To Chase the Storm

by Kimberly Cates

  He gritted his teeth, his fingers reaching instinctively for the glistening ring that had always dangled from the chain about his throat, but the bit of jewelry was gone; Rafael had entrusted it to a stone-faced guard with a plea to smuggle it to Don Gualterio de Bautista y Aligar, Bastion's father. The stalwart grandee was Rafe's only hope, the single weapon he held that might be able to pierce the secret prisons of the tribunal.

  When that guard vanished, Rafael's fragile last hope had faltered. The ring was no doubt worth a fortune to a man of the guard's humble means. And in truth, Rafe could scarce blame him for running off with it and forgetting the man who had pressed it into his hand.

  For in the dungeons of the Inquisition, it was easy to forget... forget the glow of the sun, the cream-crested sapphire waves of the sea, to forget your very name...

  Rafe shuddered. He had heard tales of those who had never escaped the inquisitors' grasp, who were not even granted the release of death. There were whispers of men grown old within these dank walls, living skeletons cackling away in their insanity.

  Would that be his fate? Tessa's? To be entombed here forever?

  No, not Tessa's. Encina was too eager to cause pain for another Santadar, too eager to have his name honored for capturing King Philip's supposed tormentor. The cursed bastard would do anything in his power to bring about Tessa's death. And within these walls, Encina's power was akin to God's.

  With a curse, Rafe flung himself at the heavy door, venting his frustration and fury against the thick portal. Pain shot through his shoulder, and he clenched his jaw against the groan that rose to his lips—then suddenly all sound died within Rafe's throat, silenced by the harsh grating of the door swinging open.

  Rafe staggered back, blinded by the light as a torch was thrust into the aperture. "Captain Rafael Santadar? Known as Phantom of the Midnight Sea?" a gruff voice demanded. The torchlight dripped orange over a flowing black mantle, but a voluminous hood concealed the man's features in shadows.

  "Go to hell!" Rafe snarled, hating all who lurked within these evil walls.

  "I tried." A strange, suppressed amusement in that voice sent a spear of disbelief through Rafe's body. "But I confess, mi compañero, that the devil would not have me."

  "No... impossible. It is impossible," Rafe gasped, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the cell wall. "They have finally driven me mad."

  "There is nothing new in that, Rafael," the voice teased. "I've said you were crazed from the day I met you."

  Heart racing in his chest, Rafe reached out and yanked back the man's hood. The earth seemed to crumble beneath Rafe's feet as he gaped in disbelief and wonder at a sight he had never hoped to see again—the rakehell grin of Bastion de Bautista y Aligar.

  * * *

  Tessa struggled to stiffen her spine, her chin jutting in defiance as she walked between the two men guiding her through the maze of corridors that wound through the prison. Not a word had they said when they unlocked her cell door, their eyes gleaming like rat's eyes beneath their shelf-like brows. Their lips had been wet, glistening and eager, the stench of sweat and filth clinging to their thick bodies, their hair hanging in strings slick with oil.

  Tessa fought the urge to plead with them, to beg to know where she was being taken. Images of the torture Encina had promised her raked at her courage, but she clenched her fists, the manacles cutting not half so deep into her flesh as her resolve to meet her fate with a courage befitting Rafael Santadar's woman.

  Where was her bold sea phantom? Was he still tormenting himself with guilt, driving himself mad with his plot to gain her freedom? Even during the eternity she had suffered in the suffocating darkness of her cell, the most excruciating torment of all was imagining Rafe—proud, noble Rafe—enduring the skittering rats, the coarse, meager food, and the endless echoing silence.

  And most unbearable of all was the certainty that she would never touch him again, never again see his beautiful solemn-sweet mouth, unless it was twisted by agony.

  "Santadar is dead to you..." She could still hear Encina's snarl.

  Yet she knew that could never be, for Rafael lay deep within her heart. She remembered when he had told her the story of his mother's fierce courage as the wounded Anne had carried her bleeding son across miles of rugged terrain to get him to safety. Love had given Anne St. Cyr Santadar that superhuman strength, made her able to work a miracle—love for her husband, love for her son.

