by Laura London
We took the carriage into Chipping on the pretext of wishing to visit the subscription library, which Brockhaven thought a very good idea, considering, as he said, that the paucity of proper reading material in the house had driven us to more exotic kinds of literature in our commendable thirst for the printed word. I shudder to think what he would have said had he known our true purpose.
On the carriage ride to town, we laid our guilty plans. Ellen was taken aback to hear that I didn’t know many ingenious ways to steal things because she had quite thought I would, being a gypsy. I will admit that there are gypsies who do steal things, and Grandma did once say that God had made a special rule that it was all right to steal from gorgios but only from gorgios and only if it was something you really needed, like a chicken or a blanket. But the only how-to story she had ever told me was about her cousin, Rupa, who would beg at the front door of the house while her sister, Lala, would go around to the back and whip the wash off the line. My grandmother said that for herself, she would never do such a thing because the gorgios punish you plenty if they catch you at it, and I’d better never do it or my father’s ghost would groan in his grave. But knowing my father as I did, I somehow think he would have appreciated this venture.
Ellen made a wonderfully quick recovery from my utter unhelpfulness, and soon she had conjured up a plan. We would send the apothecary to look for a hopelessly obscure item that would surely entail a trip to the storeroom and, while he was looking, we would grab the opium, leaving payment, of course, in an envelope, and run for the carriage, which would be left three blocks away by the subscription library. We spent the rest of the trip devising a suitable concoction to confound the apothecary.
Now, you might think this is just the sort of plan that was doomed to failure, but the spirits that want one to hunt werewolves on May Day were on our side. Ellen had read recently in an old herbal about “the white lillie, the roote of which makes an excellent plaister which bringeth the haire againe upon places which have beene burned or scalded.”
The apothecary was a cross-looking man with a dusty old wig and a red chin. He looked at us morosely when we asked for the white lillie and said we’d better not drink any of it because he thought it might be poisonous, and next time to have more sense than to go scaldin’ ourselves anyway. I could hardly believe our luck when he said he did have some for us, but it would take awhile for him to find it, yes it would. With dreary satisfaction, he warned us that it would take quite a while. When his shuffling footsteps faded into the basement, Ellen fairly leapt across the counter like an athlete at the Greek games, grabbed a bottle clearly labeled “Laudanum,” came back over the counter and left the envelope, bulging with money. It was Ellen’s last-minute inspiration to write “from a tormented addict” on the envelope. I don’t doubt that we were in the carriage and well on our way back to Edgehill before the apothecary discovered our crime. A most successful theft. Next to that, procuring a satchel and soaking it in wine was as easy as hopping on two feet.
We set out May Day morning two hours after the midnight church bells had rung in the summer and the May. The necessity to give any revelers who might be abroad the impression that we were girls from the village meant that we rode bareback, leaving our expensive saddles in the tack room. The night was warm and dry and the half-moon lent a silver cachet to the piles of clouds which floated between heaven and earth. Black shadows moved with the rustling leaves over our heads, and the smell of damp limestone rose from the ground. The night air tasted heavily sweet and intoxicating, like a strange potion. Twice as we wound our way uphill we heard revelers singing and laughing.
Their torches appeared first, flickering through the faraway branches like will-o’-the-wisps, and we took refuge in the shelter of the trees, and watched as they passed, their faces looking queerly distorted with hilarity and over-indulgence. It was ghostly to have them come so close without seeing us, and I had the feeling that if I were to ride in their path, they would step right through me. Then the clatter would fade in the distance, the torches would dwindle into sparks, and wink out in darkness, and we would have the path once again to ourselves.
The higher on the hillside we climbed, the quieter and darker it seemed to become. I had lived too much of my life in the woods to have any fear of these soft shadows and moving branches, and yet, I began to have an eerie feeling of being curiously unprotected. If I could have had Kory with me, or dear old Caesar, the mastiff—but as I have said, they would be too easy a clue to our identity. Poor Caesar had been left sitting grumpily in the stables tonight, waiting for Brockhaven to return from dinner and cards with his friend Dain, who was Lord Bredon, a young, unmarried landowner of rakish reputation whose land joined Brockhaven’s on the side opposite the boundaries shared with Isabella and Vincent.
