Rhiannon (35 page)

“Three men come!” Daisy piped from the doorway when the reeve and his party entered the clearing. Rhia and Mam jumped instantly to their feet and bustled to get drink and cheese for them, all thumbs in the doing of it so that Rhia cut her knuckle and Mam spilled some ale upon her skirt. Only Granna sat and calmly chewed her pipe.

The three settled themselves around the firepit and without delay reported that indeed in the wild brush of Wythicopse they had found the old fireplace opening, where Roman slaves had once bent to stoke the pipes that ran beneath the floor of that ancient palace. Almund, who himself was needed in a thousand places the morn of Beltane Eve, had commandeered two of the languishing pirates to help Jonah, and they had spent the morning breaking through that fireplace with axes, opening an entrance to the crawlspace beneath the floor, then covering the entrance with overgrowth again.

While they did this, Thaddeus had managed to signal his friend, Brother Silas, and the two of them were even now positioning themselves and Brother Silas's instrument within that shallow crawlspace.

“Everything over there is now in order, Aigy, as safe as we can make it,” Almund concluded. “Holt will be but steps behind Rhiannon all the way to the place and all the way back. He's skilled in concealment, and you could find no better bodyguard than he'll make.” Almund put his hand upon Holt's shoulder.

Holt looked embarrassed but pleased by the praise. “Aigneis, you know I'll guard her with my life,” he said simply.

“Silas gave me a short concert on his bagpipe before we left, and indeed, I was much impressed by the sheer wretchedness of it,” Jonah interjected, pulling off his bandanna and cap in one impatient move. “It would frighten the devil himself and turn him to righteousness. So, madame, all is well-done. The plan is tight as Noah's ark.”

Sir Jonah obviously expected Mam to be charmed and won over by his wit, but the others knew that wit would likely not sit well with her in this particular circumstance.

You could have heard a bird breathe as Mam stood.

“You ask of me the hardest thing anyone has ever asked,” she said, quite icily. “And Almund, though I know Holt to be true and capable, you yourself must stand ready to interfere within the church at the slightest hint of anything amiss over there.”

Almund looked troubled and did not answer her at first. And then he stood and walked some steps closer to speak with her more direct.

“Aigy, though Holt and I will watch that holy chapel from here within your cottage, we have to stay clear. There is nowhere in its courtyard to conceal ourselves, and we will only dare approach when we have our signal that a confession is very near to being made by them. Understand that. Rhiannon will make sure that a candle is lit in the southwest window of the church when they've first arrived there, and she will move it to the southeast window to signal us to come close beneath the windows to hear what transpires. To storm the place too early would greatly endanger those inside. These young folk will be largely on their own. It's how it must be.”

Without a word of answer, Mam walked to her medicinal corner and got busy. She'd spoke nothing nor done anything to scuttle the plan, but indeed she held her lips in a tight line and her hair was a moving blaze that Rhia could feel scorching the place.

The others felt it, too. “We'll to the chapel now to make it ready,” Almund mumbled.

Holt and Jonah, looking greatly relieved for the excuse to escape, jumped readily to their feet, and the three of them left.

Daisy frowned, confused by all this. “Well,
I'm
going to
Sally's,
” she told them, and flounced out as one who's frustrated beyond endurance by the present company.

Rhiannon, scarcely daring to move, nevertheless crept around the edge of the room to sit close beside Granna, who had stared deep into the firepit for some time, frowning.

“Do you . . . see anything?” Rhia whispered, first glancing nervously in Mam's direction. “Does the fire speak of tonight's goings-on?”

Granna would not answer at first. Rhia watched her eyes, and saw a spark in them she hoped was concentration, though it might have been dread, or even fear.

“I've watched these flames all day, since your mother told me of your risky plans, Rhiannon,” Granna finally murmured. “In the fire I've seen a shadow procession of folk coming up our bluff, and I've seen as well a procession of shadow folk going back down.” She reached for Rhia's hand. “But looky there, child.” She pointed with her pipe stem. “Can you na see the space of circling black there between the glowing ashes? There to the nether side, amidst the bluish sparks. See?”

