Perfect Shadows (27 page)

“Hence my rudeness, I fear,” Selby answered smoothly. “Having
heard that, I could not contain my curiosity at the clutter of paper and
volumes there. I do apologize. The play concerns an ancestor of yours, does it
not? It is excellent—”

“I will tell my cousin, the Baroness Ramnicul, so.”

“Ah, your cousin. That would be the woman you are keeping here,
then. I fear the all town believes her to be but your doxy—” He broke off,
raising his hand in reproof as I stood suddenly, color flaming across my face.
“Your grace, please! I did not say that I thought that, and indeed I am most
happy,
most
happy, to hear it is not so! I will do what I may to turn
such malice aside, I promise you, now that I know the truth. I am certain that
it is no more than the tittle-tattle of servants in any case. Please sit back
down, and let us talk.” I felt taut as a drawn bowstring and sank warily back
into my chair, trembling with suppressed rage.

“I will now to my business, my lord. I have heard that you are
thick with Sir Walter Ralegh, and that both he and Thomas Walsingham frequent
your house here. But now you are seen in the company of my little friend Roger,
and I am afraid that he does your reputation no good, no good at all. He has
told me—things,” he paused to lick his dry lips, “and I have heard things from
others, about your—tastes—your carnal tastes. We have much in common, my lord,
oh, very much.” He reached out his hand, puffy fingers crawling like slugs
across my hand, then reaching for my face. I jerked away, but Selby,
recognizing the emotion, clutched tighter, digging his nails into my flesh.”
Depend on it, your grace, I hold all the winning cards in this hand.”

“You want money I suppose, or you will—what?” I spat, gripping
the seat of my chair in an effort not to reach up and throttle the man. He
laughed softly, turning my maimed face to meet his eyes, dropping the other
hand to wrench open my half-buttoned doublet.

“Money? Yes, later perhaps I will want money, but first—you are
beautiful, my lord, so beautiful, and it would not be wise for you to refuse me
the use of your body, although it will certainly pleasure me all the more to
avail myself of you and you unwilling.

“I have learned the arts of coercion very well, my lord, the
arts of seduction having failed with age, and do not flatter yourself that you
are the first I have practiced upon. Now either I will have you, my sweeting,
or Master Topcliffe will! How do you think old Bess would respond if she found
that one of her favorites preferred boys? She is her father’s daughter, after
all, and sodomy is not a charge she will take lightly. You’d be for the Tower,
and not just you, I fear, but good Sir Walter and your pretty Tom as well. I
would see to that. Your foreign blood might save you, or it might not. Nothing
would save them.” His voice had dropped to a crooning whisper, his free hand
had opened my shirt, which I had not bothered to lace, and his pallid eyes took
in the burn scars on my bared chest as he drew his thick finger down the thin
redline, the track of Essex’s blade. His breath hissed out at the sight of the
brands. “Ah, I see that I will not be the first to teach you the pleasures to
be found in pain, and the delights of submission. Oh, we will have such sport
together, my sweet! Come now, surrender yourself to me, you know that you must,
that you want and need this as much as I.” His slavering breath was coming
faster, his eyes glazed.

“No.” I raised my hands, clamping relentless fingers about his
wrists, forcing his hands back, pushing the looming body away. Rising and
forcing the horrified man back into the chair he had just left, I stood looking
down, only half hearing the broken threats that bubbled from him in a
continuous stream. Crossing his wrists in front of him, I held them both
effortlessly with one hand, using the other to force his chin up, capturing and
holding his hate filled glare.

“How often have you played this game, my lord? How often have
you practiced your sport on some unwilling victim? For the last time now, that
I promise you!” My hand slipped into his hair, drawing his head back and
exposing the pulsing vein in his throat. Disgust welled in me as my teeth sank
into my victim and his sour blood filled my mouth. Soon his body relaxed
against me and I pulled away. “Now look at me, my lord, look only at me,” I
said, his blood still wet on my lips.

