shadow and lace (22 page)

Rowena's cry died on a hacking cough as icy air paralyzed her raw throat. One by one, the others lapsed into silence. The air itself seemed to be waiting. A muted click from the door echoed with the resonance of a bell. Rowena held her breath as an iron panel slid open, driven by the chubby fingers curled around its edge.

"Begone," came a petulant voice. "There is no one home."

The panel slammed shut.

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Rowena slumped against Little Freddie as bittersweet relief drained the remnants of her strength.

Irwin was the first to master his voice and his senses. "Uncle," he called. "Uncle, dear, 'tis your nephew and children come home. Do let us in, won't you, sir?" He mumbled in an aside to the rest of them, "Must not know 'tis us," then bellowed cheerfully, "hullo! Tis Irwin, sir. We are not beggars or robbers come to loot your castle. We are your kinfolk. Open up and let us warm ourselves at your fire."

Big Freddie stared at Irwin, his mouth hanging open.

"Mayhaps Papa does not realize…" Rowena said faintly.

"He realizes." A cold gray light burned in Little Freddie's eyes. "You try, Ro."

Rowena's first cry came out in a croak. She swallowed and tried again. "Papa, 'tis Rowena. We need your help. We have been hiding in the forests for over a week. But now we are home and ever so hungry and cold. I've fled Caerleon. I've come home, Papa. To Revelwood and to you. I beg you…" Her voice trailed into silence. Little Freddie's hand slipped into hers. Anger deepened the edge of her voice as she drew herself up straight and shouted, "Papa, open the door. We are exhausted and chilled to the bone. How long must we stand out here and beg for entrance to our own home? You must open the door. You must—"

Little Freddie tugged her hand. The icy wind bit at the tears wetting her cheeks.

With a click, the panel slid open. Papa's face appeared like a bright moon in a square sky. "Foolish child."

His words were all the more jarring for being spoken so softly. Rowena knew instinctively that he was referring to her. Her eyes widened. Papa had never once rebuked her.

Irwin started toward the moat, a grin curving his full lips. "My dearest Uncle, we've rescued Rowena from a ghastly fate and brought her home. Are you not pleased?"

"Get back!" Papa's spat words erased Irwin's grin. "Foolish children, all of you. Begone. Go as far away from Revelwood as you dare. We do not want you here. None of you."

Little Freddie's features hardened to a mask. "Tell me, Papa, was it a well-worn sack of gold that won your loyalty to the dark knight? Or mayhaps thirty pieces of silver?"

Papa sniffed. "You wound me, lad. Do you truly think no better of me than that?"

Little Freddie's sneer was answer enough.

"Twasn't gold or silver, was it, Papa?" Rowena cried. The wind sent her hair streaming across her face. Papa's face blurred and crumpled like a pudding in the rain.

"Not gold. Nor silver. But murder, Rowena. Murder in his eyes when he attacked me like the madman he is. He swore if he found you here, there would be no hope for any of us." Papa continued in more chiding tones. "By fleeing him, you have dishonored my good name."

Little Freddie muttered a word that would have done Marlys proud.

Papa's voice sank to a whine. "I beseech you, child. Save yourself and your kinfolk. Return to Sir Gareth on your knees. Beg for his mercy and forgiveness. Surely you can use your feminine wiles to win your way back into his heart and bed. Your papa cannot allow you to return to Revelwood in disgrace."

Rowena lifted her head. "I understand. If I go on alone, will you open your door to the boys?"

Irwin and Little Freddie broke into protest, but it was Big Freddie's baritone that silenced them all. "Nonsense. You'll go nowhere alone. I'll not be having it." Rowena stared at him and he ducked his head, his shy smile revealing a row of broken teeth.

When she turned back to the door, the panel had closed. All was silent within the castle. The gatekeeper was gone.

Rowena fought to keep the note of pleading from her voice. "Papa, we are starving. Can you not spare us some food to ease our journey?"

The panel slid open. Rowena ducked as four dark bulbs came sailing across the moat. A bruised turnip rolled past her feet and bounced into the moat. Irwin dove to his hands and knees, trying to save the other turnips from meeting a similar fate. The panel slammed shut.

