“I’m mad, then. Walk me through this once more.”
Scowling, the ghost said, “Try to remember how this feels, talking to me. You need to reach beyond the visible, and may God forgive us both this folly.”
The fear on Miranda’s face haunted Richard as he led Zeus from the inn’s stable. If not for him, she wouldn’t be caught up in all this. Now, considering Wyndon’s involvement and all a nobleman’s influence meant, along with her muteness, she faced certain conviction. He couldn’t reach her in time unless he somehow managed to enter the shadowland despite all his prior failures.
The little sleep he’d snatched did nothing to banish his weariness. His eyes felt as though they had dirt in them, and the sour taste of old wine lay heavy on his tongue. Still, he had no choice. He was Miranda’s only chance, and she was ... his life’s blood.
Death on the gallows tree—
A mailed fist squeezed his heart.
No. Not Miranda. Not while he could still fight for her.
He drew in a breath like daggers piercing his chest. He should have left her in London, behind the house’s wards, but berating himself about that now wouldn’t help.
Besides, the wards hadn’t kept Grandmère safe.
At least the rain had stopped. He scooped up a twig from the inn yard. Tucked into his left glove, it would anchor him and, through him, Zeus to the living world so they could leave the realm of the dead when they reached Canterbury.
His gut knotted. For most of his life, he had dreaded the shadowland. Now he had no hope without it.
He rode Zeus down the muddy lane at a walk, Edmund a ghostly presence beside them. A brisk wind pushed the clouds east, here and there revealing a lone star or a shaft of moonlight. Frost formed on the bushes and trees and in the ruts of the road. His breath and the stallion’s made tiny clouds of white in the clear air.
It was a beautiful night, but his mind kept replaying the image of Miranda in that cell. He set his jaw and clamped down on the fear. For this to succeed, to have any chance of saving her, he needed a clear head.
Richard extended his senses. As expected, only night birds and small animals stirred in the forest around them. It was time.
Trees ahead arched their branches above the road. “That shape should do for a portal,” he said, nodding toward it.
“Aye.” Edmund strode ahead. “I’ll wait for you on the other side. Come and meet me, lad. This way.”
Deep in his mind, Richard blocked Edmund’s words and concentrated on the feeling of connection across the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. Still reaching for it, he summoned power. He caught the memory of Miranda’s afterworld vision. Gave the memory and the connection magical strength.
Reaching still farther, beyond the memory, he drew power from within him and focused on the arch shape between the trees. The space glowed faint silver.
The air thickened. Its chill deepened. When Zeus whinnied and balked, Richard forced him on.
Suddenly, the air cleared. The road lay before him.
Biting back a curse, he turned Zeus. The trees arching over the road still glowed argent. He’d been so close. But that wasn’t good enough.
He kneed Zeus forward and tried again, reaching for the memory of Edmund in his chamber.
And failed again.
“Damnation,” he muttered, turning Zeus. He cleared his mind of fear, of Edmund, of everything but Miranda, and kneed his mount forward.
This time, the chill led into air that felt thick, as though he and Zeus moved through an icy pond, except that there was no water. They stepped into a wave of even more intense cold. Richard shuddered and blinked.
When he opened his eyes, the world had disappeared. Around him churned dank, stinking fog. The mud underfoot had turned to solid shadow. The cold air crackled with power.
Hastily, as Edmund had warned him to do, Richard pulled magic from the mist to blanket himself and the horse. He had reached the place he’d seen in Miranda’s vision, the site of his future non-rest. A realm of eternal damnation. A shiver ran over his flesh.
A gray shape swooped toward them, skeletal and ghastly. It shrieked with shrill, bone-rattling force. More shapes shot out of the mist. A man’s spectral form appeared in front of him, a gaping wound in his brow. The wraith screamed, and Richard’s flesh prickled.
Zeus reared. With a wild neigh, he tried to bolt. Richard tightened his grip on the reins and pulled the horse’s head down.
“Begone,” Edmund’s voice said, and the wraiths retreated.
