The Medieval Hearts Series

by Laura Kinsale

  The captain made a dreadful sound, as if a protest had been choked to a gurgle in his throat. The man called the Raven looked toward him. Elayne could see Amposta freeze under that faint smile just as she had.

  "A poor jest, though," the Raven said. "I see that you do not comprehend my humor."

  The captain grinned, baring his teeth, the red mark on his cheek burning.

  "Come and dine with me privately, my dear friend," the Raven said amiably. "We’ll talk of Moors and pirates. Mes dames, the sergeant will guide you to your accommodations. We do not keep great ceremony here, but it is my hope that you will find them comfortable."

  * * *

  "So we are hostage," Lady Beatrice snarled, pounding her cane on the tiled floor. "Sold like sheep! Those treachers of Saint John sold us!"

  Elayne said nothing. The spell of the Raven’s presence still seemed to hover about her, strange and familiar at once. Besides, the countess would not like to be reminded that it was she herself who had chosen to go aboard the captain’s galley.

  "Judas knights!" Lady Beatrice gritted her yellowed teeth. "You may be sure that their Grand Seigneur will hear of this, if I must go to Rhodes myself to complain!"

  They did not seem to be going anyplace at present. The chamber allotted to the countess was richly furnished, covered with eastern rugs and silken hangings, lit by enameled oil lamps that burned without smoke. But the arrow-slit windows looked out on a moonlit sea lying so far below that Elayne could not even see the shoreline. The tower wall and cliff beneath were invisible to her, as if the room floated high above the water by sorcery.

  A servant had come, a Moorish girl who seemed to speak no language that Elayne knew, but only brought a tray of superb fruits in syrup—figs and grapes and oranges. She placed a vase of flowers, too, poppies, such a dark purple they were black, and then vanished silently. Elayne served Lady Beatrice, who never ceased railing against the Knights-Hospitallers as she ate. But the countess grew weary at length, and willing to lie down on the feather mattress. Elayne drew the bed hangings and heard the countess snoring before she had even shielded the lamps.

  Elayne sat down on a bench at the foot of the bed, toying with the stewed fruits. This Raven was a pirate, of course. They were his prisoners, had walked open-eyed and guileless into an elegant snare. She could not seem to quite apprehend it. She licked at the syrup on a fig and took a very small bite. Eating was still a burden to her. On Lady Melanthe’s strict injunction, she took enough to keep herself from wasting, but had no enjoyment in it. She lifted a section of orange, and then ate it. Her fingers grew sticky. She dipped them in the little bowl of water on the tray. When she looked up from drying them, she was not alone in the room.

  Elayne started so that she upset the water as she came to her feet. "Sir!" she murmured, staring at the dark lord of the place as he stood in shadow not two yards’ length from her.

  "My lady," he said, bowing.

  "I did not hear—" She glanced toward the planked door, which she herself had barred from within. The heavy rail was still in place. She blinked nervously. "How came you here?"

  "Talent," he said. "And study." He moved near, standing over her. Elayne stiffened as he touched her. He took her chin between his fingers, tilting her face up to him. She suffered his leisurely inspection, having no choice. He lost none of his inhuman perfection at closer range. His face was still that graven image of proud Lucifer, fallen from Heaven to stand over her and examine her with eyes as deep black and wickedly beautiful as the poppies.

  "I know you," he said pensively. "Who are you?"

  She lowered her eyes. "Elena," she said simply, using the name of her Italian christening, which had long ago transformed on English tongues to Elayne.

  She hoped it would sound common and unremarkable in this part of the world, the name of a girl who had no ransom value to anyone. But his hand fell away as if she had just uttered some dreadful iniquity. Like a priest probing a heretic under inquisition, he leaned closer, searching every inch of her face.

  "Who sent you?" he demanded.

  Elayne swallowed. She shook her head slightly. She was afraid—and yet she felt remote, as if she were not really in this chamber, but safe somewhere, watching from afar.

  He took her chin hard between his fingers. "Who?" He smiled with an affection that seemed warm and terrible at once. She stared at him. Though she had no intention of speaking, she felt the answer hover on her tongue, as if his smile alone could compel her.

