Moonlight And Shadow

by Isolde Martyn

  Mercy, how long before the old man took her back? How much drink would they tip down her? She was whispering to Emrys, who beckoned one of the women over; she needed the latrine. At last! Miles slid off the palliasse by the wall and stealthily made his way to the door.

  He heard the women’s voices ahead in the yard. With luck he might get her away now—but two of the Welsh had come out to relieve themselves against the wall. The rain had cleared and a moon, splendid as a pagan scimitar, was free of clouds.

  As Miles stole out to hinder his wife, fierce arms grabbed him and drew him kicking back to the cellar. Rough hands flung him on his front, wrenching his right arm behind his back. Someone seized a flaming faggot from the fire and thrust it towards his head. Miles preferred to breathe in the dust than struggle for air and be recognized.

  “We have a spy, it seems.” Someone thrust back his hood and seized a fistful of hair, trying to make him show his face.

  “Mistress!” Miles mimicked a servant’s shriek, as he heard the women returning.

  The cold air of the passageway must have slapped Heloise’s senses clear, for she pushed in between his captors.

  “Mistress,” he wailed as pitifully as he could, squinting to see Heloise’s face. She was blinking at the sleek, greased hair plastered back from his brow. Was there light enow? Was she sober enough to know him in disguise? Well, if her fey mind was open to messages, she had better receive this one or he was a dead man.

  Heloise wobbled; she put a hand to her mouth and then gave a bubbly laugh. “You think . . . Oh, no, this is my servant,” she spluttered, taking the brand and tossing it back in the embers. “You knave!” She waggled a finger close to his nose. “I told you not to disclose yourself.” Her drunken giggles were not subsiding.

  “What’s he a-doin’ skulkin’ around in the shadows outside?” His captor gave another vicious jerk upon his arm.

  “Let me go, masters,” Miles wailed, his nose pressed hard against the dirt. “Don’t let ’em harm me, mistress.”

  “I thought I could trust you not to bring strangers into our midst, Emrys,” bawled Lewis, no longer indulgent. “And a sais too.”

  “I never saw him afore.” Suspicion larded the old man’s English.

  “No, no, of course you have not,” Heloise answered cheerfully. “He is but late from Kent.” Miles watched like a cyclops as Heloise patted the minstrel’s sleeve. Evidently she had perceived the rivalry between the bards. “Master Emrys, I—I am sorry. No disrespect but I felt I needed a doughtier escort to see me back.”

  “Doughtier! Pah!” Lewis’s guffaw of laughter was reassuring them. “You need a real man, benyw!” His hand patted his codpiece.

  Miles’s arm was freed. He moved it painfully forwards and stayed facedown. The humility irked him but it was safest.

  “Get up, man.” Heloise nudged him with her foot. “They mean you no harm.” He lifted himself onto his hands and knees, blowing his cheeks out sulkily to give his lean face more breadth. His wife sat down again, spreading her skirts, and indicated that he should sit at her feet, so he snatched up his alecup and lumbered across to her, rubbing his face to mask his cheeks and remembering to keep his shoulders bent in servile fashion to hide his true height.

  “Two songs more and then I must leave,” she exclaimed merrily and raised her cup, toasting them all. “My servant will see me back, Emrys. You must stay and sing again. Make music until morning. Here, Tom.” She tilted her cup and poured half its contents into Miles’s.

  His lower lip apucker, he took it sulkily, hoping one of the Welsh lads had not dosed it to make her more amenable. Inside he was thanking God that these musicians were all the worse for drinking. His millstone lady was tapping her foot to the music, and it was easy, sprawled as he was, to slide his hand around her ankle meaningfully. She smiled down at him, clapping her hands, and nodded, but she did not rise.

  His fingers rose above the slender ankle, enjoying the smooth slope of her calf. It was wonderful what modesty that drew forth; as the piece ended, she stood up, trying her nursery Welsh in bidding them “Nos da.” Emrys she bussed upon the cheek and then, sweetly blowing kisses to them all, disappeared up the stairs. With a mumble and a touch of forelock, Miles fled after her and, taking her by the elbow, hurried her across the shining puddles.

