The baron backhanded her then, so hard that she went sprawling backward into the dust of the courtyard. Valerian made a growling, inhuman sound and lunged at her father.
A furious bellow spilled from the baron's throat, and over it all Brenna's own sobs could be heard, as well as the frantic peace pleas of poor Challes.
The baron raised his sword and neatly sliced open Valerian's poor garment, along with the flesh beneath. The baron laughed, the sound echoing off the inner walls of the keep, like the ravings of a madman. "So you dare to go for my throat, do you?" he roared as the squire returned with the extra sword. "You are brave, as well as insolent, like so many fools." At a gesture from his master, the servant handed the second blade to Valerian. "Well, upon this day, you shall die."
"No!" Brenna screamed, clawing at the ground with spread fingers in her effort to get to her feet and fling herself upon her father. But this time Challes succeeded in forestalling her; he wrapped an arm around her middle and dragged her backward into the shadows. When she shrieked in protest, the tutor slapped her, but it was the words that followed that quieted her, rather than the blow.
"God save us all, my lady, you've already doomed your beloved with your imprudent ways! Will you see him sundered at the joints as well, like a fowl to be served at supper? In the name of all that's holy, be still, and perhaps some passing angel will show us mercy!"
Dirty and broken inside, Brenna sagged against her teacher, weeping softly, and he held her.
Valerian took the sword, and though he was not experienced, he was strong. The battle raged for an eternity, it seemed to Brenna. Her father prevailed for a time, then Valerian. Both men were bloodied, their clothes drenched with sweat and gritty with courtyard dirt. At last the baron swung his blade in a mighty arch, and Valerian went down with nary a cry, with a deep, crimson gash in his middle.
He did not rise.
Brenna screamed inwardly, silently.
The baron, unsteady on his feet, breathing hard and bleeding copiously from wounds in his upper arm and one shoulder, looked down upon the half-conscious lad and raised his sword for the kill. For a long time he stood there like that, prepared to run Valerian through and finish it, and for Brenna all of creation stopped, as motionless as a painting.
The baron glanced at her, and she saw the utter absence of love in his eyes, and then looked down at Valerian again. Finally the nobleman spat on the lad and flung the faithful sword aside, sending it clattering across the stone pathway that wove through the courtyard.
"He shall rot awhile in my dungeon, and then hang," the baron decreed, pointing one bloodstained, filthy index finger at Brenna. "You, Daughter of Eve, shall be witness to the fruits of your whoring, and so shall the bootmaker and his wife, and everyone else in the village who cares to witness the spectacle."
"There was no whoring, Your Grace," the tutor said quickly, stunning them all by what he risked. "The Lady Brenna was weeping, and the tradesman's son attempted to comfort her. It was no more than that."
The Baron assessed the scholar he had engaged some years before, at the behest of Brenna's late mother, whom he had loved with a slavish devotion. "Get out," he rasped. "Or you shall swing from a gibbet with this dog's get." He kicked Valerian's prone body once, eliciting the first and last moan from him, then stalked away.
Brenna ran to Valerian and placed his head in her lap, stroking his blood-streaked hair. "I won't let him part us," she whispered, cold with shock. "I'll die with you—I vow it by all I know of heaven—before I'll say farewell."
Somewhere, deeper within the keep, she heard her father shouting orders. Too soon, men came, wrenching the dazed Valerian from her arms, roughly hauling him away. Brenna did not fight them, because she was afraid of doing Valerian further injury.
Challes crouched beside her briefly, where she sat in the dust like a beggar, and spoke in a quiet but stern voice. "Go to your quarters, Lady Brenna. Wash yourself, and brush your hair, and don a clean gown. When your father summons you, and he shall, answer his questions respectfully and keep your opinions to yourself. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," she whispered. She didn't see what any of it mattered; all she cared about was saving Valerian.
Then even Challes was gone.
Brenna rose after a while and was met at the edge of the courtyard by her lady's maid, Moll, who clucked and fretted at the sight of her charge. Like a sleepwalker, Brenna let herself be led inside the keep, across the great room, up the broad stone stairs, and along the passageway to her own chamber.
