A Passionate Magic (6 page)

“What else can you do, Lady Emma?” Blake
asked, gazing at her in near reverence for her accomplishments.

“I know how to make herbal medicines,” she
answered. “My father’s wife taught me.” It wasn’t the entire truth,
but it was close enough for her present purposes.

“Lady Richenda doesn’t believe in medicines,”
Blake revealed. “She says all illnesses are the punishment of God.
If a person falls sick, it’s because he has committed a sin. That’s
why the men-at-arms are so often sick. Lady Richenda says they are
all miserable sinners.”

“The men-at-arms fall ill because they drink
too much ale and wine, they stand long watches on the battlements
in cold, damp weather, they live together in a crowded barracks,
and they very seldom bother to bathe,” Emma stated firmly.

“Lady Richenda wouldn’t agree with you,”
Blake said.

“What about wounds?” Emma asked. “Does Lady
Richenda wash and sew up the injuries that men working with weapons
so often sustain?”

“She says those are the Lord’s doing, too,”
Blake said. “If the good Lord wants a wounded man to live, then he
will live, regardless of how the wound is treated. If the Lord
turns His face away, then the man’s wound will suppurate and he’ll
die. But it’s up to God, not to mere men or women.”

“I cannot believe Dain feels the same way,”
Emma cried. “I’m sure he has seen enough men wounded in battle to
know that some can be restored to health, while others, though they
must die of their terrible injuries, can be made more comfortable
with the proper nostrums.”

“You’re right about Dain,” Blake said.
“Sometimes he sends for a healer, an old woman named Agatha who
lives in Trevanan village, to treat his men, but Lady Richenda says
Agatha is a witch. Whenever Agatha comes here, Lady Richenda shuts
herself in her room and won’t come out until the healer has done
her work and left. Then Lady Richenda runs to the chapel to pray,
and she insists that Father Maynard say the Holy Mass at once. But
Agatha is a kind person. Last winter she gave me horehound syrup to
stop a cough that had made my chest ache for days.”

“I would very much like to meet Agatha,” Emma
said.

“I’m sure you will meet her, if you stay at
Penruan long enough,” Blake told her. “I ought not to say this, but
in the great hall and the kitchen people are laying wagers on how
long you’ll last after Lady Richenda comes home.”

Emma decided to ignore that last piece of
information in favor of pursuing her real reason for asking Hawise
to bring Blake to the lord’s chamber.

“I wonder if you would be willing to do a
great favor for me,” Emma began.

“It is a page’s duty to perform favors for
his lady,” Blake responded solemnly. “Now that you have married
Dain, you are my lady, at least until Lady Richenda returns. What’s
the favor? Are you planning something else that’s fun?”

“What I want,” Emma said, “is to obtain the
key to the stillroom. I understand it is in the cook’s keeping. Do
you by any chance know where it is and how I might get it?”

“You want to steal a key?” Solemnity gave way
to eagerness. Blake’s face was alight with boyish mischief. “Oh, my
lady, you are fun! You must have grown up with brothers, because
you aren’t like any girl I’ve ever known.”

“I have three brothers, one older than me and
two who are younger,” Emma said. “I’ll tell you about them
sometime. Blake, I do not want to steal the stillroom key. I only
want to borrow it, and that for just a short time. I will return it
when I have finished in the room. Do you know where the key
is?”

“Why do you want to go in the stillroom? I
went there once, with Lady Richenda. That was a couple of years
ago. It was dusty and there were cobwebs, and I only noticed a few
herbs.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Emma said.
“But I want to discover for myself exactly what herbs there are,
and what medicines.”

“There probably aren’t any medicines at all,”
Blake said. “There wouldn’t be, would there? Not with Lady Richenda
feeling the way she does. She’d think medicines work against the
Will of God.”

“I disagree,” Emma said very firmly. “I think
medicines are meant to work
with
the Will of God. I think
the good Lord meant His people to be as healthy as possible, and
happy, too, and I intend to do everything I can to see to it that
the people of Penruan are both.”

