by Jacobs Delle
But the most puzzling of all was how he had found her so quickly, not once but at least twice. He’d followed an eerie sense that had led him, first in Brodin Forest, and again this time, directly to her.
How did they share their dreams?
Philippe slid his lowered gaze toward the knights who remained near the beck and realized he could hear their words. He’d always been able to hear what other men could not.
With a quick shake of his head, he brought himself back to the argument.
Black Robert de Mowbray, the great and powerful Earl of Northumbria, was staring at him with his mouth agape.
“Christ and His saints! You’re an Annwyn King!”
Something inside him sank to the bottom of his gut. For a moment, even swallowing was beyond him. “A what?”
“That has to be it.” De Mowbray rubbed at the thick brush of beard. “Aye, it has to be. I should’ve known—nay, how could I? You showed nothing of this when you were a babe.”
Whatever that thing was in his gut, Philippe thought it had just twisted into a knot.
“What’s an Annwyn King?” he asked. “And what do you know of me as a babe?”
With his beefy hands at his temples, de Mowbray shook his head, then paced some more. “Saints!” he growled. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew if I answered even one question, you’d be asking more, and then more. And it will never end.”
“What’s an Annwyn King?” Philippe said again. “Why should you know about me when I was a babe?”
“Where’s my mother?” Leonie demanded.
“More to it,” added Philippe, “who is her mother? Is she the Cailleach?”
Leonie turned her shock on Philippe instead of de Mowbray. “The old woman? My mother can’t be that old.”
De Mowbray sighed. “Aye, lass, she can. She is, but she isn’t.” With a circling wave of his hand, he summoned his knights. “We’d best be getting on to Bamburgh and send word to Rufus you’ve been found. I’ll tell you as we ride.”
De Mowbray gave his orders to his knights more with grunts and pointing than words, something Philippe thought strange for such a windy-worded man. But even as Philippe mounted the horse given up by one of the knights with Leonie boosted up behind him, he made up his mind he wouldn’t wait long for answers. Of all things, he knew he was not a king of anything.
Leonie wrapped her marvelous long arms around Philippe’s waist, making him wish to be out of his mail and back in the elegant, soft bed in the house in the valley. He thought once more of the curse and swore to himself. Leonie was right. They would live before they died. But she would not die because of him. He would find a way.
They would find a way.
He fully expected De Mowbray would again evade their questions once they were on the move and he was prepared. But the man seemed resigned. He had sighed six times since mounting his great black steed.
Once more he huffed, so loudly this time one of the knights turned to look back with a puzzled frown. But the earl’s glower quickly returned the man’s attention to the road ahead.
“Might as well,” the earl said aloud. “Well, lass, you want the truth. ’Tis not all that pretty a beast, the truth.”
“Just tell me.” Her jaw jutted.
De Mowbray shook his head slowly, then began. “The old Scots tell many a story about the Cailleach, some true, most mere fancy. It’s a word for an old woman, a hag. But she’s more than that. She’s a meddler of sorts, you might say. Likes to interfere in the affairs of men, but she’s not of the world of men. She lives a very long life, far beyond that of any mortal man. But she’s mortal, so eventually she dies and a new Cailleach is made. No one knows how. It just happens. The Cailleach is always Faerie, never human. And she does not choose—she is chosen.
“Herzeloyde was living among men as the wife of Theobald when she began her change and she had no choice but to go, but she feared to leave her daughter with her violent husband when she went to the Summer Land. But she couldn’t take her, knowing the child was human.”
“But I’m only half human.”
“There’s no such thing, lass. You showed no sign of the Fae blood in you, so you had to be left in this world. You see, when a halfling is born, ’tis known right away what he is, either human or Faerie, never both. The Faerie accept their own kind, but they cannot take a human into their realm.”
“But I am both. I have the sight, and I can command weapons. And I have been closing wounds since I was a baby.”
“Aye.”
