FLAME OF DESIRE (44 page)

Richard recognized that voice now. “Roderick?” he asked, licking his lips in an effort to quench their parched dryness. He was confused. Why were they here? Were they playing hide-and-seek? Yes, that was it.

Again the voice repeated. “Seton. He is nearly here. Listen to me. You are Father Stephen. Father Stephen. Do you understand?”

“Father. Father will find us.” He felt his legs give way beneath him and fell to the hard floor. When he looked up, the face before him seemed blurred. Strong arms picked him up, shaking him roughly.

“You are Father Stephen. Listen to me and listen to me well. Richard, if you do not want to part with your head. Seton had you condemned as a traitor and imprisoned. Remember? I gave you a root to chew so that they would think you dead.”

Through the mists of his brain the truth slowly dawned on Richard. “Seton.”

“And he is coming for you now. We will both be punished if you do not do as I tell you. You are me. Remember how we would play that game when we were little? Only we are grown up now,  Richard. You are me, Father Stephen. You came to see the prisoner, to offer up the last rites. Now you are leaving to return to the queen. The queen has called for you. Remember?”

“Father Stephen. Yes, I am Father Stephen,” Richard repeated. Slowly reality was returning to him and he had a brief flicker of knowledge of the danger they were both in.

His brother raised his eyes to heaven, thanking God for returning his brother to his senses. He wondered if that guard had awakened yet. Well, it made no matter. The priest had returned to the man to tie him up with the ties of his own rope girdle and to stuff a cloth in his mouth to keep him from crying out. It was the other guard who posed a danger. He led his brother out the door and pushed him into the corridor. “The London docks. Go. Hurry.”

Richard started to leave but turned back. “Heather. You must get a message to Heather. I will not leave without her.” His brother nodded, giving him his silent promise.

Richard did not know how he walked down the stairs, but somehow he managed to do so despite the weakness of his limbs and the haze before his eyes. It was all coming back to him and perhaps then it was his anger which drove him on. He would cheat Seton of his victory. He would thwart that bastard!

“You, there. Halt.” It was a voice he seemed to recognize which called to him. The guard. Now he remembered. Slowly he turned around to face the man, expecting full well to be recognized and dragged back into his cell.

No. I will fight if need be, he thought grimly. Let them kill me now. He looked around for a weapon, wondering if he had the strength to fight.  But the guard merely looked at him.

“Where in blazes is Simon? I’ve looked everywhere.”

Richard shrugged his shoulders, remaining silent.

“I sent him to see you. I want that body back where it belongs. I looked in the chapel and there is no one there. Where is he, where is Simon?”

This time Richard pointed toward the stairs. “Back where he belongs…my..my son,” he murmured, trying to imitate his brother’s manner of speech. “I helped him carry the poor soul.”

“You helped him? Well, why not? You have the look of strength about you.” He started for the stairs, but turned back. “You will tell Seton, as you promised, that we are not to blame?”

“Not to blame.  Yes, my son,” Richard intoned, making the sign of the cross before him. “I will tell him.” He hurried down the hallway, his heart pounding like the hooves of a stallion. At last, after passing several guards who did nothing at all to detain him, he came to the front portal. The taste of freedom was like that of fine wine. He was so close to being safe, so close. He smiled, that expression changing to one of suppressed anger as the door was opened and he found himself face to face with his enemy. Seton, he thought with alarm. If there was anyone who would see through his disguise, it was this man. Seton knew both Roderick and Richard, had seen the two as boys together, knew of their fondness for trickery, for changing places. Seton alone would know well that he was not his brother. He would look at his chin and see clearly written that which marked him as Richard. There was no cleft to his chin. No cleft. Desperately he sought to turn away his face, burying his chin in the folds of the cowl of his habit, bowing with humble servitude before this ambitious bastard.

But Seton seemed not to notice that it was not the priest his eyes beheld. Too puffed up with his own importance, he grinned at Richard. “I told you that one day all would be mine, you sniveling eunuch. I only wish that our father was alive to see which of his sons now wields the power.” He pushed past him. “I am not surprised that you have no stomach to watch what I have wrought. Flee, then, and go back to your prayers, you foolish priest. I have won. I have won it all!” He hurried up the stairs, laughing victoriously.