I tried to ignore my uncertainty and felt for the hilt of the knife I had sheathed and attached to my sash. I knew how to throw it with some precision—it was an art Grandma and I used to practice on long summer evenings, those timeless times after the bottom rim of the sun has touched the horizon and before it dips below. Once in Ellen’s room, I had exhibited my skill, to her ecstatic delight, and there was a slash in the center of a chalked circle on her wall to testify. To hide it from Gwen’s doubtless disapproval, she had hung over it a sampler which read “I Come Not To Bring Peace, But A Sword.”
To be cheerful, I sang softly to Ellen in Romany, which is the best language for me when I feel uneasy. I taught her the words and our voices blended in the night; singing:
To the forest, go,
Dance with the fairies!
Hold the hand of time!
Feel the caress of Mother Earth…
Our first suspicion that the Palace of the Dead Arches (ruin) was haunted tonight by more than a malingering werewolf came as we crossed the stonework bridge into the oaks. We saw far distant in the woods a tower of red smoke reaching into the sky, patterned with scarlet cinders. Drawing on, we heard laughing, shouting, singing, the music of out-of-tune fiddles, screaming fifes, and a drum. We left the horses by the bridge and crept slowly closer to the ruin, Ellen dragging the satchel in both hands. Peeking through the tangle of brush around the clearing, we saw that we had come upon the scene of the May Day bonfire, the destination of the straggling groups that had passed us in the woods.
Blankets were spread everywhere on the ground. Some of the revelers were sitting; some, girls and men both, were dancing with wild abandon, black impassioned silhouettes against the leaping flames of the bonfire. To the rear, the freshly cut elm Maypole lay surrounded by five or six young people stripping off its last branches and winding its fifty-foot length with ribbons, herbs, and flowers. The workers sung May carols as they went about their task, the voices making a strangely harmonious counterpoint to the instrumental music being played by the group of musicians standing near. There was wine everywhere, in skins and bottles; we saw a man on the far side of the fire lift a flagon and pour the wine into his mouth as if it had been water and he lost in the desert for a fortnight without it. As I grew used to the brightness and jumping shadows, I found myself beginning to recognize faces: girls from the village, farmer’s sons, and here and there young men to whom I had been introduced at Lady Perscough’s soirée, every one of them looking drunker than a cork. Peregrine Absalm was playing some wild, drawn-out tune on the guitar, and near him John Lennox was wrapping festoons of flowers around and around a young, dark-haired girl whose gown was slipping perilously lower over her rounded shoulders.
I felt the pressure of Ellen’s hand against my arm. “Liza,” she whispered, “cast your eyes at that.” I looked in the direction she had discreetly indicated. Not thirty feet from where we were hidden was Robert, seated on a blanket with his arm around a sloe-eyed village beauty and his hands…
“I can’t bear to l-look,” murmured Ellen, holding her own hands over her eyes.
“Well,” I said in a sympathetic whisper, “if you can’t bear to look, then you h
ad better close your fingers together, wouldn’t you say?”
Ellen’s fingers curled down into little fists on her cheeks. “I don’t know how she c-can stand to have him use her like that!”
I agreed dutifully and added for good measure, “I’m sure she must be cheap.”
“Oh, a slut!” Ellen agreed vehemently. We didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and then from Ellen came the inevitable. “I wish it was m-me.”
I tried to think of something encouraging. “He respects you too much to treat you so.”
“I suppose that’s it,” she said miserably and heaved a sigh. “If he did treat me l-like that, then everyone would t-try to make him marry me, which does, I th-think, tend to be a big deterrent. Even if he could bring himself t-to seduce me, a thought which I am sure has never c-crossed his mind, he hasn’t the least disposition t-to marry anyone, least of all me.”
