The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4)

by Rebecca Lochlann

  How much time had passed? Where was he?

  He could answer but one of these questions. Every time he woke from feverish stupor, he saw the same curved rock wall rising around him. Vaguely, from better days, he knew he was lying inside one of the ruins near Curran’s estate. Dun… something.

  You have forced your way into my design.

  The voice echoed, bouncing off the fitted stones. He pushed it away. He no longer knew if it belonged to the oracle who had foretold his future, or to Athene, but he couldn’t bear the taunt in it, not now.

  He needed a physician, medicine, and water. He was so thirsty. But the idea of standing was more than he could bear, and he was afraid. What if Aodhàn Mackinnon found him?

  In lucid moments, he fantasized. The first one he’d take his rage out on would be Aodhàn Mackinnon. He could hardly believe his old enemy had survived being stabbed in the chest and dumped in the ocean. Patrick had ferreted out the story in Àrnasdal during one of his property searches, for it was a popular tale up and down the coast. Seaghan MacAnaugh happened along at the perfect moment to rescue poor drowning Aodhàn. So here he was, alive, twenty years older and far poorer. Not only had he survived, he’d found Aridela, and, according to incensed yet delighted gossip, was working hard to separate her from her namby-pamby husband, the loyal hound, Menoetius. Would these three never change? They kept being reborn, living out the same useless existence, over and over again, and for what? Perhaps Athene had expired at some point, leaving her human playthings to forever spin in some self-generating rotation that couldn’t be stopped. If so, he was caught up in it with them.

  Patrick drifted in the ocean of his delirium. He saw himself as a young prince, the son of Lycomedes of Tiryns. Every one of your kin, to the lowest bastard you have sired, will perish on my sword, he’d promised Chrysaleon. His brain dredged up other bodies he had consumed and used, too many to count. He’d learned how to listen to the sensations that warned him of the triad’s presence. He’d learned how to follow and find them. At first he’d done what anyone in his position would— killed them. But he quickly realized two things: killing them did not mean they were dead; toying with them, making them suffer, prolonged the thrill and added spice to his very long, often tedious, life.

  One of his favorite recollections was as Heinrich Baten, Papal Inquisitor, who forced Chrysaleon to watch without recourse as he’d tortured Aridela.

  How he loved Christianity! It leant itself so perfectly to his own goals and passions.

  Once he learned that Chrysaleon could look directly at him and not know who he was, that was when he really began enjoying himself. As long as he kept Chrysaleon from smelling him, he was safe.

  He had to admit he went too far during the German Inquisition. Confident in his terrifying role and in the protection of his guards, he made sure Chrysaleon recognized him, and that arrogance had come close to finishing him.

  “He hasn’t succeeded yet,” Patrick told himself as he tumbled and pitched on dirt turned to heaving waves. Would it, in the end, be a simple flesh wound that proved his undoing? The fever and hallucinations were worsening. Again and again, he relived the ordeal in the cavern at Lebadeia, on the Greek mainland, where he had gone to receive the oracle’s revelation. He heard the voices, felt those unearthly hands upon him, and most especially he saw the eyes glowing out of the darkness.

  I shall use you.

  One morning, he woke in the ruin outside of Glenelg unusually clear-headed, and knew he was dying.

  He forced himself to his feet, groaning, waiting for the vertigo and hammering to lessen. When he could see the ground in front of him, he staggered from the ruin, intent on one thing. Finding a body, any body, to consume before it was too late.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OLIVIA WAS SQUALLING when Diorbhail brought her into Lily’s sitting room, but Morrigan soon had the child giggling with a game of keekaboo, then soothed with the newly available powdered milk formula Lily had convinced Morrigan to try, telling her it was high time Olivia adapted to something other than her mother’s breast.

  “Did you and Ramsay go to Covent Garden?” Lily asked as she poured tea.

  “Aye. I mean yes,” Morrigan said.

  “A wagon-load of flowers arrived with instructions to put them in your bedroom.”

  “I swear he bought every bloom I admired until I caught on and made him stop.”

  “Your husband is the rarest of fabled creatures. A romantic male.”

