The Gallows Curse (53 page)

    Your
hair, what happened to your beautiful hair?' Raffaele said, aghast.

    'Luce
dyed it. Ma insisted in case the sheriffs men came back.'

    Raffe
continued to stare at her, then he seemed to remember where he was. 'Talbot
tells me that no one has returned here again to enquire about the murder.
That's good. That means they don't link Raoul's death with you.'

    'But
what about Hugh?' Elena said. 'He saw me. He didn't seem to remember who I was,
but he said he thought I looked familiar. And he asked Finch about me. I can't
stay here now. What if he returns?'

    Shock
and fear flashed across Raffe's face. He grasped her shoulders, staring down
into her eyes so fiercely that she was forced to lower her gaze.

    'What's
this about Hugh? He was here? When . . . when was he here?'

    'More
than a week ago . . . two maybe.'

    'Was
he here looking for you?'

    'I
don't think so,' Elena said. 'He was here to . . . use a little boy. He just
happened to see me. But what if he remembers where he saw me before? You have
to take me away.'

    Raffaele
stepped back from her, running his hand distractedly through his thick grizzled
hair. 'I will
...
I will, I give you my word, but not yet. There's
something I must do, and until that's finished, I can't be with you to look
after you. This is the only safe place I can leave you.'

    'But
it isn't safe!' Elena wailed. 'What if he comes back?'

    Raffaele
was pacing the floor, gnawing on the edge of his thumb.

    'Hugh
only saw you fleetingly when he was at the manor, one of dozens of servants. He
wasn't there when you were accused. Everyone in the manor knows that villein
escaped the gallows. There won't be a man in Osborn's retinue who doesn't know
he'd pay a fortune to capture you, but even so, Hugh won't be able to link a
face to a name. Even if he was the man who you overheard talking about the
Santa Katarina,
you said yourself he didn't see your face.'

    Elena
lurched violently, grabbing hold of the edge of a table, trying to keep herself
from falling.

    'Hugh!
You think Hugh was the man I heard in Lady Anne's chamber? But
. . .
but
I don't understand. That night when I told you, you said it was one of Osborn's
servants.'

    Raffaele
shook his head impatiently. 'I know that's what I said, because I couldn't
imagine who else it could be. You told me the man you overheard had fought in
the Holy Land, but even then it didn't occur to me it could be Hugh. Hugh's a
cold-blooded bastard, but I couldn't believe that even he could be so base as
to betray his own king and country. And I wouldn't have believed it, unless I'd
seen him with my own eyes, skulking among the trees, watching for the
Santa
Katarina.
He was expecting that ship. He must have been the man you heard
in the chamber, how else could he have known about it? And why would he have
been trying to conceal himself, if he wasn't afraid of being caught by the
king's men?'

    'Then
you have to take me away from here before he comes back, you have to
...
if he knows it was me who heard him, he'll kill me!'

    'I
can't!' Raffaele snapped. Then he took a deep breath. His voice was heavy with
weariness. 'Hugh can't be certain you heard anything. In fact he must believe
by now that you didn't. I've taken great care not to tell anyone what I
suspect, in case he realizes what you overheard. Hugh's bound to have heard
that Osborn's missing villein is a red-head, and if he glimpsed your red curls
that night outside the chamber, he may well have made the connection. But. . .'
Raffaele held up a warning hand seeing that she was about to protest again,
'but don't you see that means he's looking for a red-head? That's all he knows
of you, and you're not that woman any more.'

    Raffaele
crossed over to her and slipped off her cap. He pulled the pins from one of the
braids and let it fall. Then, with an almost childlike curiosity, he ran his
fingers down it, unravelling the braid, letting the long dark hair fall in soft
waves across his palm. Elena, her thoughts still occupied with her fear of
Hugh, was too bemused to move. Raffaele gently rubbed the locks of her hair
between his thumb and forefinger, then his gaze lifted to her face and, bending
his head close to her, his lips parted and she felt his hot breath on her
mouth. She stiffened, flinching away.

    Raffe
instantly straightened up, letting her hair fall. He turned abruptly back to
the casement, but not before Elena glimpsed the dark flush on his cheeks.

    'It
is your eyes,' he said in a strangely broken voice. He cleared his throat.
'Luce has done her work well with your hair, and the colour of your brows
changes the shape of your face, but still anyone would know your eyes. Though
you need have no fears about that where Hugh is concerned, I doubt he's ever
noticed a woman's eyes.'

    Elena,
thrown entirely by his abrupt change of tone, could only stare at him.

    Raffaele
crossed to the door and opened it. 'If Hugh returns, just stay out of sight,'
he said without looking back at her.

    Seeing
him stride away snapped Elena out of her immobility. She ran after him,
catching his arm. 'Please, Master Raffaele, please take me with you. I could
stay in an inn or find work as a maid in the town. You said no one would
recognize me.'

    He
looked down at the little fingers grasping his sleeve and for a moment she
almost thought he was going to agree, then he seized her wrist and roughly
thrust her back into the chamber.

    'I
told you, you will stay here! Do you think I'm Athan or some frog-witted
plough-boy who's nothing better to do than dance attendance on you and your
selfish little wants? I saved you from the rope, what more do you expect of me?
And not one word more about your dreams, do you understand? Better you confess
you put a knife in a man's back with your own hand than that you killed him by
witchcraft. It is dangerous, can't you see that, you stupid little fool? And I
won't be there to save your wretched neck next time.'

