“We had quarreled,” he said. “I wished to wear my very best to show I was sorry.”
She dropped her head a little and did not move forward. Pasgen stopped backing away. Elizabeth looked around at the walk, at a row of bushes that divided the bed of flowers near the path from a bed that fronted another path. She seemed to understand that the bushes would hide them from sight and Pasgen was afraid she would insist on returning to where the maid could see them, but she did not.
Instead she asked sharply, but in a low voice that would not carry, “Where is the letter from my Da?” And she held out an imperious hand.
Taken completely by surprise, Pasgen opened his mouth, closed it. Was Denoriel acting as messenger for a secret correspondence between King Henry and his daughter? That was ridiculous, impossible to believe. Whatever could she mean? Ah. It was not impossible that the child, thinking Denoriel of more influence than he was, had asked him to carry a letter to her father.
“I have no letter from your father,” he admitted, “but—”
“I told you—” she began angrily, taking another step toward him—and then blinked and murmured, “My father …”
She backed away a step. Pasgen reached out toward her—not too fast. He did not wish to startle her into full flight when he could see she was not ready to run. She was staring at him intently, and then he realized that alarm was growing in her eyes. Pasgen took two quick steps forward, now almost touching her, and an ache began deep in his bones.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly but intensely. “Put your cross in its special pouch. You know I cannot bear it.”
Somehow what he said had been horribly wrong. The child’s eyes widened and just out of his grasp she turned to run, whispering, “You’re not my Denno,” over her shoulder.
Teeth gritted against a rising agony, Pasgen leapt forward. It would take almost no time for him to break that scrawny little neck. He need only withstand the pain for a moment, he told himself, as he threw an arm around her. But what lanced through his arm was no sharper ache; it was a torment he had never expected, as if his forearm above the wrist had been pierced with a red-hot poker and sparks from it flew up along the arm to his elbow.
He released the child, thrusting her away with his other hand so forcibly that she stumbled forward a step or two and then fell. He had somehow twisted her as he pushed so that she had fallen on her back, and he saw that the black iron cross lay bare on her breast. His arm throbbed in waves of agony and an ugly aura rose from the child, who was fumbling at her side, perhaps to bring out another cross.
“Blanche,” she shrieked. “Blanche, come quickly!”
Pasgen hissed, “Silence!” as if it were not already too late—his keen ears could hear hurried footsteps beyond the curve of the path.
Her neck was thin and naked. He would not need to touch the cross. One squeeze … Pasgen forced himself one step forward. Pain drummed in his bones and the injured arm felt as if it would burst open to allow lava to pour out. Another step.
“Blanche!” Elizabeth screamed, trying to slide herself backward.
Her heel was caught in her gown and would not grip the earth. Her hand scrabbling at her belt pulled up the chain of her tiny housewife with its needles and pins and spool of thread and tiny scissors. Scissors! The iron cross had made him let her go. The scissors were also iron.
“If you try to put your hand on me,” she quavered, “I will stab you with my scissors. Iron scissors. I will stab you.”
The pain—burning in the flesh and lances of agony down his bones—was so intense that Pasgen’s vision was blurring. His right arm hung useless at his side, feeling stiff and bloated, the fingers too swollen to bend, and a flower of blue-white agony bloomed just above his wrist.
Scissors. If she stabbed him, if the iron came into contact with his naked flesh, it would be far worse than what the cross had done through the silk of his sleeve. For one moment, Pasgen hesitated. But that this puny mortal girl child should threaten him raised such a flood of fury in him that he took another step toward her, prepared to fling himself atop her and break her neck.
Only a flaming arrow pierced his cheek and suddenly the whole world was afire. And a woman’s voice, strong and resonant, was chanting words he did not understand, but they were wrenching at his power, tearing him loose from the world. He heard “Be gone” and screamed, because the backlash from his collapsing Gate, also torn from its anchor, battered at him, bruising his flesh and cracking his bones. A void opened, impenetrable blackness, waking in him terrors he had not known since infancy, and he cried, “Mother!” and saw Llanelli’s face, and saw no more.
