The Herald of Day

by Nancy Northcott

  “A life sometimes not preferable to yours, I would imagine.” He set his empty plate on the floor and gave her a wary look. “You needn’t sit there searching for words. You answered my questions. I’ll answer yours.”

  “How did you know I was trying to find words?”

  His brow furrowed. “I can’t explain it. Odd, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed.” How strange. And faintly troubling.

  Misgivings aside, though, she liked knowing more about him. She might’ve been disturbed to have him know how she’d lived, save that he wasn’t speaking to her or looking at her any differently.

  He shrugged. Spreading his hands, he said, “Tessa warned us. I suppose we’ll grow accustomed to this awareness in time, or perhaps it will fade. What do you want to know?” Despite his words, his posture remained stiff and his eyes, averted.

  “I saw you clinging to a board. In the Channel, I think. You were afraid, not of dying but of something worse than death. What did I see?”

  His body tensed again. His mouth tightened, and an odd echo of discomfort quivered in her chest. Was she feeling what he did? She must be. What had that pool done?

  “When I was sixteen, not long before the Restoration, I sailed across the Channel to bring King Charles money from Royalists in England. You may be too young to remember that Cromwell’s soldiers, Roundheads to us, demanded elaborate signed permissions for moving through the countryside.”

  She nodded, and he continued, “To one with my Gifts, their rules presented no difficulty, so I volunteered for the task. On the return trip, I was caught in a storm. The boat sank, fortunately not too far from shore for me to swim. An ordinary man would have died. I managed to live.”

  He had explained the fear, but not the worse than death. Did his evasion have anything to do with the horrible vision she’d unwittingly scried in the fire? She sensed that he didn’t want her to press further. Well, there were things she would prefer not to discuss, too.

  “One day, near dawn, you went to the chapel of a deserted castle. In summer, I think. You didn’t want to. It made you sad and angry. You knelt in a musty chapel with a sword in your hands. Will you tell me about that? Or have I trespassed on your good will?”

  He took a deep breath. Fleeting sharpness like the ghost of pain flitted through her chest. The lines in his face deepened.

  “I had to go there, to a place called Middleham, in Yorkshire, on Midsummer Night for my family’s honor.” His voice rasped, as though he dragged the words from somewhere deep inside him. “As generations have before me, I went there to honor our debt to Richard III. I’d promised my father I would.”

  “What debt? And why Yorkshire?”

  “If you don’t know what the debt is, I’d rather not go into it.” When she nodded assent, not wanting to pry into something private, he added, “I went to Middleham because that was King Richard’s favorite holding. No one has lived in the castle for some time, so I was able to use its chapel. My father used the village church.”

  His smile looked forced, and the echo of his difficulty producing it jabbed into her heart. He said, “Doing such a thing in London would be rather conspicuous.”

  Remembering that sudden flash of lightning, she nodded. An odd tangle of emotions coiled in her chest. Bitterness warred with sadness and a strange pride, none of them her own.

  Taken together, her vision and this awareness of him signaled some dreadful doom awaiting him, a horrible fate he didn’t believe he could escape and didn’t want to discuss.

  Despite it, he treated his servants kindly, risked his life for England, and offered her reassurance, even hope for a better life. If only she could comfort him, but his closed expression warned her not to try.

  The silence suddenly seemed awkward. She bent to collect their dishes and cups.

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “The servants are long since abed. As for the vision, it confirms our original interpretation of your dream, with the added details of the stag and the small dragons. The stag likely represents Sir George Buck, who wrote a defense of King Richard. That’s the book that has been altered.”

  Trying to recall what he’d said a few days ago, she asked, “Because a monastic chronicle has gone missing?”

  Richard nodded. “That chronicle contained material vital to the book’s defense of the king. As for the dragons, they likely stand for all those who’ve gnawed away at the king’s good name.”

  “I wonder why I never saw them in an earlier vision.”

