The walkways were wet and muddy. A tree branch, blown down during the storm, lay near the iron gong. Raindrops splattered on Bellona’s helm as she walked beneath the trees. The heads of the roses, heavy with rain, drooped on their long stems, mourning the Mistress’s passing.
The guards posted at the double doors leading to the Mistress’s quarters came to attention as Bellona approached. Their salutes, usually snapping with energy, were slower, more solemn. They moved quietly, muting all sounds.
“Daniela, what has happened?” Bellona asked in a low voice.
“I know nothing for certain, Commander,” the soldier replied softly. “This morning, when we came on duty, one of the sisters came to us to say that you must be summoned immediately.”
“One of the sisters,” Bellona repeated. “You do not know which one?”
“She was veiled, Commander,” said the soldier. “Her face was covered.”
“Then the Mistress must be dead,” said Bellona. The sisters would all wear veils in mourning for the Mistress, keep their faces hidden from sight for thirty days. “That is what we assumed, Commander.” Poor Melisande, Bellona thought as she entered the darkened hallway. She has had all this to bear alone. How hard it must have been for her, to keep the death watch by herself, to say good-bye. She must be exhausted. And there is still the king to notify and the arrangements to be made for the people of Seth to come to the monastery to pay their homage to the new Mistress. I must see to it that Melisande gets some rest, else she will make herself ill.
At least, there will be no lying in state, no viewing of the body, no funeral.
The Mistress was so important to the safety and security of Seth that the very first Mistress of Dragons had decreed that no one should ever see the Mistress’s dead body.
“It is true that the Mistress of Dragons is mortal,” the very first Mistress had declared. “But she must not be seen to be mortal by those who depend on her for their very lives. They need to know that their future is secure and thus they will only ever see a living Mistress. By my decree, the body of the dead Mistress will be burned immediately after her death, with only the new Mistress presiding, and her ashes scattered over the sacred Eye in the Sanctuary.”
“I always considered that a strange custom,” Bellona remarked to herself, padding soft-footed down the too-quiet hall. “It seemed disrespectful to the dead. But now I understand. If the people saw the corpse of the dead Mistress, they might have doubts. They might be afraid. They might wonder if the new Mistress would be up to the task. This way, they never have a chance to doubt. A new Mistress is already at hand, already caring for them.”
Bellona wondered if Melisande had performed that sad duty. The details of how and where the cremation took place were all highly secret. Only Melisande would know them and she was bound by her sacred oath never to reveal them until she herself was on her deathbed.
With subdued and pitying heart, Bellona came to the door of the Mistress’s quarters. She was not surprised to find it open. Melisande would be waiting for her. She would be grieving the passing, but she would be in control of herself. Bellona had no worries on that score. A brief embrace, their tears mingling, then they would take up their new duties and move on with their lives.
Although it was now morning, a lamp still burned in the room. The heavy curtains remained closed, keeping the room in shadow. As Bellona entered, she cast a glance at the Mistress’s bed.
It was empty. Bellona sighed deeply and blinked back her tears.
A woman with a white, diaphanous veil cast over her head sat at the desk. She might have been writing, for there were sheaves of paper on the desk before her, but the quill had fallen from her hand. She sat in a somber reverie, staring at nothing. She did not turn when Bellona entered, though she must have heard her footfalls, the jingle and creak of her armor.
“Mistress . . .” said Bellona softly and for all her heavy sorrow, her heart sang within her to call Melisande by her exalted new title.
The woman turned her head. Lifting her hands to her veil, she removed it.
Bellona stared in shocked astonishment.
“Lucretta! I didn’t expect. . . Where is Melisande?”
Bellona was puzzled, but not overly concerned, though she did think it odd that, if Melisande required help, she should have sent for Lucretta and not one of the other sisters.
Lucretta had always been jealous of Melisande, dating back to their childhood days. Neither pretty nor charming, possessed of a hostile, cynical nature, Lucretta was one of those people who live in the belief that others are whispering bad things about them. She was tall and spare and lank. Her bony face was twisted in a perpetual scowl, as much as to say, “I know you hate me and therefore I will hate you first.” Though only twenty-eight, she might have been forty. Her frowns had left their mark upon her face.