From the path behind us came a crash and an incredible blare of bugles. A half dozen wild young men on horseback came into view, galloping their uncontrolled horses into the clearing through the place where we had concealed ourselves! Ellen and I clambered to our knees and fled like a pair of flushing pheasants. I ran blindly in my haste, not stopping to look back until my toe caught on a root and brought me up sharply.
I had taken cover by a large outcrop of limestone. The bonfire and its tumult had receded into the distance and my surroundings seemed strangely silent.
“Ellen?” I said, not whispering. My voice sounded so loud and sharp that I jumped. My only answer was the plaintive whistle of an owl. I stood still and then called again. This time I knew I was alone.
Hoping Ellen would come to me, I stood where I was, time like a demented spider spinning its cloying web about me. I waited until my nerves were aching and still there was yet no sign of her, so, hoping she would do the same, I slowly began to make my way back to the horses, or at least, made my way back to where I thought the horses were. I had no light, and the trees seemed to cut out the moonlight like overlapping bat’s wings. Bushes caught at my skirts and scraped my face. I knew I had gone too far and in the wrong direction when I came upon a horsetrack that I hadn’t seen before. The revelers were so far away that their noise was almost indistinguishable from the dry voice of the wind.
Then, terrifyingly, came the inhuman, crackling yowl I had once heard near the ruins, the time when Caesar had dashed into the woods to protect me. But Caesar was at Edgehill, and it was impossible to tell whether the diffuse howl was coming from two miles away or twenty yards. I drew the knife from inside my cloak.
There was a tiny crack of a branch behind me and I turned. A gray shaft of moonlight was falling through the trees. A mesh of leaves parted and a tall, black, cloak-draped figure stepped soundlessly into it. I drew back my hand and sent the knife slicing through the air. There was a solid thwack as it landed uselessly in an unseen tree trunk. I would not get another chance.
“What the hell?” said a male voice.
There is no one else in the world who can swear with the same fluid efficiency. Horror mingled with sweeping relief as I realized that I had just tossed a knife at Lord Brockhaven. My first thought was to thank God it was him, and not a ghoulish thing from the underworld. My second was to turn and flee like a thousand devils were at my heels.
Strong hands caught me from behind, pulling me back against his hard muscled body.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, shoving me against a tree with such proficiency that you would think it was a move he did every day. Holding my hands easily in one of his, he thrust his other hand under the folds of my cloak. “Let’s see if you have any more weapons where that came from.” Roughly, his hand explored my waist in a quick, searching motion and then moved higher. Suddenly it became a caress.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “A woman.” He began to laugh.
I shrank back until the tree’s rough bark dug into my back. It took me that much time to remember that I was masked, and please God, in the darkness there was nothing else about me that could tell him who I was. Hope pulsed within me that I might still, miraculously, be able to escape with my identity unknown.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he whispered huskily, his hands curving around my waist. “Why, you’re trembling. Were you afraid all alone in the woods? Is that why you threw your knife at me?”
His hands were a burning distraction, but I knew I had to answer, and, not trusting my voice, I nodded, hoping he would find that a sufficient reply.
“Poor little doe.” He lifted his hand across the slope of my shoulder and spread his cool fingers on the side of my neck, barely touching my skin. I shivered. “Are you waiting for your lover?” I nodded again, to avoid a lengthy explanation. At my answer, he let his finger stray over my lips for a moment, and then released me. “Nay, darling,” he said. “It’s no place for you out here. I can’t leave you by yourself. Come with me—we’ll find your sweetheart. No doubt he’s by the bonfire.”
I hung back, unpleasantly surprised by this spate of unexpected philanthropy. All it needed tonight was for me to be unmasked in front of the bonfire. He took a step, my arm in his hand, but stopped when he felt my reluctance to go with him. I thought fast, not wanting to give him time to think up any more questions, and said the first thing that came to my mind, trying to imitate the slur and rhythm of country speech.
“He’s—he’s gone off with—another girl,” I said. One doesn’t often have the good luck to know immediately when one has made a terrible mistake, but fortune smiled wickedly down on me this time. I had forgotten for a moment Ellen’s statement that no young lady of good repute would be abroad tonight. Brockhaven promptly placed the worst possible construction on my words, and my seeming desire to remain in the woods with him had only one logical possibility. If this were chess, I would have just put myself in check.
