Valentine (18 page)

Her arm seemed like a tree trunk when she tried to raise it to take Valentine’s hand, and so she attempted a tentative step closer to the edge of the pier. The wood felt spongy beneath her feet, causing her to sink ever so slightly against the horizon that was now rushing up to the sky.

She fell onto the raft, onto Valentine. She scrambled over him, her elbows bowing as the raft bucked and dirty water ran over her fingers where she gripped the side of the wood. Each wave seemed to coax another round of retching from her.

“Maria, hold on—I am going to untie us so that we might move out into the smoother water,” Valentine said somewhere behind her, but she could not respond.

Her head pounded. She felt like she would suffocate between the constant bile in her throat and mouth and the horrid, humid river smell that had had permeated her entire world. After what seemed like an hour, the vomiting slowed, and she was no longer hearing her retching echo under the rickety pier.

She pushed away from the edge of the raft, the sleeves of her gown wet past her elbows, her skirts past her knees, and fell over on her side, facing the mast. Valentine pulled the setting pole out of the water and secured it. The he came to kneel at her side.

“Better?” he asked, raking her sweaty hair from her eyes.

Mary shook her head as best she could. She felt as though her guts were swirling still, seeking something—anything—to expel from her shivering body.

“Let me move you,” Valentine said, reaching down and taking hold of her beneath her arms. “Perhaps if you can no see . . .”

He dragged her beneath the tarp, and Mary knew it was the most undignified she’d ever been in her life, her skirts leaving a wide, wet trail across the decking, but she couldn’t care. She only hoped she would die soon.

Valentine propped her up against the pile of their bags and squatted down. “Maria?” he called gently, and even in her stupor she could see that he was trying to keep an eye on the river and the shores beyond. “There is some wine. Would you—?”

“No,” she croaked. She felt better enough to shake her head properly now and hold out her hand, her fingers stretching wide, reaching. “Give me the poison.”

He dug into his tunic.

“All of it,” she clarified.

M
orcillo’s potion worked.

Within moments, Maria fell into a deep sleep, her lovely face at last relaxing from the terrible grimace, her skin chalk pale, but not the sickly shade of gray it had been since stealing the raft.

Maria would likely frown at him about that little piece of information, should she find out. But the thief at the stable had not been fair with his price, knowing he was the only one in the village who could pay coin of any amount for the animals. Valentine didn’t blame him, really; he was just evening out the transaction by including the man’s raft in the bargain.

Valentine pushed the setting pole into the soft mud beneath the water over and over, guiding the raft with the current, stretching his muscles, as the sun dipped over the mountains behind him, and he began to breathe deeply again for the first time since leaving Prague. At this time on a different night, he would be scanning the shoreline, seeking a safe place for him and Mary to make camp. But not this night. Maria would likely sleep for several hours, and it would be difficult to carry her from the raft without overturning it. The country to either side of the Elbe was mostly marsh, and so coming ashore with even a conscious Maria would prove a challenge.

Valentine could still spy the road intermittently between the trees on the shore, and he wished to put as much distance as he could between himself and Drezdeny. The thought of Enrique and Francisco looking for him there was unsettling. It was easy to hide from them in Prague, but in a village of such small size, and with only one road or the river in and out, there was little anonymity to be had. Valentine would kill Enrique if need be—he longed for it, actually—but his cousin? Francisco had been more of a brother to Valentine than his own flesh, and it would pain Valentine to shed Francisco’s blood, even after knowing he had fallen in with the enemy.

He bent slightly at the waist and peeked beneath the tarp where Maria slept on. Morcillo had traded them no lantern, so there would be no further opportunity to see her until the sun rose again. She seemed restful, the side of her face pillowed on her folded hands, her legs curled up toward her middle on the pile of their bags. She reminded Valentine of an abandoned kitten.

He looked back to the river and took another deep breath as the stars began to peek through the darkening blanket of deep velvet. Valentine felt a dull ache in his chest at the realization that Maria would soon belong to another. Likely she would revert to the woman Valentine had first met in Melk—anxious, rigid, restless. She would return to the only home she had ever known, to lie with some lauded English knight and bear his children. Her adventure, over.

Valentine would never know the part of her he longed for, the part that he had blithely taken from so many women before—her body, her passion, her love. He told himself he was a fool for not having her and being done with the mystery. She could have been his at the old mill, or in Tabor; certainly in Prague, where the fire between them in the Snowy Owl had nearly burned Valentine alive. But he would not ruin her.

Maria might think herself in love with him now, but she had nothing to compare him to. Their time together had been naught but a rousing escapade that showed her a small sliver of the world she had been denied access to her entire life. Valentine was helping her achieve what she professed to want most: a husband and children. What Maria likely felt toward him was gratitude, and an appreciation of the exciting voyage they were on, the memories of which would have to sustain her for the rest of her life.

The rest of her life, married to another man.

A man who would perhaps never know the depths of her revulsion for water travel. Or her love of millinery, and the way she flushed at the slightest hint of a compliment. Or her damnable cheerfulness at the rising of the sun. A stranger who had never seen nor known of any of Maria’s family, who were dead and gone forever.

Did Valentine love her? Perhaps, he conceded to himself. Perhaps he did. After all, in attempting to think of the future, even one moment beyond the day when he would be forced to part from Maria, it was as if the world dropped off sharply into nothingness. As if halfway through a written page, the words simply ceased, disappeared, the rest of the page blank.

