Squaring her shoulders, she set herself to press through the thinning crowd toward the narrow alley. Now the royal procession had passed, her path was easier. She led Moibeal into the alley and circled the inn. More shuttered windows, but there!
“The gate to the castle,” she whispered.
And the Grail is the Cup of Truth.
Here was the postern where riders had once entered the walled courtyard, and it swung ajar. Heart lifting, hope quickening her steps, she tethered Moibeal to the gatepost. The bay shifted uneasily, hooves striking the cobbles in a way that made Linnet wince. With the high buildings to muffle the distant din, this narrow alley was unnervingly quiet.
“There now, hush,” she whispered. Surely even Sir Galahad had relied upon stealth betimes. “Ye can bide here, quiet and safe. Hush now.”
Leaving the mare prancing, still unsettled, Linnet touched nervous fingers to her hair and smoothed back the wayward ringlets forever springing loose from her chignon. Did she even look respectable, after being wind-whipped and jostled by that drunken mob?
The skin between her shoulders itched, as though someone were watching her—the way Jasper had watched her that day, the last day of her sanity. The last day of his wretched life.
The day the Faeries came for her.
But that was just a dream, the sick fancies of a mind led astray by the Devil. Or so the nuns at Glencross Abbey had told her.
Snow was swirling down now, thick and white, from leaden skies. Through the flurries, she glimpsed naught but a few distant forms hurrying toward shelter. The Queen’s procession was well past, the festivities over for them.
Swallowing the hard lump of trepidation rising in her throat, she slipped through the gate. A cobblestone tunnel wound before her, dark and narrow as a serpent, lit at the end with the pearly light of day. She crept along, heeled pumps tapping softly on the stone, cold-numbed feet clumsy on the uneven footing.
Of course, she was always clumsy, and never more so than when she feared.
But Sir Galahad would be fearless. Carefully she steadied her footing on the ice-rimed cobbles and pressed on.
At last, the courtyard opened around her, high and narrow, ranks of shuttered windows frowning down from the second-floor gallery that circled the yard. Across the way, where the innkeeper would have welcomed his guests, this entrance too was hammered shut like a rejection, the death of hope. She saw no one and nothing, save a pile of moldering straw and the sinister hulk of a wagon leaning crazily over a broken axel.
Sick with disappointment, she felt her heart plunge to her belly.
Nonetheless, she steeled herself to violate a lifetime of caution and do what she hated most—draw attention to herself.
“Good morrow?” Though muted, her voice rang against the bare stone. “Is anyone here?”
Something scuffed against the stone behind her. She whirled, heart pounding in her throat, fighting an absurd impulse to hide.
“Ye’re Sir Galahad on the Grail Quest,” she whispered, to remind herself. And Jasper was dead.
The dark tunnel yawned before her, obscured by swirling snow. She opened her mouth to call again, but the words stuck in her throat.
Another Faerie tale reared up in her mind, a dragon exploding from its den to pour flame over the brave maiden who’d ventured forth on trembling legs to confront it, armed only with a magical shield...
Impatient with her hampering fears, she shook her head. Clearly, she’d come on a fool’s errand. After all, she was the Countess of Glencross—she was—not some silly moon-girl running errands for her betters. She’d rejoin the procession in Cornhill at the next pageant, something about the Four Virtues...
From the tunnel, a shadow slipped into the courtyard. A gaunt man, features obscured by grime and graying stubble, incongruously clad in a fool’s tattered motley.
A fool’s errand indeed, she thought dryly, with a fool to summon me.
Hesitant, she started forward, but a flicker of movement elsewhere drew her gaze. A second figure lurched from behind the broken wagon.
His size made her gasp. Nearly a giant, this one, with a smith’s hulking shoulders and thick arms, shirt and breeches smeared with pitch as though he’d issued from the mouth of Hell.
Her nebulous misgivings coalesced into hideous shape. Why had the man not shown himself when she hailed?
Fore and aft, the two mismatched figures closed in, the giant with his lumbering gait, the tattered fool with his nimble, hopping stride. Uneasily she shifted to keep them both in view, placing solid wall at her back.
