The Golden Dove

by Jo Ann Wendt

  She whirled to backtrack. But behind, in that direction, male voices shouted in the muffling fog. A dog bayed excitedly. Then a second dog, a third. Her chest constricted. With a panicky sob, laboring for breath, she fled the sounds and plunged on through the orchard, plunging from tree to tree. Breaking out of the orchard, she seized her wet unwieldy skirts and ran headlong down an endless slope, running drunk- enly, her boots heavy as lead, so caked with mud.

  At the bottom of the slope, she tripped and fell, her hands slapping into icy mud. Panting, gasping, she pushed herself to her feet, seized her sodden skirts and ran on. The fog swirled upward for an instant, clearing for a moment, and she stopped to get her bearings, panting, panicking, swatting mud from her forehead.

  Ahead lay Blackpool marsh, dark and frightening, its tree- tops overgrown with tangled vines, its miles of hunter's paths winding through dangerous bogs and mires. She could smell marsh gas and stagnant water. She could hear the quiet pop of sulphurous gases bubbling to the surface.

  As swiftly as the fog had cleared, it closed in again, engulfing her in its thick, white silence. Behind, distant but not so distant as at first, dogs bayed excitedly. She had no choice. Seizing her wet heavy skirts, she plunged into Blackpool marsh.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dove found himself on the road to Blackpool Castle again. He'd ridden this road a half dozen times in the past two weeks, ever since he'd learned Jericho was in service there.

  Not that he hoped to see her. Hell, no! If he saw her again in a hundred years it would be too soon. The ungrateful grubworm. She'd broken his heart, disappearing out of his bed—out of his life—without so much as a by-your-leave.

  And then to pop up in service to a man he loathed! To a man the de Monts despised. It was treachery. Disloyalty of the blackest sort. He would never forgive her, not even if she crawled on her knees and begged.

  A finger of fog drifted out of Blackpool marsh and crossed the road, eerie as a ghost. His mount shied. Dove whacked it. The horse opted for obedience. Dove drew his cloak closed against the chill mist.

  D'Orias was worried about Jericho. But Dove wasn't worried. Worry about Jericho? He'd sooner worry about a wart hog. Jericho was as tough as old barrel staves. She'd been a tough brat at eleven; she was tougher at twenty. The London fire proved that. Worry? Ha! Someone ought to worry about Blackpool, with that treacherous disloyal grubworm in his house.

  A thick cloud of fog enveloped him, momentarily erasing the world, replacing it with weightless, white, glowing silence. His horse shied again. Dove kicked it. The horse settled down. Dove breathed fog. It was cold and wet and smelled of marsh gas. His nostrils flared, rejecting it.

  However ... if his horse should stumble and go gimp- legged in the fog, it would be only common sense to seek shelter somewhere, wouldn't it? Blackpool Castle was near. Not that he wanted to check on Jericho. Hell, he'd sooner check on a crocodile. The ungrateful wench.

  He drew his sword. He was sitting there in the saddle, wondering which of his mount's legs to whack with the sword hilt, wondering if the stable master would kill him, when he heard a faint eerie sound. From a distance perhaps a half mile away, from deep in the marsh came the baying of dogs.

  He froze. The sound pierced his brain like an icy knife. Cold sweat broke on his forehead. His armpits gushed sweat. Sweat prickled on his upper lip, like a mustache. He swatted it away. For a moment he felt lightheaded.

  He cursed aloud to bring himself out of it. Hell's bells!

  Was he going to be like this forever? Scared shitless whenever a dog barked unexpectedly? Would he always react like a three-year-old? It was so damned unmanly.

  He cursed again. With a hand that wouldn't stop trembling, he rammed his sword into his sheath and wiped his clammy palm on his leather breeches. It was only a dog pack hunting in the marsh. Hunting rabbits, likely.

  But his breathing refused to slow down. Why was he reacting so? Breathing hard, he strained to see through the swirling fog. Had there been fog the day his father was killed? He couldn't remember. He'd been only three. He remembered nothing of that day. Whatever had happened that day had retreated into a locked closet in a three-year-old's brain, emerging occasionally in nightmares that still woke him in terror, nightmares that vanished before he could sit up in bed and examine them.

  Trembling, he listened as the baying and howling converged in frenzy at a fixed point deep in the marsh. Whatever the dogs were hunting, they'd found it, cornered it for the kill.

