Mesmerized (32 page)

“Because of—of what she was doing. What I told you—” She glanced around again nervously.

“Madame Valenskaya, don’t worry,” Stephen said. “We will not let your daughter do anything to you.”

“Maybe you won’t be able to stop her!” Madame Valenskaya said. “You were right there when that happened to Mr. Babington, and you couldn’t stop that, now could you?”

“You’re saying that…Irene did that to Mr. Babington? Put him into a coma?” Stephen asked.

“Course she did. Or, rather, what she conjured up. She—see, something’s latched on to her. She never was a sweet girl. I mean, she always looked out for herself first and the devil with anybody else. But she wasn’t…
obsessed
, the way she is now. The last few months, all she can talk about is Blackhope and getting in and getting that treasure and all. And she got all secretive-like, locking herself up for hours in that room, you know, the one where I saw that funny star thing.”

“She is practicing witchcraft.”

“More than that. She summoned something up. Something awful and wicked.”

“What do you mean ‘something’?”

“I don’t know.” Madame Valenskaya lowered her voice. “Spirits, I think. Evil ones. Maybe even the devil. That’s what’s been coming into the séances lately. Nothing like that ever happened before. I swear it. Something took hold of Babington that night, something powerful evil. Didn’t you feel it?”

“Yes, I did,” Olivia agreed. “What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know! I don’t want to know. I told her I didn’t want to do it anymore. And she told me I had to keep on. She threatened me if I didn’t. But I couldn’t! It was too scary. I was afraid of what was going to happen next. That’s why I ran away. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” She looked at Olivia a little ruefully. “The fact is, my lady, I’d had a mite too much to drink last night. I didn’t think about what I was going to do once I’d got there. I just wanted to get away from her. To hide. So last night, in the middle of the night I got up and—”

She stopped, her face growing visibly paler.

“Yes?” Stephen urged, leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the woman’s face. “What happened?”

Madame Valenskaya swallowed and said, “I saw Lady Pamela going down the hall, all quietlike. She was in front of me, going the same way I was. I didn’t
know what to do, but she looked so odd, the way she was sneaking along, so I followed her. She went into this bedroom around the corner, and I went after her and opened the door a crack and peeked in. There was a door in the wall, and it was open into another room, and there was a candle in the room. I could see that. I guess Lady Pamela was in there, because I didn’t see her anywhere else. But—but then all of a sudden that little room was filled with this awful oily black smoke. And—and it scared me so bad, I nearly dropped my own candle. I closed the door and I ran. That’s—that’s when I did get lost in that other part of the house. I hid when I heard them coming because—I don’t know what I thought. I was scared.”

She paused, then added mournfully, “I wish I’d never come to this house.”

No one added what they all thought—that everyone else in the house no doubt wished the same thing.

Stephen sighed, then said, “You had best take her back to her room, Tom.”

“No!” Madame Valenskaya screeched. “You can’t send me back there. Irene will be furious with me. There’s no telling what she’ll do to me!”

“I’ll stand guard outside her door,” Tom offered.

Madame Valenskaya sent him a contemptuous glance. “As if you could thwart her!”

“I will be talking to ‘Irina’ in the meantime, Madame Valenskaya,” Stephen said sternly. “I will get to the bottom of this and be rid of you both. Now, I suggest you go to your room, or I shall have to fetch
the constable to investigate the fraud which you and your daughter have perpetrated upon my mother.”

Madame Valenskaya subsided at that threat, apparently fearing gaol even more than her daughter. She went docilely with Tom out the door. Rafe volunteered to bring Irene down to the study and strode out of the room after them.

Stephen and Olivia looked at each other. “We are talking about possession now?” he asked disbelievingly.

Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know that it is any more bizarre than any of the other things we have seen.”

Great-uncle Bellard spoke up. “If we believe that those who have died can remain in a house in some form, as your Lady Alys and Sir John seem to have, then I would think it’s not that hard to believe such a lingering spirit could somehow enter a living human being. You have accepted that Olivia sensed a sort of lurking evil. What if it tried to enter Mr. Babington? You said that he looked and sounded unlike himself.”

Olivia nodded. “That is true. It was…eerie. It was Babington, and yet it wasn’t. Still…”

“I know,” Stephen said. “I cannot accept it, either.”

“Yet we can scarcely deny what our own senses have told us,” Olivia argued. “It is hard not to think that we have been drawn into this centuries-old struggle between a couple in love and her husband.”

“It makes no sense. And even if it were true, how are we to stop it?”

