by Sarah Rayne
As he shuddered in climax, she felt his anguish and his need stream into her own consciousness.
There was a sort of timelessness in lying in the deep, soft bed, drifting in and out of half-sleep. Fael watched the moonlight slide through the windows of the sad, faded room, touching the dim furnishings with silver.
I don’t know what I feel, she thought, staring up at the ceiling. I certainly don’t know what he feels. She turned her head and saw him seated in the deep window, his head turned away from her. But at her movement he looked across at the bed. The mask was still in place.
Fael sat up in the bed, linking her hands about her bent knees (yes, I can do that more easily as well now!) and said, ‘What are you looking at?’
He turned sharply as if the sound of her voice had surprised him, and Fael understood that what had happened between them was totally outside his experience. He knew, technically, how to make love (How? Street women? Oh God, how appallingly lonely for him!), but he had no concept of the pleasant, drowsy closeness afterwards, where you might both drift into sleep, still half-coupled, or you might decide to get up and cook bacon and eggs together, or simply just get up and go home.
He looked back at the window, to where the darkness was pressing against the glass. ‘Listen,’ he said, softly. ‘Can’t you hear them, Fael?’ and Fael felt as if icy fingers had traced a path down her spine.
‘What? Hear what?’
‘The leanan-sidhe,’ he said. ‘They’re quite near tonight. I’ve been watching for them.’
There was an abrupt silence. Then Fael said, ‘Leanan-sidhe? What are leanan-sidhe? Is that another word for the sidh we used in Cauldron?’
‘They were another branch of the legend. The leanan-sidhe of Moher were far more malevolent and far more powerful. They were water demons who possessed the ancient flame that inspired writers and musicians and poets,’ said Christian. ‘The legend is that this house is directly over an ancient subterranean water cave, where they held their strange court.’
Fael shivered and drew the sheets more closely about her.
‘It’s told that although they could bestow the mantle of creativity,’ said Christian, his voice still far away, ‘they did so maliciously, giving it only in its pure elemental state. The recipient burned up in the fires of his own genius and died young, and the leanan-sidhe presided over his deathbed, shrieking with glee.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Yeats believed that version, by the way.’
Fael said, almost to herself, ‘It’s an explanation of why true genius hardly ever reaches old age. Writers and composers – Keats and Shelley and Mozart and Byron.’
‘Yes. You might want to warm your hands at the flame of genius a bit, but you wouldn’t want that flame to consume you. Of course it’s all only a myth – embroidered a bit, because the Irish love to embroider a story.’
‘Have you ever – seen them?’ said Fael, carefully. ‘The leanan-sidhe?’
‘Not properly. I’ve glimpsed them beyond the house – blurred shapes darting across the dark garden. Sometimes I’ve thought I’ve heard them gathering under my window, plotting and laughing with their heads together.’
This conjured up an unspeakably nasty image for Fael.
‘But twenty-nine years ago,’ said Christian, ‘they were certainly inside Maise.’
‘The night you were born,’ said Fael, staring at him.
‘Yes. Very few people have seen the leanan-sidhe materialise – they say in the village that it’s a terrible sight – but my mother witnessed it that night. She saw them struggle into their human form, Fael, here in this room, and once they had formed, they gathered about the bed, and they waited to see what would be born.’
‘This is mad,’ said Fael, after a moment. ‘You’re talking as if we’re in a fantasy world. The leanan-sidhe aren’t real, they’re legends, myths.’
‘Are they?’ He came back to the bed, his eyes on her, and despite herself, Fael felt the familiar tug. He’s setting the spell working again, she thought.
‘They were real on that night,’ said Christian. ‘They sprinkled their music everywhere, so that the humans were blind and deaf; and so that they could watch for the human child being born. And then, when the long birth was over, they took the child and left in its place—’
He stopped, and Fael said in a whisper, ‘A changeling.’
