Rhiannon (41 page)

“And he fell upon seven sharp knives?” Jonah boomed.

Roderick pressed his sleeve to his mouth, and Jonah turned to Frederique.

“Let's hear
your
version,” Jonah commanded. “And if you value your life, you will not again insult me with the phrase ‘I can explain.' I seek confession only, as there can be no explanation under heaven for such a vile thing.”

Frederique squinted and chewed his lip, then bowed. “Uh, we were riding really fast, see? And Leonard slammed into the fellow in the dark, like he ofttimes does collide with those who will not yield. Pow! The fellow died, so Leo made us stab him.”

Rhia swallowed down bile at this flat answer, but Jonah sadly nodded.

“This has the ring of truth,” he murmured, taking a small step over so that he now stood glowering down at the central squire.

Leonard raised his own hot and angry eyes to meet Jonah's. The sweated curls of his yellow hair fell back so that Rhia could see his jaw-bones were set hard as well, and he ground his teeth. When Jonah did not speak, Leonard put a foot upon the floor to stand, and Jonah did not stop him. The two presently stood eye-to-eye, facing each other in silence so fraught, Rhia thought the air between them must ignite and burn them all.

After some moments, Jonah said, quietly and coldly, “Bow your head.”

Leonard smiled a small, snide smile, then bowed his head, though there was no respect in this token stance. His every look and movement held outrage and scorn—she could even
hear
it in the hard breaths he breathed.

Jonah shifted the sword to his nether hand, then slowly reached for the end of Aleron's blue scarf and began unwinding it inch by inch from Leonard's bowed neck.

“After you'd killed him, why take his scarf?” Jonah asked, his voice little more than a ragged whisper. “Your father is rich enough to buy you your own colors. So why?”

Leonard snickered. “Why
not
?” he murmured coldly. And then, he dared to raise his head so he looked eye-to-eye with Jonah again. “I have now had time to untangle this thing in my mind, though at first you gave me a shock, I'll admit it. I have seen Prince William Aethling at court, and you bear a striking resemblance. But the prince is dead. And so you are either his ghost or an impersonator. I think impersonator, given the trickery we've already witnessed this night. But if you
are
indeed his spirit, I'd say to you that you are no better than I, sir. Yes, I rode too fast the night of your squire's death. Yet all in the realm know of
your
enormous folly. If I was selfish, how much more were you, to lose so many at the price of showing off with a drunken party and a fast race upon the waters? You
killed
a boatload of your friends with your recklessness, have you
forgot
?”

Rhia heard herself gasp, and felt Thaddeus's arm go stiff. Indeed, Roderick made a whimper and Frederique put his long and moony-eyed face into his hands. All despaired of what was to come, and braced themselves for Jonah's final, violent response.

Jonah swayed where he stood and his breath came in a fast pant. A sheen of sweat had broken out upon him, and his eyes bored even harder into Leonard's own until Leonard dropped his gaze, overcome with the intensity.

Jonah slowly wound Aleron's scarf around the hilt of the sword, then took a firm two-handed grip upon that hilt. His eyes were glazed so that Rhia wondered if he even knew what he was doing as he raised the weapon above his head.

Thaddeus jumped to his feet, but could find no way to intervene. Rhiannon looked down at her lap, weeping and praying a single word—:
No, no, no!

“I would give my very soul for a second chance,” Jonah whispered. “Yet
you
already kill again since my friend's recent death, just from blind selfishness! How
many
chances have you been granted to show repentance, and how many have you
squandered
thus?”

Panting and shaking, he stood poised to bring down the sword upon Leonard's head. It seemed to Rhia an eternity crawled by as he prepared that fatal strike. Most others in the room now wept, and had turned their faces from the bloodbath to come. Leonard could do naught but close his eyes and wait for his deathblow to fall.

Then Thaddeus spoke in a clear, bell-like voice. “Second chances come in many forms, good friend. A chance to show mercy is surely one of them, else why did Christ advise to turn the other cheek?”

Jonah glanced toward Thaddeus, and Rhia held her breath and changed her prayer to
please, please, please
as she frantically tapped Mam's cross against her chin.