  He swatted a prickle of sweat from his lip and stared into the white fog, intent, intense, trying to see. Trying with eyes that burned in his skull as brightly as a hundred candles. Trying, trying, trying to see through the fog and into the past. Twenty-four years ago, twenty-four years . . .

  His heart began a slow, upward beating.

  It had been foggy that day . . . now he remembered . . .

  Angelina had never done a brave thing in her life. But she was about to now. And the terror of what she intended to do made her heart hammer.

  Preparing, she raked her hands through her wild, disheveled hair and licked her bloody knuckle to staunch the bleeding. During the past quarter hour, she'd gone nearly insane. Locked in her bedchamber, she'd battered at the corridor door, using fists, arms, candlesticks, the fireplace poker, footstools—anything she could lift and use for battering.

  She'd shrieked, she'd begged. She'd smashed a window with the poker and had leaned out over the precarious three- story drop, shrieking into the unlistening fog, screaming for someone to come to Jericho's aid. But no one had come, the servants likely in the kitchen, cowed, frightened, ordered to stay there by the duke.

  Sobbing in frustration, she'd clawed at the corridor door on hands and knees, pleading with Fox Hazlitt as he stood guard on the other side. She would give him money. She would give him her jewels. She would give him everything she owned. Only save Jericho! Let her out

  But to no avail. Hazlitt paced the corridor, unmoved by her tears.

  Now, terror pounding, she quietly crossed the room to the livery cabinet. Overwhelmed by what she was going to do, she braced her shaking hands on the cabinet for a moment. Then, drawing a breath for courage, she made her preparations.

  Next, she took a silk scarf from her night box. She got a footstool and moved it to the shadows. She sat on the stool and braced her feet on the floor. With trembling hands, she arranged the gossamer-thin scarf in her lap.

  She waited, heart racing. After a few minutes, a light rapping sounded on the corridor door.

  "Your Grace? What's amiss? You're quiet of a sudden. Be you all right?"

  She didn't answer.

  The rapping came again, more urgent this time. "Your Grace?"

  She said nothing.

  Hazlitt pounded loudly. "Your Grace! Is anything amiss, Your Grace?"

  "Yes. I'm bleeding. I cut my ankle on window glass. I'm bleeding badly."

  The iron key rattled frantically in the lock.

  Damnation, Fox Hazlitt thought as he went barreling in. The duke'11 nail my hide to the front gate if anything's happened to her. He wants to deal with her himself.

  The first thing Fox noticed as he barreled into the shadowy darkening room was the cold air and the smell of fog. She'd smashed out the window. Had she jumped? Jumped to her death? Frantic, he swung his head to and fro, looking for her.

  "Your Grace?"

  For a panicky moment he couldn't find her. He started to sweat. The duke! Then, the glimmer of her silk chamber robe caught his eye. She was sitting on a cushioned stool in the shadows. Torn between relief and new worry, he crossed the room in a rush. Bleeding? Damnation! The duke would—

  He drew up short. Bleeding? He couldn't see any blood. The silk slippers that peeped from under her chamber robe bore no trace of blood. He stood there, confused. What the devil?

  "Your Grace, what is it?"

  "I told you. I'm bleeding."

  Sitting with her hands in her lap, her face was as whi
te and drained as if she'd lost every ounce of her blood. It scared him. Not for her sake. For his own. The duke would kill him.

  "Where, Your Grace! I don't see no blood."

  "My ankle. I bound it. The blood is seeping faster than I can staunch it. I think I cut a vein."

  "Judas Priest!" She was more trouble than she was worth. Grabbing a linen napkin from the livery cabinet, he went dashing across the room. He dropped to his knees before her. Waiting for her to stick out her foot, he was struck by a fleeting thought. Odd, the way she was sitting there, stiff as a post, scared, her hands clenched in her lap, a scarf over them. Her posture was odd.

  It was his last complete thought.

  With terror thundering in her, Angelina braced herself. She waited until he lifted his face to her in impatience, waited until his sinewy throat lay bared and vulnerable. Terror stricken, she forced her eyes to search out the pulse point, the artery.

  She found it, and nearly fainted. For an instant, she feared she lacked the courage to do it. Then, through the open window came the bloodthirsty baying of dogs as the duke loosed them. Her breast leaped savagely.

  With a cry—"My daughter!"—she lunged up and thrust the knife in.