Every instinct she had clamored a warning. Thanks to her brother, she knew what it was to be hunted.
Showing fear would be the worst thing she could do. Thus she nerved herself for speech.
“God save ye, master. Was it ye who wrote me?”
Like a bright bird, the fool hopped toward her. “Are you Lady Linnet Norwood?”
His falsetto voice unnerved her more than the giant’s hulking silence.
She thought about lying, claiming she was someone else, but it was too late to pretend ignorance now. She wore the finery of a queen’s lady, and she’d come alone to this isolated meeting place as bidden. Who else could she be? What other lady in all the vast court would be mad enough to risk it?
“Who are ye?” she countered. “Who sent ye?”
“A friend.” The fool hopped closer. “A dear friend of your fine family, to sing a pretty song for a little linnet-bird.”
“A friend of my family?” she echoed, with a pang. “Do ye speak of my father, then?”
The fool giggled. “Not your father, little bird.”
At the endearment, grief closed her throat. Her mother used to call her that, but surely he couldn’t speak of her. Lady Catriona Norwood, the late Countess of Glencross, had abandoned her five-year-old daughter to her husband’s cold custody and never looked back.
The old bitterness squeezed her lungs in a burning fist, but she’d no time for that old sorrow now.
Looming on her left, the voiceless giant seemed to fill half the courtyard. The vacant stare on his slab of a face made her edge away.
“Keep yer distance,” she cried, voice wavering despite her best effort. “Tell me who sent ye!”
“Someone who loves you, little bird. I carry a message from him.”
Not her mother then, of course not. Not that she’d been fool enough to hope for that. And the endearment was hardly surprising. Little bird. Anyone who knew her, named for the brown finch that sang so sweetly, might call her thus.
While her mind worked frantically to disentangle the threads of this mystery, the fool had drawn close enough to smell. Over the fresh powdery scent of falling snow, the sour reek of sweat wrinkled her nose. A regular rogue, this one—and rancid with fear beneath his ragged motley. No one sweated like that in January.
Surely she could elude the poor wretch if she must, dart back through the tunnel to the relative safety of the road. Let them continue this unorthodox discussion there, and damn the risk to her tattered reputation.
Gentle Mother, she needed answers! She’d speak to the Devil himself if she must.
A flicker of movement in the tunnel snared her gaze. Fragile hope flickered in her heart. Someone else was coming—a proper goodwife, soberly cloaked and gowned. A chance-come savior, or one with the answers she sought?
Yet the woman hung back, blocking the narrow passage, shoulders hunched and steps crabbed with age. Just a crone, with a basket over her arm.
Linnet circled away from the fool and hurried toward her, a cry of welcome springing to her lips. It died unvoiced as she glimpsed the crone’s gnarled fist, half-hidden in the dark spill of her skirts, and the cold gleam of the knife.
With sickening certainty, Linnet realized none of this odd company had come here to aid her. They knew who she was, aye, but cared naught for her desperate quest—save to end it. She’d been a fool indeed.
A heavy footfall sent her spinning away,
heart fluttering in panic, barely in time to elude the giant’s grasp.
“Stay away from me!” she cried, vainly scanning closed shutters and high walls. No escape, and no point pretending all was well. “Help!”
“No one will help you, little bird,” the fool sang softly. From his fluttering rags, he produced a hatchet and whirled it in a careless arc. “Come here, little Linnet, and sing your song for me.”
She broke and ran—away from the giant and the giggling fool, deeper into the courtyard, though the place was a deathtrap now. She cast about wildly for a weapon, anything she could use to defend herself.
A barnyard implement lay against the broken wagon, a rusted pitchfork with broken tines. With both hands, she snatched it up.
The rush of footsteps made her whirl, pitchfork slicing sideways through the air. Effortlessly the fool danced aside, hatchet whistling overhead. She was terrified he’d hurl it at her, frozen with the cold white terror she knew so well. A cloud of memory fogged her mind.
Crouching in the depths of the castle cellar or the spider-infested hayloft while Jasper’s singsong voice taunted her, raged at her, crooned promises that iced her blood...
