Twilight Magic

by Shari Anton

  He set the string of horses in motion, leading them a way down the road before swatting the lead horse to keep it moving.

  The horses lumbered along as Darian ran back to where she stood. What was done was done, but it still seemed senseless.

  “Do you really expect the horses to walk all the way to Winchester Palace without interference or mishap?”

  “That would be far too much to ask. One or two of the bodies are likely to fall off.” He crossed his arms, also watching the horses climb a slight hill, then disappear from view. “Most people will look at them and cross themselves and leave them alone. However, I am willing to wager some imaginative soul will see a fast way to make some coin and lead the whole lot of them to the bishop in hopes of a reward.”

  “Or some not so naive soul will dump the bodies and sell the horses.”

  Darian shrugged. “Either way we are done with them.” How could he be so callous? So hard and unfeeling? Even as she wanted to rail at him, she knew she wouldn’t. Had he shown a dram of mercy to the soldiers earlier, she and Darian might be the dead bodies draped over horses.

  “I need to wash,” he announced. “Coming?”

  They walked briskly back to the clearing. Darian scooped up his satchel on the way through, never pausing on his way to the river.

  Emma hesitated. She could use a wash, too. Her hands were still bloody, and a dip in cold water might banish the remains of the sting. But to go near the river was a risk. The Thames had caught her once and she didn’t want to repeat the experience.

  She’d almost decided not to follow Darian; then the clearing suddenly seemed smaller, and men’s shouts and Rose’s growls again bounced off the trees, accusing her of cowardice, blaming her for their deaths.

  Emma hurried after Darian, who’d noticed her absence and waited for her several yards from the river.

  “I need to wash, too, but I cannot get too near the river,” she stated.

  “Give me your hand and close your eyes.”

  Emma felt as much the babe as she had when he’d put on her hose. But as his fingers entwined with hers, she knew her trust not misplaced. She closed her eyes, allowing him to lead her through the woods and down the slope to the river, the sound of flowing water becoming louder. She halted when he did. Grasping her by the shoulders, he turned her slightly.

  “There is a rock behind you, where you can sit and not see much of the river if you look left. Back up a step. There.” He took hold of her hands. “Now ease back. Good. You can open your eyes now.”

  He released her hands and hurried down the slope. She didn’t dare watch for fear of becoming entranced by the water. So how was she supposed to wash the blood from her hands, the grit and sweat from her face?

  Darian had no such problem, judging by the splashing she heard. Perhaps, if she walked backward down the slope—she’d trip over a rock or fallen branch and end up in the river.

  Then Darian stood before her, water dripping from his hair to slide down his bare chest, holding his sodden tunic out for her to take.

  Gratefully, she rubbed the soft, cold wool over her face and throat, and washed away the worst of the blood from her hands. They would be raw for a while, but wouldn’t bleed, not like Darian’s wound.

  Darian pulled a short-sleeved tunic from his satchel and tugged it on, leaving his wound exposed.

  “Have you an unguent or cloth for bandaging?”

  He glanced at his injury. “ ’Twill heal on its own.” “ ’Twill continue to bleed if you do not wrap it. If you have no bandaging, cut off the hem of my chemise. That should do for the nonce.”

  Sighing, he knelt before her, drew his dagger, and lifted her bliaut above her knees to get at the chemise. And she couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d knelt before her, helping her dress. That hazy memory seemed a lifetime ago, made more unreal by the sound of his blade slicing through linen.

  “We need to replace your bliaut,” he said flatly. “Perhaps we can purchase a gown along the way.”

  Such a mundane concern, but he was right. She would rather not enter the abbey garbed in a bloody gown.

  He stuck the dagger in his boot, stood up, and began wrapping the long linen strip around his arm, too loose and jumbled to do any good at all.

  Without a thought of why, she bolted off the rock and swatted his hand away, his ineffectual tending pricking her ire. Fiercely, she unwrapped the bandage.

