Lady Changeling

by Ken Altabef

  Perhaps gold and amethyst was the correct combination. Perhaps.

  The screams from the next room became so loud he was certain someone at the manor house might hear them. Then they stopped abruptly. Either the spirit ether had lost its steam or Amalric had lost his. At least now there was silence. Trask could look forward to a long night of relative quiet. His empty stomach growled. He thought of his beautiful Belgian…

  Chapter 21

  Charles Pratt shook his head. “Well, one thing’s for certain. There’s no way we’re gettin’ through all that tangle on horseback.”

  Fitzroy March bent back a few buckthorn branches to take a look, but it was no use. The coastline here was completely impassible. The rocky terrain ran sharply upward into a sheer cliff that bordered the sea, all dressed up with thorny bushes and brambles. There was no inland route they could possibly use. Those bushes would tear their horses to pieces.

  Pratt turned his mount toward the seaside. “We could try and force the horses around through the surf…”

  “No,” said March. “We’d have to beat them too hard to get them to go into the water. I want to keep them as fresh as possible.”

  “Should we turn round?” asked Reed Bambury. “Go back?”

  “No,” said March. He pointed to the cliff. “That’s exactly where he’d go.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s the only place we can’t easily follow.”

  “Don’t you think he might’ve gone inland? There are a dozen towns, a hundred places he could try to lose himself.”

  “And a hundred chances of being recognized,” shot back March. “He won’t risk it. And besides, he’s a water rat. He feels at home on the shore. He can survive here. All by himself. Lay low and wait until he can somehow get onto a ship. Maybe he’ll run into a sympathetic ear, some privateer he’s had dealings with in the past. No. He’s here somewhere. On the coast.”

  March led his mount a few yards back along the shore. The two other men followed. It was time to make a decision. Which way to go? Ketch had left them only two choices—fight their way through the thorny bush on foot, or take a dip in the sea. “We’re going to have to get wet, is all. We’ll leave the horses here. Let’s go.”

  “What if he circles round and sneaks through the bush while we’re lookin’ for him on the other side?” asked Pratt. “Steals the horses. That’s just what he’d do, I bet.”

  “You may be right,” admitted March. “We’ll have to leave Reed here to watch the horses.”

  “What if he overpowers Reed?”

  “Then I’ll make sure he hangs for it.”

  “He’s going to hang anyway,” Reed observed.

  “I meant you. And try not to fall asleep this time.”

  March shoved his reins into Reed Bambury’s hand.

  He turned toward Pratt. “Fancy a swim?”

  Far from game, Pratt looked hard at the pounding surf, a concerned frown on his face.

  “You can swim?” March asked.

  Pratt shrugged. “A bit. Fair enough, I guess.”

  March removed his overcoat and laid it carefully on the rocks. He stripped off his shirt, revealing a broad muscular chest with a tuft of hair in the center, mostly gray. He tossed his pistols on the sand. “Let’s go.”

  Pratt followed him into the water.

  The promontory of the cliff stuck out far enough from the rest of the shore that the two men were in for more than just a hip-deep wade through the breakers. His heavy boots, sword belt and rapier didn’t help matters and March found himself pushing hard against the water, Pratt floundering helplessly after him.

  Beyond the jut of the cliff, a rocky shoreline awaited just about a half-mile ahead. March continued his dog-paddle. Whenever his feet touched bottom, the mud sucked at his boots. He would make it, but he wasn’t so sure about Pratt.

  “You all right?”

  Pratt sputtered salt water at him. The general tone of the gurgle suggested a confidence that he too would make it to shore, so March relaxed just a little. The water was cool and refreshing as it washed away the summer heat. After its initial sting, the salt began to warm and soothe his wounds. His shoulder ached a little with each stroke, but the wound had already closed and no longer hindered the full range of motion of his arm. The stab wound through his thigh was still painful. He worried it might have become infected. Assuming the salt water would be good for it, March decided to pay a visit to the seaside each day if possible. Another week should do it, he thought. Till then I’ll just have to kick Ketch’s arse with my other leg.

  He was glad the faeries he’d killed hadn’t taken the opportunity to poison their blades.

  March trudged up the rocky shore on the far side of the promontory. It was less a beach than a jumble of pointed rocks with long strands of deep green seaweed caught between their teeth. He sat on a rock and poured water from his boots. As Pratt struggled along in the water, March took the measure of the land. Remember why we’re here, he told himself. Not for a pleasant walk on the beach.

  To the south lay the sharp rise of the cliff they had just circumvented. To the north the rocky shore gave way once again to naked beach, a desolate stretch of white sand as far as the eye could see. The inland route was overgrown with marram grass and sand sedge with some larger shrubs a little bit farther along. Where would Ketch go? Not back up the cliff face. Not further along the beach either. Too exposed. He’d want a good place to hide.

  Pratt made it out of the water and plopped down beside him. After a moment’s struggle to catch his breath he asked, “What now?”

  March stood. His thigh cramped up and he had to force it to straighten. He paced slowly around.

  “He could be anywhere,” added Pratt. “If he was ever here at all.”

