Elizabeth gripped the arms of her chair. All Marlbourne had said spun in her mind with the events of the past few days: Margaret's attack, the frightening wedding, the horror at Maidenstone, the runner's accusations, her husband's hands at her mother's throat when the door finally opened, Grubner's death, the twin puncture wounds on her own body. She pressed her fingers to her temples. None of it mattered. The man she loved was innocent.
But his own father's words whispered through her mind. Bloodsuckers. Murderers.
Cold air, ripe with the smell of the stables, washed over her, adding to the chills the duke's words had raised on her flesh. The candles at either end of her mother's coffin flickered again. One went out, but the other held fast to life, bobbing and dancing. Elizabeth rose on wobbly knees and entered the light, using one candle to relight the other.
She glanced back at the duke. The tips of his boots slid further into the light as if he'd sunk deeper into his chair. The snores increased in volume. Elizabeth left the duke with her mother and slipped out of the parlor.
The corridor was pitch black except for a faint glow at one end. But even without that beacon, Elizabeth could have found her way. Her night vision was gone, apparently as temporary as her reprieve from pain, but the draft that had blown out the candle continued to stream over her skin, washing her in the scents of hay and horses and night. She moved into it, seeking its source, and passed out of the hall, across the entry and through the door leading to the kitchens.
The kitchen door stood wide to the night, a box of kindling propping it open. The faint jingle of harnesses drifted in with the chill breeze. On the wood table at the center of the room lay a pretty blue quilt, white horses cavorting playfully against a blue background. Near the quilt were several large barrels. Even if the words 'Blackfish Oil' hadn't been painted on them in bold red letters, Elizabeth would have known what was inside. The strong fishy odor of the cheap lamp fuel was unmistakable.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel path outside. Someone was coming. Elizabeth dodged behind the half-open door separating the servants' dining room from the kitchen. From where she stood, she could peer through the thin space near the hinges where the door joined to its frame. She could see into the kitchen beyond. Two men in black cloaks entered the kitchen. One stopped, searching the darkness with his eyes.
"What is it?" Nicholas asked. He picked up the white horse quilt and threw it over one shoulder, then lifted two barrels of blackfish oil from the table.
"Nothing. Probably," Bergen replied. "Thought I caught a familiar scent. Couldn't be her. She drank tea with the rest of them before you went upstairs tonight. Besides, she doesn't smell the same anymore, not since you bit her. Still tempting, but not quite as overwhelming." Bergen picked up the remaining barrels of blackfish oil, wrinkling his nose and turning his head away.
"Who then? runners?"
"No runners. I took tea round to all of them. Even the runner set to watch at the edge of the woods. He's fast asleep against a tree. They'll be no trouble tonight."
"Careful Sebastian, you're becoming a regular poisoner."
"Bergen the Poisoner and his friend Nicholas the Murderer." Bergen laughed. "We'll make a lovely pair hanging from the gallows if Fielding has his way."
"Then let's be sure he doesn't. Drugged or not, I don't trust Lennie to sleep for long." Nicholas went out the door.
Bergen took one last look around the kitchen and followed.
Elizabeth stepped out from behind the door and tiptoed across the kitchen, fingering the tea stain on her dress as she went. Her mind struggled to pull up some memory, but she pushed it aside. If she'd been drugged before, that knowledge could wait. Right now she needed to know what her husband and the doctor were doing, and why.
Across the lawn from the kitchen, a wagon and two strong horses waited in front of the stable entrance. Jimmy was checking the harnesses. The barrels of blackfish oil from the kitchen table now sat in the wagon among a jumble of shovels, ropes, and old blankets. Dr. Bergen appeared at the stable doors and called to Jimmy. The boy left the horses tied to a post and followed the doctor into the stable.
Elizabeth stooped low and dashed out the kitchen door and across the yard, wondering as she did so if she'd lost her mind completely. Climbing into the wagon wasn't easy. Her joints protested even that simple exertion. But the men were up to something, and judging by the fact that they'd attempted to drug her along with the rest of the household, asking sweetly was unlikely to yield any answers. So she hurried to find a spot, away from the shovels and other sharp tools, among the oil barrels. Her knees pulled tight against her chest, she tugged the tangle of old blankets over herself, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head to make herself as small as possible. The reeking fumes of the blackfish oil made breathing more than unpleasant but it was too late to move. She used the edge of a blanket to cover her nose and mouth.
