The Courtesan

by Susan Carroll

  His hands encased in leather gloves, the witch-hunter gripped the reins of his mount. Like her master, the spirited ebony mare blended with the darkness. Aristide’s shoulder-length hair was as black as the horse’s mane and just as wild in the brisk wind blowing leeward. He was likewise garbed all in black from his thick boots to his leather jerkin. His beard-shadowed face cast no pale gleam to alert his enemies, his skin toughened from many days spent in the saddle, weathering the elements.

  Simon had an angular countenance, the set of his mouth hard and uncompromising, rarely softened by a smile. His right eye was as dark as the rest of him, glinting with a piercing intelligence. His ravaged left eye was usually kept concealed beneath a black patch. A heavy scar, the result of a duel, bisected his forehead, disappearing beneath the patch only to emerge in a thin crease that marred his cheek. He was an intimidating figure; tall, with sinewy limbs. Anyone would have to be mad to have attacked him.

  But Simon had concluded that the creatures stalking him were mad or else imbued with evil and malice to a chilling degree. On a night like this, alone, isolated from any sign of human habitation, he preferred to think his pursuers were merely insane. It was more comforting than the alternative.

  As the shadows deepened around him, Simon resisted the urge to nudge Elle into a gallop. The barest pressure of his knees and they’d both be off like the wind. But it would be far too dangerous; the cliff path narrow and treacherous even in the full light of day. A full out gallop in the dark would be pure suicide. An easier road beckoned to him through the trees that rimmed the cliffs, but the gnarled trunks, the thicket of shrubs and undergrowth offered far too many places for concealment.

  Simon kept the mare to a sedate walk. He heard nothing beyond the steady clop of Elle’s hoofbeats, the wind rustling through the trees, the surf battering the rocks far below and yet the back of his neck tingled with the awareness that he was not alone out here in the darkness. They were here. At least one of them. Perhaps the one he had sensed dogging him in the last village he had passed through.

  Or perhaps exhaustion and only a few snatched hours of troubled sleep were starting to get the better of him. But he didn’t think so. Elle’s behavior told him otherwise. The mare had been twitchy the past mile or so, skittering, tossing her head, her ears pricked.

  Simon reached down to pat her neck when the sound carried to his ears. At first he thought he imagined the faint wail of an infant. It could be no more than the wind keening over the rocky headland. Simon’s gut knotted with dread all the same.

  Around the next bend, the land leveled off and the cries became louder and more plaintive. Simon drew Elle to a halt, tersely scanning the distance. Barely one hundred yards ahead, moonlight flooded an object abandoned perilously near the edge of the cliff. Anyone else might have mistaken it for a blanket roll left behind by a careless shepherd. But Simon had seen such bundles before, with one difference this time.

  This one was still alive, the infant’s cries borne to him clearly on the wind. Simon’s heartbeat quickened, his first impulse to charge forward. But he’d narrowly avoided ambush too many times to be that rash.

  He slid from Elle’s back and drew the mare into a stand of trees, tethering her to the trunk of a sturdy, but pliant beech. Elle’s eyes did not roll in terror, but she was blowing and stamping. She shifted her sleek powerful chest and shoulders as though to block him from leaving the grove.

  Simon stroked the horse to soothe her. He lingered in the shadow of trees, his gaze tracking the path to the jutting of cliff. The plateau where the child had been abandoned offered no place of concealment, no cover for anyone attempting to hide. It would not offer Simon any either if some assassin lurked further down the path or even in the trees, preparing to lodge an arrow in his back.

  But that was not his enemy’s usual mode of attack and the cries of the infant overrode his caution. They were growing weaker by the moment. It was just possible that they had never counted on Simon being here this soon.

  Easing past Elle, Simon drew his sword and started forward. He could barely hear the child now, only one final whimper and then a terrible silence. All stealth and wariness forgotten, he ran, dislodging a hail of pebbles beneath his boots.

  He hurtled towards the small bundle on the edge of the cliff, dropping to his knees beside it. The wind stirred the edge of the coarse blanket, but there was no movement from the tiny figure. Simon set down his sword and stripped off his gloves. He gathered the swathed infant into his arms with gentleness, which was as rare as his prayers.

  Please. Please let me have arrived in time. Just this once.

  He peeled back the flap of the blanket, his breath hitching sharply. The doll’s glass button eyes fixed him with an empty stare, the jagged mouth stitched onto the canvas face sneering at him. Tricked.