There she stood still and endured while Moll stripped away her gown, along with the shift beneath it, and scrubbed her with chilly water and a rough cloth. Brenna's hair was brushed, then thick tendrils at either side were plaited, with narrow ribbons made from cloth-of-gold woven through. She was powdered and perfumed, like a bride being prepared for her husband. Then, finally, she was laced into a green frock, just a few shades darker than her eyes, and steered across the rushes to the looking glass.
Brenna did not connect herself to the beautiful image wavering upon the murky face of the mirror. She was numb, as insubstantial as a ghost, with no more depth than her reflection.
She turned to look into Moll's eyes and clutched the maid's work-worn hands in both her own. "I must go to him," she said. "Where is he?"
Moll's plain, earnest face paled. "The bootmaker's lad? I would imagine he's in the dungeon still, mistress, where the baron had him put, but—"
Brenna's mind was beginning to work again. The servants lived in a world all their own; they knew each other's habits, had their own feuds and romances. Without their help, she could not hope to reach Valerian. "I know Father has already ordered that I am to be closed up in my chamber, after tonight. But you must bring the key and let me out, Moll, as soon as the moon is high."
Moll swayed slightly with fear. "Milady!" she rasped. "Do you know what you're asking of me? Why, if I were found out—"
"You won't be caught," Brenna interrupted, knowing the promise was a rash one even as she spoke. "Please, Moll—I must go to Valerian. Tonight!"
"It's no use, your putting yourself into such danger!" Moll rarely argued, but she did so now, with fervor. "He's to die one day soon, with the sunrise, is Noah Lazarus's son! And nothing you can do will save him!"
Brenna would not, could not, turn away from her course, though she knew as well as anyone that it was a deadly one. If these were Valerian's last days on earth, then they would be hers as well. If she must see him step into eternity, in the first flowering of his manhood, then she would follow on his heels, and cross the unseen river knowing what it was to pass the night in her beloved's arms.
She tightened her grasp on Moll's hands and looked deep into her old friend's troubled eyes. "My father will have me whipped if he catches me at this," she said softly. "If I can risk that, can you not chance letting me out of my room when the time is right?"
Moll was in anguish, but she nodded just before she turned and left the room.
Brenna's evening meal was served in her chamber, by the light of tallows, for she was well and truly banished from her father's table as well as his heart. He would not forgive her, and the knowledge grieved her sorely, but that night her status in the household was the least of her concerns.
She didn't even pretend to eat; the food on her trencher had grown cold, and she was pacing nervously back and forth at the foot of her bed, her hems whispering in the dry rushes. Moll did not return, and the hours dragged past, with Brenna still a prisoner in her chamber.
She slept in her beautiful gown, and no breakfast was brought when the morrow came. She was given water, that was all, by a servant who would not meet her gaze or answer her questions.
A week had passed, during which Brenna had eaten nothing and heard not a word spoken by another human being, when a burly manservant came and summoned her to her father's chamber. Still wearing the green gown, now much crumpled, she finished the last of a cup of water before stepp
ing into the passageway to follow her silent escort across the stone floors to the other side of the keep.
The baron stood at an open window when she entered, gazing out at the dark sea, and he did not turn to greet her.
Brenna herself heard the song of the tides and felt the cooling mist on her face. She took courage from those things, and straightened her back, for she loved the sea.
"You sent for me," she said with simple dignity. She was light-headed with hunger and worry, but her sense of injustice sustained her. "I am here."
Her father's broad back stiffened, and she felt a stirring of pity for him. He was bound by what and who he was, she realized, and even if somewhere inside himself he truly wanted to show mercy, he would be unable to do so. He had been born to a rigid code, he knew nothing else, and it was not in him to change.
"You have broken my heart," he said starkly, and still he did not face her. "Tell me, have you lain with that devil's spawn or simply lusted after him?"
Brenna swallowed. Tread carefully, warned a voice in her giddy mind, one with the timbre and substance of Challes's. "I want him," she admitted without the slightest remorse. "But, no, Father, I have never lain with Valerian or any man. You knew that before you asked me."
