Perfect Shadows (41 page)

Deacon jerked the door open and dragged the resisting prisoner
out into the passage, where two men waited to aid in the removal. There were a
score of witnesses, petitioners hoping to see Lord Robert, but they appeared
blind to the struggle before them, conversing in quiet voices as the young man
was dragged away, down into the dark and damp second cellars beneath Cecil’s
house, where he was thrust into an airless cell and left. The key turned in the
lock with the sound of a falling axe.

It was nearly a week later that Cecil made his way down to those
cellars to review the progress of this recalcitrant prisoner for himself. He
had been called out of the city for a few days, and unable to supervise the
interrogation. He had read the regular and unsatisfactory reports, but they had
not prepared him for the sight that met his eyes in the little torture chamber
that he preferred to call the questioning room. The young man was tied to the
wall, his broken and swollen hands raised above his head, and his back no more
than bloody strips of skin, flayed by the whip in Deacon’s hand. The blows
still fell with a wet, rhythmic sound. Deacon’s eyes were glazed, and his
breeches drooped around his knees. Cecil, his gorge rising, saw that the man
was fondling himself with his other hand. As his mouth opened to demand that
this iniquity cease, Deacon was suddenly plucked backward as though he were
pulled by a rope, and over the startled man’s shoulder Cecil saw the face of
the one-eyed Sybrian prince, wild and furious in the flickering light, his lips
twisted into an animal snarl. Cecil took an involuntary step back against the
wall at the sight, as the prince, with a swift and utterly effortless motion,
twisted Deacon’s head around entirely backwards on his thick neck, then let him
fall, kicking him out of the way as he went to Richard. He broke the manacles
holding the victim as if they were made of piecrust and caught the young man as
he fell, mercifully unconscious. The prince turned another inarticulate snarl
on Cecil where he cowered against the wall, before taking his burden and
vanishing up the stairs like a shadow.

When his breathing returned to normal, Cecil called for help.
The three answering grooms found him stooping over Deacon’s dead body, and he
rose at their approach. The corpse’s breeches were still tangled about its
knees. The tiny penis, scarcely bigger than a woman’s little finger, jutted
obscenely up from his hairless groin.

“He fell down the stairs,” Cecil snapped, fighting down his
nausea to answer the servants’ questions. The men looked doubtfully at the
stairway, eighteen feet away and through a door, but nodded when Cecil repeated
adamantly that the man had fallen down the stairs. He gave orders for the room
to be cleaned, and the equipment it held dismantled. He found the pages that
had been written while the prisoner had been yet able to talk, to answer the
questions put to him, and retired to his office to study them. He poured
himself a draught of wine, considered a moment, then doubled it, before
settling down to read.

The next evening, just after he called for the candles to be
lit, Cecil realized that he was not alone. He gave a convulsive start and
blinked at the long and jagged blot his pen had left on his page.

“I think, my lord Secretary, that we had better deal plainly
with one another,” Kryštof said, from his seat in the shadowy corner.

“Yes,” Cecil agreed, gathering his thoughts and facing his
uninvited guest. “I think we better had.” He considered a moment, then rapped
out, “What business is it that brings you, night after night, to Drury House?”

“The Earl of Southampton,” Kryštof answered carefully, “has a
very beautiful wife.” Cecil stifled a wild desire to laugh. Was this all it
truly amounted to? A bit of scandal and servant’s gossip? He shuffled through
the papers before him, fishing for the report of the bribed servant inside
Southampton’s establishment. He flipped the deposition to the top of the pile
and scanned it quickly, clucking to himself at the contents, a list of the
names of those closeted with the earls. Prince Kryštof’s name was notable by
its absence, though prominent enough upon the list of those seen entering. He
carefully folded the papers away, tucking them into a small brassbound chest,
and removing two or three large and much blotted sheets.

Cecil cleared his throat, wishing that the foreign prince would
bring the distasteful subject into the conversation, but he just sat, regarding
the little man with his glittering eye. Cecil cleared his throat again, and
took the plunge.