As she ran toward Elizabeth, Blanche Parry managed to wrench off and throw one of her iron crosses at Pasgen. It struck him on the cheek, raising a red welt, and he staggered back, away from the child. Blanche then unhooked her necklace and waved it over Elizabeth, chanting the strongest spell of exorcism she knew.
Elizabeth was weeping in gasping sobs, struggling to sit up, her eyes almost black with shock. The creature in outdated court clothing no longer looked much like Lord Denno to her. His hair was now gold rather than silver, his eyes were a different color, more gray than clear green although they too were oval-pupilled like a cat’s, and his ears were longer and more pointed than dear Denno’s. Worse, his whole face was twisted with rage and pain.
“Be gone!” Elizabeth screamed as for one moment more he seemed to strive to throw himself at her, but then he screamed too, and … vanished … crying “Mother” as he disappeared.
Blanche threw herself down beside Elizabeth and gathered the child into one arm, still holding the necklace with its many iron crosses high between them and where Pasgen had been.
“My fault. My fault,” she breathed, holding Elizabeth tight. “As soon as I saw those clothes—years out of date they were, and all wrong for coming to visit you—I should have known there was something wrong with Lord Denno. I should have taken you back to the house.”
Elizabeth took a deep tremulous breath and her shivering began to diminish.
After a few minutes more, Blanche murmured, “I don’t feel any bad thing anywhere near now, lovey. Do you think if I help you, you could walk back to the house?”
“Not yet,” Elizabeth whispered. “If I go back now, everyone will see that I have been crying and believe that Lord Denno did something wrong. There’s an arbor with a bench. Let’s go there and sit.”
Blanche frowned fiercely. “What do you mean they will believe Lord Denno did something wrong? I saw him threaten you!”
As she spoke, Blanche lifted Elizabeth to her feet. The bench was no great distance and, although Blanche was nearly carrying Elizabeth for the first few steps, the child grew stronger and steadier and sat without support when they reached the seat.
After a while, Blanche said, “I cannot believe that Lord Denno tried to hurt you, but I saw it with my own eyes. What could have driven him to do such a thing?”
“It wasn’t Denno,” Elizabeth whispered, taking Blanche’s hand and clinging to it. “He looked like Denno, but his hair was yellow, not white, and somehow … I don’t know … his face was wrong, not Denno’s. And … and he thought I meant my father when I said ‘Da.’ Denno would never make that mistake. And he … he told me to put away my cross …”
“Told you to put away your cross!” Blanche stared at her with round eyes, but they were eyes full of belief, not disbelief. “No. Lord Denno would never do that. You must be right, lovey. It was someone who wanted us to think he was Lord Denno, so Lord Denno would be blamed—” Blanche’s voice stopped abruptly and she folded her lips over what she had been about to say.
“For—” Elizabeth shuddered. “For killing me?”
“More like for stealing you away,” Blanche said firmly.
Denoriel had just bid good afternoon to Joseph and drawn from the letter press a particularly thick and creamy sheet of parchment—he thought paper would not be elegant enough for a note to the d
uke of Norfolk—when the air spirit erupted into the chamber, shrieking, “Come! Come! Danger! Come! Danger!”
The creature winked out and Denoriel jumped to his feet. “Miralys,” he called silently, “go to the stable in Hatfield. I am coming.”
He ran headlong toward the back of the house and into the kitchen. A dryad looked up from some tubers she was scraping, but she said nothing as he careened across the room, through the door, and down the stair that led to the wine cellar. About two-thirds of the way back, he squeezed between two tuns. A pointed finger changed a spot of deeper blackness into an arch of stone, within which was a shield-shaped glimmer. One spot brightened at his mental demand. Denoriel, slightly dizzy with the expenditure of power, stepped forward and was in Elizabeth’s bedchamber.
Empty! No scent, no feel of Unseleighe presence. He did not call for Blanche. He could not sense her either so she must be with Elizabeth. That reduced the terror that had almost blanked his mind, and he hurriedly slid out of sight of the door beside a large wardrobe, grateful that no one had been in the room when he stepped through the Gate.
