Mark of the Black Arrow (16 page)

Without pause the shorter of the two tore down the next tapestry.

“I commanded you to
stop
,” she thundered, raising her voice, the spell broken as she pushed forward and snatched the cloth from the man’s hands. “What are you doing?”

“Following orders,” the tall man replied flatly.

“You will address milady properly, and heed her command.” Chastity grabbed the arm of the tall guard as he reached for a new tapestry.

“Orders of the king,” the shorter one said, as if it explained everything. Chastity looked at Marian with wide, startled eyes.

“Watch them,” Marian hissed. “I will go to my uncle, and put an end to this insanity.” With that, she passed through the main hall and was sickened to see that everywhere the tapestries had been ripped from the walls and lay in piles on the floor. A pair of servants was busy rolling them up. She quickened her step, and a minute later she saw the new bishop exiting King Richard’s study.

He scurried on his way without acknowledging her presence, which surprised her and further served to stoke her ire. She marched into the study and found the prince there. She had to fight down her instinctive sense of outrage at seeing him sitting at the king’s table. He looked up from a piece of parchment, which he then dropped onto the desk, folding his arms over it as she approached. Whatever it was, he didn’t want her to see it.

“Child,” he said, greeting her with a thin smile. “What can I do for you?”

“You can stop the guards from tearing the tapestries from the walls,” she said, barely managing to control her temper. He blinked at her, and for a moment she thought he might deny having given the order. Then he leaned forward across the desk.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” he said smoothly. “You see, the tapestries, they are… outdated. I’ll be replacing them soon with some new ones.” He spoke to her as if she were a simpleton.

“What gives you the right?” she demanded.

“Why, my brother, of course,” the prince replied. “You remember, he left me in charge, and gave me the authority to do whatever was necessary. I’m afraid this is necessary.”

“Those tapestries have been there for generations,” she persisted. “The king would not wish them removed.”

“Well, my dear brother isn’t here to protect them,” John said, and every pretense of cordiality disappeared from his voice. “Or you, for that matter,” he added. “I’d hold my tongue if I were you, niece, lest something happen to it.”

She blinked in surprise as she realized he had just threatened her, and without subtlety, at that. He stood up abruptly and leaned forward, his eyes jittering as if he were mad.

“I’m your sovereign now, and, if you forget that, I won’t hesitate to remind you in the most direct way possible.”

Marian took an involuntary step backward, frightened by the look in his eyes. She had questioned Richard’s choice in appointing his brother. Now she wondered if the land wouldn’t have been better served by Henry, scoundrel and schemer that he was, than by this man who stood before her.

She desperately wanted to tell John that there was something wrong with him. She also wanted to examine the document that was now lying exposed on the desk. Instead she forced herself to take a step forward and, though it galled her, she dropped her head as though expressing subservience.

“I’m sorry,” she said through clenched teeth.

“That’s better,” John answered. “You’ll find that if you keep that attitude, things will be infinitely more pleasant for you.”

“I understand,” she said.

Reading upside down was something her mother had taught her from a young age, explaining that a lady often had need of more information than the men in her life were willing to give. Unfortunately the language on the parchment was unknown to her, but there were a couple of symbols there, and she hastily committed them to memory.

The effort caused pain to twinge in her skull.

The sigils looked foreign, a language she knew not. She would ask Cardinal Francis about them. Hopefully he would know their meaning. He was a learned man, and had studied many things.

“Good,” John said coldly. “Now get out, and don’t interrupt me again.”

Though she seethed inside, Marian managed to hold her tongue as she turned and departed. The king should know of what John was doing with the tapestries. It was an outrage, yet she hesitated. Was it enough to cause Richard to forsake his holy quest and return home? No, she decided. She needed more information and the cardinal was just the man to help her with that.

She didn’t have time to send for him and request an audience. Neither did she want those in the castle who might report back to John knowing her purpose. She cast one more thought at going to tell Chastity what she was doing. After all, her friend would worry when she didn’t come back.

