by Anne Carsley
She was sitting wrapped in her cloak, watching the fire die down and making no effort to replenish it when Charles came in. He wore his austere look again, and the sight of him so shook her that she was glad she had had the time to remind herself of what must be.
“You know that the weather has changed.” The words were flat, grating.
“I am ready.” Julian rose to face him and was thankful that her face did not give away the anguish within.
“Then we will go.” He lifted his head and shook back the dark hair.
Their eyes met and neither knew which one moved first, but they were in each other’s arms, their mouths locked as they strained together and still could not get close enough. Still fused, they lowered their bodies to the cloak pallet, and in the fading firelight with the chill beginning once again to permeate the hiding place, they made love in the deepest sense of the word. This time mouths and hands and bodies touched and lifted into tenderness that transmuted passion beyond itself. Short in time, forever in caring, this welded Charles and Julian together in the one flesh which was more than poetry; it was truth made manifest.
Afterward they held each other close, arms wrapped together, her face in his neck, his lips on her hair, man and woman, one for the other, in the caring that should have been for all the years and might not go beyond this day’s end. Julian wanted to cry and plead with him to stay, that they not part, and from the less than firm hands on her back, she thought that he might have other ideas as well. But this time must stand inviolable for them both. Charles was as he was, and she could accept that now just as she could accept her passion and go on.
“Get your cloak and your weapons together. Go and wait for me in the crags. I will bring all to order here and come to you in a few minutes.” He spoke above her head, his voice in perfect control.
Julian knew that he did not trust himself to thrust aside any pleas she might have. She might not hold to her own resolve if it came to that. She yielded to the inflexible pressure of his arms and let herself be pushed back. She did not look at him; she dared not, for she knew that she would weep and disgrace the vow she had made. She wanted to cry out that rulers were always in evidence, one little better than another, that they could live in Cornwall and times would change, or they could go to France, both of them, that what they had was rare beyond all compare. . . .
“Charles.” She heard her voice quaver and turned to busy herself with the adjustment of her skirt and cloak. “I will keep watch but do hurry.” She spoke briskly, as if she were in a hurry.
“I will.” Behind the commonplace words rang his gratitude, the tribute of a knight of chivalry to his lady fair who had not demanded the ultimate that he could not give. “I will, my lady.”
Later Julian crouched in the crags where she could see the entrance to the passageway and gave vent to the quick harsh sobs that tore at her. She buried the sounds in the thick muffler that protected her face. It was the only relief she was likely to get and that was quite enough, for soon he would come and exposure to the wind would not account for red eyes. Fiercely she forced herself to silence and touched some of the snow remnants to her face. It took all her willpower to stand up and wave when he emerged from their place of safety, their created heaven of delight, the place where they had each truly known the other. It took more than her courage not to look backward as, without speaking, they set their faces toward the west and began, once again, the journey that would separate them perhaps forever. He would go to his cause and she to France in the long road of their differing destinies.
When they began to move steadily the cold did not seem so intense. Charles knew exactly where he was going, every move sure and precise as he led them over snow patches and to rocky trails where their feet left few or no tracks. Julian was thankful for the pace and for the cold, since she could concentrate on that and not on the past few days. She inhaled the fresh air, breathing deeply, and walked a few steps behind Charles, watchful as he.
Once when they paused on the edge of an open expanse which would be green meadow in summer but was now barren and gray-white as it gave way to slate-colored rocks, Charles looked back at Julian and said, “It will be no easy life that you go to. The village is very small, only a few families, and you must fit in so that if soldiers come they will suspect nothing.”
She said, “You forget, Charles, I worked with my household at Redeswan, often at tasks they could have refused to do. I am not gently reared.” There might never have been intimacy between them, so coolly did they speak, and yet it was better so in view of the inevitable parting. She had held her feelings in hard check too often in these last years; it had been a relief to experience the passion and anger she felt, to be herself with Charles, and still some core of Julian was not to be released to anyone. That she knew instinctively.
He said wryly, “Nor I when I think of some of the things that I have had to do at Varfair.” His stride lengthening, he moved ahead of her and out into the cut of the wind. “If we hasten we can be there by full dark, I believe.”
The brusqueness made it easier for her to ask the question she had wanted to pose. “Is the princess herself safe from these rebellions raised in her name? Do such efforts not risk her life as Wyatt’s did several years ago?” Julian told herself that she did not really care about the Princess Elizabeth. All she wanted was some reassurance that Charles would have a regard for his own safekeeping.
He stopped and looked back at her, the mask coming back down over the features that only a short time ago had been suffused with caring for herself. “Julian, do not pry; I have told you that she has declared ignorance of all plots. It is for her protection and that of this realm. Now, come.”
Let be! Let be! One part of her mind warned; the other pressed. “Anne Boleyn’s daughter would be so, would she not? Mary Tudor rallied Englishmen to her in the very teeth of rebellion, and they gave their hearts. Who knows that it might not happen again? I fear for you and for us all!” Julian heard her voice crack and knew that her eyes swam with tears.
