Daughter of Fire (48 page)

William’s expression was contorted with rage. “Speak plainly.”

“This man owes his loyalty to only one man.”

“Aye,” William acknowledged.  “My brother.”

“And the danger may not end here, milord.” Rorke went on to explain the fear that took hold of his heart.

It was William who spoke the words. “The queen!”

But Rorke sensed the danger was far greater. Vivian had spoken of her fear of the Darkness. Twice before, it had tried to destroy her. She had given him the crystal for protection, leaving herself vulnerable. It was she who now needed that protection. But even if they rode without stopping and the horses lasted the journey, it would still take them six full days to reach London.

Twenty-four

V
ivian stirred the fire at the hearth against a bone-aching cold that no amount of wood seemed to dispel. She shivered as she drew the edges of the shawl more tightly about her shoulders.

She had left the queen’s chamber a short while earlier after giving her a soothing tea so that she might rest after a sleepless night with the child so large within her. Over the past several days, since Rorke left with the king for the north country, Vivian had also experienced a restlessness, but of a far different nature.

“I do not like this coldness,” Meg said uneasily from the chair beside the hearth, where she sat spinning yarn, her gnarled fingers moving with the ease of memory back and forth between the wheel and the spindle.

“It grows worse each day.” The old woman’s fingers fell idle at the wheel. Her head was turned toward the sound of Vivian’s movement at the hearth, but her head was cocked as if she listened for some other sound.

“’Tis unnatural,” she whispered.

“Aye,” Vivian said replied thoughtfully. “I have felt it as well.”

“Will they return soon?” Meg asked as Vivian knelt before the hearth.

She smiled faintly at the old woman’s undisguised eagerness. “Why, Meg,” she remarked. “Can it be that you miss milord FitzWarren?”

“Bah!” Meg scoffed. “I do not miss him. But I warrant it was not so cold when he was about. I do not like it!”

Vivian knew that Meg referred to the shadows that seemed to be everywhere with Rorke and William gone from the fortress. But she found herself thinking of far different aches of coldness that she had found eased by the fire that filled their bed at night.

“Aye,” she agreed, gathering the shawl more tightly about her shoulders. “It was not so cold.” Or dark, she thought to herself with a shiver of apprehension. As though to warm herself, she extended her fingers toward the flames as she silently whispered the ancient words, calling upon the powers of the Light for a vision in the fire.

The flames leapt wildly, the brilliant golden, orange, and red hues smothering almost to nothingness in the darkness of shadows at the hearth, then flaring suddenly and fluttering violently, an uncertain image forming briefly before it disappeared in the chaos of the fire. Fear welled inside Vivian as she rose from the hearth.

“Stay here where you may be near if the queen should need you,” she told Meg, taking her mantle from a peg at the wall. She closed the stout door behind her and hesitated only a moment in the passage before turning her steps toward the great hall.

It was strangely deserted. Even the Saxon earls and barons who hovered about daily for an audience with the king’s brother, in his absence were strangely missing. Missing, too she realized with alarm, were the guards usually posted in the passageways and at each entrance as she made her way toward the chapel. Relief swept through her at sight of Poladouras. He looked up with surprise at seeing her so soon again after morning prayers.

“What is it? Has there been word from the north country?”

She shook her head. “Nay, there has been no word. But I fear something is wrong.”

With much effort, he pushed from bent knee to his feet and walked toward her with grave expression.

“Have you sensed something?”

“Yes... No... It is not clear. I know only that something has happened.” She laid a hand at the sleeve of his cassock. “The guards are nowhere about.”

His silvery eyebrows lifted  with his own surprise. “That is most unusual. Young Stephen was left in charge of the household. He would not dismiss the guards with so much unrest about London.”

“There is more,” Vivian explained. “Something I saw in the flames.”

Poladouras sensed her urgency and nodded. “I will come with you.”

They left the royal compound by way of the passage near the kitchen. The cook was where she should be, ordering her serving girls about as she labored over the evening meal. The woman seemed to think nothing was amiss, lifting a shoulder with little concern when Vivian questioned her about the guards.