  “One would think a man who wields a weapon would know how to wrap an injury! If you intend to stop the blood, then you have to wrap it tighter, like this.”

  “Emma, I know how—”

  “Not that one could tell.”

  He remained silent while she neatly wrapped and tied off the linen.

  “What about your hands?” he asked softly.

  She held them up for him to see. “They have stopped bleeding. Your arm has not. My hands will heal long before your arm.”

  He stared at her as if she’d gone daft. Perhaps she had. All she knew was that her body hurt and her arms ached and she wanted to be quit of this place now. She spun to go back to the clearing. Darian clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  “Easy, Emma. In a few days the images will fade, the horror will lessen.”

  She shrugged him off, wanting no comfort. If she let down her guard, she would surely begin sobbing again. “Please, can we just leave?”

  Without another word, he obliged her. Soon they were riding out of the clearing as they’d entered it; atop a battle-trained horse, Emma riding across Darian’s lap.

  Except this time Rose didn’t range ahead, enjoying the freedom of scampering along the road and occasionally veering off to investigate some intriguing scent.

  Emma desperately tried not to listen, but over and over, the nagging voice she’d heard earlier scolded her for stopping the vision forming in the washbasin.

  If she had known they would be attacked, Rose and five soldiers might now be alive.

  She’d never slept in a barn. But then, until of late, neither had Emma slept in an inn or on the ground.

  Or with a man.

  Only some of those new experiences did she wish to banish from her memory.

  Rain had forced them to quit the road earlier than she was sure Darian preferred, the handiest shelter a peasant’s farm. A few pence gained them a place to sleep, a spare blanket, and, later, a bowl of stew and bread. Unfortunately, the farmer’s wife owned no spare gown, so in her bliaut Emma must remain.

  She stood near the barn’s doorway with the horse while Darian climbed the ladder to the loft, ensuring no mice or birds occupied the space where they would sleep.

  The cow in the far corner eyed the horse suspiciously. Swallows flitted in and out of gaps in the walls. Three gray geese couldn’t make up their minds over whether they wanted in or out. Several plump brown chickens roosted among the grain sacks. Perched atop a stack of wooden crates a cock watched over his flock. Muddy puddles revealed where the roof wanted for repair.

  All and all a warm, cozy place, if somewhat smelly and noisy.

  “Looks dry,” Darian called down. “Hay seems clean, too.”

  Good news—and his longest utterance since leaving the clearing. Not that she’d said much, either, both of them keeping their own counsel.

  Emma removed her sodden cloak and spread it over the handles of a plow, then pulled down Darian’s cloak from where he’d tossed it across his saddle.

  She jumped when he reached from behind her to snatch it away.

  “I will take care of this. You go rest.”

  Rest. Be at ease? For that, one need be at peace, an unachievable state of mind just yet. Still, she found a chicken-free sack of grain and sat while Darian hung his cloak on a peg, which also held leather strips, and proceeded to unsaddle his horse.

  Emma noted the bandage had held tight and no blood seeped through. Chagrined to realize he might be right about the slightness of his wound, Emma’s cheeks warmed over how she’d insisted on bandag
ing his arm, swatting away his hands because he wrapped the cloth wrongly. Ye gods, how shrewish she must have sounded.

  “I beg your pardon, Darian. I did not mean to be so peevish about your wound.”

  He set his saddle in a dry area near the wall. “Think naught of it. You were overwrought, a not unexpected reaction.”

  He didn’t have to say to what she’d reacted. Damn near every moment of the bloody battle was still too fresh and horrifyingly clear, including sobbing her eyes out against Darian’s chest.

  “You said the images will fade.”

  “In time.”

  “How long?”

  He led the horse to the back of the barn. The cow bawled a protest at the intrusion, but seeing neither man nor horse pay any heed, it soon relented to sharing the hay manger.

  “Hard to say,” Darian finally answered. “Your reaction is not unusual. I know of men who recovered swiftly after their first battle and others who did not.” He pointed a finger at her. “The first thing you need do is stop blaming yourself for what happened. If anyone is at fault, I am for not...Well, I can think of several things I might have done differently.”