  "Tell me now," he said gently. "You must tell me."

  "Lady Beatrice," she whispered, clamping her lips closed against saying more.

  His black eyebrows lifted. "Nay, tell me who sent you. Who put you in her service?"

  "The countess," Elayne mumbled. "I serve the countess."

  "The Countess of Bowland?" he asked kindly, his voice very quiet. "Melanthe?"

  Elayne’s eyes widened. But he seemed now not so threatening, more human. He looked at her with a fondness that made regret well up inside her; it was the way she had longed for Raymond to look at her, with love and tenderness. It seemed that if she did not tell him what he wished to know, she would be wrong; unfeeling. "The countess," she murmured. To gaze up at him made her dizzy. "She said..." She tried to remember, but all the voices of the past months seemed to clamor together in her head, a tumble of instruction and warning. "She said...she told me...trust no one."

  She felt his hand tighten on her chin. He drew in air with a soft hiss. "Did she?"

  "I don’t know," Elayne said in confusion. She put her hand on the bedpost. "I’m not sure."

  He smiled, like the Devil speaking from the shadows. "Then trust me," he murmured, or Elayne thought he did. She could not seem to see him clearly. He faded, or the light faded, or the shadows crept into her eyes. The lamps went dark, leaving her standing in the blackness, with nothing certain but the wooden carving beneath her fingers and the sound of Lady Beatrice’s snores.

  * * *

  Under the influence of the hot southern atmosphere, the countess succumbed to a sleeping sickness. She would not rouse to sense except to complain weakly of her head aching, and to take drink and a little gruel. Elayne watched over her, worrying. She seemed to have no fever, even in this stifling heat. Indeed, she seemed cold and moribund, so Elayne tried to ask the Moorish girl for herbs to increase warmth and blood flow. She asked in every tongue that she knew. The girl only nodded agreeably and went away, returning with the same wine and white bread to soak in it. Elayne asked for a physician, and the girl nodded again. But no doctor came.

  Elayne sat in the window embrasure, where she could catch the breath of a cool breeze in the tower chamber. Their baggage had been returned, no doubt after being thoroughly searched for anything of value. It seemed nothing had been alluring enough to steal, for all of Elayne’s possessions from her traveling chest were intact, including her daybook, still locked and undisturbed.

  There was no bolt or bar on the door beyond the one she set herself from the inside. She seemed to be unimpeded in coming or going from the chamber, but she did not want to leave the countess. As disagreeable as Lady Beatrice could be, she was familiar and undaunted and English. Elayne had no knowledge of what had happened to the Hospitaller knights or the maids who had remained aboard the sailing ship. But the idea that the countess might succumb to her illness and leave Elayne utterly alone in this place was unnerving.

  In the fourteen nights of slow imprisonment that passed, Elayne had far too much time to think, watching Lady Beatrice lie in heavy slumber with her ill-tempered spaniel curled up at her knee. Elayne’s earliest impulse—vague thoughts of escape—died a quick death under cold reason. Their chamber was not left unlocked through any carelessness on the part of their guards. It was clear enough that the island of Il Corvo was a prison in itself.

  She thought of their captor. A memory teased her, a difficult image, too indistinct to catch. The Countess of Bowland, he had said, as if he knew all about her
godmother. She had not told him of Lady Melanthe. But she had some apprehensive notion that indeed she had, only she could not remember when or how.

  He was a pirate. He would be striving to obtain the highest ransom for Lady Beatrice. He would want to know if Elayne had any value. Possibly he intended to force her to write a begging letter for her release, full of dread and pleading.

  She ought to be full of dread. She was surprised and a bit guilty to find that she was not. She had no notion of what was the best thing to do. But she was not, in truth, in any hurry to resume her journey to Monteverde and her marriage. There was a dreamlike quality to the days that passed in silent waiting, marked only by the rhythm of Lady Beatrice’s hoarse breathing and the cries of the seabirds outside. Elayne felt be-spelled: suspended between the earth and the sky in this rich carpeted room that seemed to hover like the gulls in the sapphire haze.