Rhia bent and squinted, but could not, as usual, see any such thing.

“It's death,” Granna whispered in a weak crackle of sound like a quick-burning leaf. She kept tight hold of Rhia's hand, but would say nothing more.

Reeve Clap's deputy Holt Yeoman was not much of a talker, and Rhiannon was glad of that going down the trail that early evening. All the better to practice in her head the coy conversation she was expected to use upon the earl's son's sophisticated friends. Not that she hadn't already been trying out various ways to get them blabbing about their exploits. Ever since she'd heard Jonah's plan, a big part of her brain had been working on it all the time.

She might widen her eyes and say, “Tell me, Sir Leonard, of the bravest things you've done, as I long to hear of your most outrageous exploits!” Or, “How fast I've seen you ride! Surely you've had escapades at such speeds?” Would Leonard, or one of his mates, then brag of doing reckless mischief in the woods the night Aleron was murdered?

Oh, but
why
would Thaddeus and Jonah
ever
think her capable of such a thing as flirtatiousness? Why, she'd never so much as said two sentences to a boy near her age until she'd met the two of them! The earl's friends, courtiers that they were, would surely spot right away her country ways and lumpish speech. She tapped her chin with Mam's cross and bit her lip, trying to be consoled with the thought that at least she looked her best tonight. She'd gone to a fine lot of trouble for that.

She'd washed her hair in the brook and rinsed it twice in rose water this afternoon, and now it swung free and slippery along the length of her green woolen tunic to below her waist. She'd braided her waist rope with honeysuckle, and cinched that belt so tight her small waist showed, then she'd put sprigs of morning glory and wild rose in amongst a few tiny braids she'd made in her tresses and through the laces of her boots.

“Hear that?” Holt suddenly spoke, startling her from her thoughts. “The party's well begun in the streets of Woethersly, though night has yet to fall.”

Indeed, above the lapping of the sea, they could now hear the distant thrum of tambourines, the high swirl of dance music played upon flutes, and the squeal of raucous laughter. In another hour, when the bonfires were lit and Beltane Eve had wound up to its heights, that thrum would become a roar with little chance of anyone hearing what was said or being heard themselves when they tried to call above the racket.

Only Wythicopse's remote location might make it quiet enough for coy conversation.

Rhia reached in her pouch for Leonard's scarf. She draped it round her neck and, with fingers made clumsy by the afternoon's nervous imaginings, tied it in what she hoped was a fashionable and jaunty way.

 
It was fully dark by the time Rhia, with Holt some steps behind, came to the far edges of Woethersly. Once past the holy grounds of the church, they were caught up in the roiling and rambunctious crowd that surged willy-nilly through the streets. All were by now either drunk or feigned being, as drunkenness brought with it the giddy heedlessness the evening allowed. Some were costumed and many wore masks.

Bonfire wood was stacked high in several places, and would be lit when the Queen of the May arrived at the center of the green to give the signal. After the flames had burned a little and got some low, the young maids and lads of the town would go to jumping the fires, as this would help free the summer sun from the wintry grasp that held him still. Winter
must
loose the sun by the end of tonight, else the May warmth could not come in upon the morrow.

Thinking of that, Rhia mused that more than a few of those fire jumpers would wake in the streets at dawn to find themselves with burns they'd naught felt when they'd got them, drunk and loony as they'd been. Maddy last year had burnt her ankle, but now wore that scar with pride. Rhia'd not jumped. Typically, she'd wished she had Maddy's nerve and could just
do
it without thinking it ten times first. But she
had
thought it ten times, then had withdrawn into the shadows to meekly watch the others.

No bonfires to jump or
not
to jump this year was the one comforting thing about this Wythicopse plan, she decided, as a howl of general delight turned her attention to the left. The Queen of the May was riding sidesaddle toward the green. The torches set in the ground showed her near-nakedness, for she wore but a short tunic, as a boy would do, and her legs from above her knees to her toes were completely and shockingly bare, though glistening with faery dust. Her white hair flowed to her waist, glistening as well, and her steed's snowy mane was strung with bells and sparkles.

