Linda Barlow

by Fires of Destiny

  Roger regained his senses then. He lifted his head and looked around him, saw Alan and Richard, understood the expressions of haste and desperation on their faces. A few arrows were still falling, but none had the range to reach them now. There were shouts, though, from the direction of the gate through which they had fled. Pursuit. There was no more time to waste. He pushed Alexandra into his brother’s arms. “Get into the boat,” he ordered in his usual voice. “I’m coming.”

  They obeyed while Roger bent quickly over the body of the man who had loved him. Francis. He stared at his peaceful face, trying to memorize it, imprint it deep upon his brain. Despite the tragic circumstances that had arisen this past year to divide them, only one human spirit had ever been closer to him. And Francis had just laid down his life for hers.

  “Farewell, my friend,” he whispered. He was crying; he did not care. Francis would have wept for him, too, if it had been his body lying bloodless in the dirt.

  Gently he closed those silver-gray eyes forever, and then he did something he had never done, something he would never have dreamed of doing, although if he could have seen it, Francis would doubtless have been gratified. He kissed him full upon the mouth. “God grant you peace.” He covered his friend’s body with Alexandra’s hair, a living, shining shroud. And then he straightened and ran—to his wife, to his child, to freedom.

  Epilogue

  Whitcombe, June 1559

  The small procession winding up the road to Whitcombe Castle halted when the gates of the fortress were flung open and a man came running out into the road. “Alix?” he cried, extending his arms to a slender red-haired woman seated sedately upon a horse.

  “Hold the baby, husband,” she said, thrusting a bundle into the lap of the man at her side. Then she slid from her horse and threw herself into Alan Trevor’s arms.

  “Very nice,” said Roger Trevor dryly. He too dismounted, carefully cradling his child. “I shall expect an equally warm embrace from your wife, little brother.”

  “And you shall have it,” said the quiet voice of the elegant woman who had followed Alan through the gates. She embraced him as closely as her heavily pregnant state would allow. “Welcome home, Roger, Alexandra,” said Pris.

  Alan released Alexandra, who turned to hug Pris. He offered his hand to his elder brother. “Indeed, welcome to your lands, your castle, my lord,” he said with a grin. “‘Tis high time you returned to attend to the running of them.”

  Roger shaded his eyes and considered the newly repaired fortress walls with satisfaction. “I do believe you’ve found your calling in life, lad. Restoring ancient wrecks. Perhaps I’ll take my wife and child back to London and leave the running of the place to you.”

  Alan waved his suggestion away, but Alexandra met her husband’s eyes with a smile, knowing that this was exactly what he intended to do. Roger’s place was at the court of the intelligent and farsighted new queen, Elizabeth. And she, his wife, meant to be right there beside him.

  “Come within,” said Pris. “You have much to tell us.” She glanced at the fourteen-month-old infant in her father’s arms. “May I take her?”

  Roger had his hands full as the little girl began to squirm to wakefulness. He cuddled her, crooning. It was obviously a task to which he was well accustomed. “If she’ll go to you. She’s a little wary of strangers.” He held his daughter up so she could see his brother’s wife. Pris smiled and clucked at her; the little girl tentatively smiled back. She had thick black curls, fair skin, and blue-green eyes that were turning greener week by week.

  “She’s beautiful!”

  “Her parents believe her to be the most comely child ever born,” Alexandra laughed. “And the cleverest, of course.”

  “You darling,” Priscilla murmured, taking the child. “What is her name?”

  “We call her Frances,” Roger said.

  Pris met Alexandra’s eyes briefly. “It is a lovely name.”

  An hour later, Alexandra and Roger sat on the dais in the great hall at Whitcombe with Alan, Pris, and Dorcas, eating, drinking, telling tales of their adventures, and explaining the circumstances that had brought them home to England after a year and a half of exile abroad. “When Mary died and Elizabeth took the throne, we wondered what the new queen would do about the religious strife that has plagued our country for so many years,” said Roger. “It appears now that sectarian prosecution has ceased. Elizabeth has declared that she wishes to open no windows into men’s souls.”

