The Flame Eater

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Adrian stood, pushing back his chair with a loud scrape. “Assumptions, ignorance, undisciplined imagination. We know nothing. Even the sheriff knows nothing.” He turned to Nicholas. “And you, you’re running off as usual, just as soon as matters appear challenging? Deserting your wife once again, abandoning your whole family, and certainly your duty. What excuses have you to offer this time?”

  Nicholas looked up from his well filled platter and smiled widely. “My reasons? Boredom? Irritation? Headache? But no, my dear cousin, I offer no excuses. I have never acknowledged either the desire or the necessity to excuse myself. I am simply leaving on my own affairs and will inform my wife, whose business it is, and no one else since it is not theirs.” He then refilled his cup from the jug of Tuscan Trebbiano, and as an afterthought also filled Emeline’s. “Drink up, my dear,” he told her. “I believe we may both need a little additional insulation.”

  She drank obediently, then turned back to her mother. “Nicholas has to go away, Maman,” she said. “I know he hasn’t any choice. So can you and Avice stay a little while?”

  “I am also not entirely sure,” her mother told her, “that I believe your Papa’s murderer could possibly be traced by a couple of girls barely out of the nursery. But I do have a certain interest in knowing who – and seeing the culprit hanged – and I’ve very little wish to return to the Gloucestershire gales.”

  “That’s it then,” declared Avice. “We’re all staying.”

  Sysabel gazed warily across at her brother who had sat down again with an air of being long misunderstood and much mistreated. “If you wish to return to Nottingham, Adrian dear,” she said with care, “since you have so many responsibilities there, then you should go. I’m perfectly well chaperoned here as you can see, with Aunt Elizabeth, and her ladyship.”

  Adrian opened his mouth but Nicholas interrupted. “Settled then. Adventure and intrigue, and all at my expense. What more could you ask, Adrian? Off you go back north, and leave the women to their hunt.”

  Emeline spoke in a hurry, fearing further interruption. “So, did anyone discover any clues at all? Do we even have any guesses? Did you discover anything on that mad romp through the countryside while the rest of us were half dead with worry?”

  There was a clatter as Adrian once again took up his knife and spoon, and Nicholas reached for the wine. Avice shook her head but the baroness, quickly swallowing a mouthful of honeyed pears, took advantage of the short pause and said, “As it happens, perhaps I have. Chasing after you two girls, I had occasion to speak with the sheriff at Gloucester. He informed me of some interesting facts which I had not previously been told,” here she frowned briefly at Nicholas, “and although I’ve no wish to repeat any unsavoury secrets, the female who was evidently slaughtered at the same time and in the same manner as my poor husband, had a grown son. This son has since entirely disappeared. Although becoming the inheritor of his mother’s property, he has recently run away. I find that most suspicious.”

  Nicholas glanced at her, cup in hand. “With one’s only parent dead under gruesome but mysterious circumstances, a child might run, don’t you think, to search for protection elsewhere?”

  “You know about him then,” scowled the baroness, “since seemingly you know he had no father.”

  “Quite true, my lady,” he replied. “I spoke to the sheriff at some length shortly after the tragedy occurred. I saw no reason to pester you with uncomfortable and entirely incidental irrelevancies. The child was devestated at the loss of his mother and was in no way implicated either in her previous immorality, or in her death.”

  “You presumably know a good deal more than the sheriff, then,” said the baroness, “since he seemed to think it as suspicious as I did.”

  Nicholas shrugged. Sysbel sat up suddenly very straight and stared at him. “So you’ve no real interest in finding who killed your own father-in-law, Nicholas – nor in who slaughtered your own brother.”

  “My cousin, the sloven, the coward and profligate,” muttered Adrian.

  “As you say,” nodded Nicholas cheerfully, shaking out his sleeves. “And not nearly clever enough to go hunting murderers across our wide green pastures. I shall leave all that to you ingenious females. Just don’t lynch anyone too quickly. Fear can make the innocent appear guilty, while the guilty are invariably working very hard to appear innocent. I shall take an interest from afar.”

  “From afar tavern?” suggested Adrian.