She had said too much. She could tell by the
way Blake was gazing at her with wide, gleaming eyes and wonder in
his young face.

“I will get the key for you,” Blake said.

“If you will just tell me where it is, I can
borrow it for myself,” Emma said. “I don’t want you to get into
trouble for my sake.”

“No, no, I can do it. I know I can,” Blake
said. “You couldn’t, but I know how to get it.”

“How?”

“Don’t ask me that. Just tell me when you
want to do this.”

“Right after the midday meal?”

“Yes, that’s good. When you leave the table,
go straight to the stillroom door. I will meet you there. And Lady
Emma?”

“Yes, Blake?”

“Promise you won’t ask me any questions about
what I plan to do.”

“I promise.”

Emma kept her promise, and she never did
learn exactly how Blake was able to obtain the key. He was waiting
for her at the stillroom door as they had planned. He refused to
give her the key, unlocking the door himself and keeping the key in
his own hand the entire time they were in the room.

They weren’t there for very long. It was a
good-sized room, with a shuttered window to let in light, though
they left the shutter closed and used a candle to see by. There was
a table in the middle of the room, and there were shelves from
floor to ceiling on two of the walls. Bunches of cooking herbs and
a few empty baskets hung from the ceiling beams. Three small jars
grouped together on one of the shelves proved to contain old and
musty dried herbs. There was no sign of any prepared medicines, nor
were there any mixing utensils, bowls or pots, no source of heat,
not even a mortar and pestle. As Blake had warned, the floor,
table, and all of the shelves were dusty, and cobwebs were draped
from the ceiling and in every corner. Clearly, the room was seldom
opened and only rarely used.

Emma left the stillroom in silence, trying to
think how to convince Dain to oppose his mother’s wishes and allow
her to make use of the room.

When Dain rode out to intercept the brigands
who had wrought terror upon Trevanan, his thoughts were sharply
divided between schemes for ambush and capture of the outlaws, and
memories of the bride he was trying to convince himself he did not
want. He had originally agreed to wed a child of seven, his secret
plan being to find an excuse to repudiate her and thus break the
peace between himself and Gavin before the girl was old enough to
consummate the marriage. Instead, he had been sent a bride who was
a beautiful raven-haired young woman with mysterious eyes and an
air of self-assurance equal to his own.

He had come so close – so dangerously close!
– to consummating their marriage and thereby making it completely
legal. He was grateful for the emergency that called him away from
Penruan, knowing that if he had stayed, Emma would have spent her
first night in his castle locked in her husband’s arms. The lady
was willing; he had seen longing in her incredible, gold-flecked
brown eyes, and had felt it in the way she clung to him, hungry for
more of his caresses.

He had been all too eager to bestow those
caresses. It was because of his shocking desire for the daughter of
his sworn enemy that he deliberately prolonged the search for the
brigands, whose villainy extended far beyond what the messenger
from Trevanan had reported. Two village men were dead, killed
defending their homes and families, and three women abducted,
carried off to the moorland camp of the outlaws among the rocky
tors, there to be repeatedly ravished and beaten.

When they were found one woman was dead of
her injuries, but the other two Dain at once returned to their
grieving families. Whether the women would ever be fully received
back into those families would probably depend on whether the
coming months found them with child by their brutal captors.

Dain’s mouth thinned at the possibility. He
resolved to stay in even closer contact than usual with the village
elders. If he learned from them that the women were scorned or
mistreated in any way because of what had happened, he would remove
them from Trevanan to Penruan and give them honest work there. He
knew of several homes in the vicinity where orphans or unwanted
children were joyfully received, and to those homes he would send
the babes born of rape, if that was what their mothers wished.

As their liege lord, obligated to protect and
defend those who lived under his rule, it was his duty to see to
the futures of all of those innocent victims. He knew his mother
would disapprove of kindness to such women, but on this matter Dain
was not concerned about Lady Richenda’s opinion. He felt completely
sure that Emma, who insisted on proper treatment of her traveling
companions, would care about the ravished and battered women, and
she would commend him for what he planned to do. At the sudden
realization of the direction in which his thoughts were leading he
told himself with cold obstinacy that Emma’s opinion on the matter
meant even less to him than his mother’s.