At last the baron turned, very slowly, and Brenna's heart quailed behind her rib cage. She was not effortlessly, foolishly bold like Valerian; she had seen her father punish servants and errant villagers, and she knew the ferocity of his rages. Now she was utterly stunned to see that his face was wet with tears.
"Perhaps," he whispered, "your body is indeed pure, just as you say. But yours is the soul of a whore. You have fused yourself to that filthy peasant as surely as if he'd taken you to his bed. And now there is nothing to be done. He must die, and you must go to your new husband in shame."
Brenna interlaced her fingers and bit her lower lip for a moment, trying to think calmly. "There is something that can be done," she said quietly, and at length. "Banish us, both of us, Valerian and me. We'll make our way to London, or—"
"Silence!" the baron roared. "Do you argue for him still, when you know I cannot bear any reference to the scab?"
A shrill commotion in the hall beyond the baron's heavy door stopped Brenna's impulsive reply in her throat. It was undoubtedly for the best.
"What in the name of—?" her father muttered as the great door crashed inward.
Seraphina Lazarus, Valerian's mother, filled the chasm, beautiful even in her frenzy. Her flawless skin was white as a corpse's, her violet eyes wild, her chestnut hair loose and untamed, like a witch's tresses, and her simple gown was streaked with ash.
Brenna felt ill, and would have retched if her stomach hadn't been shrunken and empty, as she watched the woman rush to the baron and kneel at his feet.
"My firstborn," Seraphina pleaded, clutching the nobleman's hand and kissing his knuckles and fingers and wrist, frantically, feverishly. "Oh, sir, I beg you, spare my boy—allow me to die in his place—take all of us, my husband, my other son—" The bootmaker's wife paused and made a pitiful, strangling sound, far down in her throat. "There is pestilence abroad in the land," she blathered. "Set Valerian free, I pray you, sir—if it is the will of Heaven that he perish for his sin, then surely the plague will take him—"
Plague. Brenna barely registered the word on a conscious level, weakened by her confinement as she was, and sharing Seraphina's agony as she did, but she felt a ripple of fear all the same.
"Damn your indecent soul, woman," the baron seethed, glaring down at Seraphina. "You utter one travesty on top of another, arguing and bargaining for the life of this young devil as if he were a lover!"
Brenna flinched at the cruelty of the words. "Father—" she began in protest, starting toward the pair, but there was no stopping fate.
The baron's rage mounted visibly; he went crimson, temples pulsing, and raised a swordsman's hard fist to strike Seraphina a savage blow. Even after he'd struck her, the bootmaker's wife scrabbled through the rushes to clutch at his garb again, sobbing now, and wailing piteously.
Brenna's father tore himself free with a great curse, and he might have kicked the poor woman if his daughter hadn't stepped between them.
"Her only crime is love," Brenna reasoned with a tranquility that surprised her as much as it did the baron. "Oh, Father, turn from this—please. I'll do anything you say, anything at all, if you'll just unbend this once and show compassion."
The baron eyed her coldly, and then the woman groveling on the floor. He raised his voice to cover the sound of her anguish; she babbled something unintelligible and then fell to whimpering. "Valerian dies," he barked.
Seraphina gave a great, bubbling shriek and fell unconscious onto her side, and a spew of bright red blood burst from her mouth.
Brenna tried to go to the woman's aid, but the baron took a bruising grip on his daughter's arm and flung her out the door. He was shouting for the servants when Brenna started for her chamber, paused, and then slipped into the shadows and made her way to a rear passageway.
The dungeon was unguarded—the baron knew Valerian was injured and probably considered him unworthy of a bailiff's time. Carrying a tallow she'd stolen from the kitchen, along with some cheese, a basin, and a piece of soft cloth, Brenna moved from cell to cell until she reached the last and most cramped of them all. A rat scuttled out of the gloom before she could work the lock. It stopped at her feet to rise onto its haunches and whirl about in a macabre little dance, before falling dead on its side.
