“Joanna!” Graeham screamed from the top of the stairs, then lapsed into a fit of coughing.
He barely heard her through the roar of the flames and the closed door. “Graeham?”
“Oh, God, Joanna!” She was alive!
“Graeham, go! You can’t help us.”
“No! I’m not leaving you there. I’m coming in.”
Another ceiling beam crashed down in front of them; sparks exploded; thatch rained down in burning clumps. Graeham backed up a step, flinching from the heat of the flames and the knowledge of what he had to do.
He had to clear a path into the solar and get them out.
There were three fallen beams blocking the way, and that door—closed, but, pray God, unlocked. And, of course, the flames that licked the floor, the walls, those beams...
If he made it through to the solar at all, he’d be massively burned.
“You’ll die,” Thomas said.
“Most likely.” But Joanna would live. Ada, too, but Graeham had fixed his thoughts on Joanna as a way of getting through this. He could do this. He would do this, for her.
Graeham sucked in a deep, steadying breath, but that only made him choke.
“You’ll never make it,” Thomas said. “The pain will get to you.”
“I’ve got to try!” he screamed. “Joanna’s in there!”
“I know.” Thomas took off his straw hat and threw it down the stairs. He faced the burning landing with a look of determination, pulled the hood of his cloak down over his face.
Graeham grabbed the leper’s shoulder. “What are you—”
“I don’t feel pain—not in my arms and legs.”
“But, Thomas—”
“I’m going blind, Graeham,” he said, so quietly Graeham almost didn’t hear him.
“Thomas...Christ.”
The leper smiled. “Wish me Godspeed.”
Graeham squeezed Thomas’s shoulder and released it. “Godspeed, friend.”
Thomas hesitated only momentarily before plunging into the flames and the smoke.
Graeham couldn’t watch; he closed his eyes, crossed himself. He heard a thud and a hiss of sparks. Opening his eyes, he saw Thomas moving through the flames like a dark ghost, having shoved the first burning beam out of the way. He grabbed the second with—
“Jesu! Thomas!”
—with his bare hands, his cloak on fire now—
“Thomas!”
—flames crawling up his legs, flickering over him as he threw the beam to the floor and seized the third—
Graeham muttered a prayer as Thomas, his cloak falling away in burning shreds, yanked on the door—
It opened. Thomas lurched into the solar, a living torch, and shrugged off the remains of his flaming cloak, but the rest of his clothes were on fire now, too, and his hair...
A woman screamed, and Graeham saw them through the curtain of flames on the landing, two dark forms on the floor amid the burning thatch and embers drifting down from above. They had a blanket over them. As Graeham watched, Joanna rose and threw the blanket over Thomas as he crumpled to the floor.
Graeham drew in a smoky lungful of air and held it, shielded his face with both arms and hobbled across the burning landing, wishing to God he could run. He felt the scorching heat of the flames, hot stings on his arms and back; by the time he entered the solar, his shirt was on fire. He whipped it off and threw it aside, grateful that his heavier braies were spared.
“Graeham, your hair!” Joanna whipped off her veil as she leapt to her feet and patted Graeham’s head with it.
There came a groan of splitting wood, followed by a thunderous crack as first one rafter, then another, came smashing down at the rear of the solar in a spray of sparks. A red hot ember landed on his bare shoulder; he flinched
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Looking around wildly, Graeham saw that the narrow bed against the wall was untouched by flames. Limping over to it, he hauled the mattress off, dragging it through the doorway and onto the landing. “Come on! We haven’t got long.”
“Thomas can’t walk!” Joanna said. “Neither can Ada.”
“I can make it,” Ada said weakly, struggling to her feet. She looked so young, so frail, but very determined.
“Joanna, you help Ada,” Graeham gasped out as he wrapped the listless Thomas in the blanket. “I’ll take care of Thomas.”
“Leave me,” Thomas moaned. His face was charred and blistered, his hair burned off.
