Before I could seek my rest, there was still the matter of the new servants to sort out, and I made my way into the large kitchen, where a husky-sweet baritone voice was singing:
‘To be a Scot’s whore and you’re fifteen years old,
And you were the fair flower of Northumberland.’
The last word startled me so that I swung the door open with far more force than I intended. I apologized and was given a seat by the fire and a cup of wine.
Rhys told their complex story simply, that they had been driven from the mountains of Wales and took refuge in the service of the Percy family. They had been four, originally. Another sister, Eve, had disappeared shortly after they had come south with the earl. He had told them that she had desired to return to the north, and that he had sent her, but he hadn’t known that Dickon could read and write. A letter sent to the priest at Alnwick had been answered in the negative, and they feared their sister was dead. Thinking of that room with the circle scribed into the floor and the bolts used to fasten shackles, I thought I knew the fate that had overtaken the girl, and shivered. Perhaps she had been too drugged to change her shape, for I couldn’t imagine Percy letting any of them go if ever he discovered their nature. So they had fled Percy’s service, Dickon working as a scrivener, Rhys as an hostler, and Eden at sewing and lace making, but Percy had begun to seek after them. Hearing tavern gossip of the rift between Northumberland and the foreign prince, Rhys had decided to take my offer of employment, hoping that the protection such a position offered could be extended to his family as well.
He had gotten the shock of his life when Sylvana had opened the back door, recognizing instantly what she was, as she did him. They soon decided that they must be kin, however distantly. Rhys and his siblings were pre-Celtic, descended from folk that had been pushed back into the Welsh hills before the Celts themselves had been driven to those same hills first by the Romans and later by the Saxons. Rhys was big, though not quite so big as Jehan, and Eden and Sylvie were almost of a size. They all had dark chestnut hair, and the same tilted tawny eyes as Jehan and Sylvie.
Dickon, who had been singing, was different, shorter than his brother and slender, with hair so black that it shone with purple highlights in the candlelight, his dark eyes the violet-grey of storm clouds, each iris ringed in jet black. The fine bones of his face and hands suggested aristocratic blood, and he hadn’t changed when the others did. The boy caught the speculative look I swept over him and his face reddened. “I’m a bastard, a half-brother,” he snarled and strode from the room. I rose to follow him, glancing at Rhys, who nodded me on.
“Dickon, wait,” I called softly into the darkness of the great hall. My vampire’s sight easily picked the lad out of the shadows and I crossed to him. “I am sorry, I meant no insult or injury to you. Will you forgive me?” He gave me a quick glance then turned his face away.
“Dickon’s a family name, my lord,” he muttered.
“I see. Your name is Richard, then? Good, I shall call you that. But you haven’t answered my question, Richard. Will you forgive me?” I saw the sullen nod. “Good, again. Rhys said that you read and write. Would you care to act as my secretary? I need someone to read and write for me, as I can do neither.” I could see that I had surprised the boy out of his sulks at any rate.
“Why not, my lord?” he asked simply, neither snarling nor muttering. I smiled.
“The assault that took my right eye took that as well. I enjoyed reading, and writing too, and I would appreciate it a great deal if you would help me.”
“Of course, my lord,” Richard answered somewhat coolly.
“You have a beautiful voice, Richard.” I saw the quick flash of the boy’s grin.
“You wouldn’t have thought so, last year! I used to sing trebles in the choir, till it broke. It’s only a few months that it’s settled. I—I’m happy that it pleases you,” his voice took on the hint of a snarl. Neither accustomed nor reconciled to being used as a servant, I thought.
“It does please me, and it would also please me if you would sing some more, tonight, if you are not too tired,” I said gently. Richard paused a moment, then nodded and allowed himself to be led back into the kitchen.
The next evening I sat bolt upright as the day-trance released me. The comfortable sound of my bath being filled would tell me that I was not alone even if the presence of living blood had not alerted me by senses less conventional. I drew the curtain aside, and was surprised to see Rhys, not Jehan as I had expected. Rhys smiled uneasily and crossed the room to the bed.