  Alexandra took up the story: “After Mary’s death, my father petitioned our new queen for a pardon for Roger. We finally heard this spring that it had been granted.” She smiled and touched her husband’s sleeve. “He returns to England a free man.”

  “Thank God!” said Dorcas. Although she still wore mourning for her husband, the dowager baroness looked happy and content, her expression more carefree than it had been when she had so worried over Richard Trevor’s illness. “I had a feeling it would happen, that we would all be together again.”

  “I had no such confidence, I’m ashamed to report,” said Alexandra. “I had begun to despair of ever seeing my home and family again.”

  “Have you visited your parents yet?” asked Alan.

  She nodded. “They are in London. After Roger’s escape from prison, my father was dismissed from his post at court and imprisoned. His alienation from the court proved advantageous, though, when Mary’s health declined.” Alexandra felt a pang of sorrow for her dead mistress, whose last few months, by all accounts, had been as joyless as the rest of her life. “He cultivated new friends who were quietly planning for the day when Elizabeth would take the throne. He is now advising the new Queen.”

  “He is a clever man, with brilliant political instincts,” said Roger. “If anyone advances within this realm, it will be your father.”

  “I think not,” Alexandra said. “Oh, he could, that’s true, but when we spoke in London he told me he had given over his quest for power. There are personal quests more important, he said.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “My mother is with him. They have made peace with one another, and are happy, I think, for the first time in years.”

  “You, my love, have a romantic soul.”

  “No, truly, they are reconciled. She told me so herself. She even told me…” She paused, sending a mischievous wink to Pris and Dorcas “…that lovemaking is more pleasant now than it was when she was a girl.”

  Alan cleared his throat, looking embarrassed, but everybody else laughed.

  “I sincerely hope that twenty-five years from now I may say the same thing!” Alexandra added.

  Roger grinned at her and winked. “I plan to keep you well satisfied for at least twice that long, poppy-top.”

  *

  “You are happy, Pris?”

  Alexandra and Priscilla were alone briefly while Alan took his brother on a tour of the renovations.

  “Very much so, can you not tell?”

  “In sooth, you look it. Alan too.”

  “Life is wondrous strange. I have loved two brothers. When Will was alive, it never occurred to me that Alan and I would ever suit one another. Yet we do, exceedingly well. He composes poetry, did you know that? And he plays sweet music on his lute that touches me deeply. He sang to me at our wedding. I wish you had been here for that.”

  Alexandra smiled. “We were sorry to miss your wedding. ‘Twas at Christmas, was it not?”

  “We wanted to wait for you, but we were not sure when you would return, and, well…” She touched her full belly and laughed. “We could wait no longer, I’m afraid.”

  “No, I imagine not! So it was Alan’s gray eyes that struck you to the heart?”

  Priscilla’s expression sobered. “Yes. You were right about that. You said it was a metaphor for love, not death.” She paused. “I heard that Francis Lacklin gave his life to save yours. Is that true?”

  “Yes.” Alexandra felt the old sorrow as she remembered the eventf
ul night of their escape and the long period of grieving that had followed. For Roger especially those weeks had been sad and cruel. “He saved Roger from the scaffold and me from certain death at the hands of the Tower guards. ‘Twas the final act of his life. God will forgive him, surely, for everything else.”

  “Do you forgive him?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “So, then, do I.”

  Later that afternoon, Alexandra dismounted in front of Merwynna’s woodland cottage. It looked just the same—the trees rose dark behind it, and before it the bright water of the lake shimmered. Roger, with a wakeful Frances seated on the horse in front of him, rode down to the water. Their daughter loved water of any kind. Like her father, the girl loved to be at sea with the waves rolling beneath her.

  Just as Alexandra raised her hand to rap upon Merwynna’s door, it opened. The old woman with her white braids and fierce black eyes hovered on the threshold, her forbidding face cracking in a grin. “So here ye are at last. I saw ye in my dreams, crossing the sea, wending yer way to the north. I prayed to greet ye once more before laying my sorry carcass down in the earth forever.”

