“Enough to kill me?” she demanded.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are no going to drink the whole thing at once, Maria.”
“The way it smells, and considering it’s poison, I doubt I shall be drinking any of it!”
He spread his arms wide and gave her a bow. “Suit yourself.” Then he turned on his heel and began walking once more down the pier, his boots echoing on the raised and rotted wood. He gave a little hop over a section with missing boards, the river sloshing beneath like a fat brown ogre waiting to devour her.
“Valentine!” she demanded.
He stopped, his shoulders drawing up near his ears. He turned, leaped over the hole in the pier once more, strode up to her as if he would run her over, then stopped just as his tunic brushed her gown.
As Mary had known he would.
“If you would be so kind, Maria, as to refrain from using my given name in a place crawling with criminals, and where my family has recently been inquiring of me, you would win my undying devotion.”
“Is that all I have to do?” she mused up into his face, trying to ignore her quivering knees.
“What do you want?”
“That pier doesn’t look at all secure,” she said.
“As you could see with your own eyes, I traversed it with no trouble.”
She took a deep breath, as if in preparation to speak, but found she could say nothing, and so she continued to look up into his face.
His eyes looked into hers, his lashes twitching with the little movements of his gaze, and she saw his brow soften the tiniest bit.
“Do no be afraid, Maria,” he said. “You will be fine, potion or no potion, yes?”
“Yes,” she said at last, giving a shaky sigh. She was grateful he had not insisted she try to convey to him her fear of the leg of their journey that lay just ahead of them now. Not only the travel by river but the persistent and growing knowledge that the closer they came to the North Sea, the farther away Valentine moved from her. Already his past was encroaching, causing his thoughts to turn inward and then ahead of them, to the time when he would be free of her. “Can you . . . ?” She held one hand slightly away from her, palm up.
His full lips quirked, but not maliciously, and he readjusted their satchels in order to take her fingers in his warm grip. “All right now?”
She smiled as a flush crept up her neck and then nodded. Perhaps it would be different this time.
“Are you certain? We can go now?” He cocked his head, and Mary could see the sparkle return to his eyes. “You do no need a privy? A sweet?”
“I would love a sweet,” she said, playing along.
He tugged her fully onto the pier, keeping her attention on his face as he continued to make light. “We shall have to see what is in the bag the little troll gave us. As soon as we are underway, yes?” He placed both hands at her waist and lifted her over the missing boards and then joined her with a fleet leap, once more taking her hand. “No, no—do no look down at the water; look at me. Bueno. Nearly there now.”
Mary’s head was already swimming when they came to a stop only a moment later. She felt as though the pier was riding the waves, the shoreline on the far side of the river undulating lazily in the heat. Her throat constricted. She felt cold little beads of sweat dotting her hairline and upper lip.
This time would be no different after all. Unless it was perhaps worse.
“Here we are,” Valentine said, and Mary blinked and looked past him to discover the large raft she had seen earlier, with the triangle-shaped shelter tied to its mast.
“Maria?” Valentine called, giving her fingers a little shake. “Maria, give me your satchel.” He released her and reached for the strap of her bag, and immediately Mary felt herself begin to list drunkenly.
“Oh, no.” Valentine seized her arm just in time. “Find your balance once more. There you are. I’ll be just a moment. All right?”
She nodded, and felt a hard little pebble at the base of her throat that she tried to swallow so she could answer him properly. But the pebble only grew larger the more she tried to force her rigid muscles to obey.
Valentine stepped nimbly onto the floating square, and up close Mary could see the threadbare material of the sail, the patches on the triangular shelter, the wet rot at the base of the little bench. Brown water sloshed over the corners of the bucking raft as Valentine walked about. He drew a length of frayed, filthy rope through the straps of their satchels and then looped the rope around the mast securely.
Mary’s nostrils felt stuffed with the warm stench of dead fish and stewing vegetation. A rivulet of sweat ran down the nape of her neck and into the swampy place between her shoulder blades. The splashing of the river seemed to grow louder, a roar that pressed against her eardrums. Her mouth felt gritty, dry, and flooded with saliva in the same moment. If only she could swallow . . .
“Maria?” Valentine said, in what to Mary seemed like a whisper. She looked down and saw his handsome, concerned face looking up at her from the raft. He was holding a hand up to her, and even though she knew Valentine was standing perfectly still, his hand retreated, advanced, circled, blurred . . .
Her arm seemed like a tree trunk when she tried to raise it to take Valentine’s hand, and so she attempted a tentative step closer to the edge of the pier. The wood felt spongy beneath her feet, causing her to sink ever so slightly against the horizon that was now rushing up to the sky.
She fell onto the raft, onto Valentine. She scrambled over him, her elbows bowing as the raft bucked and dirty water ran over her fingers where she gripped the side of the wood. Each wave seemed to coax another round of retching from her.
“Maria, hold on—I am going to untie us so that we might move out into the smoother water,” Valentine said somewhere behind her, but she could not respond.
Her head pounded. She felt like she would suffocate between the constant bile in her throat and mouth and the horrid, humid river smell that had had permeated her entire world. After what seemed like an hour, the vomiting slowed, and she was no longer hearing her retching echo under the rickety pier.