  Dove was still shaking and sweating, captive of remembered horror, when the sound of galloping hooves roused him from his dazed trance. The galloping hooves came hard and fast. Shaking, he swallowed, grabbed the reins, kneed his mount to the roadside, tore his cloak open and warily rested his hand on his sword hilt.

  Highwaymen? Not likely. Not coming from the direction of Blackpool Castle. But anything was possible. Since the war, England had become plagued with them.

  Two horses broke through the billowing fog. They galloped past. Then, spotting him, the riders frantically reined in, wheeled, and came trotting back. The riders were no more than boys. Stable lads. They were panting so hard they had no breath, and their eyes were large with fright.

  "Lor' Dove, is'na?" the oldest asked.

  "Yes." Wary, Dove kept his hand on his sword hilt. Highwaymen commonly used ploys, ruses.

  The lad went on panting. "Lor* Dove—the duchess— milady Angelina—she sent us—t' Arleigh Castle—wi' a life or death—message.''

  "What message!"

  The boy hacked, gulping breath. "Her Grace—made us repeat it—thrice. T'get it true. She said—t'say—ye and yours—are to come—at once—her daughter Jericho—Lor* Aubrey's daughter, Jericho—"

  "Daughter!"

  "—is in terrible danger. She's fleeing. She's in Blackpool marsh. The duke—he's loosed his killer dogs after her."

  Dove grabbed the boy by the collar, wrenched him up from the saddle. Their horses skittered under them, hooves thrashing in puddles, splattering mud.

  "What in hell are you talking about! Jericho Jones? Jericho is a serving maid. She isn't the duchess's daughter. She isn't

  Lord Aubrey's daughter. And what do you mean, 'loosed killer dogs after her'?"

  The boy's Adam's apple bumped against Dove's knuckles as he swallowed in fright. "I don' know, milord. All's I know is what the duchess tol' us. When the duchess come flyin' through the fog to the stable, she was covered wi' blood, her gown was drenched wi' blood, milord."

  Dove stared at him intense, stunned.

  "My God, what's going on in that house?"

  "I don' know, milord. Evil things maybe."

  Dove swung his head toward the marsh. The distant barking had grown even more frenzied. The pitch had risen. Something had been treed. Jericho? His scalp crawled.

  Shoving the boy into his saddle, he snapped instructions like musket shot. "Ride for St. John's Basket—stop at the first house you come to—tell them to pass the word—Lord Dove will pay a gold guinea to every man who arms himself and comes at once to Blackpool marsh—then ride to Arleigh Castle—you'll find Lord Aubrey there—tell him what you told me—tell him to bring men." Dove threw a frantic look at the sky, the fog thickening overhead, the darkness descending. "And tell him to bring torches!"

  "Ay, milord."

  The boy looked so scared that Dove clapped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed it urgently. "Do this well and you've a new post at Arleigh Castle. As my master-of-the-horse."

  "Me, milord? Me?"

  "You."

  For a split second the boy's eyes shone with joy. Then with a shout of, "Ay, milord, I'll ride like the wind," he wheeled his horse and thundered off at breakneck speed, the second boy following.

  Deep in the marsh the high-pitched baiks had risen to a frenzy. Dove felt faint. He fought back the dizziness that welled up. So much blood. There'd been so much blood. His father's blood. He remembered! He'd been soaked in his father's blood when Aubrey had found him in the forest and tenderly carried him home.

  He slid from the saddle, and, weak with dizziness, clung to it for a moment, pressing his face into the leather. Then, with lurching steps, he rapidly tethered the horse to a bush. A horse was useless in marsh. Tethered, it would serve as a signal for the men to follow.

  Then, whispering, 1 'Jericho!'' whispering her name over and over, using it as a talisman, using it for strength—"Jericho, Jericho!"—he shed his buckler, grabbed his sword, and lurched toward the marsh. Drawing an agonized breath, he broke into a run, running toward the nightmare he'd feared all of his life.

  Jericho was exhausted. She ran wildly, arms pumping. When a low tree branch whipped out of the fog and snagged her hair, wrenching her scalp, she cried out in pain. Breathing hard, gulping in draughts of air, she yanked her hair free and plunged on.