  “Merwynna.” Alexandra opened her arms and hugged the wisewoman tightly. “Don’t you dare speak of dying. You look hale as ever, God be thanked.”

  Merwynna held her away and looked into her eyes. “Aye, lass, and so do ye.” She glanced at Roger, who had also dismounted. He was trying to coax Frances away from the lake.

  “So.” Merwynna strode over to the little girl. “And this is the bairn who insisted upon getting a start in her mother’s belly long before her parents were wed?”

  “She’s a spirited lass who knows her own mind, just like her mother,” said Roger with a grin. He lifted the child so Merwynna could get a better look at her.

  “Who-dat?” Frances demanded, pointing a chubby finger at Merwynna.

  “That, my girl, is a witch.”

  “Roger, you’ll frighten her!”

  But Frances must have shared her mother’s mettle, for she tilted her head to one side and examined Merwynna with her round green eyes, not seeming intimidated at the idea of coming face to face with a witch. Merwynna crooked a finger at her, and Frances laughed.

  Inside the cottage, Roger played with his daughter on the floor while Alexandra sat at the herb table with Merwynna and caught up on the local gossip. “And the birth?” Merwynna asked, casting a knowledgeable glance at Alexandra’s once-again slender figure. “I had hoped to be with ye for that. Did all go as it should?”

  “It was horrible,” Roger said. “She insisted on coming on a short voyage with me and gave birth at sea, three weeks early, with no woman to attend her. There was only my physician, Tom Comstock, to assist in the birthing. I was terrified she would die.”

  Alexandra laughed. “In sooth, he suffered more than I. ‘Twas easy, Merwynna. And Tom proved very skillful, for a man.”

  The wisewoman muttered her disapproval. Men were useful for getting a babe into a woman’s belly, she declared, but good-for-nothing when it came to getting it out.

  “The Voice was right about so many things, Merwynna,” Alexandra mused. “There’s only one thing I still don’t understand.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “What saves us? Do you remember? You said I would have to learn that for myself.”

  “Ye have. Ye know the answer now.”

  “No, I don’t. It’s not reason. It’s not even not self-knowledge. What then? Faith? Hope? Courage? Fortitude? Or perhaps the ability to forgive?”

  “All those things,” said Roger, listening to the conversation from the floor. “And children, too. Watching the joy my daughter takes in life has given me a new outlook on things.” He smiled as Frances toddled to the doorway, pointing excitedly at a bird that was pecking seeds from the ground in front of the cottage. The child clucked in imitation of the bird, then laughed at the sound of her own voice.

  “Look at her—so eager to discover all that life has to offer. We were all like that once—proud, determined, unafraid. We have the capacity to be like that still.” He paused, then added, “One thing I’ve learned is that nothing is ever lost. We grow and change, but we need not be alienated from our former bright and carefree selves.” He reached for Alexandra’s hand. “With you, pretty lady, I am able to recapture that early confidence and joy.”

  “And I with you,” she told him, leaning down to steal a kiss.

  “The babe is fleeing out the door,” Merwynna noted. “Never mind,” she said, as both parents reluctantly started to their feet. “I will play with her for a time. Try my mattress. ‘Tis fully as soft as it was the first time the two of ye made carnal use of it.”

  “Merwynna—” Alexandra was blushing.

  “Go to it,” the wisewoman advised, chuckling. “The time is ripe for ye to conceive again, and I would deliver yer next babe myself. ‘Twill keep me alive for another nine months.”

  Then she chased out after Frances, closing the cottage door securely behind her.

  “Well,” said Alexandra, grinning at her husband, “how can we refuse?”

  Roger wasted no time in dragging her over to the mattress in question. He loosened her thick red hair, which had grown down below her shoulders again, and caressed it in his sweet, hot way. “I wouldn’t dream of refusing,” he said as he pressed her lovingly down beneath him.

