She curled tighter on the stone floor, arms wrapped around her knees, and shivered in her threadbare gown. Her bare toes curled apprehensively—filthy despite her best efforts with her meager allotment of brackish water.
In the cell beside her, unseen, a boy started to whimper. He would burn with her tomorrow. But she’d heard that brute of a jailer tell him they might rack him first, to get a better confession. Heresy, the charge was. He’d failed to affirm that the bread and wine they raised at Mass were transformed to the Body and Blood of Christ. Both his parents had already fed the flames, but the bishop was hoping for a better haul.
Shaking herself free of paralysis, Rhiannon scrambled to her feet and laced her fingers through the grate.
“Courage, young John!” she cried softly, beneath the mounting tramp of boots. “Thou art not alone. We are here with thee. Pray to thy God now.”
Far better the boy pray than dissolve into babbling terror. When she heard the child’s unsteady voice gabbling the paternoster, she nodded approval. Since she’d sacrificed her maidenhood for Beltran’s life, Christian prayer no longer hurt her—the clearest evidence she’d found that, indeed, both her immortality and her fickle magick must surely have deserted her. Sometimes she liked hearing the holy words now, when they were spoken in faith. The prayers reminded her of Beltran.
The torch burst into view, but she refused to cringe like vermin from the light. Refused even when she saw the Archbishop of Canterbury’s red-and-black robed form sweeping behind the jailer. Instead she lifted her chin and surveyed him, proud in her rags as a princess on royal progress.
The jailer didn’t scurry past, but crouched to unlock her cell. The cold seed of fear in her gut blossomed into terror.
Quaking, she stood while the jailer brought a chair for the Archbishop—though none for her, of course—and locked the cell again behind him. Locking her in with Reginald Pole—architect, with his executioner Bonner, of the Tudor Inquisition.
Seating himself comfortably, the Archbishop stroked his long brown beard and surveyed her. She stood barefoot and straight-backed, resisting the impulse to brush her tattered skirts or smooth the tangle of hair that spilled down her back.
Fae or mortal, you are still a king’s daughter, she told the terrified quiver in her belly. She’d heard the man before her carried Plantagenet blood, the old royal line of England. He would respect a composed demeanor. She demanded respect from her butchers, even if she had nothing else.
“Rhiannon le Fay?” Reginald Pole nodded, as if acknowledging her composure. “I’ve come to hear your confession.”
“My confession?” Her voice trembled with anger, but she steadied it. “I’ve made my confession, signed and witnessed, to thy toad of a bishop. He’s assured me ’tis more than sufficient to burn me. What more can thou desire?”
“Tomorrow you feed the flames at Smithfield, no matter what you say now,” the Archbishop agreed calmly. Despite her resolve, a black cloud darkened her vision.
Through the darkness, a thread of sound trickled to her ears. Young John next door, whistling a few bars of music—a way to hearten their fellow captives, letting Rhiannon know she was not alone. Comforting her as she’d comforted him.
She drew a shaking breath and opened her eyes.
“What more must I confess?” she asked.
“His Lordship the bishop believes, as I myself believe, that you’ve withheld certain information that would aid our sacred mission to root out heresy in England,” Pole said smoothly. “We must have it, mistress, to rip up the Protestant fallacy root, branch and tree. I’d like you to tell me again about the fate of Lord Beltran Nemesto, the former Blade of God.”
Rhiannon started, heat flaming in her cold cheeks. This again? I’ll give them no such pleasure. Beltran is safe with his God, safe beyond their grasp, no matter what evidence they think to wrest from me.
“I’ve told thee all I know. I barely knew Lord Beltran when Queen Mary named him my counterpart at court.”
“Ah yes, to ascertain the validity of your claim to be royal emissary for the so-called Faeries.” Contempt dripped from each punctilious word, but he didn’t linger here—no need, for she’d already “confessed” to these so-called crimes. “What interests me, mistress, is what befell him in the fens on the night he disappeared.”
“I haven’t seen him,” she said honestly, pain constricting her chest. “I believe he’s left England, never to return.”
Reginald Pole leaned forward, dark eyes intent upon her face. “His Lordship the bishop believes you’re lying.”
Her temper sparked, and she welcomed the tincture of strength coursing through her. “I, Rhiannon le Fay, do not lie. Why would I lie about such a thing?”
“To protect your paramour, who forsook his oath to follow you into sin and damnation! We know either your feminine charms or your witchcraft led him astray.” His voice lowered. “Confess to this, mistress, and it will go easier for you tomorrow.”
A flicker of hope leaped in her heart, but she knew it for false hope and cold comfort. Mary Tudor was convinced she would never bear the heir England must have while a single witch or heretic drew breath in her realm. No force under Heaven could save Rhiannon from the stake.
Besides, there was the Convergence. If the Goddess were denied her sacrifice, both realms would burn.
Briefly something niggled at her, a vague confusion. She could never quite recall why she felt so certain her death would avert that evil. Surely, it was enough that she knew.
To keep from breaking down and begging for her life, she summoned all her scorn and flung it at him. “What, if I condemn him, wilt thou refrain from burning me after all? I tell thee, Lord Beltran is innocent.”