“Jehan and Sylvie are resting, but Sylvana says they’ll be well tomorrow, the way we heal. They should’ve gone straight to their beds last night, but they were that worried about you, my lord, that you’d have no one to care for you, see.” He went on to say that Almsbury had gone with Southampton’s men when they came for the horses that afternoon. “Tomorrow Jehan’ll be back caring for you and I’ll look after the stables. But now,” his voice took on a low, wary tone. “Sylvana told me about you, my lord, and we have tales that tell of your kind among our folk. They say that we are never so well off as when we serve you, and she told me what you—what you need, see. I can’t say that I’m not fretted, my lord, but I need your help more than you need mine, so I am willin’.” He sat down on the bed, cautiously as if it were a nest of snakes, or as if he expected me to lunge at him and drain him on the spot. I shook my head.
“No, Rhys. Sylvana spoke out of turn. You need not—feed me, to ask for and be granted such protection as I can afford you. I can manage without your sacrifice. I take it that you have spoken of my nature to your family? Good, but do not trouble yourself. Jehan, Sylvie and Sylvana have all sustained me, and shall again, by their own choice, but I do not ask that of you or yours. But, Bowen, we do not know how things may fall out, and neither would I turn you or Eden away. Richard is still a child, and whatever else you may think of me, know that I do not take children. Do you understand?” Rhys nodded, his face a careful blank, as he got up and left the room.
I rose and crossed to the bath. I would heal without heavier feeding, though not as swiftly, I reflected as I sank into the hot water, letting it soak the soreness and stiffness from me. Yet I wanted more, and I suddenly recognized the feeling. I wanted a lover. Tom was comfortable, an old friend, and a good one, but even he had felt the need for the new, and had found Rózsa. I wanted the excitement, the—I realized that I was not alone.
Southampton stood in the doorway, and, seeing my eye upon him, slouched into the room. He had dressed with great care, at the summit of style. His fitted slashed doublet and trunk-hose were all of satin, most appropriately of the rich crimson-blood color called Mortal Sin, crusted with gold thread and winking with jewels. The finest white knitted-silk hose clung to the muscles of his thighs and calves; his shoes of red and gilt Moroccan leather were graced with knots of gold ribbon. The falling band that he wore instead of the old-fashioned starched ruff was made entirely of lace as delicate as frost on a windowpane, perfectly accenting the dark auburn curls tumbling over it. Oh, yes, I thought, smiling to myself, that is what I want.
“Why hello, Hal,” I said softly. “What brings you back so soon?”
“I could not stay away,” he snarled, his voice ragged. “I do not understand why, how, you affect me so. Whenever I think of you I’m filled with lust, and an urge to fling discretion to the four winds and myself at your feet. . . .” He trailed off, looking down at his clenched fists, while the color drained from his face. I rose from the tub and reached for the towel, ignoring the tearing sound of his breath.
“Go on down to the study, Hal, and I will join you there when I have dressed. It would appear that we have much to discuss,” I said gently, and he turned on his heel and left the room without a backward glance.
A half-hour or so later I entered the study, wearing a black shirt of cobweb-lawn open to the waist and smoothly flowing black velvet trousers, tucked into soft-soled boots. Hal stood tappi
ng nervous fingers on the skull-shaped reliquary that rested in its niche in the mantelpiece. He spun with a gasp as the door opened, looking for all the world like a stag brought to bay. I ignored his near panic and set the tray I carried on the table, pushing the litter of books and papers to one side with the back of my hand and sliding the tray into place; I was closely followed by Rhys, who set a covered basin and ewer on the chest beneath the window and withdrew silently. I poured a cup, turned and offered it to my guest, who took it with shaking hands.” Sip it, Hal,” I warned, “it’s brandywine. That’s a pretty toy, is it not?” I continued, nodding at the jeweled skull. “I picked it up in Rome, but I forget which saint’s skull it was supposed to hold. I use it for quite a different purpose.” I crossed to the fire and took down the box, flipping back the top to reveal a small pipe and a greeny-brown cake. “It’s hashish, from Turkey. Would you like to try it?” Hal nodded and watched with interest as I prepared the pipe.