  “I did not know you liked Welsh epics,” she giggled when they reached the street.

  “Tell me the one about the foolish English virgin. You should know it backwards.”

  Heloise tried to stamp her foot at him. Grammercy, she had not asked the rogue to hazard a beating! “That is not—”

  “Christ Almighty!” She found herself swung into a doorway with his hand clamped over her mouth. “I risked my life coming after you tonight, madam.”

  “Why in heaven bother?” Heloise retorted in a fierce whisper as he loosened her. His hand had left her with a gravelly taste.

  “Such gratitude. Because, lady simpleton, if you are ravished by a Welshman whoreson in the high street, I shall never be free of you and will have to suffer an egg smelling of leeks in my marital nest.”

  “Well, it would serve you right. Are you going to see me back or are we to huddle here like adulterers while you lecture me all night?”

  “I thought I was a decent Christian man,” he growled, grabbing her hand and hauling her along. “I reckon Job in the holy scriptures was better off.”

  “What’s that to the point?”

  “He mainly suffered boils. Why God has saddled me with such a shrew as you, I cannot fathom.”

  “Because you hang men and dislike children and kill innocent bees.” That retort brought him up short. “And I . . . I rescued you just now, you ungrateful man!”

  “Lady, be quiet! You are making enough noise to bring the watch from Bulith, let alone the next street.”

  “Well, you are ungrateful.”

  “Hush!”

  “Huussssssssh!”

  Miles cursed. His chance of taking her through the streets without discovery looked nigh impossible and if they were found together, he would be stuck in a marital rut with her forever. If he could sober her . . . He hauled her along a laneway towards the river and into a doorway built into the town wall.

  “What is this?” She struggled to free her hand, stumbling in the darkness as he hauled her up a spiral stair into a watchtower.

  “Somewhere to stare at Pen-y-Fan by moonlight while you regain your sobriety. Get down.” A fierce hand forced her to crouch. “I want to make sure we have not been followed.” He stooped beside her, listening intently, and then tensely edged upwards as though he expected a volley of arrows to come flying in if he stuck his head up. “I hope your magical powers run to alarum bells,” he muttered.

  Heloise muffled a giggle. “There is nothing here, sir, but the tylwyth teg, and us.”

  He ducked back down. “Faeries, that is all I need. We have enough problems already from the underworld—of Brecknock, that is. What is so amusing?”

  “You, you are so gloriously serious.”

  “I think you mean sober, which is more than you are.” He played sentry again. “Our luck is in, it seems.” A hand, warm and dusty, located one of hers. “I should have learned by now that danger and you skip hand in hand and it always embroils me.”

  Upright, she untangled her feet and surveyed an enchanted world. Below them flowed the Usk, black as Lethe with the cleared moon broken in shards and glossed upon its waves. Gables and ridges, shingles and tiles all sleek with rain, glinted in silence like an altar painting. Torches burned at the castle but half-heartedly, as though the stones themselves were slumbering. But the wind was blowing from Pen-y-Fan; something was shifting.

  Miles, scanning the gaps of cobble and dirt between the dwellings, was listing lethal possibilities. Murder? Bootcaps and fists applied strategically to rib and groin in reprisal for the hanging? A bloody means to stop the alliance with ap Thomas? Rape of the lily maiden at his side? Why in hell had he bro
ught her up here?

  “Best that we wait a little longer,” he advised and, taking a corner of his damp cloak, wiped the forge dust from his face. They should leave now. What had begun in the orchard had to be withstood now but the ache was growing.

  “There is no harm—yet.” Her words were a soft sigh with the ripple of willow leaves. “I would know . . . and it is all right,” she continued in a steady little voice. “I actually drank very little.”

  Ha, is the earth round? Shapeshifter!

  “I am sorry that I put you at risk,” she ventured softly, as if afraid to leave the abyss of silence between them unbridged. “It was kind of you to come after me.”

  “Kind?” You are my possession. “Lady, I have been at great pains to build up a reputation that will shake some respect out of the Welsh. God knows who is behind this little adventure of ours and it is not over yet. There is still some price to be paid.” His grim tone warned against the perils involved in baiting him. God’s mercy, but he was trying not to imagine the feel of her.

