The Penwyth Curse (8 page)

She said, “I have met you and I have given you
warning. Mayhap you are a wizard. You knew about my children, and that surprised me. You said it will rain. But you are not as strong as the curse. Leave now, Sir Bishop of Lythe. Rain, it is a wondrous thing. I long to see curtains of rain, to feel it against my skin. Rain tastes good on a tongue. All this is very curious.”

She turned slowly and walked toward the door of the small chamber. He watched her gown pick up more dust from the stone floor. She paused at the door, looked over her shoulder at him, cocked her head, then whispered in that parchment-thin voice,

When she finished, she smiled at him. “The Penwyth curse is a good curse. It is strong. It has meat and gristle and bone. It will last a very long time. Aye, something you don't know, my beautiful boy. My mother was a Witch of Byrne. She knew of the curse when I wedded with Lord Vellan, told me it would protect my home even after I was long dead. Then she whispered that she didn't know if I would ever die.”

“Did your mother the Witch of Byrne die?”

“My father slew her,” she said, “and buried her heart away from her body.” She gave him a vague smile and left the steward's chamber.

Bishop stared at the closed door, stared at it for a very long time. He felt cold.

He wondered if Merryn was a witch, like her great-grandmother. He was still alive in the early evening when the servants brought in bread and cheese and ale to feed the forty people, only twenty of them soldiers to guard the keep, and six wolfhounds that sat on their haunches in a straight line, jowls quivering.

Bishop saw a very old serving woman carry a heavy wooden platter to Lord Vellan. It was piled high with stark white bones that had been boiled clean.

Lord Vellan picked up the biggest bone and tossed it to the first wolfhound in the line. He caught it in midair. The other dogs didn't move. One by one, each caught his own bone and fell to.

Only then did the rest of the company begin their meal.

“The hounds are well trained,” Bishop said to Lord Vellan.

Lord Vellan looked over his shoulder, saw that the first wolfhound was back on his haunches, and threw him another big bone.

“Aye, those that aren't stay in the bailey.”

“I met your lady wife, sir. She came upon me in the steward's chamber.”

Lord Vellan threw more bones, then smiled at Bishop. “Poor Ranlief. My steward hasn't stopped his complaining. He has three blankets, what more could he want? Ah, my wife. Twisted you up, did she, lad?”

“I confess that a lot of what she said I did not comprehend.”

A serving maid, this one sprightly—not a day over fifty—handed Bishop a fat loaf of white bread and carefully placed a platter of cheeses in front of him. He heard a soft rustling, turned to see Merryn ease into the chair beside him. The chair beside Lord Vellan was empty. Bishop supposed it was for Lady de Gay. Why wasn't she here?

“You're still alive,” Lord Vellan said. “All of my men
are surprised. My wife said you drank a magic potion to ward off the curse.”

“No, I have not drunk any today,” Bishop said. He gave Merryn a hunk of his bread, paused only an instant before he broke off another hunk and ate it himself. He didn't taste any poison, but that didn't mean much. If the four husbands had tasted poison, surely they would have yelled it out before falling dead. The truth was that the bread was delicious. He ate another hunk. The miller here at Penwyth ground the flour well—there was very little grit.

Merryn nodded and looked over the platter, finally picking up a piece of yellow cheese that he could smell from two feet away.

She grinned at him. “It tastes much better than it smells. It's made from Beelzebub's milk.”

“It is said that Satan roves the land. I did not know that he also gave milk.”

More wit, she thought, and smiled. “No, not Satan. Her name is Beelzebub. She is one of our goats. She makes the best cheese of all of them.”

“It does have a powerful smell.”

“Aye, it does, but your breath will remain as sweet-smelling as the roses that bloom in my garden. Here, try it.”

He did, and was surprised that the cheese was mellow and sweet. He ate more of it, chewed more bread. The miller would grind his flour and Beelzebub the goat would make cheese for him. He devoutly prayed that the cheese wasn't poisoned. Made from a goat named Beelzebub, who knew?

