The Bride of Time (32 page)

He had lost much blood, but somehow he had to get back to the Abbey, collect Tessa, and leave the area. There was no other alternative. Crawling out of the barrow, he sniffed the air. One advantage of his condition was that his sense of smell had heightened. He had the feral nose of the wolf in either incarnation. Now it was in tune with the human scent. He sensed none in the immediate area. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. He had to reach Tessa as quickly as possible. His life and hers depended upon it.

The sky to the west along the horizon had turned a fiery shade of gold. An odd sunrise, Giles thought, stumbling off in that direction, but at closer observation, gooseflesh riddled him from head to foot. This was no sunrise. The sun rose in the
east
. This peculiarity was taking place in the west. It almost looked like…fire! It was! Longhollow Abbey, which he’d seen last night just before he passed out, was now engulfed in flames. He ran toward it over the dewy bracken, gorse, and heather, blind with pain and weak from blood loss, praying he wasn’t too late.

As valiant as his effort was, it wasn’t long before he fell facedown on the heath, his breath coming short and his vision blurred, but not so blurred that he couldn’t pick out the shape of a familiar wagon lumbering toward him in the darkness.

Moraiva!

All at once he found himself cradled in the crook of the old Gypsy’s arm, leaning upon her as she probed the wound in his shoulder. After a moment, she staggered to her feet.

“Get up, Giles Longworth,” she commanded in a tone not to be denied. “I cannot lift you, and you must get into the wagon. That pistol ball must come out of there at once. It is silver, and it is draining your strength. You are fortunate that it hasn’t struck a vital spot or you would be dead now. Get up, I say!”

“O-old woman, I fear you ask more than I can give,” he replied. “My home is in flames. I fear for my wife, my staff. I have lost much blood—”

“You can and you will rise up and get into this wagon!” Moraiva ordered, pointing a rigid arm and wagging finger. “Do it now, before the guards come. There is much to be done before that event, but no time to do it if you linger here. Get up!”

Giles pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward
the wagon, and Moraiva clicked her tongue. “Such a sight to tempt a poor old woman,” she said, raking his body familiarly. “If I were thirty years younger, I’d give your lady wife a run for it.”

“The…Abbey!” Giles panted, hauling himself up into the wagon. “I must reach the Abbey before the guards do, and that fire can be seen for miles!”

“Once I take that bullet out,” the Gypsy returned. “The clothes of my dead husband await you. Put on the breeches but not the blouse, and lie down on the bunk.”

Giles did as she bade him, and she brought a lantern and knelt beside the bed, which was no more than a straw pallet in a low wooden frame. Handing him a crock, she said, “Drink. It will dull the pain.”

Giles tossed down a healthy swallow and fell back panting as she took the crock from him.

“Open,” she said, thrusting a folded leather belt toward his mouth. Giles clamped his teeth down hard and screwed his eyes shut tight as she probed the hole in his shoulder with a sharp knife. Beads of cold swear broke out upon his brow and ran down his neck as she dug deeper.

Amid the awful pain, he felt the pressure lighten as the Gypsy’s deft fingers removed the ball. He spat free the leather belt, crying out when she poured the rest of the contents of the crock into the wound.

“Your strength will return now,” she said, slathering on an ointment from a cobalt-blue glass jar on the boxed-in shelf on the wagon wall. It smelled foul and burned for a bit, especially when she bound the wound with linen strips. Her wagon was an apothecary on wheels, for it was her function to heal among the Gypsies, and her skill was legend.

“We must hurry, Moraiva,” Giles said. “That is Longhollow Abbey on fire!”

“I know,” Moraiva said, climbing onto the wagon seat.
“I have seen what becomes of it in another time. Lie still! Regain your strength. You will need much for what is to come.”

“What is to come?” he spoke up. With the door open as it was, they could easily converse as she drove.

“Your Abbey is no more,” she said. “Your life here is no more. You cannot stay, for if you do you will be put to death for that which you did not do.”

At last, someone who believed him to be innocent! He had begun to doubt himself, unable to imagine a child capable of such atrocity.

“There is a way to help us all. I know you do not truly believe in the corridors, because you have not yet experienced them, but they are your only hope now.”