‘Yes. One of their own kind.’ He was pacing the room now, driving one clenched fist into the other. ‘And that is why I am condemned to live this half-life, Fael, this non-existence. That is why I have to walk in the shadows, and why I have to go masked and cloaked, and avoid human contact.’ Fael could feel the bitter torment pouring out of his mind, as if it was black silt. He’s mad, of course, said her mind. And then – but how much is madness and how much is that anguished desolation I felt earlier?
She said, ‘But why would the leanan-sidhe come back now?’
He stopped pacing the room and turned to face her. ‘Because you’re here, Fael,’ he said. ‘Because we’re going to have a child – you and I.’ He looked down at her. ‘The leanan-sidhe are greedy, you see,’ he said, softly. ‘They can never resist first-born children.’
Understanding was flooding Fael’s mind now, but with it, cold sick horror. But she said, ‘You’re taking a lot for granted, aren’t you?’ and was pleased to hear the anger in her voice. ‘In any case, it’s pretty rare to conceive on a single encounter—’ And stopped, because of course there was not going to be just a single encounter – he would keep her here until she really did become pregnant.
She said, ‘But even if there were to be a child—’
‘Yes?’
‘It wouldn’t be a first-born,’ said Fael.
The silence closed down at once, and white-hot currents seemed to ebb and flow between them. After what seemed to be a very long time, he sat down on the bed and said, ‘What do you mean?’ One hand came out to imprison her wrist.
‘It wouldn’t be a first-born,’ said Fael again, managing to meet the narrow eyes levelly. ‘There was a – a child that was—’ For some reason the word, miscarriage, was unacceptable. Because it was too intimate? Or simply too modern? Or was it because it reduced that never-to-live scrap of humanity to medical and clinical levels? Fael said, ‘It was born before its time because of the road crash.’
For a moment she thought he would strike her, but he remained perfectly still, the fingers of his hand still circling her wrist. When eventually he spoke, the words came out with such extreme difficulty that Fael only just understood them. He’s lost all control, she thought. He can’t discipline his speech.
‘Oh God, you cheating bitch,’ said Christian. ‘You gilt-haired, silver-voiced bitch!’ He stopped, breathing raggedly, and Fael was acutely aware of the hard bone and muscle beneath his skin; she thought she could nearly feel the fight he was waging for mastery of his emotions.
When he spoke again, his voice was almost normal once more. ‘A human child,’ he said, and the bitter desperation in his tone scraped against Fael’s senses. ‘A human baby, Fael, to use as a pawn – that was what I wanted. For a long time I didn’t see it – I didn’t realise what I should do. And then I saw it all, and I saw that it was the only way. And I wanted it to be yours, Fael,’ he said. ‘But it had to be a first-born – anything else would have been of no use to them—’
Fael said, in a voice of horror, ‘You were going to use a newborn child – my child – to bargain with a legend? For – for—’ She stopped, unable to find words.
‘Children have been used as pawns before. And a human child – a beautiful unflawed human child – offered in return for the humanity they stole from me—’
Humanity. So that was how he saw it.
‘And they would have honoured the bargain, Fael,’ said Christian. ‘Because the child – your child – would have been so very beautiful that they would never have been able to resist—’ He broke off, turning away from her, his hands going up to the thin, concealing ma
sk. ‘There was no other way,’ cried Christian in an anguished voice. ‘It was the only way I could have any hope!’
Fael felt anew the aching desolation, and pity sliced her afresh. But behind the pity another, much darker emotion was welling up: a need to know, to share, to see . . . Humanity, he had said. They stole my humanity.
Before he realised what she was doing – almost before Fael realised what she was doing herself – she had reached up and pulled the silk mask aside.
He sprang back from her at once, flinging his hands up in the gesture of defence that had scalded Flynn Deverill’s mind with compassion, and cowering into the shadowy corners of the room.
Fael stared at him, her mind tumbling with disbelief, her throat closing chokingly so that she could not even scream. Because even though he was holding his hands up protectively, and turning away from her, she had seen what the mask had hidden: she had seen that he had thick dark brown hair, and clear, long-lashed eyes . . .
