“Did ye know who he was?” she asked.
Modron swung her basket and strolled along the ivy hedge. “Not at first. Your mother swore herself a faithful wife, no matter where her heart lay. But on Midsummer’s Eve, she finally yielded to her lover’s embrace. All that summer they met in secret, and she was oh so happy.”
The entrance to the Maze yawned beside them, a deep green cave piled with snow. Linnet took one look and knew she’d never go inside.
Someone is trying most determinedly to have you killed.
But Modron didn’t press her. She lowered her basket to the ground. The fading light gleamed on her silver rings, banding the smallest finger on both hands. Those rings gave Linnet a queer tickling sensation, as though she’d seen something similar, somewhere long ago.
But her mother’s story drew her, pulled her past the elusive memory. “Then what happened?”
The goodwife straightened. “The King happened. He’d been watching her all summer, when he wasn’t indulging his pregnant wife. On Lammas Day, he decided he wanted Catriona Norwood in his bed.”
The world spun to a halt around her. “But she...did he...?”
“He tried.” Modron frowned. “To her credit, Catriona refused him—courteously at first, with pretty words of gratitude for his favor and so on. When he decided to take what he wanted by force, she slapped his face.”
Linnet gasped. What courage had it taken to defy the man who’d beheaded his last wife when she displeased him? To risk an explosion of the famous Tudor temper could have cost her everything, even her life.
“I found her weeping in the chamber we shared,” Modron murmured. “She confided everything to me. I advised her to leave court at once, but she felt she must wait for your father to return from his hunting trip. I think she hoped it would all blow past, with the earl none the wiser. And so it might have done, had Henry not been Henry.”
Linnet felt too ill to prompt her, almost too ill to listen. When Modron beckoned to a stone bench, she sank down gratefully. The goodwife settled beside her.
“By the next day, a rumor was circulating through the court that called your mother a witch. Her love of strange herbs was mentioned, and her fondness for the midwives’ company, and her frequent absences. The ladies remembered mainly that she was beautiful, and savaged her worse than the men.
“Good Queen Jane summoned your mother and banished her from court, claiming she wanted no such unwholesome influence during her lying-in. As chance would have it, I was attending another lady that day who’d miscarried. By the time I returned, Catriona was gone.”
Having her own knowledge of the court’s malice, Linnet could well imagine what her mother must have suffered. Sympathy squeezed her heart, bringing tears to her eyes.
“What happened when my father returned? He was the Earl of Glencross. With his wife banished, he would have demanded an explanation.”
“Why, so he did.” Modron smiled sadly. “And the vengeful King, true to his colors, told Edward Norwood his wife sought to seduce her King. When the earl came blustering from the Royal Presence, he was bellowing that he would overtake his wife and whip her back bloody, that he’d shave her head and wall her up with the nuns at Glencross Abbey, that she’d spend her days on her knees before the altar doing penance for her sins.”
Another daughter, hearing such a tale, would have cried out in horror. But Linnet’s world darkened behind a red tide of rage. She’d known Edward Norwood, known what he was capable of. And she’d seen the shy, startled, fearful creature her mother had become.
She forced out the words. “Did he carry out his threat?”
The goodwife shot her a keen glance. “I hoped to hear from your mother, a letter at least, but I heard naught for many years. I made discreet inquiries, and was told he’d done it—had her stripped naked and whipped in the public square, with her sons and the whole village watching, then marched her barefoot and shamed to the convent. A few months later, you were born there.”
Born under the roof of Glencross Abbey, and Linnet had never known it. Years later, she’d returned as a prisoner herself, locked up for a lunatic by her father’s son.
She struggled against the tide of fury and pity churning through her. “He must have let her return home—to the castle, I mean—after I was born. Because my memories of her are there, and she gave birth to my brother Colin at home.”
Which meant that Catriona had been forced to submit her body to the same husband who’d shamed her, forced no doubt to thank him for his mercy. Small wonder she’d turned her back on the infant boy and fled her husband at the earliest opportunity, for good.