“I can’t do that, friend.” Hauling Thomas onto his shoulder, Graeham herded Joanna and Ada through the doorway, over the mattress and down the stairs, following with halting steps. From behind came a deafening crash, and another, as the roof of the solar caved in.
As they stumbled down the two flights of stairs, Graeham heard voices and the splashing of water. At the bottom, he found the front door open, and some of the neighborhood men throwing buckets of water on the fire.
The men helped them into the street, where they collapsed on the crumbling paving stones, gulping lungfuls of fresh air. Ada lay curled on her side, her eyes squeezed shut, coughing raggedly. Thomas lay still as death except for his chest, which rose and fell with every rattling breath.
Amid the mayhem of men running with buckets and shouting to each other, Graeham gathered Joanna in his arms, trembling in the wake of a tide of feeling that squeezed his throat until he could barely speak. “I was so afraid for you,” he whispered into her hair, his voice hoarse, his heart pounding. “Oh, God, I...”
I love you. I love you so much. Too much.
He mustn’t tell her, he knew, mustn’t give voice to that which he had no right to feel. He could offer her nothing, promise her nothing. To declare his feelings under the circumstances would be a cruel self-indulgence that would only end up hurting them both.
The knowledge that she had a right to the truth about Phillipa and Oxfordshire, that he was honor-bound to tell her, weighed heavily on him. He should tell her to her face, but he doubted he’d be able to summon the strength for that. The less painful—albeit more shameful—option would be to write her after he returned to Normandy.
She whispered something against his shoulder that he could barely hear over the chaos surrounding them. “I love you.” Was that what she said, or was it merely what he wanted her to say, despite his better judgment?
He didn’t answer her, just held her tight, wishing he never had to let her go.
* * *
Rolf le Fever, strolling through the central aisle of the cavernous silk traders’ market hall, deserted for the midday dinner hour, thought he smelled smoke.
It was a common enough smell in London, what with the close-packed dwellings roofed in straw and reeds and lit with open flames. And if the weather was dry and the wind strong, a fire that might otherwise have consumed but one or two houses could sweep through the city with demonic speed, destroying whole wards before it was brought under control.
Rolf had been five years old the last time London had been ravaged by such a fire. For the next decade, his family had lived in the undercroft beneath the charred remains of what had once been one of the finest homes in London while his father worked at rebuilding his silk business—for every last bolt of his stock had burned up with the house. To be reduced to living in a cellar after knowing such prosperity had deeply shamed his parents, and the shame had rubbed off on him. As a boy, he used to dream of riches and respectability, of the grand life he would enjoy when he grew up and became a mercer himself—the fine house, the elegant clothes, the jeweled saddles and furnishings, and most important, the right kind of wife, a girl of noble blood.
He was successful now, by God. He had everything he’d ever wanted...except, of course, for the right kind of wife. That lying dog Gui de Beauvais had cheated him out of that which he’d most longed for, God damn his soul to eternal torment.
Rolf paused and unfisted his hands, took a deep breath. He mustn’t think of all that now. This was his time of day, h
is special time, when the mercers and their customers went home for dinner and he had the entire hall to himself. He relished having this quiet time to wander up and down the aisle and admire the dazzling silks hung like overlapping pennants in the booths to either side of the vast enclosure.
Noontime sun streamed into the booths through small windows high in the stone walls, highlighting the satin sheen of the richly-hued samites and the coinlike seals woven into the ciclatons. The sunlight particularly enhanced the gossamer beauty of the sendals, airy and translucent as the wings of faeries, and the orphreys, shot through with gold and silver threads.
Rolf paused at his favorite booth, that of a Florentine merchant who specialized in silks dyed the sumptuous shades of red for which his region had become renowned. These were the silks he’d most admired as a boy, and they still struck him, every time he laid eyes on them, as almost wickedly beautiful, as if they’d been soaked in the blood of angels. They hung in all their vivid splendor from the ceiling rafters to the floor of beaten earth, dozens of them in shades of scarlet, rose, violet, vermillion and every possible variation. He glided his hand from one to the other, watching them ripple and quiver as he stroked them.
