Kissed by Starlight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “Gardner,” he supplied, bowing yet again. “Blaic Gardner.”

  He waited until, with a creak of leather and a rumble of the big wooden wheel, Clarice drove away on her desperate errands. For himself, he walked off into the garden. With luck, his world awaited him down one of those paths.

  * * * *

  “At least this time,” Felicia reflected, “I have the cell to myself.” Furthermore, once she thought of it, she had the consolation of knowing that her panic in the garden had had a very real cause. There had indeed been hostile forces gathering about her, but they had been Lady Stavely’s minions rather than an unearthly evil.

  Felicia tried to force herself to dwell solely on these two comforts, feeble though they might be. The bitterest reflection was better than thinking of Blaic. Even the sound of his name, whispered on a sob in this desolate darkness, was like the sharp point of a blade in her heart.

  “How could he do it?” she said aloud, then bit her lip hard. She forced herself to think about something else. Had the straw been changed since her last visit? It would not have surprised her to learn that Constable Richards mucked out his horse’s stall more often than the floor of the gaol.

  It was very dark. Only a dying torch in a bracket outside the door cast a measure of warm orange over the straw. She had nothing to make herself more easy—no cloak, no shawl. Both had been taken from her, lest, as the constable put it, “You tries to hang yerself.”

  More likely, she thought, some wench he had his eye on would now enjoy them. She could not imagine any woman accepting Richards on his own merits.

  Remembering how she and Mary had made shift to find blankets enough for all the children to have one, Felicia smiled in the darkness. She’d been clever then. Clever too to have figured out the antique riddle of Wicked Roderick’s treasure. Had he meant to leave the treasure hidden? Or had his buying it under the Royal Arms meant he had somehow intended it for the King after all?

  Yet she would trade all her cleverness for a chance to feel Blaic’s arm about her, to squeeze his hand. And should he offer a “Command me,” she knew exactly what she would ask. It would have nothing to do with helping her escape from her dire predicament. She’d ask him to tell her why he’d treated her so shabbily. She’d felt the love in him for her; she’d take her dying oath upon it. There had to be a reason for his cruelty. She could bear it better if she knew the answer.

  “I hope you are happy, wherever you are,” she said, drawing her ankles close to her body and resting her head upon her knees.

  “I am.”

  She raised her head to find him smiling down at her as though nothing had changed between them. Had his cruel betrayal been only a nightmare? She struggled to her feet, using the wall for support rather than taking his hand. He looked away, his mouth pained, his forehead drawn. Felicia repressed the pity she felt for him. How dare he look like that when she was the one injured?

  She suddenly realized that the wall she leaned against was not rough and dirty stone blocks but the most elegant satin-striped wallpaper imaginable. Delicate gilt chairs and chaises stood on a vast Gobelin tapestry too fine for a palace wall yet here used as a carpet. Candles glowed in many-branched candelabra, with some set in sconces before mirrors to cast an even greater glow over the repast set out on the table.

  “More tricks?” she asked coldly.

  “The last,” Blaic promised. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I should rather stand, thank you. I know that there is solid stone behind me, though you may disguise it as you will.”

  Felicia stumbled. Just like that, the wall she’d depended on vanished away into thin air. “The second time tonight,” she observed, and saw him color as he caught the allusion to his betrayal.

  The gaol had vanished entirely. As she turned, she saw dark-boled trees shoot up as though one moment had to encompass thirty years of growth. In the distance she saw round-shouldered mountains, while nearer at hand a beribboned barge floated, ready to take voyagers across the lake to an island covered with wildflowers of every shade and description. Their scent reached her, crisp as wine. A small circular temple in the Grecian style crowned the isle. Blaic stood nearby, leaning against a tree, a basket at his feet.

  Felicia thought that everything looked strangely familiar. Surely she’d been here before? “Where is this?” she demanded. “Is this...is this Mag Mell?”

  “No. Mag Mell is far more beautiful than this. Are you certain you don’t recognize this place? And you such a fine artist.”