  A long speech for a man who’d been so silent, and apparently he felt as guilty as she, though for different reasons.

  “I cannot help wondering if I had allowed the vision to form if we could have ...evaded the soldiers.”

  And Rose would still be alive. Sweet mercy, she couldn’t bring herself to say the hound’s name aloud.

  Darian eased down onto the dirt floor at her feet and leaned against the grain sack next to hers.

  “Perhaps, but your visions frighten and confuse you, so you halt them. If you choose not to allow the visions, then you must trust to fate like the rest of us.”

  Like normal people.

  “They are a curse.”

  “Or a blessing. Or simply part of who you are. Your head punishes you each time you deny a vision, and you have decided the pain is preferable to the confusion. Each of us decides what we can or cannot endure.”

  Her spine stiffened. “So you think I am wrong to foreswear the visions?”

  “I would not presume.”

  The devil he wouldn’t.

  “At Hadone, if I had told you that you and I and... Rose would be attacked by Bishop Henry’s soldiers on the road to Oxford, would you have believed me?”

  “Perhaps not then, but when we were in London, had you told me you foresaw trouble along the Oxford road, I might have heeded the warning. Taken another road, or left earlier.” He tossed a dismissive hand. “This is all conjecture, Emma. We will never know what might have been, only what is.”

  “But you blame me—”

  “No more than I blame myself. Had I not let you sleep, or had we ridden later, or had I not stopped precisely where I did, or had Rose heard the soldiers sooner. There are far too many things I could have done differently for me to place any blame on you.”

  His sincerity rang true, and though her guilt didn’t completely disappear, she was glad to know he didn’t hold the hound’s death against her.

  But what truly astounded her was his attitude toward her visions. Besides her mother, she’d told no other soul out of fear of becoming an outcast, reviled and avoided.

  She’d certainly learned how to contend with contempt at court and at Hadone when shunned for no other reason than she was her father’s daughter.

  She’d endured through the worst because of Lady Julia de Vere’s unexpected and welcome friendship. And since, she’d sailed swiftly through two headaches because of Darian’s tender care.

  Or perhaps she’d become a stronger, more confident person since leaving home. Sweet mercy, she would like to believe so.

  She’d never questioned Darian’s confidence in his abilities. The man always seemed so sure of himself— until now. That he had doubts proved unsettling.

  “You were not even sure the man who inquired about purchasing your horse was one of Bishop Henry’s men, so could not have known so many would be on us so quickly. You did what you thought best, and I, for one, cannot hold that against you.”

  He rocked his head from side to side, as if easing tension from his neck. “Would that there were no Bishop Henry, or that he were not so set against mercenaries and for some reason against me in particular.”

  Odd. That hadn’t been her impression at court.

  “I did not realize your profession had aught to do with the bishop’s anger. I thought him upset because de Salis was a... clergyman, or associate, or even a friend.”

  Darian snickered. “All knew de Salis was a hateful, evil terror of a man. I know of two villages where he and his men burned the huts, killed the men, raped the women, and maimed the children for sport. ’Twas Bishop Henry who ordered the fiend excommunicated several months ago.”

  A vile man, indeed. And Emma heard echoes of Darian’s tale of his own family’s demise. A detestable, loathsome beast had been responsible for their deaths, too.

  “So Bishop Henry should not have been aggrieved over de Salis’s death.”

  Darian picked up a piece of hay and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger, his brow furrowing.

  “Nay, he should not have been,” he commented, almost to himself. “The bishop agreed the kingdom would be best off without de Salis, but wanted God to choose the time of his death, not men.”

  Emma knew he was merely thinking aloud, but this line of thought disturbed her.

  “What men?”

  He glanced up at her, then away. “I beg pardon, Emma. ’Tis naught of import.”

  Deep in her bones she knew different.

  “What men?”

