Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  Who would remember you, that is what you must be thinking. Not as tall as her husband, Margaret was still taller than Lady Kinloss and could look a little downward into the cold, proud, crushed blue eyes and see into the face of a woman who had once been a great lady. Her hands slowed on the open neck of the dress. She had raised her foot to slip it through the hole—she put it down again, gently. She put out one hand and found the other’s shoulder: it was an aged, thin shoulder, and the hollow of the other’s collar-bone seemed to empty into her back.

  “You have seen hardship,” she said boldly, “and, I think, some tears. Do not speak to me of doing me a little thing. All the great men of the Honours are turned out in full regalia to do a great thing for the likes of you. You owe us nothing. We lay our heads at your feet.”

  One pale shard of eye, watery and swimming in the colour of a chicory-blossom, hung fixed on Margaret’s gaze; she saw distinctly the pupil swell open with emotion—anger, perhaps, or was it the terror of a hope kindled in the distance? The pale lips, lips that caught suddenly on the sharp corners of words and stumbled, opened in a pink curl, a sudden glint of teeth…

  Curse it! There was a harsh knock at the door. Impulsively Margaret thrust her feet into the dress and hauled it up over her shoulders. Dost eat? Dost eat a thing? she wondered vehemently as the fabric skimmed over her knees and stuck, obstinately, at her thighs. To put a little healthy fat on your bones would be to do a little thing for me, and no mistake! With brute force and coaxing that would have warmed Dammerung’s wily heart, she got the gown on and stood with her back to the wall as Kinloss crossed to the door and fiddled with the bolt.

  The gap at her back where the buttons had been left undone was very chilly.

  A stranger at the door said clearly, “My lordship sends for the Lady Margaret without dawdle, madam.”

  “She will be right out.” Kinloss shut the door. Her face was white again. Margaret saw one of her hands—the other was lost in the folds of her gown—was shaking badly. Her own stomach clenched.

  Shore up. A little longer and it will be over. “I heard,” she said aloud, lifting her chin. “Do up my buttons and I will go at once. And—thank you.”

  The woman went round and stood at her back, her cold fingers tugging and wrestling with the little pearl buttons. There seemed to be a lot, or else her hands were slipping at every twist. Margaret could feel the tension thrumming in Kinloss and listened in the silence to an ominous, dark music that the other’s soul was singing like a dirge.

  “I can guess,” her voice was limned and hard with steel, “by your silence that these summons bode no good.”

  Kinloss could not speak, and in her silence Margaret felt her first pang of terror. Shore up. No panic; panic will blind you from a way out. Shore up your defences. She grasped the lower edge of her bodice under the linen and gave it a tug and a twist to get it back into position. She did not say good-bye—to say good-bye was to admit defeat—but went quietly to the door with her heart’s blood hot in her neck and went out without a look back.

  The corridor was dark and lit with only a little sunlight at the far end.

  What have I to do with the wicked? What good am I among them, that I should walk with them or perish with them? I scorn them. I would crush them under my heel—if my heel were big enough. As the Lord lives, she took a deep breath and did not let it out until it had rearranged into their proper positions all the organs in her middle, I will detest their lies and habits forever. Get me from them. They have nothing to do with you or your ways, and so they have nothing to do with me. In your rough and ready compassion, pluck me from among them like a brand from the fire.

  Her lips curled; her eyelids fluttered hard in a sudden impulse to shut against the bitter irony.

  I am standing a little too close to the wicked. I will smell of smoke when you smite them. I hope you do not mind the scent of it.

  She was taken to what appeared to be a study, lined with bookshelves, with the windows facing advantageously south. There were no lamps lit. In the half-light and gloom Margaret stopped in the doorway and looked warily around, first for Bloodburn and then for a way out.

  There was no way out. The servant stood directly behind her and she stood in the only doorway that opened on the room. Bloodburn was standing at one end of the desk with his arms at his sides; facing him was a man between them in age—he could not be much more or much less than forty—with black, white-grizzled hair and a tough, homeless face. He looked sullenly round as Margaret stepped into view. For a moment their eyes met: she saw an answering flicker of surprise in the man’s face before the eyes were dropped again toward the floor.

