Perfect Shadows (32 page)

It was still and peaceful by the river, shrouded in the snow
that had been falling lightly for most of the day. The water was a black line,
thick as tar between the white banks, its chatter hushed in the cold. I leaned
against the orchard wall, watching the ragged clouds tear and drift away, to
reveal the hard glitter of the stars. The waning quarter moon was still hidden
in the horizon glow: it would be new for Twelfth Night. I had toyed with the
idea of accompanying Hal to the masque but had decided against. It would be
better to stay away, as Hal had let slip that Percy and Essex had been closeted
together with Cecil. Three men who hated me, and Essex asking eagerly and often
of Hal if I had been yet persuaded to join their revels—if that did not bode
some new plot against me I was Pope Joan. My musings were interrupted by a
sound behind me, not close, but not too far. A woman was laughing softly, and I
thought that I caught the sound of soft footfalls, as if she were dancing in
the snow. I made my way to the wild woodlot beyond the orchard.

She was there, dressed in a flowing cloak, and dancing in a
glade carpeted with drifted snow. She paused at the sight of me, poised as a
fawn for flight, but then she ran towards me. She stopped a few feet away and
did me a reverent courtesy. Her shadowy hair would be the color of honey in the
sunlight, I thought, and her black eyes would probably be brown. She was
delicately formed, her bones small and elegant. She dropped to her knees before
me, holding out her slender hands. “My Lord! I have come to write my name in
your book!” Her voice was high and sweet, like the birdsong that I had almost
forgotten in my long exile from the sun.

“Do you know me?” I asked gently.

“Oh yes! You are the Black Man of the wood! Your servant with
the cloven hoof said that you would meet me here, and here you are! I will sign
my name in your book, and you will give me powers and spells. You are my only
Lord and Sovereign, and I will do whatever unspeakable things you ask of me,
only let me write my name in your book!” She grasped at my cloak, her eyes lit
with the glow of unreason. She was mad.

“You have mistaken me, lady,” I said mildly, trying to
disentangle her fingers from my clothing, but she held tighter, kissing the
cloth. I raised her, not entirely gently. She stepped back and drew a pin from
her cloak. She stabbed it repeatedly into her finger until the blood flowed
freely, then made an elaborate show of signing an imagined book with her blood,
the fallen drops black against the trampled snow. She stepped away then, arched
her head back, and flung her cloak from her, to stand before me naked in the dim
snow-light. Her fingers strayed to her ripe breasts for a moment then she threw
herself down on the fallen cloak, spreading her legs and writhing lewdly.

“Take me, my Lord, take me now,” she moaned, foam starting to
fleck her lips as she fondled herself. I first drew back in disgust from the
madwoman, then stepped forward, dodging her attempts to ensnare me. As she sat
up to reach for me I clipped her neatly behind the ear with the edge of my
hand, and she crumpled. I wrapped her in her cloak and bore her back to the
kitchen, where I placed her before the fire. I would have to inform Sylvana of
our unwelcome guest, and set someone to finding out where she belonged.

I softly drew the door to the office open, and saw that Sylvana
had slumped into sleep before the fire, still in her human shape, but curled up
with an animal grace. Richard had crossed to the stable even as I had left the
house, and the lights in Rhys’s quarters showed that they were yet awake. Well,
they had much to speak of, and I would not disturb them. I had fetched my own
drink before now; the memory was abruptly clear, and I grinned wryly at the
thought. It had become a game, slipping down to my landlady’s cellar and back
into my lodging without being seen. She had said nothing, but I suspected the
subsequent increase in my rent went to cover my depredations. I went to the
cellar after wine, considering what I ought to do about the madwoman. I settled
on binding her securely, but not cruelly, with silken scarves before returning
to my office and the refractory ledgers. At least when the wench awoke she
would be unable to either hurt herself or run away.

After a time Sylvana stretched and yawned, sitting up and
smiling a little sheepishly. I told her of the problem I had left before the
kitchen fire, and she scurried off, only to return a few seconds later, a
disconcerted frown on her face. Wordlessly, I arose and followed her. There was
no one in the kitchen but ourselves, and the door stood open.

