Claire Delacroix (14 page)

“Nonetheless, I could not do it.” I felt him watch me as I lifted a finger to the babe’s cheek. “Will she recover?”

Silence grew between us as my brother studied me. “I has been said that it would be a cold day in hell that you gave a care for any other than yourself,” Merlyn mused.

I shivered elaborately, then met his gaze in challenge.

He smiled. “Do you not think it somewhat harsh to refer to our family abode as hell?”

“It has been no heaven to me.”

“Whose deeds ensured as much?”

“The past is of no matter now, Merlyn. What is of concern is this child. She could have perished. She is so small and fragile.” The babe made an effort to smile at my touch, the expression wrenching my heart. “Do you think she will survive?”

Merlyn watched me, apparently incredulous.

“I do not know,” he said finally, his voice softer than it had been before. “But what of Michel? Does he not yet trot at your side like a loyal hound? Or did he become disenchanted with you when he learned you had not hung the stars and the moon?”

I looked away, my mood newly grim at this untimely and unwelcome reminder. My words were tight, my voice unfamiliar to me. “Michel died.”

Silence stretched long between us, and I felt the urge to fidget beneath Merlyn’s gaze. I had heard others complain that his stillness made them believe that he could read their very thoughts, though I had always been immune to Merlyn’s ploys.

Until this day.

I thought I might scream in frustration by the time he finally sighed and shook his head. “Another casualty of your fleeting interest?”

“Leave it be!” I snapped.

Merlyn’s eyes widened briefly at my rare show of emotion before he shrugged. “Michel’s death is most unfortunate. He was a charming boy, if somewhat untrustworthy.”

I flinched and I have no doubt that Merlyn noted that he had found a wound. When I said nothing further, he turned and walked toward one of the tunnels, the babe cuddled against his chest. “Extinguish the lanterns and bring your horse.”

“Then you will aid her?”

“The choice is not mine and you know that well.” He disappeared into the shadows, sure-footed and silent.

Belatedly, it seemed somewhat of a poor idea to have tricked my tempestuous and outspoken sister-in-law.

“I would make a wager with you, Merlyn!” I cried impulsively. It seemed suddenly critical to somehow to win his favor, at least. I had no doubt that he could sway Ysabella if he so chose. “For your pledge to raise the babe with care, I would return the
Titulus Croce
to you.”

It was not what I had intended to say, but once the words passed my lips, I had no desire to rescind them. Merlyn must have pivoted, for I heard the grind of his boots upon the stone. He stepped briskly out of the shadows and halted before me, his gaze searching mine.

“Let me see it,” he said crisply.

“We should make haste…”

“Forgive me, but I doubt that you even possess it any longer. You have been known to concoct a lie to suit your own needs, Gawain.”

My fingers must have been cold, for I fumbled with the flap of my saddlebag in my haste to open it. I grasped the bundle there in both hands and offered it to my brother, like a supplicant before a vengeful deity.

Merlyn’s expression was stony. “Unwrap it,” he said.

I did so, my hands shaking. The wrappings fell away and I stared in shock at my so-called prize.

Merlyn made a sound of disgust, then turned upon his heel once more. “Even now, you would try to deceive me,” he said with undisguised annoyance. “At least, you might have offered a decent forgery. What manner of fool do you take me to be?”

Then Merlyn was gone, leaving me holding this remarkably crude forgery of the
Titulus
. I had not stolen this, this thing, I knew that well. I had checked the wrapped relic when I removed it from the church’s sanctuary and it had been the genuine
Titulus
.

My prize had been exchanged while the bag was out of my possession, either by the thugs or by the old alewife.

Undoubtedly the exchange had been done at Evangeline’s command. How galling that she had distracted me with mere lust, the oldest trick known to man! I was disgusted with myself far more than I was with her.

Indeed, I felt a shred of admiration for the lady’s cunning.

I swore, flung the useless piece of wood aside, then hastened after Merlyn. The exchange was a trick worthy of one of my own deceptions! How humiliating to have the jest played upon me - how untimely to have Merlyn think my estimation of him so low. Had there not been a child’s survival at stake, I might have found it amusing that Evangeline had outwitted me so adeptly - again.

But I had to ensure the care of my ward, and quickly. Ysabella would have no qualms in refusing, simply because I was the one who asked for her favor, and Merlyn would certainly now be less inclined to argue for me. I would need all my charm.

And perhaps one of my babe’s endearing smiles.

My lips set grimly as I marched toward the keep. Matters were not resolved betwixt Evangeline and I, that much was clear.

* * *

A Cornered Queen

Evangeline

* * *

VII

March, 1372

I stand in the small cemetery outside of Inverfyre’s walls. A glistening half moon pours silver light upon the ground and the carved stones. I can see my objective clearly. There is only one stone I visit, one stone that draws my footsteps in sleep.

The tree boughs are barren overhead, black veins against the deep blue of the sky. A wind begins to gust as I walk and the branches clatter above me.

Like bones rolling in a grave, fighting to rise anew.

It is cold, colder than Hell could ever be, as my father used to say. He had a vision of Hell not as fiery torment, but as relentless cold. He spoke of Hell’s denizens slowly turning blue, losing digits and then limbs. Immortal but doomed, they were condemned to suffer frostbite and cold for all eternity.

His was a vision wrought of a lifetime in a northern clime, of grey winters, of empty larders and emptier bellies, of bloodless fingertips and lost toes, of falling asleep so cold that one half-wishes to never awaken.

I hear his dire predictions once again as the chill permeates my bones, as I make my way to his grave. Surely my father never learned whether his vision was the truth?