Richard cast one glance behind him, anxious for his brother’s safety, then hurried out the door. “The London docks,” he whispered, and was gone, fleeing in that direction, looking much like the ravens that nestled in the rafters of the Tower.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Heather sat up in bed with a start. What time was it? What time? As if to answer her question, twelve tolls of the bells sounded in the distance.

“No!” Like the cry of a wounded animal the sound escaped he lips. They would have already taken him to Tower Green, to the hill, to Tower Hill. The thought was too hideous to imagine, yet she knew that it must be true. They would have murdered him by now, severed his handsome head.

Hugging her slender arms about he body, she rocked back and forth, moaning over and over in her own kind of mourning for the man she had so deeply loved.

“I’m too late,” she sobbed. “Too late.” She had wanted to be beside him, to see him one last time, to let him see the look of love on her face before he met his end, but she had been denied this Why? “I wanted to be with him.”

Rising from the bed, she walked about in a daze, seeing his face before her eyes, feeling the touch of his hands, hearing the sound of his voice. Tears streamed in rivulets down her cheeks; she could think of nothing but her loss. Such a brief time of happiness they had shared. Such a short time of ecstasy. Now he was gone. How could she live without him?

Closing her eyes, she seemed to envision the grisly scene before her eyes and began to scream uncontrollably. Richard was dead. Richard was dead. Was there nothing she could do to dispel her living nightmare?

She did not even hear her mother come in. Only the sharp slap to her face by her mother’s hand stopped the tortured cries.

“Stop it! Stop it this instant!” Blythe called out loudly, fearing for her daughter’s sanity.

Heather was mute in her grief, curling away as if to escape into her own private world, a world where such pain did not exist. With her hands hanging down at her sides, she stared blankly before her.

“Get some more of the poppy juice, Tabitha. Quickly,” Blythe ordered. Heather looked up at her, suddenly knowing why she had slept so deeply this morning, why she had missed the execution.

“You gave me something in my milk.”

“There was not reason for you to suffer any more agony. I knew that if I did not give you the juice you would have moved heaven and hell to be with him this morning. I thought to spare you that pain.”

“I should have been with him!” She pushed her mother angrily away. “Where is he? What have they done with his body? I want to go to him. I must.” Struggling with the arms which grasped her, she was like one touched in the head. Again her mother struck her, a gesture which caused Blythe as much pain as it did Heather as she took upon her own heart her daughter’s grief.

“Stop struggling with me and listen! He wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer this kind of grief. He would have wanted to spare you the sorrow of watching him die. I know. I know. He loved you as I do and I would have wanted to shield you.”

“I wanted to tell him how much I loved him. One more time. One more time.” Heather collapsed in tears against the warmth of her mother’s enfolding arms, hugging her tightly as if afraid that she too might be taken from her.

“He knew how much you loved him. He knew.” Blythe felt tears sting her own eyes. “And he loved you too, so much.” Rocking her daughter back and forth like a child, she keened softly in their mutual sorrow. It broke her heart to see her child suffer so. Why was the world such a cruel place? Why couldn’t one just go about life, and love and be loved? Why wasn’t she able to protect her daughter from the evil in the world? She had wanted to do so, so much, to keep Heather from all hurt, all harm. Only sunshine should have touched this beautiful red-haired girl, not such black clouds of despair.

For a long moment the two women stood in their embrace; then Heather stepped away. Remembering the heads so often displayed upon London Bridge, she shuddered. “I must see him. I must. I won’t let them put his head on traitor’s gate for all London to see. He as not traitor. If I could not save his life, at least I will see that in death he is not so abused. Even if it means my own life. I will have my say in this.”

“No. Heather, think. He would not want you to so endanger yourself.”

