“Cut me to ribbons! Ha! I felt but one hit, and that barely palpable. Come on, Francis, you pompous blackguard, don’t think I’m about to let you catch your bloody breath because of Alix. Defend yourself!”
She felt a rush of excitement. They were going to continue, in spite of her. She knew instinctively it would be a match the like of which she had never seen before.
Lacklin gave her a rare smile and took up his position opposite Roger. “Very well, my reckless friend, I’ll give you a lesson or two. And Alexandra too if she pays attention.”
She sank down to the forest floor to watch. “I won’t miss a moment of this, I promise you.”
But in fact she did miss some of it because it went too fast for the eye to see. Not only were their weapons unfamiliar, but they also fought in an atypical manner. Instead of using a long sword to attack and a dagger or buckler in the off hand to defend, they wielded slim and flexible rapiers, attacking and defending in an intricate series of beats, feints, and parries.
They were both excellent swordsmen. Being younger, Roger had an edge in physical conditioning and speed, but Lacklin made up for this with the sheer brilliance of his technique. Every movement he made was fluid and precise, every flick of his wrist and arc of his arm as smooth and controlled as a dance. His blade wove silver threads in the air, perfectly, effortlessly. Roger attacked with great verve and energy, but clever though his offensive moves were, he had difficulty penetrating his old friend’s guard.
Smiling abstractedly, Lacklin played Roger until the younger man began to get a little careless. He then picked up the tempo and attacked more vigorously. Roger parried, faltered, and was hit, the blunted tip of his adversary’s weapon touching him lightly on the left shoulder. He yelled in frustration and fought harder. Francis Lacklin laughed, sending Roger into full retreat, pressing him until he stumbled and missed a crucial riposte. Lacklin moved in mercilessly, and within seconds he had cut Roger to ribbons as much as it was possible to do with a blunted foil. Moaning with mock despair, Roger threw down his sword, and then his body, collapsing on his back next to Alexandra, breathing hard, running with sweat.
“You’re dead,” she laughed. Her excitement in the match faded as her consciousness of his nearness increased. She caught the faint masculine scent of tangy exertion and was surprised that it was so pleasant, attracting, compelling. She envisioned him touching her breasts before the hearth at Whitcombe. Jesu! Every hard breath he drew sent tingles through her. His muscles had looked even more beautiful when he was flexing them in battle.
“Aye,” he acknowledged when he recovered his breath. He was grinning, and did not seem at all dismayed by his defeat. “God’s blood, Francis, remind me never to have a falling-out with you.”
“You did very well,” said Lacklin, sitting down on the other side of Alexandra.
“A lot of good it does me—I’m still dead.”
“This time, yes. One of these days it could go the other way. You’re edgy about your parries in quarte, aren’t you?”
“Aye,” said Roger, rubbing several places on the left upper quadrant of his body where the blunt tip had struck him. “That’s where you penetrated. I always feel vulnerable in that area. I was concentrating on parrying effectively.”
“Obviously so. You let me see your weakness, so when you got tired…”
“Devil. Exploiting my weaknesses.” He rolled over onto his side and leaned up on one elbow. “I said he was good, didn’t I, Alix?”
“You said he was the finest you’d ever seen.” She was looking at Francis Lacklin with more respect than she’d ever felt for him before. “It was marvelous! I loved it. Thank you for allowing me to watch.”
Her enthusiasm must have been catching, for the two men treated her with great good humor as they continued to analyze the bout. Their rapiers were Italian, she learned, and their style of fencing innovative. In battle, said Roger, he would prefer to have a heavier sword and a shield, or perhaps a two-handed broadsword.
“What’s in here?” he asked, pouncing on her knapsack and rolling open the canvas that covered the foodstuffs for Merwynna. “God’s blood, this is enough to last a month. Alix, love, I’m starving.” He plucked out an apple and bit into it.
“So am I,” said Lacklin, helping himself to a pear.
“Merwynna only grows plants and herbs. She depends on me for other things,” Alexandra protested. But her knapsack was full today, so she too took a piece of fruit.
“Who is this Merwynna anyway?” asked Lacklin. “I’ve heard of her, but I don’t know much about her.”