“Well, doesn’t that make me Faerie then?”
“But there’s the rub, you see. When you were born—well, there’s never been another like you, to be both human and Faerie, and we didn’t know what to do with you. The healing touch is not known among the Faerie. Nor is it human. You’re both, and...something more. What that is, none can decipher.”
“But I—”
“Wait, I’ll get to that. Herzeloyde sent for my help, for Theobald suspected something and beat her so badly her maid thought she would die. Though she was desperately injured, she escaped. I took the child and her nurse and rode to Brodin Castle. ’Twas your uncle, with mine, the Bishop of Coutances, who secretly persuaded William to put his protection on you, and Theobald never dared go near you again. All these years Theobald sulked, looking for a way to avenge himself while his castle rotted about him. And I fear he found his vengeance by allying with the Scottish king and Durham against William’s son. But he died before their coup could take place.
“So you see, though I have no love for Rufus, I owe him a debt of gratitude for keeping his father’s promise. Though I admit for a while I was afraid he’d sold you out.” De Mowbray managed as much of a smile as anyone had ever seen of him.
Philippe could hear the disappointment in her sigh, and he squeezed her hand that wrapped around his waist. “And the Annwyn King?” he asked.
The way de Mowbray shook his head seemed more intended to dislodge a sudden infestation of gnats than to clear the nonsense from his mind. “’Tis another race, like the Faerie, or Sidhe, as they ought to be called. They are more like the people of this world than the one they left behind, yet they are different. Any Faerie can find the portals and enter them, but only an Annwyn King can build a portal. That’s what you’ve done.”
“I only took Leonie into the cave. She must have made it happen.”
Leonie touched his arm. “Nay, Philippe. I could not see the portal. How could I build it?”
“But you are the Faerie, not I.”
“No Faerie can build a portal, Peregrine,” said de Mowbray. “That is why Herzeloyde stays close to a portal unless she is called by duty or need. Nay, you must be an Annwyn King, else you are something the likes of which has ne’er been seen. So that is what Herzeloyde sought to protect. But there is something else that escapes us. Tell me more about this sorcerer.”
Philippe told him more of the story, though little had gone unsaid before.
De Mowbray’s face became grimmer by the minute. “Gholins,” he said. “It must take very strong powers to call them up from their graves.”
“Fulk,” Leonie said.
Stiffening in his saddle as if he’d been stabbed, de Mowbray turned wide eyes on her. “That pious fool? Couldn’t be. Nay, wait, tell me more.”
“I think the leader is a sorcerer. Leonie thinks he is a demon,” Philippe said. “She saw the hilt of his sword. It’s Fulk’s.”
“And he’s a man?”
Leonie shook her head and shuddered. “Not a man. Shaped like one, but clothed entirely in black, with a hood that hides the fact that there’s only blackness beneath it.”
“No face.” De Mowbray chewed his lower lip.
“Aye.”
The Black Earl raised his hand high to summon the knights behind him and spurred his great warhorse. “Then it’s true,” he said. “Come, we must return to Bamburgh quickly. There is danger, more danger than I knew.”
The warhorses raced
across the plain toward the morning sun in the east, and Philippe began finally to see familiar land. The sea came into view and they turned south. In a short time the castle, golden sandstone glowing in the morning sun atop a craggy rock jutting into the sea, came into view as they topped a low hill.
With renewed energy, they spurred on, so close to the castle that even the knights’ weary horses could make the last leg of the journey.
At the gate, de Mowbray dismounted and slapped the reins of his horse into a squire’s hands. He ran up the steep slope within the bailey, shouting orders, while Leonie and Philippe ran after him.
“What news from Rufus?” he demanded of a knight running along beside him.
“Naught since yesterday, lord,” the knight replied. “We sent your word to him, but he has not replied. He must still be at Bosewood.”
“And Durham? Scotland?”
“No movement so far, lord.”
