Seacliff

by Andrews, Felicia

  She heard a murmuring behind her head, but she could not decipher the words.

  “Wait!” Oliver cried. “The Thomas woman. Find her and bring her here at once. She might know something of immediate help.”

  Again the murmur of assent.

  The chill returned, and with it the sensation of a dozen small fires breaking out along her spine to the base of her skull. Nothing made sense anymore. She could no longer hear Oliver speaking, could no longer see without having the room spin before her eyes. She closed them quickly, before the brandy found its way from her stomach, and felt a pressure on her left hand. Oliver was holding it. She wanted to smile at him, to signal him not to worry… but she couldn’t believe any of this. What she did believe was that some foul humor had taken hold of her and was poisoning her system, wrenching it, tainting her senses until she could no longer use them.

  She was flying, then.

  The air around her swarmed like feathers over her arms and breasts, and in the distance, through a muddy cloud that drifted from side to side as if blown by a demon wind, she could see Griffin. He was riding his stallion, laughing and pointing at the cloud, showing the woman riding behind him how curious and wonderful the world looked. The woman had hair the shade of wheat, a round pale face, and a figure lithe and supple. Griffin twisted around and kissed her. Morag Burton kissed him back.

  Suddenly Caitlin landed on a pile of feathers laced with ice, coated with fire.

  Water trickled between her lips; she gagged.

  Her clothes were stripped from her, and she felt that given half a chance she would float over Seacliff and see herself as the gulls and falcons and eagles do before they dive for prey.

  “Gwen?”

  She was amazed. It was her own voice. She heard it clear as a Sunday bell.

  “Gwen?” she repeated.

  But the question was so weak, like a child’s, she wasn’t sure Gwen had heard it.

  A cold finger touched her chin.

  “I’m here, Cat, it’s all right,” a voice said in Welsh, not in English. “Sir Oliver is down in the kitchen, checking all the stores. He thinks there may be something rotten Mrs. Courder didn’t catch.”

  But all she could reply was, “Gwen?”

  And her own voice was the last thing she heard before the muddy cloud of her senses exploded and engulfed her in flaming silence.

  17

  The stallion’s name was Whitefire. And as he paced slowly across the wide expanse of the crescent-shaped clearing he shook his great head and lowered it to the dew-laden grass on which he nibbled. His moon-cast shadow vanished into the darkness of the hill’s forest. The hour was well past midnight, and the only sounds heard were the muted tinkling and creaking of the stallion’s equipage, and the occasional soft hoot of an owl in the branches overhead. He snorted, and swished his tail lazily from side to side. And every so often he turned his head to look for his master, as if to be sure he hadn’t been forgotten.

  The clearing was a natural pause in the woodland that covered the eastern range. There were no shrubs or saplings, no burrows or debris from nesting birds. And where the grass ended, an outcropping of brown rock began, leading to a drop of nearly three hundred feet. At its base the trees began again, and stopped only when they reached the ancient stones of Falconrest.

  Griffin Radnor squatted on his haunches in the shallow depression of a boulder, and folded his arms across his thighs. A thin woolen cloak was draped carelessly over his shoulders. From behind, he could have been mistaken for just another rock, until his head suddenly swung guardedly to one side. The view was hypnotizing, and every few minutes he was forced to look away.

  The valley below seemed to be lightly coated with snow, and glimmered silver. The cottages, long since gone dark, looked like toys, the vast ocean of stars mocked the bay and the channel and the ocean below, and the bulk of Seacliff, even at this distance, loomed like a protective sentinel at land’s end.

  Unless it was preparing to become a tomb, he thought morbidly.

  It was the end of August. The air had been cleansed twice of its cloying humidity by swiftly moving storms—one charging in from Cardigan Bay on the heels of blinding lighting, the other creeping over the hills from England, dropping three days of torrential rains and thunder on the valley. The first had appeared a fortnight before; the last had ended only two mornings before; and after the two storms Griffin had had a visitor. Gwen Thomas had come to his gates and demanded she be admitted. His man, Richard Jones, knew her and brought her to him, and it was then he’d learned of Caitlin Morgan’s illness.