His eyes blazed with wrath, yet his tone held reasonable. “Think now, mistress! What harm will it do to confess this last? You’re condemned to burn, as you know, but there’s more than one way to roast. Confess your blasphemous union with Lord Beltran, confess he defiled his vow of chastity in your bed, and you’ll know the mercy of the garrote before ever your flesh feels the flames.
“Strangle instead of burning, mistress—it’s a far kinder death. Or if that end’s not to your taste, a mercy-pouch of gunpowder hung round your neck will serve the same purpose when the sparks fly upward.”
He paused. “But hold to your stubborn denials, protect this failed priest and failed enforcer—who abandoned you after all, did he not, when he tired of you?—and my passionate friend the bishop will pile your pyre with greenwood and ensure you feel every flame. Sometimes it takes hours to die. That fate you may still avert.”
A surge of dizziness made her sway on her feet, half-fainting. Somehow she kept upright, determined to deny her tormentor that final satisfaction. Like a holy talisman, she held a vision of Beltran in her mind.
“He did not abandon me,” she said, furious. “Thou and thy bishop know nothing of him.”
The Archbishop stroked his beard and leaned forward gravely. “Oh, but mistress, we know more of him than you. Did you know he was denied the honor of a priest’s ordination because he couldn’t contain his lust for female flesh? Much has emerged about Lord Beltran in the two years and more since he’s vanished.”
Two years and more. Blindly she groped behind her for the wall to hold herself upright. She’d seen the autumn leaves scudding throu
gh her tiny grate and assumed they’d lost six months in Faerie. It had been spring when they crossed the Veil.
Three springs ago.
Clearly mistaking her shock, Reginald Pole nodded satisfaction. “You were merely the latest of his paramours, you see? This is a man who swerved from the path of virtue more than once. After he vanished, his steward in Rome declared him dead. Regretfully, the Dons had already nominated him to head their order, though he wasn’t yet confirmed in the post. The Blades of God live by their own archaic rules, and his death must be proven before they can name a successor. Either we must know how he died—knowledge only you can provide—or we must see him discredited and expelled from his order. Give us that, mistress, and I’ll give you the merciful end you crave.”
“Your Queen can discredit him,” Rhiannon said dully, staring at the red robes pooling like blood on the flagstones.
Red is for heartbreak.
She’d fancied she was somehow special to Beltran, even if he could never love her. Even though he’d abandoned her when he discovered his divine origins. Was she only one of many he’d dallied with, after all, no more than a casual tumble?
“I’m of no mind to trouble the Queen with this trifle,” Pole said briskly. “She is ill these many months and has taken to her bed.”
Regardless of whether Beltran abandoned her at the end, he’d saved her life more than once. She owed him a debt of honor, and she loved him. She would do nothing to malign him. She’d go to her death with a loyal heart, at least.
Wearily she leaned her head against the wall. “I’ve told thee, he no longer resides in England. For thy purpose, he is dead. I’ll sign whatever statement thou wish to that effect, but I have a demand of my own.”
“You hardly negotiate from a place of strength.” But Pole’s voice hummed with satisfaction, and she knew she had him. “You know I can’t release you. The Queen herself signed your death warrant, and those of all the heretics who die with you tomorrow.”
“I’m not asking to be released.” Grimly she thought of the Convergence. “Nay, I’ll take thy mercy-pouch of gunpowder, and go to my death singing. There’s a boy in the next cell who’s also condemned. If thou wish to have my testimony, the final price is a mercy-pouch for him.”
* * *
High noon at Smithfield was a burning day, fine as a Midsummer fair for the jaded citizens of London. Pasty vendors, apple girls, peddlers and prophets, beggars and whores, all thronged to the open field beyond the city walls. The jostling crowd made Rhiannon shrink as her procession of unfortunates stumbled forward, bare feet bruised from the long walk through the streets, arms and shoulders burning from the weight of the heavy penance candle.
Despite her utter certainty that this sacrifice was necessary—but why am I so certain?—that niggling sense of wrongness still worried at her tired brain. If she dwelled upon it, her resolve would crumble to shrieking hysteria. Desperate to hold panic at bay, she touched the trembling shoulder of the boy beside her.
She reached deep for strength and mustered a wobbly smile. “Fear not, Young John. Thy mercy-pouch awaits thee. Thou have been very brave.”
Though his gamin face was streaked with tears, Young John managed to smile back at her. Rhiannon stayed close to him as their guards pushed back the gaping crowd—oddly grim and muted for an execution, with none of the bawdy mockery she’d been braced to expect. For that much, at least, she was thankful.
Roughly the guards thrust them forward. When the crowd parted to reveal the pyre, Rhiannon closed her eyes and fought back a surge of terror.
Drop the candle, push through the guards, run for the alley. Run anywhere!
Above the heaped kindling, bare stakes jutted toward heaven, piercing the mass of leaden clouds that roiled overhead. Ominous thunder rumbled in those clouds, and lightning flashed among them.
The foul weather of Rhiannon’s lost spring had lingered. London at Samhain was bracing for the mother of all storms.