  In such a reverie, anything began to seem possible. Lady Beatrice had only spoken of her own self to the pirate; she had not revealed Elayne’s destination or her consequence. If he discovered her identity, there was no surer thing than that he would try to ransom her back to Lancaster or her betrothed husband. But as long as he thought her merely a handmaid to Lady Beatrice, she did not see how she could hold much interest for him.

  In her most secret heart, Elayne even dared hope that her destiny might change with this turn of events. If the pirate did not discover who she was; if he intended to negotiate a ransom for Lady Beatrice’s restoration to her family, Elayne ventured to dream that fortune might favor her. It might fall out in some way that she would be returned to England after all with the countess, still unmarried. It might even fall out...

  She thought, in spite of herself, of Raymond’s last words. He had not wanted his marriage, any more than she wanted her betrothal thrust upon her. She prayed earnestly and repeatedly that his wife was in good health, and carefully did not allow any other sinful hopes or wishes to enter her mind as she recited her Aves each eventide. She prayed that Lady Beatrice would mend, and that they would be freed of this pirate’s clutches.

  Then she sat in the window and gazed out at the sea, lost in the empty beauty of the blue night, not knowing what else to ask for.

  FOUR

  She was roused from deep sleep by a candle in her eyes and a sharp hand on her shoulder. Elayne rolled over, her heart jolting, disoriented by the sudden awakening.

  "Il Corvo summons you," a young woman’s voice said. Blinking, Elayne stared at the hooded figure but caught no glimpse of her face, for she stood back, illuminated only by the single candle that guttered and shone bright enough to blind.

  "My garments," Elayne said hoarsely, with a wild fear that she would be brought before the pirate wearing nothing, exhibited and sold as a naked slave.

  "Wear this," the girl said. Her voice was unfriendly. She held up a robe of deep royal blue trimmed in gold. Elayne pulled it over her smock. She was given hose and slippers, but offered nothing to cover or bind up her hair. Countess Beatrice snored on in unheeding slumber.

  "A comb—" Elayne said tentatively, trying to tie up the garters with shaking fingers.

  "Hurry. It is no matter. He will prefer it so."

  Elayne took a deep breath. All the fear that she had not felt seemed to come upon her at once. She was shuddering deep inside, unable to think past the sound of her heart pounding. She said nothing more to the girl, only followed her cloaked guide through long passages and up endless stairs until they came to an arched door standing open on blackness.

  "Go in," her escort said. Elayne stood frozen. "Go in," she repeated. "He awaits you."

  Elayne stepped through the door. With a soft boom, it shut behind her, closing her in darkness. Her heartbeat rose as she put out her hand to grope at what was before her.

  She encountered smooth metal, intricately carved. It moved as she touched it. Elayne jerked her hand back. But it was only another door, swinging open outward, cool fresh air rushing into the tiny room where she stood.

  She felt that she was looking outside before her eyes were certain of it. Slowly they lost the bedazzlement of the candle. She could see that the door opened onto a platform, a wide terrace surrounded by white columns, unroofed beneath the night sky. The floor was tiled in white, scored by dark lines that spread out from her feet as if beckoning her to walk forward.

  It was silent. Even the air that moved past her cheeks made no noise. But above the pounding of her heart she could just make out the sound of the waves at the base of the sea cliffs, a resounding echo at the edge of hearing.

  She crossed herself. As she stepped out onto the terrace, the whole sky opened above her, set off by the wheel of columns, thick with countless stars. She stood transfixed by the heavens, looking up. Never had she seen so many stars, as if the sky were not black but a living brilliance, a sparkling sheet of icy fire. They looked near enough that she might put out her hand and pluck one, and yet unfathomably distant.

  The place seemed an incarnation of starlight. She turned in a slow circle. The stars swung above her, cold and stately. When she stopped, she distinguished the outline of a man against the column before her. It did not alarm her—she was too amazed. She stood still, gazing toward him as the starlight poured down on the pale pavement between them.

