Fire Dance

by Delle Jacobs

  Just before Rufus rode through the gate, he called Melisande to stand beside him, and seeing her apprehension, took her hand in his. "Rufus is not as gruff as he seems, love. Do not fear."

  Her bright blue eyes regarded him with something akin to suspicion as she stood silently beside him.

  Rufus rode at the head of his army, trailed by his knights and foot soldiers, and after them, his household and a multitude of supply wagons with hideously squealing axles. Alain felt his eyebrows raise at the size of the spectacle. Mayhap Rufus meant to take Scotland, after all.

  Alain himself took Rufus's rust-colored charger by its bridle, and Rufus sprang down from his saddle. His agility was always a surprise for such a corpulent man. Rufus was also a man of great energy, and was easily brought to enthusiasm when it came to a challenge or new idea. Alain could see in the king's eyes a wild excitement usually found only in the fervor of battle. So Rufus couldn't wait to see the results of his scheming.

  "By Christ's Sweet Blood, it is good to see you, De Crency." said Rufus as he bounded up and clapped Alain on the back. Then the king's pale blue eyes grew wide beneath highly raised brows as he stared in blatant fascination at Melisande.

  "My wife, Sire, Lady Melisande."

  "By God, De Crency. I have made a terrible mistake!"

  "Sire?"

  "I gave such a beauty to you, when I should have kept her for myself?" He took Melisande's hand and raised it to his lips. "Lady Melisande, we must contrive to rid you of this husband. You would surely prefer marriage to a king, would you not?"

  Melisande's face was struck with horror as she instinctively jerked back her hand to her breast. Rufus cocked his blond head, puzzled.

  Time to intervene. "Ah, Sire, I am afraid the lady does not always understand such humor."

  "Humor?" she squeaked weakly.

  Rufus's bushy blond brows pulled into a heavy frown as he considered her again. Then he brightened and reared back into a great roar of laughter that further darkened his beefy red face.

  Melisande turned deathly pale.

  "Your pardon, lady," Rufus said, still chuckling, as he finally contained himself. "I've been too long in the company of men."

  "Oh, nay," she insisted. "It was my misunderstanding. Of course you did not mean– "

  "Oh, and there you are wrong, lady," said the king, and his eyes gleamed with his own brand of wicked mischief. "I do certainly mean you are that beautiful. I do wish I had not been so foolish to send you this poor knight, when I might have made you my own queen. But what's done is not to be undone. Alas, even I must agree with the Church on the business of marriage, and you are stuck with him."

  Melisande gave the king a feeble smile, as if she almost understood. "Aye. I shall have to live with it."

  Rufus roared his great belly laugh again, and squeezed her hand between both of his. "I vow, you are a jewel, lady. I do see much of your lady mother in you." A strange sadness crept over his face. "She is gone now, is she not?"

  "Aye. These past three months."

  "You have my greatest condolences, Lady Melisande. Know you, my dear, that I have never forgotten her, though I was but a moonstruck boy when I met her. Ah, De Crency, now there was a woman. If only I had been ten years older, she would have become England's queen, and all England the better for it."

  Alain directed the king toward the hall, mentally hoping the kitchen staff had a feast set, even this quickly. "Truly, Sire? I had no inkling you had ever considered a queen."

  "But if you had known her, De Crency, you would know that there has been none to compare with her, all these years. Aye, my dear, you do resemble her greatly, save your eyes. Hers were somewhat green, I recall. And your hair is not as pale, nor does it curl in tiny rings about your face quite as much as did hers. Yet your hair is nonetheless as lovely. But Alain, do not grow jealous. I shall not steal your lovely bride from you."

  Then Rufus's jovial face suddenly sagged to deadly seriousness.

  "Now, what is this business about Fyren?"

  CHAPTER 23

  As he escorted the king up the steps to the dais, Alain explained the sudden reappearance of the man who called himself the Spawn of Satan. He gave over his great chair to the king, and seated his wife between himself and Rufus.

  Rufus, for all that he appeared intent on the great piles of food on his trencher, missed not a word.

  "What think you, then, lady?" asked Rufus. "You do know Fyren better than any here."

  "I know not, Sire," she answered tentatively, almost as if she expected a new wave of Rufus' roaring laugh to roll over her. "I did not believe him before, but always there was some doubt. Even now, for all that he appears to have risen from his grave, there is something that does not fit."

  "How so?"

  "I cannot say, Sire, something I know without knowing."

  "Aye," said Alain, "he is more charlatan than sorcerer, I vow. Yet, we must not deny the danger he poses."

  "I told you thus, before I sent you here, Alain. The lady's explanation of the ancient manuscripts tells us much. It is commonly known that the ancients had knowledge that has been lost. Many such Greek and Latin texts perished at the hands of our Norse ancestors, for whom it had no meaning. Think on it, Alain, if we had the secrets that made the Romans great."

  "Among these here is Greek Fire, so says my lady."