  A flicker of red amongst the trees caught her attention. Then she heard the breathy tootles and light drums of merrymakers approaching. Surely... surely...she recognized the horse’s skull that the lead couple carried on a pole. A red ribbon bound it about its jaws and the place where the ears would have gone.

  “It’s my painting! You’ve put us in my painting!”

  The revelers were masked, precisely as she had painted them. They danced as they came on, with light bounds and fluttering chasses. Dressed in vaguely Renaissance costumes, ribbons floating behind them, each man bowed, each lady curtsied as they passed her, all without breaking the rhythm of their dance.

  “Shall we join them?” Blaic asked.

  Felicia remembered finishing the painting before the admiring eyes of the children. She’d started the older ones on drawing and had been surprised by Melissa Bainbridge’s talent. What would become of that girl now?

  “I don’t want to dance,” Felicia said. “All I want is to go back to Tallyford.”

  “But you are already dancing.”

  Felicia looked around and found that it was true. Still in her bedraggled blue silk gown, she caught hands and swung, minding her steps with care though it was a dance she’d never learned. Everywhere she turned, she saw intelligent eyes gleaming at her behind grotesque masks—here a wildly feathered bird with a sharp yellow beak, there a crescent moon smiling dreamily. An insect with clicking jaws, a clown with jutting chin and nose, a cat with silver whiskers, a dragon crowned with sparkling fire—all passed by in a whirling pattern, with herself in the middle. All were brilliantly painted; all were hideously exaggerated.

  Felicia was prey to the nagging notion that these were not the masks but the true appearance of her dance partners. If they wore masks, it was to make themselves more human, not less.

  Frightened for the first time, she put her hands to her cheeks, gratified to find herself still as she had been. Yet she could not stop dancing. The music seemed to have gotten into her very bones, so that she could not stop; yet she did not feel tired. Her partners were all laughing as they headed down to the barge, carrying her along with them.

  Blaic was already there, waiting under the canopy. He held out his arms, yearning to enfold her against his heart. “Come, Felicia. Come with us. My friends are waiting to welcome you. Leave the sorrows of the mortal world and come with me. You will never grow old. You will never die. I will love you forever and forever.”

  She looked into his eyes. He was far from her, yet it seemed as though they stood close together. She realized that he truly did love her and, though she still did not know why he’d betrayed her, she forgave him.

  He seemed to know it. His brilliant green eyes sparkled with tears. “Come with me,” he said. “Do lovers vow to love until the stars die? We shall watch them die and I will love you still. I will take you to the deepest valley in the heart of the ocean and love you. In the east are mountains so high they hold up the roof of the world. There too I shall love you. Come.”

  Felicia wanted to rush the length of the ship, to fling herself into Blaic’s arms — not for the promises he made but because she loved him so much that being apart from him was pain. Yet something held her back. Not anything so strong as a doubt; more as if the voice of her native caution was reasserting itself. “You are not telling me everything,” she said.

  It was as if she’d broken some kind of spell. Suddenly, it was obvious that the background was painted.
She could see the individual brush strokes. The revelers held perfectly still — toes pointed, arms extended, hands lifted in the exact movements of the dance. One woman seemed to have been caught in mid-leap, for the light could be seen under each foot.

  Blaic alone moved. He walked the length of the barge to stand at the edge, though the water no longer lapped beneath it.

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “Do you know me so well?”

  “I know you with all my heart, yet....”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “How can I?” She had not meant to say the words so loudly, but against the utter silence of the painting they seemed to crash like cymbals.

  “Yet you have forgiven me.”

  “That is easy to do. Who could not forgive you? Whatever your reasons....”

  “I had very good ones. Come, sit with me, and I will tell you all about it.”

  She looked at his hand as she would have looked at a loaded pistol. “No. Stop trying to fool me.”