She thrust the hateful images aside. The giant came at her in a lurching run. Viciously she swung her pitchfork in a wide arc, holding both men at bay.
“Sweet Jesus, why are ye doing this? Is it my purse ye’re wanting? Or these bloody gold sleeves?” But she knew it wasn’t. She raised her voice to the uncaring heavens. “Someone help me!”
“No one will come, little bird,” the fool whispered.
Aye, she knew it. No one ever came. Nor would help come today, with the entire city following the twin lure of free wine and the spectacle of their fetching new Queen.
With a despairing cry she fled deeper into the trap, dragging heavy skirts and petticoats around her knees, the wire cage of her farthingale swaying as she scrambled into the slanting wagon. This vantage raised her above her attackers. The high sides offered some protection, forcing them to come at her from the low front.
Now the fool had fallen back, waving the giant forward. Clumsily the smith climbed over the traces and swung a meaty leg over the seat.
Trapped, just like old times. Next would come the fist smashing like a hammer of fire against her ear to stun her, because he never liked to mark her face. Then the hail of blows and kicks to subdue her when she clawed and fought him, the panting curses in her ear...the eager hands fumbling at her, crushing her tender breasts...
Unexpectedly, a red tide of rage poured through her. Hunted again, trapped again, hurt again. Through blurred eyes she saw the man looming over her. Brother, blacksmith, butcher, their faces blurred together.
Screaming defiance, she gripped the pitchfork in both hands and swung it with all her strength.
The tines raked across his cavernous chest.
The giant bellowed, a wordless howl of agony, mouth gaping to reveal the red stub where his tongue had been torn out. Nearly mindless with terror, Linnet screamed too, watching crimson spread across his filthy shirt.
Still bellowing, the giant lurched toward her. Fired with the madness of the cornered animal that turns on its tormentors, teeth bared, she lunged forward and plunged her pitchfork into his massive thigh.
Now he, too, screamed like a stricken animal, making her stomach pitch. When she yanked the pitchfork free, two rusted tines snapped off and fell to the straw.
The lone tine that remained made a poor weapon, but she gripped the handle so hard her fingers throbbed. Surely none of this was real, no more real than the fevered fancies of a madwoman who thought herself kidnapped by Faeries, while in truth she wandered witless through the wild. Surely she must waken, just as she’d woken from that dream, her brain swimming with confusion, the nuns’ murmured prayers in her ear.
The giant’s leather breeches were slick with blood, gushing from the deep punctures, dripping into the straw. The high animal scream had died in his lungs, and she prayed never again to hear such a sound.
But somehow, as in a nightmare, her attacker was still coming.
Through teeth that chattered with cold and terror, she scrambled back into the wagon and gasped out the Lord’s Prayer.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis...”
A short cry from somewhere pierced her words. From her elevated position, her gaze swept the courtyard, seeking the fool and not finding him. But there, near the tunnel, lay the crone’s lifeless form, dark skirts spilled like ink around her.
Uncomprehending, Linnet searched the courtyard. Where was the fool?
But the figure who strode into view was no fool in motley. Someone else now commanded the courtyard—a lithe shadow clad in jet and glittering jewels. God love her, could this be rescue?
This was no ragged vagabond, not with a nobleman’s short cape slung fashionably over one shoulder and pinned with a starburst ruby the size of her fist, or the wicked rapier like a streak of silver fire that swung at his lean hip. A spill of raven hair poured around his shoulders beneath a dashing plumed hat as he stalked toward her, silent and graceful as a cat on the icy stone. Silhouetted against the swirling snow, his slender frame seemed almost to glow with a nimbus of pearly light.
Before her, the giant groaned and fell to one knee, ham-like hands clutching his wounded thigh. Ribbons of blood snaked through his dirty fingers. His vacant eyes stared up at her, uncomprehending and somehow tragic.
Suddenly the fool was there—so close!—hopping into the wagon. Linnet cried out and swung toward him, raising her blood-daubed pitchfork with its lone tine. But the fool was staring at his fallen comrade in dismay.
