Suzanne Robinson (6 page)

He watered his horse and was returning the bucket to the well when his manservant stuck his head around the door of the keep with great reluctance. Ralph’s hair was disappearing quickly, and he walked like a chicken, darting his head forward with each step. Galen had saved his life in battle, and Ralph went wherever Galen did. Unfortunately for Ralph, he’d acquired a taste for the small luxuries afforded a rich nobleman—and the nobleman’s manservant—while Galen was indifferent to them.

“God save your lordship, but you’d better come inside.”

Galen set the bucket down and put his fists on his hips. “For God’s mercy, Ralph, I told you there’s nothing to fear. The village folk are an ignorant lot and see apparitions and shades in every patch of mist and fog.”

“It be Lady Rowena’s shade they’re seeing, lordship.” Ralph peered around the keep, eyeing the long shadows cast by the abandoned towers. “Only two days hence Snel the goatherder saw her a weeping and moaning in Ditchley Vale. She was pale, and she—she glowed with supernatural light!”

“Snel the goatherd leaves milk in little wooden bowls on his doorstep for fairies to drink during the night.”

Ralph goggled at him. “And they do?”

“No,” Galen replied with irritation. “No, Ralph, they don’t. If there are fairies, they’ve magic enough to get their own food. And there’s no shade of Lady Rowena either.”

He wasn’t about to mention the strange sounds he’d heard a few nights ago. He’d been coming home from a long walk, and darkness had come early in the midst of the thick forest of Durance Guarde. He’d turned around a sharp bend in the path that led to the castle and encountered a wraithlike figure. It had been hanging in the air, obscured by saplings and the moss that hung from tree branches. He had taken a step toward it, and it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. When he moved farther off the path, he realized he was seeing the glow of light from one of the castle windows. What an addlepate. He’d had real visions too many times to take fright at his own imaginings.

“Better come in before the sun goes down, lordship.”

Sighing, Galen started toward the keep. “Go on. I’ll watch the sun set before dinner. And this time mind those quail. I spent all morning trapping them, and I don’t want them burned; I want them roasted.”

“Er, then you’d better come to dinner now, lordship.”

Galen followed Ralph inside and over to the circular fireplace that once served as the only heat
in the great hall. A spit had been erected over a pile of burning logs, and Ralph was barely in time to keep the quail from turning black. In spite of the manservant’s complaining Galen was glad of his company. He loved his brothers, but the four of them were difficult to manage all at once, and when they sensed trouble they descended upon him like vultures. Each was eager to help; each had a different opinion of what Galen should do about his problems, and only Fulk refrained from expressing it.

The de Marlowe gifts made them different from most aristocratic families. To survive they’d kept together, fostered to the household of a Welsh prince, a relative who knew their secret. Such closeness was unusual among the aristocracy. Look at the royal family. Brother would kill brother for the throne. Galen’s brothers would give their lives for him. That was what he feared. Even knowing about this vision risked one’s life, and he wanted to spare Simon, Macaire, Fulk, and Fabron.

Galen dragged his attention back to the meal. The balding crown of Ralph’s head gleamed as he plopped quail onto a wooden tray, and they began to eat. That is, Galen ate and Ralph complained. Ralph was a city man.

“I miss the cookshops in London, I do. Never had better venison than at Eda’s shop in Candlewick Street.”

“Hmm.”

“Makes a lovely cameline sauce, does Eda.”
Ralph took another bite of his quail and winced. “Got a crick in me neck from that horrible pallet you make me sleep on, lordship. Back home I got a nice trundle bed with a lovely mattress stuffed with straw and goose down, and nice tansy to keep the fleas away. Here the fleas have had centuries to breed so they’re thick as flies on a turd.”

“Ralph, I’m eating.”

“Sorry, lordship.” Ralph took a long drink from a leather tankard and grimaced, revealing a gap where he’d lost a molar to decay. “No proper pottery, nor plate, nor glass for drinking from neither. I had to put polished horn in me window to keep out the drafts.”

“Your life is a trial, Ralph.”

“It is, lordship.” The manservant brightened. “But I purchased a rice pudding in Holywell village. It’s flavored with spices and honey and wine, just as you like it.”

“You’re a good man, Ralph.”