“She’s the local witch,” said Roger with his mouth full. “I’m amazed you haven’t tried to exorcise her, or whatever one does to witches.”
“She’s not that sort of witch. She doesn’t consort with the devil. She’s a wisewoman. Her gods are the Old Ones, the spirits of trees and rocks and hollow places. They’re the ones she prays to, they’re the ones who assist her in her magic.”
Both men stared at her. “Christ, Francis, listen to her. You’re worried about the corrupt practices of the papists, but at least they’re Christians. This girl is a bloody pagan.”
She laughed. “I’m not.”
But Roger was serious. “Whatever gods the old woman worships, people are certain to think she’s in league with Satan. Power such as hers is considered evil.”
“Nonsense. There’s nothing evil about Merwynna—she cures the sick and practices midwifery—women’s arts, in other words. She rarely casts spells. I know, I’ve been her protégée for years.”
Roger cursed softly. “You’re Sir Charles Douglas’ daughter; you can’t be the next witch of Westmor Forest. Are you mad to mix in such doings?”
She bristled. “There’s no danger, no harm at all in what I do. She’s my friend.”
His handsome face was thunderous. “Don’t be a fool, Alexandra. What d’you mean, no harm? Witchcraft is a crime punishable by hanging. Do you want to end your life on the scaffold?”
Her own temper flared. “Who are you to be so judgmental? With the sort of life you lead, you’re in more danger of ending your life on the scaffold than I!”
Silence greeted this remark. She thought she saw them exchange a lightning-fast look. Twisting her fingers together, she stared down into her lap. Now I’ve made them suspicious, she thought nervously. When, oh when, am I ever going to learn to control my too-ready tongue?
“What else have you got to eat in there?” Lacklin asked, pointing to her knapsack. She risked a glance at him. He was, as usual, cool and unruffled. Was there anything, she wondered, that could ever shake his self-possession? Just as no one would ever be able to penetrate his guard in a fencing bout, no one would ever understand the mind or heart of him either.
“Here, take whatever you want.”
Lacklin removed a chunk of cheese, saying, “May I share some of this with you?”
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry.” She no longer felt easy with either of them. Lacklin was dour and cold, and as for Roger, he was damnably moody. One minute he could be the pleasantest man she had never known, and the next he was an angry, opinionated bully. He had been like that as a boy, too: she remembered how often they’d argued with each other. She’d adored him, it was true, but she’d never cared for the way he used to order her about.
She glared at him, but he was looking at the ground, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration or annoyance.
Francis Lacklin said, “Here, Roger, have some cheese. And stop worrying. I’m sure Alexandra knows what she’s doing.”
Roger looked up and Alexandra felt the power of his dynamic brown-eyed stare. His eyes were beautiful. They drew her, lured her, bewitched her. Gazing into them, she felt something leap inside her. Once again she was burning with the memory of the way he had touched her on his first evening home. Her belly tightened and her heartbeats thickened as she yearned to feel that delicious touch again.
“Give me a piece,” Roger said to
Lacklin, not dropping Alexandra’s gaze. He spoke her name: “Alix. You’re my oldest, dearest friend. It frightens me to think of you tangling with such a crime as witchcraft. I want you to be careful, that’s all.”
Her color rose. He was smiling at her. She loved his smile. It made him look younger, almost boyish. “I’m always careful, Roger.”
They stared at one another until Francis Lacklin cleared his throat rather loudly. “Got a knife? This cheese is like a rock.”
“Here,” Alexandra said, pulling her dagger from her girdle. She was focused again on Roger’s lean and tough body, bare to the waist…the subtle play of those lovely muscles beneath the skin, the light sprinkling of hair that she longed to stroke, the scars of other weapons that had snaked inside his guard. She drew an uneven breath, dropping her eyes to his long-fingered hands playing idly with the forest moss. She was his oldest, dearest friend. He was domineering and quick to anger, but he cared about her. She closed her eyes. He’s a traitor, she warned herself. He might even end up a regicide.
Francis Lacklin made an exasperated sound. “This is useless,” he said, looking down at the dagger she’d handed him. “It’s broken.”