Rowena sat down with legs crossed and chin propped in her hands. Out of the pale sunshine and borne on the airy wind came tiny flakes of ice that cut like daggers against her skin. She tilted her face upward and licked a snowflake from her cheek.

"Wonderful. Papa has forsaken me. I could be hanged for horse thievery. A madman is pursuing me. And now God sends us snow to brighten our journey."

Little Freddie knelt in front of her. "Papa forsook each one of us with his cry of pleasure when our seed left his loins."

She studied his face. Tiny cracks spread along the borders of his lips. His gray eyes were huge and eerie above the shadows etched in his fair skin.

"Perhaps Papa is right," she said. "Perhaps I should return to him. Throw myself on his mercy."

"From what I've heard of him, he has no mercy. Do you believe otherwise?"

Rowena's eyes darkened as she felt again the tender stroke of Gareth's fingers against her cheek. She had been a heartbeat away from surrendering herself to those hands when his cold words had stopped her.
Leave me be
. Could those same hands have used their diabolical expertise to end a child's life? She shivered at the memory of his caress. If Gareth ran her through, her pain would be over. His mercy might prolong it indefinitely.

" 'Tis what frightens me the most. I do not know."

"Then we go on." He offered her his hand and they rose in one motion.

"Where shall we go on to?" Irwin asked. Rowena flinched as his teeth crunched through the skin of a turnip.

Without wanting to, she remembered Dunnla's stew, steaming thick with beef and barley. The world wavered before her eyes as if seen through a haze of smoke. When Irwin offered her the turnip, she snapped a large bite out of it. Its bitterness was somehow heartening.

She tossed the turnip to Big Freddie.

"I've never had my own horse before," he said.

She lacked the heart to protest as he held the turnip in front of the horse's nose without even taking a bite of it. The sorrel swallowed it whole. Irwin's face fell. His hand darted to his sleeve to massage his other treasures.

"Horses are nice," Rowena said gently. "But we cannot eat them." She cuffed Irwin as he gave Big Freddie's horse a speculative look.

It was beginning to snow in earnest. Feathery flakes settled in Rowena's hair. Above them, the sun dissolved behind a veil of low-hanging clouds.

Rowena mustered a smile as she mounted her mare. "We shall go wherever we choose. The world is ours and we shall make our way in it as any travelers would do. What is hunger compared to the thrill of adventuring?"

"Damned inconvenient, I say." Irwin rolled onto his horse. "Pardon me, Ro. Shouldn't have sworn in front of you. Though I daresay you've heard worse living in that nest of noble vipers."

Rowena started to protest, then remembered she had heard much worse from Marlys's lips. She inclined her head in a regal nod. "I shall grant my forgiveness this time, Irwin."

"Frightfully benevolent of you," Little Freddie whispered with a smirk.

She nudged his pony with her foot. Of one accord, they circled the castle and started across the cold, gray expanse of the moor. Dead bracken crackled beneath the horses' hooves. The wind, unbroken by even the bones of trees, whipped flecks of snow into their faces. Rowena huddled deeper into her mantle, taking a perverse comfort in the bleakness of the landscape. There were no ancient trees waiting to spill a dark shadow armed with a silvery sword onto their heads. There were no dark blots of doubt on a barrenness that was a vast shadow in itself. In the most wintry, desolate season, the moor had once again become her friend.

Her optimism lasted until a nightfall which found them huddled behind a moldy hillock. They lay in the same heap they had slept in for years. Little Freddie's back fit to her stomach like a spoon. Rowena's leg was thrown over his waist. Little Freddie pillowed his head on Irwin's bulk and Big Freddie curled around their feet like a faithful hound.

The snow had stopped after laying a feeble blanket on the ground. The sky had cleared. The stars winked like cruel diamonds against a pelt of sable as impenetrable as Gareth's eyes.

"What ever shall become of us?" Rowena said to no one in particular.

Irwin burrowed into the dirt like a groundhog. "If we freeze to death, we shan't have to worry about it."