“I’m sore tried, lordship.” Ralph cast a sideways glance at his master and groaned. “Me back is a torment. I got bit by some poisonous worm yester e’en, and I swear this ale we get from Snel has lye in it. Me guts is raw. If we don’t go back to London town soon, I’ll perish in this savage place.”

“We’re staying here, Ralph.”

The manservant fell silent. He uncovered a large wooden bowl and served the rice pudding. With his spoon halfway to his mouth he darted a look over his shoulder. Although a dozen candles
had been placed around, the hall was so vast that most of it lay in darkness. The ceiling was vaulted and rose two stories high. A gallery ran around the second level, providing more darkness beyond its arches.

“Did you hear something, lordship?”

Galen didn’t even look up from his pudding. “It was the wind.”

“There be no wind today.”

“It picks up as the sun goes down.”

“Yester e’en I was on me way to the guarderobe in the middle of the night, and I looked out one of the arrow slits.” Ralph lowered his voice. “I swear, lordship, I saw a flickery light in Rowena’s Tower. By my faith, I did.”

“You probably saw the light from my room reflected off the wall,” Galen said. Rowena’s Tower projected from Berengar’s Tower, and from his chamber he could see the window of the room where the poor girl had been kept prisoner.

Ralph was shaking his head. “No, lordship. It was a strange shimmering glow.” He lowered his voice and glanced around the hall again. “And I saw a shadow pass by her window.”

Galen put down his bowl and spoon and regarded his manservant with exasperation.

“No more tales of shadows and shades, Ralph. I’m not going home, and I’m not going back to court. You’ll have to do without luxuries for a while longer.”

“Oh, lordship—”

“But I give you leave to improve this place and make yourself more comfortable.”

Ralph looked only a bit more cheerful. “It will take a merchant’s fortune to amend this ruin.”

“Begin with your own chamber, then, and don’t bother me.”

“Yes, master.” Ralph brightened. “I’ll purchase a new bed. I’ll order one in Holywell town upon the morrow.”

“Good, then you won’t be pestering me.”

Galen rose and headed for the stairs that wound up Berengar’s Tower. “You did well with the quail this time.”

“And I’ll hire a cook.”

“No servants.”

“But we need a cook, lordship.”

“If you bring one soul into this keep, I’ll make you go fishing for carp and clean the cursed things yourself.”

Galen left the hall with the laments of his manservant echoing off the vaulted ceiling. He climbed the stairs then he reached a ladder and trap-door to the roof of Berengar’s Tower and was in time to watch the sun sink below the treetops. As he’d told Ralph, the wind had picked up as the sunlight faded, and he breathed in the smell of forest—soil, dead leaves, grasses, and wildflowers. After a day spent hunting and riding across the countryside, he was bone-weary. He glanced in the direction of the Stafford lands. The castle was behind another line of hills, and he wondered again if
Lady Honor had gone there or back home to her dower lands.

Mayhap she would pass this way again. He wouldn’t mind seeing her, as long as she refrained from claiming land his family had owned for countless generations. Galen felt a stir of desire and directed his thoughts elsewhere. He was tired, but he’d never get to sleep if he kept thinking about lying on the keep floor with ladies squirming around on top of him. He descended to his chamber and went to bed.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he suddenly bolted upright and wide awake. His gaze darted around the chamber, but found nothing out of the ordinary. He waited, listening to his own breathing. His blood froze as a long hollow moan floated on the breeze through the open window. Galen rose, picked up his belt and sword, and went to the window.

Naked and shivering, he looked out at the irregular line of the wall walk, at the towers that marched around the outer wall, and saw nothing. The moan came again, a long keening noise like a damned soul. Gooseflesh rose on his skin, and a spike of alarm went through him. Never had he heard that noise before. It seemed to arise from the air itself, and it sounded as though something unearthly was in torment. Another wail penetrated his ears and reverberated in his skull. He sucked in his breath as it seemed to take forever to fade.

Then he saw it, a glow coming from Rowena’s
Tower. His room was higher, and a great space separated him from the wall in which the window was placed, but he could see a pale, shimmering glow emanating from the room where Lady Rowena had been kept.

“Rowena?” he whispered.

Galen leaned out, to see more closely, and a white figure formed itself out of the light. For a moment he stopped breathing as the apparition took shape—a woman dressed in a diaphanous white gown with long trailing sleeves. Her skin was dead white, and it reflected the unearthly light that surrounded her. She lifted pale arms and held them out to him. Her mouth opened. It was a dark gaping hole in a pale face. Although her lips didn’t move, that spectral wail issued forth, echoing off the walls of the castle and fading away on the wind.