Two more servants wearing leather gloves and carrying wide-bladed utility knives made her decision for her.

It could not wait.

A
daryn was determined to find some sage for Lady Longstride and answers for herself as she set out to visit a potion maker with whom she occasionally had dealings. The older man had been a friend of her father’s, and she’d known him since childhood.

She rarely left her home, and when she did it was usually to barter for something she or a client needed. Barnabas, on the other hand, was a downright hermit, never leaving his hovel for anything or anyone.

When she arrived at his home, after several hours on the road, she was shocked to find that almost everything in it had been stripped bare, and that a cart out front was laden with trunks and sacks. The old man was huddled over another trunk out back, packing things away in it.

“Barnabas?”

He jumped and turned with a cry, then pressed a hand over his heart.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, before turning back to what he was doing. “Thank goodness,” he muttered.

“Barnabas, what are you up to?

“I’m leaving,” the man said, standing up again. His eyes twitched nervously.

“Leaving? You’ve lived your whole life right here, haven’t moved more than a hundred feet. Where are you going to?”

“I was thinking I’d head to France.”

It seemed so preposterous she almost started to laugh. The cart out front was no laughing matter, though. Three months earlier, when she’d last seen him, he’d owned no such conveyance.

“But why?”

He leaned in. “Look, there is something happening. I’ve felt it, and others have felt it, too. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

She licked her lips. “Maybe I have, and maybe I haven’t.”

“Whatever is coming, I don’t want to stick around and see it. If you’re smart, you won’t either.”

She glanced at his garden. He had spent so many years cultivating it, and now he was just going to abandon it.

“How is your sage growing?” she asked.

“Sage?” he replied. “Sage is the least of my worries. Although it’s all rotted, as yours surely is. No one’s been able to grow sage in months.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that there’s an evil poisoning the earth, destroying anything that can possibly stand up to it.”

She took a deep breath. He’d always been prone to exaggeration and a pessimist on top of it all. Still, his words twisted in her mind like something alive.

“If what you say is true, there would be other signs.”

“Are you blind, woman? The signs are all around. Blackbirds litter the fields and blot out the grass. Worms crawl across dry dirt. Half the cows in the land are dry.” His eyes twitched even more rapidly. “Owls have been flying out of the forest and circling people’s houses for weeks. They’ve been flying both night and day. Death is coming, and not just for a few people. It’s coming for everyone. There’s scarce a house in all the region that hasn’t been visited.”

“And how would you know that? You never leave your home.”

“I have friends, friends all over, and they tell me,” he said, “and now I’m telling you. Leave while you can, before the owls hoot outside
your
door.”

“If an owl comes to me, I’ll not take it as a portent of death. I’ll take it as a visit from
cailleach-oidhche
…or a sign that the mice are growing too plentiful,” she said scornfully.

“You mock me, Adaryn, but mark my words. You’ll come to a bad end if you stay.”

She sighed, not sure what to think.

“Do you have any dried sage I can buy?”

He barked, a short, hard laugh. “Not a stick. Anyone with any sense is using all they’ve got left over to make wards, cleanse houses, preparing for the worst.”

“Do you know if Alderman has any?”

He shook his head. “He left the region more than a fortnight ago. Picked his garden dry before he left, but I can tell you no sage was growing there, either.”

She blinked in shock, stunned to hear that the old wizard had left, and without stopping in to say a word to her. They had shared a few summer weeks as a young couple not old enough to know a thing about the world and still enjoyed company occasionally. Something was wrong indeed.

“Best tend to your own house and not worry about others’,” Barnabas said, not unkindly. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Take care of yourself, child, for your father’s sake. I’d not like to see you joining him in the grave anytime soon.”

“Be careful around those French,” she said back. “They’re an unfriendly lot.”

He nodded and then turned away, but not before she saw tears in his eyes. Shaken to her core, she began the long journey home.