  "Greek Fire. Aye. It is said, though many things are named thus, they have not the awesome power of the genuine Greek Fire."

  "They do not," Melisande agreed. "Yet, I cannot make out the complete formula. So I cannot think how it can be useful."

  "The king reads Greek, do you not, Sire?"

  Rufus gave a studied frown. "I know somewhat of it, but I am no scholar, and I can find none to teach me more."

  "Mayhap, Sire, you might know the meaning of the missing word," Melisande said.

  Rufus nodded gravely. "Tell me, lady."

  "I know not how to say them, but– " Melisande drew out the odd Greek characters on the tablecloth with her finger, hoping Rufus could understand her invisible tracings. His lips silently mouthed the strange symbols.

  Rufus' frown became more studied. "It cannot be an ingredient, surely."

  "But what is it?"

  "Antithesis. It refers to the opposite of something. If you have an idea, for example, then I present its opposite."

  Melisande's hopeful face sank.

  "That was also her interpretation, Sire. She hoped you knew a different meaning."

  Rufus sighed. "Ah, that is the difficulty with the languages of the ancients. The scribe who copies it might mistake the word, or even one letter of it, and give it a different meaning. Mayhap, lady, if you work with the ingredients you know, an idea will come to you."

  "Aye, that was my thinking, Sire," she said, and her solemn eyes nevertheless danced and sparkled.

  Alain saw it in both of them, his wife and his king, as their eyes met in a common understanding. She loved the quest, the challenge of something new or impossible, and none could understand that better than Rufus.

  Rufus gave no objection when she asked his leave to begin her probing in the kitchen. But Alain knew Rufus well, and knew he had an accumulation of questions beneath the facade of pleasantry. Rufus always schemed, and he needed facts to do it.

  "Come show me your castle, De Crency," said Rufus.

  Alain took him up the narrow stone stairs that led onto the allure, where they surveyed the surrounding pasture, village, and greening fields of oats and barley, all the way to the distant fells. Turning, they looked back on the castle itself as it rambled in apparent aimlessness up the hillside.

  "I see what you mean, Alain. This place could easily be stormed from above. Although the climb would be disheartening."

  "And you and I know many a foot soldier and knight willing to do it. It takes but a few men breaching the wall to make it open to all," Alain replied.

  "Surely Fyren knew that."

  "But he thought of himsel
f as the aggressor. Mayhap he never expected he could be attacked. There were things about the old monastery that stood here before he came that I think he valued more. Melisande says he has an intense fear of fire from a childhood accident. Stone buildings already complete must have had enormous appeal to him. Even more, the caverns below, where he could conduct his crimes in secret. The caverns are much feared by the local folk. We think he did not share the secret of the hidden passages with any but his daughter or his closest minions. And she believes there are more places which she does not know. The bolt hole was known of course, but by few."

  The king nodded. "So he added the curtain wall and that new tower to the already existing buildings. Aye, I see it, Alain. If he had built a new place with passages into the caverns, too many people would know of them. But to take over one where they already existed– a different matter. He could preserve his secret. Show me this bolt hole."

  Alain took the king down the narrow stone steps and across the upper bailey. Rufus ignored those who bowed before him, for his attention was riveted elsewhere.

  Alain led the king through the temporary portal in the ground floor of the tower, past hoards of grain and other staples to the hole.

  Rufus climbed over the mass of debris and blocks of stone to peer inside. "I agree. Far too vulnerable. I cannot imagine giving the enemy access directly into the tower. Unless, as you say, such access is not known. But Fyren knows, and he is your enemy. So block it."

  Rufus turned away from the bolt hole. He stopped abruptly, and his nose wrinkled up, twisted about on his face. As he brought a cloth up to his nostrils, Rufus's head reared back, then launched forward in an enormous sneeze, followed by another, then another.

  "I must be out of here," the king said, snatching words between sneezes.

  Alain hurried him back the way they came, furtively scanning for the red tabby. He did not see him. Any number of things might set Rufus to sneezing. Dusty, moldy places seemed ofttimes the worst. But the cat- Back in the bright sunshine, Rufus blew his nose and sniffed.

  "Now, let us go see what your lovely wife conjures up."

  Alain stiffened minutely at the allusion to witchcraft, but knew Rufus meant no ill by it. Rufus, who held little stock in the mysteries of the Church, was as skeptical of sorcery. Alain pointed to the kitchen.

  "Ah, my Lady Melisande," said Rufus. Affection dripped from his voice in a way Alain had never heard. It was not the sort to provoke a man's jealousy, for Melisande had captured Rufus's affection long before he had ever seen her, coming from that left over from his boyhood enchantment of her mother.

  Melisande looked up from the crockery bowl she held, and gave Rufus that crooked little half smile she had only recently acquired. When she caught her husband's eye, she became suddenly radiant, her broad smile lit by the brilliance in her eyes. He loved her all over again. Silently, anew, and more deeply.

  "Welcome, Sire," she replied.

  "What have you here, lady?"

