A Passionate Magic (19 page)

The woman stood hesitantly, looking from
Hermit to the fire and back to Hermit again, and he stayed where he
was, making no movement at all, not wanting to frighten her away.
Then she lowered herself gracefully to the sand and sat across the
fire from him. As she did so, the white scarf covering her head
slid off to reveal long waves of unbound auburn hair.

“I call myself Hermit,” he said, and smiled
in hope of putting her at ease. In the light from the fire he could
see that she was truly neither ghost nor demon, but a pale woman
some years past her youth, and her silver eyes held a sorrow far
surpassing his own grief. Out of respect for her sadness he
addressed her gently. “Have you a name, my lady? Will you tell it
to me?”

“You may not call me ‘my lady,’ ” she said,
still whispering. “No one may call me ‘my lady’ anymore. It is
forbidden. I am Exile.”

He did not question her statement. As he did
not want anyone to pry into his past life, so he refused to pry
into anyone else’s.

“Well then, Exile, will you share food with
me?” he asked. “It’s in my sack, just over there.”

Her eyes were still on his face, as if she
was reading his soul, and he sat a little uncomfortably under her
regard until she answered him.

“Agatha’s bread? Agatha’s cheese?” she
whispered.

“Yes. Is she your friend, too?”

“My only friend. I will eat with you. Thank
you for the kindness.”

Her manners were dainty. She broke off small
pieces of bread, and accepted with her fingertips the wedge of
cheese he cut and offered to her. She nibbled at the food as if she
were a great lady at a royal banquet. Hermit’s curiosity was
stirred by her obvious fine breeding, aroused to a point at which
he decided to press her for just a little information.

“Have you been living in this cave since
before I came here?” he asked. “I’m sure I’ve seen you several
times, usually just as I am falling asleep.”

“I live in there.” She seemed oddly hesitant,
and the place she indicated with a brief gesture of one hand was
the solid rock wall of the cave.

“I don’t understand,” Hermit said. “Is there
a secret entrance?”

“It is hidden.” Again she hesitated, her
silvery eyes locked on his. “If Agatha sent you here, there can be
little danger. She would not tell you about the cave unless she was
sure you will not harm me.”

“Indeed, I will not,” Hermit said. “My
dearest wish is never again to cause harm to any person.”

Still her eyes held his. Eventually, she
appeared to make up her mind, for she nodded and rose to her feet.
She walked to the cave wall, to the solid rock into which Hermit,
when half asleep, had seen her wispy, indistinct shape vanish
several times.

“Watch,” she said, and walked right into the
wall. Before Hermit could scramble to his feet, she reappeared.
Seeing his baffled face, she smiled.

“Magic,” Hermit said, understanding at last.
“You are a sorceress.”

“So I have been told.”

“Aren’t you sure?” His nervous laugh rang
out, echoing against the rocks.

“If I were truly a sorceress, all that I want
would come to me,” she said. “Instead, I am Exile. Alone.
Bereft.”

“I knew a sorceress once,” Hermit said,
almost to himself. “She was wicked beyond all imagining. I don’t
think you are wicked.”

“I have been called wicked.” Her voice
returned to its original sad whisper. “That is why I was
banished.”

“I find it hard to believe Agatha would
befriend someone who is evil,” Hermit said.

“Agatha has been my friend since I was a
little girl. She showed me how to control my power and how to use
the door that is not there. Several times, the door has saved my
life, when searchers came here looking for me.”

“Do you mean Agatha set up the magical door?”
Hermit asked. Eagerly he searched the rock, but he was unable to
detect any sign of the opening Exile had used. Still, it was there;
he had just seen the proof.

“I do not think even Agatha’s magic is strong
enough for such a great achievement,” Exile said. “No, the door has
existed in this cave for centuries. When Agatha was very little,
her granny taught her how to use it, as Granny was taught by
her
granny, and so on, back into the mists of time, for as
long as people have lived in Cornwall.”

“Did Agatha ever tell you who first erected
the door?” Hermit asked, intrigued despite his personal prejudice
against magic. He reminded himself that not all magic was wicked.
He had known a few good and honest magicians in his time.