Or is Hell to be compelled to endure one’s own worst fear forever, each to his own as it were?

A peregrine cries - inevitably, for this is Inverfyre - the shadow of her outstretched wings passing over me. I shiver and hasten on, nearly falling into the hole before my father’s stone.

His grave is open. It is always open in my dreams, not as if freshly dug but as if my father forced his way out of his dark prison. I recoil as always I do, stepping back into some soft mire that nigh stops my heart. A scream sticks in my throat. Being struck mute in the face of disaster is my deepest terror and I taste it yet again.

I spin, intending to flee, and halt at the specter come silently to stand behind me. I recognize it immediately.

It is my father, or some rotted replica of my father. The fine garments in which he was buried hang from his flesh, nay, the flesh hangs from his very bones. The bones themselves glow in the moonlight, discernible through the gaping flesh. Clumps of dirt hang from his hands; soil is embedded beneath his uncommonly long nails.

But despite the similarities, it is not my father. The eye sockets of his skull are filled with yawning emptiness. There is not a spark of his soul here, in torment or otherwise. Bile rises in my throat as this half-rotted obscenity, this man dead but not dead, raises a hand toward me.

I almost take a step back, then check myself, recalling the open grave in time.

He laughs with my father’s laugh, and I shudder that the familiar merry sound should emanate from this monstrosity. His teeth rattle in accompaniment to his laughter, rotten flesh slides further from his temple.

“No,” I whisper. “No.” I edge sideways, for this cannot be the fate of my beloved father.

He pursues me, without appearing to move. “Wicked Evangeline, wicked child,” he whispers, his voice echoing from all sides. He grows impossibly larger, his voice increasing in volume. Condemnation resonates in every word that issues from the foul hole of his mouth. “I know what you have done!”

I turn and run, stumbling over my feet, my hem, the stones, the tufts of winter-deadened grass. I feel the cold of his pursuit, feel his darkness embrace me, hear his words echo inside my very skull even as his dank chill engulfs me. I choke on the fetid air of rotted flesh and wet soil and grave. I seize the portal of the keep with desperate fingers.

“I know what you have done, daughter mine!” he cries, the words raising to an unearthly howl. “And for this sin, you will pay!”

* * *

I awakened abruptly in my own bed, heart pounding, sweat trickling down my back. The stone portal in my dreams proved to be no more than my linens, my knuckles white from the tightness of my grip upon salvation. The rasp of my uneven breathing filled my achingly familiar chamber and I realized with relief that I was alone.

A pale sunbeam made its way through the window and gilded a square upon the cold floor. The hunting horn sounded again in the distance, awakening Fergus’ men, and I heard the falcons cry out in anticipation of fresh kill.

It was early, early enough that only hunters and hounds were stirring. Fergus was gone from my bed because he had left the morning before to hunt for three days.

I lay back, closed my eyes and fingered my lip. It stung still, though was not as swollen as I had feared.

It would seem that men, alive or dead, left me with few choices, then condemned me for whatever solution I found. This was my thanks, for showing the decisiveness of a man, for doing the labor of a man, for collecting the due that should have been collected by a man.

I had had two recurring dreams this winter, and I far preferred the one featuring a golden-haired scoundrel with lust in his eye and seduction in his touch, even if it did leave me red with shame upon awakening.

Just the thought of Gawain forced me from the bed, the site of my deception. I washed with haste, relieved to be able to avoid Fiona’s attentions. No doubt there was a bruise upon my lip and she - as Fergus’ cousin - would delight in telling me that I had gotten solely what I deserved. She had left the basin of water in my chamber the night before, because she was too lazy to do any deed in the morn, and for once I was glad of its icy chill.

Still my father’s accusation of sinfulness yet echoed in my thoughts, condemning me.

And yet unfair for all its core of truth. How I yearned to argue with him, to persuade him that my choice had been no choice but the sole chance of fulfilling his and my mother’s expectations! But my father had heeded no challenge to his conclusions while he lived, and I heartily doubted that death had changed that trait.

Still, I was irked. I had been taught from the cradle that the greater good had to prevail, that the needs of the many outweighed the desires of the individual. How dare my father haunt me for heeding his own counsel!

Had he not been the one to teach me to play chess, to teach me that one sometimes must sacrifice a lesser piece in order to protect the king?

And what lesser piece was there than a daughter who had not had the wits to be born a son? I flung down the washing cloth impatiently, restless with my lot, chafing with the tedious rota of duties that lay before me this morn.

Every morning. From the morn of my tenth birthday until the day I breathed my last, I was responsible for an endless array of tasks, none of which were important enough to merit praise when well done, all of which contributed to the sustenance of this keep, every one of which kept me as busy and fettered as a falcon tied to its post with a bone to worry.

When I rummaged discontentedly in my trunk for a clean chemise, a finger of sunlight touched the pomegranate forgotten in the corner, burnishing its leathery skin to a gleam.

It was as if my thoughts had coaxed the fruit into sight. I stared at it. I had not truly forgotten about it - although I had tried. It seemed a portent that it came to light on this day, on this day that I felt reckless and unappreciated. The pomegranate was smaller and harder than it had been, and I wondered whether it had spoiled.

I fetched my knife and sliced it open, gasping at the spill of glistening ruby pearls. They were as dark as blood and glistened like jewels. I ate half a dozen off the blade of the knife, the pungent taste making me close my eyes and revel in a forbidden memory.

Gawain. I saw again his golden skin, the ripple of muscle beneath his smooth flesh, the sun-drenched spill of his hair. I saw the mischievous glint in his green eyes, the quirk of his lips just afore he smiled, the rumble of his laughter when my fingertips lay across his chest.