  He shook his head at her, slowly, lovingly. “It would be my fate to fall in love with a stubborn, clever woman. Why couldn’t you have been a fool, ready to believe any tale I chose to tell?”

  “You should not love me if I were such a one as that.”

  “No, I should not. But if I had, I would not be in such a predicament now. Shall I tell you a fairy tale, my love?”

  “Please.”

  “You see, the king cursed me when he made me stone. If it were not for the advice of some good friends of his, I should have remained in that state for eternity. But they thought of him and knew he would regret it if he left me no loophole.”

  “They thought of him? Surely he must be an evil tyrant!”

  “That is as it may be. But he had been king for a long time, and they were still his friends. And mine, as it turned out.”

  Felicia watched Blaic as he told her of the conditions laid upon his release. He spoke simply, without putting in any humor to lighten the tale. “I knew no woman would ever shed a tear for me as myself. But the curse only said a woman must weep over me. That is what you did.”

  She remembered her tears falling on his boot and smiled. “So I freed you.”

  “Yes, and brought sorrow on yourself. For I had to betray you if I was ever to come home.”

  “Was that all?”

  “No. I must sing as well as Cuar the Harpist, the greatest of all our musicians, and learn to be as wise, or as devious, as Forgall the Wily, who, it now appears, is king.”

  “King? But you said...that other one.”

  “Boadach the Eternal has gone to join his wife in sleep. The burden of losing his only daughter to the mortal realm preyed upon his mind. He could not bear to dwell in Mag Mell without her.”

  “How do you know all this?” Felicia asked.

  “I returned there. The Living Lands are peopled once more. A thousand of them greeted me when I walked through a doorway between your realm and mine. They wait for us now. My lord father is there, come from the Westering Lands to meet you. You will be a princess in the eyes of my People, honored there as you have never been honored at home.”

  He laughed. “Think of it! You’ll never hear your petty stepmother’s voice again. No one will doubt your sanity or your honor. We shall dwell in bliss forever, for all I need for my happiness is your delight.”

  Turning away from Blaic’s imploring eyes, Felicia looked deep within her heart. To live with him and to love him was all she wanted from her life; the rest was unimaginable. What would it be like to live as he described? To spend endless days in a haze of pleasure, with every desire gratified, with every wish fulfilled as soon as it was imagined? Best of all would be sharing everything with Blaic, but that would be true in either world.

  Then, too, what would she be relinquishing? Men seemed only interested in her for her body, and she knew she’d be revolted by the possibility of sharing physical love with anyone but Blaic. So she would pass her weary days as an old maid, serving out her days in one of two ways: either as a member of her sister’s household — for surely Clarice would marry one day, despite her present feelings — or as directress of an orphanage filled with other people’s unwanted children. Valued only so far as she was useful, suffered only so much as she was willing to give, working herself to daily exhaustion for the doubtful honor of a death from respectable old age.

  Yet, even as Felicia described her future life in the worst possible terms, she knew she was lying to herself. Yes, there would be hard labor ahead, but she’d seen what kind, firm direction could do for children. There would be joy in giving the world honorable and industrious persons where it saw only poor children tainted by bastardy. Was she not a bastard herself? Could she not, by her own example, show that this taint need not destroy all hope?

  As for Clarice, the bond between them could not be stronger were it a tie of full blood. She would delight in seeing Clarice wed, and in holding her nieces and nephews in her arms. It might not be bliss, but it would serve.

  “Felicia....” Blaic said in a low tone of foreboding. “Felicia, what are you thinking? Don’t think, my beloved. Just take one step toward me. I shall do all the rest.”

  “Blaic, with all my heart I love you. But I cannot be what you want.”

  “No!"

  “I cannot go with you. If I did, what would be left of me?”

  She heard a tearing sound, rough and harsh. She started to turn away from him, to look for the source of the sound. He looked toward the sky and shouted, “Wait! Please, wait!”