Though Jonah instantly focused again on his revenge, raising the sword a bit higher and gritting his teeth, Rhia saw the white fury gradually retreating from his face as a tide leaves the beach. Finally his sharp features were shed of that completely, and assumed instead an expression of sad wonderment, as though now in Leonard he inspected a monstrous fish with a murderous nature, hardly man at all.

Jonah finally stepped backward and brought the sword down with all his strength upon the floor, grunting with the effort. It made a bright sound when the tip sparked upon the stone, but Aleron's soft scarf stopped its further clatter when he let it drop completely from his hands.

“I pity you, Leonard,” he muttered as he turned his back and strode to the door. He jerked it open and stepped outside. The wailing storm then took the occasion to elbow its way inside, like a nervy guest.

All was instantly chaos. The squires found their feet and Leonard and Frederick rushed for their swords. The others in the room bundled against the gale and moved closer together, wondering what would happen next. Thaddeus pulled Rhia behind him, as it was unclear if there would be more swordplay. It seemed likely the three would simply take to their heels, but then again, they might first seek to silence all who had heard them confess to causing Aleron's death, and to its subsequent concealment.

Indeed, when he'd retrieved his sword, Leonard turned to run wild eyes across the group of fearful witnesses huddled in the shadows. He gripped the hilt of his weapon, set his teeth, and half turned toward them, but Roderick caught his arm.

“Leo, we
must
get out of this wretched place!” he urged.

Leonard snarled, “Let
go
of me and leave me to my work, you spineless snitch! You
bragged
that you have never killed, yet you did not bother to add that it's because you faint at the sight of blood and
I
must do the dirty work on your behalf and lazy Fred's! Unhand me, or you'll regret it, Rod, I swear!”

“Leo, let's just
go
!” Roderick screamed, pulling him along against the wind and toward the door. “My father will stitch this up when we may reach him, but don't make it more a mess for him than it presently lies! He grows much
weary
of this sort of trouble!”

“Frederique?” Rhia heard Maddy whimper.

But Frederique was well gone, the first of the three to scramble.

“Gramp!” Rhia cried, for indeed that perturbed groshawke had flown in on the wind at this first chance, squeezing just beneath the stone top sill of the oaken door and above the heads of the two quarreling squires. He was flapping his wings with much ado and upset, insulted at his perch being shifted by the eery light and
further
insulted that all these had taken advantage of his absence to sneak inside the place.

Leo flinched and looked upward, unnerved at Gramp's theatrical behavior. In fact, Gramp may well have been the factor that tilted Leo toward leaving the witnesses unkilled and yielding to Roderick's hysterical urgings. He was still peering uneasily at the rafters when he finally gave up his plan and fled with Roderick from the place.

The four inside hastened to watch from the windows.

“Jonah left to bring the reeve,” Thaddeus said in a rush. “I hope Almund's arrived.”

The wind and rain swirled everywhere, yet they could see the three squires met up in front of the church, arguing with many wide and angry gestures about where the path might start that would take them down to safety. And then three others approached along the very path the squires sought—Jonah between Almund and Holt. They carried no swords, but held the large fighting sticks known along the frontier to pack quite a wallop.

Those three halted and stood glowering in the rain. Almund called, “In the name of King Henry, you three stand accused by your own confession of manslaughter and complicity, and are placed under arrest by my authority as reeve.”

Rhia could see from the haughty way they stood that the squires had no intention of submitting.

“No frontier reeve can arrest the earl's own son and his retinue!” Leonard called. “Better luck next time, dunderheads! I compliment the middle yokel on his acting as he is a ringer for Prince William and
nearly
took me in. In fact, only his cowardice in sparing my life showed him to be an actor, not our hotheaded dead prince. Now, you must
part
for us immediately!” He drew his sword and Frederick drew his.

Within the church, Thaddeus sadly murmured, “What Leonard's said may be true and the reeve lacks the authority we'd thought he'd have in this. Who can say for sure, given the unsettled nature of the law these days.”