“There is a tale that long, long ago, the
great magician, Merlin, came to this cave, lured here by the
enchantress, Nimue. According to the story, Nimue misused Merlin’s
love for her to convince him to teach her his magic. Once she had
learned all she wanted from him, she imprisoned him behind a door
that is not there.”

“Behind that door?” Hermit asked, again
staring at the rock into which Exile had disappeared and from which
she had reappeared.

“So the story says.” Exile gave him another
sad smile. “I have never seen Merlin. I have explored much of the
cave that lies behind the door, but not all of it. Perhaps he is
hidden in a secret room.”

“The door is certainly well concealed,”
Hermit remarked. “No ordinary mortal could guess it exists.” It was
all he could do to keep himself from asking the questions that
crowded into his mind. He longed to know where Exile had been born,
how she had found Agatha, and exactly what kind of magic she
practiced. Most of all, he wanted to know who she really was.

For just a moment he contemplated the
possibility that Exile was in fact Nimue, but he quickly discarded
the thought. If she were the enchantress who had bound Merlin into
perpetual imprisonment, he did not think she would tell him about
it in the way Exile had, as if it were a sad event. Besides, for
all her talk of magic and legends, her ability to walk through a
rock wall, and her appearance of being something other than an
ordinary woman, Hermit knew in his heart that Exile was as human as
he was.

While he speculated about her possible
origins and wondered what tragedy could have brought her to a cave
where legends took on real life, Exile did something unexpected.
She drew closer to him, lifted one delicate hand, and touched his
temple.

It was as though he was drenched in flowers,
in beautiful fragrances and lovely colors and the caress of
countless soft petals against his skin. He saw Exile’s face aglow
with an inner light, and while her hand stayed where it was, just
gently pressing against his head, all of his pain and grief
disappeared, leaving him peaceful as he had not been for
decades.

Then she took her hand away and he was Hermit
again, standing in a seaside cave because he had no other place to
go, as much an exile as she was. She blinked, and he saw tears in
her eyes and knew that after touching him she understood all there
was to learn about his past and his motives.

“Oh, what a pity,” she said in a mournful
whisper. “But you are right to keep silent. No one knows better
than I that your secret must never be revealed. Revelation will
bring danger and possibly death, which I am sure you do not
intend.”

“I thought this was a safe place,” he said.
“I hoped that here, I could avoid hurting others. Now I know
better, and I am not certain what to do.”

“Sometimes it is wiser to do nothing than to
do the wrong thing,” Exile said. “Sometimes, it is best to wait
until the fates have completed weaving the threads.”

“Earlier, I thought of leaving,” he said.
“But I am so weary. I have traveled so many years and for so great
a distance, in hope of keeping my loved ones safe. And now this,
when I least expected it, when I was unprepared.” He dropped to his
knees, bowing his head, unable to bear the pain or the guilt of
what he had once done.

Exile knelt before him with tears running
down her pale face. After a moment she touched him again, using
both of her hands this time, one hand on either side of his head.
Instead of the glorious profusion of flowers, what he sensed was a
soft, welcoming mist, pale gray-blue and scented with lavender and
rosemary.

“Sleep,” Exile said, her gentle whisper
blending with the mist and the fragrance. “Trust to Time, and to
Fate.”

He wondered if this was how Great Merlin had
been lured to his imprisonment, and for a single, confused moment
Hermit imagined himself in a secret, inner chamber of the cave, his
arms bound with golden ropes, his body suffused with an
indescribable feeling of peace and contentment. Hermit wondered if
he would ever wake up again, if he would ever be free of Exile’s
sweet spell.

Out of his past he recalled another spell
that had been anything but sweet, a spell that had all but
destroyed his soul, and he struggled against what was happening.
But he did not struggle for long. The weariness of spirit that had
brought him to the cave and kept him there for days prevented him
from opposing Exile’s magic. He could not fight her. He did not
want to fight. His last conscious sensation was of her lips on his
forehead.

