have happened. Until now."