  “The fever takes her and leaves her, takes her and leaves her,” Gwen had said, her hands trembling so hard she could barely hold her mug of cold water. “That old sod from Llewfanon has given her every potion devised since God created the world, but all she does is shake like an autumn leaf.”

  “Does she speak?”

  Gwen shrugged. “Of a way, of a way. She makes no sense, none at all.” She choked back a sob, wiped a hand over her pale, drawn face and took a deep unsteady breath.

  Griffin put a hand on her shoulder but said nothing more. He did not know how to comfort this woman, though he admired her for staying long enough on her feet to make the journey to Falconrest. At the Stag’s Head, he’d heard of Davy Daniels’s lashing and that Seacliff’s mistress had been too late and not forceful enough to save the boy from being permanently crippled. But when he’d broached the subject gingerly, Gwen had grown heated, her dark eyes flashing with indignation.

  “Lies!” she’d cried. “Cat came round that tower like an archangel ready for battle. She took the whip from the English bastard’s hand and beat him down with a look. She cut off Davy’s shirt herself, she did. And when blood was all over her, she never batted an eye. Who told you this? Who’d dare tell such a foul lie?”

  He’d backed away quickly, though he didn’t physically move an inch, and asked her instead about Caitlin’s ravings.

  Gwen subsided instantly, shrinking into an upholstered chair next to Griffin’s hearth until he thought she’d disappeared. “I don’t know. She… there’s talk about geese and birds, and once or twice she blathers about that silly pond of hers back in Eton. The rest is pure raving; I can’t make head nor tail of it.” She sipped from the mug. “One time she was in the middle of a story, and I didn’t recognize it until I remembered it came from some old tale Les used to tell. Then the next thing I know there’s Bradford telling me I have to get on with my work and the mistress needs her rest and”—her voice rose to a keening wail—”and don’t he think I know that I’ve work to do, but I can’t do it, because she’s lying there wasting away with nothing to be done for it? Don’t he know that?”

  He kept his face impassive, waiting for Gwen’s anguish to pass. “A white patch,” she’d said after a while.

  “What?”

  “A white patch. I don’t know what she meant. Twice, I think, she sits up with her eyes all wide and staring, talking about a great bloody giant what wears a white patch over his eye. I had all I could do to keep her from leaping off the bed! All I could do. All… I could do.”

  It was then that Griffin rose from his chair and pulled Gwen to her feet and embraced her. He held her until her sobbing was over and insisted she should get back to the house before Bradford discovered where she’d gone. He’d had Jones take her as near to Seacliff as possible in a cart, and had immediately begun a vigil that lasted all day and night until he could no longer keep his eyes open. When he slept, it was badly. When he ate, it was quickly. He let Richard see to the running of his estate, collect the rents and arrears, and take the goods to the market in Llewfanon.

  And each evening toward dusk he rode with grim purpose up the road and through the village, determined not to stop until he reached the doors of Seacliff.

  But on those lonely rides he would draw up abreast of the grove where Davy had discovered the body of Lam Johns. And though he was afraid of no man—and especially not of
Sir Oliver Morgan and his henchmen—he was reminded of Morgan’s ruthlessness. If, as the master of Falconrest, he paid a call on the mistress of Seacliff to ask after her health, which he’d heard was frail, he might make Caitlin’s life more difficult than it was now.

  So each evening he turned back at the grove and used the side roads to avoid passing through the village again. He didn’t want to set tongues wagging, tongues that could be loosened more by Morgan’s money.

