Fire Dance

by Delle Jacobs

  "You did not? Then there is much more for you to learn. I think we will suit each other

  well."

  "I suppose it must be considered a sin to have such great fun."

  "The priests say it is. But what do they know? They are the ones who vowed to be celibate, not we."

  She laughed. Barely a double-syllabled chuckle. But she laughed. He felt as if he were king of all Christendom.

  Then he collapsed to the balcony floor.

  * * *

  She screamed and screamed as she caught him, grappled for a hold before he tumbled down the balcony's steps. He hung limp and heavy in her arms, and she knotted fists of his tunic in her hands, but his heavy body was quickly slipping from her.

  "Someone come! Someone help me!" she cried. "Help me!"

  Gerard burst through the chamber door. He bounded for the steps and shoved her aside as he grabbed at Alain. The Norman's head lolled backward, and his eyes rolled about in their sockets.

  "What is it?" Gerard demanded. "A wound we did not see?"

  "No wound," she replied. "I know not what it is."

  But she knew. She had run out of time.

  Chretien came running, his eyes wild at the sight of Alain draped limply over Gerard's shoulder. He raced for the door to the middle chamber and threw it open. Gerard carried him through the door, and eased him onto the bed.

  "What has happened?"

  "He collapsed. I came when I heard the lady's screams."

  "Lady?" Terror clung to Chrétien's eyes.

  "Aye. I think I know the malady."

  "Can you cure it?"

  "I know not. It is a dangerous one. You must make him do exactly as I say, and hold him down if he does not stay in the bed, for he must rest."

  "Whatever you ask, it shall be done," said Chretien.

  It would look strange to him, she knew. But she must take the chance that he would accept her word.

  "We must take all his clothes and wash them in water, as hot as can be done. If they shrink, so be it. We can always make more. The sheets, too. And I want him bathed in warm water, three times each day. The water must be discarded."

  What else? What would draw the poison from his body?

  "Milk. He must have as much milk as we can get into him. But naught else. Save broths, mayhap a little bread."

  "Milk?" Chretien looked dubious.

  "Milk. No wine nor ale. We must work the bad humours from his body."

  "And this will cure him?"

  She bit on her lip. Would it? Or was she already too late? In this way, she had lost her mother, for she had not recognized the poison soon enough. But at least his skin did not yet have the horrid tinge of yellow.

  "I know not. But do not waste any time."

  Alain murmured a small groan at the sound of her voice, and his eyes opened, looking confused.

  "What happened?"

  Melisande lifted his eyelid with her thumb to study his eye. No yellow tinge there, either. "It is a malady I've seen but once, lord. It will pass if you will let me treat it."

  "It is naught but an empty stomach, lady. Let me up."

  Her fearful glance swung to Chretien, begging his help.

  "Nay, Alain. It is not a simple thing. You must follow her instructions, else I fear for you. You are not one to faint like a lady in her first months."

  "It is naught, I say. Let me up."

  Chrétien's big hand lashed out and held the lord down at his chest. "I will knock you flat if I must. But you see, you have not even the strength to resist my hand. It is not like you, for you should have cold-cocked me by now. I think she is right, Alain. I will not lose you for your stubbornness."

  "I, too," said Gerard. "And I can call upon any in this hall for help."

  Alain gave them a disgusted frown. He sighed. Melisande knew she had won the first round. She suspected she was not the only one who had noticed the odd, occasional trembling of his hands, sporadic loss of balance and headaches. She had seen the worried look on Chrétien's face, and had known he, too, sensed the weakness in a normally strong man. She had not understood before now what that weakness could have cost him in battle.

  She had to treat him, yet at the same time she had to get rid of the cloak before he changed his mind. If Fyren had not lied, then he might at any time demand it back from her, being unable to break the eternal bond to it that would destroy him.

  What was sorcery, and what was not? Was this? Her mother had wound herself in the cloak, clung tenaciously to it until her last breath, when Melisande had finally pried it from her fingers. She would not let Fyren claim Alain, too. Never!

  She sat beside him, keeping watch next to Chretien, who refused to leave the chamber. Kitchen women brought up buckets of hot water and the little soap pot from the bath house. The bed was stripped beneath him and clothes from him while he remained in the bed, grumbling indignantly. His dignity was of little importance to her now. He balked at the milk. It did him no good. Chretien offered to funnel it down him.

  "I am hungry, lady. I want a decent meal." he demanded.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, and stroked suggestively at the hairs on his chest. "In three days," she said, "you may have a real meal again, and everything else you want, if you do as I say. If not, you may never have one again. Or anything else."

  She allowed her hand to stray provocatively beneath the covers just far enough to be sure he got the point.

  "Melisande."