As she realized her mistake, Alexandra’s fingers flew to the leather girdle at her waist, where her own knife still lay cradled. She had forgotten that she’d stuck Ned’s broken dagger in there next to hers.
She shot a quick look at Lacklin’s face, but it was, as usual, impassive. She didn’t know where Ned had found it, or what the battered object represented, but her mother’s tale of the peasant boy’s urgency had troubled her. “Sorry, I pulled out the wrong one.”
“Let’s see that thing,” said Roger. Before she could grab it, he reached across her and took Ned’s knife from Lacklin’s hand. “This isn’t yours, is it, Alix?” He was turning it over and staring at the intricate carving on the hilt. He rubbed at it a bit with his thumb. “Where did you get it?”
“Ned gave it to me. You remember him—the half-witted boy whose throat you threatened to slit on your first day home.”
Roger looked up, saw her watching him, and frowned. He glanced at Lacklin, who seemed to be ignoring them both. Roger’s expression turned bland. He handed the dagger back to her. “Worthless. You might as well get rid of it.”
She felt a ripple of unease. Something seemed off, although she couldn’t have said what, exactly. Did the broken dagger hold significance for Roger? She recalled that Ned had been frightened of him. Terrified, in fact.
“Who’s Ned?” Francis Lacklin asked.
“Just a harmless peasant boy.” She thrust the hilt back into her girdle. “Here,” she said, giving Lacklin her other one. “I understand you’re leaving tomorrow, Mr. Lacklin?” She was eager to change the subject. “Where are you going?”
Lacklin tossed Roger a piece of cheese before answering, but his cold gray eyes were on her. “London. I have friends there.”
In sooth, you do, she thought. Murderous, treasonous friends.
“I might be going to London myself shortly,” Roger said.
“Why? You’ve only just returned.”
“He can’t abide his father.”
“That, yes. But I also thought I’d taste the pleasures of the English court, if there are any to be had among that bunch of Mass-mouthing papists.”
If he was going to London, he would be mixing in Lacklin’s nefarious doings, of that she had no doubt. “What about your responsibilities here?”
“What about them?” His voice had gone cold. “My father hates me; we do nothing but argue, and even Alan’s hero worship is wearing thin, just as I knew it would. Once the hero is revealed to be an ordinary human being, the worshiper invariably turns on him.”
“Alan’s turning on you? After only one week?”
“Come over and see for yourself. It’s my own fault, of course. I’m impatient and bad-tempered, not to mention bored. I’m accustomed to more activity.”
“It’s a comedown after playing sea lord of the Mediterranean,” said Lacklin sarcastically.
“I’m willing to concede that. My father still rules Whitcombe, and I have never been good at adopting a subordinate role.”
“You’ll be under the queen’s authority if you go to court. You’ll have to simper and fawn and play the hypocrite, going to Mass twice a day whether you like it or not.” She paused, fiddling with an acorn cap. “Unless of course you opt for danger, excitement, and freedom of conscience by joining the heretics.”
“Thank you,” said Lacklin. “I couldn’t have put it any better myself. Appeal to his spirit of adventure.”
“I’d rather simper and fawn than have anything to do with a pack of raving dissenters. No, Alix. I have no intention of seeing anything of Francis and his fanatical friends in London.”
He spoke it very slowly and clearly, as if he wanted to be absolutely certain that she put any such idea out of her mind. She wished she could believe him, but she didn’t. “Well, you might see something of me. As I told you, my father intends to drag me to London to marry me off.”
A silence; then Roger said silkily, “Not to me, I trust.”
Alexandra rose, collecting her knapsack and her knife. “We’ve already established that.” She gnawed on her bottom lip a moment, then added, “I’ll probably be over at Whitcombe this afternoon.” She was determined not to take them by surprise again. “Alan and I plan to study some Greek.”
Roger’s eyebrows went up. “Greek, is it? Excellent Alexandra, you are a woman of many talents.”
She was tempted to stick out her tongue at him, but she rejected the gesture as too childish. “‘Til later, then.”
“‘Til later, poppy-top,” said Roger, employing one of his oldest nicknames for her. It made her smile.