A chill trickled down Brenna's spine, and she crossed herself hastily and offered a prayer to the Virgin. Then she stepped over the small, furry corpse and into the cell where Valerian lay.
He was a shadow, curled in the fetid straw. The dank walls dripped with water, and the faint, panicky twitter of other rats reached Brenna's ears.
"Valerian," she whispered urgently.
He stirred. "Milady?" Valerian moaned the word, then sat up, blinking, one arm clutching his wounded middle. "Jesus, Joseph, and Mary," he marveled on a long breath. "Leave me—now—before they find you here!"
Brenna set down the cloth and tallow on a crude bench and knelt beside him in the straw, giving him water from a cup and the morsel of cheese. "This is where I intend to pass the night," she answered. "Here, with you."
He managed to eat just a little, and Brenna went back for the basin. Then, kneeling beside Valerian in the fowl straw again, she began to bathe the blood and dirt from his flesh. Even in the dim glow of that one candle, she saw the tears shimmering in his eyes.
"Oh, God, Brenna," he whispered. "How did we get ourselves to this place?"
"Shhh," she said and went on washing him. Her own hunger and weakness floated somewhere above her, suspended.
Presently the loving task had been done as well as it could be, given the circumstances. The tallow guttered out, and Brenna laid herself beside Valerian on the cell floor, and gathered him close with one arm. With the other hand she undid the laces at her bosom and, baring her breasts, offered him the only intimate comfort she knew about.
He was half dead of his wounds, but the blood in his veins was youthful, like the sap in a fierce young tree, and he drank hungrily from her breasts, and kissed her, and spoke pretty, disjointed words while he nibbled at her earlobe. Finally he raised her skirts and took her, with a hard, greedy thrust.
Brenna felt searing pain, followed swiftly by a treacherous pleasure, and she gave herself up to her forbidden lover with all the passion pent up in her innocent soul.
* * *
CHAPTER 3
« ^ »
Daisy
Las Vegas, 1995
The victim was a showgirl, no more than twenty years old, and she lay sprawled on the living room floor of her cramped apartment, wearing nothing but a short sea-green robe. Her shoulder-length blond hair spilled over the cheap carpeting and partially covered her face.
She was impossibly pale, even for a corpse. Daisy thought of Snow White waiting
for her prince, and shuddered. There was no blood anywhere.
Daisy had been promoted to detective six months before, after the requisite four years on the street, and she had seen her share of murders. No matter how many she investigated, the bile still rushed into the back of her throat, and sometimes she had to run to the nearest bush or bathroom to throw up. On other occasions, especially when the victim was a child, she wept.
This time she felt an ugly sort of shock take hold, deep inside her. Even before her partner, O'Halloran, started filling her in on the details, she knew they were dealing with some kind of monster.
"Look at this," O'Halloran said, crouching beside the body, which had already been outlined and photographed. In fact, the coroner's people were hovering, ready to do their grisly duties. He brushed back a tendril of the dead woman's glossy blond hair with remarkably gentle fingers to reveal a pair of neat puncture wounds, set about two inches apart, in the victim's neck. "If I didn't know better, Chandler, I'd say this was the work of one of them vampires. You know, like in the movies."
Daisy felt a chill trip down her spine. "I know what vampires are," she snapped.
O'Halloran, a wiry, graying man of medium height, with twenty-eight years on the force to his credit, sighed loudly and stretched to his feet. His eyes were either pale blue or pale green, depending on the weather and how things were going at home. This was a blue day. "What's the matter, Chandler—you suffering from PMS or something? Well, take a pill. I got enough problems without you flashing an attitude."
Daisy didn't apologize, though she knew O'Halloran was right. She was off track—her meeting with the magician had occupied her every waking thought since she'd left his dressing room the night before. When she had managed to sleep, she'd been plagued by strange, vivid dreams of a medieval courtyard and two men fighting with swords…
"Chandler," O'Halloran prompted, poking her with an elbow.
Daisy jumped and shook her head once in an effort to clear her head. "Yeah, I'm with you. Sorry. What's her name?"
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