“What’s this, little bird? What have you done to my poor Burl?”
Silent as a spirit, the glittering nobleman materialized before the wagon, cape rippling like ebony wings around his shoulders. Close enough now to glimpse the face beneath his fashionable brim—all slanted cheekbones and angular jaw and a mouth to make any woman blush. Beneath a dramatic sweep of jet-black brows, his long lashes were lowered, eyes hidden as he gazed down on the fallen Burl.
Then that mobile mouth curled upward, as though he mocked the death spilling into the straw at his elegantly booted feet.
A heavy gauntlet, stitched in silver, hung crushed from a careless hand. As he watched, he slapped the glove idly against his thigh. Under other circumstances, she would have said he looked bored, a jaded playgoer enduring a familiar script performed by mediocre players.
The quality of light under these pewter skies lent his fair skin a pearlescent gleam, as though he glowed. His cloak unfurled in the air behind him, and that lush banner of hair rippled around his shoulders—even when there was no wind.
Both she and the fool were riveted.
The fool recovered first.
“Who are you? Some friend of the little bird’s?”
The stranger never lifted his gaze from the crippled giant, huddled in a spreading pool of crimson. But his sullen, exquisite face seemed to brood.
“I’m no man’s friend, and no woman’s. Mine is the face you see when it’s time for you to die.”
Linnet’s breath caught in her throat. At odds with the terrifying words, the music of his voice enchanted her. A silken tenor that caressed the ear, finer than any troubadour’s, flavored with a foreign accent. He spoke as though he sang, more beautifully than the Queen’s own choir.
The rippling magick of that voice sent chills down her spine and gooseflesh across her skin. Like the Merlin in the Summer Lands, he could sing the very stones into dancing...
But nay, she’d only dreamed that. There were no Fae and no Merlins in the world anymore. Any other belief led straight back to madness.
The fool shifted, as though he too sensed this strange enchantment. “If you’re no friend of hers, then you’ve no interest in this business. Forget what you’ve seen here, and my master may well forgive whatever you’ve done to that old witch Maisie.”
“Forgiveness,” the stran
ger mused, “is a vastly overrated virtue. Ask any soul in Hell. I care naught for forgiveness, Master Rune, son of Rudyard.”
The fool stiffened. “How do you...I’ve spoken my father’s name to no man since...”
“Since the night you drew the blade across his throat as he slept, and sent him to Hell with his own skinning knife?” the stranger murmured. “Yes, I know.”
“Curse you!” the fool exploded. His hand shook as he extended the hatchet to point, though the stranger never lifted his gaze from the dying Burl. “Curse you and begone!”
“Save your breath. I’m thoroughly cursed already.” The stranger’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile.
At his feet, the giant convulsed. Sweeping his cape behind him with a practiced flourish, he laid his bare hand on Burl’s shaven head—a gesture that looked strangely like benediction. Blood-colored rubies glittered on his graceful fingers.
Before Linnet’s astonished gaze, the stranger glowed as though the moon were rising behind his pale skin.
“Be at ease, Burl, son of Grufydd,” he whispered. “For you suffered greatly in life, and killed without malice to feed your ailing mother. Someone will make a case for you.” He paused. “If I were you, I’d ask for Gabriele. Avoid Michael like the smallpox.”
Even at such a moment, with the man himself speaking nonsense, he flashed a grin that was pure mischief.
A novel sensation fluttered low in her belly. For no earthly reason, her heart lifted. For one mad instant, she nearly smiled herself.
Beneath the light touch, the man called Burl heaved a breath and stilled. She could almost see the life leaving the giant’s body, a coincidence as well timed as though the stranger had planned it.
Despite her fascination with the scene playing out before her, the shock of that death hit her.
She had killed a man. Again.
Never mind that she’d acted in self-defense. How many misdeeds could she hide behind that fig leaf? Murder was a mortal sin. When she confessed for Jasper, the nuns at Glencross Abbey had feared for her soul.
“Sweet blessed Bride.” Wretched, she shifted her pitchfork to cross herself. “I’m going straight to Hell for certain.”
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 2
