Garron turned slowly to stare at one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen in his life standing directly behind him. She was tall, nearly to the bridge of his nose, slender as a girl, her gown pure white, just as white as her soft flesh, and he thought, She is golden and white, just as the old woman said. How had she gotten behind him? He accepted her presence, he had no choice, and now he had to deal with her. Now his questions would be answered. No matter what she did, no matter what she said, he was ready. He felt deadly.
“I have been looking for you. Are you the witch I seek?” No fear leaked into his voice, and rage thrummed in his blood. He slowly raised his knife to her face.
She merely smiled at him. “Marianna said you would come, over and over, she said you would find her. I do not know how you managed it, but come you did. How did you find my sanctuary?”
He held the knife not an inch from her smooth cheek as he studied her face. “You cannot be Merry’s mother.”
“Do you not see the resemblance between us?”
He slowly shook his head. “Merry’s eyes are a dark blue, yours are as gray as old ice. You are nothing alike. You are not her mother. Who are you?”
She continued to smile. “Marianna said you were fine looking, Garron of Kersey, and I see she was right. She also said you were honorable, that there was strength in your center. Did she say you were valiant? I trust not, since ‘valiant’ is a silly word given to the heroes men invent to make them feel safe. Are you a hero, Garron of Kersey?”
“Aye,” he said, his voice strong, calm, “I am a hero. So is Merry.”
“What a strange thing for a man to say. How is she a hero?”
“Were I to explain, I still doubt you would understand. Now, where is my betrothed?”
“Do you see her? Come now, you have searched my entire tower.”
“Not the third floor. There were no stairs leading up to it.”
She laughed.
“Tell me where she is or I will kill you now.”
She slowly shook her head, but her smile never faltered. “Mayhap you are a strong warrior and those weaker can trust you to protect them, mayhap you are steady in your beliefs, ignorant and narrow though they be, but in my world, you are only a simple man whose fear of those things he cannot understand turns his heart to ashes. Tell me, Garron of Kersey, how did you find my tower?”
He touched the knife tip to her neck. “I snapped my fingers and found myself facing your ridiculous tower. A black tower, madam? How little imagination you have. And the sickle with the crooked lines slashing through it—what does that mean? Something you hope will frighten people who chance upon this place?” The knife pressed deeper. A drop of deep red blood pooled around the knife tip. “Now you will tell me where Merry is or I will cut your throat.”
She lightly raised a soft white hand to touch his cheek. “Aye, you are comely, Garron of Kersey, but there isn’t time for me to enjoy you. You are too late.”
Her fingers were soft, caressing his cheek now, pressing inward. He jerked his head back. He thought he smelled something sickly sweet but ignored it. He put his face close to hers. “Do not touch me again. What do you mean I am too late? Tell me where you have hidden Merry, or I will kill you right now.” And he pressed the knife tip in deeper. Another drop of blood welled up and slid down her white throat to paint a slash of red on her white bodice.
Still she didn’t move, still she smiled up at him. She touched his cheek again, then when the knife pressed deeper, she drew her hand back. “Things do not proceed as I had planned, but no matter. What will happen should amuse me. You must leave me now, Garron of Kersey.”
“No, I will not leave until I know where you have hidden Merry. You have but an instant, madam, or I will slit your throat.”
“Merry? What a silly name,” and yet again her fingers touched his cheek, her eyes met his, deep, fathomless. He wanted to slam his knife to the hilt so it would come out the back of her neck, but he felt as if he were moving away from her. Yet this beautiful woman was beside him, both her hands on his face now, drawing him away from himself. He felt his knife fall from his fingers, but they couldn’t be his fingers, for he was not really here now, he was above, or mayhap he was beyond this cursed tower. Was that his knife he heard thud softly onto the blue carpet with its strange symbols? He felt his sword slip from his hand, but it wasn’t his hand, it was another’s. He heard his sword land hard on the stone floor. But he’d been standing on the thick carpet. Was it his sword he heard, or another’s? He heard the witch laugh, but he didn’t see her now. He was alone, and he was nowhere at all. He felt empty, a shadow. He called out, “Where are you, witch?”