She pushed away from the edge of the raft, the sleeves of her gown wet past her elbows, her skirts past her knees, and fell over on her side, facing the mast. Valentine pulled the setting pole out of the water and secured it. The he came to kneel at her side.
“Better?” he asked, raking her sweaty hair from her eyes.
Mary shook her head as best she could. She felt as though her guts were swirling still, seeking something—anything—to expel from her shivering body.
“Let me move you,” Valentine said, reaching down and taking hold of her beneath her arms. “Perhaps if you can no see . . .”
He dragged her beneath the tarp, and Mary knew it was the most undignified she’d ever been in her life, her skirts leaving a wide, wet trail across the decking, but she couldn’t care. She only hoped she would die soon.
Valentine propped her up against the pile of their bags and squatted down. “Maria?” he called gently, and even in her stupor she could see that he was trying to keep an eye on the river and the shores beyond. “There is some wine. Would you—?”
“No,” she croaked. She felt better enough to shake her head properly now and hold out her hand, her fingers stretching wide, reaching. “Give me the poison.”
He dug into his tunic.
“All of it,” she clarified.
Chapter 16
Morcillo’s potion worked.
Within moments, Maria fell into a deep sleep, her lovely face at last relaxing from the terrible grimace, her skin chalk pale, but not the sickly shade of gray it had been since stealing the raft.
Maria would likely frown at him about that little piece of information, should she find out. But the thief at the stable had not been fair with his price, knowing he was the only one in the village who could pay coin of any amount for the animals. Valentine didn’t blame him, really; he was just evening ou
t the transaction by including the man’s raft in the bargain.
Valentine pushed the setting pole into the soft mud beneath the water over and over, guiding the raft with the current, stretching his muscles, as the sun dipped over the mountains behind him, and he began to breathe deeply again for the first time since leaving Prague. At this time on a different night, he would be scanning the shoreline, seeking a safe place for him and Mary to make camp. But not this night. Maria would likely sleep for several hours, and it would be difficult to carry her from the raft without overturning it. The country to either side of the Elbe was mostly marsh, and so coming ashore with even a conscious Maria would prove a challenge.
Valentine could still spy the road intermittently between the trees on the shore, and he wished to put as much distance as he could between himself and Drezdeny. The thought of Enrique and Francisco looking for him there was unsettling. It was easy to hide from them in Prague, but in a village of such small size, and with only one road or the river in and out, there was little anonymity to be had. Valentine would kill Enrique if need be—he longed for it, actually—but his cousin? Francisco had been more of a brother to Valentine than his own flesh, and it would pain Valentine to shed Francisco’s blood, even after knowing he had fallen in with the enemy.
He bent slightly at the waist and peeked beneath the tarp where Maria slept on. Morcillo had traded them no lantern, so there would be no further opportunity to see her until the sun rose again. She seemed restful, the side of her face pillowed on her folded hands, her legs curled up toward her middle on the pile of their bags. She reminded Valentine of an abandoned kitten.
He looked back to the river and took another deep breath as the stars began to peek through the darkening blanket of deep velvet. Valentine felt a dull ache in his chest at the realization that Maria would soon belong to another. Likely she would revert to the woman Valentine had first met in Melk—anxious, rigid, restless. She would return to the only home she had ever known, to lie with some lauded English knight and bear his children. Her adventure, over.
Valentine would never know the part of her he longed for, the part that he had blithely taken from so many women before—her body, her passion, her love. He told himself he was a fool for not having her and being done with the mystery. She could have been his at the old mill, or in Tabor; certainly in Prague, where the fire between them in the Snowy Owl had nearly burned Valentine alive. But he would not ruin her.
Maria might think herself in love with him now, but she had nothing to compare him to. Their time together had been naught but a rousing escapade that showed her a small sliver of the world she had been denied access to her entire life. Valentine was helping her achieve what she professed to want most: a husband and children. What Maria likely felt toward him was gratitude, and an appreciation of the exciting voyage they were on, the memories of which would have to sustain her for the rest of her life.
The rest of her life, married to another man.
A man who would perhaps never know the depths of her revulsion for water travel. Or her love of millinery, and the way she flushed at the slightest hint of a compliment. Or her damnable cheerfulness at the rising of the sun. A stranger who had never seen nor known of any of Maria’s family, who were dead and gone forever.
Did Valentine love her? Perhaps, he conceded to himself. Perhaps he did. After all, in attempting to think of the future, even one moment beyond the day when he would be forced to part from Maria, it was as if the world dropped off sharply into nothingness. As if halfway through a written page, the words simply ceased, disappeared, the rest of the page blank.
Such melancholy thoughts were ruining his relaxation, and so Valentine shook himself and scanned the riverbanks once more. Fatigue began to wash over him, and he thought perhaps they were far enough from the village and the road now that a safe place to put in could be found. Unless it was a trick of the moonlight, a rocky peninsula jutted out into the water a short distance ahead, a downed tree leaning over it into the river. It seemed an ideal place to drag ashore and make a fire, and he would not have to wake Maria—if that was even possible so soon after she had imbibed of Morcillo’s potion.