  “He was here.” March stooped to examine a small pile of cracked crab shells that had settled between two rocks. He took a sniff. “Still fresh. You see? We must be close. He didn’t expect us to cross the water.”

  Pratt picked up half of a crab claw. “Could have been an otter.”

  “Otters leave tracks. There’s nothing here. It’s wiped clean. See? Only a man on the run would do that. The absence of tracks is just as telling as if his footprints were right here in the sand. A bloody pirate wouldn’t realize that. They don’t think that way. He’d just sweep his evidence away and think he was in the clear.”

  “Bloody pirate,” said Pratt.

  March circled the area. “Let’s walk. There must be a trail. See? These plants here look as if someone might’ve gone by.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “It’s good enough. Let’s go.”

  March felt a stab of fiery pain in his leg at every step.

  “How far do we go?” Pratt asked.

  “As far as it takes.”

  “I think I’ve got a sardine in my boot…”

  March laughed. “Just stomp down on it a little. That’ll settle it. Things could be worse, you know. One time I was bitten by a lamprey eel. Took an egg-sized chunk out of my leg, that one did.”

  “You might’ve waited until after we swam back to tell me about that,” said Pratt. He rubbed the irritating dried salt from his bare chest. “This sun’s going to fry us before long.”

  “If you think this is bad let me tell you about Panama. I shipped there in 1729. Our good King George wanted to establish a port on the coast to harass the Spanish. Our own little Portobello. He sent the 16th regiment on one of Vernon’s big troop ships. Nothing like a six month cruise across the Atlantic to turn your insides out. Have you ever?”

  “No.”

  “A good way to find religion. When you reach dry land again, after all that vomiting and colic and squabbling on the ship, you feel like you’ve been let out from the bowels of Hell itself. Hallelujah! But Panama wasn’t much better than the ship. Hell can be a jungle too.

  “You see, the problem wasn’t the Spanish troops. It was the natives. They didn’t much like us
European blokes hanging around. They set about doing all sorts of mischief. Stealing our supplies, setting fire to our huts in the middle of the night and whatnot. So we were brought there to get rid of them. Our orders were to just kill them. Eradicate them. Like rats. Should’ve been easy, right? I’m talking about savages. Spears and arrows. They didn’t even know how to fire a musket.”

  March paused to slap away the branches of a low-lying shrub.

  “But they used the jungle like a shield. They knew how to hide. We beat the bushes night and day. We only flushed out a few of them. Women and children mostly.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, we had to bring some heads back to Georgie. And these women were so ugly you could hardly tell them apart from the men anyway. Not by the heads alone. But we never caught any of the men. They always saw us coming.”

  He kneeled to inspect a suspicious ridge in the sand. It might have been a boot print.

  “Didn’t matter anyway,” he continued. “The Spanish ran us out a few months later. Bad days those, terrible days. It was all just a waste of time really.”

  March stopped walking. For a moment, a powerful memory stole across his thoughts. The ruins.

  “We passed through lands seen only by a handful of white men. But there were buildings in the jungle. Giant blocks of stone. I don’t know where they got them from. Laid them one on top of another. I mean they were perfect. Huge. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since. Time and weather had done their work but you could imagine how they must’ve looked all those years ago when they were new.

  “The natives we were after? They hadn’t built them. These were made a long time ago, by people that had come before. When the wind whistled through these ruins, you know, it sounded like the wails of souls in torment.”

  “Cripes,” said Pratt.

  “Some of the stones had inscriptions in some sort of ancient language—looked like a cross between Greek and Chinese to me. Nobody could ever tell me what those runes say, or what those buildings were for, or who left them. To me the whole thing was like a message, like something from another world. Was it a warning? Makes you think, though, doesn’t it?”

  Pratt shrugged. “I guess. Speaking of barren jungles, do you think we’ll ever be able to find Ketch out here? Shouldn’t we go back and get more men?”

  “No worries. I’ve been on his trail for half an hour,” March said. “From the state of those crab shells, he can’t be much farther ahead of us. I’d say we better check those caves. You see? Right there.”

  Twenty yards ahead, barely discernable between overgrown branches of field maple and hawthorn, March pointed out the entrance to a small rocky cave. The two approached cautiously.

  “You think he’s really in there?” asked Pratt. “I mean, right now?”

  “Could be.” March slid his rapier silently from its thin scabbard. He went in along the side of the entrance, keeping close to the rocky wall. The interior was a semicircular chamber about ten feet wide. The cave was empty. March examined the sandy floor for any signs of passage but it was completely clean.

  Pratt breathed a sigh of relief. “He’s not here.”

  “Wait. What’s that over there?” March found a small opening in the far wall, low to the ground and just wide enough for a man to crawl through. The murky light inside the cave gave way to utter darkness. He couldn’t see a thing. “We need a torch,” he whispered. “Go fetch a dried branch or something.”

  March crouched just outside the opening. He listened carefully. He couldn’t hear a sound, but that didn’t mean anything. He was certain Draven Ketch could keep silent as a church mouse if he wanted. Sea scum like him are used to hiding and making sneak attacks.

  Pratt lit a dried hawthorn branch with his flint and coaxed it to burn a little. March tossed it into the opening. The branch sputtered as it hit the sand but kept burning. It shed a feeble light in the little cave, enough to see that there was nothing and no one inside.