“Dain, did you leave this for me?” Emma held
out her hand to show him the delicate pink seashell resting in her
palm. “I found it on your pillow when I woke this morning.”

They were in the lord’s chamber, and the day
was still young. Emma was growing used to waking to find Dain gone.
He often rose before the sun and went up onto the battlements with
Sloan to hear the reports of the men who were coming off nighttime
sentry duty. The times were perilous, and Dain kept Penruan in a
state of readiness lest an enemy noble attack or the dispersed
bands of outlaws reform into new groups and decide to destroy
Trevanan more completely than on their previous foray. Though he
never said so to her, Emma knew one of the hostile nobles he was
guarding against was her own father. She knew the baron of Wroxley
would never break the peace agreement, but Lady Richenda
continually poured her hatred and suspicion of Gavin into Dain’s
ears.

On this summer day Dain returned to the room
they shared just as Emma was finishing her morning meal of fruit
and bread. Upon seeing him she decided the time was right to ask
about the mysterious gifts. Dain had not made love to her since the
night when he had been so angry. He kept to his own side of the bed
and rebuffed any attempt she made to become closer. Yet when others
were present he treated her politely, and on several occasions he
had defended her against his mother. And there were the objects
that occasionally appeared on the pillow next to her. Every one of
those gifts held a personal meaning for Emma, and suggested
remarkable familiarity with her character.

“Why do you think I would give you a
seashell?” Dain asked, frowning at it.

“Didn’t you give it to me?”

“Of course not.” He sounded surprisingly
impatient. His next statement explained why. “My mother is
ill.”

“I am sorry to hear it.” Emma closed her
fingers around the seashell and tried not to let her disappointment
show. If the gifts were not from Dain, then someone else was
leaving them, and she would have to discover who. At the moment,
there was a more important matter to consider. “What is wrong with
Lady Richenda?”

“According to her maidservant, she has a
severe pain in her belly and a cough that will not stop. She has
apparently been suffering for several days while hiding her
illness. The maidservant came to me to report that Mother could not
rise from her bed this morning.”

“Then she is very ill, especially if she
missed early morning Mass. Dain, I will gladly do what I can for
her, but you know how she dislikes me. She may refuse to accept my
remedies.”

“I will go with you to her room,” Dain said,
“and insist that she answer your questions in my presence, so you
can determine what is wrong with her.”

“Very well. Just give me a moment.” Emma
opened her clothing chest and took out the linen in which she kept
her mysterious gifts. She unrolled the linen and added the seashell
to the other items.

“What is this?” Dain was watching her, and he
bent forward to pluck the blue bead from the collection.

“That was my last gift before the seashell,”
Emma said.

“Intriguing.” He held the bead up to the
light so he could see it better. “I saw something like this before,
when I was a boy, but I can’t remember where.”

“When I found it, I thought it was from
you.”

“No.” Dain turned the bead over and over in
his fingers, staring at it as if his sharp gaze could uncover its
mystery. “When I look at this, I remember someone weeping, and I
recall an ache in my heart, as if part of me was wrenched away.
It’s just a fragment of memory and I must have been very young,
because I cannot connect what I remember with anything else.” He
handed the bead back to Emma and she put it away with the seashell
and the cornflower and the sprig of rosemary, both of which were
almost dry enough to crumble into pale dust.

“Could the weeping be a memory of your
father’s death?” she asked.

“Possibly. Whatever it was, I’ve forgotten
it. Seeing the bead brought it back for a few moments.” Dain rubbed
his forehead as if it hurt. “It cannot be important or I would
still remember.”

Lady Richenda’s chamber was sparely
furnished. Her bed was narrow, and Emma suspected it was hard, too.
In keeping with the ascetic appearance of the room, there were no
hangings to draw around the bed to shut out drafts. A plain wooden
clothes chest sat beneath a tightly shuttered window. The only
other objects in the room were a crucifix on one wall, bearing a
particularly contorted, agonized figure, and a prie-dieu placed
directly beneath the crucifix. No cushion softened the hardness of
the kneeling bench that bore the hollowed-out evidence of Lady
Richenda’s years of frequent prayer.