shadow and lace (35 page)

Rowena and Blaine threaded through the dancers, hand in hand, moving toward the arch of the stairway.

Fordyce thumped the chalice down. Wine sloshed over its rim and Gareth thought about communion for the first time in years.

"My Althea didn't have Rowena's spunk though. Her infernal delicacy prevented me from cherishing her as I might have."

"Althea?" Gareth echoed stupidly as his precious plans cartwheeled and came crashing down before his eyes.

Blaine drew Rowena into the shadows below the stairs. They seemed to be arguing. Rowena glanced back at the table, an unreadable plea in her eyes.

Fordyce rambled on. "Aye, my darling wife was sickly from the beginning. There were sacrifices to make. I kept her out of drafts and encouraged her to always pull her washtub into the sunlight. I gave her a few months respite between sons and resolved to seek out others to relieve those baser needs a man is prey to."

Gareth felt as if he were going to be sick.

"Now my Rowena has never had a sickly day in her life. I daresay she could bear the attentions of even the randiest knight." He nudged Gareth with a leering wink.

Rowena's slender wrists crossed behind Blaine's neck as she pulled him down to her kiss. Gareth stood, shoving his chair back with enough force to topple it.

Seeing Gareth start forward, Mortimer brought his tune to a crashing end. The drummers lapsed into silence. The dancers stumbled to an awkward halt.

The minstrel inclined his head, his limp hair gleaming in the torchlight. With delicacy and grace, his long fingers stroked the taut strings, coaxing forth the first haunting notes of a ballad they had heard only once before.

Gareth froze in his tracks. Tossing back his long hair, Mortimer sent his voice soaring in a sweet tenor unblemished by dissipation, plaintive with an innocence he had lost when only a boy at the hands of his father's most trusted knight:

The fair Elayne Unfairly slain…

Even the flames dancing on the hearth seemed to quail before the melody. Shadows flickered on the walls, tightening throats with their sudden proximity. Mortimer had lost his audience. All eyes were riveted on the tall, dark man in their midst.

Her faithless hand Stilled by a name
. ..

Gareth heard a metallic thump behind him. Wine splashed around his ankles like blood. He turned. Lindsey Fordyce's face had gone deathly pale as the lies he had told so often and so well that he had come to believe them fell away like scales. His throat worked, but only a meaningless moan came out.

A vicious song of triumph strummed through Gareth's blood. He met Rowena's stricken gaze across the hall and felt a brief moment of regret. But even that could not dim a burst of elation so intense it nearly blinded him.

He turned away from Lindsey Fordyce. There would be time enough for truth between them. He hid his smile behind a sneer and put a hand on his sword hilt. He had one more performance to make as the Dark Lord of Caerleon. After tonight, he would leave them to find a new player for their petty dramas.

With a snarl that would have struck terror in the staunchest of men, he shouldered his way through the dancers, coldly shoving them out of the way. Mortimer continued singing as if oblivious to the thundering cloud about to descend on his head. A dark-thatched squire threw himself in front of Mortimer, but Gareth pushed past him as heedlessly as if he had been a flea.

His fist closed around the strings of the lute. A last discordant note trembled in the air before the minstrel's song died to a silence so palpable that Gareth's harsh breathing was audible to everyone in the hall. Gareth snatched the lute. He lifted it above his head as if to smash it, saw Mortimer's imperceptible wince and hurled it to the squire behind him. One fist caught in Mortimer's tunic, driving the slender man back until he slammed against the wall. His legs twitched helplessly.

"You fool! Did you not heed my warning the last time I heard that obscenity of a ballad pass your lips?"

Mortimer's attempt to shrug looked as if it were breaking his bony neck. " 'Twas a pretty tune, milord. My memory failed me," he rasped.

"I warned you that your life would fail you if that melody ever fell from the strings of your lute again."

"The people, sir. They hunger for new tunes. 'Tis my duty to satisfy them."