“No doubt they are in the practice yard, or the armory.”

With some measure of relief, they encountered a guard outside the sally port. But he gave no acknowledgment of greeting and Vivian realized that he was not the usual guard.  There were soldiers in the practice yard, others could be seen in the armory. Many more armed guards walked the bastion walls and stood guard at the towers.  But still she felt that uneasiness that moved through her blood.

“It seems the cook was right,” Poladouras commented as they crossed the yard toward the kennels and the mews beyond. “There are ample guards about.”

“Aye,” Vivian said, her feeling of apprehension growing. “But they are not William’s guards.” As they passed the kennels, William’s hounds set up a chorus of barking.

“And it is odd that the hounds are kept confined, when they are usually turned out.” She quickened her pace as she turned toward the mews.

She needed no special sense to tell her what she had feared. She heard it in the unusual silence of William’s birds as they sat at their perches, their feathers roughened at their sleek bodies as though they, too, sensed it. And she smelled it in the heaviness of the air. She smelled death.

Even though she sensed it, still she cried out when she found the small falcon. No sleek, golden head turned with a familiar chirped greeting. No special bond of communication flowed magically between them.  Blood stained the straw beneath the perch. The small falcon’s lifeless body hung limp from the leather jesses that had bound her to the perch. Her once glossy feathers of such an unusual gold color were now dull with death and the blood that seeped the bludgeoned body.

Vivian felt Poladouras’ gentle hand at her shoulder. “I am so sorry, my child,” he whispered with heaviness of grief, for the girl and falcon had been raised together and he knew the special bond that existed between them. He looked about the mews.

“The other birds, no doubt would not accept her.”

“Nay,” Vivian whispered, her heart aching. “ ’Twas not the other birds for they are firmly tied, nor are the wounds what another bird would draw.” Her voice broke softly, “She was beaten to death while tethered and hooded, unable to defend herself, or flee.” Tears slipped down her cheeks at the loss of a beloved friend.

Poladouras sighed heavily. “I will see to the creature,” he said, moving to step past Vivian. But she stopped him with a hand at his sleeve.

“I will do it.”

She cut the leather jesses with her knife, cradling the lifeless falcon in her arms. She had no sense of life that she could call back in the broken, bloodied body. With Poladouras following, she carried Aquila from the mews.

She climbed to the highest bastion until she found a place apart where no soldiers watched. Poladouras had followed, laboring up the steps behind her. His expression was grim with Vivian’s own unspoken thoughts.

Focusing on the power within her, Vivian closed her eyes and spoke the ancient words that reached beyond time and memory into the mist of the world beyond. When the words had been spoken, she opened her eyes, and, on a single thought, cast into the leaden sky above, she opened her arms.

A man of faith, caught between the immortal powers that he knew existed and the faith that he believed in, Poladouras watched the ancient ceremony with a mixture of sadness and inspiration.

He had no explanation for her abilities other than what they were. He accepted them because he had learned long ago there were far more things in heaven and earth than man could explain merely by faith in God. So he had accepted and embraced both.

There was a sudden fluttering of movement, a disturbance in the air. From her arms the falcon rose seemingly alive once more, unfurled its glossy wings that were caught with sudden light as if the sun had come out, and in a single motion leapt into flight.

She circled once, majestic wings dipping faintly. Then, on a slow arc, she circled away, disappearing into the mist that rose beyond the fortress walls. No amount of Vivian’s powers could call it back to earthly life, and so she had released its spirit to the sky.

“We must return,” Vivian said, moving past Poladouras with a new urgency. “Aquila’s death is part of something more.” As they descended the bastion, they passed the guards once more.

Vivian stopped and approached the guard they had passed only moments before. Only it was not the same man.

“Where is the guard who was here only a few minutes ago?”

The guard looked at her uncertainly. “Forgive me, mistress. But there has been no other guard here since I relieved the previous guard at midday.”

“What are you saying?” Poladouras demanded. “ ’Tis just midday now.”

