by Lisa Cach
“He probably thinks we’re the ghosts again,” Pippa said, her wild black hair quivering with the shaking of her laughter.
“Scared in the daylight!” Braya sneered. “Such a man is he! And one who would attack our mistress as soon as he sees she is no crone.”
“Alizon! Dammit! If you don’t come out, how am I going to apologize for yesterday? I shouldn’t have done that, and I regret it. Deeply.”
Wide eyes turned to her. Greta spoke the thought they all shared: “He is sorry?”
Maybe he was. The thought soured her mood further. It was bad enough to have shamelessly given in to her lustings, and to have told him her name in her desperation that he take her, but it was worse by far to have him now say he regretted touching her. His apology embarrassed her far more than her own enthusiasm had.
George shouted again. “There is no excuse for what I did. It was unforgivable. Unpardonable. Disgraceful. I ought to be whipped.”
Yes, he ought to be.
“He doesn’t sound very sorry,” Joye said.
True, he did not. Perhaps there was hope.
“Alizon! Please forgive me. I beg of you. It won’t happen again!”
She wanted him to try it again. It was better if the virgins thought him a beast, but she wanted to complete what the beast had started—on her own terms, of course, and somewhere more private than the kitchen floor.
She could not lose her wits like that again, but as she lay in bed last night she had concluded that she could take what he had offered without losing control of the situation. If she could outwit a village, survive a dragon, and provide for eleven women and girls, then she should be able to maneuver one naïve foreigner into her bed and have him obey her instructions.
She would not let down her guard. She might not have her disguise to protect her any longer, but strength was not to be found in a brown woolen robe. It was inside her, and she would use it to take what she wanted and to reveal nothing of herself. He would see only red hair and “cherry stones,” and be happy with what was offered. Her secrets would remain safe within the fortress of her heart.
She would reveal nothing of the presence of the virgins. She would reveal as little as possible of her own past. He would see nothing of the yearnings that plagued her in the night, that if discovered and exploited could tear apart the world she had built upon Devil’s Mount.
When he had lain between her thighs, she had cared about nothing but her own pleasure. She had cared nothing for dignity, secrets, revenge, the lives of others. Nothing.
She had enjoyed feeling that she was of flesh and blood, and was no longer the effigy lying in cold perpetuity above a crypt.
She had, sickening as it was to admit, enjoyed letting someone else take the lead for a change.
She would not allow herself such weakness again.
George would not be allowed to take her. She would take him.
“Alll-i-zohhh-ohh-ohhhn!”
“All right, all right!” she groused under her breath, sliding off her stool.
“You are going out there?” Greta asked.
“The hound must be fed, must he not?” Fed and subdued, and put in service to her own desires.
“Anything you want, you got it!” George sang, standing with his back to her as he sliced cheese on one of the work boards. He was swinging his butt back and forth, in time to the strange song he sang.
Alizon sat at the kitchen table, hands clasped before her, wishing for the hooded robe that was now at the bottom of Belch’s pool. She felt exposed and awkward, especially with what had last happened between them in the kitchen fresh in her mind.
George had said nothing to her about her lost disguise, and the accompanying subterfuge. After a brief apology for yesterday, he had discussed nothing at all except for food and the possibility of a bath and doing some laundry afterward. He had not even mentioned the battle with Belch.
She did not know what to think, and it was making her tense. He must have questions that he was waiting to spring on her. She found herself on the verge of volunteering answers, if only to end the anticipation.
“Anything at ALLLL, you got it, BAAAAAY … BEEEE!” He spun around to face her, a pair of wooden spoons in his hands, beating them on invisible drums while making “doo doo doo doo” noises.
She frowned at him.
“Doo doo doo doo.”
“Is this what music is like in your land?”
“Only the best,” he said, grinning. “Roy Orbison is my god. He’s the one who sang that song.”
“Perhaps you will become a minstrel like him, when you tire of dragonslaying.”
“An interesting idea, but I doubt anyone would want to listen.”
“As I am being forced to do,” she grumbled.
He laughed. “You would like my sister. She shares the same opinion of my musical talents.”
Her lips parted. “Sister? You have a sister?” For some reason, it surprised her.
“Athena. She manages my house for me while I’m away. She has a daughter, Gabrielle, my niece.” He smiled, his gaze focusing on some internal thought.
“You sound fond of them.” For the first time, she realized that whoever George truly was, he had a life waiting for him somewhere beyond Devil’s Mount. Nothing else he had said about his homeland had struck her as being real as did his simple mention of sister and niece, and the gentle smile that accompanied it.
“I am. Athena talks sense into me when I’m being mule-headed, and Gabby … Gabby reminds me that my worries aren’t as important as I think.” A faint expression of surprise drifted over his face as he said it, as if it were a truth he had not recognized until now.
“How old is Gabby?”
“Five.”
“And your sister’s husband, what of him?”
A look of disgust twisted his features. “Gabrielle’s father was a musician in a small troupe.