“My lord, the questioning of your secretary was never meant to
end so. He was to be shown the instruments, and only the boot was to be used,
as his hands were valuable to you—” he broke off as the man lunged from his
stool, his face a mask of wrath. Cecil snatched at the bell to summon the
footmen, but found that it rested in the prince’s hands, its brass gleaming
dully in the candlelight. He watched in horror as those long and slender
fingers twisted the heavy metal, wadding it as if it were paper, letting it fall
with a muffled thump to the carpeted floor. His own hands clutched the papers
he held and he made himself smooth them out on the table before continuing. “I
am sorry, your grace, and I do hope that the young man may recover. Deacon
should not have been allowed so free a hand, I see that now, of course. I did
not know that he was mad, and certain matters kept me from overseeing him as
thoroughly as I should.” He dragged his eyes from the papers before him to the
face of the prince, to find that the man had righted his stool and once again
sat across the table from him. He considered the face of his guest for a time
before continuing.

“Deacon died of a fall down the cellar steps that broke his
neck,” he stated finally. “This is the only copy of the transcript made of
Richard Bowen’s questioning, my lord, and I give it to you. He is a courageous
young man, perhaps foolishly so. He broke at last, and answered the questions,
but not before his mind had given way. The answers he made are meaningless; he
seemed to be remembering scenes from his childhood in Wales.” Cecil handed the
papers to Kryštof, who took the stained pages, and folded them away without
looking at the contents. Cecil’s thin cheeks burned as he remembered the man’s
disability, but the prince merely nodded, and left the room. The secretary sat
for a moment, considering whether to call his guest back, to receive the other
pages the chest held, the ‘confession’ that Percy had wrung from this same
Bowen that Twelfth Night several years ago. He made his decision and deftly
folded the papers away. One never knew when they might be needed, after all.

My face wet with tears, I gently laid Richard’s bandaged body on
the bed that Sylvana had made for him, knowing that there was no hope that the
boy would recover from this ordeal. If only we had known where he was, that it
was Cecil and not Percy who was holding the boy, we could have saved precious
days, and probably his life. If he had been my lover, or Rózsa’s, there would
have been a bond that would have led us to him, but there was nothing. He had
been racked at whiles, and the bones in his hands and feet had been broken,
splinters protruding through the mortifying flesh. I was surprised to see
Richard’s eyes fixed on me: I had not expected the boy to regain consciousness.

“Kit,” he whispered, using my fond name for the first time, “I
am afraid to die, but I don’t want to live a cripple. Help me, Kit, please,
help me.” I looked at him, startled, to see if he knew what he was asking.
Richard gave an almost imperceptible nod and closed his eyes.

“It may not work, Richard. It doesn’t always, and we may not
have the time. . . .”

“Please, Kit,” he repeated, and I gathered the broken body into my
arms, pressing my mouth to the rapid and thready pulse in the throat. Richard
relaxed as the pleasure welled in him, drowning the pain that had been his
world for far too long; I thought with regret of the love and joy that might
have been ours had he not been so needlessly afraid. I called him softly,
rousing him from his thoughts. I used my sharp canine teeth to open the
throbbing vein in my wrist. Like a woman feeding a child, I held the bleeding
wound to Richard’s fevered lips and bade him drink. Eyes closed, he kissed the
wound, then his lips parted, and he drew my dark, bittersweet blood into his
mouth, and I trembled against him with the intimacy of the act. Soon he fell
back, his pain much lessened, and he slept. I roused myself and wrapped a kerchief
around my wrist.

Geoffrey was waiting for me when I returned to Chelsey after my
visit to Cecil the following evening. Wordlessly he followed me to Richard’s
room. After I had taken away his pain the night before, Sylvana had set the
bones in the boy’s hands and feet, and he was resting easier for it, though he
had been much disturbed by the knowledge that he had broken under the torture,
fearful of what he may have let slip about vampires, and about the nature of
his own family. It was this that had prompted my visit to Cecil, and I had gone
fully prepared to kill the twisted little man if it proved necessary, although
given the inescapable repercussions of such an act, I was most relieved that it
had not. I gingerly settled on the edge of Richard’s bed, conscious that even
this slight shifting must hurt the torn places inside him, broken by the rack.

