“I pray you be brief, my lord, since you will be secret,” she snapped. “I have set the entire court to playing hide-and-go-seek, like a pack of children, and it will not be long before some booby finds his way here. They think that my brain is going soft,” she added, a sour smile quirking the corner of her mouth. She reached for my hand, dropping the ring I had sent her back into my palm. I watched my knuckles whiten as I held it tightly for a moment before returning it to my finger. She nodded occasionally as I spoke and then dismissed me with the promise that the matter would be seen to. I melted back into the shadows as muttering voices signaled the approach of others, and stifled a gasp as the Queen chose to join me in my concealment.
“It may not be too late,” Percy’s harsh tenor voice was unmistakable. “Her Majesty must take such an accusation seriously, even if the girl herself is missing. We must say that he has spirited her away, and killed her.”
“And then if she is found? Old Bess may be fast slipping into her dotage, but her brain has not yet completely gone to mush. This is finished and I’ll have no more of it; I have in mind something quite different for our night-crow,” Essex retorted, and I, hoping that the movement would not be noticed, caught the enraged Elizabeth to my chest, clamping her arms to her sides and tightly covering her mouth with my own to keep her from crying out. She struggled furiously for a moment before relaxing into my kiss. When the gallery had been quiet for a few minutes I released her, dropping again to my knee as she stepped back from me, then reeling with the blow that she cracked across my face. I raised one hand to my cheek, forestalling a second blow with the other.
“Majesty, wait!” My voice was hoarse with emotion. She glared at the hand gripping her wrist, crumpling the starched ruff into a limp ruin. I loosened my hold, and she stood over me, the unspoken question of why she should not call her guards plain on her face. “Majesty, it came to me that they could kill you then, and blame me, and who would disbelieve them?” My voice shook with the force of the vision that had overwhelmed me the moment that Elizabeth had begun to step from the arras. Her eyes flashed for a moment, then softened.
“It was my lord of Northumberland, then, that imprisoned you last summer? No, you need not reply, I see the answer plainly enough in your face. But you do wrong my lord Essex, cousin. My person, old and bent as it is, is safe with him; he will not harm me, whatever he thinks of my wits. I forgive you your rough care of me, for I see plainly that it was care, and your impertinence has already been punished. Your fears for your safety seem well grounded, cousin, and I agree that your plan is a good one. The letters you ask will be delivered to your house in Chelsey tomorrow. My lord,” she continued in a tone so quiet that even I was hard put to hear, “why did you kiss me when you could have kept me still another way?”
“I wanted to,” I answered, not sure if the surprise in my voice was due to the rare vulnerability she showed by her question, or to the unexpected truth of my answer.
“Go now, before I discover a reason to take you back behind the arras,” she spluttered, and as she turned to go, I saw the unmistakable glint of a tear on her painted cheek.
My head full of my plans, I was unprepared for the tumult that greeted me when I reached home. Sylvie and Eden held each other, weeping, at the foot of the stairs; I could hear Richard sobbing above, and the low murmur of someone attempting to comfort him. I started up the stairs, but Sylvana called me back.
“What was done to yon child I know not, my lord, but he will not endure the presence of a young woman, not even his own sister. She went to bring him a bit of broth, and he . . . he attacked her. She’s not hurt, just her feelings,” Sylvana added, and looked down at her square and capable hands for a moment, clenched into fists, then raised her eyes to me again. I nodded and went wordlessly up the stairs. I recognized the soft voice before I reached the little room at the far end of the passage. Hal sat on the edge of the bed, rocking the boy as if he were a child. He turned at the sound of my steps and sent an ironical smile over his shoulder. He gently disengaged Richard’s clutching hands, and stood to face the door. I slowly crossed to the bed, holding out my hand and sitting on Richard’s other side.
“I will go and see to the wench,” Hal said, and slipped away. At his words Richard’s tears broke out again, and he buried his face in his hands. I let him cry for a moment.