  Oliver Morgan already had ample reason to be furious with Griffin. Several times over the past three years James Flint and his cronies had carried messages from Morgan, offering to purchase Falconrest and all its surrounding holdings for a sum that Griffin found difficult to believe a retired major of His Majesty’s army could have amassed. He refused, more bluntly each time, and it wasn’t long before he began to hear complaints from his farmers and foundry workers about damage. The incidents were minor to be sure: fences knocked down, livestock badly injured, highwaymen swooping past cottages at night laughing maniacally and shouting obscenities, unnerving his people more than frightening them.

  But this last spring, the incidents had grown worse. A fire had destroyed a newly restored barn and silo; a prime bull had been found in the field with its throat slit; a well near the foundry had been poisoned, and several men had taken seriously ill.

  Lam Johns had worked for that moldy creature the village called a vicar. His family had lived on Radnor land since the time of the English King Henry VIII. The tragedy of his murder had been doubled the same day when his ailing mother, despite attempts to conceal the news from her, heard of it anyway, and was dead within forty-eight hours of her son’s hanging.

  It had been, Griffin believed, murder twice over.

  The sharp scrape of a shod hoof over a rock jolted him out of his reverie, and with infinite caution he rose from his perch above Seacliff. His joints protested their sudden call to action, and Griffin groaned to himself as he stepped backward away from the edge of the drop. Though his legs tingled, he felt steady enough. Snapping his fingers once, he saw Whitefire respond, leaving his grazing patch not far away; the stallion was at his side in a few moments. In a single leap Griffin was in the saddle, and moments later he’d left the deserted clearing behind him.

  Except for the furtive sounds of someone moving through the brush, and the sounds of Whitefire thundering down the forest path, the night was quiet.

  Three evenings later, having heard no further word from Gwen on Caitlin’s condition, he asked Jones to take charge of the house in his absence and he went outside. It was a clear, cool night, and a nearby stream sang as he strode toward the tall iron gates set into Falconrest’s surrounding wall. He had to walk. He was much too restless, too anxious to sit for any length of time, and he’d reach his destination too quickly if he mounted Whitefire and rode to it.

  He decided to cut across the countryside first and stop at the Stag’s Head for a pint and some companionship. The villagers, though they liked him well enough and trusted him, had taken to shying away from him. Their reticence came as no surprise. He knew that Flint’s men were threatening detention if not physical harm to anyone who was too friendly with the master of Falconrest. In the beginning this had amused Griffin. He had never considered himself a dangerous man, and that Oliver Morgan believed his exaggerated reputation was proof enough the major was a fool.

  After downing the pint, he would take the road to Seacliff, but this time he’d go straight to Orin Daniels. And if the farrier was well disposed to his visitor, he might be convinced to admit Griffin into the south tower. The back steps led up to Caitlin’s room.

  It was a foolish notion, perhaps, but one that promised a wickedly delightful evening. He grinned broadly to himself as he closed the gates behind him and set off across the pastureland on the opposite side of the road.

  With his long strides he covered the distance easily, his night vision picking out with no trouble the burrows, the stump holes, the cavities where boulders had been removed to make way for plows. He whistled. To see Caitlin was only part of the joy; to be in Morgan’s house, to creep in right under the man’s red-veined nose and visit his wife in her bedchamber… that was an irony he could not resist.

  He forded a stream in a single leap.

  A small herd of black-masked sheep skittered away at his approach, a few of the ewes bleating in fear though the rams refrained from challenging the stranger.

  A watchdog from a cottage barked a fierce warning into the night, and Griffin was hard-pressed to resist finding it and taking it with him.

  As he neared the village, he found himself on a lane that led directly to the main road. Branches formed a canopy over his head, and on the dry ground the moonlight lay in puddles that rippled when the night wind gusted down from the hills. His heels struck the ground reassuringly; his cloak flapped about his calves; his soft-brimmed hat was set at a rakish angle on his head, and his hair was worn in a braid that bounced lightly between his shoulders.

  Griffin was so entranced by the evening’s promise—the image of Morgan’s face bloated with anger—that he almost missed the sound of a snapping twig off to his left. He sensed it came from a thicket of brier and laurel to his left.