  Morrigan had been afraid of embarrassing herself or worse, Curran, with her provincial speech and mannerisms. But after a week with Lily, her nervousness disintegrated. It was a pleasure to put this raven-haired lady in the category of merry, and Richard, her husband, as well.

  “What else did you do?” Lily offered her a plate of star-shaped biscuits and fancy lemon teacakes.

  “We walked in Hyde Park.” Morrigan closed her eyes to better enjoy the sweetness of sugar mixed with the tang of lemon. “Mr. Disraeli was there. We saw Buckingham Palace. Then it was off to Piccadilly and Knightsbridge. I bought twelve yards of watered silk from the Orient for my Aunt Ibby, and a collar for my dog, embroidered with rubies— sham of course. Can you imagine, I saw a dog collar with real diamonds! And they were meikle— I mean, large.”

  “Every taste is catered to in London,” Lily said, a bit darkly. “What shall we do tomorrow? We could take Olivia to the zoo in Regent’s Park, and afterwards we could picnic, if the weather allows.”

  “Would you like that, lassikie?” Morrigan asked her daughter. Olivia kicked her plump legs, caught at her toes, and giggled.

  Lily begged to hold her. Olivia returned her hostess’s smiles for a moment but soon twisted in search of her mama. She had little patience for anyone but Morrigan, Curran, or Diorbhail.

  “The Hamiltons are having a ball. They’re vulgar money, like us, so we’re invited. There’s enough time to have a dress made, thanks to my dressmaker. I’ve never seen anyone sew so fast. And my maid, Hélène, is a genius with hair. What do you think of baby’s breath? Sprigs of white against your dark hair would be enchanting.”

  “Oh, aye. Thank you.”

  “Ramsay’s been so vague about your travels.” Lily handed the squirming baby back to her mother. “And he kept blushing like a naughty schoolboy. I could sense mischief was afoot. Ah, now you’re blushing. I adore mischief. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  Of course Morrigan couldn’t tell her what had precipitated their flight from Glenelg. “It… was an adventure,” she said, as her cheeks grew hotter. “He wanted to show me a place he visited when he was young. Then I wanted to go to Cape Wrath, because I’d heard a story about it. Then he wanted me to meet you.” She shrugged. “It grew and grew.”

  One of Lily’s brows lifted. “You make it sound quite ordinary, but I have a feeling there’s more to it. In fact, it sounds as though you and Ramsay are on a pilgrimage of sorts.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Morrigan said, and dropped her gaze to Olivia’s face, embarrassed.

  Lily moved closer so she could stroke Olivia’s head then she clasped Morrigan’s fingers. Gently, she said, “It’s more than an adventure. It’s a journey to a spiritual place, a place of meaning. It’s something that changes you. Sometimes a pilgrimage happens nowhere but in the heart. In others, the body comes along, as with you. I know of what I speak, having gone on my own, which brought me out of darkness to Donaghue, and this life.” She glanced fondly at the room’s opulent furnishings and rich wallpaper.

  Morrigan hesitated to ask for details, fearing it might be uncivil.

  Lily sipped her tea. “Where will you go after London?”

  Morrigan could only blink. She had made no plans. She hadn’t allowed herself to hope for anything beyond each unfolding moment. But, if all remained the same, Curran would ask her where she wanted to go, as it would be her turn. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think on it.”

  * * * *

  M
orrigan woke in the silent hours after midnight. Curran lay next to her, breathing evenly, one arm thrown across her stomach.

  She donned a robe and padded barefoot through the mansion, thinking how different it was from the daytime, when servants were everywhere.

  Surely she could find a novel to keep her company. The sumptuous library was dark inside, but warm. She lit a lamp and picked up a leather-bound volume from the table beside it.

  It was a book of poems. Settling into the wing chair, she opened it and scanned until a heading caught her eye.

  Tristram and Iseult.

  * * * *

  How could I have known that your waist would fit my hands like it was made for them? That your body would mold into mine and mine into yours as though we were twined within the same womb?

  “Morrigan? Morrigan, dear?”

  Morrigan woke with a start. Lily was bending over her, smiling as she brushed a lock of hair off her face.

  “Did you sleep all night down here?”