“Eden is not much harmed, Richard,” I said gently. “She is frightened, and hurt that you do not want her. She does not know what they did to you. She does not know about the ceremonies that were practiced in that place.” Richard raised his eyes to look at me, shame and anger mingled with fear on his face.
“That is where Eve died,” he whispered. “Tied down in that—that place—as I was, like some animal. I thought that I would die there, too, and I would not have cared, only, not like that. Not like that!”
“Like what, Richard?” My voice was just sharp enough to jerk an answer out of the boy.
“He told me, about the . . . what they were to summon that night. It wanted v-v-virgins, and they had thought that Eve was. She was not and instead of—of—it devoured her, and took hours to do it, while they huddled in the darkness, waiting for it to finish, and hoping that it did not think to look for them.” Richard’s eyes, enormous in his thin face, glinted madly in the candlelight. “He told me, told me not to let—her—take me, because then it would be me. They gave me water, but it tasted foul, and I was having dreams, dreams that made me, my manhood—hard, hard enough to hurt. Then she came, I could smell her in the dark, fouled and filthy and I tried to beg, to beg her not to, but I was gagged, and I knew that he had told her that she would be my death, but she only laughed, and she— with her mouth, made me hard, and then she—she mounted me, and clawed at the burned places, laughing when I tried to scream, kissing me with her mouth, her vile, filthy mouth—” he broke off, racked by tearing sobs, letting me fold him into a protecting embrace.
“How did you come by those burns, Richard?” I asked.
“The earl. He questioned me. About you.” I waited, and before long I had the whole tale of the accusations they had meant to make against me. It was well I was leaving, I thought. I soothed the boy, telling him not to worry, and he rested his head on my shoulder, the sobs becoming softer and more infrequent until they became no more than an occasional shudder.
I waited patiently for the weeping to subside and nodded for Jehan, waiting at the door, to bring the tray that he carried to the bed and leave it there. Richard, at my urging, tried to take a few mouthfuls of the bread sopped in broth, but the sight of it revolted him, and his hands were shaking so that he could not fill the spoon. I took the bowl from him, and, gently pushing him back to rest against the pillows, fed him, talking all the while of inconsequential things. He looked surprised to see that the bowl I returned to the tray was empty. He took the small cup offered him and managed to sip the brandy it contained without spilling it.
“My lord of Southampton was very kind,” Richard muttered, fighting against the sleep that was overwhelming him. “I thought that I hated him.”
“Sleep, Richard. I shall send Jehan or Rhys to sit with you. Now, sleep,” I repeated, gratified to see the boy’s eyelids droop, then caught the cup that fell from the slack fingers.
Hal was standing by the fire, fondling the reliquary on the mantel, just as he had been those few short weeks before, the night that he had first become my lover. He turned and smiled before kneeling to draw the poker from its resting place in the coals and plunge it into the waiting flagon. The scent of boiling wine, sweet with spice, filled the room as I settled into a chair by the fire. Hal drew the cushion from the other chair, tucking it under him as he sat leaning against my legs and staring at the fire. He poured the wine into the waiting cups and passed one up to me.
“It is arranged, then? Where will you go?”
“The letters will arrive tomorrow, and I think that I will go first to Blackavar. I must consult with Nicolas and Geofri, then I
will go . . . I don’t know, somewhere obscure, until Richard is fit to travel abroad. After that, oh, Paris, probably, or Brittany. I should not be out of reach of London for a few weeks yet. I must make some arrangements about the women, though. Richard will want to be away from them for some time to come, I am afraid.” I saw the question that Hal refused to ask, and told him the entire ugly story, omitting nothing.
“Do you think that Robin knew what use Harry meant to make of the boy?” Hal asked, and spat into the fire.
“I doubt it. I doubt it very much indeed. Percy can be very discreet when his skin is on the line, and Essex has no stomach for murder, so I deem. Richard said that you had been kind to him,” I finished, my hand resting on the auburn curls spilled across my knee.
“I felt that I owed him that, at least, seeing as how it was my arrogance that sent him from the house and into that coil in the first place.”