Her nickname among the soldiers was “the Prune” or sometimes “the Prude” for it was well known that she had never had a lover. She not only rejected any advances, but had acidly lectured those who dared approach her on the sins of the flesh. The only praise that could be given Lucretta was that she was dedicated, heart and soul and body, to the Sisterhood. She had long felt that she should be Mistress. She had long resented the fact that Melisande had been the one chosen.
Lucretta did not answer Bellona’s questions. She regarded Bellona with a supercilious and most unpleasant smirk. A flash of gold sparkled at her neck. She wore a locket that was sacred to the Mistress, worn only by her. A cold qualm shook Bellona.
“Where is Melisande?” she demanded, taking a step forward.
“Well you might ask, Commander,” Lucretta replied haughtily, rising to her feet. “She is gone.”
Her eyes, which were the same washed-out gray as her skin tone, were small and mean and gleamed with some inner pleasure. Lifting her hand, she fondled the golden locket around her neck.
“Gone?” Bellona couldn’t understand the woman. “What do you mean she’s gone?” A thought occurred to her. “She’s attending to the cremation—”
“No, she is not,” said Lucretta. “Melisande is gone from the monastery.” She paused, drawing out the suspense. She was enjoying herself. “Melisande ran off with a man, her lover. He came to fetch her in the night.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Bellona flatly.
Lucretta turned away. Reaching out her hand, she slightly parted the curtains, gazed out the window, as if she might be hunting for the errant woman. “She has been gone for many hours. Who knows where she could be by now?”
Bellona strode across the room. Her fingers itched to seize the woman by her scrawny throat and throttle her.
“Where is Melisande? What have you done to her? Tell me, by the Eye, or I will—”
“You will what, Commander?” Lucretta turned, fixed her gray, gimlet eyes on Bellona. “Lay profane hands on your Mistress?”
Bellona glared, her hands clenched to fists.
“For I am the Mistress of Dragons,” Lucretta continued with detestable aplomb. “I was with the Mistress when she died. I performed the cremation. I scattered the ashes. Melisande abandoned her post. She abrogated her duties. She left the Mistress to die alone. She betrayed the Mistress.”
Lucretta smiled sadly, her tone pity-coated. “She betrayed everyone who ever loved and trusted her.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bellona repeated. “Melisande would never do what you accuse her of doing. She loved the Mistress. She would have given her life for her. She would have never left her to die alone.”
Bellona eyed Lucretta. The woman had changed. She had never been this glib, this articulate. She had never been this commanding.
Bellona took a step closer. “You’ve done something to Melisande. I don’t know what. Murdered her, maybe. You hated her enough for it. I’ll investigate. I don’t care if you are Mistress. And I won’t be the only one. The sisters love Melisande. Everyone loves her. They detest you!”
“What they
think of me is not my concern,” Lucretta replied, with a lofty calm that was maddening to Bellona. “What you think of me is not my concern. Investigate, by all means. You will hurt only your beloved Melisande, not me. For I have proof.”
Bellona dared not lay hands on one of the sisters, but she could intimidate and she did so, pushing forward, using her strong, muscular body to crowd the scrawny woman, shouting in her face.
“Where is Melisande?” Bellona cried. “What have you done with her?”
Lucretta did not move, did not flinch. She gazed impassively into Bellona’s anger-pale eyes and quietly repeated, “I have proof. I will show you if you will get ahold of yourself. Indeed, I must show you. For I am sending you to find her and slay her.”
Bellona stared at Lucretta, searched for the lie in her and could not find it. Bellona’s anger burnt out, leaving her chill and numb, her mouth filled with the taste of ashes. Her heart thudded. She found it hard to breathe, to think. She stood in a stupor, her hands clenching and unclenching, trying to bring some feeling back to her fingers.
“Show me,” she said in a voice dull with pain.