“Come, ye lads——share the delights of the faery realms!” she sang as she rode so provocatively, touching some handsome young man gently upon the head with her wand, whilst next giving that boy's girl-friend a sharp hit with it. All of this brought laughter and lewd comments from the boisterous crowd.

Everyone in the White Queen's path pretended great temptation, though none would consent to jump upon her horse and ride pillion behind her. To return with the Queen of the May to faeryland's pleasures brought certain doom when Beltane was over and the faery gates closed again.

The horsehair wig had tipped a little from the Queen's white brow and Rhia noted a bit of the actress's dark hair showing beneath, a thing she would have ignored two Beltanes ago, when she still believed in all magics. And then someone yelled, “Make way!” and there came the shabby hobbyhorse careening through the crowd, the three performers hidden in his skin running blindly along so that all had to move or be collided with. A cheap trick he was, like the Queen herself, yet Rhia smiled at his clumsy, helter-skelter trot.

Then suddenly——
Whoof!
A dozen high fires sprang from the wicker wood that had been brought and piled high. A dozen orange blazes waved spiky arms against the dark sky, casting dancing shadows upon all below so that cheekbones were picked out and skin hollowed and all present became something more delightfully patterned and strangely formed than they were in normal times.

Here
was the true magic, then, in the firelight's transforming touch. The musicians pranced all the more gaily with their lutes and pipes, the sweating revelers wove in delirious snake-lines behind that music, and innocent children gaped from the shoulders of their elders, their eyes wide with the spectacle of it all.

Rhiannon looked quick behind her, and after a moment located Holt. His eyes were fastened upon her in the way a hunter is said to fix his prey, so she let herself relax a bit as she searched through the flickering light for the sort of off-kilter movement in the crowd that would signal Maddy's careless approach.

But the folk in the green were already off-kilter to such an extent that Rhia had no inkling of her friend's close arrival until a hand clamped shut upon her wrist and she felt her shoulder jerked nigh clean of its socket. And then she was taken through the roil and press of bodies as if she were a rag dragged along by some mongrel. Indeed, Maddy moved them as the hobbyhorse moved, heedless of all knocked asunder by their passing!

“Maddy!” Rhia screamed. “Slow down, won't you? My feet barely touch ground!”

But Rhia could not hear her own entreaties, and so it's sure Maddy could not, either.

Indeed, Holt might be left far behind, though Rhia could not spare a worry for being unguarded, as a greater conundrum loomed large. Maddy had
two
wrists in her two strong hands, and she pulled along
two
, Rhia and another! The galloping glimpses Rhia could have of her twinned captive showed the long skirt of a female, but all else of that person was concealed beneath a cloak and mask.

While it would not have been past Maddy to snatch a good-looking stranger from the crowd, this girl appeared to be a willing tag-along. But
why
was she here, and what dire effect might it have upon the evening's proceedings?

Past the left turn at the manor gates they sailed, then on along the line of yew trees. When they'd nearly got to the nether ford of the river, Maddy finally decided to loose her grip, and they all three collapsed to the ground. The clamor and noise of the festival was reduced so much that Rhia could hear the gurgle of the river, along with the sound of blood rushing within her ears. The fires poked up into the sky far behind them so that they all three turned to face that way as they got their breath. Everything nearer to them was shrouded in the absolute darkness of a moonless night.

“I . . . I thought it was to be only you and me from town, Maddy——you to be with Frederique and me for Leonard, with the other squires too young for, well, feminine company,” Rhiannon found the spunk to say. She'd no wish to offend this other, but she dreaded what this new complication might do to the plan they'd made, which already, to say it true, was hung together by the flimsiest of threads.

“Yes, I did say that,” Maddy admitted. “But last year you said you'd jump the fires, Rhia, and then you didn't, see? So how could I know for sure you'd come? And without a good-looking girl for himself, Leonard would be so angry, who knows what he might do? I mentioned he has a temper, did I not? Anyhow, two girls will not offend him, so never worry about it.” She shrugged. “In fact, once Rodrique sees this other,
he
will likely want her for
his
own companion and will wave away his lady cousin.”