“What did you do with the skull?” he asked suddenly.
“We buried it,” I smiled. “It was a woman’s, Geofri said, or a child’s. There are ossuaries there, as you know, and an endless supply of ‘martyr’s bones’, but somehow we thought returning the pitiful object to the earth was best, to keep her from being taken away and sold again, as was likely if we had returned her to the catacomb. Geofri has rather strict views on the respect due to the dead.” I lit the pipe and drew the smoke before handing it to Hal, who took it gingerly and imitated me, but choked on the unfamiliar taste. He soon became accustomed to the flavor, and began to relax.
I pushed the chairs back, pulling the cushions from them and arranging them on the floor before the fire. I stretched out my legs, using one of the heavy chairs as a backrest. Hal gazed at me for a moment, then did the same, settling between me and the fire. “Now Hal, do you wish to tell me why you could not stay away?” He hesitated, unsure. “Well, I think that I know,” I said carefully. “But this choice must be yours, and I will not try to force you to my will, or even influence your decision. Have you loved with a man before?” He nodded slowly, his eyes smoky with memory.
“Twice,” he answered huskily. “One older and one younger. I was fifteen, and he was twenty, a groom in Lord Burghley’s household, assigned to look after me, though not, I fear, in the fashion he did,” Hal chuckled, then saddened.” He died about a year later, of the plague. I took a younger boy, a page, as a lover, to try to forget him, but . . . it was a mistake,” his voice hardened.
“The boy threatened to go to Burghley if you didn’t pay dearly for his silence, I suppose. What did you do?”
“Planted a ring of mine among his things and went to Burghley myself, and had him turned out for stealing. He tried to tell Burghley anyway, to defend himself, but as I had been rather spectacularly discovered that morning with two of the serving-wenches in my bed, no credence was paid him.” Hal smiled as I laughed out loud.
“Masterful! I must be wary, I see.” I reached out and tentatively touched his hand, running my fingertips across the back and around the thumb into the palm, lightly holding it, and raising it to my lips to press a kiss there. Hal shivered, then sat up and began deliberately undoing his doublet, one jeweled button at a time, his gaze never straying from my face. He untied his points and slid out of doublet, trunk-hose and hose in one graceful movement, with practiced ease. Clad only in his shirt he leaned over me, first easing my filmy shirt over my shoulders, then his eager hands searching for the fastening of the outlandish trousers. I could see his eyes catch on the scars upon my shoulder and chest, arrow wound and brands. He tenderly bent his head and kissed them, causing me to shudder with the intensity of my desire.
“Do you know what you are doing, Hal? Is this truly what you want?” I asked hoarsely. “You still have a choice.”
Hal shook his head sadly, raising on one elbow to turn a bittersweet look on me. “I have no choices at all,” he breathed, then smiled tightly as I leaned forward to kiss him, gently at first, then more ardently as the depth of his reaction drove me. I found myself aching to learn the limits of the man, all the nuances and subtleties of his responses. I had meant to hold back, to build gradually, but fell helplessly into the desire to push and master him, reading without conscious thought his unuttered needs. When I came at last to press my teeth to the vein in his throat, tangling my hand in that burnished hair and drawing his head back almost to the point of pain, my own release was shattering. The rich sweetness of his blood filled my mouth, and his body shuddered as wave after wave of pleasure engulfed us both.
I withdrew from the spent and sobbing man beneath me, turning him and drawing him up until the tear-soaked face rested on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hal,” I murmured, kissing the sweat-dampened curls. “I hadn’t meant for it to belike that.” Hal pressed his fingers to my lips, to hush me.
“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered, then raised his face to mine.
“Lo, I confess I am thy captive, I,
and hold my conquered hands for thee to tie,”
he quoted, smiling, and I stared at him in surprise. “It’s from Marlowe’s Ovid,” he explained quietly. “Kit Marlowe was the dead friend that Walsingham has named you for.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, disentangling myself to fetch the basin, which held heated towels, and the ewer full of water that was still pleasantly warm. I began to wash, first myself, then him. Hal shivered at the attention, his eyes growing heavy with content. He reached a hand and caught my wrist, kissing the fading scars still visible there.