No doubt the threat of rain dampened the spirits of its denizens. That, and the plague and the famine and the war with France, all the grim handmaidens that heralded the Convergence. Mary Tudor’s illness, too, must cast a pall over her people. The jailor had said the Queen’s condition was worsening. If the Queen’s ailment kept Reginald Pole and his toady Bonner at the royal bedside rather than attending Rhiannon’s funeral pyre, well, she would thank the Goddess for that too.
A biting wind knifed over the field, making the spectators curse and clutch their cloaks. With the other poor souls condemned to death, Rhiannon huddled into her threadbare gown and shivered.
At the pyre, confusion reigned. With brutal efficiency, the guards wrested away the penance candles and roughly began sorting the prisoners for burning. Sick and shaking, longing for the ordeal to be over yet dreading it, Rhiannon searched the dull faces of the observers who ringed them.
She remembered what the Archbishop had said about Beltran. Could it be possible he still lived? A flicker of hope stirred within her. If the archangel Uriel walked the mortal plane, surely he would do what he could to save her.
Yet she glimpsed no burning figure hurtling down from Heaven, no familiar tawny head or flash of cobalt eyes in the uneasy crowd around them. Tears stung her eyes, and fiercely she brushed them away. Not for worlds would she have these Popish bullies believe she wept with fear!
Hard hands seized her shoulders and thrust her toward the pyre. Clinging to courage with both hands, she reached for Young John.
“Please, sir, the boy. He’s to have a mercy-pouch.”
The guard, an unshaven lout with greasy hair, hawked and spat in the dirt. “No mercy for heretics.”
Horrified, she twisted toward him. “But we paid! The Archbishop himself promised—”
“Well, His Grace ain’t here, is he?” The lout propelled her toward the pyre, Young John stumbling and struggling in their wake. “He’s too fine for the likes of this.”
Now the poor boy was sobbing. Rhiannon burned with the urge to comfort him, to run this fat bully through with his own spear. Panic and outrage and steely defiance mingled in a heady brew that set her drunker than any wine. Planting her feet, she flung off the guard’s bruising grip. For a dizzying instant, she stood straight and free.
Why have I been so docile, so blindly certain this sacrifice is required?
“Here now, go where you’re told!” Jowly face twisting with rage, the guard cocked back a meaty fist.
She hissed defiance and braced for the blow.
Abruptly a hooded figure loomed over them, commanding the pyre like God on his mountain. A heartbeat from striking her, the guard faltered and fell back, crossing himself with superstitious dread. Rhiannon tipped her head back and gazed into the eyeholes of the executioner’s dark hood.
Here, then, was the man who would light the pyre. A tall man, chest and shoulders solid with muscle—strong enough to swing the axe, she supposed, on the days that was called for. Within the hood, his cold eyes glittered.
A peculiar blend of dread and anticipation launched butterflies in her stomach. Blindly, she reached to draw Young John closer.
In silence the executioner extended a gloved hand, a surprising courtesy. Responding to this, the only civility she’d known since her sentencing, she placed her hand in his. Strong fingers closed around hers and lifted her to the pyre with eas
e. Desperate to stay with her, Young John scrambled up behind.
She gazed up and up into the executioner’s hooded gaze. “Please, sir, the boy. The Archbishop promised him a mercy-pouch.”
The hooded figure gazed at her, still amid the scuffle as cursing guards muscled the last struggling captives toward the stakes. Her skin prickled with curious awareness. At last the executioner spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Never fear, my lady. God’s a Being of infinite mercy. Today you’ll see the depth of His love.”
As she stared up at him, riveted by this odd pronouncement, the lowering skies opened. The dry rattle of hailstones, tiny and hard as pebbles, hissed across the pyre and stung her bare skin. Below, the Smithfield crowd scurried for cover beneath trees and carts and market-stalls.
As for the condemned, most stood like sleepwalkers beneath the stinging pellets, lips moving in prayer, staring hollow-eyed at the surging crowds. A few struggled madly as the guards braced them against the stakes and shouted for rope. A sudden crash of thunder raised scattered screams.
Abruptly the guard with greasy hair loomed beside her. Brutally he seized Young John and dragged him toward a stake. Frantically the lad fought him, crying out for Rhiannon.
The sound of her name on the child’s lips pierced her heart—she, the healer, who lived to bring aid and comfort to others. That piteous plea shredded the veil of delusion and witchcraft that had blinded her since she woke in her captors’ keeping.
A child’s need shattered the wicked illusion, and the unmistakable tingle of Avalon magick that flared into life, radiating tangible heat from the executioner’s hooded figure.
“Goddess!” she gasped, making the warding sign against evil. “This is Morrigan’s doing. Merciful Lady, I was bewitched.”
A lightning rush of energy arced through her tingling limbs, banishing the lassitude that had gripped her for so long. Every nerve in her body fired for flight or a deathly struggle for life. She glanced wildly at the scene around them—the menacing guards, the panicked captives, the crowd running for cover as the hail slashed down. Another flash of lightning pierced the deepening gloom, limning the executioner in silver fire.
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