  “Better you do not know. The less involved you are, the less the danger.”

  “Like this morning?” Becoming alarmed, she pressed on. “Darian, if those soldiers do manage to return to Bishop Henry, he will be after you all the more, and me also because I stood as your witness and thwarted his intent to see you hang! What is it you are not telling me?”

  The hay stopped twirling. He bent it in twain. “The morning before de Salis was killed, the king gave the order for his assassination. If de Salis had not died that night, he would have sooner than later.”

  Assassination!

  The king had ordered someone to murder de Salis? “What man would agree to—”

  Emma’s stomach flipped so hard she pressed her arms against it, wishing they’d stayed out in the pouring rain, kept riding until they reached Oxford, where they would have been too tired to do aught but sleep.

  Sweet mercy, who better to send out to assassinate a troublesome villain than a mercenary? And what better mercenary than the one who sat quietly at her feet, crushing a piece of hay?

  “You?”

  He tossed the hay aside.

  “Aye,” he said, confirming her suspicion. “That is what I do, Emma. I execute the worst of the worst. Quickly and cleanly, with no one the wiser, sometimes not even my victim. Most simply vanish without a soul as witness. Had I killed de Salis, his body would not have been found, nor would I have been so witless to leave behind my dagger. Bishop Henry knows this, yet he accused me before the king and others.”

  And she’d stepped into the muddle, believing Darian guiltless—among other reasons. Ye gods. At least she’d been right to believe his plea of innocence. He hadn’t killed de Salis, but he would have obeyed the king’s order, as he’d apparently done in the past.

  How dare the king and bishop turn on the man to whom they’d given such appalling duty!

  “You were betrayed! The very men who ordered you to assassinate de Salis accused you of doing the very thing they had ordered! Perhaps you should change allegiance, Darian. Empress Maud would not force you to accept such dreadful duty.”

  He stared up at her, then said with a sad smile, “Only you.”

  “What?”

  He rose, took a swipe at the dust on his arse, then crossed his arms. “I assure you the empress has her own assassins, so
she has no need of me. Nor does anyone force me to be an assassin. I believe some men deserve death and am most pleased to send them to hell.”

  Horrified, she had no answer.

  “You need not fear me, Emma, unless you have maimed a child of late.”

  Absurdly, she shook her head.

  “I thought not.”

  He grabbed a nearby bucket and strode out of the barn into the pouring rain.

  Emma groaned and hung her head. This couldn’t be happening. The Darian she knew couldn’t be that hard-hearted and brutal. True, he’d proved this morn he could be ruthless in battle. But he’d been fighting men who’d attacked them, defending himself and her, not mercilessly killing someone because it pleased him to send a man, however deserving, to hell.

  What had happened to the sometimes humorous, oftentimes restless and annoying, but most times patient and kind man she’d come to know? Where was the gentle, considerate lover?

  How could two so different men occupy the same body?

  The gloriously smiling lover in her vision turned out to be a cold-blooded assassin. If ever she’d needed proof that her visions were devil-sent, this was it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nice place,” Darian commented.

  Sitting on a bench in Mother Abbess’s small but nicely appointed office, hands clasped on her lap to keep from fretting, Emma looked up at where Darian stood by the open-shuttered window overlooking the yard below.

  Today, he seemed no different than the Darian of Bruges she’d come to know before learning about Darian the assassin.

  She’d pondered his revelation most of last eve and into the night, up in the hayloft, where she’d slept alone. She’d both condemned and excused him, and still wasn’t sure of her feelings on his profession.

  This morn, as they’d ridden toward Oxford, her preoccupation with Darian had given over to her concern for Nicole.

  Darian didn’t need her, Nicole might, and Emma hoped that at long last she could do right by someone.

  “The abbey does seem nice, though not quite what I expected,” she admitted.

  “You have never been here?”

  “When Gwendolyn and I were asked to choose an abbey for Nicole, we chose Bledloe because Mother Abbess has a reputation for merciful firmness.”