  And love for that child, grown into a man, would steel Tessa's own courage in the ordeal to come.

  The guard grumbled something she did not understand. Then the man straightened his slumped form as they neared a grand archway.

  A torture chamber? she wondered with a shudder of panic. Nay. Light from magnificent windows gilded the room, and even from a distance Tessa could see astonishingly rich furnishings—gleaming and smooth, carved of teak and oak.

  She struggled to shake free the webs of confusion, the interminable days of darkness and despair having dulled her senses. If this was not a torture chamber, then what was it?

  The guard prodded her forward, and she stumbled into the room, her gaze sweeping tapestries and paintings of saints and martyrs—Saint Stephen, his flayed skin delicately draped over one outstretched arm; Sebastian, his flesh bristling with arrows; Catherine, bound to the torturer's wheel.

  Despite their grisly fate, the countenances of the saints had been wrought with a serenity that grated on Tessa's nerves. They all were smiling, their eyes turned up to their God. Yet Tessa knew full well that God could not hear her within these walls that were supposedly his own.

  "Tessa of Ravenscroft." The resonant voice made her gaze snap to a long table stretching the length of the room. Four men garbed in flowing white sat behind it. Her gaze clashed with that of Lucero Encina. The hated inquisitor looked so solemn, so holy, she would have given anything for an opportunity to crack her palm against his smug, evil face.

  "You have been brought before the holy tribunal to answer charges of heresy," a stern, gray-haired man announced. "The heresy of witchcraft."

  As Tessa let her gaze sweep the faces of her captors, she could see in their eyes that she was already condemned.

  She let a bitter laugh break from her lips and took refuge in the biting wit that had always served as her shield from fear. "Sir, if I were a witch, do you think I would still be languishing here? I would have cast a spell to spring open the locks long ago."

  All the men behind the table, save Encina, went pale and began, in their harsh voices, to babble in a tongue she could not understand, but she sensed that her hasty words had frightened the men before her.

  When she glanced at Encina, his eager grin chilled her.

  He rose from his seat, steepling his hands before him as he watched her. "Strange, witch, that you should say that. A spell to spring wide prison doors? Perhaps you could reveal to us how your devil-spawned powers allowed you to do just that."

  "To do it? I said that if I were a witch, I would have done it."

  "Perhaps you do not waste your sorceress's spells upon your own worthless life, slathering them instead upon that of your demon lover."

  Tessa felt her belligerence melting beneath that opaque, evil gaze. Confusion battled with the odd sensation that she was treading across a bottomless lake sheened over with the thinnest sheet of ice.

  "I have no demon lover."

  "You deny having spent many nights in Captain Rafael Santadar's company—and in his bed, mistress?" Encina goaded her. "And heed well your answer, for I saw with my own eyes his lust for you."

  "Nay. I do not deny... sharing Captain Santadar' s bed. But even you, Encina, cannot think him a demon. He is a captain who warred so valiantly for your cause but a few weeks past, a man who lost his ship and nearly lost his leg from the wounds he suffered in the fighting." She turned pleading eyes to the implacable faces of the other men. "Please listen to me. Rafael Santadar is known throughout your country for his honor, his courage
. He has battled your foes, spilled his blood in your king's name. I swear to you that I am no witch, but I am even more certain that Rafael Santadar has never committed the dark sins with which Encina charges him. He is innocent."

  "And if he is a truly innocent, honorable man, as you claim," Encina purred, "would you not agree that his most fierce desire would be to face his accusers and clear his name?"

  "He will," Tessa flung at Encina, her gaze slashing again to the other white-robed men. "And when Rafael Santadar is brought before you, when you look into his eyes, you will be unable to believe this wicked man's lies."

  An ugly chuckle rumbled from Encina. "I fear that will prove most difficult."

  Tessa blanched, terror that Rafe might already lie dead racing through her. "Why, blast you?"

  "Because your bold, noble captain has turned coward and fled."

  Tessa felt the blood drain from her face as waves of dizziness pressed down about her. "Rafe... is free?" Relief shot through her; her eyes filled with tears of gratitude and joy.