He did not answer but only went more rapidly. The stiffness of his back and his head held higher let Julian know his anger was rising. She cursed that she had brought up any vexing question, especially one that divided them from the amity they had just come to know. She was often perverse; now that very quality had marred the memory that he would hold of her. Why could he not have shown a little warmth outside the cocoon of their cave? Julian knew that she must be reasonable, that Charles had his cause to serve; she had thought herself reconciled to it and now knew rebellion was never really quelled within herself.
They went on in silence that lasted for hours as the short day dwindled into gray afternoon and the dark clouds hung closer to the crags and low bunched tree skeletons swayed in the lashing wind. Julian huddled deeper in the cloak and wondered if she would freeze before shelter was found. Charles did not appear to be affected; his pace did not abate.
A hill thickly crowned with trees and boulders gave way to a series of smaller ones. Charles stopped just before the top of one of them and lifted his hand. “Walk apart from me so that they may see we are harmless. They may not be expecting us if no messenger has reached them. They will know me, of course, for Varfair is not far away. A stranger is another matter.” The look he gave her was no longer cold, it was one comrade to another in a common cause.
Julian was dizzied by it; this man could be friend as well as lover. The enormity of her loss shook her anew, and she could not respond to him. Instead she walked on ahead and stood staring into the little valley, hardly more than a depression in the rocky land. Both hands went to her mouth and a whimper came out. If the boulder had not been directly behind her she would have fallen.
“What is the matter?” Charles came up beside her, thrusting out an impatient hand.
She pointed to the piled debris, the few embers of a fire that had devastated, and a low tree where figures swayed back and forth in the wind. Six bodies hung there, and just beyond the gallows were o
thers, dead and piled together in man’s obscenity to his own kind.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Stay here.” In the space of a few moments Charles seemed to have aged; his eyes were deeper in their sockets, the lines around his mouth etched hard. This was the face he would wear into battle, into middle years if he lived so long. Even as he spoke, he drew the shining sword, which flashed in the gray chill.
Julian jerked out her own sword, fumbling at the handle, determined to use it if she had to. “No. I come with you.”
Charles might not have seen her, so fixed were his eyes on the horror below. He said, as to another man, “Do not be a fool.” Then he was running down the hill toward the ruins of the village.
Julian was behind him, and her shocked eyes recorded the horror. Beside the hanged men, there were several women who lay with their heads bashed in, shirts over their chests, privates exposed in the final degradation. A young girl, an arrow impaled in her back, had tried to shield a small boy beneath her body. Now both were dead. An old woman, assaulted from behind, lay in the remains of her earthen hut.
“Old Miles—Martha, his wife—there’s Mary and her husband, Jack—yonder lies the old midwife. Tormented and murdered! I knew these people and they me, some all my life!” Charles clenched his teeth and waved the sword back and forth over his destroyed friends. “Betrayal again!
There were other closer villages to which we might have gone. Those who did this knew special knowledge.”
“But who? And why? Why kill them in such a way?” Julian looked at the scene of death under the lowering sky and felt the bite of the coming snow on her cheeks. She welcomed the reviving anger that came. Only minutes ago she had felt betrayed because he had so swiftly shifted emotions; now there was passionate gratitude that she still lived, that Charles was by her side unharmed.
He spat curses to the unhearing gods of vengeance, and tears ran unashamedly down his face as he threw the sword aside and began to investigate the pitiful bodies as they lay. Julian could do no less, and her voice rose in the agonized cry of all men in every time and every place.
“What kind of God permits this from creatures who worship? I say that man is truly made in His image and that it is vile as He is vile!”
“It took you long to see that, did it not?” Charles’s tone was almost conversational. “There is nothing we can do here, Julian. They have not been dead long. We will cut them down and let the snow bury them; this ground is frozen solid. Then we will make for the coast and another of the meeting places. It is all we can do.”
“What difference does it make? We will die in the end.” The shivering was reaching over her whole body, and she could not control it. “What difference does anything make?”
Charles rose up from the corpse he had just lowered to the stony earth and put both hands on her shoulders, turning her so that she faced him. “Probably nothing, Julian, but we must try. Try in spite of everything, thought and proof to the contrary. Do you understand me? In the face of nothingness, simply because we live and breathe and because something we, you and I, do that may change the history of this land for the better.”
“I do not care! I have never cared! Why can’t you understand that, Charles Varland?” She lashed out at him, grateful to have some sort of scapegoat.
He stared into her vivid face, and his own twisted again with the upsurge of pain. His hands dropped away and he whispered, “How much the greater was their agony and pain? The responsibility is mine. If I had not lingered with you, if I had left you at the ruins and come ahead through the storm, this might have been averted. I bring disaster always.”
“This is not true! You must not blame yourself!”
“I can. I do. We are both to blame, Julian, for yielding to the demands of the flesh. Now we will carry this vision with us.” He swung round to indicate the valley and the crags which were now almost one with the dark clouds. His face changed, and Julian drew in her breath sharply as she followed his gaze.