Little Freddie shrugged. " Tisn't much colder than Revelwood. 'Tis Rowena that frets me. She has grown accustomed to a warmer bed."

Irwin sniffed. "I daresay she has."

Rowena was too addled from hunger to retort. "We could become a traveling troupe of entertainers," she mused. "Wealthy wastrels like Sir Blaine tumble over one another to hurl them pouches of gold and silver. We could sing for our supper."

Little Freddie poked Irwin. "Can you sing?"

"Well… nay. I can play the trumpet and hum a little."

"How about you? Can you sing?"

Big Freddie shook his shaggy head.

He lifted an eyebrow at Rowena. "You?"

"I fear not, but perhaps I could learn to rope dance. And you could tumble. And Irwin…" her smooth brow furrowed, "Irwin could juggle. Aye, 'tis a fine thought. Refrain from eating the turnips, Irwin. You can juggle them."

"Can you juggle two turnips?" Little Freddie rolled to his back and cushioned his head on Irwin's belly. "The nobility are looking for oddities to amuse them. They tire of their own company."

"Nothing odd about us," Irwin mumbled.

Rowena giggled. "Shall we strap a bundle on your back, Little Freddie, and bill you as a hump-backed dwarf?"

Irwin flung himself on his side. "Can the two of you not freeze to death in silence and let a man sleep? Cease your musing. We have no coin, talent, or gross deformities to make such a venture worthwhile. If a dancing bear should happen by, you may awaken me."

Rowena looked at Little Freddie. They propped themselves up on their elbows.

Little Freddie's finger stabbed beneath Irwin's ribs, and Irwin lifted his head with a groan to find them grinning like idiots. He followed their gazes to their feet where Big Freddie had thrown out his limbs in a shambling stretch. His mouth fell open in a snore deeper than a growl.

Irwin frowned thoughtfully. "Can he dance?"

"As well as you can juggle, methinks," Rowena replied.

Rowena bent low over the mare's neck. A stone slammed into her shoulder. She cried out at the throb of pain and dug her heels into the horse's flanks. The ground unrolled beneath the mare's pounding hooves. The others were a blur of shadows racing beside her. Some distance from the village the shower of stones lessened, then ceased. Relieved, Rowena drew up the reins and the mare shuddered to a halt. She collapsed into its tangled mane, her breathing as ragged from fear as if she had outrun the bellowing mob on foot. A paroxysm of coughing wracked her chest.

Little Freddie gently drew her hair back and peered into her face. "Are you ill?"

She shook her head, summoning a feeble smile. "Winded."

Irwin's horse pranced in a circle, spurred by the restless bouncing of its rider. Irwin's cheeks were flushed an indignant red. "You would think we were murderers or child-stealers. 'Tis the third village we've been run out of in as many days. I had no inkling that people took their entertainment so seriously."

"Mayhaps the humbler art of begging would be a more profitable pursuit." Little Freddie put out a hand to stop Irwin's horse from trodding on his pony.

"Nonsense," Irwin snapped. "Not with our talents. I found it quite amusing when Rowena fell off the rope we had strung between the church and the stable."

Rowena looked at him askance. " 'Twas not supposed to be amusing. 'Twas supposed to be rope dancing. Even the village idiot knew that."

"But the way you hung there by your knees with your kirtle over your head…" Irwin chuckled at the memory. Rowena gave him a look that would have cut a diamond only to have its effect ruined by another fit of coughing.

Little Freddie slipped off his pony and unstrapped the bundle of rags from his back. He straightened with a moan. "Quarreling amongst ourselves won't put bread in our stomachs. We are as poor and hungry today as we were a month ago. We've had to beg or steal every crumb we've laid in our bellies. Not one ha'penny did we gain from that village today."

"Them folks had no coins. They were poor like us."

They all turned to look at Big Freddie. He scratched the top of his mangy head, forgetting he had two of them. A stuffed bear's head had been shoved back from his own lank hair. The stolen pelts trailing from it were bald in spots, thickly matted in others. Dark, sightless eyes stared back from the bear's head. Rowena blinked, forgetting for a moment which face belonged to her brother.