A lesser woman might have killed the babe for a child of rape, then turned the knife on herself.
The information shed a different light on Catriona’s flight. In truth, who could blame her? Still, knowing the manner of man she’d married, she’d willingly left her daughter in his keeping.
Gentle Mother, why hadn’t she taken Linnet with her?
This distressing tale did naught to assuage Linnet’s doubts about her lineage. If anything, Modron’s tale gave form to her nebulous fears. Catriona may have refused the King, but she had taken a lover that summer.
Battling a tangle of emotions, Linnet struggled to think clearly. “Ye said—ye said my mother sent no word for many years, aye? She vanished when I was five years old. By chance, did ye hear from her after that?”
“Aye. After word of her so-called death reached the court—a year after she vanished. Just a short missive, signed only with her initial, but I knew it was she. Hale and happy, she wrote, among her own kind.”
“But she never went to Edinburgh! We searched...”
“Not her father’s folk. Her mother’s people. She found refuge in distant Cornwall.”
Linnet stared into the goodwife’s knowing eyes and felt the world move beneath her. To know her mother had survived...hale and happy, among her own kind...blessed Bride, such unexpected sweetness! Her eyes brimmed with tears of joy.
If Catriona had survived what must have been a hellish journey in the teeth of winter to reach that remote fastness, why, she might be there still. Perhaps Linnet could find her, see her.
Confront her with the choices she’d made.
She could demand the truth of her parentage.
But did she really want to know?
Linnet struggled to gather her wits. “Where...where in Cornwall, did she say?”
Modron smiled. “She found sanctuary behind the ancient walls of the sea-girt castle of Tintagel.”
The name whispered through her brain, then seemed to echo, mounting until it filled her head to bursting.
Tintagel.
What lover of Faerie tales did not know the fortress of legend where, once upon a time, the rebel Duke of Cornwall had imprisoned his fair Igraine? The fortress whose walls King Uther Pendragon had breached, disguised as the Duke, to seduce his lady.
The place where Arthur of Camelot was conceived that very night.
As a child, she’d loved those splendid tales of chivalry and shining armor, the legend of the Round Table, the quest for the Holy Grail. She’d pored over Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, learned her Latin on the well-thumbed pages of the Arthur legend.
Why, then, did thoughts of Arthur fill her with vague unease, that precursor to the sinking dread that overcame her whenever she probed her memory for the lost years? Why this cold terror that made her palms sweat and her belly churn?
“Are you well, child?” The kind voice recalled her to the present.
Linnet blinked and the world coalesced around her. Modron was leaning forward to search her features, oddly intent, a furrow creasing the white skin between her brows.
“I am,” Linnet said vaguely, with no certain notion that was the case. Dizzy, she touched her temple, where her pulse fluttered thin and fast.
“Tintagel.” Why should the very name make her sweat? “I...was not aware there was a castle
there. Naught but the ruins of a Norman keep, aye? Was the castle rebuilt?”
“As to that, I cannot say. ’tis a goodly distance from here to the end of the world, where the Cornish coast crumbles year by year into the sea. Even if by some miracle I could travel there on a whim, Catriona’s letter warned me never to seek her. I had the distinct feeling she did not wish to be found, nor her presence there to be generally known.”
Modron paused. “Moreover, she hinted it was dangerous to go there.”
“No doubt, with the roads as they’ve been, landless men and brigands roaming the countryside looking for mischief.” Linnet nodded. “Did ye hear no more from her?”
“I sent a reply, of course, but heard nothing more.”
“And the reason ye sought me out? Is my quest such open knowledge?”
“I don’t move in court circles these days...though I have reason to believe my access may soon improve.” Modron’s lips curved in a small, satisfied smile. “But all of London heard of your elevation to Countess of Glencross, and knew you’d come to find a husband. I’ve intended to seek you out for some weeks.”
Linnet leaned forward. “Do ye still have her letter, mistress? I’d give much to see it.”
