The Black Rose Chronicles

by Linda Lael Miller

  After a while Father was quiet. Krispin drifted off to sleep, and so eventually did I. On the morrow Mother gave me the book that had started the latest battle, carefully wrapped in her best shawl, and spoke to me in a subdued tone.

  “You bring it upon yourself, Valerian,” she said, pouring water from a ewer into my wooden cup. Father was not in the shop, and Krispin had gone down to the sea at daybreak to watch for ships, the way he always did, so Mother and I were alone. “Always baiting him, always defying him. Why do you do it?”

  I was ashamed, for I knew she had endured much because of my willful nature. “I don’t know,” I answered glumly, tearing off a piece of coarse brown bread for my breakfast. My lower lip was swollen, and it hurt to chew and swallow. I did not express my fear that if I ever stopped rebelling against Father I would instead grovel at his feet, pleading with him to love me.

  She looked upon me sternly, then touched my hair. “Be gone. He’ll be back soon, with the things he needs to put the shop to rights again, and he mustn’t find you here.”

  I nodded, snatched up a second piece of the hard, dry bread, took the manuscript shrouded in poor brown cloth, and started for the door. Matthew Challes, Brenna Afton-St. Claire’s tutor, whom she generously shared with the boot-maker’s boys, disliked laggards and dealt with them severely.

  I was the first to enter the schoolroom, that hallowed, light-filled place, with its rush-scattered floors and windows opening onto a vista of the wild sea, and Challes gasped audibly when he saw me. He was a tall man, taller than I was by the span of my hand, with deep-set brown eyes, a poet’s sensual mouth, and pale skin. There was a faint smattering of pockmarks across his right cheek. “So Noah’s been at you again, has he, lad?”

  I simply nodded and held out the book.

  Challes set it aside, with less reverence than I would have expected, and stooped slightly, eyes narrowed, to study my battered face. “Good God, it’s barbaric. How do you bear it? Why haven’t you run away to London or gone to sea?”

  I could not go from Dunnett’s Head, though I dreamed of it, because I knew my mother would perish if I abandoned her, and because there was someone else I could not bear to leave, but of course I had too much pride to admit the truth. Blessedly, before I could be compelled to make an answer, the Lady Brenna breezed into the schoolroom, and as always, I felt my steady heartbeat turn to a violent thud-thud-thud when I saw her.

  She was fifteen that year, nubile and womanly, and it was generally known that her father, the baron, was seeking far and wide for a suitable husband. He had only two requirements in a prospective son-in-law, as I recall—social rank and a respectable fortune. The contents of the baron’s coffers, never remarkable, had been dwindling rapidly for a generation or so.

  I remember quite clearly that I would have given my immortal soul to be her mate, to bury my hands and face in that wild cascade of lush, red-gold hair, to see myself reflected in those jewel-like green eyes, to press my body against hers, my masculine frame moving in sweet, intimate concert with her soft, lithe one.

  To this day I recall that she was wearing a velvet frock that morning, rendered in a deep blue, and that it was no less beautiful for its shabbiness.

  Seeing me, and my wounds and swellings, she winced in mingled amusement and sympathy. “My poor Valerian,” she said, touching my cheek with a light, cool hand. “When will you learn to steer around trouble instead of sailing straight into the heart of it?”

  I had no answer for her question; I was too busy wondering if she knew what even so innocent a caress did to me. Although my tunic fit loosely and hung to the middle of my thighs, thereby covering any involuntary evidence of my desire for milady, a sidelong glance at my tutor told me he’d guessed the true state of affairs.

  I blushed and pretended I hadn’t seen the mating of mirth and censure in his gaze. I was just opening my mouth to babble something inane to Brenna when Krispin came in, bearing an armload of autumn wild- flowers and grasses and beaming.

  “For you, milady,” he said, holding the gift out to Brenna and following up with a courtly bow. He adored her, as I did, and I wondered if she knew and returned his esteem in even the smallest part.

  The light of pleasure blazed in her eyes, and I was bludgeoned by jealousy.