When I had finished with the brute I had Jehan take him to a
tavern near Whitehall. I then went to the kitchen and forced myself to swallow
a great deal of bread, which I promptly vomited up along with whatever remained
of Selby’s foul blood, as tainted as his soul.

Sir Harry Warren and Sir Edward Selby watched with some interest
as the big serving-man led Ned’s unresisting uncle through the crowded common
room, deposited him in a private parlor, paid the landlord with gold and then
vanished from the smoke filled room. Each had sold himself to the depraved old
man more than once, when the alternative had been a prison stay for debt, and
Ned still bore the scars. Harry was the more fortunate in that respect: the
aging lecher could not use his kinship and the threat of disinheritance to take
his resentment of his victim’s youth out on him. He reached a steadying hand
out to his friend. He had never found out what had been done to Ned the last
time he had sought his uncle’s help, and from the look on his friend’s face, he
didn’t want to.

“I’ll go, Ned, if you like,” he said softly, but Ned shook his
head. “Then I’ll come along.” Ned shrugged as they found their feet and
threaded their way to the little parlor. Lord Thomas was sitting against the wall;
bolt upright and staring at nothing. Ned spoke softly, then, and upon getting
no response, more loudly, then shook his uncle by the shoulder. For a moment
nothing happened, then the man swung around to face the two, his mouth opened
wide, showing the broken and blackened teeth, and a scream poured from him,
high pitched and metallic, going on and on. Harry had heard the like only once
before, when a dog at the bearpit had gotten in a lucky slash. The bear had
screamed like that, trampling its own guts into the earth trying to get to the
dogs who were literally devouring it alive. He slapped the man across the cheek
and the sound cut off, like snuffing a candle, only to be replaced by a worse
one: Selby giggled. He looked from one to the other, and giggled again, shoving
a finger into his mouth and biting down hard. Blood sprayed from his lips as he
leapt to his feet, jerked the outside door open and ran out into the night.

Harry and Ned stood stunned for a moment, then ran after him.
They followed him by the shouts of the bystanders, and arrived at the river’s
side in time to hear the splash as he threw himself into the water.

What seemed like hours later, Sir Thomas was lying in the frozen
mud of the riverside, the burly water-man who had rescued the old man standing
over him, awaiting his reward. Ned pushed his way through the gathering crowd
to kneel at his uncle’s side. He noted, with a curious detachment, that the
water streaming from the old man’s nose and mouth was freezing as soon as it
touched the ground, then realized with a start that his uncle yet lived and was
trying to speak. He leant down, placing his ear to the bloodless lips.
“Lovell,” the dying man whispered. “Lovell. Ch-chel—”and the rest was lost in a
frothing sigh as the life slipped from him.

Harry paced the solar, while Ned sat slumped in front of the
cheerful fire, numb and unseeing. Presently Harry sniffed the air and leaped to
pull his friend away from the fire; his boot-soles were beginning to smoke.
“Ned, are you mad? Those are your only unpatched boots, and you’re ruining
them!” Ned looked up at him without comprehension.

“He’s dead, Harry,” he said, for the fiftieth time, in a
monotone that made Harry grit his teeth with the effort it took to keep from
slapping him. “He’s dead,” he repeated, and Harry closed his eyes in
exasperation, snapping them open a moment later as he realized that they were
no longer alone.

“Who is dead?” a pleasant voice softly asked and Harry turned to
face the Earl of Southampton, still in his night-robe and cap. He sauntered
over to the fire. “Gentlemen, you wished to see me?” Ned nodded dumbly and
Harry gave an exasperated snort. He was going to have to do the talking, and he
hated it—the man was no kin of his, thank God. He took a breath and began, ignoring
the other two men who silently entered.

“Lord Thomas Selby is dead, my lord. He met with an accident
last night.” Slowly and with much hesitation, ignoring the outcry from Almsbury
near the door, he told what the two had seen the night before, describing the
serving-man in some detail at Southampton’s prompting. When asked about the
man’s dying words, he could only shake his head and motion to his friend.