  At his back, the bells of the abbey pealed in another saint’s day.

  “England is full of walls,” she whispered, slithering her fingertips over the sandstone. “Castles, abbeys, towns, anchorite cells . . .”

  Miles understood, or thought he did, but he had no answer; his thoughts were running widdershins, his sideways gaze lingering where it should not. He had seen her in so many forms, like a jewel toppled upon his palm, but now . . . God in Heaven why did she have to look so ethereal and lovely, and stand so damnably close that he could smell her fragrance?

  “But music can steal through walls and conquer kingdoms,” he observed. “That was sedition at work, my lady.”

  “Perhaps, sir, but their songs and voices were so beautiful. ‘Speak gently and bid the sky no more to glower, nor cast a veil across the moon.’ I shall not forget tonight.”

  His mind was reeling. He had tasted loneliness, the river pouring mercilessly through the arc of stones like sand through the glass of time.

  “Nor I,” he added wryly, drawing his cuff across his mouth. “I still have the taste of ashes in my mouth.”

  “Have you no heart, Cysgod?” she chided, laughing, turning to aim small fists playfully against his chest. “Is there no poetry in you tonight?”

  “There is a great deal,” Miles answered, with a Welsh lilt, “and it is mostly Anglo-Saxon and the theme is getting you back to the castle without having our throats cut. As for my heart”—he laughed—“I keep it where the Welsh can’t steal it, see. I advise you to do the same, cariad.” And then he added in his own voice, “Are you cold?”

  “No, please,” she protested, staying his hand from untying his cloak.

  “At least I can keep the cruel wind from you.” Hands, ungoverned by mind, spun her and drew her back against his shoulder. It took all his will to keep his hands armoring her shoulders and prevent them straying where his lips longed to touch; his imagination was divine sedition and utter torture.

  A lady towered with her mortal lord, Heloise held her breath. Loath to cut herself free from the spell that was winding, she felt the hardness of Rushden’s body like a stake against her back. Was this the passion that the saints denied themselves? This other fire kindled beneath her skirts? To confess her heresy would destroy her. Take him now, she could hear her father saying. Make him burn for you. Oh, if she were Dionysia, she would wind a halter of seduction around his neck and press her soft belly against his thighs. But for Heloise Ballaster, there would be no forgiveness in the morning; Rushden would call her passion wanton and her surrender cunning, because to become her lover he must become her husband. Oh, her inexperienced hands were shackled but she wanted to misbehave so desperately, to taste the words of love upon his breath.

  What shall I do? her soul called out across the river to the ancient ones, the faeries that watched over her, and peace came with the rustling of the grasses. Look at the moon, whispered her inner being, is she not a veiled Diana staring out towards the planets, mourning Actaeon?

  “Are you a changeling, Heloise?” The man’s voice at last eased the silence, his words warm against her cheek. “Is that what you believe?” It was a step across the ice. A coil of woven words thrown out might help him reach her.

  With a fragile happiness, she leaned back, surrendering to the moment.

  “I see things ordinary—” She corrected herself: “Others never do.” The answer was here, but this man would not know that, just by standing with her in this stone turret like a king, a spell was being cast.

  “Are there voices in the bells?” Jeanne d’Arc?

  “Not for me.” She shuddered, sheathing her hands into her loose sleeves.

  “You are trembling.” Rushden slid his hands down to clasp hers beneath her breasts. “Not long now.” Until . . .

  “An owl, look!” she exclaimed delightedly as the grey wings skimmed soundlessly past their turret.

  “The lady Bloedeuedd, perhaps,” he said softly, his arms falling lower, hands splaying across her, melding her against his hardness. “Born of flowers, bewitched into an owl for being unfaithful.” His voice was close, so seductively close. “What else do you see?”

  “I—I saw . . . foresaw . . . a fire consuming the thatch beyond the church.”