“Rolf.”
He turned, not expecting to hear a woman’s voice in the empty market hall and surprised—nay, astounded—at who that woman turned out to be. “Elswyth?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. She’d put on weight, and...
Jesus Christ, was that a sleeping shift she had on? And a filthy one, at that.
“What the devil are you wearing, Elswyth? What are you thinking of, going out dressed like that?”
She had a wineskin looped across her chest. Ducking her head, she lifted it off and uncorked it. “I’ve come to toast our future together.”
He snorted. “Our future? Our future? What are you talking about, woman?”
“Our future. You and I.” She held the wineskin out to him, her eyes as oddly shiny and fixed as dark little glass beads.
“You and I?” The woman was bereft of her senses; there could be no other explanation. “Elswyth, you and I have no future together.”
“Then why did you tell me you wanted to marry me?”
Did he? He couldn’t remember; he said that sometimes, to soften them up. “‘Twas a long time ago, Elswyth.”
“‘Twas but a year ago, Rolf. You told me you wanted to marry me.”
Rolf sighed. “Well, then, I’m sure I did at the time, but sometimes things don’t work out as one—”
“I gave myself to you.”
“Yes, well—”
“Because you told me you wanted me for your wife.”
“Elswyth—”
“And then, not two weeks later, you left for Paris. And when you came home, it was with her.”
He laughed bitterly. “Believe me, my dear, I’m no more pleased about that particular turn of events than you are. ‘Twas a mistake, and I regret it with all my heart.”
“Verily?” Her eyes lit with human animation for the first time.
“Would that I’d never met the woman, much less married her.”
“She stole you from me.” Elswyth stalked toward him; he backed up into the floating silken banners. “I was devastated.”
“‘Twas...complicated,” Rolf hedged, remembering how eagerly he’d negotiated the union with Ada, sight unseen, so excited was he at the prospect of being wed to the daughter of a baron.
“She was young and beautiful,” Elswyth persisted, showing her little yellow teeth, “but unscrupulous. She stole a man who was promised to another. She tempted you. You couldn’t resist her.”
“Quite right,” Rolf said, seizing upon her rather skewed but opportune perspective. “I was as much a victim in all this as you, my dear. Now, if you’ll excuse—”
“‘Tis exactly as I thought—which is why I took the steps I took.”
Rolf hesitated, not sure he wanted the answer, but unable to resist asking. “What steps?”
She smiled as if at a slow-witted child. “You didn’t really think a rheum of the head could last six months, did you?”
Rolf stared at this demented woman in her dirt-stained shift, this...this apothecary who’d prepared his wife’s tonic every day for six months. He backed up a little further, into the cool caress of silk; she closed the distance. “That was no infusion of yarrow,” he said, both appalled and impressed.
“Oh, it was,” she assured him. “Olive made it up in four-pinte batches all winter.”
“Then...what...”
She smiled. “Have you ever heard of woman’s bane?”
“Woman’s...I...I don’t believe I’ve—”
“Most folks call it wolf’s bane, or sometimes leopard’s bane, but I prefer woman’s bane, because it can be so handy for solving a woman’s problems.” She laughed; there was a slightly frantic edge to it. “It comes from the root of a plant called monkshood. The ancients called it the Queen Mother of Poisons. Do you want to know why?”
“Nay.” It couldn’t be. It was impossible. He’d always thought of Elswyth as rather soft and dull-witted, a woman who would yield to him and then go placidly about her business until he was ready for her again. Could he have misjudged her so dramatically?
“A tiny bit of woman’s bane,” Elswyth said, “a very tiny bit, can help folks to sleep and take away pain. But just a tiny bit more can make a person sicker than they’ve ever been, and in the proper dose, ‘twill bring on a swift and rather unpleasant death. That’s why Olive doesn’t even know I grow it out back. I don’t keep it in the shop—I go out and dig it up as I need it.”
“As you need it.” Rolf appraised her soiled shift, the dirt imbedded under her nails and caking her feet. No doubt she’d dug up a little bit every day for the past six months.