The madwoman had not freed herself, or if she had, she had taken
her bonds with her, but it was my thought that someone had taken her. I went
out to the stable, and found Rhys face down in the straw, so deeply asleep that
he could not be awakened. Richard, in a like case, had fallen across the small
hearth in Rhys’s cottage at the back of the stable. It was well for him that
his doublet was of sturdy English wool, for his right arm was so close to the
tiny fire that his sleeve was smoldering. I pulled him away from the fire,
dowsing the smoking cloth with a flagon of ale from the table. It had a
peculiar odor, which I suspected explained the unnatural sleepiness of my
household. I laid Richard on Rhys’s bed and returned to the kitchen where
Sylvana had fallen asleep again as she stood leaning against the wall, but she
woke immediately upon my return. I told her of my discoveries and we went back
to the house to find Jehan and Sylvie, sprawled together in the serving-man’s
big bed under the eaves; both drugged asleep. From there I went back into the
cellar, to investigate the adulterated tun of ale. It was almost empty, and
careful scrutiny revealed that the slats in the top had been tampered with. I
went back upstairs, but look as I might, I could find nothing missing but my
disagreeable guest. The late winter dawn was bleaching the eastern sky when I
threw myself across my bed and let the day-trance overtake me.

Percy smiled to himself, watching Sommers and the groom cross
the quad of the old Abbey to the solar, a writhing bundle athwart the groom’s
shoulders. He could see Sommer’s grin despite the dismal morning light; it had
gone well, then. Essex waited behind him, toasting the chill of the morning
ride out of his fingers. He turned to his guest, excusing himself. He would
have the wench brought here; it would never do to have his brother-in-law see
the interior of his study. “I think that you had better be seated, Robert,”
Percy said softly upon his return a few minutes later. Essex looked puzzled,
but complied, choosing a settle not far from the meager fire. After one or two
false starts Northumberland cleared his throat, saying abruptly “This is not
easy for me to say.”

“Obviously,” Essex retorted sourly. He did not much care for his
sister Dorothy’s miserly husband, and resented needing his help in the matter
of their common enemy, the foreign prince. Before replying Percy narrowed his
eyes until they looked like the chewed pits of olives.

“It seems that we have misjudged our foe. He is a greater
danger, a greater evil, than we had imagined,” he intoned, never taking those
murky eyes from his guest. “Do you remember meeting my little cousin Margaret
here last month?” he added in an apparent change of subject. Essex nodded,
somewhat confused, and Percy clapped his hands sharply. The door swung open,
and a groom deposited a large bundle before the fire, and left the room as
Newman Sommers entered. Essex stiffened. He despised the scholar; something
about him prickled the hairs on the back of his neck, raising his hackles as if
he were a hound. Then the bundle moved, claiming his attention.

It was Margaret, but not the quiet and demure girl that Robin
remembered. Her face was streaked with mud, her hair full of twigs and leaves,
but her eyes had undergone the greatest change. They were mad and calculating
at the same time. As she sat up the cloak fell from her naked shoulders, but
instead of being embarrassed, she smiled, leaning towards Robin and licking her
lips, raising her hands, her bound hands, he realized with a start, up to
caress her nipples.

“God’s Teeth,” he choked out through his rising gorge. “What has
happened to her?” Sommers squatted next to her, nearly unbalanced by his
crippled foot and leg. Margaret grasped his hand, placing it on her breast and
whimpered when he removed it.

“Now, Maudie, you must tell us what has happened to you,” he
spoke coaxingly, as to a child. She gazed uncomprehending for a moment, then
dropped her eyes to the fire. When she looked up she was smiling.

“I met him,” she whispered. “I met the Black Man in the forest.
I signed his book. Oh, he was beautiful, though he had but one eye. Did God put
his other eye out when He cast my Lord from heaven?”

“Perhaps. It was the one-eyed lord that tied you up?” Sommers
hinted.

“Oh yes. He tied me up, and he . . . we did such things! We did
such unspeakable things. I signed his book. I signed it in my blood.” She held
up a finger, stained and swollen.