  It was Challes who interceded, clearing his throat loudly. “Here, now, no more of this nonsense. Sit down, the lot of you, and we’ll begin our lessons.”

  I couldn’t concentrate; the sun was bright and the wind coming up from the sea and swirling through the gapped wooden walls and high windows of the old keep smelled of salt. I dreamed of grand adventures in faraway, exotic lands, with the Lady Brenna at my side, and paid scant attention to my Latin.

  When we were through with our studies, Krispin vanished, as he often did, to explore one of his sea caves or walk the shore, and I lingered just outside the great, sagging gates of the keep, looking at the sea. Being a lad of seventeen summers, I was in no significant hurry to return to my home and spend the remainder of the day helping my father in the shop.

  I had not heard Brenna’s approach, and I was a little startled when she suddenly appeared beside me, holding some of Krispin’s now-fading bouquet of flowers and seagrass to her freckled nose. “Do you dream of leaving here forever, the way your brother does?”

  I smiled, even though I felt an infinite sorrow stir in the depths of my spirit. Yes, I thought. And I dream of taking you with me. “I’d like to see France and the lands beyond,” I conceded, cautious in her presence as always, because her opinion of me meant everything. “What about you, milady? Do you imagine being married and bearing children?”

  A brief, troubled silence followed, during which I suffered the proverbial agonies of the damned, fearing I’d said the wrong thing. She gazed out toward the sea, squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun, her expression so solemn, so mournful, that I wanted to take her into my arms and promise to protect her from dragons and devils and all else she might fear.

  Finally she looked up into my face. “I’m to go to Northumberland,” she said at last. “Father has found me a husband there. Word reached us yesterday, and he told me as we supped.”

  I felt a great wail of grief and protest rise in me, pulsing painfully in my throat, but I did not release it. It would have frightened Brenna, and otherwise changed nothing.

  Brenna linked her arm through mine. “I don’t want to leave you, Valerian,” she said. “You love me, don’t you?” I merely nodded, for I would not have dared to speak even if I could have managed it. Without Brenna, my life would be unendurable. And there would be no more lessons in the keep, no more Challes, no more books and poetry and music.

  For the first time, I truly wanted to die. In retrospect, that seems an exquisite irony.

  She rested her head against my shoulder, and I could smell woodsmoke in her hair, and the sea, and that scent that was, and is, peculiar to her. “I’ve always pretended,” she said in a voice so small that the wind nearly carried it away, “that I would marry you one day. I knew it couldn’t happen, and yet…”

  I turned, staring into her face, bewildered and full of wild, impossible hopes. “What did you say?”

  Brenna smiled that same unbearably sad smile that had rested upon her lips moments before. “Is it so difficult to believe,” she countered, “that I should love you?”

  I swallowed hard, full of sadness and ecstasy. How wrenching it was, knowing that she wanted me as I wanted her and, at the same time, being aware to the depths of my soul that we could never be together.

  She interlaced her fingers with mine. “How will I bear it?” she murmured, asking herself, not me. Asking the sea and the hard, brittle blue of a September sky.

  By then it was all a blur to me, the water, the village, the grassy slope leading down to the shore, for I was blinded by tears. I could not answer her question, or my own, which was exactly the same.

  Brenna stepped in front of me, raised her hands to
my face. “Perhaps Father would let us be married if I told him how much we care for each other.”

  I laughed, and the sound was jagged, seeming to tear the flesh of my throat as it passed. “The baron? Bless a marriage between his daughter and the bootmaker’s son? Good God, Brenna, he’d have me in chains before day’s end, and on the rack not long after!”

  She rested her forehead against my chest, and I wanted to push her away, for there were always servants and others about, watching, interpreting what they saw and heard to suit themselves, passing it along to all who would listen. Still, thrusting her from me would have been like expelling the breath in my lungs and never drawing another. I felt her tears dampening my tunic, and laid my hands lightly, reverently, on her slender shoulders.