I slid from the chair to join him on the floor. “And he’s ruined your shirt,” I said, reaching for the tear-stained silk, smiling as Hal caught my hand, and raised it to his lips.
“You can buy me another.”
I nodded. “Then I must be sure to have my money’s worth,” I said huskily, and ripped the fine silk from his body, smiling at the desire this act kindled in his eyes.
Chapter 19
The wind howled and tore at the thatch, catching at the chimney pots, and hurling one to shatter on the cobbles of the paved yard. The storm had come up suddenly an hour or so before, sending its biting breath through every crack and cranny of the old house. Richard and I sat side by side on the high backed settle near the kitchen fire, poring over the large book we held between us. I soon closed the volume with a snort of disgust. “It is useless, Richard,” I growled. “I cannot tell one letter from another. Perhaps I never shall.” Richard flinched at the depth of the anger and the despair that I could not keep from my voice. It had been just over a month since his deliverance, but he still could scarcely endure the sight of a woman. We had come to this secluded manor as soon as he was well enough to travel, he and his brother, his cousin Jehan, and me, the vampire. Richard seemed to have lost the feelings of fear and disgust I had engendered in him such a short time before. They had been spent, perhaps, as payment due for his life.
“You, my lord, are what you are, and that is all,” he had said. Now he gently took the book from my trembling hands and returned it to the sideboard.
“Perhaps,” he began, but broke off at the sound of hooves ringing on the cobbles of the yard. I started for the door, but it burst open, bearing Southampton in on a wave of wind-driven snow. Hal looked about him wildly for a moment, then pitched face forward onto the floor. Richard managed, with no little struggle, to wrestle the heavy door shut, then turned to help. Hal lay at full length, his head resting in my lap. There was something odd about his appearance, more than the bruises on his face, or the ravages of the weather. His hair, dark and full as ever on the right side of his head, had been raggedly shorn on the left, leaving the scalp almost bare in several places.
“Brandy, Richard, and blankets,” I said tersely, and Richard scurried to obey. Quickly we stripped the wet clothing from him, and I wrapped him in the soft dry wool. There were the marks of a terrible beating upon his body. When he began to stir I held the brandy to his lips, allowing only the smallest sip. He swallowed convulsively, then opened his eyes, gazing vaguely about for a moment before focusing on my worried face.
“I thought that I would die,” he murmured. “The storm came up so quickly . . . should have listened to Cade. The knave said we should wait it out, and come on the morrow, but I would not hear of it. He’s all too likely dead in a ditch somewhere now, if he hadn’t the sense to turn back. God knows I didn’t. I had to see you, Kit,” his voice sank to a whisper. He took in the startled expression on Richard’s face, and the look of concern on mine, then turned away, pulling his hand from the tangle of blankets to finger the stubbly places over his ear. His earlobe was torn, dried blood streaking his neck and throat, and staining the lace of his band. The pearl earring I had given him, and that he had worn ever since Twelfth Night, was missing.
“It was at court, in the Presence Chamber, that damned officious Willoughby, all puffed up with being her Majesty’s Squire of the Body. As if he or any other man has ever seen her body! She’s not that much of a fool, whatever others may think,” Hal smiled at his coarse joke and paused, searching for his place. “Yes, anyway, we were playing cards, Ralegh and I, and the rogue was winning handily; he had taken nearly all I had. We had just dealt, and my hand was perfect: I would win back all I had lost, and more. Then Willoughby, damn his poxy soul, swept up to the table to inform us that play must cease, as her Majesty had retired for the night. I pointed out that as we were not playing with her Majesty her absence would not inconvenience us, but Willoughby demanded that play stop, and Sir Walter, having won all evening, rose, tossed his cards onto the table, collected his winnings and walked away with a smile.
