by Amanda Paris
“So what’s the plan?” I inquired a few minutes later.
“Peter is sending word to Father Philip, who is at the chapel, and he’s there waiting with food and the horses. We’ll soon be married in the chapel, and then we’ll be far away from here, long before the tournament begins this afternoon. I wanted to leave during the night to give us better cover, but we can’t afford to hide and wait it out first,” he finished.
I thought about the incredible risk Damien was taking and my father’s angry reaction last night to his declaration. I swallowed. Hard.
“Do you think maybe it’s a bad idea to get married now?” I asked, thinking that Lamia might be well on her way to finding us.
He stopped short, causing me to collide into his back.
“I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait until we were safe first?” I suggested tentatively.
He stared down at me, the torch casting his features into a half shadow. The planes of his face looked hard and chiseled, as if carved from stone.
“Emmeline, do you agree with your father?” he asked quietly.
“What?” How could he ask me such a question?
“I cannot offer you castles or wealth. Do you want someone noble?” he asked.
I saw the pain written in his eyes, even in the dim light cast by the torch. My father’s words had hurt him more than I could have imagined. Damien had always been sensitive about the disparity between our stations, but we’d both relied on my father’s love to see us through.
“Of course not!” I replied indignantly.
“Then why don’t you want to marry me?” he asked. His voice rang hollow in the tunnel.
"I do want to marry you,” I assured him. “I just want us to be safe, that’s all. Now, come on. Let’s go!”
I took his hand, now leading him. I was anxious to be away. We were almost running now and nearly rammed into the door. We’d finally made it to the other side!
I turned and gave Damien a long, hard kiss.
He smiled radiantly, the torch light illuminating his features even in the shadowy tunnel. All shall be well, I thought, as long I have him. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Chapter Six
"Reckoning"
Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's Perpetual angelus.
T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”
We were both glad to draw breath in the clean, fresh air. The tunnel had oppressed us with his damp, rank odor. We didn’t tarry, however, but ran through the woods, not bothering to look behind us. The tree branches hit our faces, and though it morning dawned through the mist, the woods enclosed us in darkness, becoming thicker the farther in we ran.
I eventually had to stop and catch my breath, my longs skirts an encumbrance that slowed my progress.
Damien looked around, searching for someone or something. I heard the horses then, and my heart sank.
“Peter?” I asked hopefully, knowing inside that it wasn’t him. I fervently prayed that he or Father Philip had been able to get away. Before Damien could answer, however, his face told me something was terribly wrong. We continued to run through the woods, my long skirts catching in the branches, which hit my face and arms, scratching me and drawing rivulets of blood down the side of my face. We ducked left into the church ruins where we’d pledged our love the night before, hoping, perhaps, that we’d eluded whoever was following us. But both of us knew better. Damien drew his sword and let his lips tell me again how much he loved me. There was no chance to respond. We’d run out of time.
They came, chanting, “Burn the witch!” It was the armed guards who’d taken Damien from the hall. They surrounded us, and four of them approached all at once. Damien began to engage them in combat, easily overcoming two, then four. I watched in amazement at the speed and agility with which he worked, quickly parrying, thrusting, and finding a fatal home for his sword in his opponents, much slower to react, though they outnumbered him.
All of a sudden, however, they had multiplied despite their losses, fanning out in all directions, perhaps as many as twenty or more. Where had they come from? I knew they weren’t part of the castle. I didn’t recognize any of their faces.
The mist cleared, and Lamia appeared before us, a strangely luminescent figure that looked like some pagan goddess of war.
“Emmeline,” she began in that low, husky voice I’d grown to hate.
I expected anger from her, but she evinced total assurance, a calm superiority born of supreme victory. She had won, and she knew it. I looked around for my father, but I didn’t see him anywhere.
Without taking her black eyes off of me, she ordered the guards: “Take him.”
“NO!” I screamed as they rushed for Damien, who valiantly fought off the first wave, defeating five of them before the rest came at him at once. They quickly bound him, shoving him forward. He struggled against them in vain.
“Where are you taking him?” I screamed, trying to pull the closest ones off of him. “Why, where else would we take a knight who’d kidnapped the beloved daughter of the lord of the castle? To the dungeon, of course!” Lamia said, laughing. She came forward and caught up my wrists in one hand, recalling to me the iron grip I’d felt last night. Her skin glowed, and her touch burned my arm, as though I’d put my skin to the flame. I desperately sought to escape her, but her hands felt like impenetrable chains, binding me.
With her other hand, she hit me harder, even, than she had the night before. It felt like a metal club, but the sheer force of my will kept me from falling. I knew not where I found the reservoir of strength to preserve me, but I resolved not to falter for Damien’s sake.