  At last she drew back, sniffling, and her attempt to smile rent my heart. “Perhaps he will be a good man, my husband. Perhaps he will be gentle and think me pretty.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering the sounds I’d heard so often, through the daub-and-wattle wall that separated my parents’ chamber from the one I shared with Krispin. Those were primitive times, and that particular brand of modesty was in short supply in the countryside and the village alike. I had seen men take their wives in the fields, like dogs mounting bitches in the street.

  “Jesus,” I whispered, shattered by the image of Brenna lying in another man’s bed. In that moment I wanted to go to the high cliffs south of the village and fling myself off them, into the sharp rocks clustered below. “Yes,” I said finally. “He’ll think you pretty. How could he not?”

  We parted then—surely it was Lady Brenna who broke away first. I descended the hillside toward the village without looking back. I was still half blinded by tears and thus didn’t see Krispin until I’d practically collided with him.

  “There’s a ship on the horizon!” he cried, fairly dancing with excitement.

  I pushed him aside—perhaps I was a bit too rough in my despair. I didn’t gave a sacred damn if the shore was lined with Viking vessels, brimming with spear-waving invaders. Brenna was going away, probably before the winter snows, and I would never see her again.

  Krispin was not content to let me pass; he clutched the sleeve of my tunic and wrenched me back. I swung at him without thinking, catching him up alongside the head and dropping him to his knees.

  I barely noticed the flush of fury in his fine-boned face, or the venomous spark in his eyes. He raised himself and came hurtling at me like a snarling dog, and I cuffed him again, more out of surprise than anger.

  He went sprawling once more, in the chilly grass, and then sat up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. His face was utterly expressionless as he sat there, looking up at me, thinking God only knew what.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, extending my hand to him, making no effort to hide the mark of tears on my face.

  Krispin allowed me to help him, though oftentimes when we’d had such a scrap, he’d slap my hand away when I offered it. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, dusting off his leggings and tunic. Like mine, they were poor and ugly garments, rough to the touch and virtually useless against the chill of a cold night. “I was only trying to tell you about the ship—”

  I was already striding toward the village again, and the shop, where my mother would be keeping her pitiful vigil, watching for Krispin and me as if we were sailors just home from the sea, while my father watched her, in turn, and seethed. My brother scrambled to get into step with me.

  I dragged one arm across my wet face, and we talked no more of ships. We could not have guessed, in our innocence, what monstrous suffering that vessel would bring to us all.

  That night Father was in a mood, and Mother had taken to her pallet with some ailment born of the strain between them. Krispin slipped out to mingle with the men from the ship and hear their tales, while I sat in my chamber with my back to the wall, brooding over Brenna’s impending departure.

  In the morning there was no sign of Krispin. I shrugged at the realization, filled a basin with water from the ewer my mother kept filled, and washed as best I could. During the night I had conceived a plan—I would go to the Baron Afton-St. Claire, Brenna’s father, and ask for her hand. If he had me clapped into chains or pulled me apart on the rack for getting above myself, so be it. I had to try.

  As it happened, Challes was waiting at the schoolroom door when I arrived, his eyes red-rimmed, fairly bursting with tidings. Dire ones, I could tell.

  He grasped my arm, hard enough to leave bruises, and growled, “What in God’s name have you done? The baron is demanding to see you, and he is in a towering rage!”

  I wrenched free of my tutor’s hold, drawing myself up in fury even as terror seeped into every part of my being. In our village and in all the barren lands surrounding it, Afton-St. Claire was the most powerful of men, and my fate was most definitely in his hands.

  When I did not answer his question immediately, Challes leaned in close and spat, “Damn you, bootmaker’s son, what have you done?”

  I remembered holding Brenna the day before, while she cried over our parting. Even though I might die screaming for daring to touch her, when I searched my heart I could find no regret. “The Lady Brenna was weeping. She laid her head against my shoulder.”

  “And you touched her with your hands?” Challes cried in a strangled voice. “Fool! Arrogant, willful fool!”