“I told Willoughby what I thought of him, jumped up little cur that he is, and he threatened me. I slapped him soundly, told him where he could meet me honorably, and walked away. I never imagined that he would . . . he was waiting for me, he and some of his hangers-on, as I passed the tennis court on my way to the waterstairs. I had only the one groom with me, and he was quickly overpowered. I would not run, could not have escaped them if I had, and would not give that cullion the satisfaction of playing hare to his hound! I lunged at him, felling him with one good blow to the eye, and then his minions overwhelmed me.
“Two of the largest held me, and Willoughby and the others, three or four of them, took their turns with me. When they had finished I was only halfway conscious. I remember falling to my knees when the two that held me walked away, and I felt a hand in my hair, pulling my head up. I could hear Willoughby, that silly braying laugh of his, and then I was being held again while he pulled savagely at my hair. I was let fall once more, and was only vaguely aware of Willoughby, the clicking of his Spanish heels against the pavement, walking away, when someone leant over me and there was a red-hot pain at my ear—” he broke off, shaking with stifled rage. I caught Richard’s eye.
“He may have my bed, my lord, and I’ll sleep on the truckle-bed, in case he needs anything.” I nodded and gathered my exhausted lover into my arms, carrying the long length of him to the bed as if he were no more burden than a child, holding him as Richard made up the truckle-bed. I then went to the kitchen to wake Rhys and Jehan, and send them out to care for the earl’s horse and to look for the earl’s man. They returned just before dawn to say that Cade had turned up in the village, about a mile further on, having missed the lane that led to the farm. He was none the worse for it, to judge by the conversations they had overheard. I instructed Rhys to take a message to the inn as soon as he could, to say that the earl had made it to the farm in safety, then retired wearily to my own chamber, securely locking the door behind me and drawing the thick curtains that blocked any light that might find its way through chinks in the heavy shutters.
I woke the next evening still dressed and lying crossways on the large bed. A quiet, but persistent knocking came from the door, and I stumbled to my feet and worked the key around in the old lock, stepping back to let Jehan, bearing a load of firing, past me. He quickly kindled a fire on the large hearth and disappeared back through the door, muttering about a bath. I stripped off my doublet and trousers, waiting in shirt and hose for Jehan to return. Hal came in while the bath was being filled and perched himself on the edge of the bed. His hair had been neatly trimmed around, far too short to be fashionable, but the ravages were unconcealable. He seemed unable to keep from reaching up and fingering the bare places on his scalp.
“I think that I know why you sleep the days, and stir only at night,” he said softly, refusing to meet my startled gaze. Jehan set the water can down and turned to face us, waiting. Hal reached out his hand and drew a slender finger up my front, from my
navel to my throat, then slipped his hand around to rest against my neck, just beneath my ear. “It’s to keep this skin so perfectly white. I’ve never seen such pale skin on a man,” he still refused to meet my gaze, as Jehan, tension draining from him, resumed his task filling the bath. “Am I . . . ugly to you, now?” It was no more than a whisper, and I felt his hand tremble beneath my hair. I firmly, but tenderly, mindful of the bruises, took my lover’s face and turned it to mine.
“You are beautiful to me, Hal,” I told him, and reinforced it with a gentle kiss. Jehan cleared his throat, and Hal laughed.
“I will await you downstairs,” he said, and slipped from the room. I let Jehan shave me, and then settled into the bath to soak and to think. That had been a bad moment, thinking that Hal had discovered my true nature, and I could not help but wonder what we would have done if he had.
Nearly a week had been spent at Blackavar, discussing the recent events with Nicolas, Geoffrey being out of the country at the moment, while Richard recovered somewhat from his ordeal. It had seemed a long journey, and we had taken turns carrying the boy, shocked and semi-conscious, on the saddlebows. Dawn had streaked the sky when we arrived, and I was myself unconscious, overtaken by trance before the doors of the great hall had opened. Nicolas had been sitting on the edge of my bed when I awoke, to greet me, and then scold me for taking chances with the sun and the day-trance while I was yet young enough to be so vulnerable. Later that evening his pleasant features grew hard and cold as he listened to the tale that I told him.
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