*  *  *

It was quiet.

The silence had snuck in, creeping along the walls and windows like a shadow. All of a sudden he realized that the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. The in and out of air through his lungs rasped along his eardrums, startling him.

The door was shut now, but all afternoon he’d been accompanied by the hustle and the bustle of men and women following his orders, their noise bleeding through the stout wood. Now even those were gone.

He decided to stand, to fling open the portal and find someone,
anyone
, who might be outside.

“She will have to be handled.”

The voice came from nowhere, freezing him in place. Eyes jerking to and fro, he searched the room. From the black of a shadow beside a cabinet stepped the Sheriff.

The shadow was not big enough to hide a man.

The armored man stood, pale hands clasped before him. His skin and hair almost glowed against the gloom around him. The wide fur collar outlined his angular face, giving it a cruel, aristocratic air.

John put his feet on the floor, sitting up in his chair.

“I’ve handled her just fine.”

“No, you shut her up.”

“That’s not handled enough for you? What would you like me to do, cut her tongue out?”

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow. “You have no sophistication, always reaching for the quickest way.”

“If that little girl is going to be a problem,” John said, “I would rather just be done with her.”

“That
little girl
has lived in this castle nearly her entire life, while you have been here for mere days. If you harm her, it will not go unmarked, and there will be repercussions. This island has its protectors.” Pale fingers stroked the collar, running through the long fur flecked with tiny sparks of blue. “Our first asset will be knowledge. Find out everything you can about her.”

“She’s my niece.”

The Sheriff’s eyes blazed. “I did not ask for what you already know. Find out the things you
don’t
know.”

“To what purpose?”

“There is something about her that smells strange to me.”

Prince John furrowed his brow, and then nodded. “I’ll call for records, and question the staff.” He returned his attention to the table in front of him. His hands shuffled parchments, moving them into a pile.

Without warning, the Sheriff was there beside him. John didn’t jump, but inside his skin he twitched.

“What is this?” The Sheriff’s finger pinned a parchment to the table top. The tone of his voice drew the prince short. His mouth moved, but he had no words, unsure of how to respond.

“Did you have these out when your niece was here?” the Sheriff pressed. The words were a hiss, a slip of steel on sheath. “Out in the open, where she could read them? What sort of fool are you?”

“She couldn’t read them!” Prince John protested. The Sheriff removed his finger and John fumbled the pages more, trying to shove them together, to make them smaller. The parchment fought him, sheets sticking to each other and crumpling, or slipping and flying from his hands. “None of them have been translated. Some are a struggle even for my mind.”

“Leave them be!” the Sheriff roared. John froze, hands in mid-clutch. In a flash of dull sheen off ebon armor the Sheriff snatched one of the loose pages. He stared at it, eyes darting. As the seconds ticked by his face darkened, taking on the color of aged bone instead of corpse white. His lip curled, revealing teeth gone sharp. His eyes rolled black, flicking up to pin John in his seat.

“This is a binding.”

Prince John gulped, the noise loud in his ears, sounding like a bucket dropped in an empty well. His mind scrambled.

“I thought it might be needed, with the culmination of our plans.”

“This puny enchantment would accomplish nothing. It wouldn’t even cause a blink.”

“It’s Enochian.”

“And?”

“I thought…”

“You thought consorting with the enemy might save your arse.” The Sheriff leaned down, bringing his face close to John’s. “The only thing you can do, little prince, is remain loyal to me. We are bound together, and
that
is the only binding that should concern you. Break faith in our arrangement at any time, and there will be nowhere in this world you can hide that I will not find you.”

“How dare you?” John responded. “You need me.” Hatred flashed through his chest at the weak mewl his voice had become.

“I need you to provide information about young Marian.” The Sheriff straightened. “Everything depends upon you doing as you are told. Obedience brings reward. Anything short of that…” The Sheriff shrugged, leaving the threat unspoken, and all the worse for it.