“Did he tie you with these scarves?” the ugly man persisted,
loosening the bonds that held the girl’s wrists. She nodded dreamily, and he
held the scarf out to Essex. He recognized it: a length of black samite that
her majesty had given to the prince at his return to court after his “illness”.
Her hands free, Margaret made short work of the scarf binding her feet, and
when she was free she threw herself upon Essex, driving her tongue deep into
his mouth, and thrusting her small hands into his clothing in search of his
manhood. He pushed her away in disgust, back to Sommers, who caught her and
held her naked body against his side, letting her kiss and maul him.

“Take her away,” Northumberland snapped, and Sommers led her
from the room, his fingers as busy with her as hers were with him. “You see?
This Kryštof, if he is a prince, then he is a Prince of Hell, a vile conjurer,
using his powers to corrupt the innocent, and enlist them into the legions of
Satan. He must be denounced, and destroyed. You do agree?” Essex nodded,
feeling numb and sick. Something about the scene niggled at him, something that
he could not quite place. Grimly he rose and strode from the room, without a
word. He wanted out of that house, away from Percy and especially Sommers, whom
he could hear, even through the closed door, grunting out his foul lust on that
hapless young woman.

Ralegh sat in the window seat of his study, smoking and watching
the blue of the winter sky pale into the silver that presaged snow. There was a
disturbance in the courtyard, and Bess was at the chamber door even as he
leaned forward to look. “It is my lord Essex,” she breathed, and indeed he
could make out Essex dismounting. Sir Walter opened the casement to lean into
the biting air. “Come up, my lord!” he bellowed, his words seeming to hang in
the still air even as his breath did. Essex looked up and waved, then
disappeared under the arch of the door.

Ralegh turned to his wife, bidding her to meet his guest, and to
bespeak the servants for hot drink and more fuel for the fire. She smiled
uncertainly at him for a moment, then went without a word. She grew more
beautiful by the day, he reflected, and every day he loved her the more, never
regretting an atom of the trouble their love had brought him at the hands of
his jealous queen. He looked up from his thoughts to find Essex standing in the
doorway.

Minutes later they were seated, Essex with his long legs
stretched out to thaw his toes comfortably in the borrowed slippers while his
damp boots dried. He fingered the pot-bellied pewter cup he held, grateful for
the warmth of the mulled cider and mead that it held, but more than a little
contemptuous of his host. He would never have served a guest, especially a
rival, with such homely fare, he mused. But Ralegh did just as he pleased, and
it seemed that what pleased him was a gossip cup and Banbury cake toasted at
the fire. Sir Walter watched his guest begin to relax, and when the cake was
finished he refilled the cups from the flagon on the hearth and offered a pipe,
then settled back to listen, first with polite interest then growing horror as
Essex related his tale.

“I realized as I rode from that scene of abomination what had
struck me amiss with that account, Sir Walter. The blood was still running from
that mangled fingertip, yet Percy spoke as if the lass had been seduced or abducted
weeks ago. Hal has been much in the company of the prince, and has not spoken
of anything unholy, or even untoward in the man, yet someone corrupted that
young woman, and if not he, then who? I would see Kryštof brought low, it is
true, but not—not like that. It is monstrous! Monstrous!

“I would have you speak to him, to warn him. You have toiled
mightily these months past to bring Cecil and I into accord, and I would not be
in your debt. I know that this man is a friend of yours, and I fear that Cecil
will not be too particular in the evidence he sifts,” Essex added, rising from
his seat. “I will go now to Hal, and warn him. And, Sir Walter, there is
something amiss with that companion of Harry’s. He is like some fell, poisonous
beast, and I shuddered when he touched that wench, defiled and mad as she was,”
he finished, stamping his feet into his boots to emphasize his words. He turned
on the threshold, with the charming smile that had won him so much and yet
would cost him so dearly. “There was a time, Ralegh, when I thought that we
could be friends. I am sometimes sorry that it was not to be.” He was gone
before Ralegh, remembering those desperate hours at Cadiz, could reply. Sir
Walter looked at the sky, and, judging that the snow would hold off for a few
hours, called for his horse to be saddled. He would not ride to Chelsey, but to
visit Harry Percy.