Giles ground out a bitter laugh. “Then I am doomed, because the corridors want no truck with me. They have barred me at every pass.”

“I think because there is only one corridor for you, Giles Longworth, and when you find it, it will be open to you.”

“Can this horse move any faster?”

“He will get us there.”

“What must I do?” Giles asked through a grimace, wishing she hadn’t wasted all the contents of the crock upon the wound. His strength was returning, but the pain was excruciating.

“Trust your lady wife, she knows the way,” Moraiva said. “You cannot stay here any longer. Through no fault of your own, your life is over here. The child was tainted when he came here. It may have happened in the womb, or after. You may never know. This is something I alone will know, and once I take you to your Abbey, you shall see me no more. Our paths will not cross again if I am to help us all.”

“I do not understand,” Giles said flatly. What seemed
to make complete sense to her made no sense at all to him.

“In order to reverse the curse that has come upon you, you must go to another time,” Moraiva explained. “But it will not be easy, as not any time will do. Only certain pathways will work. Your lady wife will take you there. She bit me, so now I am as you are, and I must avail myself of a corridor to do this also—”

“But what of the boy?” Giles asked. “I cannot just abandon him. His curse was hardly his fault, either.”

The Gypsy smiled. “I mean to take the boy with me,” she said. “It is he who set the fire.”

“How could you know that?”

“I know, because I have seen it in a different time. Your Abbey becomes quite a curiosity in the future. Your lady wife saw it, too—”

“She said she had something she wanted to tell me, and I put her off. Could this be what she meant?”

“Yes,” the Gypsy said. “But do not reproach her for not telling it sooner. She had no idea when in time the fire took place. Had you known, you could have done nothing to prevent it. The tale is well told. None were ever seen again. It is presumed that all perished in the holocaust, though no remains were ever found. They blame that on the flaws, assuming that the Cornish winds blew all the evidence away; but we know differently, don’t we, Giles Longworth? You must trust me.”

“But how do you know this? How can you be so sure?”

“I know because I have lived it before,” the Gypsy said. “I have done what you must do now, and cancelled the curse. When your lady wife bit me, it was not the first time a werewolf sank its fangs into my flesh. I know the corridors well. It worked for me once. It will work again. I will take the boy, and it will work for him also,
if it is so ordained. He is Roma. My people will raise and protect him. Either way, he cannot remain to ravage the coast and infect all here, for since he has come many have been tainted. It is the only way.”

“Then we must go quickly,” Giles said. “The guards are already convinced that I killed Forsythe. If they reach the Abbey before us and take me into custody again, my life is over, especially since they saw me change into the wolf. That blaze will bring them sure as check. The sky is lit up like the dawn. In my confusion while returning to my human form, I thought it was first light, until I realized I was facing west.”

“They will come, yes, Giles Longworth, once they find their horses who ran fast and far from you last night. I am hoping they will be a while at that. Rest and save your strength until you reach a place before the wound occurred. Then you will be restored, as if that silver pistol ball never entered your flesh.”

Giles said no more. There was no use. It all sounded so odd, and made little sense, yet he was certain the Gypsy would give him no more answers.

Why was the wagon moving so slowly? He slid his feet onto the floorboards and dropped his head into his hands, trying to avoid the sight of the fiery blaze in the sky ahead, but it was no use. His life as he knew it had just gone up in flames and turned the sky to blood.

Tessa was semiconscious when Foster half-dragged, half-carried her up the narrow staircase and through the service door in the wainscoting to the second-floor landing. Coughing uncontrollably, the first word she uttered was Giles’s name.

“Oh, madam, thank God!” Foster said, leading her down to the main floor. “I feared for your life. Can you make it below?”

Tessa nodded, leaning on the valet. “Giles?” she begged. “Where is Giles?”

“He is not here, madam. He never returned.”

“You are…certain, Foster?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Where is Master Monty?”

“I do not know, madam. He wasn’t in his rooms. He was in yours the last I saw of him. He did this”—he touched his brow gingerly—“before setting the house afire.”

“Oh, Foster, that cut is deep. It needs attention!”

“It will mend, madam. Right now we must concentrate upon getting you to safety.”