Sliding back in the saddle, Richard tightened his calves around Zeus’s heaving sides. The stallion tried to buck. Richard stayed on but gritted his teeth and sent a tendril of power into the horse’s mind.
Trembling, Zeus stopped fighting. He also stopped moving, but that was better than bucking and rearing.
The wraiths hovered nearby, watching. Anticipating, to judge by the chills rippling down his back.
“I told you not to bring him,” Edmund said, his voice no longer rusty but deep and strong.
Panting, Richard turned his head. Knee-deep in mist, no longer translucent, Edmund stood a few feet off to his left.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave him in an unfamiliar inn. We’re here. What next?”
Edmund waved at the skeletal wraiths. “Off with you. There’s naught for you here.”
Frowning, he studied Richard. “You look near done in already. I don’t think you’ve the power for this.”
“Don’t think. Talk.” God’s feet, the ghosts were leaving. “Do you have power over them?”
“We temporarily damned outrank the perpetually damned.” Edmund’s voice sounded wry. “You can’t help anyone if you kill yourself trying. Rest a bit. Draw on the magic in the fog for strength.”
“I haven’t time to rest.”
Edmund raised an eyebrow. “You’d best take it if this mad enterprise has any hope of success. This business may be like any other and grow easier with practice. But it may not. You must guard your strength.”
Richard closed his eyes and breathed deeply, pulling power from the stinking fog though it burned his nostrils.
After a while, Edmund spoke again. “Remember to hold power around you at all times to fend off the damned, but reach into the world. Picture yourself moving across England, heading south toward Canterbury. Take magic from the mists if need be.”
“Should I walk Zeus?”
“If you like, but you needn’t.”
Richard tightened his fist around the twig in his glove. As he drew power from the magic around him, he caught an odd sense of land rushing by, of scenery changing under the night sky. He couldn’t see it. It felt more like something glimpsed from the corner of an internal eye. If he looked directly at it, it would vanish.
A moment or an hour might have passed when Edmund said, “Where are you?”
“I think, London.”
Should he go to Grandmère? No. Only if he followed his plan could he help both her and Miranda.
Softly, Edmund said, “Keep going.”
Time ceased to exist. The barely glimpsed scenery moved in a place apart from him, a place growing brighter.
“Now ... Canterbury. I can almost see it.”
“Right, then. Take a deep breath. Reach for the world but pick a secluded spot. We don’t need a second witchcraft trial. Now walk toward it.”
The alley off Mercery Lane, near the cathedral close, would do. Jeremy lived near there, in St. George’s Street. An enclosed bridge spanned the alley, joining two sides of a merchant’s home. The area below the bridge would serve for a portal. Richard reached.
Glimpsing the alley, he pulled magic from the mists. The effort throbbed in his bones. He flung the power outward to form the portal. It formed more easily than the one he’d used to enter, but holding it took the dregs of his waning power. When he kneed Zeus, the stallion walked forward on unsteady legs.
The cold intensified, but the air gave no resistance.
He urged Zeus onward.
Again, he shuddered and blinked. When he opened his eyes, the cathedral’s spires towered over the half-timbered, two-story buildings ahead. He’d done it.
But the sky already paled with dawn’s approach. This had taken too long. Under him, Zeus’s sides heaved as though he had run a long race. Richard’s chest felt tight and hot. His head pounded.
“Just a little way,” he urged Zeus, his voice a hoarse croak. “Come on, lad. Then you can rest.”
They emerged from the alley and turned left, then left again into St. George’s Street. Jeremy’s house stood a short distance away, but Zeus was wobbling. To spare him, Richard slid to the ground, only to find his own legs unsteady.
The world turned black at the edges. Jeremy’s front steps seemed to leap away from him.
“Just a little farther.” He forced himself upright, grabbed the reins, and staggered forward.
The city was rousing. A woman sweeping the steps of the house next to Jeremy’s stopped to watch him. A passing carter gave him an odd look.