  Not pausing or giving any sign he had heard, he continued on. But he strained his ears through the muted night sounds for another sign that he was not alone.

  Another came, this time from a hickory grove to his right. Could a single man move so quickly? No, there had to be more than one.

  Nodding slightly, he pushed his cloak back as casually as possible to allow his arms free movement. He carried no weapon in his waistband, and he scolded himself for the oversight. Knowing it would not be long before he was the object of some harassment, he should have made it a habit to carry at least a stunted club. But he hadn’t, and there was no sense wasting time or energy lamenting the fact. Now he had to determine the size of the band closing in around him. Three or four, by his guess. He might still do well by himself if he confronted them boldly, driving them off and getting only a few bruises himself. But since they were probably carrying weapons, it would certainly be more prudent to take to his heels. The village was not far ahead, and he was just one hundred yards from the main road; a right turn, and he would be less than half the distance to the first village house. The Stag’s Head was the last building before the commons.

  Finishing his quick mental notes, he slowed and scanned the woods on either side, hoping he would be able to see in the shadows a fallen dead branch or a loose rock he could use as a weapon. There was nothing. Only his carefully controlled breathing and the sound of boots clomping boldly on the lane behind him.

  His brief smile was one-sided. There was no question they were a confident bunch. Cheeky, besides, to come right out in the open like that, without so much as a blow to stun him before the kill. He swallowed hard to keep from laughing aloud, and to remind himself he was not, after all, immortal, even though his luck had managed to keep him alive thus far.

  A thud sounded: someone had jumped from the thicket to the road.

  Three of them were back there now, he guessed. None of them very heavy. And they weren’t closing on him; they were maintaining their distance, walking steadily in step with him like troops behind a sergeant.

  His palms itched to move.

  He wondered whose idea this was, Flint’s or Morgan’s? The possibility that his pursuers might be simply highwaymen looking for a lone mark and some easy coppers had surfaced and been dismissed; bandits in this valley were virtually unknown. David Evans had developed a reputation for dealing harshly with such criminals. No, it had to be Flint’s men, perhaps with Flint himself at the head.

  The skin grew taut over his shoulders, and the muscles tightened across his stomach. His heart sped up, and the muscles in his arms began an unconscious flexing, ready to power him when he needed to move quickly.

  Then he slowed. As the trees thinned ahead, the shadows began to separate from the bol
es. Three men glided into the center of the lane and formed a barrier, their hands in front of them, clubs in their grips.

  He stopped, and the footsteps behind him stopped.

  They’d grown to six in number. Quite a conspiracy. He looked quickly to either side: trees to his right and a thick undergrowth of brier; a copse to his left that led to an unused field abutting the central road. The verge slanted upward for five or six feet before leveling out, but because the grass at this time of night was wet with fresh dew, it would be slippery going. Even if he could make it to the top and bolt across the open land, the three ahead of him would be able to cut him off without much effort. And there might be others waiting for him at the top. You never knew how well planned these things were.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said suddenly, and loudly, “I expect you’ll want my purse. Any time soon?”

  A silence greeted his mocking question.

  “No?” He took a step forward, and the trio narrowed the gap between them further by taking the same number of steps closer to Griffin. “Well, surely my rags have no value to men of your obvious gentility and refinement?” He plucked dramatically at his billowing white shirt, at his snug breeches, at his polished black belt, which he tugged again, loosening the buckle in a movement too quick to catch. “Don’t you have tongues, then?”

  Someone shifted behind him. He smiled, wryly. He’d thought by their stance they were trained in great patience, waiting for him to make the first move. For once he was pleased to learn that his first impression was wrong.

  He shook his head slowly, and clucked his tongue. “My friends, unless you deign to speak with me, how can I read your desires, eh?” He spread his arms wide. “I am not one of your fey Welshmen, you know. I cannot read the spirits that ride the night, not like some I could name. You’ll have to tell me what it is you’re after.”