“I must.” Pulling away from her mother, she sought to find her plain linen gown and a cloak. “I should have been there,” she murmured, yet she knew that he would not have wanted her to suffer such pain. He would have approved of what her mother had done. Richard would have applauded Blythe Bowen’s actions, but that did not make her heart ache any the less.

Stepping out the door, she was surprised to see that the city was engulfed by a fog. How appropriate, she thought, that the sun should be blocked out on the day that he died. Richard Morgan had taken the sun with him as surely as he had taken her heart.

Heather walked down the cobblestones to the Tower, groping her way through the fog and through the mists of her own tears. She was assailed by memories of him with every step: their first meeting, when he had hidden from Northumberland’s men in her father’s storeroom; that time she had witnessed his near-death at the hands of an assassin; her fight to save his life. Could she ever forget how he had looked lying on the cot in the stables, so young and defenseless in his deep sleep, so handsome? Even then she had loved him. Even then.

Turning off the main road, she trudged along the path to the river, remembering that time when she had t taken the letter to the council. She had wanted him to think her brave, as brave as Mary. He had been her hope, her dream come true, her future, her love. “And always will be. I will never forget him. Never. He will live in my heart until the day that I die.”

When at last she stood at Tower Hill, she looked about her, wondering if even now Richard’s Morgan’s blood stained the snow. “He gave his blood to England, and this is how he was repaid,” she breathed, trying desperately to keep her anger and resentment in control. “Seton. If it takes me forever, he will pay for what he has done.” How she hated the man. It was like a cankersore on her heart.

Seeing two bedraggled men walking about, clutching their cloaks about them for some measure of warmth, Heather approached them. She had to find out if they knew anything about what had happened to Richard. If they were workmen, perhaps they could tell her where his body was.

“Excuse me, kind gentlemen,” she said, touching one upon the shoulder. “Can you tell me what has been done with the body of the condemned man?”

The man chuckled. “Which one? There have been many whose lives have been lost on this hill.”

Heather swallowed her tears. “The man named Richard Morgan. He was to be executed this morning. A dark-haired man over six feet in height. Handsome and proud. A nobleman. Wrongly accused of treason against the queen.”

The white-haired workman scratched his head. “Don’t remember such a man being beheaded today. There was Thomas Wyatt, a blond-haired bloke, an old man, and some crazy woman who insisted she had visions, but no tall dark-haired man.”

Heather thought she had surely stopped breathing; her hands shook as she reached out again to the man. Was it possible? Had Richard been given a reprieve?  “Are you certain?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“Yes. But if you don’t believe me, ask one of the guards,” the white-haired man answered peevishly.

Heather ran over the slippery ground, stumbling and falling more than once in her haste. The old man’s words were ringing in her ears. By the time she reached the guards she was hysterical in her joy. If they had not taken his life, perhaps that meant that he would be free. Dared she to hope?

“The prisoner—Richard Morgan. Where is he?” she asked, recognizing one of the guards as the one who had let Tabitha and herself in the door several nights before.

The guard winced when she said the name, and drew back from her as if he had not heard her talk to him. She repeated her question, and this time he answered gruffly, “Dead.”

“Dead?” All her hopes were shattered in the most brutal of ways. “But I talked with a man and he said that the man I seek was not killed today.”

“He wasn’t. Blimey if he didn’t just up and croak last night. Mysterious death, it was. Scary, if you ask me.  A man doesn’t just up and die. Something evil about it all. Something frightening. Unless of course he was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

“There are those who say it was that. Or perhaps the devil himself took a hand in the matter. That would explain it all.” He wondered what she would say if he told her that the body had disappeared, vanished into thin air. Already it had been said that the man’s ghost was haunting the Tower, along with the ghosts of the past. He had been told not to mention what had happened, and it took all his self-control not to say something. It bothered him. A man didn’t just up and vanish. But he bit his tongue.

“Where is he?” Heather whispered.

Again he was tempted to tell her the story, but merely said, “Out back, in potter’s field. That’s how it is with traitors.”

“He was not a traitor!” Heather snapped.

He ignored her outburst, turning his back upon her. “I’ve told you all I know,” he said.