“L-lovell, in Chelsey. He said L-lovell, in Chelsey,” Ned
whispered, after much coaxing.

“You are quite certain that he said Chelsey,” Southampton asked
sharply, and Ned nodded. Hal turned to ask Almsbury to care for his friends,
but changed his mind. Roger had gone ashy pale, and looked likely to faint.
What had come over the fool?

It was barely dusk as Southampton slung himself from his horse
with a snarl and bolted for the manor house door. He had come to warn the
Prince Kryštof of Selby’s death and the use to which Essex had meant to put it,
a return for the warning he had been given about Cecil. He had lost time
extracting a promise from Robin to do nothing until his return, and he put but
little faith in it, in any case; Robin’s sense of honor was often a shifty
thing, focused entirely on what was best for Robin. He had not counted on
Almsbury getting here first, though if the spavined hired hacks standing and
shivering in the courtyard were any indication, he certainly had.

Southampton motioned to one of his retainers to see to the
horses, all of the horses, as none of the household servants were about, and
the other two to follow him. He shoved the door open, and his gut twisted at
the sight that greeted him. A big man, the servant who had taken Selby to the
inn by the description, lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, bleeding
profusely from a head wound. A little dark-haired beauty was crumpled at the
foot of the far wall, a bloodstain marking her point of impact and her progress
to the floor. There were muffled sounds issuing from a nearby chest, which one
of his men went to investigate, and more alarming sounds from the second floor.
He took the stairs two at a time, and followed the noises to a room at the far
end of the floor.

The prince had been hauled naked from his bed by two of Roger’s
men, and held upright with his arms twisted behind him, his head lolling as if
he still slept, or had passed out from the punishment inflicted on him by
Almsbury’s third man. He evidently had become bored with using his fists, and
had snatched up a small log from the store by the fireplace, using it to systematically
club the unconscious man, covering that milky skin with livid bruises. Roger
watched, giggling hysterically, so close that drops of the tortured man’s blood
sprayed him with every blow. He turned his vacant gaze to the door as
Southampton threw himself into the room.

At that moment the prince raised his head as if awaking, and
then, so swiftly that Southampton could not see how it happened, brought the
two that had held him around before him. Somehow, he was holding them now, and
in a dreamlike, fluid motion he smashed their skulls together. There was a
dull, wet, popping sound, and he let them fall. Southampton pulled Roger to one
side as the erstwhile victim reached for his third attacker, who stood staring
stupidly at the limp forms of his companions. Without seeming to be aware of
what he was doing, the prince snapped the man’s neck in a single effortless
movement, dropping him to the floor with the others. The sudden weight in his
hands told Southampton that Roger had fainted, and he set him carefully against
the wall before turning to the dazed man before him. He was sweating with the
fear that he would be killed with that same nightmarish ease, before he could
make it understood that he was not part of the assault.

I woke from the day-trance to explosions of pain, just as
Southampton pulled Roger away from me. I summarily dealt with the servants, but
when I looked around there was only. . . .

“My lord? Hal?” I mumbled through bleeding lips; more than one
blow had found my face. Southampton moved swiftly then, though he had seemed
frozen with fear. He eased me back onto the bed, then smoothed my hair back
from my marred face, and startled. I realized that he was seeing me for the
first time without my eye-patch. I resisted the impulse to turn my head away
and watched him as he looked at the thick puckered scar that disfigured my
eyelid, and the almost invisible stitches of silk, buried in the thick fringe
of my lashes, that caught the lids together.

“Kit? Kit!” a voice called from below.” What the devil is going
on here?” Southampton sent a questioning look at me. I smiled, or grimaced, it
was hard to say.

“It’s a jest of Sir Thomas’s,” I replied to the unspoken
question. “He says that I put him in mind of a friend of his that died. I do
not mind, and it is also a fond name for Kryštof.” I sat up sharply as a
thought struck me. “Jehan and Sylvie—they must be—they couldn’t have gotten to
me, otherwise,” I struggled to stand, and Southampton got an arm around me,
keeping me from slumping to the floor.