“I have one idea,” Olivia began tentatively. “The other time when I touched the casket, I—for want of a better word—
saw
Lady Alys and her husband. What if I were to hold the casket again? Maybe we could see more. Maybe we could find out what really happened and what we could do to stop this haunting.”

“No,” Stephen said quickly. “I won’t allow it. You remember what happened to you last time you held the casket. It made you ill. You fainted.”

“It was the shock,” Olivia argued. “I was not prepared for it, but this time I will be. I am sure it won’t affect me so badly. Please, we must try it.”

They argued the point back and forth for several minutes, with Great-uncle Bellard coming down on Olivia’s side. Stephen was unconvinced, however.

“You didn’t see what it did to her,” he pointed out to the older man. “I did. I don’t want to have her hurt again.”

“But it is my choice, isn’t it?” Olivia asked. “And you will be there to help me, should anything happen. I had a headache afterward, but that was all. I think that would be a small price to pay to find out what is going on.”

At that point, Rafe appeared in the doorway, looking a little uneasy. “Now the daughter is gone.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “I can’t find her. I looked in her room and then in Babington’s. A maid said she had been in there earlier, that Irina had told the maid to
leave and she would stay with the patient, but she’s gone now.”

“Damn. Well, I suppose we had better set up a full-scale hunt for her.”

“Stephen…” Olivia went over to him. “I think it’s even more important that we try our experiment. What if Madame Valenskaya is telling the truth? No matter how much we don’t want to believe in the idea of her daughter conjuring up some evil and setting it loose in the house, I think it is scarcely something we can ignore. Please, let me try.”

Reluctantly Stephen gave in.

Rafe and Great-uncle Bellard left to search for the missing Irene, and Stephen and Olivia made their way up the stairs to the bedroom leading to the secret room, where a footman still stood guard.

They stepped inside, and Olivia cast an uneasy look toward the wall where the secret door was now closed, indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. She did not want to step back into that room where Pamela had died.

Stephen, seeing the direction of her gaze, said, “Don’t worry. We won’t do it in there. I’ll bring the casket out here.”

“I am surprised you left it here,” Olivia replied, relieved that she would not have to go into the secret room. Even before Pamela had died in there, she had found it almost unbearable to enter it.

“I wasn’t sure what else to do with it. I expect that Pamela did not tell ‘Irina’ how to get into the room.
She would have wanted to keep the treasure all to herself. Besides, with the guard outside, no one could enter here. I can’t keep the footman on guard forever, of course. I presume I shall have to move the treasure down to the safe, which I obviously should have done much sooner than this.”

Olivia sat down beside the bed, and Stephen went over to the wall and opened the door into the inner room. He emerged a moment later, leaving the door into the room open. He walked over to where Olivia sat and set the golden box down on the bed.

The two of then looked at it for a moment; then Olivia stood up and put her hands on the box. Nothing happened. She stood that way for a moment, feeling slightly foolish.

“Perhaps if you touched one of the pieces inside…?” Stephen suggested.

“All right.” Olivia undid the clasp and opened the lid. She hesitated for a moment, then reached in and picked up the rosary.

As her fingers curled around it, a jolt ran through her, shocking her. Stephen saw her flinch, and he reached out instinctively, his hands curling over hers. He, too, felt the shock of sensation, the warmth that suddenly flowed into him.

They stood, hands locked together, suddenly engulfed in a world long dead.

S
tephen and Olivia smelled smoke and the scent of fresh blood; screams pierced their ears. It was as if a scene were playing out in front of them, and yet, strangely, they not only saw but also felt what the people before them felt.

Sir John and Lady Alys stood on a set of winding stairs. He was protectively below her, wielding his sword with ferocity against a small band of soldiers who were trying to push past him up the stairs. Behind him, Alys drew her dagger from its scabbard on her belt. Jewels winked in the hilt, but the blade was not decorative. She gripped it firmly, facing out, ready to jab at any man who tried to come at them from the side, where the steps were close to the ground.

Fear surged in her, along with the heated excitement of battle. She knew they had little chance. The enemy had gotten inside the bailey before they even knew they were besieged. Only treachery from inside
could have managed it. This was the advance guard. Soon the rest of the men would have dispatched Sir Raymond’s remaining soldiers and, unless distracted by the prospect of looting, would join the men here, and then they would swarm up the steps.

The only safety lay in the tower room upstairs. It was the last bulwark of defense, high above the rest of the great hall, reached only by a set of narrow, twisting stairs. At the top of the stairs, a heavy wooden door opened into the round tower room, and it could be shut and barred with a heavy plank.