  She was at the end of herself. She couldn't run another step, she couldn't. She'd passed her limit of endurance long ago. Her lungs heaved and burned like fire. A swordlike pain stabbed in her side, and her heart was beating so hard, so fast, so painfully, that she knew it would soon cease to beat at all and she would die. Somewhere behind in the thick, billowing fog, the gap steadily closed, the distant baying grew closer. She plunged on, running, running.

  When she passed the same tree for the third time—a tall, dead, black walnut tree that had fallen into a cradle of living trees, its massive roots upturned and exposed, its dead trunk slanting upward into swirling fog—she flung herself to a halt and uttered a wild sob. A thousand paths meandered through the marsh, crisscrossing, winding, doubling back upon themselves like coiled snakes.

  Where was she? Oh, dear God.

  She drew a labored breath and ran on. She'd already lost a boot. Sucked off by mud. Frightened by the ever-closer barking, she hadn't stopped to pull the boot out of the mud. She'd abandoned it. Now she wished she hadn't. Sodden and stretched out of shape, her wet wool stocking made her stumble and trip. In a frenzy, gasping for air, she halted, tore off the stocking, tore off her remaining boot and stocking, abandoned them and ran on.

  Not ten steps away, she wheeled in hysteria, ran back and icooped them up. Dear God, she mustn't leave a trail. Clutch- ng boots and stockings to her pounding chest, she ran on. iVhen she heard the bubble of marsh gas rising in water, she lung herself to a stop and wildly pitched the things through he fog in that direction. She heard the boots splash. She rusted the stockings had landed there too. Wet and encum- jering, her cloak went next. She balled it up and threw it. It lit with a watery plop.

  Lungs heaving, she ran on. Twigs and thistles raked the ioles of her feet like razors. Wet leaves slid under foot, slimy ind slick, making her slip and fall, and, when she picked lerself up, made her fall again. When a pocket of fog lifted >n a pond, she plunged through the stiff, rustling reeds and vent crashing into the icy water, her loud splashes splitting he foggy silence, her wool petticoats soaking up water, dragging behind like an anchor. She prayed the water would lestroy her trail, her scent. Shoulders pumping, she dragged ler petticoats with her, fighting for a foothold in the mucky x>nd bottom, fighting to keep her balance. But her soaked petticoats grew heavier and heavier.

  With a frenzied sob, she wrenched at her waist bindings ind shed them. Struggling free of them, she lef
t them behind, ►inking. She plunged out of the pond and ran on in her drawers md bodice.

  The howls came louder now. She could hear snarling. Oh, iear God, oh, dear God.

  "Run, you de Mont bastard." The duke's voice came as i thin distant cry, muffled in fog. "You shan't escape me. fcoyce didn't."

  Oh, dear God! Out of breath, out of strength, out of speed, >he dipped into herself and somehow found the will to run faster. She sprinted through the fog. By hairs' breadths, she nissed lethal dark branches that came swinging out of the fog. 3nce she ran straight into a bog and panicked as the sandy 3ozy muck tried to suck her down. With frantic mewling cries, she scrambled and clawed her way out of the bog, clutching it bushes and saplings as the shifting mire sucked at her, wanting to claim her.

  Exhausted from the bog, she knelt panting. The sound of her own breathing filled her ears. A rasping sound, like clothes being scrubbed on a washboard. Her hair hung in wet muddy strings. Mire covered her, coating her drawers and her legs with thick brown slime, the stench of it like rotten eggs.

  She picked herself up, staggering drunkenly, then found her balance, and lurched on. She ran and ran. She lost all sense of time. She lost track of it. It seemed she'd been running forever, running ever since the world began. And the fog played cruel tricks. Sometimes the baying dogs seemed almost on top of her. The next instant, their barks rang from the distance. And always, always the duke's cry, ringing through the fog.

  "You shan't escape me, you de Mont bastard!"

  She gained a brief respite when the dogs lost her scent at the pond, and she frantically took a few precious minutes to breathe, to let her laboring, worn-out heart slow down. A mistake. When she lurched into a run again, her leg muscles cramped. She hurt so painfully she could scarcely move. She forced herself on.

  Encouraged by the confused barking at the pond, she plunged into another marsh pool that loomed up in the fog. Wading with loud drunken splashes, flailing her arms to keep her balance on the slimey bottom, she beat her way through stinging reeds that scratched her face, then ducked under tree limbs that jutted out over the water and slogged through the pond to its end, then clutched at saplings to pull herself out. She took a moment to catch her breath, then ran on.