  Nicholas shook his head. “The quality and quantity of good wine is superior at my own table. But you should know, dear cousin, since you’ve been helping yourself to it for two days now.” He turned to Emeline. “Do as you wish my dear. I have things to attend to now, if you’ll excuse me. But we can talk in private this evening.”

  It was late when he came to her bedchamber and found her alert and waiting. She wore only her shift, with her hair still pinned high beneath a pearl trimmed net. She held out her arms and Nicholas sat on the edge of the bed and kissed the fingertips of both her hands. Then he stood again and began to undress. She watched him. Two candles were lit and the room was cradled in leaping shadows and the sudden lustre of dancing gold. The light toned and emphasised the muscles and taut sinews of the body, the dark hair, and the curves of bone and flesh. His skin glowed, and where the flat hardness of belly followed down to the groin, the silky hair began to curl and snuggle tight, deeper than shadow.

  Emeline sighed and said, “Nicholas. Tell me the truth. Do you know who killed my Papa?”

  His exhaustion showed. He turned to her abruptly. “I remember you once asking if I’d killed Peter. Is this the same question?”

  “Don’t be cross, my love. I know perfectly well you didn’t. But you knew about that whore’s son, and chose to exonerate him without any explanation.”

  “No.” He sat naked beside her, smoothing his palm across her forehead as he began to unpin her headdress. “I’ve wondered, guessed at an occasional possibility, had my suspicions. But I’ve no real idea who killed either Peter or your father, and would certainly do something about it if I knew for sure. After Peter was discovered dead, I had months to ponder and puzzle. I had doubts and those doubts lingered. At one time I thought perhaps I knew. It would have been an inconvenient truth – a possibility I hoped mistaken. Indeed, I no longer believe it. I simply believe coincidences hide less coincidental intentions, and so I’m sure both men were slaughtered by the same killer. And although I don’t know who it was, I have a fair idea of who it wasn’t.”

  She frowned and shook her head. The last of the pearl pins cascaded. “Like the little boy who was crying in your stables yesterday?”

  He regarded her a moment, then began to laugh. “How glad I am I married you, my love.” He picked the scattered pins from the pillows and deposited them on the chest beside the bed where one of the candles was beginning to burn low. “You are right of course. The child is simple, young, and as much of a victim as his mother. Now also destitute. So I judged him innocent and offered him employment.”

  Emeline scrunched up her knees beneath the covers, avoiding pins. “So you’ve brought the son of my father’s mistress into our household?”

  “Yes, I suppose I have.” He was still laughing. “Do you mind? You need never meet him. And he’s not your father’s son, in case you were wondering.”

  “You know so much?”

  “I know the present threat to this country is greater than the threat to us from one small boy.” Naked now, his clothes discarded across the floor, Nicholas stood again and went to the hearthside table where he filled two cups from the jug waiting there, and brought one to Emeline. “You’re getting to know me, my love. You order wine, and have it waiting when you expect me to come to your chamber. So drink with me.”

  She took the cup. “Threats to the country? Are you trying to frighten me, Nicholas, or simply change the subject?”

  “Neither. Drink up.” He drank, sitting again, the mattress sinking as he stretche
d his legs, resting back against the pillows. His cup in one hand, he slipped the other around her shoulders, holding her close. “But you must know a little of what I do and where I go, so let me tell you I’ve spent most of the afternoon and evening talking with James Tyrell, and another part of it with the king’s secretary Kendall. The problem is France. Invariably it is France. Now they’re using that exiled son of Stanley’s Beaufort wife, trying to set him up as claimant to the throne.”

  Emeline snuggled, though she lay below the covers and he stretched out above. “That doesn’t make any sense, Nicholas. England has a king.”

  “Henry Tudor has never known what to do with himself,” nodded Nicholas. “He claims an earldom forfeited long ago, and both titleless and landless, has drifted in exile for long dismal years. But France now has a plan. They’ve no more interest in Tudor than England has, but they have an avid interest in weakening and undermining English security. France knows our King Richard is no lover of French politics, and long ago refused a French pension, even when half the English nobility gladly accepted one. Our king is not a man to play games or accept bribes. So France distrusts him. Tudor will play along – it’s in his interests now and he’s started to imagine a more hopeful future for himself. More importantly, his mother will push him.”

