Fairest Of Them All (23 page)

He had not shared his darkest shame with Carey —that he had locked away his wife not to punish her, but to protect her from himself.

He searched the indigo sky, finding in its star-tossed sweep no warmth, but only a frigid beauty that chilled him to the marrow.

“You heartless bitch,” he whispered hoarsely, unable to say if he was cursing Rhiannon or his wife.

At a muffled thump outside the door, Holly awoke from a stupor nearer to death than slumber. She did not remember crawling to the bed or curling up on the tattered ermine coverlet. She unfurled her stiff limbs, sneezing as her movements stirred up a cloud of dust. The sound came again, the unmistakable thud of someone fumbling with the bolt Holly sat straight up. Some cynical demon had already convinced her that Austyn would pack up his household and ride away without a backward glance, leaving her to starve. But as the door swung open, her heart lurched with a hope she despised, but could not help.

Her pulse ceased its expectant thundering when a crown of flaxen braids appeared, but her disappointment was quickly squelched by joy at the sight of Winifred’s familiar face. She jumped down from the bed and ran over to her.

“Oh, Winnie, you cannot know how glad I am to see you. I knew you wouldn’t desert me.”

Winnie’s plump cheeks had been robbed of their ruddy glow. Puffs of flesh hid her eyes as she rested the tray she carried on a table and turned back toward the door.

Holly could not believe she was going to go. Without a glance. Without a word.

She trailed behind the mute woman, her desperation swelling. “Please, Winnie. Has Austyn forbade you to speak to me? Are you afraid hell punish you if you do? If you could just convince him to come here. To grant me a few meager moments of his time so that I might explain . . .” Winnie reached for the door handle. Holly clutched her arm, starved for the warmth of a human touch. “If Austyn refuses to come, then send Carey. Austyn will listen to Carey. I know he will!”

“Have you lost your wits, girl?” Winifred hissed, jerking her arm from Holly’s grip. Holly recoiled from the wounded virulence in her eyes. “Do you seek to have my son cast into the dungeon with that rash young priest of yours?”

Holly felt a flare of shame that she hadn’t even paused to consider Nathanael’s plight. For all she knew, Austyn might have returned to the courtyard and whacked off his inflated head.

“Of course not,” she replied. “I would never wish Carey harm. He has been naught but a Mend to me.”

“Aye, and I see how you repay him. How you’ve repaid us all.”

Kind-hearted Winifred’s derision was even harder to bear than Austyn’s. Holly’s lower lip began to quiver; her eyes welled with tears.

As Winifred stared at Holly’s rumpled chemise, her matted curls, her grubby, tear-streaked cheeks, the woman’s broad face slowly crumpled in horror. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “you’re so beautiful.” Staggering over to a stool, she sank down and buried her face in her hands.

Holly crept near to her, longing to pat her shuddering shoulder, but fearful of being rejected. She dropped to one knee at the woman’s feet. “Please don’t cry, Winnie. I never meant to make you cry.”

“Don’t you know what a terrible thing it is you’ve done?” Winifred lifted her head; her Welsh accent was thickened by grief. “We thought you were different. That you might be the one to finally break the curse.” At last Holly understood their open-armed welcome of Austyn’s new bride, their unabashed delight in her ugliness. “And now ‘tis happening all over again. The lies. The jealousy. The accusations. Half of them calling you a shape-shifting witch and begging the master to burn you at the stake. The other half blaming him for locking you away.”

“What do you think? Do you think I’m a witch? A monster?” Holly could not have said why Winnie’s reply was so vital to her.

Winifred studied her from beneath her damp lashes, then shook her head. “I think you’re a foolish girl who’s played a nasty trick on a man as much son to me as my own. Don’t ask me to help you. For I won’t.”

Holly straightened as Winifred brushed past her. “I still love him,” she said defiantly before the door could close.

“Then may God have pity on your soul,” Winifred murmured before shutting the door and dropping the bolt into place.

Winifred came twice a day after that, bearing hearty meals of stew and fresh baked bread, ewers of steaming water for bathing, and crisp linen sheets, but never again did Holly shed a tear or utter a single plea for help. She sent most of the trays back untouched and left the clean sheets piled on the chest, preferring to curl up each night on top of the moth-eaten coverlet

When Winifred stiffly told her, “The master wants to know if you require anything else for your comfort —extra blankets or perhaps a fire to warm you at night,” Holly burst into peals of merry laughter, their shrill edge sending the woman fleeing from the tower.