The crowd gasped and took a step backward as Gareth dropped Mortimer and spun around. He hefted his sword. "I shall satisfy with my blade any man who requested such a song. Does any man dare to step forward?"

The broad blade shimmered in the torchlight. No one even dared to scratch their nose. Gareth turned back to find Mortimer crawling quietly toward the door.

He kicked him in the rump. "Flee, you knave and sing no more in my presence or any other this night. Another note from you will be your last."

Gareth fought an insane desire to burst into laughter as Mortimer dropped his head between his legs and winked at him. The minstrel's silk purse bulged with Gareth's gold as reward for his performance.

Gareth sheathed his sword and dusted off his hands as if contact with Mortimer's quivering flesh had dirtied them.

A magical path opened before him as he made his way back toward the table. For once, the sly looks of mingled excitement and condemnation amused instead of angered him. He would be free of them soon enough, leaving them with the shame of their lifelong mistake. Perhaps Mortimer would even compose a charming ballad about it. He smiled without realizing it.

The smile faded as the path before his table cleared. The table was empty. The coif lay trampled among the rushes. Lindsey Fordyce was gone.

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Dragging Papa was like dragging a water-logged walrus. His squat body seemed to have gone boneless. It had taken all of Rowena's strength to tug him out of his chair, to make him understand it was imperative that they flee while Gareth was diverted. He still did not seem to comprehend her hissed pleas or the frantic desperation that drove her.

She had believed she could cast her father upon Gareth's mercy without a qualm of conscience. But when his arms had encircled her with such pathetic eagerness, she had realized that despite his failings, he was still her papa. She could no more bear to see harm come to him than she could bear knowing it was the man she loved who had inflicted that harm.

She had thought to distract Gareth by goading him to jealousy and turning his wrath toward her. But her plan had failed miserably. When Mortimer had started to sing that accursed ballad, Gareth's thoughts had turned toward the past instead of toward a future they might now never share.

They staggered through the courtyard past a circle of kneeling squires. Dice rattled like bones on the cobblestones. Her father went sprawling.

"If he can't stay up now, I daresay you'll not get him up later," called a pock-marked squire.

"Take me instead," cried a weasel-faced boy who couldn't have been much older than Little Freddie. "I am always up."

They cackled, their faces twisted into goblin masks by the flickering torchlight. Rowena caught the back of her father's tunic and pulled, feeling every muscle in her back stretch like lute wires ready to snap. The squires shrugged and went back to their game. She wished for the comforting sight of Marlys in the group. How her sturdy strength would help! She shoved Papa forward. A narrow thread of spittle trailed from his lips as he gibbered in a ceaseless stream. Rowena had to fight the urge to box his ears.

Mumbling something about "sweet hospitality," he reeled to his feet. Their momentum carried them off the flagstones and into the dew-slick grass. The cozy lights of the stable winked below.

Rowena hooked her hands under his arms. "Come, Papa. We haven't far to go."

"But I have come too far already," he mumbled.

Using her knees to support his weight, she steered him toward the stable. The stable door had been thrown wide to usher in the warm spring wind. Big Freddie and Little Freddie looked up from their own dice in surprise as Rowena and Papa burst inside. The horses nickered a welcome. The comforting smells of fresh, sweet hay and musty horses brought tears to Rowena's eyes. She swayed. Big Freddie stepped forward and caught her in his arms. She buried her face in the burlap of his tunic, his honest sweat as sweet a fragrance as any perfume. Papa cursed as he stumbled into a pile of manure.

She clutched at Big Freddie's tunic. "A horse. We must have a horse. I cannot take time to explain, but Papa must have a horse."

Big Freddie scratched his head. "He came on no horse."

Rowena shook him, helpless to stem her rising hysteria. " 'Tis of no import if he came on an elephant. I need a horse now."

Little Freddie caught her elbow. "Gareth?"

She nodded mutely and blessed the shining beacon of his mind as he ran from stall to stall, throwing open doors.

"There is no stallion here that Folio could not catch with Gareth astride him," he finally pronounced.