Boots crunched on gravel signaling the men's return. More things were piled into the wagon. Something hard struck her shin. Elizabeth swallowed a cry of pain.
"Not in there, Jimmy. Put the nice one up front." It was Nicholas's voice. "Bergen's going to walk you to your room. Go in, lock the door, and don't come out again until morning. We'll take care of the horses and wagon ourselves when we return."
"I don't mind waiting up, sir." Jimmy sounded nervous, but determined.
"If I find you out of your room before dawn, lad," Nicholas warned, "you'll no longer have a place at Heaven's Edge. Understand?"
"Yes, your lordship. I'll not set foot outside my room tonight."
"Good man. I'd hate to lose you."
When Bergen returned, the men climbed to the driver's seat and the wagon set off. Elizabeth waited until she thought it was safe, then eased the blankets aside just enough to draw better air into her lungs. The wagon was reasonably well sprung, but as time passed her tightly wedged position amongst the blackfish barrels combined with the constant jostling and stench made Elizabeth increasingly uncomfortable. She had nearly reached the end of her endurance when horses were finally reined to a stop.
"We'll leave the wagon here and take the stretcher and tools," Nicholas said. "We'll need these old blankets as well." Elizabeth felt the weight of the pile of blankets start to lift off her. Her heart skipped a beat. How would she explain being found stowed away, spying on her husband?
"Fine Nick, but one of those trees looks a little dry."
"I'll go with you." The weight of the blankets fell back in place. "Different tree, of course."
Men didn't take the time women did with such things. Elizabeth barely waited for the footsteps to die away before pushing the blankets aside. Cramped muscles and sore joints punished her for her haste as she scrambled to the ground. A thick mat of damp leaves muted her flight into the woods in the opposite direction from the men. She pressed herself flat and still into a patch of moist dirt beneath a prickly holly.
The men hadn't gone far. Through the underbrush she caught glimpses of their boots as they returned to the wagon. They took the stretcher from the wagon and piled the shovels and blankets on it. Then, with one at the head of the stretcher and the other at the foot, they set off down a forest path.
Elizabeth crawled from her hiding place as soon as they'd gone, brushing dirt and leaves from her dress. She steadied herself against the wagon long enough to let the pain in her joints ease, then she set off after them. The light of the waning moon pierced the dense tree cover frequently enough to keep her from wandering off the path, but her progress was slow.
Both the path and the tree cover ended abruptly on a rise. Sloping down from the rise, as if it had spilled out of the forest, was the village graveyard. Hundreds of headstones of varying shapes and sizes slept in gray silence between the forest above and the church below. Beyond the stone and thatch church the village lay slumbering. It might have been a tranquil scene save for the two cloaked figures working amongst the graves.
They'd spread the old blankets on the gro
und and were shoveling dirt into a growing pile on top of them. Apparently they didn't intend to leave any evidence.
Elizabeth recognized the grave they worked over. Just that morning she'd stood in the very place where Nicholas stood now, watching with the other mourners as Grubner's coffin had been lowered into the earth. The dirt that filled the grave would still be loose and dry. Nicholas and Bergen were lifting one huge shovel full after another with ease.
Elizabeth's stomach convulsed, but she'd eaten nothing that day so there was nothing to throw up. Almost since the moment her mother died, sympathetic people had been trying to force food and drink on her. Elizabeth had had no appetite, but rather than refuse their kindness, she'd simply thanked them and set their gifts aside. Or, in the case of the more persistent feeders, clandestinely tucked it behind a statue or spilled it into a plant. That is what had happened to Bergen's tea. The first cup she'd carelessly spilled on her dress. The doctor had insisted on pouring her another. All but a sip of that second had ended in a decorative urn in the blue salon.