  On the way back to the castle, they stopped briefly at the old Norman church where they had wed. They were surprised to discover the changes there. Although Alan and Pris were Reformers who did not worship here, this had not prevented them from restoring the interior to its former grace and beauty. Alexandra was deeply moved to see that the tapestries, altar cloths, and sacred hangings had been replaced. Some of these had been embroidered, she would swear to it, by Pris’s skillful needle. There were fresh flowers on the altar, and no dust at all in the cracks surrounding the stone that led below, to the burial crypt.

  “Look, Roger.” She laid the napping Frances gently on one of the front pews. “Alan has found his calling indeed. This place is immaculate.”

  “He’s certainly dusting off the Trevor family name. ‘Tis a pity he’s not the lord of the manor. He obviously cares a good deal more about all this than I do. Maybe I ought to have let them hang me, after all.”

  She elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “No, my dear baron. The arrogant title suits you. But while you are lording it about in London and—knowing you—on the high seas, Alan can live here at Whitcombe performing all the mundane tasks that you despise.”

  “And you, I suppose, are going to remain here in the country like a dutiful wife, breeding yearly and raising my children to be proper little lords and ladies?”

  When she laughed the stone walls echoed the merry sound. “Do you truly expect to turn me into a dutiful wife at this late date?”

  His brown eyes were twinkling as he feigned despair. “I seem to have made a tactical error somewhere along the way, beloved. You have lost sight of the fact that a woman’s husband is her lord and master. Even Mary Tudor bowed in submission before Philip, her husband.”

  “Perhaps. But Mary Tudor never rescued her husband from prison, and I doubt very much that she ever had occasion to hold a knife to his throat and order him to pleasure her. ‘Tis difficult,” she teased him, “to bow down in submission to a man you have ravished!”

  He gripped her wrist and jerked her none too gently against him. He pressed a rough kiss upon her lips, then let her feel his teeth on the side of her throat. “Now that our travels are over for a time, I intend to devote myself to taming the shrew I have married.”

  “Indeed, sir? How?” She rubbed against him and raised her eyebrows wickedly at his response. “Ready again, are you? And I thought I’d had the best of you not an hour ago in Merwynna’s cottage.”

  “You’d best stop that before I commit a highly disrespectful act right here in the church.”

  More soberly she said, “The ch
urch could use more acts of love, I think. And fewer acts of pride, cruelty, and intolerance.”

  “You are right in that, Alix.” He slipped her hand into his as they walked up the chancel steps to the altar. “Do you remember meeting me here three summers ago? You were praying for Will.”

  “And you had just returned after ten years’ exile. I thought you were a ghost.”

  “And I thought you were an angel. A lovely flame-haired angel with a beautiful, sensual body. I desired you immediately. You, an innocent Amazon virgin. For months you tormented me.”

  “I wanted to be your wife, while you thought of nothing but bedding me.”

  He grinned. “That, my lady, is the way of the world.”

  She squinted at the tablet honoring the dead. Alan had seen to that, too. Two names had been added since that day of Roger’s homecoming. Below the name of Catherine Trevor were those of her son William and her husband, Richard. “Your parents, Roger. I wonder if they have made peace with each other in heaven? And Will and Francis? Are their spirits reconciled now, do you suppose?”

  “Who can tell? I think it wiser to reconcile while we are here on earth, since none of us knows what may or may not await us beyond the grave.”

  She knelt and bowed her head to pray for those whose bodies lay beneath them, and for others, like Francis, who lay they knew not where. Roger knelt beside her and added his prayers to hers.

  “‘Tis strange,” he observed after several minutes of silence. “I feel a lightness of the heart. Perhaps I have finally forgiven them—my father and mother for tearing me apart between them, Will for being first and most precious to my father, Francis for putting me first with such a vengeance, Celestine for dying, even Geoffrey for his own tragic obsession with her.”

  “So many deaths. What, I wonder, has preserved us, who are no less sinful than they were?”

  “What saves us?” he said wryly. “You do know the answer, Alix. ‘Tis all the things you mentioned to Merwynna, and something else.” He looked into her green eyes. “So faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”