  “Get in here,” said Bloodburn.

  She took one more step inside the room, her hand put surreptitiously back with a finger in the doorframe lest the servant should choose to jerk the door shut, and looked with a faint air of offence from one man to the other. “Why, what is this? A tea party?”

  “Do you know this man?” Hol demanded. “Look at me, for I will know if you lie: do you know this man? Was he in with you on your ill-planned attempt at escape?”

  To tell the truth was easy. “He was not in with me for anything. I have never seen the man before in my life.”

  The man winced, his brow clenching. With the movement the sunlight showed up a conspicuous discolouration of the flesh between his brows in the shape of a T. Anxiety shivered through her flesh.

  Did I say the wrong thing?

  “Have you not? Perhaps you have not. Huw Daggerman is not a man easy to miss in the crowd.”

  “A pretty name.” She recovered herself as quickly as possible. “What has this to do with me? I am come from Capys and the Mares: I do not know your people. What is the meaning of this?”

  “When my men went to repair the glass you broke they found him in the chamber rifling through my possessions. It is not the first time he has been caught thieving.” The man Huw Daggerman’s eyes flickered upward, still sullen, but certain of his fate—it made his countenance awful. “Mayhap it will be his last.”

  “One job I have left,” the man said, taking the time to toy with a little smile, “and that is to cheat you of my scream when I die. I never scream.”

  Caesar’s face cracked, like white marble, into sardonic pleasure. “Man is a creating god when it comes to ways of making other men suffer.”

  “I would not punish him for a thief,” Margaret broke in. Her stomach was betraying her with a sick, uneasy feeling. Bloodburn swung his head toward her, grey, bullish brows lowered. Huw Daggerman did not take his eyes from Bloodburn. “Rather punish him for a fool. Who comes to a broken window—itself already conspicuous—and says, ‘Oh yes, it would be a good idea to plunder here.’ What rot! Do you make that mark on his brow for thieving? Give him a smart one on the hand and a slap on the back of his head—there are no brains in the latter, it would seem: it will do him no harm.”

  Bloodburn’s hand moved to a walking stick that lay across his desk. His face, gone suddenly too like Rupert’s, spoke murder. “No one,” he breathed, “least of all a woman, tells me what I will and will not do, nor councils me in aught.”

  Margaret saw Huw Daggerman shift his shoulder toward her out of the corner of her eye, but her gaze was on the walking stick, swinging slowly in the air, a moment from pulling back to strike her.

  “I warned you not to strike at me again.” It was with an effort that she kept her voice level. Those old shoulders did not appear to have lost any of their sureness: it would not take long to beat her to death.

  “There are worse ways to go,” said Bloodburn.

  “See here—” Daggerman blurted, quite out of his station.

  Bloodburn turned and struck the man a cruel blow to the jaw. With a grunt he went over and down across a chair, breaking one of the chair’s legs, and landed hard on his side as his hands were tied at his back. Impulsively Margaret started forward but stopped, conscious of the walking stick wavering between them.


  “You,” Bloodburn told Margaret, “I should not like to beat. Damaged goods fetch lower prices.”

  “No? Not because you lack the skill of it?” she retorted recklessly.

  Daggerman rolled over and pulled himself up by clenching his stomach muscles. Hearing her, he shook his head warningly, eyes alight with worry. A little late for you to come into an inheritance of caution! she thought angrily. She opened her mouth at Bloodburn, her teeth bared like a vixen, but whatever she meant to say—she could never remember afterward—she never had the chance. She was interrupted by a boom and a shock like a cannon shot that made the floor tiles ripple and flow like water. She was thrown around, her hand wildly reaching for the doorframe for support—somehow she snagged it and managed to hold on while the floor ran in two directions at once under her feet.

  “Oh!” she cried as Bloodburn, recovering himself before her, pushed past her through the door. She reeled after him, but a second thunderclap nearly reeled her back into the room. She staggered, fought the treacherous floor, and ran after him toward the great reception hall.