  “To claim – what? I mean, he’s nobody. I don’t understand.”

  Nicholas stroked her shoulder beneath the eiderdown. “It’s the old story of Lancaster against York, Lancastrian objections to our present Yorkist monarch, and Woodville malcontents uniting with various wandering exiles. Tudor has no claim anyway since the Beaufort line is legally barred due to original bastardy. Even ignoring that, which no doubt his mother chooses to do, there are sixteen or more in the Lancastrian bloodline before him, including the Portuguese Infanta whom our King Richard is planning to marry. But as England grows stronger, so France simply wants an excuse to batter at our coasts and weaken English power. False claimants and divisive threats are their principal artillery.”

  “Nicholas, you’re not going to France?” He turned to look down at her, slowly pulling away the counterpane, the blankets and the sheet. He removed one last wayward pearl pin from its hiding place, and tossed the covers aside. She whispered, “Now I’m cold.”

  “I can see that,” he said, his fingers tracing the swell of her breasts. “When you’re cold, your nipples rise like little dark studs.” He rubbed his thumb over her shadows, then pinched, teasing through the thin linen of her shift. “It happens exactly the same when you’re aroused.” He grinned. “But this time I think you’re simply cold. Now what, I wonder, should I do about that?”

  “So you are staying tonight, Nicholas? I got rid of my maid on purpose, and when Martha said she’d sleep on the truckle bed, I said no, even though I knew she’d be disappointed. You’re not leaving too soon, are you? Not before dawn?”

  “I have all night and all tomorrow.” He leaned forwards, pushing her hard back against the pillows. “Now how much of that, do you think, can I spend with you in bed?” Then he kissed her, his mouth forcing her ever back, his tongue pressing between her lips. He tasted the wine on her breath, and the yearning in her throat. While he kissed her, he forced his hand between her breasts, pulling down the open neck of her shift so that she was part uncovered. His fingers continued to tease, first soft, then harder, then sharp, then gentle again. She moaned slightly and he smiled. Releasing her, he sat back and running his palms down her body and her legs, reached for the hem of her shift and drew it quickly up, tugging it off over her head and tossing it to the ground. In the sudden little breeze, the bedside candle blew out with a flicker and a blink.

  The chamber sank into greater shadow. Now one solitary candle flared from its far corner, and the light travelled like a golden moth across the high beamed ceiling, scattering sudden illumination onto carvings, a moment’s vivid face in a tapestry but lost again immediately, a splinter jutting from a slat on the window shutters, the swing of tasselled drape where the bed curtains were closed on one side to eliminate any draught from beneath the door. Emeline lay in the darker depths of shadow within the bed, though where she was now naked, her breasts and shoulders and belly caught in a faint saffron glow. Her smile remained lost in darkness. The drapes rustled as he moved, shifting to face her.

  She whispered, “I’m not cold anymore.”

  He didn’t answer. His fingers travelled her body just as the candlelight travelled the walls around them with exploration and discovery. He used his palms, flat where she was curved, soft as a tickle, then pulling back. He watched her expression, smiled at her sighs and waited until he knew the depth of her arousal. Then he dipped his finger into the cup he had set down, and with a trail of dark wine, painted her nipples in liquid rubies. The little chill droplets trickled from the tilted tips down across her breasts, a sticky snail’s path in the flaring light and shadow. Then Nicholas bent, and licked, sucking clean and drinking his wine from her body. She shivered, but this time it was not from the cold.

  When he sat up again, smiling at her, he said, “No sleep tonight, my love. I have other plans which will take us to dawn.”