I spit in her face.
“You witch!” I flung at her, losing nothing now by my charge.
Her eyes grew large and luminous.
“What did you say?” she hissed in a low voice.
I had nothing now to bind my tongue. I knew she’d never let me see Damien again.
“You heard me. You’ve cast a spell over my father, and everyone knows you’re a witch!” I spat at her.
“How interesting, Emmeline, that you mention witches. We’ve just been in your chamber and have turned up several interesting items,” she replied coldly.
I could feel the blood drain from my face. She wouldn’t. She could not be so evil.
“It seems, stepdaughter, that you have a curious fascination for the dark arts,” she said in a deep voice, almost an octave lower than her normal one. It didn’t sound masculine or feminine, only earthy and dangerous.
Of course. Who knew better than Lamia what suspicion could do, what the mere rumor of witchcraft could incite in the castle? By sundown, they’d want blood—my blood.
I shuddered, for I knew what they did to suspected witches. First there would be the ordeal. If I survived that, it would only prove my “guilt.” Then there would be the stake, where they’d burn me alive. Either way, I was dead, for almost no one survived the ordeal.
“And were you the one who conducted this search?” I questioned, frantically searching for Damien from the corner of my eye. They were taking him from the ruins and heading towards the woods. They’d bound, blindfolded, and gagged him. Even so, he fought them, nearly succeeding a few heart-wrenching times. I kept one eye on him as I spoke with Lamia, hoping I could think of a plan quickly before they took him completely out of sight.
“No, Emmeline, why, I had nothing to do with it,” she said, the picture of a Madonna with the dawn streaming around her long hair to make a halo of false innocence. Only her blood-red lips belied the false holiness of her unearthly pallor.
“Then who did?” I asked her belligerently. I refused to succumb without a fight.
A shadowy figure stepped out from behind one of the chapel’s ruined walls.
“I
did,” the figure said quietly.
It was my father.
“I never would have believed it of you, Emmeline. And your mother was so sweet, so kind. Why? Why, Emmeline?” he questioned, tears in his eyes.
“Why do you believe her, Father, over me? She has tricked you, bewitched you! She is the real witch, not me,” I pleaded, trying to reach my father, to call him back from whatever spell she’d cast over him.
But he shook his head in disgust.
“How can I protect you when you lie to me?” he asked plaintively, a mournful, hollow tone causing his voice to shake slightly.
The disappointment in his eyes shook me almost as much as seeing Damien bound and taken from me to await an unknown fate.
If I could awaken my father from this evil spell, I could save Damien. I begin to think frantically.
“Father, listen to me. This woman wants to destroy me. She’ll destroy you too! She’s already wiped away the memory of my mother,” I cried, desperate to convince him.
Silence greeted my outburst. I’d have to try a different track.
“At least let Damien go. You know he didn’t kidnap me,” I finished, beginning to lose hope.
“Damien will receive all the justice he deserves,” my father replied grimly. His tone sounded ominous.
“What did you mean, Father, when you said you could not protect me?” I asked, biding my time.
I needed to know if there was anything of my real father left. Lamia answered for him.
“Emmeline, we’ve found wax figures, pins, strange herbs, and a graven image of a horned figure your room. We can only assume…” She left her sentence unfinished.
“This is preposterous. Father, you cannot believe her lies,” I said, addressing him. I refused to look Lamia in the face or answer her accusations directly.
But my efforts were in vain. I had made no impression on him, and he turned away from me, refusing to meet my eyes.
“For goodness sake, I attend mass every morning! Ask Father Philip!” I cried, desperate to convince him of my innocence.
I suddenly realized that Father Philip, Millicent, and Peter were implicated in this as well.
“What have you done to them?” I whispered.
“Never you mind,” Lamia said as if reading my thoughts. She’d begun to sound bored now that her triumph seemed assured. “They are the least of your worries,” she continued.
The armed guards had by this time taken Damien out of my sight completely, and I despaired. My father spoke to me for the last time, keeping his eyes carefully averted from mine.
“God help you, Emmeline, for I cannot,” he said sadly, turning away from me.
In his voice, I could hear the remnant of the father I knew, the man who had played with me as a child and loved me everyday until my mother had died. Lamia had him now, and there was nothing I could do. He was lost to me forever.
The last remaining guard stepped forward, as if to bind me in the same way that they had taken Damien.
“What is the meaning of this?” I began.
No one answered my question. Between Lamia and the guard, they had begun dragging me in the direction of the woods.
I knew she meant to kill me then; she wouldn’t wait to turn the castle against me. It all began to make sense, all the accusations she’d hurled at me the last ten minutes. She wasn’t after him. She was after me.