For Holly knew that no measure of blankets could warm her. No fire could banish the chill from her soul. She might have been deprived of the company of Aus-tyn’s grandmother, but she still felt a keen kinship with the woman. She finally understood that ‘twas not being falsely accused that had driven her to that window or the tedium of her own company. Twas the anguish of being torn from the arms of the man she loved. Knowing she would never again see his crooked smile or watch the way his eyes warmed when they beheld her.

But there the similarities ended. For Austyn’s grandmother had been innocent of wrongdoing and Holly knew herself to be guilty, guilty of a cruel deception. If Austyn left her there for a month or a century, she would be no less deserving of her punishment.

She roamed the tower in her frayed chemise as the minutes melted into hours, the hours into days. The wind wailed its melancholy refrain and she found herself standing more often than not at the tower window, gazing down at the courtyard below with an emotion akin to yearning.

Nearly a fortnight had passed when she began to envision her body there, pale and broken on the cobblestones, and to wonder what Austyn’s reaction would be when he discovered it. Would he cradle her across his lap and repent his harshness as his father had done, or would he be relieved to be rid of her so tidily, sparing him the embarrassment of seeking an annulment from the king?

Holly stepped up on the window seat, then onto the narrow sill, bracing her palms against the cut stones that framed the opening. The warm wind pum-meled her, molding the thin garment to her shivering body, bearing on its wings the ripe scents of summer and life and freedom. She lifted her eyes from the cobblestones and gazed across the Welsh countryside, drinking in its rugged beauty. A beauty so wild and sweet it hurt her eyes to look upon it, yet so compelling she could not bear to look away and forsake all of its unspoken promises for the morrow.

Holly’s knees collapsed. She crawled back on the window seat, clamping a hand over her mouth, ill with the thought of what she might have done had the bullying wind not snapped her out of her haze of despair. Feeling as if she’d just awakened from an enchanted sleep, she gazed around the tower, seeing it with crystalline clarity for the first time. Her father might have pronounced her selfish and wayward, but he would not have wished such a heartless penance upon her. Despite what her husband might have chosen to believe, she was guilty of idiocy, not adultery.

The wind whined down the chimney flue, no longer a comfort but an irritant. Holly sprang off the window seat, snatched the wad of pristine sheets from the chest and stuffed them up the flue. Her stomach growled its approval. Marching over to the table, she grabbed an untouched loaf of bread, then sank down cross-legged on the floor. As she tore off fat hunks of bread and tossed them in her mouth, she felt a blazing surge of something in her belly. Something even more dangerous and wonderful than hunger.

Anger.

When Winifred came to deliver supper and fresh water for bathing to the tower that night, Holly informed her that she required only two things: pen and paper. Although fearing the girl would scribble some maudlin, tear-smeared missive Sir Austyn would refuse to read, Winnie dutifully delivered both items the following morning.

When she returned at twilight, Holly presented her with a ten-page list of articles she required from the master for her comfort. The words master and comfort were underlined with a scathing flourish.

Winnie and two wide-eyed maidservants trundled in the next morning, staggering beneath their assorted burdens of tub, towels, sheets, embroidery frame, thread, fragrant oils, fresh apples, harp, beeswax tapers, broom, bedclothes, books, and various other treasures that would make Holly’s captivity tolerable, if not pleasant.

The girls continued to gape at her, even as Winifred shooed them out and shut the door in their faces. Winnie awkwardly cleared her throat “The master wishes to know if you require any lemons to rub on your elbows, or perhaps a Nubian slave to comb your hair five hundred strokes before bedtime.”

Holly snapped a crisp bite from a fat red apple. ‘Tell him that given the current length of my hair, two hundred and fifty strokes should be sufficient.”

When Winifred had gone, Holly surveyed her plunder with a calculating eye. She had chosen few items that could not be used as a weapon against her husband. She’d already pillaged the chest at the foot of the bed for her armor—brocaded cottes woven of samite and cloth of gold, twin cloaks lined with the softest sable, sendal chemises so sheer they appeared more suited to a harem than a noblewoman’s bedchamber. Most were in need of only minor repairs and a healthy airing.