But above all that, had been the single terrible moment when the candleglow had burned up, showing with pitiless clarity his face, his face, HIS FACE . . .
There was an appalled moment of frozen horror, and then he went from the room, and Fael heard his agonised footsteps running down the stair like a wounded animal in search of a place to hide.
Chapter Nineteen
Fael woke in the deep, old bed and for a minute could not remember where she was. And then as she turned her head, she saw the square window with the padded velvet seat and the unfamiliar furniture, and remembered.
Maise was shrouded in muffled silence, pale damp mist pressing in on the windows. Fael made a slow, careful way to the window seat, considering her situation. She had absolutely no idea how she was going to face her captor this morning.
She washed and dressed in the bathroom, and felt marginally better. Since the situation had to be faced at some point it was better to at least face it properly dressed, with your teeth brushed and your hair combed, and a dab of make-up to hide the dark rings under your eyes. When Scathach kidnapped her he had at any rate put her handbag in the car.
By daylight, the L-shaped room was attractive in a faded, elegant fashion and it was comfortably furnished. There were button-backed sofas and chairs into which you could probably sink in fair luxury, and there were several small tables inlaid with ebony and rosewood. The walls were hung with silk-striped paper, patchily faded to pale straw, and here and there were marks where pictures or mirrors must have hung. No, not mirrors. There would be no mirrors in Maise.
There was a desk between two of the windows which might well be Regency: it had an inset oblong of dark green leather, and pigeon-holes for notepaper, and envelopes and the little embossed wafers people had once used to seal envelopes. Fael was examining it when a movement from the stair sent her heart thumping with apprehension. She turned to face him.
‘Good morning,’ he said, and even though he had donned the mask again, the familiar voice gave a freakish tweak of distortion to the situation.
‘Good morning,’ said Fael, warily.
He stayed by the door, not attempting to approach her. He’s finding this difficult, she thought. He’s unused to human contact and he doesn’t know what to do or what to say. He only knows about threats and cold bargaining. Bargaining . . . Oh God, did he really think he could bargain with those mythcreatures . . .?
When he spoke again, she heard at once that their relationship had entered a different territory. His voice was cold and distant, and there was a bleak touch-me-not quality about him.
He said, ‘I’m returning to London later today.’
Fael stared at him. ‘But we’ve only just got here.’
‘That’s not your concern. I’ll be back on Monday night.’ His tone set her beyond all the barriers.
‘But the mist—’ Fael looked towards the window. ‘You’re surely not going to drive through that?’
‘Weather conditions don’t bother me. In any case, it’s local only. Maise is enclosed by mist for most of the year.’
Fael said, ‘But – what about me?’ and was annoyed to hear a pleading note in her voice. ‘You’re surely not going to – to just leave me here on my own?’ In this huge, dark, old house where the shadows might be something more than shadows . . . Where human-hungry beings gather under the window, chuckling and plotting—
‘You’ll be quite safe,’ he said. ‘It’s only for three days. I’ll bring up food and an electric plate and a primus stove from the kitchen. There are peat turves in the box by the fire. Even if the electricity supply fails you’ll be all right.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘I shall lock you in.’
‘I thought you were going to say that,’ rejoined Fael. ‘How do you know I won’t escape?’
‘You can’t.’
‘I might. I might burn the house down. Or I might knot sheets together and climb out of the window.’
‘If you burn the house, you will burn with it. And if you try to climb through the windows up here you will assuredly be dashed to pieces on the rocks,’ said Scathach unemotionally. ‘If the mists clear later on you will see for yourself that there is a sheer drop all the way to the cliff-face. Your prison is a very secure prison indeed.’
‘So,’ said Fael, softly, ‘it is a prison after all, is it?’
‘Oh yes. I thought that was understood.’
‘I don’t think I altogether understood it,’ said Fael. And then, without letting herself think too long about what she was saying, ‘Why did you run from the room last night?’ she said.