Almund raised his stick to a defensive position and the others did likewise. They would not yield the path but would fight it out, though Rhia thought sticks could surely not prevail against blades. She put her head in her hands.

But Beornia grabbed her shoulder. “Look! There, at the edge of the woods!”

Rhia squinted and saw a line of folk coming from the trees! They were hooded and masked, and clacked upon their clacking bowls so that the closer they walked, the louder became the bone-rattle of their freakish advance.

The squires by then had also taken notice of this army of the ragged dead. Leonard stood speechless, his brash talk dried up at the sight and his sword dropped to his side.

“The gang of three at their left blocking the pathway down, the lepers at their front blocking escape through the wood,” Thaddeus observed quietly. “We are at their backs. Yet methinks they have
most
to fear, if they knew it, from trying an escape to the right!”

Rhia looked that way and saw Mam, Granna, and Daisy approaching their fastest. Granna brandished the large oaken paddle she used for the bread, and Daisy had her pet in its sling and seemed ready to sacrifice her for catapult against the enemy if need be.

Without knowing what she was doing, Rhia ran through the door. She would join her kin! They offered flimsy resistance, and if the squires were smart they'd charge that way. She would be
with
them! Her kin—
hers!

Thaddeus grabbed round her waist and hoisted her back, and they might have had a battle about it if just then Maddy hadn't let out a squeal.

“May all God's angels preserve and keep us!” she yelped. “It's most certainly the Queen of the May, come from the faery realm!”

Beornia Gatt for once stood openmouthed and gaping. “It
is,
” she breathed.

The lepers had parted their line in the middle so that Ingrid, seated upon Charlemagne, could slowly advance from concealment in the woods. The glowing horse and rider seemed an enchant that might dissolve at any moment, made up of the moonlight and wispy curls of mist.

Rhia's breath came fast as she watched Ingrid walk Charlemagne nearer to the flabbergasted squires. The girl dismounted lightly as a snowflake, but not until she and Aleron's steed were the mere length of their shadows from the three.

Ingrid's eyes stayed fast on Leonard, though she uttered no word and made no further movement. Charlemagne nuzzled her shoulder and she bent her head to his muzzle.

Then Leonard suddenly lunged forward to grab the reins that hung lightly in Ingrid's hand. He swung himself up to sit upon Charlemagne's back, and the steed whinnied and circled in a tight little dance but offered no challenge nor resistance to Leonard's sit.

“This place, this land of phantoms and freakish weathers, I
leave
it to you!” he cried down to all of them. “Fred, Roderick—you two may better slip this pack alone. As you've so graciously pointed out to them, 'twas
I
who did the dirty deed, and as usual, you barely helped. When I reach the manor house,
I'll
send help
your
way,
if
I decide I've the energy and nerves for it, that is!”

With a bitter laugh, he dug his heels into Charlemagne's sides, then spotted the pathway down and turned him toward it, veering wide around the three who stood blocking that route. They gave, chase, but he quickly far outdistanced them. Then, seeing they'd given up, he pulled the reins to correct his veer. Those watching saw the steed ignore this direction. Instead, with a rear of his hooves and a brave toss of his fine head, Charlemagne proceeded to run at a full gallop straight through the orchard, ignoring Leo's pull and proceeding in a perfect line toward the bluff's rim.

Rhia knew they galloped too fast to stop at the edge or to make the turn.

Indeed, Rhiannon and the others all heard the triumphant whinny Aleron's steed gave to the wind when he took his leap over the edge.

May Day was but ten days gone, and already the trees were so thickly leafed that one might not catch so much as a glimpse of the forest's ancient contents. Beautiful Clodaghcombe would now hide her face behind green hands until the breathy wind of September notched her deep canopy and let snoopers have another peep at her wonders—her rood marks, her standing rocks and faery circles, her enchanted caves. But what
good
was that peep, really? Even when winter had completely bared the trees, you might look at it all, take in every sacred stone, but no matter how you tried, you could
not
see the layers of mystery and meaning that dwelt deep inside those ancient things. So truly, you saw nothing, and you
knew
nothing!