One could hold out for some time in the tower room, protected by the stone walls and thick wood, but eventually the door would be breached and death would come pouring in or, if not, one would die a slower death of thirst and hunger. It was possible, of course, that one could provision the room and thereby last longer, if the door held, but there were no provisions there now. There had been no warning, no time to prepare. Alys had barely managed to make it to these stairs leading to the room, carrying a hastily packed sack of her goods; she had reached it only because John had come running to meet her as she emerged from her room and had dragged her with him to the stairs, laying out around him with his sword.

“Go on!” he growled at her now. “Get up to the room.”

“I cannot leave you!” How could she run to safety,
knowing that he stayed here below to perish under the enemy’s swords? “You must come with me.”

A soldier tried to come from the side of the stairs. There was no rail to the side low on the stairs here. It made it easier to defend, but it was also possible to put one’s hands on the stairs and try to swing up, which was what one of the enemy tried to do now. Alys jumped forward, bent down and stabbed her dagger into his hand. He fell back with a yowl of pain.

“My lady! Help!”

Alys looked out across the great hall. A woman was pelting toward the stairs, some distance in front of a pursuing soldier. She was dressed far better than a servant, and she was comely, as well, her hair a fall of raven-black. It was her husband’s mistress, Elwena, and she held a boy’s hand in hers as they ran with the speed of the terrified across the hallway.

“Help me, my lady! Please!”

Without thinking, Alys went down on her knees at the edge of the stairs, as low as she could get without impeding Sir John. Elwena reached the side of the stairs and lifted the child up. Alys caught him under the arms and swung him up onto the stairs, setting him back against the wall. Then she turned.

Elwena grabbed the stairs and tried to scramble up onto them, perilously close to John’s swinging sword. Alys reached down and grabbed her arm, pulling with all her might. The enemy soldier reached Elwena and grasped her by the belt, jerking her backward.

Behind them the little boy screeched with fear, “No! Mama! Mama!”

Elwena turned, a dagger in her hand, and struck swift as a snake, sinking the dagger into the break between the sleeve and tunic of the man’s chain mail. The tip sank into flesh to the bone, snapping off, and the soldier fell back with a roar of pain and rage. She turned and jumped at the stairs again, straining to lift herself up, her face contorted with fear. Alys lay flat on the stairs, almost beneath John’s feet, and grasped the woman’s belt as the soldier had done, straining to pull her up.

On the floor, several feet away, the wounded soldier staggered to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder. He bent and picked up the sword he had dropped, and with a cry of fury he flung it at Elwena, as she dangled above the ground. The sword caught her in the side, cutting into her, then clattered down to the floor. She shrieked with pain and would have fallen but for Alys’s grasp of her. Alys struggled to keep hold of her, letting out a groan of dismay as Elwena began to slide back.

With a bitter oath, Sir John struck with all his strength, slicing into the neck of the soldier in front of him. Blood spurted as John pulled back his sword and with his foot shoved hard against the dying man, who staggered backward, crashing into the men behind him, and they fell, stumbling on the stairs. The soldier on the outer edge slipped on the blood, and John encouraged him over the side with a swift kick
to the jaw. In the instant of peace this afforded him, he put his sword in his left hand and reached down to hook his hand in Elwena’s girdle and yank the woman up onto the steps. He turned just in time to dodge a blow from an enemy sword that clanged uselessly onto the stone. Switching his sword back into his right hand, he started to fight again with renewed fury.

“Mama! Mama!” The boy was still crying, and he flung himself on the woman, sobbing.

“’Tis all right, precious. Hush.” Elwena leaned back against the wall, her face gray.

“We must get you up the stairs,” Alys said, bending and putting her arm around the woman. “We are right beneath his feet. He needs more room to fight.”

Elwena nodded and pushed herself up with her hand as Alys lifted. They managed to stagger up a few steps before Elwena fell back to the ground. Having given John some breathing room, Alys knelt now beside the woman and examined her side. She was bleeding profusely. Alys dug into the sack she had dropped on the stairs as she had gone to help Elwena. She pulled out a linen shift and pressed it hard against Elwena’s side.

“’Tis the best I can do for now,” she told the other woman. “Mayhap ’twill stanch the blood.”

Elwena nodded, not wasting breath on words. She leaned against the wall, one arm around her young son. Alys looked at him with pity. He appeared to be no more than four or five years old. Even if he sur
vived this day, in all likelihood he would be an orphan, for if Elwena’s present wound did not kill her, the soldiers would when they breached the tower room.

Alys glanced back at Sir John. He was still holding off the soldiers, though he was slowly retreating upward. She murmured a prayer for him under her breath, then turned back to Sir Raymond’s mistress. “We must go up the stairs.

Elwena nodded. “Help me up.”