  She flipped her eyebrows. "Everything," she said with a sly grin. Aye, it was not fair. But she had to use everything she had now. If only she had not waited so long.

  * * *

  It was called the Butter Tubs. A great hole in the ground that went straight down into emptiness. Common word had it that it was a hole into Hell, but she did not believe that. A person could stand by and listen until rocks hit the bottom, and Hell must surely be much farther down.

  Still, it gave her pause. No one knew how deep the hole was, only that it seemed to go straight down into the earth. If it did go all the way down to Hell, she could be giving the Devil back his own hideous prize.

  But if there were such a hole into Hell, Satan would come up it every day. Everyone knew Satan did not want to be in the Hell he had made. He only wanted souls to join him there in misery.

  The bottom of the Butter Tubs was the only place she knew where she could be certain no human being would ever go.

  But how to get out of the castle? Gerard and Lynet had her chamber, where the hidden passage was, and the bolt hole was blocked. There was no other way, then, but to walk out the gate, as if it were something she did every day. She would claim to search for herbs for the lord's malady.

  She found a basket to carry the detested cloak and a bundle of food for the few days it would take to get there and back. She wandered down through the village, talking to whoever stopped her to ask of their kin who had gone with Hugh to build and defend the new motte. She told them she had seen it, and they were safe within it. She hoped she did not lie.

  She made for the beck, then hid herself among the trees that lined it. There were few to see her, for these days few strayed from the safety of the village and its castle. When darkness came, she was long gone.

  By the light of the half moon, she made her way south along the road toward Gerard's castle, keeping the river in sight. Several miles farther, she turned at a crossroad to the east and hiked up into the rugged fells.

  Her strength began to flag, and she stopped to rest. From her food bundle, she pulled the cheese and bread she had cut for herself that morning, and savored small portions of each. She wrapped herself in her green cloak against the chill night air, lay back against the dark rock and rested her head. But she dared not tarry long. By morning, Alain would be enraged. He would add up all the lies she had told him, her desertion, and now, the missing cloak. And he would send his knights to patrol every inch of his demesne until she was found.

  That they would find her, she kne
w. She merely must reach the Butter Tubs first. After that, well, she could not change her fate. She closed her eyes.

  Dawn streaked the sky when she opened them again. She jumped, startled. She should not have slept so long. In a mere few hours, a good horseman could ride the entire distance she had walked. She must get to the Butter Tubs before they caught her, or the cloak would fall once again into human hands and continue to execute its deadly purpose.

  She wolfed down chunks of the cheese, packed up her belongings, and urged her weary body to continue its quest. Seeing no sign of riders, she hurried up toward the ridge, where she might have a better vantage. Leaving the broad, rounded-bottomed valley, the fells suddenly grew steeper, and she battled fatigue desperately. She should not have been so tired, not so early. She was not a weak woman.

  But she could not stop to rest. They would be on her too quickly. Only a moment, then. She knelt by a small rill and scooped up water in her hand to drink. She tasted bile as she drank, as her stomach revolted. Nay! She could not be ill. She had to do this. She struggled to her feet, and tried to force them to move. They seemed anchored where she stood. Her head swam. She fell to her knees, groped among the large rocks by the stream bed to regain her balance.

  Gorge rose in her throat again, and she fought to hold it back, but lost the struggle. Gasping, she scooped water into her mouth to wash it clean. Surely it would pass, now. It was not the sickness that came with the cloak, and how could it be any other?

  She tried to rise again. Nausea, black and red, swirled through her, overwhelmed her. A flash of purple against the whirl of colors.

  Fyren! It is Fyren’s doing! Fyren comes!

  Nay, he's dead. With the destruction of the cloak, I will end his hideous reign.

  Again, the flash of purple. Black-red swirls.

  Black. She fell to the earth.

  CHAPTER 20

  "Where did you find her?"

  "South, on the eastern fells." Chretien, still in his saddle, lowered Melisande's limp body into Alain's arms, then dismounted. "She has not been conscious since we found her. Mayhap it was a food poison, as she had retched."

  Alain adjusted the weight of his wife's slack body in his arms and started for the paired doors of the hall with Chretien at his side. "Yet it would not explain unconsciousness."

  "It is true. I thought mayhap another poison, as well."

  "An irony if so, as she is the mistress of poison."

  "Alain, you do not truly think she poisoned you?"

  "It was also an unusual illness, did you not say?"

  "Aye. But if she meant for you to die, would she not have waited to see that you did?"

  "And if she had cared for me as she said, would she not have waited around for me to live before she hurried off?"

  Alain carried Melisande through the hall's doors, to the wooden stairs beyond the dais, still feeling the ravages of the strange illness that had sapped his strength.