  He scarcely had time to register that fact before he heard the snap of a twig on his blind side. He jerked towards the sound and realized that there was a hollow in the ground below the place where he knelt. He caught the barest blur before the woman crouching there sprang at him.

  Her teeth bared in a snarl, she launched into him, knocking him onto his back. Moonlight glinted off the weapon in her hand as she thrust at his neck. Simon deflected the blow with the doll and bucked upward, hurling his attacker off of him. She hit the ground with a furious screech. By the time he had regained his feet, she had also scrambled to hers. And she was between him and his sword. With a contemptuous smile, she kicked it further out of his reach.

  She was much the same as all the others who had been sent to kill him. Clad in baggy breeches and a peasant’s tunic, her dark hair, unkempt, her eyes manic, her mouth cruel and cunning. Simon kept a knife hidden inside his boot, but he made no move to go for it.

  “Keep back, woman,” he said. “I have no desire to harm you. Drop your weapon and I am willing to spare you if you answer my questions.”

  The creature threw back her head, emitting an eerie imitation of an infant’s mewling cry. “What’s your question?” she mocked. “Where’s the babe? There is none, witch-hunter. Not this time. And that is the only answer you’ll get from me. Aside from this.” She brandished her weapon, circling in closer.

  “No desire to harm me. Bah.” She spat in Simon’s direction, the spittle landing inches from his boot. “I know how you witch-hunters ask your questions. With the rack and the branding iron.”

  “That is not my way,” he said, “If you attack me again, I will have to kill you.”

  “What does that matter? I am not afraid to die. The Silver Rose will resurrect me.”

  With a blood-curdling screech, she leaped and was on him again. Simon caught her wrists to hold her back. No mere woman should have been so strong. Whatever madness or evil surged through her veins, it was all Simon could do to keep her at bay. He felt the heat of her fetid breath, heard the gnash of her teeth as she came within an inch of tearing open his cheek.

  He was more concerned with the strange weapon she clutched in her right hand. She stabbed at him, the tip tearing through his jerkin. The only thing that saved him was the light coat of mail he wore beneath. Simon twisted her wrist until she cried out and dropped the weapon. She went into a frenzy of fury, kicking, snapping, and trying to bite. When nothing else availed, she butted the top of her head beneath his chin. Simon reeled, his jaw exploding with pain. He lost his grip on her and staggered back, barely managing to stop himself from plunging off the edge of the cliff.

  His attacker rushed at him in an effort to drive him over. He dodged her charge and it was she who teetered, the ground giving way beneath her. She fell, scrambling wildly for purchase. Simon flung himself to the ground and caught her arm. She dangled below him, her legs and free arm flailing, her face white with rage. Her weight strained the muscles in his arm until they burned with pain.

  “Who sent you?” he growled. “Who is this Silver Rose that you serve?”

  “Go to hell,” she shrieked.

  “Tell m
e what I want to know or—” Simon gasped as she clawed at his hand, digging her nails in so viciously, his grip slackened.

  He felt her start to slip, and made another desperate grab for her arm. But it was too late. She hurtled into the darkness, his last view her face gloating with insane triumph. He heard the thud of her body as it struck the cliff side on the way down and then a splash. The sea was like a dark, hungry beast, frothing at the mouth as it devoured the witch’s broken body and all the answers he so desperately sought along with her.

  What demon possessed you, woman? Where does your coven hide when all of you are not out spreading terror and trying to kill me? And who is this she-devil you call the Silver Rose? This sorceress you all worship so much you are willing to die for her, believing she has the power to raise you from the dead.

  And what if she could?

  A chill went through Simon that had nothing to do with the wind whipping in from the sea. With a low groan, he retreated from the edge and rolled onto his back, seeking to recover his breath. He sat up slowly, brushing the tangle of hair from his face. He winced at the throb of his hand where the witch had lacerated him with her nails. The salty taste of blood filled his mouth. He had bitten his cheek when she had butted him with her head.

  He worked his jaw carefully. It hurt like the devil, but she hadn’t managed to dislocate it or loosen any of his teeth. His injuries could have been a great deal worse, he reflected as his gaze fell upon the strange weapon he had forced from her hand. He had caught glimpses of these hellish devices on other encounters with these witches, but he had never managed to gain possession of one before. Simon picked it up carefully.

  The device looked like nothing more than a very thin stiletto. Closer inspection revealed that the tip was sharp, but the blade was hollow. Imbedded in the hilt was a vial of some dark red liquid. Once the stiletto punctured the skin, the hilt could be twisted or pushed, shattering the vial, sending the poisonous liquid through the blade. Simon had no idea exactly how it worked, but he’d seen the results too many times. The wound was small, looking far from mortal, but the death that it wrought was slow and agonizing.