Wordlessly, Lucretta walked out of the Mistress’s chamber. Bellona followed her, not knowing where she was bound, not caring. Her brain offered proof, her heart refuted it. She was forced to believe and yet she couldn’t believe. She knew Melisande, knew her as well or better than she knew herself. Melisande was herself, a part of her. Dearer than friend, closer than sister. Melisande lying in her arms, warm and loving and yielding, sweet kisses in the nighttime, softness and shuddering, breathless passion. Could that have been a lie? Could she, all this time, have been feeling the hands of her male lover? In the aching climax, was it his face she saw? His name she whispered? Was that the true reason for her exhaustion this past fortnight? Had she been meeting him in the night, giving herself to him?
Her suspicions roused, Bellona looked back on their time together and suddenly certain words let drop, certain sentences left unfinished, certain deeds and actions that had been of no consequence were now fraught with sinister meaning.
All very well, logic stated, but how did her lover enter the monastery? Where did they hold their trysts? The monastery was well-guarded. No one knew that better than Bellona, who would stake her very life on the loyalty and skill of her soldiers. A glimmer of hope flickered in the howling darkness of her agony. Let Lucretta explain that, and then she would believe.
She revived enough to note that Lucretta was leading her to the Sanctuary of the Eye. The heat in the chamber was intense. The brazier had been stoked with fuel and laden with incense. Yet, beneath it, Bellona could smell the reek of blood and she very nearly gagged. She saw no signs of charring or any other indication that a body had been burned here, but the stench was unmistakable.
An urn of gold inlaid with silver stood atop the stone altar. Bellona glanced at it, then lowered her eyes in respect. Her turmoil over Melisande had caused her to forget that death had claimed the woman she had loved and honored and revered for so many years. Bellona felt ashamed and guilty and that added to her misery.
Lucretta approached the Eye carved into the floor. Turning, she looked expectantly at Bellona.
“Well?” Bellona said, challenging. “Why bring me here?”
“Look into the Eye,” said Lucretta.
Bellona recoiled. “You know I am not permitted—”
“I give you dispensation. This once. Look into the Eye and see the truth. Unless”—Lucretta added, her lip curling—”you are afraid.”
Bellona stood undecided. She wanted to declare angrily that she wasn’t afraid, that her faith in Melisande and her love would disprove the proof, whatever that might be. Yet, she was afraid, suddenly. Very afraid. The Eye was from the goddess and could not lie and Bellona didn’t want to see. Bellona wanted to hold onto her love, her faith, her pride.
“It is your duty, Commander,” said the Mistress.
Not so many months ago, one of the men chosen for the coupling had managed to sneak a bottle of hard spirits into the monastery. In a drunken fit, he’d begun punching and beating the woman chosen to partner him. Going to subdue him, Bellona found out that he’d also smuggled in a knife. She saw the light flare off the blade, saw it stabbing toward her. She could not dodge the blow. She had to take it, and she had braced herself for the searing burn, twisting her body so that the knife would glance off a rib, not strike to the heart.
She knelt before the Eye.
Lucretta knelt opposite her.
“Reveal what you have seen,” Lucretta commanded.
The images were fleeting and blurred, incomplete, but telling. A man, handsome, a foreigner by his clothes, stood in this very chamber. Melisande was there, white-faced, shivering, looking frightened, near to death, but then she would be, wouldn’t she? She knew the enormity of her crime. He held out his hand to Melisande, and she—wet from the rain, her black robes clinging to her body—ran to him. He swept her up in his arms and carried her . . .
The Eye closed. The images vanished, yet Bellona would see them forever.
Bellona shut her eyes, bowed her head. Her agony was like some ravening beast let loose inside her, clawing at her vitals, tearing at her, slashing and cutting. The pain of loss, of betrayal, was unendurable and if she could have willed herself to die in that moment, she would have done so.
Bellona rose to her feet and with a wrenching effort caged up the beast inside her, muzzled its howls of pain and rage.
“She met him here in the Sanctuary, that is clear enough,” Bellona said with cold and terrible calm. Her gaze fixed on Lucretta. “But how did he get in without anyone seeing him? And where did they go?”