  "Sí. But then, you knew that, did you not?"

  Tessa's gaze snapped back to Encina's, and she felt the jaws of a subtle trap spring closed about her. "Nay, I did not."

  "Did you not say moments ago that if you were a witch you would weave a spell to fling wide the cell doors of this prison?"

  "It was a jest, to show how ridiculous the charges were. Would I have stood here pleading for Rafe's life if I had known he was free?"

  She shuddered at the triumphant light that glowed in Encina's eyes. She knew in that instant that she had damned herself with her own careless words, even before the evil Encina had shown the other inquisitors Tessa's marionette of the king.

  "You see, my dear brothers, how clever she is?" Encina asked. "Bragging about her powers, trusting that we poor men of God are too dull-witted to see her trickery, to hear her laughing at us."

  "You, Encina? A man of God?" Tessa flung out the question, desperate to drag Encina into hell along with her. "A murderer? A thief? A man who would sell his country's honor to the highest bidder? You killed Ruy Santadar!"

  "Girl, you will silence yourself," the gray-haired inquisitor commanded.

  "Nay, please listen. Encina confessed his crimes to Rafe when we lay imprisoned within the ship's hold. The inquisitor confessed."

  "You should be considering your own confession, English harlot!" Another inquisitor sprang up from the table in outrage. "Do not add to your sins by attempting to soil the name of one we know to be beyond reproach!"

  "Beyond reproach!"

  "Silence!" The roar nearly shattered the magnificent stained-glass windows. "If you value your tongue, girl, you will keep it still, else you might lose it."

  Tessa stared into the faces of her judges, each one bearing features vastly different from the others, but each man's eyes glacial and condemning. It was hopeless. It had been mad to think for even a heartbeat that this accursed tribunal would listen to her.

  Encina strode from behind the table, and Tessa could smell the stench of triumph upon him. His fingers curved beneath her chin, jerking it up so that the light streaming from the window bathed her face.

  "Did I not warn you, my brothers, that this woman is Satan's own angel? Look at her—this English slut, this devil's whore who stole Rafael Santadar's soul and then turned her evil against our king. She has condemned herself from her own mouth. And now I have obtained evidence that will even further damn this woman to the fate she deserves—flames! The flames!"

  Tessa tried to keep the terror from her eyes, seeing in Encina's visage her own hideous death. The inquisitor stalked to the table and yanked from beneath his robes a cloth-wrapped bundle. One long hand jerked the fabric free. The other men started in their seats as wood clattered against wood, their eyes fixing upon the puppet before them. It lay on the table like a battle-flung corpse, grotesque, twisted—more damning than any mere words might be.

  "Look at this proof of her sin."

  Tessa heard Encina's snarl through a haze of despair, her memory filling with an image of the silvery tresses that had wisped about Hagar's aged countenance, the sweet innocent face that another pyre had consumed. And Tessa felt herself letting go of life, of hope, as her gaze focused upon the marionette she had whittled on firelit nights a lifetime ago.

  "We are men of God," Encina's evil voice rang out. "And as such, it is our duty to see that this witch suffers. She must drink of her masters' fire. She must taste of hell, my brothers, from our holy hands, before she is cast into the dark angels' domain for all eternity."

  Chapter 15

  It was far too beautiful a day for dying.

  Tessa squinted against the rays of the sun that trembled like liquid gold upon the rim of the horizon. She drank deep of the tang of the sea wind, the heavy, lush scent of leafy trees. She felt the heat reflecting off the baking clay and stucco that lined the rutted streets.

  Warm. The day was so warm and fresh.

  In the weeks that had crawled past as she sat in her stench-ridden cell, she had forgotten what it was like to fill her lungs to bursting with blossom-sweetened air. She had forgotten how bright the sky could be.

  Aye, she had forgotten everything except the ruggedly hewn planes of Rafael Santadar's face, the fierce love that had shone in his eyes, and the wonder of his solemn-sweet smile. Those she had clung to, fingering the memories of their days together like a strand of precious gems, each single stone glittering with its own special magic.