  I straightened. “Where is the baron? In the great hall?”

  Challes ran one narrow hand over his face. “We’re all finished, you know. Not just you, you young peacock! The Lady Brenna will be locked up until her husband comes to claim her, and Krispin’s education will be come to an end, as well as your own. And I will lose my position!”

  I wanted to apologize, I truly did. I couldn’t bring myself to proceed, though, because in my deepest being I knew I had done nothing wrong. If others suffered because of the situation, it would be by the baron’s decree, not by mine.

  “Where is he?” I asked again. Stiffly.

  Challes’s sigh contained all the misery of that difficult and unjust world we lived in. “You’ll find him in the inner courtyard—practicing with his sword.”

  I was no fool, though Challes had called me one. I wanted to bolt from that keep, to run for my life, but there was nowhere to go.

  I made my way to the inner courtyard, careful to keep my shoulders straight and my head high. When I arrived, the baron, a muscular, thick-chested man, was indeed wielding a sword, battling a knobby-kneed squire who was plainly terrified. It was little wonder, given the baron’s earnest dedication to his task. The nobleman was drenched in sweat and bellowing like an outraged bull.

  I stood waiting, and beyond the clanging flash of the swords I saw the Lady Brenna huddled in the shadowy arch of a doorway, watching me.

  I was destined to lose her, I knew, and the realization gave me a strange, desolate sort of courage. Facing a lifetime apart from her as I was, years of knowing another man was laying his hands to her, in love and perhaps in anger, I could not but think that death would be a mercy. Any sort of death.

  42

  Valerian

  Las Vegas, 1995

  She was there.

  Even before I walked onstage that fateful night, to regale the baffled masses with my illusions, I felt her presence in the grand showroom of the Venetian Hotel. The knowledge that she was nearby left me so shaken that I could barely concentrate on the performance. Brenna. Dear God, my Brenna…

  My lusty Elisabeth. And sweet, fragile Jenny. And Harmony. And Sarah.

  But of course she had a new identity now, and those other names, all of which had been her own at one time or another, would mean nothing to her. Nor would I, I was certain.

  I’d be lying—not that I’ve ever hesitated to bend the truth should it serve my purpose to do so—if I said I took no joy in the prospect of another encounter with my elusive beloved. Just the thought of speaking to her again, of touching her, was rapture, but there was
fear, too, and I already felt the weight of the sorrow that would inevitably follow any bliss we might share.

  For my darling and me, the story, played out over and over on the stage of six centuries, had never had a happy ending. Not once.

  Invariably, except in her first incarnation, the ruby ring had arrived, out of nowhere, a mysterious thing of splendor and antiquity, and precisely a fortnight later I had been bereaved again. And always, try though I did to discover who had sent that glittering jewel, and with it the curse, the thing vanished while I was caught up in my mourning. The tragic puzzle was no closer to solution that night, when I found Brenna once more, than it had ever been.

  I used my powers to hold her in her seat, there in that large and otherwise anonymous audience, sensing her desire to bolt as well as her fascination with my legerdemain, but even after the carriage trick had been completed and all the others had straggled out, I lingered backstage.

  I remember wishing I could simply walk away—each time I found her, I entertained that same futile notion, of course—but I am neither fine nor noble enough to make such a sacrifice. I was starved for the sight and sound and feel of her, just as I had always been. It would have been easier to forgo the taking of blood than to turn my back on that particular woman.

  So it was that I stood in the wings as the silence lengthened in that great room, watching her fidget at her table, seeing the shadows play in her coppery hair, for some fifteen minutes before one of the dancing girls appeared at my side. Her name was Jillie, and she was still wearing her delectably inadequate costume.

  I do enjoy the many and varied facets of my work.

  “Someone you know?” she asked with a slight edge of envy to her voice. Jillie was more than passing-curious about me, and I suspect she saw me as a romantic challenge. Being older, to say the least, and infinitely wiser, I didn’t encourage her; she could have no way of guessing she was flirting with a bona fide monster.