  “Empty,” said Pratt. “No trace.”

  March was not satisfied. “We still can’t see all the way around. He could be waiting just to the side of the hole.”

  “You’re not going to…”

  “Put my head on the chopping block?” said March. Sticking his head inside that opening would be just the same. If Ketch was inside, waiting there, March would be defenseless. But still, he had to know.

  He hadn’t any more time to debate the matter. The feeble torch was sputtering out. March dropped down to hands and knees and eased his head into the opening. He had the opportunity of one quick look before darkness fell.

  No one there. But beside the opening, where they’d never be seen from outside, March found the evidence he was searching for. A makeshift bedroll, ashes from a small fire, a pile of discarded oyster shells, and the bloody pelt of some small animal, probably a rabbit.

  “He was here,” he told Pratt. “But he saw us coming. That’s just the thing. He’ll always see us coming.”

  Chapter 22

  It was a perfect day. The sky was a soft, satin blue curtain stretched overhead, a sea of calm peppered with drifting cotton ball clouds. The mid-day sun burned like a torch, but they were cool enough in the shade of the red maples. A warm summer breeze swept across the river, a gentle touch across their skin. As Theodora shook out the heavy wool blanket, a cinder flew into Eric’s eye. Well, almost perfect.

  He watched his wife set their provisions out on the blanket, admiring her slender figure as she knelt across the grass. She wore a simple white summer dress, bare at the shoulders with a frill of white lace across the neckline and down the front. Long swathes of honey-colored hair tumbled loosely down her shoulders like twin waterfalls. He drank in every detail, the perfect swell of her backside, the way her breasts dangled against the lace trim, the sunlight sparkling off every tiny golden hair along her forearms as she smoothed the blanket. She had never looked more beautiful.

  She caught him watching and smiled.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  They had rowed out across the river in a small flat-bottomed dinghy Eric kept in a shed by the river. The island was called Murch’s Island although the Grayson family had owned it for as long as anyone could remember. Theobald Murch had been an infamous Scottish rebel, a squatter who lived on the island a hundred years ago. His tiny shack had long since fallen back to earth, rendering the shoreline pristine again. All that remained of Murch was his name. The island was an idyllic haven set in the middle of the river, a grassy mound lined by stands of maple and chestnut oak.

  Theodora set out their picnic lunch—baked ham, deviled eggs, flatbread, sausages. Eric’s stomach growled slightly at the sight of all that rich food, but he was hungry for something else even more.

  He crawled across the blanket, his elbow in the pudding, and took Theodora by the shoulders. She arched her head back. He pressed her down and kissed her long and hard. He devoured her lips and tongue, pausing only to take in a hasty breath or two.

  He pressed his entire body against her, the plate of sausages caught uncomfortably between them. Rather than get annoyed at her soiled dress, Theodora laughed. She pushed him away in order to remove the inconvenient plate.

  “Tell me how you love me.”

  He did.

  “Are you happy?” she asked.

  “I’ve never been happier.”

  “Me too.”

  He’d had enough conversation for the moment. Watching Theodora’s lips forming the words only made him want to kiss her immediately. This probably wasn’t the place for it, right out in the open, but he didn’t care. If the lord and lady were to indulge themselves at this moment, they might well be seen from the opposite shore. Well, then the peasantry were in for a mighty fine show. He adored this little island. He felt safe here.

  Paradoxically that feeling of safety made him remember how nervous he had been just yesterday, in advance of Theodora’s return. He’d stood out front of the manor house waiting to meet the
wagon with four armed men beside him on the cobbles. Four men? Why? Nervous for her welfare, he supposed. Or perhaps he’d been expecting trouble from Finnegan Stump. The thought of Stump crossed Eric’s mind as a wicked spider scrabbling across its rotted web. Sinister, lurking, his beady eyes roving this way and that.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to matter any more. There had been no trouble. Just the opposite. The old man had remained inside the wagon, out of sight. It had been such a relief to see Theodora safe and sound as she emerged from the wagon and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. She told him there was good news. Her father had finally given their marriage his blessing.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up on the blanket. “You seem suddenly troubled.”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking of your father.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I told you. He won’t bother us anymore. It’s just the two of us now.”

  “That sounds good.” He’d had enough of talk. He swept the rest of the food aside and took her mouth, pressing Theodora down onto the blanket. She rose up to meet him and they kissed with rising passion. She could hardly move; he was crushing her into the ground. She turned her head to the side, gasping for air but still smiling.

  She ran her hand down his chest and seized his crotch, feeling the erection tearing at his breeches. She unbuckled his belt and snapped his trousers open. Eric could think of nothing except the warm softness of her palm as she stroked him. He was covered in sweat, could hardly breathe. All he could think about was how much he loved her, how exciting she was, how perfect. He was soon on the verge of climax.

  He had to push her away, twisting to the side, or spend himself in her hand right there and then.

  “Wait,” he gasped. “Let me catch my breath.”

  Theodora chuckled playfully. “You’re squirming like a schoolboy. It’s good to know I can still affect you that way, even after two children.”