“Then go find out for yourselves, damn you. Prepare fresh mounts. Summon the knights. And a quick repast—very quick. We ride out within the hour.”
With only a bare pause to relieve themselves, de Mowbray and his guests rushed into the hall, where the Black Earl shooed away the servants.
Philippe watched the servants scurry out, having nearly dropped their trays of food on the trestle table. “You don’t trust your people?”
“They know my secrets, but they don’t need to know yours. Nor what I must tell you next.” He grabbed up a chicken leg and took a huge bite, all but crunching through the bone.
“What’s your concern?”
“A sorcerer who is a demon, and in addition, a shade. Commanding the gholins. And now you tell me ’tis Fulk, the Warrior of God, Durham’s favorite, who’s at the bottom of this. If Fulk’s a sorcerer, or a demon, or both, then he has the bishop in his thrall. That explains a lot of things.”
“The bishop’s unexplainable behavior, for one,” Philippe agreed. “We thought him insane.” Suddenly, the delicious smell of freshly cooked meat lost its appeal. “If Fulk sides with Scotland, then he needs to seize Bosewood to gain control of the pass it guards. So he beguiled the bishop and used him to help his plot.”
De Mowbray nodded and bit into a slab of boar meat, talking as he chewed and only pausing to swallow. “Durham also has a powerful army. United with Scotland, they might defeat Rufus.”
Leonie set down her plate, too. “I imagined it earlier. If they have Bosewood and can come down through that pass, while Durham and Fulk come from the east, they will trap the king between them.”
“Aye. That would be the way.”
“Haps you’d explain what a shade is? Some sort of ghost?” Philippe asked, echoing de Mowbray’s grim smile, but with narrowed eyes.
“But it’s not dead,” said the Black Earl. “It’s a bodiless spirit that steals the bodies of other creatures for a home, you might say.”
Philippe ran a finger over his chin, absently noting its smoothness despite several days in the wild, one more reminder that things were afoot that he couldn’t explain or comprehend. “That makes sense, but one other thing doesn’t.”
One of de Mowbray’s black brows lifted, his only response to Philippe.
“Why you?”
De Mowbray’s eyes shifted beneath his thick lashes in a way that made the hair on Philippe’s neck bristle. But he gave no answer.
Philippe probed further. “Out with it, de Mowbray. Why you? I knew of Black Robert when I was a boy in Normandy. You were known to be wild and cruel, with a mood and heart even darker than your black beard.”
De Mowbray released a noisy breath and shifted in his chair. “’Twas true enough,” he said.
“Why would Herzeloyde trust such a man with her infant daughter?”
The loud breathing turned to rough grunts and clearing of his throat as the Black Earl shifted in his chair. Abruptly, he jumped up and strode to the narrow lancet window. Philippe watched every move the man made, his shoulders hunching ever so slowly and the great bear of a man ebbing into a slouch as he leaned against the sill. He chewed his lips.
At last he turned to face them, but his eyes looked more to the chamber’s vaulted ceiling than to his guests. He sighed once more.
“Robert de Mowbray is dead,” he said. “I inhabit his body.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LEONIE’S MOUTH DROPPED open. “Then you’re a shade?”
The frown on Philippe’s face increased. “’Twas not what I expected to hear.”
“You thought I’d confess to Faerie blood? Wouldn’t I make a delightful sprite?”
“It would make more sense to me. You say there is evil in being a shade. Why would Herzeloyde trust you? And how is it you know her?”
“Don’t you be impugning Herzeloyde’s honor. Make no mistake, there is naught between us that should not be.”
The man’s voice had taken on an entirely different sound that did not fit the huge, gruff bear of a man. One that was quiet, almost gentle and sad, echoing the lyrical sound of the French language.
