Suzanne Robinson (21 page)

“My guards are without. If you touch me, they have orders to skewer you.”

“You think I would hurt you?”

“I know not.”

He sighed and held out his hands. “I but wish to propose a test.”

“What manner of test?”

“Now, Pen, I know how afeared you are of my serpent dagger, but if you held it, you might find the truth.”

“No.”

He came to her, but she stepped to the door, and he stopped.

“Pen, there’s little time.”

“No,” she said, biting her lip. “I can’t.”

“But it’s mine. You might sense the truth about me from it.”

Pen pressed her back against the door and shook her head. “It’s a perilous thing you ask of me.”

“I know,” he said softly, “and I wouldn’t ask, except that I’m desperate to prove my innocence and foil the priest’s designs against Cecil.”

Pen chewed on her lip. “The supply ship has docked. The ship’s master brought a letter from my cousin. He says the Queen of Scots’ half brother, Moray, has rebelled now that she’s married Darnley, whose
mother was Elizabeth’s cousin. Mary is furious and has chased her brother across the border to England with her army. She accuses our queen of aiding her brother and his allies and threatens to pursue him into England. Tristan, there might be war.”

“Jesu Maria,” Tristan said.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and lapsed into silence. Then he spoke as if to himself. “Her majesty of England, she balances between two evil choices. If she supports Moray, she will be aiding a subject who has rebelled against his lawful sovereign, a dangerous precedent considering the number of English Catholics. If she does nothing, she may lose her most valuable ally in Scotland.”

“How do you know this?” Pen asked.

“I know not. I seem to have much perplexing and important knowledge, but I don’t know why I have it. I suspect it’s because I, not Jean-Paul, am the queen’s man.”

Pen shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Gratiana, Mary of Scotland has the blessing of Philip of Spain to seek the English throne and set up the Catholic church again. Should Elizabeth appear weak in any way, it will be a signal to Spain or France to throw their strength behind Mary and destroy our Queen Bess. Which do you want, an English queen or a foreign one?”

“Saints, I can’t think.”

Tristan reached out to her, but she feared his touch and darted aside. He withdrew his hand and waited. Pen rubbed her forehead while agitation made her mouth go dry.

“Very well,” she said at last.

She rapped on the door and ordered Dibbler to bring the serpent dagger. They waited for it in silence. When
Dibbler returned, he brought Sniggs, Erbut, and Turnip with him as well as Wheedle. Sniggs bore the dagger in its sheath. The men filed into the chamber while Wheedle remained outside and locked them in. Tristan kept his distance at the point of their pikes.

With them between her and Tristan, Pen approached Sniggs, who held out the dagger. She tried to keep at bay her aversion to blades, the old memories of drowning in blood. But every step that brought her closer to the dagger sapped strength from her legs until she thought they would fold under her. Fighting queasiness, she took a last step that brought her within touching distance of the dagger.

Pen held out a trembling hand and touched the sheath with her fingertips. She stared at the hilt. She saw the tail of a serpent twitch. A minute ruby eye flashed. Freezing, breath stopped, she fought the vision until the writhing stilled. Then she spoke to herself sternly of courage and grasped the sheath.

All at once she was sailing in the air above a jewel-blue river. A chateau floated in the midst of the waters, and, like a bird, she flew to it and through an open window, and up a winding alabaster stair. At the top she soared through an open door of polished mahogany and into a room decked with Flemish tapestries. Beneath lay the myriad hues of a Persian carpet. She came to rest upon the carpet. Across the room, before the arched window, sat a carved table upon which lay a silver quill holder and ink pot, a golden drinking cup inlaid with amethysts and pearls.

There was a flash of yellow light, and heat. She squeezed her eyes closed against the pain of the sudden brightness. When she opened them, she realized she was staring into the flame of a candle in a gilt wall sconce, and shifted her gaze to look past it.

Out of the darkness of a shadow came a man dressed in scarlet. A lean man, golden of hair, a priest. The man stopped in the splash of torchlight. He was smiling, and that smile, so like that met in dark alleys after midnight, made her flesh grow cold. To her surprise, he withdrew his hands, which had been tucked into the flowing sleeves of his robe, and touched her face.