“At Christmastide,” Elswyth said, “Master Aldfrith told me your wife had a rheum of the head and needed a daily dose of yarrow. Every day, before Olive brought the tonic over, I’d set her to some chore and slip just a wee bit of woman’s bane into the phial. Olive never knew. Neither did anyone else.”
“And Ada just got sicker and sicker.”
She laughed again, shrilly. “Don’t you see how perfect it was? When the time came, I could give her enough to finish her off, and everyone would think she’d just wasted away. And with that scheming little bitch dead of natural causes, you’d be free to marry me.”
“Why are you here telling me all this?” he asked, thinking it seemed foolish of her to divulge her chicanery to anyone, even him, and convinced now that Elswyth was no fool. Mad as a ferret, mayhap, but no fool.
Elswyth’s dark little eyes turned hard and glassy again. “Six weeks ago, Olive told me there was a man coming to your house at compline that day to take your wife to Paris—a serjant named Graeham Fox.”
“Ah.”
“Ah,” she mocked. “Well, naturally, I couldn’t have that. How could you marry me if you had a wife living in Paris? That bitch had to die, not just go away.”
“As it happens,” Rolf said appeasingly, unnerved by the lunatic glare in her eyes, “he never came back for her.”
“Only because I saw to it that he wouldn’t.”
Rolf just stared at the woman. By Corpus, he had underestimated her.
“You know, you can find almost anything you want in West Cheap,” she said. “I made some inquiries and found three men willing to crack Serjant Fox’s skull open for the fifty marks he’d be carrying.”
So that’s why that bastard never showed up that evening. His respect for Elswyth increased tenfold. “Did they do it? Did they actually kill him?”
Elswyth smiled with her mouth but not her eyes. “He never came back, did he?”
An incredulous little giggle bubbled out of Rolf’s chest. “God’s tooth, woman. You’d go to such lengths just to marry me?”
“It meant everything to me. So you can imagine my dismay this morning when I found out what you’ve been up to with my daughter
.”
His giggle turned high-pitched, nervous. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking a—”
“I know everything, Rolf, including that she’s carrying your bastard. I heard it from her own lips.”
Shit. He shrugged negligently, contorting his mouth into what he hoped would look like a charming, boyish grin, although he’d never been very good at those. “What can I say, my dear? I’m a man, and Olive...”
“She tempted you.”
“Yes. Precisely. She tempted me, and I couldn’t re—”
“I still want you, you know.”
Jesus Christ. “Ah. Yes. Marvelous.”
“I need you,” she said. “I need to be with you always. Forever.”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s still the little problem of my wife.”
“Your wife isn’t a problem anymore.”
He swallowed hard. “Nay?”
“Nay. I’ve taken care of her, just now. She’s gotten what she deserved all along.”
“She’s...” The air went out of Rolf’s lungs. Could it be true? A strange giddiness overtook him. Was he free, at last, of the sickly, baseborn little wife who’d been such a vexing cross to bear?
“She’s dead. You’re a widower. You could remarry whenever you want.” She held the wineskin out to him. “Come—drink with me to our future together.”
He retreated yet further into the comforting embrace of the silken banners, eyeing the wineskin warily. Claims of devotion aside, the woman was a raving loon. “How do I know what’s in there?”
Another hysterical little burst of laughter. “You think I’d want to poison you? Here.” Holding the wineskin to her mouth, Elswyth swallowed down a generous portion of its contents, then handed it to him.
Reassured somewhat, Rolf took a tentative sip. It was a cheap, overly sweet vintage, but there was nothing unusual about it, no hint of adulteration. He drank more, eager to soothe his strained nerves.
“How did you administer the lethal dose of—what is it?—woman’s bane?” Rolf asked.
Elswyth cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard him right. “Lethal dose? No, no, no, I didn’t kill her with poison.”
Rolf paused in the act of squeezing some more wine into his mouth. He swallowed slowly. “I don’t understand. You said you were going to—”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 31