Chapter 5
Alexandra fingered the carved hilt of Ned’s dagger as she hiked on toward Merwynna’s cottage. She wondered why Ned had wanted her to have the broken old thing. She would swear that Roger and Francis Lacklin had treated her differently after seeing it. She wished she hadn’t show it to them.
If she hadn’t been so enthralled by the sight of Roger’s half-naked body, she wouldn’t have been so careless. But lecturing herself did no good at all. It wasn’t long before she forgot about the dagger. Instead her mind began conjuring up a few special images: Roger’s merrily-arching eyebrows, his bare sculpted chest, the flash of his smile, the look in his brown eyes when he’d called her his “oldest, dearest friend.”
Warming to the theme, her imagination pictured him passing his hands through her hair, pulling her close against his sun-browned body and kissing her passionately. His fingers would wander a little, gently along her collarbone, softly upon her breasts, seeking out those tender, wayward nipples once again. Maybe, like a virtuous maiden, she would protest a little as he jerked apart her laces, but she wouldn’t truly want him to stop. And he wouldn’t stop. He would be too enflamed to listen to her halfhearted pleas for restraint. He would stroke her naked breasts, then slide his hands lower… he would smooth away her skirts, then strip his own virile body bare… he would press her back in the sweet-smelling grass and come down atop her, against her, between her naked thighs… seeking her, finding her, making hot, sweet love to her until all the stars exploded with light and fell from their spheres.
She pushed a branch aside so carelessly that it came back and slapped her in the face. Cursing in an unmaidenly fashion, she muttered, “The devil take Roger Trevor.” He cared about her, yes, but not in the way she had just envisioned, despite what had happened between them on his first night back. He had imbibed too much wine that evening.
Stop thinking about it! Even if Roger did feel a lusting for her again, he had made his feelings about honorable wedlock very clear. He would never marry her. If she were so foolish as to develop a passion for him, she would deserve the heartache that could be its only possible outcome.
The path to Merwynna’s wound around a small hidden lake. One minute all w
as dark and green; then the woods opened up like a mouth to reveal the lake’s silent waters. As always, the sight swept Alexandra clean of thoughts and passions. Her sense of the forest’s power was strong here. Standing on the flower-laden bank, she watched a crow wheel over the water, then rise and disappear. She shivered, hoping the dark bird was not an ill omen.
Sometimes, if the weather was hot and she was feeling adventuresome, Alexandra would swim the lake rather than go round on foot, but today she did not attempt it. The ancient wooden boat, kept by Merwynna for emergencies, was tied up on the far side. It was rarely used. Alexandra jested with her that like all witches, Merwynna did not care to cross over water.
She was so heated by the time she reached the thatched cottage that she wished she’d swum across after all. She knocked on the oaken door, but received no answer. Leaving her sack of provisions inside, she went around the back and found Merwynna bent over in her herb garden, gathering herbs for her healing brews. The old woman turned at the sound of Alexandra’s approach, her vivid dark eyes acknowledging the girl, but she did not speak. Talking would break the age-old charm.
Silently Alexandra removed her shoes and stepped into the garden to help. Merwynna had taught her to go barefoot as a sign of respect for the earth. Some said it was even more efficacious to remove all clothes and gather the herbs sky-clad, but Merwynna wore her usual gown of brown homespun. The dress was a mystery to Alexandra. She had never seen the wisewoman wash or mend it, yet it always looked clean and new.
She knelt beside her friend in the rich earth and gathered herbs carefully in her left hand, transferring them afterward to her right while she continued to pluck. Each herb had to be addressed with an old rhyme, some of these in languages so ancient that Alexandra could only mouth the sounds, having no idea of their meaning. After she plucked each herb, she poured a libation of mead from Merwynna’s jug into the earth from which the plant had sprung.
Merwynna collected many of her herbs, barks, and roots from the wilds of the forest, but here in the neatly laid-out garden she cultivated the plants that she used most often. There was yarrow, the blood-stauncher for wounds, and the bitter-smelling wormwood, which brings down fevers and keeps the demons away. There was the tall valerian, also bad-smelling, but an excellent cure for insomnia and nervousness. The scrubby thyme, good for preventing infection, grew in the front, where it could garner plenty of sun, near the square-stemmed vervain, a necessary ingredient in Merwynna’s much-in-demand love potions.
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