“Acheté, cher, Jean-Paul, mais très beau.”
The man in scarlet withdrew the ruby and gold dagger from his sleeve.
“Un cadeau.”

The torch flared, and Pen blinked. When her sight cleared, she was in the midst of ruins illuminated by moonlight. Fighting men surrounded her, and she faced a man with golden hair and hell’s fury in his gaze. They confronted each other across the length of their swords while she fingered the hilt of the serpent dagger.

“Jesu,
Anglais
, you have cost me much this night.”

“And the Cardinal of Lorraine, I hope,” said the other.

“Infortuné, mon fils
. This quick wit of yours has brought you a death sentence.”

She grew dizzy, and the night blackened. When she could see again, she was perched outside the window of a bedchamber. She glanced around, and found herself clinging to a wall of white stone above a moat. Above her rose the towers of a chateau with its conical slate roofs, gables, and turrets. She stepped onto the sill, shoved the window back, and dropped silently into the chamber.

A bed hung with blue and gold silk sat on a dais. A dying fire crackled in a fireplace. She floated over to the bed, palmed the dagger, and with the tip of the blade parted the hangings. The owner of the chamber lay within undisturbed. She parted the hangings and calmly pulled the covers from the sleeper.

They revealed an old man with the tonsure of a priest. He snorted, then turned over on his back. The dagger seemed to leap in her hand. It descended. She felt it hit and pierce flesh. It slid between ribs and embedded itself to the hilt. The old man grunted. His eyes flew open even as he died. His last sight was of her.

She smiled, pulled the dagger free, and wiped the blade on the man’s chest and the covers. She wiped spots of blood from her own black garb. Then she withdrew. Taking her time, she straightened the hangings and took a last look at the body. The blood looked black and gleamed wetly at her. Pen shook her head. Nausea curdled her stomach, and she grew dizzy again. Her gorge rose, and she doubled over.

“Pen!”

She heard Tristan, but she was too concerned with the dizziness and sickness to answer. She heard her own teeth chattering and her sobs. At the sound, she opened her eyes. She was on the floor cradled in Tristan’s arms with her men gathered around them. Sniggs had grabbed the dagger and shoved it into his jerkin. Summoning every last bit of her will, she lunged upright and out of Tristan’s arms. Once on her feet, she swung around to confront him, quaking and shivering.

“Pen, what happened?”

“Murderer.”

At this, Dibbler and the others surrounded Tristan and pointed their weapons at him. He gave them but a glance and returned his gaze to her.

“Pen, I’m no murderer. Why say you such things?”

Pen pointed a shaking finger at him. “You took a desperate gamble and it failed. You should have known better, but no doubt you thought my gift would show
me only what I wanted to see. You’ve destroyed yourself, priest, for now I know the true depth of your evil.”

Tristan tried to approach her, but was stopped by the point of a pike.

“I have to stop this assassin here, before he sails to England. He could be on Penance at this moment.”

Pen barely heard him. Calling to Wheedle, Pen paused on the threshold when the girl opened the door. “It will kill me to do my duty, but I will do it. You sail with me to England, where I’ve no doubt the queen’s ministers will clap you in the Tower and rack the truth out of you.”

“God’s blood, woman!” Tristan knocked a pike aside, but another took its place. “Penelope Grace Fairfax, you’re allowing a French spy to roam free and helping him to murder Cecil.”

“Belabor me with no more colorable tales, sirrah.” Pen felt weaker than a plague victim, but she kept her back straight and her head held high. “You’ll spin no more enchantments upon me. Your magic is as dead as my love.”

Christian de Rivers looked out a window in the high great chamber at Falaise, his gaze fixed on the edge of the forest beyond the grounds of the manor. Morgan had been missing for almost three weeks, and he awaited word from Inigo on the success of the search at sea. He heard the click of heels on polished wood. Turning, he saw his wife Nora entering the chamber, a fencing sword in her hand.

Smiling, she came to him and plied the blade in a figure eight. The sword buzzed in the air, then she saluted him.

“Lessons over?” he asked.

“For me,” Nora said. “But the twins have begged to be allowed a chance.”

Christian frowned. “They’re too young.”

Nora put a finger to her lips, then laughed.