“You are wrong, monk,” the guard informed him. “It is well past midday. I have been here for several hours.”

“But that is impossible!” Poladouras’ round face became red with anger. “We passed this way only moments ago. What trickery is this?”

She laid a hand at the monk’s arm. “Please, there is no time to waste.”

“What is it?” he asked between labored breaths as he followed her across the yard.

“He was not lying,” Vivian told him. “He had been at his post these past hours. But to us it was only moments.”

As they reached the sally port, Poladouras held up a hand that he must have a moment to catch his breath.

“It makes no sense, child.”

“Nay,” she agreed. “Not in the mortal world. But what has happened is not of the mortal world.”

“What are you saying?”

She pulled the door open and ran up the steps to the passage. Poladouras was forced to follow or be left behind.

“The vision of Aquila that I saw in the flames was a deception,” she explained when he reached the landing.

“But the falcon is dead,” he protested, and then asked, “Is she not?”

“Aye,” she said sadly. “She is dead. Her death was a lure to draw me away. Once I left the royal tower, time as we know it was altered. What we were certain could only have been a few minutes was in fact more than two hours. Don’t ask me to explain it for there is no logical reason. But that is why the midday sun now rests lower in the sky.”

“But why? Who has done this?” Poladouras sputtered, gasping for breath, and then asked, “To what purpose?”

Her somber gaze met his in the flickering of torchlight as they approached the main hall. “To allow enough time to accomplish what might not be accomplished in a few minutes, and it  required great cunning,” she told him. “It is not
who
has done this, but
what
has done it.”

Her pace quickened with as she ran to the queen’s chamber. In the passage she tripped, almost falling over a slumped body.

“Stephen!” she cried out, as she recognized the young knight. She knelt beside him. Blood covered the side of his face and matted his hair. But he was alive. She felt the faint pulse at his neck beneath her fingers.

With no time to waste, she channeled her power through her touch, deep within him. His eyes slowly opened. Recognition came a moment later and he struggled to sit up.

“I tried to stop her,” he whispered. “I told her no one was to enter the king’s chamber except for you and the old woman. But she would not hear of it.” He struggled to say the next words.

“When I tried to stop her...” he shuddered at the memory. “I have never seen such a creature.” Then he looked at them both. “The queen is in grave danger!”

“Stay with him,” Vivian told Poladouras as she moved past Stephen to the door of the queen’s chamber. It stood ajar. She slowly pushed it open, and stopped in surprise at what she saw.

“Mally?”

She could not fathom why Stephen was anxious about the girl being in the chamber for she often attended Matilda. Then Mally slowly turned toward her where she stood at the edge of the large bed as the queen stirred.

“The child has brought me a tisane,” she said with such weakness that a ribbon of fear sliced through Vivian for she sensed not only Matilda’s growing weakness but the distress of the child that lay within her womb. Her gaze fastened on Mally, and she saw what Stephen had seen.

It was not Mally’s eyes that looked back at her, but the vacant, dark eyes of someone—or something—else, Vivian glanced to the goblet held in the young woman’s hands and knew that it was poison.

There was a brief flicker of challenge in those dark eyes as Vivian walked toward her, then it wavered. Vivian reached out and seized her by the wrist. The young woman jerked away, crying out painfully as thought she had been burned.  As she fell to the floor of the chamber, she transformed, Mally’s features disappearing to reveal Judith de Marque.

“You cannot stop it!” she hissed at Vivian. “Even now it grows more powerful.”

“Who is it that you have sold your soul to?” Vivian demanded. “Where is the girl? What have you done with her?”

“I have sold my soul to no one. He loves me.  Even now, he has given me some of his powers. He has taken the girl.”

“Taken her where?”

“Into the catacombs.”

“You fool!” Vivian told her. “The power cannot be given. What he has given you is death! Tell me now.  Who has promised you so much?”

Judith stared up at her. “You’re wrong. I will live forever. I will have great power. And I will have Rorke FitzWarren.” But even as she spoke it, she faltered as though suddenly seized by a sudden weakness.