Probably thought he was drunk. But who ever heard of a drunk horse? Richard would have laughed if he’d had the strength.
Just a little farther.
The world spun. Jeremy’s steps rolled away from him. Impossible. He lurched toward them.
The woman called out. Voices came toward him.
In front of Jeremy’s house, he dropped the reins. He stumbled up the two steps to the door. It somehow had two knockers, neither of which he could grasp.
Hell with that. He pounded on the door. As the blackness crept into his vision again and the voices behind him grew louder, footsteps sounded inside, approaching.
Henning, Jeremy’s gaunt, disapproving porter, opened the door. “Lord Hawkstowe, what—?”
Richard staggered past him, into the spinning entry. He fell against the newel post. Clutching it for balance, he called, “Jeremy!”
Henning said something he couldn’t understand. Someone else said, “Richard? Good Lord!”
Richard shook his head hard. The fading world stopped whirling long enough for him to recognize Cabot rushing from the back of the house. Thank God. He took a step toward Cabot.
“Miranda—Grandmère—help.” The world reeled. The floor jumped into his face, and blackness obliterated everything.
Miranda kept her chin level and her eyes on the jury, but they refused to look at her. Did they fear her? Or had they already made up their minds?
Our kind can charm our way out of such fixes, Richard had once said. Perhaps she could, if she were able to speak.
But she hadn’t learned to affect people’s minds as Richard had charmed Flora, the cook at the Golden Swan. All her practice with glamours and candles and scrying had been for naught. She didn’t have the magical skills she most needed.
If the jury believed Patience, there might still be hope. But the jurors all frowned at the girl.
The townsfolk were jammed into the tiny guildhall. A makeshift arrangement of ropes and posts kept them back from the proceedings. Despite all the bodies in the chamber, the autumn chill pervaded the air. Drafts seeping around the high windows kept the air from warming, but her hands would’ve been icy anyway, from the dread that roiled through her.
At an ornate table in the front of the great room, the magistrate sat. A short, rotund man, he wore a long wig, a dark suit, and a perpetual scowl. The jurors on their two benches and the clerk taking notes at a small table flanked him.
Several feet from the jury, Miranda stood with her back to the crowd. Pikemen from the watch guarded her, but their hatred and the crowd’s washed over her magical senses.
Patience sat on a stool by the magistrate’s desk, her face furious despite the risk of drawing the crowd’s hatred to her, too. She’d been brought in by armed guards, and Robin was nowhere in sight. Her loyalty was the only consolation Miranda had.
Patience jerked her chin up. “That Lord Wyndon is not my lord Hawkstowe’s friend. I’ve overheard my lord call him a scoundrel. He pushed in to see my mistress though I told him she didn’t want him there.”
“That will do.” The magistrate shot her an angry glance. “Did you see any indications that Lord Hawkstowe curried favor with Mistress Willoughby?”
“Sir? I mean, your honor? What’d you ask me?”
The magistrate sighed. “Did Lord Hawkstowe stay close to the accused? Did he seek to please her?”
“Why, no, my lord. Lord Hawkstowe, he’s a friend o’ the king, he is—”
Guffaws from the watchers interrupted her. She glared at the crowd. “He is,” she shouted, stamping her foot, “and he’ll show the lot of you, right enough!”
The magistrate banged a gavel for order, then turned to Patience. “Let me be more specific, girl. Does your master take the accused to his bed?”
Miranda’s cheeks blazed with sudden heat, as though her longing had become public. If these people killed her, she’d die wishing she and Richard had shared more than longing.
Patience’s jaw dropped. “Angels above, no, sir! She sleeps alone! Except for me on the truckle bed some nights.” She threw a venomous glance at Lord Wyndon.
The magistrate banged his gavel to still the buzz rising in the room. “Just one more question, my girl, and I shall gladly let you go. Have you ever, on your oath, seen any sign that Mistress Willoughby bewitched Lord Hawkstowe? Any strange behavior by him since she came into the household?”