  “Likely because you can’t control the visions yet, so you receive only glimpses. Once you refine your skills, you’ll be able to explore the images as we did this evening, but without needing the pool’s water. At least the rite gave us a clue, sending us to Croyland, or Crowland, as the old name was, where the Chronicle was written.”

  “What do you think we can do there?”

  “The Chronicle contained material, as we discussed, that undercuts the idea that King Richard had a motive for murdering his nephews. It also may have clues to traveling in time. Perhaps that’s why the vision sends us to Croyland.”

  “Do you think whoever caused all this upheaval has the Chronicle?”

  “It seems likely.”

  He gathered the crockery. Setting it on the tray, he said, “Perhaps the book we saw in the rite was the Chronicle. If not, perhaps the monks treasured it enough to make a copy. Someone may have hidden it at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and someone in Croyland may have that secret copy.”

  “That seems like a very thin hope.”

  “It does, and I don’t see what use finding a copy would be, unless we can somehow substitute it for the original. Or if it contains other information we need, of course. Regardless, I think we are summoned to Croyland.”

  “I agree. Where is Croyland, anyway?”

  “In Lincolnshire. Assuming a secret copy of the Chronicle exists, someone of Catholic sympathies, if not the Catholic faith, probably has it. Persuading anyone to admit to either the faith or the copy will take some doing. Anyone whose family has kept the thing this long probably treasures it, besides not wanting to risk imprisonment for nonconforming religious practices.”

  “Of course.”

  “The queen is Catholic and may be able to help. I’ll request an audience. But now you should try to rest. Dealing with magic as strong as the pool tires even those with more experience than you have in working with such power.”

  “I am rather weary now,” she admitted.

  They walked to the doorway together. In the opening, he turned. The blue of his eyes darkened into an intent stare.

  He set the tray on the corridor floor and took her hands in his. The contact now seemed disturbingly familiar. A tingle of warmth brushed her heart.

  “You won’t have to struggle anymore,” he assured her. “Whatever happens, I’ll see that you have a safe place to go, a comfortable place that you like. I swear it.”

  Then she would never see him again. Her stomach felt suddenly cold and hollow, but she smiled. “I know you will, Richard. I thank you for that.”

  “I couldn’t do otherwise.”

  Yet his loneliness still echoed in her heart. As though of its own volition, her right hand slowly rose. Did she dare? He didn’t draw away, so she brushed her fingertips over the lines of care around his eyes. “You are very kind, and quite amazing. I only wish I could repay you in some way.”

  He clasped her hands in his and raised them to his mouth. His warm breath brushed over her knuckles before he kissed them. Awareness of him, of his touch, his dark hair soft against her wrist, and the warmth in his eyes rippled through her.

  “If I were an ordinary wizard,” he said, “or even an ordinary man, I would court you, Miranda. But I am not. My family carries a curse I’ve sworn not to continue. Marriage is thus not for me, and anything less is not for you.”

  The pool had given her no knowledge of what that curse was, and he clearly didn’t mean to tell her. Searching his gaze
, she said, “Sometimes a man tries to protect a woman from things she doesn’t fear.”

  “That’s a man’s duty, to protect the women around him.”

  Still holding her hands, he gave her a wry smile. “Use your Gifts well and be happy, and you will repay me in full.”

  It was a generous answer, so why did she feel so hollow inside?

  Chapter 19

  Richard woke abruptly. Edmund sat in the chair by the hearth. “Good morrow, grandson.”

  Sitting up in bed, Richard scrubbed a hand over his face. The mantel clock softly chimed five, and he sighed. Frequent practice might help him reach the shadowland sooner, but he also needed to sleep.

  He climbed out of the bed he’d scarcely had time to warm. “I’ll fetch my pebble.”

  “I’d hoped you would reconsider this mad scheme,” Edmund said, scowling, as Richard walked to his desk.

  “I can’t.” Richard plucked the stone from the desk’s top drawer. “I’ve had enough of debating this, Edmund. It’s necessary, and if I’m willing to bear the risks involved, the man who dragged his family into an apparently unending mire is in no position to argue. Besides, for all any of us knows, I might be the next to vanish.”