  “I came down to read. I must have dozed off.”

  “Are you hungry? Breakfast is ready in the dining room. What were you reading?”

  Lily picked up the book, still open on Morrigan’s lap. “Ah, one of my favorites,” she said, glancing at the cover, then turned it to the open pages. “A gorgeous tale.”

  “Aye.” Morrigan fought to extricate herself from the warm, scented dream. In that shadowed place of fantasy, her lover offered seductive confessions that Morrigan knew instinctively were hers alone; he had never said such things to any other woman.

  She’d been imagining Tristram and his Irish princess, Iseult, before she fell asleep, and the imagining had entwined with her dreams. It was hard to push away the entreaty in the man’s voice, hard to return to dull, bright reality.

  “Did you like it?” Lily hooked her arm through Morrigan’s and they climbed the stairs so Morrigan could change out of her nightgown.

  “I loved it,” Morrigan said. “It was braw, so braw. But sad.”

  The lines returned. Tristram! — Tristram! — Stay— receive me with thee! Iseult leaves thee, Tristram! Never more.

  Lily stopped on the landing and gestured to a painting, one Morrigan had noticed several times over the last few days. It depicted a woman, a man, and a dog very similar to Antiope. Both the dog and the man regarded the woman adoringly.

  “Hugues Merle, a Frenchman, painted this,” Lily said. “It is his imagining of Tristram and Iseult. I had to have it, and Richard obliged me.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Morrigan said dutifully. But the painted Iseult was remote and expressionless, like a marble statue, her face turned away from the man and the dog. Her left hand rested on the dog’s neck, but she didn’t seem aware of the man, who touched her arms so lightly he might have been plucking the strings of a lute. Such detachment didn’t match the Iseult in the book of poems. That woman was passionate, her grief at the dying Tristram’s bedside palpable.

  I will always be with thee; I will watch thee, tend thee, soothe thy pain; sing thee tales of true, long-parted lovers, join’d at evening of their days again.

  Lily chattered gaily as they continued to Morrigan’s bedroom, telling her about the time she, Richard, and Curran had traveled to Munich to see the Wagner opera, Tristan und Isolde at its premiere. She described the sets, the orchestra, the women with their opera glasses and lacy gowns. “One of the conductors was so overcome with emotion he had to be committed to an asylum!” she claimed with delight.

  It reminded Morrigan of a letter she’d received from Louis Stevenson. He’d written in his fanciful way that he sometimes wished he could live inside an opera.

  As the maid draped a morning gown over her head, enveloping her for an instant in a cocoon of darkness and fabric, she felt as though she was falling headlong into the poem, or her dream.

  Sometimes, she thought uneasily, she couldn’t tell the difference.

  She was soon dressed. Lily took her arm again. They left the bedroom and came upon Richard and Curran at the foot of the staircase.

  “How I wish you could see the opera,” Lily said as they all entered the dining room. “I do wonder if it will ever come here. I would love to watch prim, proper London being bombarded with all that sexual desire and tension, the moment when everything is forgotten in blissful frenzied fulfillment. It’s all there, in the singing, the music. Yet it’s about escaping our sexual longings as well, through the release of death.” She shrugged. “I confess that part makes little sense to me. Why escape our sexual longings? They were molded within us for a reason— to enjoy!”

  “Lily, please.” Richard gripped his wife’s chin sternly, though Morrigan was certain she saw hints of a smile. “Mrs. Ramsay will run screaming from our home if you don’t stop talking in this indecent fashion. She’s a lady, unlike you, my strumpet. Look at her! Her face is as red as those drapes, and you know you only hung those to scandalize the neighbors.”

  “Nonsense. Ramsay would never wed one of those long-nosed spinsters who swoon at the sight of a bloomer. You insult Mrs. Ramsay by grouping her with them.”

  “There is a happy medium, my love, between a long-nosed fainting spinster and a brazen tart, for which you don’t allow. Surely our Mrs. Ramsay fits into the vast middle ground.”

  “Please don’t argue,” Morrigan said. “I’m no’ offended, I swear.”