  Melisande displayed her array of cups and bowls, and the substances they contained. "I have all I need, save that one. And others that I thought might lend themselves to the formula. Amber, for example. I had the mason pound it to powder."

  "Why?"

  "As a powder, it mixes well with other things. But once lit, it should melt and cling to whatever it touches."

  "A diabolical touch, lady. You make a formidable enemy."

  She sighed. "But the missing ingredient still escapes me."

  "But if the word is antithesis, might it not be something that does not fit?"

  "Aye." Melisande nodded with a thoughtful frown. "But that could take us anywhere, and we have little time. It seemed more profitable to start with the most likely."

  Once again, Rufus's red nose began to flare and sniffle. He held his cloth to it until the urge to sneeze subsided. Alain never felt pity for Rufus, save when his nose took one of its spells.

  Nothing else had ever incapacitated the man, but when he began to sneeze, the spells sometimes went on and on for hours, not leaving even moments undisturbed for speech. To be such a warrior as Rufus, and be disabled by a sneeze. Nothing frustrated Rufus more.

  Calmed at last, Rufus resumed his inspection of Melisande's containers. "This is what the text says? Might I see it, lady?"

  With a grateful nod, Melisande handed the king the bound parchment pages, pointing out where she had found the formula.

  The king scanned over the pages, frowning. "But that is not what the text says, lady. It merely speaks of a formula lost forever."

  "Aye. But look within each letter. And note those which have an extra dot within them. A tiny blot that should not be there. Take each in the order it appears. That is where the formula lies."

  Rufus' perusal intensified. His lips moved silently.

  "I thought at first the letters had changed in some way I did not understand. But then I saw the pattern was short-lived, and I looked more closely."

  Rufus nodded as he read, absorbing both at the same time. "I see it. Amazing." He mumbled aloud, encapsulating the letters into odd-sounding words, excitement building on his face. Then it sagged, and he let loose a feeble sigh.

  "Antithesis. I too find naught else, lady. I am sorry. I had hoped to help. But it is a puzzle within a puzzle."

  Again the king's red nose sniffed, and suddenly let loose a great outburst of a sneeze. Before he could summon relief, the next one hit. Rufus looked down at his legs where the huge red tabby cat braided itself around them. Amidst another round of sneezes, he stepped back, but the cat followed, purring loudly.

  Melisande's round blue eyes filled with horror, and she leapt at the tabby. "Scat, Rufus! Shoo! Begone!"

  The cat looked up at her as if she entirely misunderstood its mission, and continued rubbing at the king's legs.

  "Rufus?" The king sneezed again, his whole body arcing back then forward.

  Melisande's hand flew to her mouth. "Well, I– well, it is a cat, Sire– "

  She waved hands at the offending beast, which only stood its ground and purred more loudly. Rufus's great sneezes grew louder, too, as he staggered with each blow. Melisande sprang after the cat, which scooted neatly out of her reach, then returned to its odd task of massaging the king's legs.

  "Ungrateful wretch," she grumbled, and lunged after it again. The animal yowled as she caught the tail. It pulled itself free and bolted out of the kitchen.

  "Rufus." The king glowered over the damp cloth he held to his nose as he blew.

  Melisande looked like she expected the king's great sword to decapitate her. "I was very young, Sire, and I thought it a grand name for a cat. My mother had told me all manner of tales, and– oh dear."

  Alain commandeered an unused kitchen rag to replace the king's soaked cloth.

  "King Rufus, actually," Alain said casually, ignoring Melisande's horrified eyes.

  "King Rufus?"

  "I was very young, Sire. I had no idea– he is very red, you see."

  "He thinks he owns the place," Alain added. "Watch him strut, Sire. Arrogant beast, isn't he?"

  "God's Blood, you're right. I do not strut that way, do I, De Crency?"

  "Nay, Sire, none but a cat can strut that way."

  Rufus's low chuckle rumbled, and he brought the rag once more to his nose to blow it. "Strange creatures, cats," said Rufus. "Always take a fascination for the person least likely to welcome them. Damned if I don't collect them like a dead ox does flies."

  Rufus took his leave of the lady, giving her an affectionate pat to her shoulder, and the men returned to the bailey.

  "Ah, a rare beauty, Alain," Rufus said. "Only think, if I had been but a few years older, I might have been her father."

  "She would have been somewhat different then, I'd think."

  "Nonsense. She would have taken entirely after her mother, in any case. Oh, the eyes, mayhap. Such a stunning blue. But she is a bit, ah, how shall I say it?"

  "No sense of humor," he finished for the k
ing, and laughed. "It will change with time, I vow. These people have had little enough reason to laugh, and she, the least of them. I am glad enough that she has begun to smile."

  "Not even smiles before, then?"

  "Not a one."

  "Well, I am glad I sent you, then, and not another." Rufus regarded him warily. "I suppose you have learned the truth?"

  "But every time I think I have found the bottom of this sinkhole, another opens up. I cannot comprehend how a man could do such a thing to his daughter."