  Reaching out to her, he said rapidly, “Felicia, listen to me. Please. I know you are afraid. It’s difficult to leave behind a comfortable place for something new but I swear by — I swear I shall care for you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said. Yet tears began to fall as she said it. “I don’t want to lose you, but even more I don’t want to lose myself. I was not made to be immortal, Blaic.”

  The sound in the sky grew again, louder and more sustained. She recognized it as the sound of tearing canvas, magnified a thousandfold. She saw cracks splinter across the faces of the frozen revelers as the sky broke apart.

  “Felicia! For God’s sake....” Blaic cried out.

  She reached out to him. “Come across to me! Come to me!”

  He wanted to. She saw the hope in his eyes as he poised his body, foot on the thwart, to make the leap. Suddenly, though, a great tear shot across the space between them. Darkness came welling up, pouring out from the chasms that were now everywhere, ripping the painting to shreds.

  Did the tips of Blaic’s fingers skim hers? Felicia stretched her arms out farther, feeling the muscles protest, as she tried to grasp his hands. All she gathered to her bosom was damp straw.

  She opened her eyes. The torchlight revealed only the walls of the gaol cell as the flame flickered one last time and died.

  Chapter Twenty

  Doctor Danby came out of the cell, shaking his head. His glasses were sliding down his nose on a slick of tears. “She’s raving, poor, dear girl. All this has been too much for the fragile mind of a woman.”

  “That’s what I zaid when I zeed her this mornin’,” Constable Richards said. His minion nodded vigorously. “Poor lady,’ I zaid. ‘Wimmen ain’t like us men. They don’t bear up.”

  “It had been coming on for some time,” Lady Stavely said, her mouth prim. “I thought she was becoming exceedingly odd.”

  The doctor said coldly, “I lay much of the blame at your door, madam! Your persecution of that child should make you very much ashamed!”

  “Doctor!”

  “He’s right, Mama, and you know it. I don’t see how you can stand there so smug.”

  “Clarice! Dearest!” This attack seemed to penetrate Lady Stavely’s fog of self-congratulation. “Whatever I have done has been for your protection. I couldn’t let her harm you.”

  Looking out the open door, Felicia heard every word, saw every expression that passed a
cross their faces. She knew, vaguely, that they spoke of her, but her misery was too deep to permit any exterior stimulus to penetrate. Blaic loved her; she knew it as she knew her name or the shape of her fingers. If only she knew if this parting was forever. Yet it hurt too much to even hope.

  She’d said as much to Doctor Danby when he’d first entered her cell. At the sound of a sympathetic voice, she’d poured out some part of her anguish, only to see that he was humoring her. Was it the drift of leaves in the corner, the soiled dress, or something in her eye that made him think she was mad? She did not know and, for the moment at least, she had no heart to care.

  “My love, reflect!” Lady Stavely called in alarm.

  “Wait, Clarice, permit me to enter first!” The doctor’s voice too was sharp with alarm.

  Clarice only said, “Nonsense!” and appeared in the doorway. Felicia looked up, her eyes sore with sorrowing.

  “Oh, my poor sister,” the girl said. There was no sign of disgust in her clear eyes, though she must have seen the same disorder that had repelled Doctor Danby. Instantly, Clarice was kneeling on the floor beside Felicia, shrugging off the fur she wore against the chill of the morning. She wrapped it around Felicia’s shoulders.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, Constable Richards! Had you not some other place to keep her? Even if she is mad, that does not make her a criminal.”

  “I’m not,” Felicia began.

  Clarice looked down at her with a twinkle in her tilted eyes. “Of course you’re not, but better to let them think so for now. I may have trouble with Mama, that’s all.”

  The girl stood up. “Mama! Tell them to bring the carriage around. I’m taking Felicia home, and I earnestly trust that this is the last time I shall have to do so.”

  “Absolutely not,” Lady Stavely said. “I forbid it.”

  “Then I refuse to leave. Constable, close that door. So long as Felicia is in this dreadful place, I shall share her captivity. Go on, Constable. What are you waiting for?”