Catching a shuddering breath, Denoriel sent a summoning to the air spirit, which appeared before him, cheerfully bouncing up and down on nothing. Firmly Denoriel subdued a violent desire to catch the little glittering nothing and tear it glitter from glitter. However, to express haste or anger would only muddle the creature further.
Denoriel swallowed hard. “Where is the danger?” he asked quietly.
The air spirit hung quietly for a moment. “None now. You were danger. Try to hurt child. Lady throw cross. Child cry ‘Be gone.’ Pulled on link. Took me elsewhere. Found you. Came back. Danger gone.”
“I was the danger? I threatened harm to Elizabeth?”
The air spirit did not respond. Denoriel probed gently in its mind, saw himself in clothes he had not worn since he and George Boleyn disported themselves among London’s amusements. A chill pervaded him. Only Pasgen looked enough like him, possibly “felt” enough like him, that the air spirit would make a mistake. Blanche would only have seen “him” and thought no more about another visit. Elizabeth? Elizabeth could see through illusion, but Pasgen looked like him without any illusion.
Denoriel shivered. “Gone where? Where did the danger go?”
“Ask child.”
“Elizabeth?”
The air spirit bounced acceptance of the name. Surprise, disbelief, anxiety flickered through Denoriel’s mind. He knew that Elizabeth could see through illusion, but that she could spell-cast, he could not accept. She was not yet eight years old, for Dannae’s sake. He doubted Treowth had been able to spell-cast at eight.
“Where is she now?”
“Garden. With lady. Crying.”
Crying? Elizabeth? He could not remember seeing Elizabeth cry. She must have been terrified. “Go back to her,” Denoriel said to the air spirit, collapsed the Gate behind him, and cast the Don’t-see-me spell.
Under its protection, he went to the door and listened. Nothing. Carefully he cracked the door a hair. Nothing immediately visible through the crack. Slowly, slowly, he let the door open—as if it had not been fully closed and was drifting open of its own weight. The room was empty.
With similar precautions he made his way downstairs and through the audience chamber. Softly, carefully, he unlatched the garden door and then watched until the leaves stirred with a breeze. A little push sent the door open and Denoriel slipped out just as Nyle caught the door and began to wiggle the latch.
He left the guard frowning at the door and hurried along the path, finding Blanche and Elizabeth just as Blanche said, “What do you mean they will believe Lord Denno did something wrong? I saw him threaten you,” as she helped the child to her feet.
Denoriel shrank back around the curve, hoping Blanche would not sense him or the spell. She could not see through it, but Elizabeth could. He followed carefully, behind the dividing bushes and crouched down when they reached the bench and sat. His lips thinned when he heard Blanche accuse him again, but a moment later he almost threw caution away and leapt out when he heard Elizabeth say “It wasn’t Denno.” She knew. He could go to her and comfort her. He drew a breath to call her name and clamped his teeth over the impulse.
Fool! He was a fool! Yes, Elizabeth had seen through Pasgen’s disguise, had seen the small differences between him and his half-brother. But how would he explain how he just happened to appear in Hatfield moments after an attack by a person who looked very, very much like him when he was supposed to be in London waiting for a ship to bring him a letter from Harry.
He was relieved when Blanche accepted Elizabeth’s reasoning and agreed that it was not Denno who had offered harm. He was glad that Blanche had fixed on abduction as the worst threat. There was no need for the child to be more frightened; however, Denoriel’s own heart clenched with fear. He suspected that Vidal wanted a more permanent solution to the threat of Elizabeth coming to the throne, and from the tension in the maid’s body, she, too, feared Elizabeth was meant to die.
Denoriel backed down along the hedge, afraid that either the maid or Elizabeth would sense the storm of rage and fear that was shaking him. How could he protect her? He did not believe he could cast a shield around her as he had done for Harry. Harry never sensed the magic, but Elizabeth might, and might feel confined or suffocated.