His only words to her when she said she was pregnant were—excuse the language here—‘What the fuck you telling me for?’”
“God’s blood! There is a snake of a man! I hope you served him what he deserved!”
“I wasn’t there, or I would have been tempted. By the time I heard of this, he had already left town. The good part of it all was that Athena, having been unwisely seduced by this loser’s musicality, was now wisely disillusioned as to his character. She didn’t mourn his leaving.”
“But she must have been frightened! To bear a bastard—the shame of it! And what if her family threw her out, how would she survive?”
“Ah, well, I think she knew I would never let either her or her child go wanting. Athena is one of those people who goes through life assuming that everything will work out in the end, and somehow for her it always does.”
She pursed her lips, finding such a trait annoying. “You are remarkably accepting of your sister bearing a child out of wedlock.”
“It wasn’t the most intelligent thing she’s ever done, and I could have wished for her own sake that she had waited until she was older and married to a good man. Punishing her wasn’t going to stop the baby from being born, though.”
Verily, she could barely wrap her mind around his calm acceptance of his sister’s bastard child. There had always been plenty of children conceived out of wedlock in Markesew, but they were born securely within the bonds of matrimony. It must indeed be a different world that George came from, that he could speak so openly of his sister’s shame. “Athena is fortunate to have you to provide for her.”
He shrugged, as if it were not worthy even of consideration. He brought the food he was working with over to the table and sat down across from her. “What of your own family? Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“None.”
“Parents?” he asked, as he took a round of bread and began to slice it.
“Dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I do not remember them, so there is nothing to grieve.”
He gave her a
sympathetic look from under his brows, then went back to his slicing.
“There was the widow Bartlett,” she offered, not wanting him to feel sorry for her. “One might say she was like a mother.”
“Who was she?”
“A tapestry weaver. She took me on as apprentice when I was yet a child. She and her sister fed and lodged me, and taught me skills to earn my keep.”
“Very … motherly,” he said.
“I was fortunate to have her,” she responded, hearing the defensiveness in her own tone. Something in George’s voice made her feel that he pitied her. “She took me in when no one else would have, and gave me hope for a better life. It is not common for a girl to be made an apprentice, as well you must know. My life was better with her than it would have been elsewhere.”
“Mmm. And when did you meet Emoni?”
“When I was eight. We—” She stopped, suddenly realizing what she had given away.
He raised his clear green eyes to hers. There was no accusation in them, only a frank desire to understand. “And she has no idea that you’re alive. What happened, Alizon? Why are you living here alone, while your dearest friend believes you died in the jaws of the dragon more than twelve years past?”
Her breath was frozen in her lungs. She had not meant to tell him that; had meant if asked to say that her name and that of Emoni’s lost friend were a coincidence. “You tricked me.” She started to push away from the table.
He reached across and grabbed her hands. His palms were warm around her cold fists, gentle even as they held her in place. He pulled her hands toward him and bent down to kiss the backs of her knuckles.
“No trickery,” he said, his gaze capturing hers as his soft lips left her skin. “I want to know.”
Her heart beat quick as a rabbit’s in her chest. She had no defense against this gentle manner of assault. She was torn between retreat and striking out, and balanced too evenly between the two to act on either.
His gaze did not waver, and she found that she was the one who looked down and away. She did not want to tell him anything, this intruder, this disruption to everything she had known for more than a decade. She did not want him examining her life and passing judgment, or interfering in the course she had set.
And at the same time, she wanted to tell him all. She wanted to share her burdens, and see what he from his outsider’s standpoint had to say in response.
His thumb brushed over the back of her hand, gently, the simple movement more powerful than he could know. How long had it been since anyone had touched her in such a way? As mistress of the mount she was sometimes sought to give soothing comfort, but never was that same soothing directed back at her. The virgins saw her as invulnerable.
Damnable man! His sympathy was killing her. She felt tears start in her eyes. She did not want to feel this way, to feel the stones coming loose in her fortress. He was not assaulting her walls, he was coaxing her to push them down from within.
She tried to tug her hands free.
He would not let her. “Alizon. You have been alone for too long. Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
“Peace! You know not of what you speak!” she said, betraying tears in her voice.
He released her hands and she pulled them to her stomach, holding them there and looking down at them. She heard him rise and glanced up to see him coming around the table. He straddled the bench beside her, and she scooted away.
“Come here, you nut,” he said, and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her sideways, awkwardly, against his chest. Her head came to just beneath his chin. She felt him kiss her crown and lay his cheek lightly atop her head.
She sat stiff against him, her eyes wide. His hand began to stroke slowly up and down her back. There was nothing erotic in his touch: just warmth, and a promise of caring.
She did not know what to do.
Except from Emoni long ago, she had had no one offer her such comforting. She did not know if she could trust its veracity from George, or survive without harm the weakening she felt. She felt a welling of pain rising up inside her, seeking to pour over the walls, and feared that it might wash them away entirely.