He looked down the trestle table at Dumas, who was deep in conversation with one of the old warriors. The old man was nearly bald, but his dirty gray beard was stuck into his belt, the tip of it showing below his waist, just like Lord Vellan's. He hoped Dumas had discovered something useful, because he himself hadn't.

“You're not dead,” Merryn said.

“No. I'm not married to you, either.”

“You think I'm disappointed?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then said, after he'd swallowed more of the wonderful bread, “I don't know what you are. I know only that you are not telling me things that are important.”

Not a sound from her mouth.

Bishop waited until Lord Vellan had thrown all the white bones to the wolfhounds and drunk a full flagon of wine, then he said, “My lord, as I said, I met your wife, and aye, she twisted my brain. She told me that her mother was a Witch of Byrne.”

There was sudden silence in the great hall.

8

L
ORD VELLAN CONTINUED
to chew on a hunk of Beelzebub's cheese. “She said that, did she?”

“She told me that her mother knew all about the curse that promised Penwyth would always be protected.”

Lord Vellan shook his head, making his thick white hair swing into his face. “Ah, my ancient Madelyn,” he said. “She tells me every day that she wishes to bury me. I wonder if she will. Ah, but her mother—Meridian was her name—now there was a one. She was a witch, no doubt in anyone's brain. One of the Witches of Byrne? I don't know. I never saw her paint herself white or color her teeth red. Indeed, she hated fish.

“The woman plagued me. Whenever I displeased her, she would send a curse to land on my head. I swear to you, Bishop, once my armpits itched until I nearly went mad with it. You see, I had only lightly buffeted my wife's shoulder, and Madelyn snuck away and told her mother. The itching, it was fairly bad, but not to be compared to the sores that appeared on the soles of my feet. Big sores, open, with pus flowing from them. I thought I would die. I begged her to heal me, swore to her that I
would never again harm a hair on her beautiful daughter's head.”

“You mean you struck your wife again? After you'd already endured the itching?”

“No, I did not.” Lord Vellan snapped his fingers, and the third wolfhound in the line came forward, tail wagging, to curve his huge body against Lord Vellan's leg. “Madelyn was angry with me and told her mother I had struck her again. I'm not a codsbrain—naturally I didn't ever strike her again. As for Meridian, she cursed her husband once too often. He wasn't stupid, he knew if she became really angry, he'd be dead. So he killed her in her sleep, stuck a knife in her gullet, took her heart and buried it fifty feet from her body. A cautious man, was Sir William.” Lord Vellan chewed thoughtfully on his cheese. “Now Madelyn roams about the castle, pours lime in the jakes, sleeps on the ramparts when the weather is warm, stitches small shirts for Beelzebub so that her cheese will remain sweet, and prays every morning to the ancient ones to bring rain. She told me you would bring rain. She says she felt it.”

Bishop was a straightforward man. He disliked artifice and guile. He watched people, observed what they did. He also observed various phenomena—he loved violent storms as much as he admired rainbows—and tried to understand what it was he was observing. When he listened to another person, be it the king himself, he knew and understood the words that were spoken, knew exactly what to think, knew what to do. But here? At Penwyth? He almost shuddered. He drank some ale, which was really quite good. He said, “I can't bring the rain. I have not that gift. I merely forecast it.”

“How?” Merryn asked.

Bishop frowned a moment, then shook his head. “I don't know. It's just there, a sense of it inside me. It's part of me, I guess you would say.”

“Both one and the same,” said Lord Vellan. “Both a mystery to man. Call it what you will.”

Merryn said, “Did my grandmother scare you to the roots of your hair?”

“She confused me more than scared me,” he said, knowing he wasn't telling the exact truth. “She did not make a great deal of sense.”

“You just don't know how to listen to her properly. She tells me her brain is seasoned from so many years dealing with this earth. A seasoned brain, she tells me, is a brain that can comprehend the meaning of a leaf that lies atop a rock.”