  Edmund’s eyes flashed. His gaze locked with Richard’s. Richard set his jaw. Enough was, by God’s feet, enough. This was important in a way that far transcended any one family’s troubles.

  At last, Edmund looked down. “So be it.”

  He squared his shoulders and stared at Richard. “Hold the stone in your hand. Now, think of how this feels, talking to me. Form a portal and reach for me.”

  Richard tried, rimming his dressing room door in magic.

  “Are you reaching, lad?”

  “Aye.”

  Richard walked. Kept walking. A cold current pushed against him. He crossed the dressing room threshold and halted, swallowing a frustrated ’Od’s fish.

  Edmund shook his head. “Are you keeping your mind on me?”

  “As best I can. I did feel the cold again.”

  “That’s a good sign. Try again.”

  They spent the next hour and a bit more on fruitless attempts. At last, Richard conceded defeat for the night and climbed back into the bed. “We can try again tonight.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I’m to meet Jeremy at Lambeth Palace and go through the archbishop’s archives again.” If they were lucky, they’d find a point of change to help narrow their search for the pivotal event. Or else references to a fifteenth-century heresy trial involving claims of time travel.

  “Before you go,” Richard said, “I’ve a question.” He told Edmund about the vision of Wyndon stealing the scroll from Pendragon’s library.

  Frowning, Edmund rubbed his jaw. “Despite all the time I’ve spent here, there’s much I don’t know about this place. I do know, however, that there are differing levels of power. The wraiths are mad, almost mindless. They’re trapped here, and I can command them, perhaps because I’m not condemned to remain here. Yet I cannot leave. If Wyndon did as you say, he’s able to travel here freely. That may mean he has abilities I do not, as I have those the wraiths do not.”

  Edmund hesitated for a moment. “You know, Richard, that Willoughby lass has much to recommend her. There is an old saying, A seer need not scry to See what is, what was, and what will be. She could help you determine which events should be happening and which should not. And she possesses not only magical Gifts but strength of heart. A man wants that strength in a wife.”

  “Don’t tread that path.” Richard swallowed against a surge of frustration. Miranda would help straighten things out no matter what happened between them. If he wanted more, that was his problem. It wasn’t going to be hers. “You trapped all your direct heirs with your guilt, Edmund. I won’t allow you to drag her into it as well.”

  “Marriage, a good marriage, can help stave off the curse-spawned madness, Richard. It’s obvious you care for her.”

  “I do,” Richard said evenly. “Too much to inflict our family troubles on her, so stop pushing.”

  Edmund’s shoulders drooped. “I do regret all this, lad.”

  Softly, Richard said, “I know, but unfortunately that doesn’t mend much. Take yourself off, Edmund. I must dress and head to Lambeth.”

  While he searched the archives with Jeremy and Cabot this morning, he would try not to think about how much Kit enjoyed any kind of puzzle. This afternoon, he and Miranda had an audience with Queen Catherine to request her help with the Catholics of Croyland.

  Nodding, the ghost said, “Farewell, grandson.”

  Edmund’s image wavered and disappeared. Richard rubbed eyes. A moment later, the clock on his mantel struck six.

  He hadn’t told his valet to attend him. As he stoked the fire and then dressed, he considered his actions of the night before. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told Miranda so much. Better to say too much, though, to a woman who believed herself insignificant, than to leave her ignorant of her value.

  The pool had done something to them both. Created a ... sympathy of some sort. Yes, he’d been drawn to her from the time they met, but this increased wanting, this tenderness, was an effect of the bespelled water. It would surely fade in time.

  He knotted his cravat, a plain linen one instead of the ornate, lacy ones he wore when he went to court. Now he knew why Miranda had adopted such a homely disguise. She hadn’t done it, as he’d originally assumed, so she could exercise discretion in choosing her swains. She had done it so she would have no swains. She had chosen loneliness over a loveless marriage.