She thought a flicker of bitter anger showed in the narrow eyes, but he only said, ‘Have you never heard of the primitive belief of the interdependence between identity and safety?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you— Oh,’ said Fael. ‘Yes, I think I do understand. Safety reliant on identity. You mean that your only safety lies in remaining anonymous – at least, that’s what you believe. And last night I—’ Impossible to say, ‘I saw you.’ Fael said, ‘Last night, I came too close, didn’t I? I came too near to knowing who you are.’
‘Yes.’
‘But,’ said Fael, ‘you know, I don’t know who you are. I truly don’t.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Christian Roscius, and turning, went back down the winding stair.
It had hurt more than Christian could have believed possible to see the recoil in Fael’s eyes last night, and the horrified pity. It hurt as well to remember how they had sat together last evening, with a fire burning in the hearth and how the sad, dark, old house had seemed to grow warm and to unfurl hesitant little shoots of happiness. I was right about her lighting up Maise, he thought, going through to the sculleries; she would have chased away the darknesses and the memories and the lingering sadnesses and Maise might have regained a very little of its former happiness.
But the bitch had cheated him. There had been someone she had loved – that was to have been expected, and probably there would have been more than just one. She was beautiful and intelligent and clever, and she had not always been tied to a wheelchair. Yes, there would have been a lot of men who would have wanted to take her to bed and some of them had probably done so. But there had been someone special, someone with whom she had shared the ultimate intimacy of making a child, and then, perhaps, shared the torment of its loss.
Violent jealousy of this unknown man seared Christian’s mind, and for a moment he bent over, feeling it lance his whole body. But overriding the jealousy, was the far deeper pain of knowing that the mad, wild dream he had spun of luring the leanan-sidhe into Maise, of striking that unreal, surreal bargain with them, was dead.
I didn’t believe in it! cried his mind. I didn’t believe it would work, not really, not truly! It was only—
It was only that it had been something to cling to: a dream, a shining Utopia, a land of heart’s desire – oh God, yes, a land of heart’s desire, where nobody ever gets old and bitter of tongue . . . Where I should have had peace, because it’
s there that peace comes dropping slow from the veils of the morning . . .
But Fael cheated me.
And now none of it would happen. Rossani had been right all along; Rossani was the only one worth listening to. Remember how good it felt to punish Tod Miller? said Rossani’s hoarse, chuckling voice in Christian’s mind. Remember the charge you got out of killing him, out of bending over him and gouging the knife deep into his flabby chest, snapping back rib bones, until you could plunge your hand in and feel the flaccid heart and feel the fluttering pumping suddenly falter . . . Get your kicks above the waist, fool! said Rossani’s voice. Like I always did . . .
But I killed Cauldron when I killed Miller! thought Christian in anguish, and at once Rossani’s hateful voice said: But what did you expect? You can’t have it all ways. You carried out your plan to punish Tod Miller, and the revenge was satisfying.
But had it been Rossani, or had it been Christian himself who fed Miller’s heart into the wind machine, because he deserved a ridiculous death, he deserved to have his naked body displayed for all London to see, and he deserved to have his heart spewed out over the stage . . .
Christian bent over the scrubbed top of the kitchen table, his breath ragged and too fast. Miller had deserved to die – he had deserved every ounce of agony and every shred of fear and every grisly fragment of the last humiliation. The Makepiece female had deserved to die as well. But—
But I didn’t expect to feel like this afterwards! he cried. I didn’t expect to feel this remorse – not at killing Tod or Mia, that was part of the plan – but at ruining Cauldron!
It had been black bitter gall to realise too late that he might have dealt Cauldron a disabling blow that night, and for a time he had known murderous rage against the sly insinuating Rossani who crept so easily inside his mind, and who dictated, so arrogantly, his emotions. Rossani would not have expected Christian to care so much about Cauldron.
He had not expected to care so much about Fael, either. But he would have to kill her as well now. It would tear his own heart out to do it, but she had cheated him, and last night she had come too close. And the only safety lies in complete anonymity, you know that, don’t you? said the hoarse, chuckling little voice in his mind. Never forget it.