Bishop rolled his eyes. “I am tired of this.” He turned to Lord Vellan. “My lord, I wish to hear what you think about the Penwyth curse. If there is really no curse, then mayhap you will tell me that it is poison, that you have saved Penwyth and your granddaughter by poisoning the men who have forced their way in here. It is one or the other, my lord. It is time you told me which it is.”

The great hall fell quiet for the second time. More old faces than he could count, all seamed from years in the sun, were alert, their eyes fastened on the lord's table.

Lord Vellan cleared his throat, drank more ale, then said in a voice that carried to the blackened beams overhead, “I did not poison any of the four husbands. Even though I struck my wife once, I more than paid for it. I am guilty of nothing else.”

Lady de Gay called out as she floated across the vast stone floor toward them, “I will tell you, Sir Bishop, all about the curse. It came from the spirit of an ancient Druid priest, B'Eall was his name. He was bloated with the blood of many sacrifices. He had held scores of dripping hearts in his hands, caressed them, squeezed them, the blood flowing through his fingers, until there was no more blood in them. B'Eall said he knew when he stood on this land, looking over the rocks and the hills and beyond to the sea, that it was his duty to proclaim this land sacred. He buried many bloodless hearts in this earth to make it so. And so it happened.”

Lord Vellan shrugged. “Who knows?”

“It is deep and complex, this curse,” Merryn said, and sneered at him. “Beyond a mortal man's brain.”

Lady Madelyn's tale was meant to paralyze a man with fright. It was enough. It was too much. He realized they were playing with him. No one could be as artfully mad, as artfully perverse, as these people. It was all a ruse to frighten him, to make him ride as fast as he could away from Penwyth.

Bishop rose slowly from his chair. He looked from the old woman, gowned so beautifully this evening in a long-ago style, to her husband, to their granddaughter, with her pretty feet and small ears. He wiped Beelzebub's cheese off his knife and eased it back into its sheath strapped to his forearm, inside his tunic sleeve.

He looked yet again from Lord Vellan to Lady de Gay and said, “My craw is full to overflowing with all your crazed words meant to terrify a man. They do not terrify me. They enrage me. I have had enough of it.”

No one said a word. No one's attention faltered, except for two of the wolfhounds, who began to snore. “Listen, all of you. I have told you all that I am a wizard. I have told you all that it will rain, that the drought will cease. I have told Lady de Gay that she birthed five children. I have told you that I understand otherworldly spirits and their ways, that I can hear ancient voices and understand them. I will not tolerate any more of these mad, mad puzzles, your ill-disguised threats cloaked in mystical trappings.” He looked at Merryn. “I will not tolerate your secrets and your lies.” He paused, then spoke louder, reaching every ear in the great hall. “I will now give you my own curse.”

The two snoring wolfhounds stirred, then looked up at him. Bishop stood tall. He raised both arms above his head, his palms out, stretched to the beamed ceiling. He closed his eyes. His voice boomed out deep, thunderous as a prophet foretelling doom on the heads of the people. “I pronounce that this spot of earth upon which I stand
will flow with endless rain until all my inquiries are answered clearly and truthfully.”

“Endless rain would be a pleasant thing, Sir Bishop,” Merryn said, not a whit moved, not even mildly alarmed. “It is not our fault that you are too dimwitted to understand words spoken to you.”

“And those words not spoken to me? Am I too dim-witted to understand them as well?”

She crossed her legs and kicked her foot up and down. There was that damned sneer on her mouth again. He was so mad he wanted to spit, to hurl her into the moat once it was full again.

Then he looked around the great hall. The servants and the soldiers were all of them frozen in place, their faces showing their fear. That pleased him. He looked at Lord and Lady de Gay. They were calmly chewing on bread and cheese, acting as if they hadn't heard him. But the wolfhounds, all six of them, were alert now, all eyes on him, standing tall like soldiers ready for battle. Or waiting for more white bones.

“We have answered you as clearly as we can,” Lord Vellan said, and just maybe he looked a bit apprehensive, the old fraud. Good.