Two torches were carried aloft by running men, and behind them came a troop of soldiers, all marching at a rapid pace as they poured down the path from which Charles and Julian had come. Charles cursed and reached for his sword. At the same time another torch rose brilliant off to the left and more soldiers appeared. Julian took the handle of the sword in both hands and looked at Charles.
“There is no more time for visions. They will kill us if we surrender, take us to captivity and torture. I would as soon die here among these, your friends, and not be alone.” Julian, the lover of life, could say these words and know that with him she could court death; alone she would go mad.
“I should kill you myself. If you survive this you cannot escape the stake.” Charles lifted the sword and swung it over his head so that it gleamed like that of a hero out of legend. “But you speak truly. The choice is yours.”
“We fight.” Legends rang in her head, then the pure terror of Isabella’s end obscured all else. Not that! “We fight.”
A familiar voice rang across the distance. “Varland! Give it up, man, we know all there is to know. See, here is your servant who has informed us!” The swaggering figure of Alphonso Diego Ortega, once friend, emerged into the light. His own sword was sheathed, and one gloved hand was raised to hold his men in check. They were now so close that Julian could see the satisfied grin on the dark face and the flash of the jewels at his neck.
But it was the man behind Ortega who held her attention and riveted it even as Charles went white under the tan of his face. Matthew stood tall and straight, a ruby on his knuckle, wearing new garments of red and yellow only half-hidden under a warm dark cloak of finest weave. His head went even higher as Charles cried out.
“What is this? What is it, Matthew? You have served me long. . . .” His words could not catch up with his incredulity, and the hand that was not holding his sword fumbled under his loose shirt.
The other soldiers were close now also, and they stood well ranked, waiting for a movement from Ortega. Julian gripped the sword harder, but her palms were slippery with sweat and it shook in her fingers.
Matthew laughed. “What profit or wisdom is it to be a hungry outlaw when I can serve my country and gain by doing so? I have long spied on you and reported all that I saw. The plan to take the woman from the Tower took me by surprise and I was forced to help you, but the information I passed on has been most useful. Your men and those who helped them will pay the price for that. I like not lords or their ilk!” He spat derisively and pulled his cloak closer.
“There speaks your loyal servant.” Ortega stepped nearer, his eyes glittering in the red light of the torches. “Put your sword down, Varland. Fight is useless, as you can see, and there is danger to the girl.”
“More danger to your black soul!” Julian threw back her head and the long hair rippled in the wind.
“Surrender, Varland, and I promise that the girl shall live. Your fate is ordained, but think of her.” He might have been Satan himself, tempting from the reaches of hell.
Charles hesitated and Julian saw it. She saw him come alive with a kind of hope, and that gave her all the courage she needed. To believe the promise of the Spaniard would destroy the little they had left; she knew he lied. In that instant she lifted the sword, swung it with all her power high in the air, and brought it down on the cleft between neck and shoulder so that Ortega stumbled and fell backward among his men.
Charles made one swift movement, and the dagger flew straight from his hand to lodge in the throat of his former servant. Blood spurted out geyserlike as Matthew strangled and fell in his own gore. The stunned soldiers hesitated only a second before closing in on Charles. Their swords rang against his, and Julian saw one enter his arm and thrust through to the other side.
She swung her own sword again, the fury such that they did not immediately encircle her. Then, incredibly, the yellow-clad figure at her feet rose and pulled her so hard that she fell off balance and tumbled down with him on the ground. The b
lack eyes shone into hers, the full lips parting in a smile of pure amusement as he held her. Ortega was totally unharmed despite the blow she had dealt.
“Did my pretty court garb fool you, little Julian? I often wear a corselet and half brace for my neck under it. Most useful in dangerous situations, would you not agree?”
She lifted her hand and slapped his face so hard that the blow stung her hand. Ortega sent her reeling back among the soldiers, who caught her arms and wrenched them back. She saw Charles then, lying on the ground beside the body of Matthew. His head was bloody, and one arm twisted under him. The white shirt was soaked with more blood, and his face was very pale.
“You have killed him! Let me go!” She began to kick and writhe as if she were a wild woman.
Ortega said, “Let her look at her lover one last time.” He began to adjust his cloak and smoothed his cap down on his black hair.
The soldiers released Julian so quickly that she almost fell, and she threw herself down beside Charles, lifting the heavy head so that it rolled inertly in her lap. She stared down at the carved lips, high forehead, and arching brows of the man she loved, then set her lips to his in farewell. The bitterness of it was not to be borne.
It might have been a dream that they moved under hers, but reality was when the gray eyes looked into the aquamarine ones. For a little longer Charles Varland lived. The rest of the world and its cruelties faded. He murmured, “Julian, you will be safe? Safe?”
“Aye, dear lord.” The loss of blood had taken his sense of reality, and it was better so. Already the brief recovery was fading, that waxen look more pronounced. Say it quickly and let him go as was more merciful. “Charles, I love you. I always did and I always will.”
For the space of a heartbeat his breath lingered and came sighing out in words so low that she had to strain to hear. “. . . love you. Tried not to, could not fight it. I, too.” Then his head fell forward on his chest and blood dribbled from his mouth onto her supporting hands.