She didn’t answer him. He heard nothing now, felt nothing. He was moving away, faster now, into darkness where soft air swirled warm on his face. He thought he saw a flash of fire, but then it was gone, a blur of red and gold, but there was no heat from it, only cold, blistering cold. From a great distance, he heard a soft laugh, the witch’s laugh, then he heard nothing at all.
40
A hand slapped his face, once, then yet again, harder this time, then Gilpin’s scared voice. “My lord! Please, you must wake up!”
Garron opened his eyes and stared up into his squire’s white face hovering above him, seeming somehow detached, floating.
“Thanks be to all God’s blessed angels, you are alive! Oh, considerate and generous Lord who occasionally hears his servants’ prayers, I will burn a hundred candles to your blessed Holy Mother for saving my sweet master. What happened, my lord?”
He frowned up at Gilpin, whose head was once again sitting on his neck, and tried to make sense of what had happened. He said, “I was gone, where, I do not know. Somehow, she sent me away.”
“She, my lord?”
“The witch was within the tower. She said she was Merry’s mother, but she couldn’t be, Gilpin, she was young and beautiful, all golden and white, but her eyes were this cold ancient gray, like an old tombstone, or dirty ice. She drugged me, the bitch must have rubbed some poison into my skin when she stroked my face.” He remembered her fingers pressing into his flesh and shook his head. It all seemed so long ago, yet, strangely, it felt just an instant before. He felt he could reach out his hand and grab her by her long hair. It felt like madness. His fingers flexed. “I wanted to slit her throat, but I couldn’t kill her until she told me where she’d taken Merry. But then I was gone from myself. You woke me up.” He slowly sat up, Gilpin supporting him. “I failed, Gilpin. I couldn’t find Merry. Where are we?”
“We are where we were, my lord, at the edge of the forest. Arnold and John are standing guard over us.”
He felt sunlight on his face and looked up. “It’s morning.”
“Aye, it has been for several hours now.”
But how could that be? It was just dawn, wasn’t it? “Tell me what happened.”
“I saw you climb the wall and drop into the enclosure. Then, a very long time later, you simply walked out of the gate in the stone wall. I called to you, but you simply walked past me toward Arnold. He spoke to you, but you just continued to walk past him back into the forest. It was as if you had something important to do and everything in you was focused on it. You carried your sword in one hand, your knife in the other. You said nothing at all to any of us. Both Arnold and John yelled at you, yet you refused to stop, just kept walking. I grabbed your arm, but you shook me off. All of us grabbed you, but you had great strength, my lord, and you merely knocked us aside. Then you stopped, looked back at the tower, your eyes closed, and you simply fell over. You didn’t move, my lord. We thought you were dead. You said the witch drugged you?” Gilpin looked toward the tower and crossed himself.
Garron remembered the witch speaking to him, he could still hear her light laughter close to his face, laughter at him, and her fingers were touching him, and he knew she’d rubbed a drug into his flesh for he remembered the sickly sweet smell. Then he remembered his knife and his sword falling from his
hands to the floor, then movement and blackness. Until now.
He saw both his sword and his knife on the ground beside him.
He rolled over and came up on his feet. He did not feel light-headed or dizzy. He didn’t feel like anything had happened to him at all. He picked up his sword and his knife. “We must return to the enclosure.”
Garron knew they were frightened, but they went with him without hesitation. Arnold and John searched the connecting buildings and the stable. They didn’t find the cart, didn’t find the horses, they didn’t find anything at all, only ruin.
The black narrow door of the tower was locked. They heaved and shoved, but it held. They could cut down a tree and ram it, but Garron didn’t want to take the time.
Suddenly, without warning, the door swung open. Arnold and John stumbled back. Garron said, “It is all right. Our last blow pushed it in. Don’t be afraid. Come, let’s see what is inside.”
But just like the connecting buildings and the stable, there was nothing at all inside. It was a hollow tower that reached some thirty feet into the air. The air pulsed with magick, and Garron knew all of them felt the strangeness of it. John crossed himself. Arnold stared at him, but Garron only shook his head.