It hit him then that he'd just up and announced a flood. He'd done himself in with a curse—he who knew nothing of curses or their origins, he who had no power at all. A flood. He couldn't believe his own stupidity.

But maybe his curse had come from somewhere deep within him. After all, he'd known about Lady de Gay's five children. He was a blockhead.

It had been happenstance, it meant nothing at all. He was a fool and a blockhead. He could but hope that it would rain at least two days. Were two days of hard rain enough to fulfill the curse?

There was no hope for it. He had to do something dramatic, something so shocking that it would shake them to their very core. He was smiling as he turned to Merryn, grabbed her arm, and jerked her to her feet. Her mouth
opened to yell at him, but he slammed down his palm, and she couldn't even squeak. “No. You will be quiet.” He tightened his grip, knowing he was hurting her but not caring at the moment.

He leaned down until his mouth was an inch from hers and said, his voice just as loud, just as carrying, “You will come with me, Merryn de Gay. You will remain on one of the parched hillocks until the rain comes. You will feel the rain strike your flesh, fill your mouth, blind your eyes. I will keep you away from Penwyth until you tell me the truth of the curse.”

She kicked him in the shin.

His blood throbbed wildly with rage, coursing through him like madness itself, ready to overflow into violence. He jerked her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder. He saw Lord Vellan's master-at-arms, Crispin, raise his sword. “No, Crispin, be seated. None of you will interfere. I am here to remove the Penwyth curse, and that is what I will do. I will tolerate no more lies and evasions, no more attempts to drive me to madness.”

She was struggling, trying to rear up, pounding his back with her fists. Bishop smiled as he slammed his palm against her bottom.

She yelled, reared up again, and tried to bite him. He loosed his hold on her and she fell, head down, toward the stone floor. She screamed. He tightened his hold, looked over his shoulder and said, “You will be quiet and hold still or I will drop you and your head will crack open like a ripe melon.”

She was still as a stone.

Good. It was an excellent threat, although not a particularly believable one. Bishop slowly pulled her back up. Her gown came up and his mouth was not more than two inches from a very white thigh. He smelled her flesh and he was instantly hard. Damnation. He was a man. There were just some things he could not control. But it didn't matter. He was set on his course now. He would bring peace back to Penwyth. He would learn the truth, and he
would kiss that leg of hers as soon as he got her out of the great hall.

It was Dumas who stopped him before he reached the stables. “Bishop,” he said, knowing she could hear him, “you must have supplies and protection from the rains when they come. You need protection as well. The men and I will come with you.”

“I thank you, Dumas,” Bishop said. “But I want you and our men to remain here. Bring supplies to the stable and my tent.”

She reared up again, yelling, “You fool, let me go. This is madness. I don't want to drown in a rain that will never come because you don't know what you're talking about.”

He slapped her bottom again. “No, the madness is right here at Penwyth. What I do is the only sane course open to me. I am taking one witch from Penwyth. Or perhaps I will not, if you but tell me the truth.”

“There is no truth! There is only the damned curse. It is what it is. There is no more. My grandfather knows more than anyone. If he doesn't choose to tell you everything, it is his affair. Now let me down.”

“Then he will have to find us and tell me before I will consider bringing you out of the rain. I hope you like rain, Merryn, for I do plan to tie you down and let you drown in it.”

Not another word out of her mouth. This was better, he thought, and smiled. When he rode out on Fearless a short time later, the sound of her mare's whinny following them, Merryn on her belly across his legs, and supplies and his tent lashed down behind him, he realized that if he did tie her down in the rain, he could kill her. Lying under an endless torrent of rain would likely send her to her just rewards.

Just what those just rewards were, he didn't know.

“My belly is cramping.”

“Shut your mouth. We have left Penwyth. If you can, look back. The ramparts are lined with old faces, including your grandfather's. The servants are likely alone in
the great hall, eating all of Beelzebub's cheese, possibly wondering how you will look with rain choking you.”