Such melancholy thoughts were ruining his relaxation, and so Valentine shook himself and scanned the riverbanks once more. Fatigue began to wash over him, and he thought perhaps they were far enough from the village and the road now that a safe place to put in could be found. Unless it was a trick of the moonlight, a rocky peninsula jutted out into the water a short distance ahead, a downed tree leaning over it into the river. It seemed an ideal place to drag ashore and make a fire, and he would not have to wake Maria—if that was even possible so soon after she had imbibed of Morcillo’s potion.

But as Valentine drew closer to the peninsula, he saw that the spit of land was already occupied. A lone man stood in the shadow of tree branches atop the flat rock, as if waiting for Valentine to pass. His head turned slowly, slowly, tracking the raft’s progress.

A chill ran up Valentine’s spine, and although he knew the man could not possibly make out his features in the gloom, he reached back and pulled the cowl of his tunic up over his head. He did not turn away from the stranger as he passed, but neither did he call out, choosing to watch him as closely and silently as Valentine himself was being watched, letting the setting pole skim the water behind the raft with a little trill.

The man stood with one foot braced against the downed tree, the forearm of his same side leaning against his knee. Valentine could see the outline of his tall boots in the moonlight, the jagged points of his pleated tunic. A dark shape hung at his other hip, as if he clutched something in his hand. As Valentine slowly floated past, the man raised the shape above his head: a wide-brimmed hat, with what looked to be a long feather at the crown.

Just like Valentine’s own, which Maria so fancied.

Valentine did not return the greeting, only watched the man as his own heart pounded.

The man lowered the hat and then his foot from the tree and turned, blatantly following the raft’s progress.

Valentine kept his eyes on the black outline of the man, using all his will not to shove the setting pole back into the water and begin pushing with all his might, away from this stranger who was perhaps no stranger at all. But he waited. He waited until the raft eased around a bend, draping the figure of the man in night-blackened branches, and only the sparkling moonlight moved near the bank.

Then Valentine set to work again, pushing himself and Maria down the river as quickly and quietly as he could.

He might have to part from her, but it would not be this night. And it would not be until he was ready to let her go.

 

He tossed the rock aside and began scuttling toward her like some demon, his limbs a blur, his teeth gnashing.
“Mary!”

She realized she was screaming as she opened her eyes, Valentine’s worried face only inches from hers. He was gripping her upper arms, leaning over her. Her scream died and her breath left her in a rush as she sagged back against the satchels.

“Maria, what is it?” Valentine insisted. The light behind him was soft, gray. Birdsong filled the air, dancing with the hush of the river.

“Nothing,” she said, hearing the tremor of her words. She moved to sit up, and Valentine assisted her. “Just a nightmare. Where are we?”

“Halfway to Hamburg,” Valentine said, moving away a bit to fetch a jug and a piece of bread wrapped in a cloth. He handed her the jug, and after she had taken hold of it, he twisted out the cork. “You’ve been asleep for almost two days.”

“Two days?” she repeated, stopping the jug halfway to her mouth.

“Perhaps a bit too much potion, yes?” he said with a grin as she drank. “I would no have woken you, but you need to eat and drink. And I need to sleep for longer than an hour.”

She took the bread from him, and her hunger appeared suddenly as the last vestiges of the terrible dream wafted away like noxious smoke. “Have you brought us this far with no more rest than that?”

“I put to shore a bit last night, but it was no good for long.” He moved to sit back against the mast, and she could see the fatigue around his eyes, how his skin had been burnished a deeper copper by the sun. “I think perhaps we are being followed.”

She swallowed the bread. “Your brother?”

“I do no know for certain,” he said with a shrug. “It does no matter, really. But we are far enough from the road now that I think we will be safe for a few hours. You can stretch your legs without fear of falling into the river while I sleep.”

Mary leaned forward and peeked beyond the tarp to see that they were in a grotto of sorts, the raft pulled up onto a rocky beach. The sight of the jagged gray stones gave her a momentary shiver. She set the jug aside and took another bite of bread before scooting from beneath the tarp and standing. The raft was at a tilt but firmly aground. She realized that she desperately needed to make water.

“Do no wander far,” he warned as he crawled into the spot she’d recently vacated. “Wake me if anyone approaches—no matter how harmless they seem. There is plenty to eat in the—” he yawned widely, and Mary thought that he looked quite boyish and sweet when he was tired—“in the bag.”

“I will,” she said, looking around her again, chewing the bread. She looked back. “Shall I make—”

But his eyes were closed, and Mary thought it very likely that he was already lost to sleep. She smiled at his figure sprawled on their bags. He had labored so diligently to bring them this far. Soon, though, he could rest.

They only had to reach Hamburg, and then they could surely relax.

 

Constantine Gerard stood at the end of the table nearest the tall windows in Melk’s secret library, the morning light streaming through the narrow colored panes of glass behind him, turning the map spread on the tabletop into a rich mosaic. His hands were braced on the thick vellum, his eyes tracing the routes between Melk and the North Sea one by one, over and over. His mind pictured tiny figures along the map—horses and riders—while he repeatedly calculated the time passed.

“How far do you think he’s gone?” Adrian Hailsworth asked from his chair, his words disturbing the dusty silence.

“I know not,” Constantine said.

“You do know,” Adrian challenged. “You’re just not saying.”

Constantine looked over his shoulder to where Adrian sat in his chair and noticed the chalice clasped in his hand. “Are you already drinking?”

“I was already thirsty,” Adrian said, turning his smirk toward Constantine and raising the chalice in a mocking toast. “How far?” he repeated before bringing the cup to his lips.

Constantine turned back to the map. “Depending on the weather, the route—perhaps Leipzig. If he’s had no trouble.”

Adrian snorted. “Knowing Valentine, that is an impossibility.”