He paused in his stroking to massage her lower back, then moved up to gently knead the tightness of her shoulders and neck. Her eyes closed halfway, and she allowed herself to relax a bit against him, turning so that her breasts were pressed against his chest and her cheek rested on his collarbone.
“Tell me what happened,” he said again, softly, and stroked down to her hip, massaging it and her upper thigh.
He already knew who she was. She would lose little by telling him how she came to be mistress. Perhaps the waters of her anguish could be allowed to trickle a small stream over the walls, to ease their pressures.
“I was fourteen when I was chosen in the lottery,” she said softly.
He went motionless for a moment, startled, perhaps, that she had chosen to speak. Then his hand came up to her hair, fingertips combing lightly through it against her scalp, following the course of it back toward the loose braid at her neck.
“Emoni said she had a vision of me in the lair of the dragon, so I was not surprised when my name was drawn.”
“She’s a woman of strange talents,” George said.
“Yes.” For the first time, she wondered if perhaps Emoni truly had called George, not just from a far country, but from some unearthly realm beyond this solid one. It was not to be believed, yet if anyone could have done it, it would have been Emoni.
“What happened after they drew your name?”
“They gave me a white gown to wear, and undid my hair and put a crown of flowers upon it. I looked like one of the sheep, penned and likewise bedecked. It was a wonder they did not salt me, for better flavor to please the beast.”
He chuckled, the sound a rumble she could feel in her own chest. She wrapped her arms lightly around his waist, sinking a little more deeply against him.
“The tide was out, the causeway uncovered. Milo was waiting at the start of it, a shepherd’s crook in his hand. He barely looked at me, and I was terrified of him—so big, and no expression on his face.
“I was led to the causeway, and then the townsfolk began to sing. It’s the same short, horrid song they’ve sung every year.”
She began to sing, in little more than a whisper:
“Go gently, good child
Thine innocence to save us.
Go gently, good virgin,
Thou art bravest.”
“Bastards,” George hissed. “Sending a fourteen-year-old girl to a dragon. Asking her to be brave, when they themselves are cowards.”
She tightened her hold on his waist, pressing her face against his chest. It was the first time an outsider had spoken the thoughts that had screamed their injustice at her year after year. It felt as if he had transfered her anger to his own shoulders, and now there was nothing under which to hide the pain of that long-ago day.
Again, she was standing on the shore, looking one last time at the faces that had filled her young life. Faces that expressed bliss and relief more than sorrow, and whose mouths were singing her to her death.
Only Emoni and the widow Bartlett showed any sign of regret. Emoni wept openly, but Alizon’s mistress maintained her stiff and upright posture, her eyes averted. Alizon’s mistress did not sing with the others, though, and the stony stillness of her countenance had been marred by the trembling of her tight-pressed lips.
Alizon sniffed back tears and took a breath to settle herself. She shrugged within George’s hold as if to say, “That’s the way of the world.”
She went on with her story. “I stepped out onto the causeway. The sheep were herded after me, with Milo following. I did not want to go forward, but I refused to look back. They had thrown me away, and I would not humiliate myself by begging them to keep me. They weren’t worth it.”
“Bastards,” George said again, under his breath.
“I crossed the causeway, the sheep
bleating behind me and before me the distant figure of the crone in a brown robe, hunched and leaning on a cane.” She shuddered. “She had long white hair, unkempt, wisps of it blowing about in the wind. Even from so far away she looked like a standing corpse. Walking toward her was like walking into the arms of Death.”
“Why didn’t she come to the town with Milo?”
“She never did. She wasn’t wanted there. She was too much of the mount, too much of the world of the dragon. Milo, like the causeway, is the bridge between the worlds.”
“What fun for Milo.”
“It suits him well enough.”
He made a noncommittal noise. “What happened when you reached the crone?”
“She was older even than I had expected. Frailer. Unwashed, as if she hadn’t the strength even to wipe the food from her chin. I was scared half past thinking, but it occured to me that I was stronger than she was. If it was not for Milo, I could have overpowered her.
“Milo penned the sheep, and then they brought me up to the castle. Into the kitchen, right here. Milo gave her a small packet—they must have given it to him in Markesew—and the crone mixed the powder it held into a mug of beer.
“ ‘Drink this,’ she told me, setting it on the table. They were the first words she had spoken. She barely looked at me.
“ ‘What is it?’ I asked her.
“ ‘It will put you to sleep, girl. Drink it.’”
George twined his fingers into the hair at the base of Alizon’s neck. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Didn’t I? With Milo standing there, ready to force it down me? I drank it, at first as slowly as I could in hopes of finding a way to dump it, but then I realized that whatever was in it would have me half senseless by the time I finished. I downed the better part of it in one long draught.
“I could see the crone relax. The difficult part was over for her. I had obeyed. All would go as she wished, with no trouble.
“Milo went to stand by the door to the hall. The crone sat. They were waiting for the drug to take effect.
“I waited as long as I dared, then squirmed a bit and with half-closed eyes asked to use the jakes. ‘I haven’t had a chance all day,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to foul myself when I die.’