The Great Hall seemed so far away as they struggled down the corridor through the bilious black smoke and fiery bits raining down around them. They hadn’t gotten halfway when the third floor collapsed onto the second floor in the east wing, and much of that fell below to the main floor in a crimson rush of shooting flames, high-flying sparks and debris.

They had nearly reached the gaping doors where first light had begun to dilute the darkness with fish-gray streamers when Foster let her go with a gentle shove toward the exit. “Madam, do not stop,” he said. “Keep going. You are safe in seconds.”

“No! Where are you going?” she cried as he staggered away from her, retracing his steps.

“Keep on as you are!” he called. “I must fetch notes from the valuables chest in the study for the master. It is all the money he has recently made, and with his estate in flames—”

“No!” she cried. “He will not need them, Foster.” She took the pocket from the side of her frock and showed it to him. She was grateful she had managed to keep most of her savings since the odyssey began, for it would now
be invaluable. “It is my currency he will need now. His will be useless where we are going. Leave it!”

“I must do what I must,” he returned. “You are safe now…just a few more steps. I shall join you directly.”

He disappeared through the study door then, and Tessa pressed on until she staggered through the open doorway on a belching cloud of sooty smoke and collapsed on the courtyard lawn.

All around her, pandemonium had broken loose. Able had herded the servants into the stable as they streamed out of the house when the fire started. Sobs and shrieks, outcries and whimpers rose over the thunder of the holocaust as the flames leaped high into the sky, sending showers of fiery sparks aloft on the blustery wind. Tessa knew the servants were safe: No harm would come to them in the stable; it had been intact in the future when the caretaker told her the tale. He had made it his home.

Her watering eyes trained upon the doorway, she scarcely blinked, sifting through the smoke for some sign of Foster. Floors were collapsing, shooting fresh columns of smoke, fire, and ash into the dawn sky. Falling timbers crosshatched the corridor she had just fled. Could the valet still pass through? And where was Giles? If only he would come.

Then, through the fog of drifting smoke belching through the doorway, she saw motion—a figure; no…
two
. She rose to her feet just as Foster came stumbling into the drive with Master Monty in tow. One hand held a satchel she assumed was full of money. The other hand was fisted in the back of the boy’s shirt, and the valet propelled him toward her, whilst from behind, the creaking sound of the Gypsy’s lumbering wagon bled through the racket of the panicked servants and the crackle and roar of the fire.

What happened next was fast and simultaneous—so fast Tessa scarcely had time to blink. Able came running,
Giles half-climbed, half-fell out of the wagon and rushed into Tessa’s arms, and Moraiva rose from the wagon seat, her rigid arm pointing.

“Bring the boy to me!” she commanded, addressing Foster.

The valet rushed Monty to the wagon and lifted him up, despite all the protests, pleas, and threats pouring from the boy’s throat. Holding the child at a distance, the valet deftly avoided the small though cruel feet kicking with perfect aim at his shin bones and, as he raised Monty higher, his groin.

“Stop that foul mouth!” the Gypsy charged, securing the boy inside the wagon. “We are about to go on a little journey. Be still! You might enjoy it.” She turned back to Giles. “Take her and go quickly. The guards are not far behind. We will not meet again, Giles Longworth. At least not soon if all goes well….”

Giles turned to Able. “Saddle three horses—
now
, man. I must away.

“Aye, sir,” the stabler said, set in motion.

“What is happening?” Tessa asked, her eyes flashing among them. “Where has Moraiva gone with the boy?” The courtyard was filled with smoke that had enveloped the wagon, and though she strained to penetrate it, nothing met her eyes but that gloomy veil settled over the grounds. Moraiva’s wagon was gone.

“I will explain later,” Giles said. “We cannot linger. If the guards come, I am a dead man, Tessa. They saw me shape-shift into the wolf.”

Fresh blood was seeping through Giles’s shirt, and Tessa gasped. “You’re hurt!” she cried. “You’ve been shot?”

Giles nodded. “It’s nothing, my love. Moraiva dug the bullet out. It was a silver bullet. The guards were taking me to the jail at Lamorna to hold for the magistrates. They fired on me when I shape-shifted.”