Galen beheld the long, white-blonde hair, the pale skin. “Dear Lord,
Rowena
.”

Then reason reasserted itself. It couldn’t be Rowena. Rowena had been dark-haired. He closed his eyes in pain, then opened them to find that shimmering white-blonde hair filling his vision. There was only one woman he’d ever known with that silvery blonde hair.

He trembled and stuttered the name of his dead wife. “Con … Constance?”

As Galen stared, the apparition seemed to grow smaller, and he realized she was leaving. In an instant the light and the woman vanished, and Rowena’s Tower was dark once more.

Galen kept staring at the vacant window below him. “Constance?” Then he shook himself. It couldn’t have been Constance. “By all the devils in hell!”

He tossed his sword on the bed, pulled on hose, tunic, and boots and belted on his sword. He raced out of his chamber, holding tinder and flint in shaking hands. Lighting a torch that was set in a wall sconce, he grabbed it and hurtled downstairs, through a passage and into Rowena’s Tower. Breathing heavily, he took the stairs two at a time and stopped at the door to Rowena’s chamber. He lifted the latch and shoved the door open. It swung back with a long, loud creak, but nothing came out of the chamber but chilly air.

His heart beating fast, his mind a sea of pain and trepidation at the thought of Constance, Galen held the torch high and peered inside. Nothing. He took a cautious step back and drew his sword. It encountered no obstacles. He searched the room, but found naught out of the ordinary. It was a large chamber with a fan-vaulted ceiling. Once there had been tiles on the floor, but they’d been looted, leaving only the bare wood. Galen carefully approached the window, holding his sword before him, and looked out. He could see part of the wall walk, but most of his view was blocked by the massive walls of Berengar’s Tower.

He began to feel foolish. Constance was in heaven, and her pure soul had no cause to haunt this place. The apparition must have been in his
mind. He sheathed his sword with a sigh of relief. He’d been listening to Ralph too long if he was even considering that he saw Rowena. He groaned aloud and left the chamber, heading for his own. Why would he have a vision of a poor girl dead some two centuries? Then a more sinister thought occurred to him. What if that shimmering glow he’d seen the other night on the path hadn’t been light from the castle? That meant either he was seeing spirits, or he was going mad, or both. Mayhap the strain of the Tower vision had affected his reason. Then there was another possibility; these ghostly sightings of his could be part of another vision. His hands were shaking, and he broke into a cold sweat.

If this was another vision, he would go mad. He’d had enough. He could stand no more of them. He didn’t want to see murdered children, bloody battlefields, or dead women.

Halfway up the stairs to his chamber he stopped, put the torch in a sconce, and leaned against the wall. Holy Trinity! Deliver him from this foul curse! He was weary of these visions that plagued him awake and in his sleep. It had cost him much, more than he wanted to remember. He slumped to the floor, his sword between his knees, and cooled his burning forehead in his palms, trying to banish the mistaken image of Constance from his mind.

Once he’d been young, happy and confident, able to stand against all that the world might hurl
at him. He’d had a wife and two children, a girl and a boy. He’d been fond of his beautiful wife. If he hadn’t loved her, neither of them knew it, for their parents had matched them young, and there had been no chance to miss love. Constance had been thirteen, and he’d been two years older when they married. The births of Gisela and Oliver had drawn them together, and they had worked as partners. Constance governed the children and his home, Argent.

Gisela loved horses, and Galen had feared for her safety since she was three and insisted on riding a pony. At nine years of age she rode a horse as fearlessly as he had at fifteen. Six-year-old Oliver preferred his gentle pony and kept the whole castle laughing with his jests and pranks.

On a cold day in February Galen had a vision of danger that threatened a friend and rode out in all haste to warn him. The journey took three days, and he returned to find that a Yorkist rival, Baron Roger Scrope, had attacked Argent while the gates were open and the drawbridge down to receive shipments of goods from London. Scrope, who coveted Argent and its rich fields and forests, had been as lawless and evil as old Berengar, but Galen had always beaten him in the few open fights they’d had. Now the castle was in flames. Scrope had cornered Constance, Gisela, and Oliver in the solar and skewered each with his own sword.