  He’d made the same choice for different reasons.

  Yet after all his care around women, fate did this to him. It threw into his protection a woman he could love.

  The image of her rose in his mind, her fingers warm and gentle on his face as she sought to ease his pain. Richard shuddered.

  No. Not a woman he could love. A woman he did love.

  The thought went through him like a hammer stroke. It froze his arm as he grasped a shoe.

  He couldn’t love her. He wouldn’t.

  That way lay disaster.

  The flames danced in the hearth. As they would one day for George—still his heir, no matter how unfit. There was no helping that, though. Richard had a duty to the generations to come, even if he could save them only by stopping their coming.

  Yet Kit’s reminder echoed in his ears. He also had a duty to the folk of Hawkstowe.

  Richard shook his head. He would tend to his people by fixing the sequence of time so George never became betrothed to the Wyndon girl. Then he would shake some sense into George.

  But he wouldn’t ruin Miranda’s life for the sake of his duty.

  Women always admired Sir Lancelot, he thought, buckling his shoes. They saw his noble strengths and his hopeless love. Lacking the armor of legend, no real man could measure up to that.

  A man could do better in one way, though. Lancelot’s mythical piety and strength dazzled women so that they overlooked his great failing. That lay not in loving Guinevere. No man could choose where he loved, as Richard now knew beyond doubt. No, Lancelot failed in that he allowed his love to bring Guinevere to ruin.

  Richard would see that nothing of the sort happened to Miranda.

  Queen Catherine received Richard and Miranda in her closet, a small, private chamber in her suite of rooms. Two windows in the paneled walls looked out on the Thames, and a painting of a large church hung on the wall by the door. One lady in waiting stood behind the queen, who sat in an ornate chair by one window. A tapestry of a pastoral scene hung beside her chair.

  Being private with royalty was even more intimidating than being presented at a large gathering. Miranda’s throat felt tight, and her breath seemed short. Please don’t let me have to say anything.

  Queen Catherine smiled. With a nod at the painting, she said, “The Cathedral and monastery of St. Jeronimo in Belém, near my home in Lisbon.” Gesturing to the three less ornate cha
irs grouped near hers, she added, “You may be seated, if you wish.”

  Miranda’s throat eased. The queen must’ve seen her looking at the painting, but her casual manner made the occasion less frighteningly formal.

  Holding his plumed hat in one hand, Richard said, “We thank Your Majesty. For the boon we mean to ask, however, we prefer to stand.”

  “Intriguing.” Queen Catherine’s glance sharpened. “What say you, then, my lord?”

  “We come on a quest, Majesty.” He glanced at Miranda. “It’s a matter of ancestry.”

  “Your lovely companion’s ancestry, perhaps?” The queen directed a warm glance at Miranda. “Is this, perchance, regarding a possible marriage?”

  Miranda’s cheeks heated, but Richard’s expression didn’t change. She couldn’t sense what he felt.

  “One never knows,” he said gravely. “The monks at Croyland created a chronicle that contains information we need. We hope someone in the town may have kept a copy when the abbey was dissolved, and we need Your Majesty’s help.”

  The queen’s expression hardened. “What sort of help?”

  Understanding that reaction too well, Miranda found the courage to speak. “As Your Majesty doubtless knows, those of your faith have little reason to trust strangers these days. Coming from a family of Dissenters, I understand this.”

  The queen’s eyes flashed. “England has treated us shamefully,” she said in a low, tight voice.

  “I can only, with regret, concur,” Richard said. “Those of your faith in Croyland will have no reason to confide in us or even to acknowledge their faith. Why should they risk fines or harassment on our behalf? Unless I have a reference from someone on whose word they know they can rely.”

  “You do, indeed, ask a great boon.” The queen stared over their heads, considering.

  At last, she glanced from one to the other of them. “We can promise you naught, my lord, save that we will consider your request. Either way, we will notify you of our decision.”