Lucretta stood up, her lank body awkward and ungraceful. Folding her hands over her thin stomach, she pursed her lips.
“The Mistress of Dragons is given knowledge that others are not. I know how he entered and I know how they both escaped. You do not need such information—”
“I do if I’m going to go after them,” Bellona returned, knife-edged.
“No, you do not!” said Lucretta. Her gaze lifted, met Bellona’s. “I’ll show you where to pick up their trail. Come.” She reached out her thin and bony hand, intending to place her cold fingers on Bellona’s. “We will return to my chambers. I have there a map—”
Bellona shifted her feet, avoided the touch.
“Please proceed, Mistress. I will follow.”
Lucretta did so, walking from the sacred chamber with what majesty her spare frame and shuffling gait permitted. Bellona followed, the ravening beast quiet in his cage.
To keep it silent, to keep it from tearing her apart, she began to feed it hatred.
17
BY THE TIME MORNING’S GRAY LIGHT SPREAD OVER the sky, washing out the stars and reducing the shining, globular moon to a pale wafer, flat and insubstantial, Draconas had his two humans safely ensconced in a shallow depression he had found on a cliff side.
Melisande sank to the floor. Sick with the shock and the lingering horror of the dragon’s attack and the terrible thought that she might now be lying in that bloodstained tomb, she could think of nothing but those hands clenched to fists of agony, that mouth opened in its silent scream of pain, the dragon’s claw, the golden locket.
She did not know where she was, could not have said how she came to be here. The flight through the darkness was unreal. These men who were with her were strange and frightening. They had saved her life, but why? What had they come for? Their presence didn’t make sense, it seemed sinister.
She had never been around men much, just those who came to service the cows, and she had always been disgusted by their largeness and their grasping hands and the naked lust in their eyes. Crawling into a corner of the small cave, she sat with her back against the wall, her arms clasped about her, watching the two men warily.
“We should build a fire,” said Edward. “Look at her. She’s shivering.”
His gaze on her was anxious and
worried. He was a comely man, she had to admit. His hazel eyes, with their flecks of sunlight, radiated with admiration for her and that warmed her, in spite of herself, seemed to steal away the horror of the night. He had fought the dragon for her. He appeared open and honest, yet how had he come to be there?
“Too dangerous,” said Draconas.
Dark-eyed and taciturn, saturnine—this man hardly looked at her at all and, on those rare occasions when she caught him regarding her, the expression in his eyes was of cool appraisement, as if considering how to be make use of her.
I have to get away, Melisande resolved. Yes, Edward, you are very handsome and very charming, but I don’t trust you. And I certainly don’t trust your friend. If you think I owe you something for saving me, you are mistaken. I owe you nothing. I owe my people everything. I owe them the truth. I have to return to them, tell them, warn them.
You are tired, she told the two men silently. You will sleep and when you do, I will leave.
She had to put them off their guard. Make them think she was weak and exhausted, which should be easy, she thought with a bleak sigh. She drew her knees up, laid her arms on her knees, her head on her arms. She closed her eyes, shut out the sight of them.
Edward seated himself, easing himself to the ground with a stifled groan.
“Is she all right?” he asked in concern. “She looks so ... ill.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Draconas absently, preoccupied with his own problems. “She’s young and strong. She just needs rest.”
Edward nodded. He had a few problems of his own.
“You should get some sleep,” Draconas advised. “I’ll go fetch the horses.”
“You said it was too dangerous to build a fire. Isn’t it more dangerous to go traipsing about after the horses?”
“I’ll manage,” said Draconas. “I have to. Or do you plan to walk all the way back to Ramsgate carrying her in your arms?”
Edward flushed. His head throbbed. He felt sick and dizzy and angry, rightfully angry. He’d been used, lied to, and it was time to stop. “Answer me this, Draconas. You brought me here to fetch this Mistress, who was supposed to drive away the dragon that threatens my kingdom. And what do we find here—a dragon! And it seems to me you weren’t at all surprised—”
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