Silence fell. The crowd held its collective breath.
Outrage blazed in Patience’s eyes. “I have not, and anyone what says she did is a wicked liar.”
“Mmm, yes.” The magistrate excused Patience, who gave Miranda an apologetic look.
“Yes, well,” the magistrate said. “Being unable to testify in her own behalf, the accused has written a statement, which I shall read: ‘Lord Wyndon called upon me at the inn under the guise of friendship but spoke ill of Lord Hawkstowe and, for reasons he did not reveal, damaged my clothing, threatened me, and handled me foully.’”
A murmur rose from the crowd. The magistrate banged his gavel without looking up. “‘I broke away from him, raking his face with my nails, and screamed. He caught me around the throat and hurled me against a wall. I struck my head. When I came to myself again, I could no longer talk. I swear I am innocent of any evil deed.’ So ends the statement of the accused.”
The magistrate briefly explained the law to the jurors. Without looking at Miranda, they left the room.
They were going to convict her. How could they not, after what they’d heard here and the way she’d looked when those men burst in?
With her voice silenced and Robin and Patience hostages, she had no hope. These people were not only ready but eager to believe the worst of her.
Thanks to her clumsily repaired bodice and her hair in tangled disarray, she must look like some wild creature. Using glamours to appear tidy, however, after everyone had seen her so disheveled and no one had helped her, would only encourage them to condemn her.
The fear settled into her heart with the harsh, heavy certainty of foreknowledge. She would die, and Richard would never know she loved him. Never know a woman could care for him despite his mysterious curse.
Tears welled in her eyes. Her throat closed. She blinked back the tears and the terror. She wouldn’t quail before this mockery of justice. Death was but a passage. No matter how dreadful, only a passage.
The jurors filed back into the room. The clerk conferred with one of them and turned to the magistrate.
The magistrate looked at Miranda. “Face the jury,” he said, and death shone bleak in his eyes.
Richard struggled toward alertness. The foggy arms of sleep held tight, resisting. Something important buzzed in the back of his mind. It pulled him away, toward waking.
A fire crackled nearby. The air held scents of oak and apple.
He opened his eyes to the warm glow of firelight. He lay on his back, still dressed except for his boot
s, and propped on fat pillows. Above him hung a bed canopy of green velvet.
But whose bed? Where?
“Richard?” A man sat in a chair by the bed—Cabot—Miranda!
Richard bolted upright, and the room swayed around him.
“Easy.” Cabot lunged from his chair and gripped Richard’s shoulder, pressing him back on the bed. “Take it easy, Richard. Jeremy!”
Richard shrugged off his hand. The sky outside the casement window was dark. “What time is it? We must hurry.”
The door opened. Jeremy rushed in. “Lie back, Richard. You’re not going anywhere just yet.”
Flinging Cabot’s hand aside again, Richard snapped, “Miranda’s in danger.”
“We scried her. We know all about it.” Cabot’s eyes were the gray of a stormy sea.
Richard’s heart contracted. “We’re too late? No. We can’t be.” After all his struggles, too damned late? No, surely ...
“No,” Jeremy told him firmly. “We’ve time, but you need rest if you’re to be of any use.”
Richard looked from one to the other of them. “Then you know all that’s happened? Miranda and Grandmère?”
“We’ve deduced most of it from your mumblings and several scryings. Save how you came here,” Cabot answered.
“What happened while I slept? Why didn’t you wake me?”
Jeremy’s voice cracked across his. “Lie down, Richard, or so help me, I’ll tie you down.”
Jeremy wouldn’t urge rest if they needed haste. Richard lay back on the high pillows. “Rather overbearing for a cleric, aren’t you?”
“Not for one who works with the archbishop.” Jeremy took a cup from the table by the bed. “I’ve sent an aide posthaste to London with a message for Lucius. He’s as good with herbs as I am. If anyone can help Arabella, he can.”
Richard nodded acknowledgement. Grandmère was in good hands. “And Miranda?”
The Herald of Day Page 27