  Rushden did not answer straightway. “Highly likely,” he murmured. “Do you feel the fire as well as see it?” The fire, yes, she wanted to turn within his arms so badly. “And people, Heloise? The orchard . . .”

  “I felt your mother’s pain.” Her breathing was growing swift.

  “And us, Heloise?” So y Cysgod was hunting in the darkness for the future.

  At least loosened, her silver hair could hide her face as she stared downwards, as if she were watching the torches ignite the wood beneath her. “No, not us. Something else is— I cannot tell.” Wretchedly, she flung herself free. “For there is no pattern, you see, it is more like . . .” She was babbling but . . . “More like a glimpse of a page from someone else’s story and then the book is closed. I do not hold the keys to the clasps either. Nor do I seek the lock. As you warned me yesterday, sir, I might be . . . burned for it.”

  His finger was gentle beneath her chin. “Then tell no one.”

  “I have told no one.”

  “Lady . . . you have just told me. . . . I am your greatest enemy.”

  “But I trust you.” Her eyes were shimmering with more than moonlight.

  “Well, do not.” He lowered his head. “Expediency is the enemy of loyalty and all men are traitors when it comes to—”

  “To what?” The question was a dreamy sigh; the answer . . . a shadow eclipsing heaven. Oh, she wanted this more than anything in her whole life.

  “This.” His fingers tangled in her hair, holding her face to await his pleasure, tantalizing her until she could have screamed for him to kiss her with open lips—and open heart. She would not, dare not beg.

  “Heloise!” He drew his lower lip along hers. She could have tempted Lucifer back to Heaven. His hands fastened possessively around her waist beneath her cloak and slid upwards, marveling at how wonderful she felt, her body sweet and delicate and close.

  “No!” Frail manacles closed suddenly about his wrists. She pulled away, leaving him aroused, unsatisfied. “Think of Myfannwy . . .”

  “Myfannwy! When the moon is out you cannot see the stars.”

  “I do not want to be your mistress,” she protested. “I do not want to be bought a little house in Hereford and have the neighbors whispering, ‘There goes Sir Miles Rushden’s whore—when he can spare the time.’ ”

  Miles did what any quick-witted man would do, pushed beyond endurance, to hush a lovely woman. He kissed her properly. It was his error. Heloise Ballaster tasted of mead—but such flowers, such divinity, that he felt like a god in tasting her. Within the girdle of his fingers, her waist was delicate, and her hair moonlight, celestial fire, about them both. As he deepened the kiss with a tender hunger, i
t was as if a magic surrounded them and some arcane power were touching a taper to pendant drops of light on either side of a path to welcome him to another world. Bewitched, he recognized himself inspired, renewed, as though the shackles that bound him to the humdrum earth were severed one by one.

  “Heloise.” He had never felt like this before.

  As if she understood the raw hunger in his voice, her laughter brushed his mouth and she drew back, her hair tiptoeing upon the fingers splayed against her back.

  Miles had committed sacrilege, yet at whose bidding? “I should not have done that,” he told her and hoped divine forgiveness was possible.

  “No,” she whispered, siren’s fingers running across his lips. “You should not have.”

  Miles felt dazed, lunatic. He took her face once more between his palms and lowered his mouth to hers. His lips told her that he wanted her surrender, that only in his conquest would she find her truth.

  Heloise slid her arms up round his neck and wreathed her fingers into his hair. Her thighs were turning to fire as he kissed her neck, her throat, his hands fondling and stroking with an urgency. He was her destiny, her black, ruthless, desirable knight. The magic suddenly fled and the most profound feeling of evil made her struggle.

  “No.” She pushed at his chest, her heart beating frantically. “Let me go! You must!”

  “Curse you, Heloise.”

  The iron bands of his arms freed her; sweat pearled upon his pale forehead.

  She shrank against the wall, fighting against her soul’s desire, wondering what power had dragged her from him, and struggled to reason.

  “Yes, curse, Miles Rushden. But if I let you take what you do not want, tomorrow you will call me whore and witch.”

  “Come here!” Thirst for her serrated his angry voice.

  “You did this of your own free will,” she exclaimed and sped off down the steps like a fleeing princess. “You said so.”