  Rafe's love had been her talisman, weaving about her a web of strength that even the ruthless Encina could not break, though he had tried, curse him to hell. He had tried.

  Tessa flexed her fingers slowly. The muscles in her arms throbbed with pain from harrowing hours when the inquisitor attempted to force from her a confession implicating Rafe.

  "He has escaped you. You cannot reach him!" she had cried out. Encina had only snarled that Santadar would never escape him.

  And Tessa had known with a grinding sense of doom that the inquisitor was right. Encina would not even have to bestir himself to seek Rafe out in order to capture his quarry, for her bold sea phantom would never rest until the man who had murdered his parents and sent his lady to the flames had died beneath Rafe's own sword.

  The thought sent fresh dread through Tessa, and she glanced about her, as though expecting to see some sign of the tall seafarer, some glimpse of indigo eyes spitting rage as he attempted to wrench her from Encina's grasp.

  It would be impossible, Tessa knew, for anyone to be rescued from this atrocity of pomp and splendor, this terrible majesty that was the auto-da-fé.

  Yet Rafe's words echoed back at her, taunting her with his fierce promise: "They'll not break you because of me. I'll find a way to come for you."

  "Nay, Rafe." She whispered the plea, her throat aching with unshed tears. "Even a sea phantom could not steal through this madness, especially with Encina's wolves circling all about me."

  Her gaze flicked to the two burly guards who had escorted her to the tribunal's chambers and who now stood watching her with salacious eyes. Wicked knives were sheathed at their thick waists, daggers were thrust into their boots, and their meaty fists flexed as though they were eager to plunge into the fray. They were waiting, eager and alert, for someone to try something futile, desperate. They were hoping.

  Yet even the sick light within their twisted faces did not rack Tessa with half the horror she felt as her eyes roved past the small courtyard in which the "penitents" waited. Beyond it she could see the huge dais that had been erected to afford an honored few a better view of the spectacle. Thick stakes surrounded by mounds of faggots dotted the earth below the dais like festering sores. A crude street cut a path through the houses to the place where the ceremony of death was to take place, and that narrow, muddy ribbon of road was thronged with the pious, come to watch Satan's minions die.

  Bile rose in Tessa's throat. How could they watch this without retching? How could they look up
on these, the damned, the poor unfortunates who had fallen beneath the Inquisition's fury without wondering what it would feel like to wait here for the horror to begin, robed as though for a bridal bower?

  A chill swept over Tessa as her eyes scanned the other pathetic prisoners who also awaited execution. Twelve of them there were, a motley gathering attesting to the far-reaching power of the Holy Office.

  An aged man, his face carved with the features so typical of Spanish nobility, stood erect beside the gate, as if impatient to have the infernal business done. A boy of about sixteen stood in the man's shadow, his whole body trembling as he looked out at the crowds choking the street. A young woman with huge eyes fingered a lock of pale hair so fine it could only have come from a child. Tessa felt her chest tighten as she imagined the poor woman's babe, sobbing for the mother who would never again croon lullabies or chase away the nightmares with her kiss. And the others, too many others, with faces that blended into one mass of silent horror.

  Loathing raced through Tessa as she watched the priests move among the condemned, attempting one last time to break their will and make them fall to their knees before Spain's unyielding God in the minutes before they faced death.

  And what would it matter? Tessa thought bitterly. She had heard the young boy plead with the priest, repent for crimes so absurd that she would have laughed had she not been choked with horror. The boy had embraced "the true God," begged for mercy—and the Inquisition's twisted mercy had been accorded him. The priest, that smug, sanctimonious bastard, had passed an approving hand across the lad's head, promising that he would be strangled at the pyre before they lit the flames.

  Tessa smoothed chill fingers down the pristine white folds of the San Benito that covered her body. The richly embroidered robe seemed to jeer at her about the horrors to come. Flames stitched in red by the hands of dainty Spanish girls writhed upward upon the snowy cloth, and hideous faces contorted with agony seemed to claw their way through the blaze that consumed them. The robe was a signal telling all who watched that this prisoner was to die racked by the full agony the flames could offer—burned alive for her sins.