Now, as the men stepped down into the grave to continue digging, Elizabeth wished she'd drunk Bergen's tea, instead of only pretending to. She'd be sleeping now, unaware that her husband, the vampire and accused murderer, was also a grave robber. Could this truly be the same man who'd held her in his arms and loved her with such passion and tenderness? Elizabeth dropped to her knees and hunched over in the tall grass beside the path. Dry heaves wracked her body. Tears ran down her face.
The runners believed Nicholas was a killer. His own father appeared to agree. Now he was robbing the grave of a murder victim. The evidence of her husband's guilt continued to grow. Yet she wouldn't accept that the man she loved was a monster. There had to be another explanation. When her stomach stopped convulsing, she lay curled on her side, her head in the woods, her feet in the graveyard. She stayed like that for a long time, thinking of nothing and everything, everything except Nicholas. She couldn't think of him. Not now.
It was the coldness of the ground that finally forced her back into a sitting position and from there to her feet. She dried her tears with the hem of her dress and pulled leaves from her hair. She would lie in the dirt soon enough. Until then she would live and keep believing in the one thing she had left worth living for, Nicholas Devlin.
Down in the graveyard the men laid aside their shovels and brought the stretcher to the edge of the grave. Elizabeth looked away as they lifted the body onto it. When she looked back they were refilling in the grave. They would be returning soon.
Elizabeth hurried back along the path to the wagon, closing her mind to the sights and sounds of the forest night, focusing instead on what to do next. The thought of a long walk back to Heaven's Edge in the dark, even if her legs would allow it, made her skin crawl; the memory of that other terrifying trip through the woods was still too fresh in her mind. Since revealing herself to the men was not something she was willing to do, there seemed no choice. She would have to secrete herself in the wagon again until it returned to Heaven's Edge and hope to slip away undetected once they arrived.
The image of Grubner's body being lifted from his grave flashed in her mind. Her pace slowed. Riding in the bed of the wagon with a dead body would be more than she could bear. She'd rather face Nicholas and have him know she'd been spying on him.
It was the sight of the wagon itself that presented the answer. The horses whinnied a greeting as she approached. Elizabeth stroked their noses to quiet them as she passed. The blue quilt she'd seen in the kitchen lay across the driver's seat. Cold as she was, Elizabeth was tempted to throw it around her shoulders, but didn't dare waste the time. Even carrying Grubner, the men would travel faster than she had. She set the quilt aside and ran her fingers along the lip of the wagon seat. She found the latch easily and released it.
The storage area beneath the seat was filled with things a wagon driver might need: simple tools for fixing a loose axle, feed bags half-filled with grain and a couple of wool blankets in case the horses had to be left standing in cold weather. Leaving the blankets, Elizabeth tossed the rest into the woods. The blankets she laid flat in the bottom of the seat's storage box, hoping they would provide some cushion from the jostling of the wagon.
She studied the latch carefully to make sure she'd be able to open it from inside. The idea of being trapped in that small space almost made her reconsider, but the horses whinnied as if urging her to hurry and she thought she heard the distant murmur of men's voices. Quickly she set the blue horse quilt back atop the driver's seat as best she could and squeezed herself into the tight box, pulling the seat lid closed. As the latch snapped shut, panic seized her. The space was too small, too coffin-like. She had to get out. Her fingers fumbled frantically at the latch. It opened easily. Dizzy with relief, she was about to push the lid away, when the horses whinnied again, this time in greeting. She snapped the latch closed.
"It would have been easier to have removed the body and replaced it with rocks before the burial," Bergen complained.
"Easier, but risky," Nicholas said. "Grubner was well-loved. People get sentimental. Someone might have insisted on seeing him one last time, or placing something in with him at the last minute. It's safer this way."
A weight settled into the wagon bed and metal tools clanked against each other as they were added. The wagon shook as Nicholas and Bergen climbed up on the driver's box. The wooden lid above her creaked under their weight. With a slap of the reins the wagon jerked forward. To her relief the ride in the box was less painful than the ride in the wagon's bed had been. The tight space didn't allow for much tossing about and the horsey odor rising from the blankets beneath her wasn't nearly as offensive as the blackfish oil. Still, her feet and toes were tingling from lack of blood flow by the time the wagon rattled across a bridge and stopped. The wagon rocked as the men stood and one jumped to the ground.