Again she managed to stand with Alys’s help. Alys sheathed her dagger and picked up her sack, curling her other arm around Elwena’s waist. Slowly they went up the steps, Elwena leaning against Alys, and the boy following behind them, keeping a death grip on his mother’s skirts. Every few steps they paused, and Elwena sagged against the stone wall for a moment. Then they started again.

The stairs seemed endless, and the sounds of battle were still a din in their ears. The stairs curved, and soon they could no longer see down to the bottom, where Sir John fought on. Alys’s heart ached at leaving him, yet she had to help the wounded woman to the room above them.

They reached the door at last and stumbled inside. The room was lit only by a cross-shaped window open to the outside air. It was little used and contained few creature comforts—dried rushes spread across the floor, a simple pallet for a bed, a small stool beside
it, and on the stool, a cheap candle in the form of a bowl a animal lard with a thick wick stuck in.

Alys helped Elwena over to the crude pallet and eased her onto it. She set down her sack and knelt beside the woman. Gently she pulled away the shift she had pressed against the other woman’s waist. The blood was, she saw, still flowing freely. The wound needed to be cleaned, she knew, but she had no water with her, and so she left the wound as it was, pressing the makeshift bandage back into place. Taking out a nightshift, she used her dagger to tear off a long strip from around the bottom, and this she used to wrap around Elwena’s waist, tightly binding the bandage to her.

Elwena lay half-propped up against the wall, panting from her exertions. “You helped me,” she said after a moment, her voice wondering.

“Yes, of course. You were in trouble.”

“You are his wife. And I—”

“I know.” Alys shrugged. “That does not change the fact that you were in trouble. I could scarcely stand by and watch them rape and kill you.”

“There are some as would,” Elwena told her.

“Perhaps. I am not one of them.”

Elwena looked at her oddly. “I was not kind to you. I strutted in front of you with my finery.”

“I know.” Alys paused, then added honestly, “I hold no grudge against you, Elwena. I am not jealous. I was only glad that the nights Sir Raymond went to
you, I did not have to endure his lust. I pitied you that you had to.”

Elwena lifted her chin proudly. “I don’t need pity. I was able to take anything he did, and I made a good life for me and for Guy.”

“I am sure you did the best you could for the boy,” Alys agreed candidly.

She got up and went to the door, sliding the bar up and opening the door to look out. The sounds of battle were growing closer. That could only mean that Sir John was still alive, and she offered up a small prayer of gratitude. After replacing the bar, she came back and squatted down beside Elwena. The woman’s son was sitting quietly by his mother’s head, one hand on her hair, patting it. His other thumb, she noticed, was firmly planted in his mouth, and his eyes had a haunted look. He knew, she thought. With a child’s instinct, he saw that his mother was in grave danger.

Alys glanced at the bandage tied around Elwena’s waist. The blood had soaked clear through it and was spreading out to stain the whole side of her dress, as well. She was mortally wounded, Alys knew; the only question was how long she would be able to hold out before she died.

Elwena opened her eyes and looked at her, and Alys started a little guiltily, as though Elwena would be able to guess what Alys had been thinking.

“Do you love him?” she asked, surprising Alys.

“Who?” Alys said, though she was certain Elwena did not refer to Sir Raymond.

“Sir John. The captain. There’s them as say you do.”

“Who says it?”

“He
said it once, when he was drinking.”

“Sir Raymond?” Alys asked, stunned by the other woman’s statement. “But he never—”

“He would not admit it to anyone. It would damage his pride too much. I am sure he didn’t mean to tell me, probably doesn’t even remember it. He will find some way to make you suffer without anyone knowing why.”

“I fear he will be too late,” Alys remarked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was not.”

Alys looked at Elwena sharply. “What do you mean?”

“The castle has been overrun. We will all die. And by chance it happens when Sir Raymond is not here.”

“No!” Alys said automatically. “It is his own! His home. And all the rest of the people…he could not…” Her voice trailed off as she considered. “To kill all these people—the soldiers, the servants—just to get his revenge on me? Even he could not be that evil.”

“They say he dances with the devil in the woods.”

Alys’s hand curled instinctively about the cross she wore on a chain around her throat. “You think he would kill even you?”

“You think he cares for me?” Elwena’s smile was bitter. “Because I give him pleasure? He gives me
things, yet he counts me no more than he would the loaf of bread he eats or the shoe he puts on his foot.”

“Wait.” Alys raised her hand to silence her and cocked her head, listening. “’Tis closer—the fighting.” She stood up and hurried to the door, leaning her head against it. Again she lifted off the bar and eased the door open.