His tone was light and tender. “Well, then, what can I do for you, darling?”
I could have wept with frustration. Short of a long explanation, I couldn’t seem to think of anything that would get rid of him, and a long explanation would surely reveal me to him.
“Go,” I said, still trying to disguise my voice. “Please.” Even to me it sounded unutterably coy. I heard him laugh softly again, and he pulled me hard against the length of his body. I could feel his breath on my cheek as he bent over me, and then suddenly he placed a deep, searching kiss on my lips. My cheeks were cupped in his hands, and his fingers played with my earlobes as his mouth was on mine, probing, seeking, brutal, and erotic, his lips moving over mine, stroking, taking, and laying waste like a comet skimming too close to the breast of the fertile earth. It was not a kiss he would have used on a virgin, because the question it asked was a demand no man would make on an innocent girl.
His lips left mine, and I took a shuddering gulp of air. He leaned my head back against a large, slanting branch and found my mouth again. My knees were beginning to shake beneath me, and I was strangely grateful for the tree at my back, and the solid strength of his grip. When we had kissed before, in the glen, it had seemed the essence of heavenly love. There can be no heaven without the inferno, and this is what I experienced now—a match, carelessly thrown by Lord Brockhaven, on the dry, parched kindling of my attraction for him exploding us both into burning cinders. I hadn’t known the human body was capable of such a feeling, such a stretching of the possibilities, such a release of one’s soul in a thousand directions at once.
When his lips left mine this time, my own felt scarred, swollen, and the harsh panting of my breath seemed forced out of my lungs with each chest-wracking pump of my heart. His lips searched gently for the pulse in my throat, and I was sure that if he found it, he would cause it to stop.
“Sweet, darling, so sweet,” he murmured. Among his many talents, I discovered in Brockhaven a gift for the understatement. His hand reached behind my head, roaming with searing tenderness through the swimming net of my hair. “Hush—don’t let it frighten you. Do
you know who I am?”
“Yes,” I whispered the word, swallowing painfully.
“That’s fine, my love.” Through the material of my gown, I could feel his palm as he touched me intimately. “Don’t be afraid—I’ll be good to you.” His kisses tasted me deeply, and I felt intoxicated, my blood flowing like wine, burning and heady through my veins. My earlobe tingled under the caress of his breath as if in anticipation of the nip that followed, and, like a warm blanket, his hand covered my breast. And there was the pressure of his body on mine… I looked up at him. His face wavered before me, and I could see his half-closed, heavy-lidded eyes in the moonlight.
I summoned my waning strength and tried to pull away. Prevented by his hand on my back, I gasped, feeling my heart skip as he brought me back to him, and suddenly I felt powerless, my head falling back, my hair streaming as I could no longer keep my mouth from his. Far away, like drowning echoes, I heard him speak.
“You’re so charming, love,” he murmured. “I need you tonight, need you to help me forget someone—a lady… You smell so sweet”—He kissed my throat—“like wild bluebells, like—”
He stiffened all at once, looking down at me in the moonlight, and I could only gaze back. “Like Liza,” he finished. His body was still now; the insistent pressure had stopped; and, to my horror, he reached up his hand and untied the mask. I heard it fall with the slightest of rustles to the grass at our feet. Still in his arms, I tried to control the shiver I could feel beginning to overtake me.
“How far would you have let it go before you stopped me—before you told me who you were?” he asked, his voice husky, strangely uneven.
The silence caused by my inability to answer him was broken only by the hooting of a faraway owl. Finally I summoned my voice, and said, though I could manage but a whisper, “I knew you’d be angry.”
“I see. Complicated, isn’t it?” Slowly, with an almost painful deliberation, he pushed me away. “Never fear, sweetheart. I won’t disappoint you. In a moment I’m going to be madder than hell at you, but right now I’m only…” He didn’t finish his sentence before pushing me to arm’s length, holding me there, staring back at him dumbly. “I’m trying to function with only half a mind,” he finished.