Holly carried cloaks, thread, and needle to the window seat and curled up in the sunshine. A devilish smile played around her lips. If Austyn thought he was going to just lock her away and forget her existence, he had sorely underestimated his opponent. Twas here while she prepared for battle that she would wield her most lethal weapon of all.

Tipping back her head, Holly began to sing.

Holly sang.

She sang while she swiped the dust from the furniture and swept the timber floor. She sang while she replaced the moth-eaten coverlet with the wedded cloaks, creating an inviting nest of plush sable. She sang while Winifred and the maidservants carried in buckets of steaming water for her bath. She sang while she soaked her weary muscles in the tub and afterward, while she rubbed oil of myrrh into her neglected skin, restoring its pearly glow. She sang while she combed her flourishing curls and each night when she lay down upon her pillow, she sang herself softly to sleep.

She sang cheery May songs and wistful ballads. She sang stirring Crusade anthems and complex rounds, alternating the parts of the different singers. She sang children’s rhymes and bawdy ditties. She sang liturgical chants, spinning songs, lays, and laments. And one evening at sunset, she stood at the window of the tower and warbled a hymn so full-throated and magnificent that even Nathanael in his dungeon cell lifted his eyes heavenward, seeking a choir of celestial angels.

Austyn suffered no such delusions. Twas no heavenly visitation, this scourge of melody, but a demonic infestation. Each note pricked his tortured flesh like a tine of Lucifer’s pitchfork. There was nowhere he could flee to escape the compelling sorcery of Holly’s voice. He could ride to the ends of the earth and still it would pursue him.

He did not know if she sang in her sleep, but by God, she sang in his. In his fevered dreams, she sang only for him while he coaxed her to a climax of flawless rhythm and perfect pitch.

Twas not her soaring hymns that disturbed him most, but the simple lullabies she sang at night when her voice had grown weary with just a hint of a husky croak. Twas then that he found her most beguiling. Twas then that he had to brutally remind himself that the sirens had sought only to lure Ulysses to certain doom.

Then one twilight eve when he thought he was going to have to beg Carey to tie him to one of the pillars in the courtyard just as Ulysses had been bound to his own mast, the singing ceased. Just like that. No hint of hoarseness. No fading. It sisqiT ceased.

The silence was more terrible than anyone had anticipated. A pall of dejection descended like a black cloud over the castle. When Austyn strode into the great hall, all conversation lurched to a halt and he felt the gazes of everyone in the hall settle on him. He’d grown accustomed to their weight in the past month. Grown accustomed to Carey’s furtive glances, Winnie’s nervous stares, Emrys’s unspoken question of, “What monstrous thing will he do next?” Gone were the days when they had looked upon him with pride and admiration instead of fear.

Most damning of all were the swollen eyes and perpetually reddened nose of his wife’s nurse. Austyn suspected the old woman would have fled for help long ago if she hadn’t feared to leave her mistress at his mercy.

Even his father, who had not uttered a single word since his harangue from the parapet, blinked up at him with the wide, frightened eyes of a child. With his soul so recently stripped of melody, Austyn felt naked and raw beneath their probing scrutiny. Suddenly, he could bear it no more.

“What ails the lot of you?” he bellowed, whirling around to glare at them. “Are you never going to smile again? Laugh again? Speak above a godforsaken whisper?”

With a heart-wrenching sob, Elspeth threw her apron over her face and burst into tears. But not before Austyn had caught a glimpse of himself through her eyes—a towering brute, more ogre than man.

The deafening hush only made the music of Holly’s voice clearer, more seductive. She beckoned him with her crystalline silence, driving him to stride blindly toward the stairs, determined to confront the enchantress who had bewitched him into such a beast

Austyn’s treads slowed as he neared the north tower. The silence was no longer pristine, but haunted by the echoes of Holly’s screams and pleas as he had dragged her up the winding stairs beneath his feet Twas as if the ancient stones had absorbed her piteous cries. His wrists and forearms still bore the fading marks of her scratches, but he feared the deeper scars of her betrayal and his abandonment would never heal.