  He walked forward, his cloak reflecting silvery highlights. Elayne saw that he wore the same shimmering tunic of silver in which she had first seen him.

  "What is this place?" she asked, her voice almost lost in the stupendous silence.

  "My observatorium," he said. "You are standing upon it." He opened his hand, and she looked down at the intersections of lines scored across the floor, marked at intervals by numbers and symbols.

  "You are an astrologer?" she asked.

  "I trifle," he said. "I could cast your horoscope with fair accuracy, I daresay."

  "Pray do not," Elayne said. She did not want to give him any further power over her than he had already.

  His soft laugh echoed from the columns. "As you wish." He tilted his head a little to one side, looking down at her with dark eyes. "Afraid? I had not thought you so orthodox."

  "I am faithful in Christ," Elayne said guardedly.

  "Come, admit it," he said. "You are a heathen."

  "Nay, I am not."

  "A pagan. I shall have no qualms about selling you to the Saracens."

  "They will not thank you for it," she said, ignoring the chill that touched her.

  "You are mistaken there, my lady. A virgin female bred to courtly manners, young and fair of skin, with your extraordinary eyes—worth five thousand French crowns, I venture."

  The breath left her chest. She stood very still, trying desperately to calculate. She had no idea what a French crown might be worth, but five thousand of them sounded a ransom for a prince. Or a princess. "If this be a ruse to make me afraid, I only wish it might be successful. I am only maidservant to the Countess of Ludford."

  "What choice have I, then? As a sparing merchant, sweating over my reckonings."

  She said nothing, her meager defense already exhausted.

  "In haps, you would like your fate cast after all?" he asked.

  "As it lies in your hands," she said stiffly, "little wonder if you can foretell it."

  "Perchance it is not so dreadful as this moment would suggest." He looked up at the stars. "Saturn ascends. All things appear melancholy on such nights. Have you not sometime felt it, when you wake deep in the night, at the wolf hour, and all you loved seems hell and cold, no matter how bright the day before?"

  She gazed at his starlit face. His expression was as cool as the stones. "The wolf hour?" she repeated slowly.

  "But you are young and innocent," he said. "Haps you do not know it."

  Elayne thought of Raymond, of the nights she had woken and stared into the darkness of the bed-hangings. "Aye," she said. "I know it."

  A silence grew between them. He seemed to gaze at their faint shadows on the pavement, as i
f he had gone away to the stars somewhere. Or haps he was merely calculating his profit when he sold her to the Saracens. There was no way to read his expressionless face but as an exquisite work of art, a mystery like the enigmatic angels carved above an altarpiece.

  "Come," he said abruptly. "I will show you more."

  She followed him as he turned away, all thought of sleep vanished now. She felt as wakeful as she had ever been in her life. Each shape and surface was sharp and perfectly clear to her eyes, each sound distinct. Her own footsteps echoed, but his were as quiet as the rustle of wings. He paused before a pair of columns, then stepped up onto the dais and lifted a slim scepter from its jeweled rest. As he did it, the wall behind the columns seemed to subside into darkness.

  Elayne realized she was looking through a door. A faint illumination rose up from below, carrying with it a strange scent, acrid but not unpleasant, as if flowers or herbs were burning. The bluish glow provided just enough light to see the stairs sinking out of sight. He turned to her, bidding her enter.

  She was not at all pleased to be descending this staircase. "Sir, I prefer not to go down."

  "You are afraid?" He seemed surprised.

  "God’s mercy, yea! I like not the look of it."

  "It is the way to my library."

  She shook her head, taking a step backward.

  "What do you fear?"

  Elayne looked up at his face. "Tell me what you do there."

  "I conjure the Devil as a black goat," he said, with an impatient sweep of his hand. "He arrives in a great cloud of hail and brimstone, and does whatever I bid him. Don’t you wish to watch?"

  She drew a quick breath and crossed herself. "You are too bold to make such a jest."

  "Nay, madam," he said softly. "If I make bold, be certain that I know the Devil too well to summon him. I have lived by his hand and under his rule, and no power he could grant be worth that cost."