“It’s a ruin,” Gilpin whispered, “naught but a ruin, for a hundred years it’s been falling in on itself.”
“The Devil’s work,” Arnold whispered so low Garron scarce heard him.
Garron nodded. “It is a ruin,” he said, “and isn’t that curious?” He stepped back out and looked at the black door. The white painted sickle with three crooked black lines through the middle of it shone bright, as if they’d been painted on only yesterday. At least something hadn’t changed. Why did the witch leave the sickle? He didn’t look away from it, from the three crooked black lines running through the middle. He lightly touched his fingertip to it, expecting, he supposed, for the paint to be still be wet, but it wasn’t. Her face appeared clear in his mind as he touched those crooked lines, and he said to her, I will find you, witch, and when I do I will kill you.
He said to his men, “There is nothing for us here. Let us return to London,” and without a backward look, Garron strode to Damocles.
Thunder sounded overhead, black clouds formed over them. Not a minute later, cold rain poured down upon them, and the daylight vanished. They endured, there was nothing else to do.
She’d created an interesting illusion for him, then drugged him. He felt his failure to his bones. He’d lost Merry and he didn’t know what to do about it.
An hour later they met Whalen and the other soldiers at the edge of the forest. Whalen shook his head, his face grim. Garron said, “We did not find her either.”
Sir Lyle shook his head. “I am very sorry, my lord.”
Once they were clear of the forest, it stopped raining.
41
LONDON
It was early evening when they rode through the massive gates into the White Tower’s vast inner courtyard. So many people were there, waiting to hear what had happened. But what could he say? That he’d been drugged by a witch who was Merry’s mother?
He said only, “We failed to find her.”
Garron imagined Arnold and John would have quite a lot to say once they’d poured some ale down their throats, but now they spoke only of finding a strange tower in the forest, abandoned and empty. They said nothing about how he’d acted when he’d come out of the enclosure.
As for Gilpin, he gave Garron a sorrowful look and shook his head. “That empty tower. We all had hopes of finding Merry there, but alas.”
“Do you remember when I went in the tower alone, Gilpin?”
“No, my lord, you are not remembering aright. Naturally I would not let you go in that strange place alone, my lord. No, all of us went in and found the tower abandoned.” But Gilpin was frowning, and looked bewildered. He knows there is more, Garron thought, but somehow he no longer remembers.
It didn’t matter. Garron knew Gilpin was very worried. Would he ever remember? Or perhaps, he thought, he had himself dreamed all of it. Maybe all there was, was this abandoned ruined tower, built even before William had come to English shores. No, he couldn’t accept that. He knew she’d drugged him, she’d planted the illusions in his brain, made them so real he could touch them, taste them, feel them in the air itself.
Garron met with the king and queen. He knew he would be believed mad if he spoke about the witch who was Merry’s mother, how she’d drugged him, how she’d made him see things that weren’t there, and so he, like Arnold, John, and Gilpin, told them about finding an abandoned tower, but not Merry.
The queen wept. Most of the queen’s ladies wept with her. Blanche waved her white fingers at him.
Silence filled the White Tower. There was simply nothing more to be done.
Garron fell into an exhausted sleep. Merry was standing beside that bed in her nightrobe in the sickle-shaped room. She was holding out her hand to him, speaking to him, begging him, he knew it, but he couldn’t hear what she said, nor could he seem to move to her. He heard her calling his name, so clearly, so close.
Garron jerked awake, his heart pounding. He knew she was in trouble but there was nothing he could do about it.
The next morning, Garron, with Gilpin, Sir Lyle and his two men, and a dozen of the king’s soldiers, prepared to leave for Jason of Brennan’s keep, Swaines, only a three-hour ride, Burnell told him, in the opposite direction from the forest and the witch’s tower.
Merry. He knew to his gut she wouldn’t be at Jason of Brennan’s keep, but surely Jason had to know where her mother was keeping her. If he didn’t find her, he would journey on to Meizerling. Would the witch even be there? If she was, would she admit she’d practiced magick on him? Would she admit she’d drugged him? Would she admit she held her daughter somewhere?