“Four lifetimes ago, I was born Valenze of the house of Savoie, on the Piedmont at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains. There was a Faerie lass I followed into the Summer Land, and like many a man before me, I tarried too long. I returned to the outer world, the world humans know, only to discover I was but a pale wisp of myself, and I could not survive without the body of another. Since then I have been many things. A blacksmith, a soothsayer, even a midwife.
“Black Robert was indeed the vile man you remember. He and his wild friends took it into their bored heads to raid a convent and rape its nuns when I was there. It was at the end of my sojourn in the midwife’s body, a very old, sick woman in the care of the nuns, and I was desperate to find a new home for my soul before the old one expired. That’s the evil, you see. A shade steals the bodies of others to survive, and he finds a sort of immortality in it. He has only to find a new body when he has the need, and if he chooses wisely, each time he can live a new life again. All men fear death, but to a shade, giving up his soul to death is terrifying. He’ll do anything to find that new body.”
“Meaning he will kill to take over a man’s body?”
“I did not—would not—until then. I had always managed to slip into a body just as life expired, without then expiring with it. ’Tis a tricky thing, you see. Sometimes the body itself dies and can’t be revived, and if the shade doesn’t escape in time, he dies too.”
“How much time?”
“Very little, but it depends on how disintegrated the shade is. I thought I knew exactly how to do it, but that time I had become desperate, for I had failed twice and feared to fail again.”
“So you killed de Mowbray.”
“’Twas easy enough. An iron candlestand to his head while he was busy raping Sister Isa. His friends fled with only a few dents and broken bones. I could have done as I had done before and merely suppressed that villain or forced him out of his body. But then he might have done the same, haps to one of the nuns, or some other hapless man who would then die. So aye, I killed him. And I took over his life. But I did not know how truly evil the man was until I inhabited his body, for there is much more than just the body that remains, you see, and Black Robert de Mowbray had, it seems, many terrible secrets. I live with them now.”
“If you were a knight in battle, you would not hesitate to kill a man,” Philippe said.
“And he deserved to die,” Leonie added. “If you had not done what you did, other innocent people would have suffered and died.”
“Aye. But I thought only of my own life, and only later did I justify what I did. Now I am Robert. The more I live within his body, the more evil I take on. I’m no different from another shade. I am imprisoned by my own fear of death.”
“Yet Herzeloyde trusted you with her daughter.”
Robert’s dark, flashing eyes turned a bitter, barely hidden rage on Philippe. “Do you think I would not do the same to you as I did him, if need be?�
��
“Haps you would not, when the time came.”
“A man is what he does, my friend. I am not just what I have done, but what all those others have done as well. I know my own evil.” He chuckled crudely. “But don’t you worry, man. I’ve no designs on your body. And you may be sure, Herzeloyde would rip out my throat if I let harm come to her lovely daughter.”
Leonie lowered her head, not quite sure if she ought to laugh along with him or not. For a joke, it seemed very ugly. “But then you do know where to find her,” she said.
“’Tis not so much going to where she is—that I can’t do. ’Tis more a thing of her coming when she is needed.”
“When she appears out of nowhere,” Philippe added. “When I went to find her, she appeared inside Cyne’s house so suddenly I thought she must have been there all along. But when she left, she passed right through the wall.”
“I told you how it was done,” Leonie said.
“Aye, now I know.”
“So then Herzeloyde came to me and warned me of a great evil that has descended on the land. Those bone demons have been gone for many years. We did not know what they were about again. Now, with this faceless thing commanding them—he is a sorcerer, to be sure. Yet I agree, he is also something else.”
“Then a demon as well as a shade?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Haps we should ask instead, what is it they want?”
“They want Leonie,” Philippe said. “And Bosewood.”
“But I think ’tis something bigger. If ’tis Fulk, as you say, then of course Durham is involved. A year ago, Fulk returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, changed, I thought. The bishop is not the man he once was, but Fulk even more, for he was once a good, if arrogant, man.”
“So Rufus has said. And now the three powers come together to battle for the border of England and Scotland. Or is there even more at stake?”