But as Valentine drew closer to the peninsula, he saw that the spit of land was already occupied. A lone man stood in the shadow of tree branches atop the flat rock, as if waiting for Valentine to pass. His head turned slowly, slowly, tracking the raft’s progress.
A chill ran up Valentine’s spine, and although he knew the man could not possibly make out his features in the gloom, he reached back and pulled the cowl of his tunic up over his head. He did not turn away from the stranger as he passed, but neither did he call out, choosing to watch him as closely and silently as Valentine himself was being watched, letting the setting pole skim the water behind the raft with a little trill.
The man stood with one foot braced against the downed tree, the forearm of his same side leaning against his knee. Valentine could see the outline of his tall boots in the moonlight, the jagged points of his pleated tunic. A dark shape hung at his other hip, as if he clutched something in his hand. As Valentine slowly floated past, the man raised the shape above his head: a wide-brimmed hat, with what looked to be a long feather at the crown.
Just like Valentine’s own, which Maria so fancied.
Valentine did not return the greeting, only watched the man as his own heart pounded.
The man lowered the hat and then his foot from the tree and turned, blatantly following the raft’s progress.
Valentine kept his eyes on the black outline of the man, using all his will not to shove the setting pole back into the water and begin pushing with all his might, away from this stranger who was perhaps no stranger at all. But he waited. He waited until the raft eased around a bend, draping the figure of the man in night-blackened branches, and only the sparkling moonlight moved near the bank.
Then Valentine set to work again, pushing himself and Maria down the river as quickly and quietly as he could.
He might have to part from her, but it would not be this night. And it would not be until he was ready to let her go.
Mary was lost in a world of warm color, the shapes and sounds swirling around her seeming to undo the chaotic dizziness that had seized her before she had drunk the vile potion. Now she felt only like a leaf loosed by a gentle breeze, the current of air turning her lazily as she floated down, down, to land on a cool carpet of grass.
“Mary, Mary,” a voice called playfully.
She sat up on one hip, her arm out to brace herself, and looked to see who had spoken. “My lord,” she said, her voice echoing as she saw her betrothed sitting only paces from her. He was eating something dark clasped in his hands, a piece of bread perhaps.
Her heart shriveled a bit at the sight of him. He was here, waiting for her after all.
“Where have you been, Mary?” he asked before taking another bite of the food in his hands.
“Why, nowhere,” she answered. “Nowhere at all.”
He chewed noisily, his teeth crunching, crunching, and the sound caused a shiver down her spine.
“Not so, Mary,” he said, his voice low with chastisement even as he smiled at her. The way he kept emphasizing her name caused her to wince. “You’ve been very naughty. You’ve betrayed me, Mary.”
“I haven’t,” she insisted as he continued eating. “But I can’t marry you.”
“You will, though. You will be my wife, Mary.”
“I don’t love you.”
“I . . . don’t . . . care,” he singsonged and tossed the last bit of food up into the air to catch it deftly in his mouth with a loud crunch. “You are home now and we will live together forever and ever.” He turned slightly to reach behind him for another piece of whatever it was he was dining upon. “Mary.” Crunch.
“Stop calling me that,” she insisted. “That’s not my name.”
“It is your name, Mary. And this is our home, isn’t it? Hasn’t it always been your home?”
Mary looked around and was startled to discover that she was sitting outside the wall of Beckham Hall. Only that wall was leaning precariously now, crumbling toward her, a gaping hole near the ground where once stones had been stacked securely.
Her eyes found him again, and she realized that he was eating a piece of that very wall.
“So happy you’ve returned, Mary,” he said and smiled at her again, this time showing his teeth—long, broken fangs. He took another crunching bite of stone.
“Stop calling me that,” she repeated.
“Ma-ry,” he gurgled.
“No!”
He tossed the rock aside and began scuttling toward her like some demon, his limbs a blur, his teeth gnashing. “Mary!”
“No!” she screamed, throwing her hands up in front of her face as he reared over her, his mouth yawning wide. “No!”
“Maria!”
She realized she was screaming as she opened her eyes, Valentine’s worried face only inches from hers. He was gripping her upper arms, leaning over her. Her scream died and her breath left her in a rush as she sagged back against the satchels.
“Maria, what is it?” Valentine insisted. The light behind him was soft, gray. Birdsong filled the air, dancing with the hush of the river.
“Nothing,” she said, hearing the tremor of her words. She moved to sit up, and Valentine assisted her. “Just a nightmare. Where are we?”
“Halfway to Hamburg,” Valentine said, moving away a bit to fetch a jug and a piece of bread wrapped in a cloth. He handed her the jug, and after she had taken hold of it, he twisted out the cork. “You’ve been asleep for almost two days.”
“Two days?” she repeated, stopping the jug halfway to her mouth.
“Perhaps a bit too much potion, yes?” he said with a grin as she drank. “I would no have woken you, but you need to eat and drink. And I need to sleep for longer than an hour.”
She took the bread from him, and her hunger appeared suddenly as the last vestiges of the terrible dream wafted away like noxious smoke. “Have you brought us this far with no more rest than that?”
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