The heavy rains were past. It was a fine morning, warm, the sun was bright overhead. He was preparing to mount Damocles when he heard Gilpin yell, “My lord! My lord, wait! She is no longer gone! She’s back!”
“What? What did you say, Gilpin?” He turned, impatient, on edge.
“She is here, my lord! Merry, she’s here!”
His brain went blank. “What did you say? You said Merry is here?”
“Aye, she said her mother let her leave! Look, she is coming right now!”
Garron looked up to see her running toward him. She was wearing a bedgown, a robe pulled over it, holding the skirts high in her hands. He saw her face, saw her hair wasn’t braided, but was loose around her face and down her back, bright red beneath the sun. It was Merry and she was laughing and crying at the same time and running as fast as she could to get to him. For a moment, he simply couldn’t believe it, then he was running to her. He caught her up against him and buried his face in her hair. She was real, he could feel her heart pounding against his chest. She was really here, she’d come back to him. He raised his head and looked down at her, cupping her beloved face between his two large palms.
“How can this be? Is it really you and not some phantom come to haunt me?”
He felt her warm breath on his face as she leaned up to kiss his chin. “Aye, my lord,” she whispered, “I am a phantom come to bedevil you, for all your allotted worldly years,” and she kissed his ear, his nose, his mouth.
He said her name even as he kissed her deeply, his hands wild on her back, lifting her hard against him. He didn’t want to let her go, ever again. He would help her bathe, he would accompany her to the jakes, he would—Garron became aware of a crowd of men gathering around them. She saw Sir Lyle standing off to one side, looking on, a quizzical look on his face. Slowly, Garron let her slide down his body. He smiled down at her, then looked at those around them. “I thank all of you. She is somehow returned to me. When I learn how my betrothed managed this remarkable feat, I will tell all of you.” And he picked her up in his arms.
“My lord!” It was Robert Burnell, his robe flapping around his feet. “I heard the hei
ress is back. Is this she? Really? I mean, I see all that wicked hair of hers, but how can that be? You could not find her, no one could. How could she suddenly appear?” Robert Burnell, the Chancellor of England, pulled up short and crossed himself.
“She has told me she is a phantom come to bedevil me,” Garron shouted with laughter, and carried her away through the crowd.
42
Merry sat on a fat cushion at the queen’s feet, Garron stood beside her, not about to let her out of his sight. The queen couldn’t seem to stop stroking her hair, long and loose down her back.
The king lounged opposite her in an opulent chair he’d brought back from the Holy Land, a gift from Sultan Baibars himself, his long legs stretched out in front of him, jeweled leather shoes on his big feet.
The queen laid her hand on Merry’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to tell all of us what happened.”
Merry lightly placed her hand over the queen’s. It appeared to steady her. “My lady, it is all very simple, really. My mother sent two men to drug me and bring me to her. When I awoke, she told me I would marry Jason of Brennan. I told her he was the Black Demon, that he’d devastated Wareham and killed many innocent people because no one would tell him where Arthur’s silver coins were hidden. I told her I wished to marry Garron, that he would make a fine lord for Valcourt as well as Wareham.” She paused a moment, then looked up at the king through her lashes. Garron stared at her. He’d never seen her do that before. It was remarkably effective. The king blinked and sat forward in his chair. He never took his eyes off her as he handed her a stuffed fig from a silver platter a servant held beside him.
“And what did your mother say to that?”
Merry smiled as she took a small bite of the fig. Her head tilted just a bit to the side, cascading her hair over her shoulder, to curl around her breast. “Sire, she finally acknowledged she was satisfied with my selection. She gave me her blessing and sent me back here with the two men who’d taken me in the first place. She prays you will not seek to punish her since she was merely concerned that I was being forced into a marriage that didn’t please me. All her recklessness, sire, it was only because she felt she had to rescue me, to spare me unhappiness.”
The Valcourt Heiress Page 23