  "Let me carry her up," said Chretien.

  "She is my responsibility. You have done enough by finding her." He labored up the stairs, wishing fleetingly that he had not put so much stock in his injured pride. It would have hurt little to allow Chretien the task.

  But that was what had suffered most, his pride. To wake and find her gone, without a word. Mayhap she had hurried off to join some mysterious lover, the one he had so trustingly pretended did not exist. What a fool he was.

  At the top of the stairs, he paused and caught his breath again before taking her into the private chamber that Lynet had hastily vacated. Chretien ran ahead and pulled back the down quilt, so that he could lay her down on the bed.

  "Call for Nelda. Mayhap she will know what to do for her. At least, to get her in some clean garments."

  "Aye. She is very cold, Alain. I think she had lain there a long time."

  "Mayhap, as she was three days gone. Or she may have already accomplished whatever hellish task she was bent on, and was returning."

  "Returning would mean an intent to come back to you."

  "I do not doubt she thinks me that gullible."

  "Could you not hear her story first, Alain?"

  "How so, Chretien? She has deceived me from the beginning. What is the difference in one more story?"

  "Only listen. I ask no more."

  Oh, he would listen. He knew he would. But this time she would not convince him. For he had learned at last, she was as wicked as her father.

  "Go for Nelda," he said. He watched the still figure of the woman who for such a little while had been his wife. Against his own will he reached down and stroked a finger across her cheek.

  * * *

  She had lain three days in her strange stupor, not even knowing how to swallow the drops of water Nelda squeezed into her mouth without someone stroking at her throat. Already she began to look thin. And Alain had stood and watched, waiting for change that it seemed would never come.

  If she were awake and treating another, she would know what to do, but none here knew. Lynet and Nelda did whatever they thought might help, but they were as helpless as he. His throat tightened and ached. God help him, he did not want her to die.

  She tossed about fretfully. Occasionally an odd word would come from her mouth, that seemed connected to nothing, like the strange utterances from her dreams. Her voice sounded dry and harsh. She must be horribly thirsty. But she showed some inclination to swallow now, and Nelda carefully increased the water, feeding it from a spoon.

  "Don't," she had said, several times. And once, "Don't touch it."

  What awful thing did she dream of now? Was it still those macabre terrors of dark, cold places? Or of fires where demons danced, and Fyren came up from Hell? Whatever perfidy might be hers, he could not persuade himself that she had invented those horrors of the night to draw him in. Mayhap he had been wrong. Mayhap she really had been possessed by demons all this time.

  "Please! Don't let him!"

  He turned to look at her again, her face flushed and feverish, her throat parched, gravelly. Almost as soon as her body had warmed, the fever had come upon her.

  "Come now, love, just another spoonful, there's a girl."

  Nelda cajoled another bare mouthful of moisture into Melisande's mouth.

  "Don't let him touch it," she said.

  "I won't, sweeting, don't you worry. Now, take some more."

  Again she gulped a spoonful, then fell back to the pillow, her head to the side, eyes closed. He had never seen an illness like this one. It was certainly not the same as whatever had infected him. Sweet Jesus, he would make any bargain with God for her life. He ached so deeply within himself, he thought he might turn inside out with the pain.

  He left the chamber and the hall, and trudged up the steps to the top of the curtain wall, where he stood on the allure and surveyed the construction in progress. But he seemed to see nothing. Or nothing held his attention.

  "What news of Rufus?" he asked Chretien.

  "He is delayed. The heavy rain has bogged down his carts. But he meets no resistance."

  "It is too easy for him," said Alain. "He will be bored."

  "Aye. Supply problems cannot be compared with a good battle or two, not for Rufus."

  He leaned on the wall, staring out over the countryside, where everything carried the bright impression of a fine spring. True, the rain had muddied the roads, but roads in this part of the isle were too primitive to be of much use, anyway. The crops prospered, however, and the apple trees bloomed.

  "How fares the lady?" asked Chretien.

  "Restless. Nelda has been able to get some water into her."

  "The fever?"

  "Still there."

  "I think whatever it is, she is also ill from exposure."

  "Mayhap. But we can do naught else but treat what we can see. Nelda has some knowledge of the lady's methods."

  "What will you do with her, Alain?"

  "I know not."

  He did not want to continue the conversation, so tur
ned to continue his walk on the allure. Chretien walked for a while with him, then went about his duties.

  Eventually Alain returned to the chamber, to watch a little longer.

  "Don't let– kill him," she said.

  "Don't touch– " or "Don't kill– ", she said, later.

  But never anything that made sense. He wondered briefly if she had made a pact with someone to kill him. Dougal, mayhap, or Malcolm. The opportunities had been there.