The Lascar's Dagger (25 page)

When he heard someone tapping at his door around midnight, his immediate reaction was relief that he didn’t need to pretend, even to himself, that he was going to have a good night’s rest. Expecting it must be someone in need of his pastoral care – a dying member of the King’s household, perhaps? – he rose, lit a candle from the coals still burning in the fireplace, and carried the holder to the door. At least he didn’t have to beware of an assassin within the palace.

It was a woman. She’d pulled the hood of her grey cloak low to conceal her face. Her ringless fingers clutched at the folds of the mantle, but when she stepped forward, he saw she wore her plain grey gown beneath. Celandine. She was alone and the passage beyond was empty. She entered, almost treading on his toes, forcing him to step back.

He was so surprised, he gave way. “Mistress…” he began in protest, but before any further words, she was inside, shutting and barring the door. He tried again, speaking to her back. “Mistress, you really shouldn’t be here. What if someone saw you? Your reputation! If you have a message from the Princess, then…”

She turned and flipped down her hood to reveal her identity. “I just borrowed Celandine’s clothes. We’re the same size.”

“Milady!” Appalled thoughts tumbled through his mind, one after another. She was clay-brained. She could be destroyed by this, her whole life reduced to ruins. She might be confined to a cloister for the rest of her life. A scandal like this – dear Va, it could reverberate across nations! It was one thing for a married woman of lower rank to be careless with her assignations, but a virgin princess? And with
him
? He could be charged with treason. Beheaded, if they thought he’d shared her bed.
Oh, sweet Mathilda, what are you doing?

He swallowed, searching for the right words, for a way not to hurt her. “This is unwise. Milady, you must leave. Just because I am a witan mentoring you does not mean we cannot be accused of behaviour that could wreck your marriage!”

“Maybe that’s a good idea.”

Appalled, he went cold. “Oh no. Milady—”

“Oh, pah! Stop ‘miladying’ me all the time! My name is Mathilda. Use it, at least while we are alone. And I’m not serious, of course, not about wrecking the nuptials. I will marry the Regal. I know my duty. I’ve known since I was five years old that this moment – or one like it – would come.” She made no attempt to conceal her vexation. “I don’t have a choice. But I do have a choice about who will be, um, the first.”

She must surely have been blushing, although he couldn’t see it in the candlelight. He took another step backwards, but the room was small and he bumped into his clothing chest. She took a step closer, twisting a hand into the cloth of his nightgown. He was forced to lift the candle holder high to avoid setting fire to her cloak.

Her upturned face was inches from his own as she whispered her next words. “I’m going to marry an old, wrinkled man.” She undid the ties at the top of his nightgown with her free hand and touched his bare chest with her fingers. He started sweating. “I want to have a memory to take with me. Of what it’s like to be cherished by someone who loves me, someone who will take, with gentleness and respect, what should be mine to freely bestow where I will. Someone who also has passion and desire.”

Her hand slid up to his shoulder and then to the back of his neck. He stopped breathing.

“I’ve watched you, Saker. I’ve seen your duty turn to devotion, your respect replaced by love. I’m offering you all I have in return for a memory to last me a lifetime. A memory to see me through the horrors and the loneliness I will have to endure. Can you turn away?”

He opened his mouth to tell her again she must leave, choking on words he didn’t know how to say without hurting her. Words that were becoming more impossible to voice with each passing minute. His heart thundered under his ribs.

When he still did not reply, she lowered her gaze, and continued, “Was that such a hard question?”

“Milady – Mathilda – what you ask is impossible. No matter how much I would value such a – such a perfect gift.”

“I’m begging you.” She raised her head, her words little more than a breath shivering against his skin.

“Please, Lady Mathilda…”

“Look, I humble myself before you.” She slid to her knees in front of him. “A princess on her knees, beseeching you. Is it such a hard thing to ask you to love me tonight, to take me in your arms, to kiss my lips?”

His face flamed hot with embarrassment and desire. He groaned and grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her to her feet. “You mustn’t kneel. Not you. Not before me. Milady, Mathilda,
please
.” He wanted to tell her she’d been watching far too many of the court’s romantic masques, but the depth of feeling in her voice told him she meant what she said.