“Richard,” I said gently, “I have the transcript. Cecil said
that there was nothing to concern you. Whatever you may have told them, this is
what they heard.” Richard’s troubled gaze turned to comprehension and then to
quiet laughter as it traveled down the page, which reported that his brother
and sister wore wool, and recorded numerous apparent references to the seaweed
samphire. It was concluded that the captive’s mind had broken, and it was anger
at this failure of his art that prompted Deacon’s final vicious attack upon the
prisoner.

“W-w-wearing w-w-wool! Oh, God, and samphire,” Richard’s
stuttering laughter choked him, and I slipped an arm around his shoulders.
Geoffrey caught the papers as they fluttered to the floor, and added his deep
laugh to ours.

“The disbelief of the enlightened is always our greatest ally,”
he rumbled, added that he would meet me downstairs later, and left. Richard
raised a halting hand to my face, drawing me into a kiss. I found that the
pulse in the slender throat was somewhat stronger, though still rapid and
uneven. I left the lad sleeping after the exchange, and went to find Geoffrey.

I fumbled with the bandage at my wrist, and Geoffrey pushed my
hand aside, to tie it securely himself. I thanked him, and settled into the
chair before the fire. Eden rested on the floor between us, her head against
Geoffrey’s knee, and he absently caressed her hair. After a few minutes she spoke,
her words hardly more audible than the soft sound of the fire.

“He was always the favorite, the baby. I was five when he came,
and I never looked at a doll after that. It was little short of a miracle that
he was not spoiled, with all the attention that he got, especially after his
noble father noticed him. The village boys were prepared to take him down if he
started lording it, but he never did. Oh, he had his faults. He could be an
intolerable prig sometimes, and unable to understand anyone not living up to
his lofty ideals, as you know, my lord. Will he—survive?” She ended her ramble
abruptly, turning to look first at Geoffrey then at me.

“We cannot know that, Eden,” Geoffrey answered gently, and she
rose gracefully from the hearth. “I pray you join me later,” he added as she
left the room, then turned his attention on me, studying my face for a few
minutes before speaking again. “It is never an easy decision to make,
Christopher, to make this exchange. He begged your help, and it is not within
us to refuse such a plea. If he does not rise, you must take what comfort you
can in the fact that you did all you could do,” he paused for a moment, then
added softly, “but I think that he will.”

Rózsa waited impatiently in the little parlor for the Countess
of Southampton’s arrival. Kit had asked her to act as his emissary, bringing
his regrets to Libby, as he did not wish to leave the dying Richard’s side. She
turned her attention to the portrait over the mantel, a fine likeness of the
earl. She studied the fine-boned face with its frame of long hair, lightened in
the portrait to a more fashionable shade. The eyes followed one, and the artist
had caught the hint of wistfulness under the supercilious stare. A slight sound
behind her told that the lady had finally arrived. She was unprepared for the
beauty that greeted her, and for the wave of attraction and desire that
followed.

Libby extended her hand, and looked up through her dark lashes
at her visitor. With some surprise she saw that what she had taken for a slight
and pretty boy was in fact a woman dressed in men’s clothing. The shock
rendered her nearly speechless, and she spluttered, searching for a term of
address. Her guest turned a dazzling smile on her, and she felt more confused
than ever. The woman introduced herself as Prince Kryštof ’s cousin, Rózsa
Miklos, the Baroness Ramnicul, and Libby vaguely remembered seeing her at court
once or twice before her own banishment, though of course the baroness had not
been dressed as a boy then. Somehow she responded to the formalities, and the
expressions of regret that the prince could not attend upon her that evening,
then shocked herself, blurting out, “Why are you dressed like that?” Rózsa’s
eyes widened for a moment, then she laughed, the comradely laughter that draws
two strangers into friendship.