  “Will it be the last time then, before you go?” He nodded, and kissed her again. The wine from her breasts was on his tongue and his lips, and now she breathed its perfumes from his mouth. And his kisses travelled too, softly down her neck to the curve of her shoulder, to her breasts again and the hard thrusting nipples, and on to each little valley between her ribs. He kissed her navel, his tongue very warm. Then to the belly, all around and across as if he was searching. On to the line at her groin where her hair tightened into thick little curls, the dark russet now streaked with gold in the changeful wayward light. His teeth nipped, pulling at the soft pubic hair, and then forced lower, kissing the small entrance between her legs as if it was her mouth, his tongue pressing within the lips, opening where she had been tight closed. She grabbed at his shoulders, pulling him back up to her. “Oh my love, don’t leave me. I wish you were truly the fool they all think you. Act the coward, and stay here with me.”

  His fingers followed where he had kissed, pressing between her thighs and pushing just a little inside. “Here,” he whispered, voice gruff as if his own passion made speaking difficult, “this is a nipple too, of sorts. It swells, and hardens, and pushes up, as if waking and sitting to stretch after a warm sleep. This way you tell me what you want, even without words.”

  “I don’t have words. But it feels more like a dream than waking up.”

  “Sometimes waking is the dream.”

  “I don’t like waking to an empty bed.”

  “Then tomorrow you won’t, my love. You’ll wake in my arms, and I’ll call for ale and cheese so we can breakfast in bed, and if any strength remains to me, I’ll make love to you again before you face your relatives.”

  “No morning chapel? No prayers? You face danger and a long journey. We should both pray for your safety.”

  “These are my prayers. And the bed is my chapel.” He took her hand, bringing it between his thighs and wrapping her fingers around him. “Here, my sweetling, a prayer as potent as any other. Hold firm. Now pull a little away from my body. Not too much yet, or you’ll lose me too quickly to temptation. Now, feel that ridge. Press your thumb under and up, gently at first, and see how the shaft hardens ever larger under your palm. We’re both responsive to each other, my love, and can explore old ways and new ways.”

  “You call it a shaft. Like an arrow.”

  “Perhaps it is.” He smiled. “There are other words I might use, if you weren’t my wife. But an arrow sounds well enough.”

  “So, if I wasn’t your wife, what would you say?” she asked, invisible blushes. “Is prick too vulgar? But it does so very much more than just pricking.”

  He chuckled. “Names don’t matter. It’s touch that tells stories. Vulgarities apart, my love, marriage is for learning and teaching pleasure, giving it, and receiving it, and remembering it when res
ponsibility calls and the bed goes cold. Reliving it in thought perhaps, when alone and following cold paths and other duties, but missing the warmth.”

  “I don’t want to think about being apart yet. Can I touch you here, down further, and below?”

  “Kiss me.”

  “There?”

  “Does that frighten you? Now, my own love, use your tongue. I have an opening too. Find it, and explore inside me as I intend exploring inside you.”

  It was more than an hour later when he released her, both of them exhausted. The last candle had guttered and the chamber slumbered in seething, panting blackness. Nicholas kissed his wife’s trembling eyelids, and again pulled the warmth of the blankets up around her chin, tucking her in, and pressing close to her side. He fingered the dampness at her thighs, and smiled, and wished her sweet hours until they awoke together the next morning. “Then I shall want you again, I warn you, my sweet, just as soon as I reopen my eyes. Already I know how I’ll take you, and how you’ll sigh and moan, ready or not.”

  She whispered back, “I love you so much, Nicholas my dear.”

  “Then dream now, little one.” He shook his head, still smiling. “And so shall I.”

  “Of me, Nicholas?”

  “God willing. In truth, it all seems a dream to me now.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Avice stared, shoulders hunched, and said, “You’re all pink, Emma. And sweaty. But it was quite chilly last night. You must have much thicker blankets than me.”

  “Hush, Avice,” said her mother. “You really are an ignorant child sometimes. You must take after your Papa.”

  “I don’t,” said Avice. “I’m just like you, Maman. And don’t tell me no. I’ve seen all your wonderful new clothes since Papa died, and the lovely food with honey and raisins and proper spices, and real loaves of sugar in the pantry, and the hundreds of extra candles, and far less time spent in chapel. Father Godwin looks positively lost and lonely these days. And Maman, those sleeves. They’re long enough to dust the floors, and there’s real rabbit fur all the way up inside. So you see, you’re just like me after all.”