“The fencing master has given them wooden blades, and I left orders that he’s to watch them every moment. Elizabeth and Jehan have both promised to obey. No word?”

He turned back to the window. “None—wait.”

He leaned out and squinted against the afternoon sun. A rider had emerged from the tree line and galloped toward the manor. As he approached, Christian
made out the scrawny figure of Inigo Culpepper. The thief galloped close to the moat, wheeled, and waved a black kerchief.

Christian’s heart plummeted to his knees. He closed his eyes for a moment, then returned Inigo’s wave. The thief nudged his horse and galloped back the way he’d come. Christian remained in the window, staring at nothing. Morgan was lost. Morgan, who had been in his care since the boy’s father, Viscount Moorefield, had asked him to foster his youngest son.

He felt Nora beside him. “It was my fault.”

“No.”

“Aye,” he said. “I sent Morgan to help his brother, hoping they would reconcile. They did, but then he met that bastard priest and went after him.”

Nora slipped her hand into his. “Morgan wanted to serve the queen as you do. You know how the viscount tried to destroy both him and Derry. And you most of all know how desperately Morgan was running from his past.”

“I should have made him stay at court.”

“The queen was furious with him for allowing her favorite serving woman to seduce him.”

Christian waved a hand. “She would have forgiven him. He but needed to attempt to seduce her with his courtly graces and she would have been placated. I should never have let him go.”

“You couldn’t have made him stay with you forever, my love.”

“What am I going to tell Derry? He’s at Moorefield Garde, taking possession of his father’s title.” Christian turned to Nora, caught her hand, and brought it to his face, stroking his cheek with it. “What am I going to tell Derry?”

Nora kissed him. “Nothing until after you have come
back from your meeting with Cecil. If Inigo hasn’t returned by then, we’ll know Morgan’s lost.”

Morgan shouted at Pen through the locked door of the Painted Chamber. “Penelope Grace Fairfax, you come back here!”

“I’m going to get your supper.”

Morgan kicked the door and glared at it.

“I knew you couldn’t stay away.” He raised his voice so that she could hear him as she left. “Because you love me, damn you.”

“I do not,” came the faint reply.

Morgan cursed, drew back his fist, and punched the door. A bolt of pain shot up the bones of his arm. Yelping, he grasped his fist with his other hand. He ranted at himself and panted with the pain.

“Witless sod. You’re a fool, Morgan, or whoever you are. A witless crackbrain—”

Morgan stopped in mid-rant. He stood beside the door without breathing as all of existence picked itself up, shifted at right angles, and sat down again. Without fanfare, without a sign or portent, his memory popped back into his mind. He didn’t even hear his own breathing stop, speed up, and then grow faint.

“Bloody everlasting perdition,” he whispered.

Absently he shook his aching hand and began to stroll around the chamber as memories deluged him. Disjointed thoughts stumbled through his head. He’d been chasing Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul, the bastard, had said his brother Derry was dead. By God’s mercy, he’d said Derry was—no, he wouldn’t believe that. He couldn’t and keep his reason intact.

All he could do was hope the priest had been lying. It would be like Jean-Paul to conjure up such a falsehood
to torment him. Somehow he had to submerge this ravening worry about Derry. God, he’d been so close to killing the priest twice. Each time, Jean-Paul had escaped, and now he was glad, for he’d discovered the plot to kill Cecil.

So much killing. Morgan’s steps faltered as he remembered his own part in the death of his oldest brother, John. For so many years he’d blamed Derry for it, and hated him for it, tried to make him suffer for it, when all along
he
had been the one who caused John’s death.

Morgan dropped his face into his hands, almost unable to bear the floods of remorse and guilt. After John’s death their father had blamed Derry for John’s death and used Morgan against him. He encouraged Morgan to blame Derry as he did, to hate him, even tried to coax him into killing his brother.

At first Morgan had been comforted by his father’s attention. He’d been the youngest, the one always left behind, the one forgotten and pushed aside in favor of his older brothers. The viscount’s sudden attention was like water to a shriveled and drought-ridden young plant.

But the years passed, and Morgan gradually realized that his father wasn’t interested in him except as a tool to be used against Derry. Once he understood the meanness of his father’s affection, he gave up trying to attain it. An act of wisdom.