She was holding him now, pressing her body to him, her mouth inches from his, whispering. “Do not fear for consequences. What court lady does not know how to ensure there is no child to explain away after an indiscretion?”

Embarrassed, he stuttered something incoherent. Mercifully, she changed the subject.

“Tell me this, Saker, dearest friend. If you were instructed to accompany me to the Regality as my mentor, how would you feel knowing you had to live out the rest of your years in Ustgrind, away from your friends and family? Never to worship again in the forests of Ardrone? You told me you’ve been to Ustgrind, and you thought their stone chapels cold, and their mists and their meres drear.”

Every word she uttered was a blade of guilt into his soul. Torn, he knew he should offer to accompany her if it was allowed, to be her comfort in her lonely exile. She had just as good as told him she loved him. How could he say no? But the horror of drab Lowmeer and the comparative bleakness of its Way of the Flow, the idea of living for years at the Lowmian court, with its rigid protocols…

The words that came out of his mouth were not the ones he intended to say, but as he heard them, he knew they were right. “How can I go with you, feeling the way I do? If you hold me in equal affection, how could you look at me day after day and be loyal to your husband?”

She raised her eyes again then, to stare at him, her face so close, her breath a whisper against his cheek.

“Va save me, I would do it,” he said. “I would do it, if I thought it was possible and if I thought it’d make you happier. But neither the Regal nor his clerics would ever allow an Ardronese witan at the Lowmeer court. And the Pontifect would never send me.”

The moment dragged on, then she gave a slight nod. “Yes, you are right. Saker Rampion, always the wise mentor. Do not come with me, then. Instead…” She raised a hand and cupped the side of his face. His candle wobbled and shadows danced. Her next words were whispered. “As your beloved princess, I demand you give me my memory of love in your arms.”

Without waiting for his answer, she drew his head down with one hand and ran her tongue over his lips. For a moment he resisted, but then her mouth was hard against his – and he was lost. His hips pressed against her, his desire swallowing him whole. He managed to place the candle on his clothing chest, but that was the last coherent thought he had.

He drew her into the vortex of his need, and she was there, matching it with her own. He tried to be gentle, to be cautious, but her response to his touch was so passionate and unrestrained that the last of his self-possession was devoured by desire. Afterwards he could never be sure how they ended up on the bed, sheened with perspiration, naked and in each other’s arms.

Still later, when he lay sated at her side, she gave a low laugh. “And now you start to wonder,” she said, “don’t you? You doubt my virginity. Yet there is blood – see?” She touched the bed linen.

“You – you know much for an unschooled maiden,” he said, careful not to sound condemnatory. He had no right to that. He was dazzled by what had happened. Sublimely happy, petrified with horror, all at the same time. He’d lain with a king’s daughter. Broken her maidenhead. He could die for this. So, possibly, could she. Utter, irresponsible madness. Yet so glorious. With a finger he traced a line down her body from her neck, across a nipple, to the fuzz of her pubic hair, just to be sure she was real.

Her soft laugh made him nuzzle her neck for the sheer pleasure of her taste, her closeness and, yes, the danger. Anything not to think about the sublime stupidity of what they had done.

“We court women seek pleasure in each other’s arms,” she explained.

Blood rushed to his face. Glad she could not see the heat of his embarrassment in the dim light, he was nonetheless robbed of speech by the unabashed wantonness of her words.
Giddy hells, Mathilda, don’t tell me anything more!

She rolled over on to her stomach to look at him. “Oh, tush! What else is open to us before we marry? Our fathers demand we are chaste and ignorant until our husband is chosen for us. Our mothers and older sisters are wiser, and explain how to remain virginal and yet skilful in the ways of pleasure, so that we won’t be cold in the arms of our husbands, nor ignorant of how to satisfy them.”

He blushed yet again; before this night he hadn’t even known he could. “I – I fear I am ignorant of, er, court … ways. But Mathilda, you’ve placed yourself in an impossible situation. You can only be a – a virgin once.”