    The
door crashed shut behind him and Elena stood there, massaging her wrist. Tears
filled her eyes, tears of fear, rage and anger, but above all misery. For she
suddenly realized that the only person in the world she really trusted, the
only person who had believed in her innocence, had just walked away from her.
Until that moment she had never understood so completely how it was possible to
feel such utter loneliness and desolation surrounded by so many people.

    Raffe
bounded up the stairs to Ma Margot's chamber two at a time. He knocked on the
heavy oak door, but didn't bother waiting for an answer before he burst in. The
chamber was empty. The shutters, as always, were tightly shut and only a single
candle burned on the wall behind the serpent chair. A hooded sparrowhawk
perched on a block of wood on the table. The bird flapped its wings angrily as
the draught from the open door ruffled its downy breast feathers. Raffe
instinctively reached out a finger to stroke it, soothing it with murmurs of
reassurance, but a vicious peck from the curved beak made him withdraw his
finger with a curse, and he sucked it, trying to stem the flow of blood.

    A low
chuckle made Raffe jerk round. Ma was standing in front of the curtain.

    'She's
been taught to defend herself even when she is hooded. Haven't you, my angel?'

    Raffe's
temper reboiled with the throbbing of his finger. 'What's this I hear about
Hugh coming here? Talbot didn't tell me that.'

    Ma
shook her head warningly, then twitched back the curtain. Luce was standing
behind it, her shift clutched in front of her, but otherwise as naked as the
day she was born. She was panting slightly. Her face was flushed and her eyes
danced brightly in the candlelight. Ma smiled up at her and jerked her head
towards the door. With a wink at Raffe, Luce slid as lithely as an otter from
the room.

    Ma
mounted the steps to her own serpent's chair.

    'Sit,
Master Raffe, you're making the bird nervous. Now come, you know we never
discuss our customers. Not, that is, unless they wind up dead at your friend's
hands.'

    'Elena
didn't kill Raoul!'

    But
even as Raffe said it he knew he sounded like a man who was lashing out from
uncertainty. He couldn't even convince himself of the truth of that. This was
the second time in a few months Elena had been accused of murder. Was that just
unlucky? Both times he'd so desperately wanted to believe that she was
innocent, but then once he'd thought she was a virgin and all that time she'd
been sneaking off behind his back to trysts with that lout Athan, even when she
swore to him she was not going to see a man.

    Part
of him had dreaded seeing Elena again and yet he couldn't keep away. He hadn't
been able to bring himself to look at her at first, because he knew that Raoul
had had the pleasure of her. He had wanted to punish her, make her the whore
she was, but now that it had happened, he was terrified of seeing that look of
hardness in her eyes, that loss of innocence that had still remained even after
Athan had bedded her. He wanted to seize her and shake her until she told him
every single filthy thing that she and Raoul had done together. He wanted to
know in each minute detail how she had looked when Raoul had touched her, what
she had said, what she'd thought, what she felt.

    Yet
Raffe knew that if Elena had told him, he would have pressed his fingers to his
ears and run away screaming. He had tried to convince himself that nothing she
had done with Raoul would have been done willingly. Yet there was a worm that
burrowed into his head, a worm of jealousy and doubt that made him lash himself
over and over again with the thought that she might have surrendered herself to
Raoul as willingly as she had once done to Athan. Even the smallest whimper of
pleasure, the tiniest thrust towards Raoul's body would have been an act of
betrayal.

    And
yes, Elena could have given herself entirely to Raoul and still have murdered
him. He'd known women in the Holy

    Land,
fragile, delicate beauties who could whisper words of undying love and press
their soft lips to a man's mouth. And then, as they fondled his manhood with
one hand, with the other they'd pushed a knife between his ribs, as coldly as
any battled-hardened soldier. Women could be far more ruthless than men when
they had made up their minds to kill.

    Raffe's
face was burning, and he was suddenly aware that Ma was watching him with that
usual knowing smile of hers. He was seized with the desire to wring her filthy
neck, but instead he contented himself with trying to wound her pride.

    'I
thought you always said that not even a tick from a dog could crawl in or out
of here without you or Talbot knowing about it. Are you telling me a simple
girl managed to escape and get herself back in here and murder someone without
you seeing her? You're getting old, Ma, losing your touch. Eyesight failing?
Nodding off at your window?'

    But
if he hoped to needle her, he should have known better. She merely raised her
thick black brows, like a schoolmaster warning an errant pupil.

    'Talbot
and I were attending to other things. The girl could easily have slipped out through
the door. And there are other ways out of here,' Ma said. 'I found her in the
cellar with that boy Finch; who knows what else she or that little brat has
discovered. Too inquisitive for their own good, the pair of them. Besides,
there's some that have the power to send out their spirits to do mischief while
their bodies lie sleeping, even when they are locked in a gaol.'

    But
Raffe wasn't listening. 'The cellar, you found her in the cellar, what has she
seen there?'

    The
ghost of a smile slid across Ma's mouth. 'My pets,
all
my pets.'

    A
chill ran through Raffe's frame. You told her about the man?'

    Ma
pulled the ruby pin from her hair and spun it idly in her fingers so that
sparks of blood seemed to fly from it around the room. Told her? Now just what
could I tell her, Master Raffe?'

    Raffe
tried to resist staring at the whirling ruby lights. He struggled to pull his
thoughts together. Think! Hugh, that's what mattered now.

    'Why
did Hugh come here?'

    Ma
laughed again. 'Why does any man come here? He has needs, desires he can't
satiate anywhere else, well, not without a deal of questions being asked. I
dare say even he can't do as he pleases with his servant boys without raising a
few objections. And, you know, men are curiously shy about having the whole
world know the exact depths of those stinking mires in which their desires
frolic.'