  Simon set the weapon down, seeking some safe way of transporting it. He found the discarded doll and stripped the blanket away. Out of its swaddling, the doll was a crude semblance of a child. No more than a cloth head and body carefully weighted with something to give it just the right feel of a small infant when wrapped in the blanket.

  Simon seized the doll and hurled it off the cliff. But his anger was tempered with relief, that that was all it had been this time—a fake. He’d witnessed more cruelty, death and evil in the span of his thirty years than most men twice his age. But he was not certain he could endure the sight of one more dead child. He’d lain awake far too many nights, picturing the torment of those helpless babes he’d been too late to save. Left exposed in some remote locale where their cries would go unheard, abandoned to perish slowly of hunger and neglect.

  What kind of woman could command others to commit such horrors? The same woman who could craft a weapon like that poisonous stiletto; the dark flower that was her emblem arrogantly engraved on the hilt. No matter what it would take, Simon intended to find the witch and put a stop to her ungodly crimes. Unless the Silver Rose got him first.

  That was more than likely if he behaved as stupidly as he’d done tonight. Five years ago, even two, he would never have fallen for such a trap. But his lone crusade was wearing him so thin, he was surprised he still cast a shadow.

  He wrapped the blanket around the stiletto. Retrieving his sword and gloves, he trudged back to where he had left Elle. She stamped, tossing her head and yanking on the lead, spooked by his battle with the witch. It took much soothing on his part before she settled down. He rested his forehead against the velvet softness of her nose.

  “Lord, Elle, I’m so tired of all this. So damned tired.”

  She whickered, her dark eye gleaming softly in the moonlight. She nuzzled his hair and lipped at the neckline of his shirt as though to comfort him. As absurd as it seemed, Simon sometimes thought the mare understood him.

  Miri Cheney would not have thought it absurd. She would have said . . . Simon’s breath snagged in his throat as her image stole into his mind, so clear even after all these years. The memory of a young girl with hair pale as moonlight, a face as ethereal as an angel’s, eyes that could be the soft hue of morning mist or the dark color of a storm at sea. Fey eyes that could almost make a man forget who he was, what he needed to do. Or worse still, forget who she was. A daughter of the earth, a wise woman. That was how Miri had always referred to herself. No matter what she chose to call herself, a witch was still a witch. And yet, there had been something different about Miri.

  Despite her unfortunate family background of sorcery, she had been more misguided than tainted by evil. The girl had possessed an innocence, a shining faith in the ultimate goodness of the world, a hope for the best in people. Girl? No, she’d be a mature woman by now and that light of hers had probably dimmed since her family had been forced to abandon their home on Faire Isle, driven into exile. Simon was in large part responsible for that.

  Rumors had reached him this past year that one of the Cheney sisters had dared to return to the island and was living there in quiet seclusion, a woman possessing an almost supernatural ability to cure any sick or wounded creature she came across. There was only one person that could be . . . Miri.

  Simon tightened his grip on Elle’s bridle as he sought to banish the woman from his mind. Remembrance of her loosed upon him far too painful regrets. But Miri had been invading his thoughts more of late and he could no longer keep the gates of his mind barred against her. His enemies were gathering strength to an alarming degree. He was alone. He was exhausted. He was desperate. Each day inched him closer to the conclusion he stubbornly resisted. There was only one way he was going to defeat the Sisterhood of the Silver Rose.

  He needed the help of another witch.

  About the Author

  Susan Carroll is an award-winning romance author whose books include The Bride Finder and its two sequels, The Night Drifter and Midnight Bride, as well as The Painted Veil, Winterbourne, and most recently, The Dark Queen. She lives in Rock Island, Illinois.

  Also by Susan Carroll

  WINTERBOURNE

  THE PAINTED VEIL

  THE BRIDE FINDER

  THE NIGHT DRIFTER

  MIDNIGHT BRIDE

  THE DARK QUEEN

  The Courtesan is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2005 by Susan Coppula

  Excerpt from The Silver Rose copyright © 2005 by Susan Coppula

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carroll, Susan.

  The courtesan/Susan Carroll.

  p. cm.

  “A Ballantine Books trade paperback original”—T.p. verso.

  1. France—History—Henry II, 1547–1559—Fiction. 2. Catherine de Mâdicis, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of France, 1519–1589—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.A7654C68 2005

  813′.54—dc22 2004062269

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-345-48464-2

  v3.0

 

 

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