“Alas.” Modron sighed. “Lost in a fire, it was. Half of London burns on a regular basis. However, your mother sent something else with her letter. I was wearing it the day my district burned, and thus it was saved from the flames.”
Modron unpinned her cloak to reveal an expanse of creamy bosom above her tight-laced bodice. A necklet of silver links rested there, spilling down into the shadowed crevasse between her breasts. Casually the goodwife unclasped it. A silver crescent, the twin of her sickle-shaped knife, dangled from the chain.
Watching the crescent moon revolve slowly before her eyes, Linnet felt again that sense of niggling familiarity.
Well, that made sense, didn’t it, if the necklet came from her mother? She couldn’t precisely recall seeing Catriona Norwood wear such a piece, but she’d been only five when her mother vanished.
“She sent this to me in trust,” Modron said gently, “for her only daughter. I feared sending it to you while your father lived. For several years after his passing, you yourself were not easy to find. Now that fate has led you to me, the time is ripe for you to take it. Thus, I discharge my final duty to my dear friend.”
In a daze, Linnet claimed the necklet. The cool silver links made her skin tingle, as though a subtle current of energy ran from her fingertips straight to her heart. Fumbling, she clasped it around her neck. Longer than her mother’s heart-shaped locket, it slithered down her bosom to nestle between her breasts, the crescent safely hidden.
For a moment, her hand lingered over the Tudor locket, which she never removed these days. If Catriona’s friendship with King Henry had ended so badly, why would she have kept what now looked like a love token from him?
Nay, there were too many questions unanswered. After weeks of shuffling through archives and correspondence on a blind search for any morsel of knowledge, suddenly it was very clear to Linnet where she must go.
The goodwife seemed to follow her thoughts. “You plan to seek her out at Tintagel, child—despite her clear wish to be left alone, and the danger she mentioned?”
“I do.” Resolve coursing through her, Linnet surged to her feet. By now, the sun had set, and the lavender twilight deepened to gray. “I’ll set forth at once. ’tis seventeen years since she vanished. Long enough to wait for answers, aye?”
Now Modron too appeared troubled, as she rose and collected her basket. “At least tell me you won’t consider undertaking such a venture alone, in the heart of winter?”
“I’ve no great retinue.” Linnet shrugged. “The Glencross coffers can’t afford it. I’ve a tiring-girl, but I doubt she’ll wish to leave London. Indeed, I fancy Sir William Cecil and the Protestant faction will be more than glad to see me go.”
“But not alone,” Modron urged. “You yourself bemoaned the state of the roads. You’ll need an escort with a strong sword arm. Surely there is someone, some trusted companion you may turn to?”
Inevitably, she conjured the image of Zamiel, his lethal prowess with the rapier, his quick wits and keen instincts.
Not to mention his heavy purse.
Aye, Zamiel of Briah—dissolute rogue though he was—had proven a good ally in a tight spot. Still, it would shame her to ask for such a favor. Indeed, her pride smarted at the thought of begging any man’s help. She was accustomed to managing quite handily on her own.
Yet her thoughts turned to the slow investigation underway about the murdered Frenchman. Blossom had seen Zamiel, wounded and bleeding, in her chamber—mere steps from the murder scene. And Blossom loved to gossip.
A timely absence from court might be the best thing for Zamiel. With his help, surely, they could find some respectable company traveling west. Then, of course, they’d part ways on the road.
“Aye,” she said aloud, to Modron’s expectant face. “There’s one whose aid I can seek. I’ll go to him at once.”
Chapter Nine
The newest whore from the Maidenhead was a tender redhead with nipples the color of apricots. Zamiel’s valet, whose name he still could not recall, was tonguing them with apparent relish.
Zamiel angled his high-backed chair for a view of the trestle table where this feast had been laid, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Instead he sprawled, one booted leg draped over the armrest, a goblet of wine dangling from his fingers, and brooded.
Ever since the Angel of Mercy had vanished with the moon, her whispered warning filling his ears, he’d done nothing else.
Tried to sleep, but the unholy racket below had kept him awake and tossing.