“If that was not how you meant it to be, you might still show me how you did intend it . . . ” his voice trailed off as I leaned over him, a shadow between him and the fire, then a fire between his teeth when our lips met. I was gentle this time, using every ounce of my skill to bring his release, and every ounce of my will not to feed from the man again. All too soon, it seemed, we broke apart. Hal laid back and when I asked him what he was doing replied: “Drinking the sight of you like wine, some heavy and heady rich wine, red as blood, rarer and more precious than rubies,” and laughed at the giddy simile. I brought the tray, uncovering the dishes to reveal the rare beef and sallet of sorrel and rose petals, and poured him a wine redder than blood from a second flagon. He leaned against me, letting himself be fed and basking in my attentions.
“I am more content this night,” he told me, “than I have been since ever I came to court.”
Chapter 8
Northumberland prowled the gallery and fidgeted in the old chapel he had taken as his study at Malvern Hall. The disturbances there had begun quietly enough some two or three weeks after the disastrous attempt to summon the demon Cadavedere, begun with a few rappings and tappings, and had grown in intensity until they could not be ignored. A sudden flung stone had broken a retort, spilling the results of two weeks work across the pages of an irreplaceable grimoire, and Percy had had enough. He briefly considered calling in a priest to try to exorcise the spirit, but had decided against it on the grounds that he probably knew more than his priest did on the subject of exorcism. Instead he had carefully set a mirror and murmured the spells of concentration and calming he had always found so useful preceding attempts to scry. A second stone shattered the costly mirror, and a tattoo of rapping broke out.
The earl, enraged, found himself shouting “Who in the name of hell are you?” then watching in horror as a massive wax candle began to burn down one side, as if it were subject to a heavy draft, although there was no breath of air stirring and the flames of every other candle in the room burned straight and still. The wax streamed from the candlestick, splashing onto the scarred tabletop, but oddly, deliberately. Northumberland leant forward, and gasped as his nearsighted eyes picked out the device that imprinted itself in the hot wax, the sigil of Mars encompassed in a star of thirteen points. He knew of only one man that had used that device: Aestatis Montague. Percy cleared his throat. “D-d-doctor, is that you?”
The upshot was that now, weeks later
, the earl paced throughout the early evening, waiting for the time to ripen so that he could begin a rite that, as far as he knew, no one had ever attempted before. He stepped back into the shrouded chamber. It had originally been the Lady Chapel of the old abbey, and the candlelight gleamed on the scrubbed and polished floor, the icy white marks of the chalk patterns, and the sweating, naked body of the gagged man shackled in the center of those markings. He was not a prepossessing man, a beggar in fact, with a twisted clubfoot and a fleering sidelong glance under thatchy eyebrows, red, like his matted hair and scabby beard. It had been an easy matter to lure him to the house under the pretense of charity, and even easier once there to drug him, and keep him drugged until the most propitious time to perform the rite. But he was not drugged now, and he strained against the bonds that held him, twisted and fought for a freedom he would never win in the flesh.
“It is time to begin,” the earl said quietly, though there was none but his victim to hear him. He picked up a sword from the altar behind him, and slowly, expertly, began the chant and the accompanying motions, watching in fascination as he actually seemed to see the man’s soul pull out of his extremities and bunch towards the head. There was a snap that was almost audible, and the soul floated above the fettered body, attached by a thin silvery cord. Percy, still chanting, flicked his blade out and to the left, and the large and ornate sword, the Templar’s sword, severed the filament holding soul to body. With a wail that would trouble the earl’s dreams, the ghostly, amorphous shape shot from sight; immediately Percy dropped the weapon and caught up an aspergillum from a chalice standing by, sprinkling the lifeless body with the contents until it was evenly covered. He tossed the aspergill aside and snatched up the candelabra, holding it over the corpse while the chant reached a crescendo.
“ SURGAT! SURGAT! SURGAT!” he shrieked, and a mist seemed to form over the body, sinking into it like a stone into a weed-choked pond. At the final syllable, the dead man opened his eyes.
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