Va, he was suddenly having trouble managing his tongue. He took a deep breath and added, “You are about to marry a man of … experience. He will know, and your life could be endangered. Lowmeer is an unforgiving place and the Regal is an unforgiving man. You – no,
we
have been insanely unwise. It was my fault – I am the older and supposed to be the wiser, and I let this happen.”

Va save us, how can I possibly undo this?

His renewed horror at what he had done seeped into his tone, yet she did not appear worried. She shrugged, indifferent, and placed his hand over her breast. “There are ways to deceive even a monarch. A sachet of blood, herbs that tighten the skin. My maid, Aureen, is the daughter of the palace midwife. She knows these things and she’ll accompany me to Lowmeer. Don’t fear for me, Saker. And never underestimate me, because you’ll rue that day. Right now – I think I would like another memory to cherish. You see? I am wicked at heart.”

“You are wonderful at heart. But I fear I have disappointed you. It has been a long while since I bedded a woman, and the result was by necessity, er, hasty.”

“Then show me what it means when a man has bedded a woman less than an hour past.”

Unable to refuse her anything, he obliged. He might as well be hung for a gold guildeen as for a brass bit.

Two hours before dawn, as she dressed again in the unattractive grey gown, he asked, suddenly panicked, “Does Celandine know you are here?”

“Yes, of course. How else could I be wearing her clothing?”

“What if she betrays you?”

She laughed. “Celandine would never do that.”

“How can you be sure?” He started sweating again, with fear this time.

She shrugged. “I know her well. I saved her from an awful fate. She owes me everything, truly, and a word from me could send her to the gibbet.”

Startled by the words, he paused, then reached for his shirt. “Do – do you trust her? She heard our conversation yesterday afternoon, and now you’re going to ask her to help you fool a bridegroom!”

“She’s the only one of my ladies I do trust.”

“Everyone at court has a price.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? I’m a king’s daughter. Everyone desires my favour, yet they’d throw me to the bears
and
the wolves if that would gain them my father’s favour, or my brother’s, instead. But Celandine? She’s the mouse that gets her crumbs from
me,
and from me alone. And I know things about her that she doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

He was not reassured. “Be careful. The more dowdy the woman, the more easily she is seduced.”

“You denigrate her.” She pulled on her snood and began to tuck her hair up under it. “She’s a very moral woman.”

“Possibly. I do not know her. I’ve hardly spoken to her, or her to me. I’m just concerned for your welfare. You know she has a witchery. That’s why you asked me about glamours, isn’t it?”

She smiled and nodded. “Her talent has been useful to me.”

He paused, searching for the right words. “Milady, Mathilda, what we did tonight gave us a moment of – of paradise, but even paradise is said to have its savage bears and cunning wolves. If you were hurt because of what happened here…” He couldn’t express his dread and had to swallow back bile.

“Would you tie my bodice, please?”

It laced at the front, and his fingers fumbled as he obliged. She teased him, kissing his nose and chin and eyes as he tried to tie the bows. He could hardly breathe. Desire built in him again. And more: a deep anger against those who would treat her like a piece of merchandise to be bargained over.

When he bent to pick up her cloak from where it lay on the floor, she straightened her skirts and said, “No ill shall come to me.”

Her calm put him to shame. Gone was the young girl he’d first known; this was a woman facing an unpleasant destiny with a courage that reproached him. As he placed the mantle around her shoulders, he said, his voice husky, “You gave me a precious memory too. I will never forget. And I’ll always love you.”

She stilled for a moment, regarding him. There was little in her expression to tell him what she was thinking. “You were right; that second time was better. A memory to last a lifetime. But as for the rest … You loved me enough to bed me, but not, I think, enough to sacrifice your life for me. You’d not come to Lowmeer even if you could.”

The truth in her words seared more than he would have thought possible. He could have hunted for a way to be in her entourage. He could have begged the Pontifect to help him. But she was right. To go to Lowmeer, for an extended period of time? To watch her day after day married to a man like Regal Vilmar? To give up the adventure of his service to the Pontifect? He couldn’t do it.

“It wouldn’t be possible,” he whispered at last.