During the next few days he and his men
sought out and killed every member of that particular outlaw band.
Beset by frustration over his unacceptable desire for Emma, fueled
by impotent rage against Gavin, whom his king had forced him not to
attack, Dain sought release from his conflicting emotions in
violence against the brigands who threatened his people. He took
grim satisfaction in the bloody work of retribution, offering no
mercy to the criminals and fully living up to his reputation as a
fierce, coldhearted warrior.

When it was over he ordered everything his
men could find belonging to the outlaws heaped into one huge pile,
with the outlaws’ bodies tossed on top. At his command the pile was
set alight, becoming a funeral pyre for those who dared to injure
the people of the baron of Penruan. Let the other brigands who hid
on the moors see the flames and take note of the fearsome vengeance
they could expect if they chose to attack Penruan or Trevanan.

As soon as the fire was reduced to ashes Dain
gathered together his able-bodied men, his wounded, and the one who
had been killed on the very last day of fighting, and he rode home
to Penruan sunk in a grief so deep he did not think he would ever
recover.

At the cry from the sentries at the
gatehouse, notifying everyone in the castle that Dain was returning
with wounded, Emma hastened to the great hall to offer her help.
She was relieved to see there were only four wounded men, and that
Dain seemed to be unhurt. Then she saw and recognized the body of
the squire being carried in on a litter and understood why Dain was
so quiet and withdrawn, and why his attention was devoted to the
mangled remains of what had once been a handsome young man.

“I am so sorry,” she said, going to him with
her hands outstretched. “On my first day at Penruan, when Robert
came to the lord’s chamber to arm you, it seemed to me that you
were fond of him.”

“So I was.” Dain’s face was hard, his mouth
grim, as if he was holding back strong emotion.

Emma’s heart ached for his grief. Placing
both her hands on his arm, she offered the one comfort she could
give to him.

“I can help Father Maynard to wash and
prepare Robert for burial.” When Dain turned his head to look at
her out of bleak eyes, Emma explained. “I have performed that sad
task several times in my life. I will do it again now, with proper
reverence, if you will allow me.”

“No,” Dain said. “This is my work. I will do
it.”

“You?” Emma stared at him in surprise. “I
know you loved him, but it’s hardly a lord’s duty to prepare the
dead.”

“Loved him?” Dain repeated. His burning eyes
bored into hers. “Aye, I loved him. Robert was my son.”

“What?” Emma’s hand pressed hard against her
bosom. “Oh, Dain, I didn’t know. No one told me you were married
before.”

“I have never been married,” Dain said, in a
tone that implied he still wasn’t. In a gentler voice he added,
“Robert’s mother was the first woman with whom I ever lay. I
learned a useful lesson from her, that it only takes one time to
create a child. I was fifteen and a squire.

“She was one of the kitchen maids at the
castle where I was fostered,” he continued, speaking as if he could
not hold back the words that would explain an apparently unseemly
grief. “She was a maiden when I first lay with her, and for a few
months she doted on me, so I never questioned her claim that I was
Robert’s sire.”

“Where is she now?” Emma asked, expecting him
to say that his mistress lived in Trevanan, or perhaps in the
castle itself.

“After Robert was born she married the
blacksmith of the castle where she lived. She died in childbirth
two years later. When Robert was old enough to become a squire I
brought him here to Penruan to serve me, with the intention of
eventually making him one of my household knights. I believe he
would have made a fine and loyal knight.”

Emma heard the slight crack in Dain’s voice
on those last words, and she knew beyond doubt that deep in his
most secret heart Dain had cherished dreams for his illegitimate
son.

“I am certain what you say is true,” Emma
said to him. “Judging by my brief knowledge of him, Robert was a
devoted squire.”

“Thank you for those words, my lady.” Dain
inclined his head to her, then turned on his heel and headed for
the chapel.

“Dain, wait!” Emma cried. “There is something
I must ask of you.”