I remembered what they did to poor, crazy Agnes, who lived well beyond the protection of the castle walls in a small cottage on the fringe of Sarum. Everyone went to her for herbs, healing, and advice. That is, until Lamia, who’d accused her of witchcraft. She’d had Agnes thrown into the small but deep pond not too far from the clearing where we’d stood near the chapel. Agnes hadn’t floated, but she hadn’t surfaced, either. Her “innocence” was proven, much good it did her.
I panicked, nearly becoming hysterical. Like most people in the castle, I could not swim, and though drowning would prove my innocence to them, I would still be dead. Several of the knights, including Damien, had learned to swim as an unusual part of their training for the Crusades, where no one really knew what dangers a knight could face. Many went and never came back to tell the tale.
But none of them could help me now. They had taken Damien, and no one else knew where we were; they were likely having breakfast before going to the tournament fields to ready the horses. There was only my father, and he seemed determined to follow whatever dire plan Lamia had in store for me.
I made one last attempt to elicit his help.
“Father!” I cried. But he gave a signal to the guard.
We drew closer to the pond, and I realized that I would soon die.
“Father!” I screamed one last time.
He suddenly turned to me, hearing something, I supposed, in my voice that compelled him.
“I love you,” I finished, watching the shock fill his eyes as they threw me in.
The cloth-of-gold sunk like a dead weight. A great whirling rush consumed me, burying courage and with it hope.
Set me as a seal upon your heart….
Only the brilliant light of Lamia’s strangely shining presence penetrated the deep.
Jealousy is cruel as the grave.
But
Love is Strong as Death…
Emily
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”
Chapter Seven
"Discovery"
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”
My first impression grew from an intense light, a flashing sensation across my line of vision.
“Emily…Emily…” I could hear my name being called. My eyes slowly focused, and I saw Ramona standing over me, concerned.
“What happened?” I asked, feeling a little groggy.
“You reached the end, Emily,” she said quietly.
“You mean…I died?”
It was too much to take in.
“I think so,” she said, with sympathetic eyes.
“What about Damien? Where did she take him?” I asked frantically. Part of me still felt like I was there.
I was shaky and a little breathless. I also had a terrible headache. I still had the same feeling, though, as I did right before I remembered being thrown into the cold water. The fear, dread, and pain had not dissipated.
“I don’t know. You died before we could discover his fate,” Ramona answered.
“She killed him! She must have!” I said, sobbing and putting my head in my hands, wet with tears.
I couldn’t think. My head clouded with images from the past, and my vision blurred.
Ramona left me for a few minutes and returned, holding a small, blue porcelain cup.
“Here, drink this,” she said, offering it to me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Herbal tea. It will help with your headache.”
“How did you know?” I began and then remembered. “Oh, right. I forgot. You’re psychic.”
The tea tasted good, but I couldn’t place it—perhaps chamomile?
“A special blend of my own,” she answered, reading the unasked question in my mind.
“Oh,” I mumbled.
I sipped it slowly. She was right; my head felt almost instantly better.
“What am I going to do?” I moaned.
Ramona sat down beside me and looked contemplative.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said.
“And?”
“And I don�
�t see a way it can be done.”
“What? What can’t be done?”
She looked for a moment as if debating whether or not to tell me.
“Ramona, please, if you can help me find him, save him, you have to! Otherwise, what’s been the point of all this?” I pleaded.
“I don’t know. Usually someone from the past wants you to do something, to resolve something from your past life. That’s why your dream affected you so strongly. Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe you’re in some kind of danger.”
“So I’m warning myself?” I didn’t understand.
“No, I don’t think so…but Damien, he might be trying to warn you.”
“But didn’t the worst happen? I died. And besides, maybe he wants me to save him.”
I realized the idiocy of that statement. He’d already died hundreds of years ago, even if Lamia hadn’t killed him.
“Perhaps,” Ramona answered cryptically.
“Ramona, if you have something that could help me, please say it. I can’t read minds…I’m not psychic, remember?”
“Okay, Emily. Calm Down.”
Calm Down? How could I calm down? I’d just died!
“I’m just trying to think of a safe way to do this. Is it even possible? It’s never been done before. Yet, I wonder…,” she said, tapping her forehead while she thought.
“Out with it, now,” I demanded. I was getting more than a little frustrated by her reticence.
“Emily, in your past life, you were accused of being a witch.”
“Right.”
“But you didn’t practice witchcraft.”
“No.”
I was unsure where this was headed.
“But what if you had been?”
“Had been what? A witch?”
“Yes—of sorts. Or a wise woman, if you prefer.”
“I’m not following.”