"Shall we leave her in there a while or let her out?" Bergen's voice was directly above her. "I ought to let you decide, Nick, since she's your lovely little bit of trouble. But I won't."
The lid of the wagon box flew open and Elizabeth was pulled up and out as easily as if she was a child. Bergen tossed her into the air, her screams mixing with his laughter as she fell. Nicholas caught her easily and stood her on her feet in Maidenstone's courtyard. She wobbled on stingingly numb legs, trying hard to catch her breath.
In the short time she'd known him, Elizabeth had experienced her husband in many moods: cold, kind, mysterious, generous, frightening, tender, passionate. But this was the first time she'd ever seen him angry.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he growled so fiercely she might have been cowed with fear if the arms he steadied her with hadn't been so possessively gentle.
"Me? You're the man who keeps disappearing in the middle of the night!"
"That's the problem with women, my friend." Bergen laughed. "Before you're married they won't let you in their bed; after, they won't let you out. At least that was my experience. A compliment if you think about it."
The crunch of feet on loose stone made them all turn in unison. Vlad emerged from the archway of the main entrance to Maidenstone dressed in robes similar to the ones he'd worn the night of the wedding. The flaming torch he held threw eerie shadows across his face and created a monstrous silhouette on the castle wall behind him.
"You have the body?" the priest asked.
"And the blisters to prove it." Bergen held his hands up, palms out, and jumped from the wagon, landing silently in the stone courtyard.
"Then bring it and let's be done." The priest brought the torch close to the wagon and stared at Elizabeth. "Why is she here?"
Bergen raised his brows at Nicholas, but said nothing. He climbed into the bed of the wagon and busied himself tucking the pretty blue quilt securely around the body.
"She's my wife. She's with me," Nicholas said, as if that answered everything.
Apparently for Father Vlad it did. The old priest murmured,
"Just as she should be."
Nicholas and Bergen lifted the stretcher from the wagon. Vlad offered his arm to Elizabeth. With solemn dignity the priest led her around one side of the castle, Nicholas and Bergen following with their sad burden.
"We've watched Margaret carefully and seen no signs. She was simply food." Vlad spoke as if Elizabeth should know what he was talking about. What signs?
"But since Grubner did not survive, we cannot be sure his body has not been made attractive to the diavol. What must be done is regrettable, but it is the only way to be certain."
Certain? Of what? Elizabeth wondered. They turned the final corner of the castle near the burnt out kitchens. Elizabeth looked up at the roof-line, half-expecting to see a scarlet creature waiting there to pounce. There was nothing but a waning moon in a starlight sky.
"The boys built the pyre last night while those at the house slept. They did well, yes?" Vlad gestured with the torch across the rubble-strewn courtyard behind the castle.
Pyre? Elizabeth's steps faltered. But Vlad continued on, taking them into what had once been the kitchen gardens. He released her beside a waist-high wall. Stone had been laid in an oval about eight feet long and perhaps four feet wide. No mortar filled its gaps, though those that existed were small. Within the bowl of stone, wood had been piled in a dizzying twist of patterns. They weren't random, but Elizabeth couldn't make out what they were supposed to represent.
"It was built with stones from the fallen outer walls. Nothing was taken from the castle itself. Nicholas wouldn't allow it," Vlad said.
Elizabeth nodded, recalling the plans for restoration work on Maidenstone her husband had told her of during their honeymoon. When the priest spoke again his voice was apologetic.
"The stones will contain the ash so it can be gathered and returned to the grave complete. Nothing will be lost."
Bergen and Nicholas set the stretcher with its quilt-covered body on the ground a few yards away. The night breeze puffed and ruffled the quilt, causing the white horses sewn against its blue background to leap and dance like ghosts in the moonlight. Elizabeth gaze met her husband's over the cavorting animals. Her mind raced with questions. Why take Grubner's body to burn it and then return the ash to his grave? Was this more of Vlad's strange religion? What did it have to do with the fact that Grubner, like Margaret, had been bitten by a vampire? Most important of all, why, when it seemed Father Vlad believed Nicholas had told her so much, hadn't her husband explained anything all?
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