  Kra-KOW! The door to the hall wrenched like a broken picture frame to one side as she stood in it, sending the world askew. But her heart, suddenly uncaged, sang like a canary as she stood behind Bloodburn and watched the thunder get its fingers into the huge front doors of the house. They splintered, letting in shards of light, and finally blasted away altogether into a fine shower of wood. A grey, wind-whirling figure mounted resolutely over the debris and came striding in, followed by several others at a hesitant distance.

  25 | The Cedars of Lebanon

  Dammerung emerged from the dust rather more furious than Margaret had been expecting. “On your knees!” he roared, sweeping his arm through the air as if to cut them in all two. The startled servants and retainers seemed to have their feet knocked from under them, and they crashed to the ground on their hands and knees. Bloodburn he left standing, but even Bloodburn looked apprehensive for the brief moment it took Margaret to break her gaze from Dammerung and look at the lord’s face.

  The look there left her satisfied.

  “By heaven and thunder—” Dammerung was still roaring as he came “—by flood and fire, by all the improbable stars, by the shoe my horse cast to get me here, you have meddled with the wrong man!” And he stopped dead in front of Bloodburn, his finger thrust under Bloodburn’s nose.

  There was a soft tinselly sound of falling dust and the heavy breathing of the War-wolf; all else was silence. On the background outskirts of the scene Margaret looked on, oddly quiet now in her heart, and oddly aflame beneath the quiet. None of the servants had dared to rise yet. Beyond Dammerung Margaret was aware of a bright knot of fellows, bare-headed and on the alert: Brand the Hammer and Sparling were among them; and Aikaterine too, she noticed with faint surprise, clad in light armour that would have shone gold had it not been so covered in dust. The high light fell softly on her and made her look gentle and terrible at once.

  “Lady Spitcat got your tongue?” asked Dammerung quietly.

  “For a woman,” Bloodburn replied, “she has been most unusually candid.”

  An angry doggish smile slashed the War-wolf’s face. “A unique quality in a woman—I prize it most highly.” He was silent again for a moment, then thrust like the thrust of a dagger: “Why?”

  Bloodburn must have felt the game was up, for he shrugged philosophically and said, “It is an old chess move, to take and to hold the queen. I meant to get a costly ransom out of you for the lady.”

  Dammerung’s eyebrows flickered playfully. “Is that so…? But in your heart is Rupert de la Mare not rightful heir of Marenové, and would your ransoming not be robbing him?”

  “What do you know of where de la Mare lies in my heart?” It was Bloodburn’s turn for the deadly lightness to lie upon his voice. “I might have given the money to de la Mare…then again, I might not. Only I know that I despise you—and it please you—and would lief see you ruined to right and left.”

  “Then better you had broken the lady, which would have been a death-blow to my soul,” said Dammerung softly, seriously. Margaret’s skin crawled cold.

  Caesar merely shrugged; his face was impassive.

  Dammerung took in a deep breath and drew back, as though he needed space to think. “I might fain kill you now, you know—and it please you—though killing in cold blood has never set well in my mind.”

  Bloodburn’s voice turned scornful. “With all due respect, that tendency to mercy is what cost you your freedom, and will cost you more yet.”

  The War-wolf’s eyes flashed sidewise at Hol’s face, angry and stabbing. “I would not curse mercy just yet, blackguard, for your life yet hangs upon it—heaven so help you.”

  At that moment someone touched Margaret from behind and she jumped mutely, heart in her throat, to find Aikin Ironside smiling down at her from the shadows of the corridor. She got a confused idea that there were several others in the corridor behind him.

  “If you would permit me—” he said in an undertone, simultaneously pushing her gently aside.

  Dammerung caught sight of him stepping out into the hall and his face lightened briefly. “Have you got them?”

  “Aye.” Aikin Ironside held up a ring of keys with a heavy chunk. “The old brute gave fight and tongue, but he quieted quick enough with friend Huw’s fist in his mouth.”

  The thief stood free beside and behind him, looking, quietly and casually, for a way out.