He bit his lips and strained to hear, but Elizabeth and Blanche were discussing what to tell Mistress Champernowne. Denoriel gritted his teeth. It had been much easier with Harry, who had known from the beginning that he was a “good fairy,” an “elven knight,” and was not surprised or frightened when Denoriel did inexplicable things or appeared suddenly in places he should not have been. And Elizabeth—he felt disloyal for the idea, but truth was truth—Elizabeth was far keener of mind than Harry had been.
He could not stay and guard her himself; Blanche would soon sense his presence if he were close indoors, and Elizabeth might see right through the Don’t-see-me spell. And he suddenly realized he could not wear the Don’t-see-me spell for very long; his knees already felt soft and there was a hollow inner trembling in his body that warned him he would soon need to go Underhill to restore himself.
Underhill. Aleneil. She was welcome in Elizabeth’s inner chambers where he was not. Between them he and Aleneil could surely arrange something. Still, he was not displeased when he heard Elizabeth say uncertainly that she should perhaps tell her governess the truth about the attack. That would provide Elizabeth with human guards at least. But after a considerable hesitation Blanche warned her to think about it a little.
“If you tell Mistress Champernowne, she will blame me for allowing you to go off alone with Lord Denno.” Blanche sighed. “That would be only just. I deserve to be blamed, but—but another maid would be even less use in feeling the presence of evil. I am better than nothing.”
“No!” Elizabeth flung her arms around Blanche and hugged her tight. “No. I will not tell, ever. You are the only one who feels what I see. If not for you, sometimes I would think—” her voice dropped “—think I was mad.”
“There is another thing,” Blanche said thoughtfully. “You cannot really explain to Mistress Champernowne why you believe the man who attacked you was not Lord Denno. Therefore, she will exclude Lord Denno from those allowed to visit you or, if you insist on seeing him, will surround you with guards. She must, Lady Elizabeth. Whoever it was will not again make any of the mistakes that betrayed him this time.”
“But—” Elizabeth began and then shook her head.
She had never told even Blanche that Lord Denno was not a man as other men, that he had huge emerald green eyes with the slit pupils of a cat, that his ears were long and pointed, the tips showing through his hair. Thus she could not tell Blanche that the person who attacked her had much thinner and sharper ears and different-colored eyes.
Blanche cocked her head at Elizabeth’s expression, but Elizabeth only shook her head; she could not explain, and, afte
r another moment, Blanche sighed and added, “And I … forgive me, my lady, but I am not able to guard you as I should. It seems I cannot see clearly enough. I thought that person was Lord Denno.”
There was a silence while Elizabeth thought about how frightened she had been and how much safer she would be with Gerrit and Nyle or Shaylor and Dickson watching. But then she could never talk to Denno about her Da. The guards had been her half-brother’s, and “knew” he was dead. They had never said so, but their expressions … She very nearly began to cry again, but she swallowed the ache in her throat and thought about letters.
No, it would not be safe for the guards to see or hear about such an exchange. They knew she was not supposed to receive or send FitzRoy letters … Not that she had got any letter yet. Would there ever be a letter? Could a letter just be bait to draw her near? But then why had not that … that person held out a letter to her? She would have come close to take it and he would have had her.
She swallowed hard, wondering if that could have been Denno disguised and then disguised again just to seize her? For a moment she clutched Blanche’s hand tighter, then relaxed her grip. No, that was silly. Denno would have held out a letter to her. That … person knew nothing, not even that it was her half-brother she called “Da,” not her father.
“I would not want to be surrounded by guards when I am with Lord Denno,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Sometimes Denno and I have … private things to say to each other. But I do not think whoever that was could hide himself from me again—and you may be sure I will not let even the real Lord Denno come close enough to seize me.”
“Clever Lady Elizabeth! That is very wise.”
Blanche gently drew her hand from Elizabeth’s and the child released it readily. Then the maid took a small cloth from the pouch at her belt and moistened it with rose water from a small flask, also from the pouch. She used it to wipe Elizabeth’s face, replaced everything, and tucked a few wisps of Elizabeth’s hair more firmly under her headdress.
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