Threw them all out, went crossly back to bed, and still hadn’t slept.
Got back up, shifted his linen, went off to the theatre in futile search of diversion, and brooded some more.
Now here he sat in his own hall, his thoughts chasing themselves like a damned dog after its tail. Lucifer had lied to him, as always.
Wallow in every pleasure the mortal realm has to offer. A nubile young maid to warm thy bed...
And if he had, if instinct hadn’t kept him from tumbling into the arms of the first whore who offered, he’d be roasting his toes in Hell.
He’d managed to choke down this bitter reminder. His only ally, his sinister parent, was aptly named the Father of Lies. Nay, what killed him—sent him straight for the wine bottle—was the grim knowledge that any mad scheme he’d harbored for a liaison with Linnet Norwood was destroyed.
She wanted him. Her delightful abandon to his kiss told him that. And the True Creator knew he wanted her.
He wanted to pull the pins from her riotous mass of curls and watch the dark, fire-streaked ringlets tumble down around her shoulders.
He wanted to unlace her, ease down the stiff-boned carapace of her bodice to free the lush fullness of her breasts.
He wanted to know whether her nipples were the same apricot hue as the red-haired harlot spread across his dining table, whether the curls between her thighs were the same fiery copper as those currently on display.
None of that was possible now. Unless he wanted to play right into the old serpent’s hands and abandon any plan of inciting the restless ranks of Heaven to rise, he had to keep away from Linnet Norwood—far away.
Let the lady seek her sober, frugal, virtuous husband in the customary way. With her title and her connection to the Scottish throne, not to mention her unconventional beauty, she’d find a bevy of eager candidates vying for her hand in no time.
So he swung his leg moodily as the redheaded whore eased his valet’s prodigious cock from his codpiece. At least someone was enjoying himself.
His cupbearer sidled up, a pretty-faced youth he’d hired from the Cock for an exorbitant sum. Barely sparing a glance at the hopeful lad with his perfumed blond ringlets, Zamiel held out his goblet. The youth refilled his cup, with many
lovelorn sighs and sidelong glances beneath his long lashes.
The lad brushed his gauntleted hand with hopeful fingers. Zamiel smiled absently and shifted away.
“My dear boy,” he murmured, “you’re a new one, aren’t you?”
“Aye, milord.” The youth pouted. “Don’t you remember me?”
“Alas, I’m a dreadfully wicked, negligent, incompetent master.” Jehovah knew, that was the truth. “We haven’t many rules under this roof, but I insist upon three of them. First, stay out of my privy chambers. Second, no one touches my lute. And third, I don’t fancy being touched myself.”
He spared the lad a brief smile to soften the rejection. “Look all you like, but seek elsewhere for your play.”
The young cupbearer sulked gorgeously, but Zamiel waved the boy away. Alone once more, he tossed back the fruity golden wine without relish. In fact, this entire business of debauchery was beginning to lose its luster. He’d felt more violently alive for an hour with Linnet, every nerve in his body firing with tingling energy, than he did roistering through London from high noon to midnight.
“Get used to it, my friend,” he said glumly. “She’s not for you. This meaningless farce of mortality is as good as it’s going to get.”
From the corridor, the ruddy, cheerful face of his porter Maxwell—or was it Menzies?—popped into view. Spying Zamiel, the porter hustled toward him, chivvying before him a cloaked and hooded female.
Zamiel tipped his head back and groaned. Not another whore, was it? He’d called for some tumblers an hour ago, hadn’t he? Perhaps the troupe was arriving at last.
“What’s this? The next course for the feast, Menzies?”
“Moncrief, milord,” the porter said cheerfully.
“I know I called for tumblers, Moncrief, but I fear I’ve changed my mind. Shockingly fickle, aren’t I?” Zamiel opened his ever-bulging purse. “Just pay the wench and send her away.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Yer Worshipfulness, but she ain’t a wench.” Moncrief pushed the girl gently forward. “I think she come from court.”
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 15