Rowena paused for a moment. "Then give me Folio."

Big Freddie blanched. "I cannot be giving away my master's horse."

"Would you rather see your father struck dead before your eyes?" she asked. A hard glaze descended over Little Freddie's face. "I know he is no prize. But he is our father. I cannot watch Gareth kill him in cold blood. It would kill me—" She stumbled to a halt.

Little Freddie flung open the last door. Powerful white forelegs pawed at the hay. The other horses milled nervously in their stalls. Throwing an exasperated look between the two of them, Big Freddie slipped a bridle studded with emeralds and onyx off a peg and tightened it over Folio's graceful neck.

Little Freddie lay a saddle across the horse's back with a tight smile. "There is a practical consideration, you know. Gareth will be spared killing Papa. Folio will probably throw and trample him before he can get down the drawbridge. The stallion does not know Papa."

Rowena's jaw tightened. "He knows me."

Little Freddie's hand froze on the saddle's pommel. "You are going with him?"

"Only until I can get him to a place where he will be safe. Then I shall bring Folio and return."

"To what? Boiling oil? The gibbet?"

Rowena lowered her eyes. "I shan't be afraid of Gareth. I have to believe he will not hurt me."

"I pray your faith is not misplaced."

"As do I." Rowena took the bridle with a firm hand.

Folio pranced out of the stall, casting a shadow on the wall that dwarfed them. Rowena peered around, perplexed. Papa had disappeared. Big Freddie found him curled in an empty grain bin, snoring happily. He threw Papa over his shoulder while Rowena prepared to mount Folio.

Bracing one hand on Little Freddie's bony shoulder, Rowena hefted herself astride the stallion. She smiled weakly and tangled her hands in Folio's silky mane, struggling to hide from her brothers a fear bordering on terror. Free of Gareth's mastery Folio was a wild-eyed and quivering creature, like some monstrous unicorn out of a maiden's nightmare. She did not need the horse to remind her she was maiden no more.

Folio danced sideways as Rowena's brothers lifted her groaning papa behind her. His sudden burst of drunken energy was nearly their undoing.

"That-a-way, girlie!" Papa jerked Rowena's hair out of its net and slapped it on her back like silky reins. He bounced up and down, driving his heels into the beast's sides. Folio surged forward, ready to make a new door in the planked walls of the stable. Big Freddie stepped in front of the horse with a grunted command that brought the horse to a trembling halt.

Rowena eyed her brother with newfound admiration. He grinned sheepishly.

As he steered the horse in a circle, Little Freddie caught her ankle. "Godspeed, love. I will detain Gareth for as long as I can."

Then the pressure of his fingers was gone and Folio was pointed toward the windy night. Without awaiting a command from Rowena, the stallion shot forward. The small remnant of sanity Papa still possessed drove his arms around her waist with desperate strength. The courtyard passed by in a blur of tattered images—the excited shouts of the squires as the phantom horse thundered past, a peasant stirring from his drunken stupor long enough to glance up, a knight clutching the silken shoulders of the lady on her knees in front of him, his eyes round with surprise. The courtyard wall loomed. Rowena pressed her eyes shut, dreading the terrible sensation of weightlessness that would be theirs when Folio leaped, the timeless moments before his forelegs caught on the top of the wall and sent them crashing down in a tangle of shattered bones.

The horse veered. She opened her eyes. They were through the first gate and heading for the drawbridge. Sparks flew as iron-shod hooves struck the drawbridge. Papa lost his grip and slid sideways. They went careening toward the oily black arms of the moat. Rowena threw herself to the opposite side until she clung by little more than the muscles of her thighs.

The stallion shot across the lake's bridge toward the beckoning meadows. With every hoofbeat, Rowena expected to slide beneath the horse's belly and have her skull split by his flailing hooves. Her hair whipped around Folio's legs, spooking the horse further. As his hooves struck the soft turf at the top of the hill, he reared. Rowena screamed as the horse slipped out from under them. She and her father went rolling down the steep slope in a tangled ball.