  She glanced at Curran, thinking of her life before she’d met him, of the thrashings, the dreadful entertaining of strangers, the soul-numbing chores, and the night Douglas Lawton had sought to end her life… not to mention that other night she couldn’t bear to think of at all.

  Then she pictured the day she had given this man what propriety claimed was a woman’s only asset, if she didn’t have land or a title.

  He seemed to understand. He twined his fingers through hers and kissed her temple.

  “Now, now, Donaghue insists we act with decorum.” Lily flicked the back of his hand with her napkin, but her smile was pure benevolence.

  * * * *

  Glenelg’s scruffy delivery boy perused Aodhàn curiously as he handed over a sealed envelope. The fisherman had never before received a letter.

  Aodhàn unfolded the missive, his gaze going first to the signature. It was from Faith, Lilith’s aging mother on Barra, and was scrawled in nearly unreadable Gaelic.

  An Englishman is staying at the MacNeil house. He is asking questions about you, about Lilith, about what happened. He hired me as cook and maidservant. He does not know who I am. His name is Quentin Merriwether.

  It was easy to guess why Curran’s solicitor was snooping around on Barra. Curran must have sent him. But why? It could only be because of those careless things he’d said to Seaghan the morning after Curran and Morrigan’s wedding, when his memories were freshly returned, burning through him like lightning. Aye, he was almost certain he’d said something about Barra, and his wife. Seaghan must have told Curran.

  Aodhàn’s long friendship with Seaghan was destroyed. Curran and Morrigan were gone for the foreseeable future. He hadn’t yet determined a way to get to London, but he could find someone to sail him over to Barra for the cost of a red fish or two. Quentin Merriwether needed to be dealt with. It would only take a few days.

  The man’s blood would be on Curran’s hands.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MORRIGAN’S GOWN, A mossy green taffeta creation, was finished the very day of the Hamilton ball. Lily’s French maid, Hélène, arranged her hair in a beautiful twist, adding a few loose wisps in front of her ears and on the neck. She shocked Morrigan by insisting the already plunging décolletage be coaxed lower. Thankfully the rosettes in the center added a teasing hint of subterfuge to her cleavage.

  With a diamond tiara sparkling in her piled black hair and a sapphire-blue gown, Lily resembled a celestial goddess. Her neckline was even lower than Morrigan’s, and, far from embarrassed, the saucy wench plumped her breasts higher and gave an irrepressible laugh. “I’ll have those
gentlemen drooling like infants,” she said.

  “Do you vex your husband with the things you do?” Morrigan blurted.

  For the briefest second, Lily’s finely arched brows lifted. Then she smiled and shook her curls. “We have a unique understanding,” she said, dabbing a crystal perfume applicator to the hollow in her throat. The tantalizing scent of roses entreated one to breathe deep. “Come with me.” Lily guided Morrigan to the freestanding looking-glass and rested an arm around her shoulders. “There you are, cara mia,” she said. “How lovely. I knew that color would be perfect on you. It brings out hints of red in your hair, and complements your skin.” She tilted her head. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

  Morrigan blushed. She wanted to pull free of Lily’s touch and at the same time, longed to dissolve into it. Was it because she’d never known a mother’s embraces that the touch of women moved her so?

  “Oh, I dinna ken,” she said, nervousness making her forget her attempts to cultivate a more patrician manner of speaking.

  Lily smiled and fingered one of the wisps of hair in front of Morrigan’s ear. “My darling, that is one of your most delightful aspects. If you did know, you would be a formidable adversary to our blue-blooded witches. Morrigan. The name hardly fits, bella. Somehow it makes me think of a necromancer. Of blood and cauldrons. Definitely worldly. Fearless.”

  “Then it’s a mistake on me,” Morrigan said. “Because I sometimes think I’m afraid of everything.”

  Lily’s hand faltered then dropped to Morrigan’s shoulder and pressed it. “I think you’re quite brave.”

  “Brave?” It was difficult to remain still. The only other women she’d ever been so close to were Eleanor and Diorbhail.

  “I hope you’ll forgive us,” Lily said. “Ramsay told me about your father. Yet you never ran away.”

  “Only because I was more afraid of what might happen to me elsewhere.”