  “You have not killed my steward?” asked Bloodburn hastily.

  But the question, which made Bloodburn a touch human for a moment, only enraged Dammerung. “What wonder is it to you? What of your wife and cub? You do not ask after them. Nay, we have not killed the grizzled brute, for we are not swift to kill.” He turned to Brand. “Rout out the dame and dog-pup. Bring them to us.”

  Brand took a detail of men and crashed away, their nailed boots echoing on the stone flags.

  Dammerung turned back to Bloodburn. “I like it when the punishment fits the crime. It gives one a pleasant, assured feeling that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world, and all that. So since you, you dog of an Amalekite, took her face from me—” he beckoned up Margaret, though she did not move “—which is a wandering home to me, I will, rather than pay you ransom, take her back and burn the roof-tree of your hall.”

  “I did not burn your…wandering home,” Bloodburn argued rhetorically. “It does not seem to my mind that the crime deserves such punishment.”

  “Hy my!” cried Dammerung, flinging himself back and walking round Bloodburn, looking him up and down. “What, thee of little faith! I said burn the roof-tree of your hall and I meant the roof-tree of your hall, no more, no less.”

  Caesar’s colourless eyes swept the gathering; Margaret could see his head move ever so slightly as he counted them off. “Even with thirteen of you—an unlucky number too, I think—you would be hard-pressed to keep a blaze particular to this hall.”

  The War-wolf smiled scornfully. “How sceptical hell breeds its men,” he remarked. Bloodburn frowned but did not contradict him. “I know the high arts and the Golden Tongue which men of old spoke to shape the world, but I use them but rarely since men now are often low and mealy, and it is not sporting fair to come among them as a god come among worms. So I content myself with blowing to smithers your thrust-jawed door and teaching your servants a little respect—and lighting a blaze under your thatch. Come out,” he added imperiously, as if calling the souls up from the grave. “Come out and see the handiwork of your own folly.”

  Aikin Ironside and an Orzelon-gang man who was often not far from the prince’s side stepped forward, flanking the Lord of Hol. Dammerung swung aside, his head up, his gaze a little detached as if he were seeing into Bloodburn, not roving over his face. Bloodburn went, silently, regally, passing down through the mute ranks of his servants and retainers; one dared to move as if to draw a sword, but Aikin Ironside turned and fixed the man
with a flash of a look like a falcon, full of blood-lust and the mockery of a man taunting, and the little movement died before it came to anything.

  Dammerung watched them to the pile of rubble before he turned to Margaret. For the first time a smile began on his face, then he saw her gown. The smile crumpled into a look of startlement. “What—”

  “I know. It is a terrible colour. But my other dress was done to rags. Have you brought my things?”

  “Hello to you too,” he said, recovering. His eyes peeled away from the bright rouge fabric. “I have brought them. I will toss the dress on the pyre too, if you like.”

  She took his arm. “’Tisn’t mine, ’tis Kinloss’. I promised to give it back.”

  He passed his hand over his lips thoughtfully, leaving behind a smudge. “I could make it look like an accident. I am here to rid the world of evil and suchlike. Are—all well?” he added softly.

  She smiled. “My head is still unwell. I think I must have been out in the elements too long. And I took a blow to the face. But they fed me and clothed me, after a fashion.” Her eyes travelled ahead to the back of Bloodburn’s doublet. “I wonder if he was not kinder to me than he was to his wife.”

  “He was,” said Dammerung coldly. “He was, but I will soon put those things to rights.”

  “O-oh..!” she protested as they stepped out into the stark afternoon light. She was momentarily blinded. He set his hand in the small of her back to steady her; between the high swimming light and the loud crunch of gravel underfoot, she noticed the dull jangle of pain in her back had gone. A blast of warm air hit them in the face; looking round, shoving her hair out of her face, Margaret saw Dammerung watching Bloodburn out of the corner of one bright, narrowed eye, like a cat watching a dog which has not yet got its scent. But aloud he said, “Why, friend Huw—” and turned, flinging a look over his shoulder.