She had dressed rather simply for the meeting, almost severely, and had left off a good many of her jewels, contenting herself with a string of marrow-fat pearls and her ever-present rings. She raised her hand as though she would pat Clarice’s cheek but contented herself by making a gesture of protection and blessing over her head.
“You should rest while you can, my love. Tomorrow we will be on the march at dawn.”
“I am to accompany you?”
“Oh, yes. You must be there to cheer on my army and to witness our victory. They are fighting as much for you as for me. Do not forget it.”
“I shan’t, Mother.” She stood up, taller than Matilda. “I wish I could embrace you to wish you good fortune.”
“Tomorrow you shall. I will be so delighted to hold my dearest in my arms again.”
“I can’t help wishing that. ..”
“What? You know I’ll grant any of your desires.”
“I wish that you might find happiness.”
Her mother laughed. “A wasted wish, my dearest! Tomorrow, I achieve it. We will never be parted again.”
“No. We will never be parted again, Mother.”
Within the hour, Clarice was in the fast-darkening courtyard again. She wore her riding habit, somehow overlooked in all the hundreds of exotic dresses her mother had conjured up. A heavy shawl of white wool was tied about Clarice’s waist, all her luncheon bundled up in it, while the cloak of silence went over all.
Things had changed in the square. Instead of confusion, there was order. Wagons, small and large, covered and open, were lined up neatly, waiting for their beasts of burden. Knots of soldiers stood about under lighted torches, discussing in more or less raucous voices what feats they’d accomplish on the morrow. From time to time, a hustling courier dashed by. Or a preoccupied officer passed, counting wagons or men. No one noticed her, or if they did, no one cried out.
Now to find Dominic. Like it or not, she was going with him. At least in Forgall’s camp, if he was killed or sent back she’d know of it immediately. She wasn’t about to stand any uncertainty on that point one instant longer than she had too. As soon as the word came, she’d know what to do.
Another officer came by, this one sauntering with deliberate speed. Clarice put back the hood of the cloak. “O’Hannon!”
He whirled, his hand on the dagger’s hilt at his hip. When he saw her, his sandy brows twitched together. “Ah, in the name of the Three, what are you doin’ here, my lady?”
He glanced around nonchalantly and strolled to her side. “This is no place for you. Not with the dark closing in.”
“I must see Dominic Knight again.”
“Ah, no. Not again. It’s not safe.” Then he looked in her eyes. “Curse me for a black-blooded rascal if I ever regretted a good deed more than when I took you to see him the first time!”
“I don’t so curse you. Corporal O’Hannon. Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, rot my soul. An’ won’t he half-bless me when he sees you. Come on then. And without a sound, else we’re all sped.”
She raised the hood over her head and followed him. The cloak muffled the sounds she made, but sharpened her own hearing. When O’Hannon held out his hand for her to stop a moment while he went on, she did so, leaning back until her shoulders touched the wall. She heard a strange clicking sound, faint but repeated.
Looking around, she saw next to her on the wall a furry brown spider as big as her hand. She screamed with terror, but no sound emerged from the muffling hood. The spider’s eyes leaped out on stalks in surprise. It scuttled away, the tiny pads on its feet clicking away over the stone walls.
Clarice sprang away from the wall, terrified that she’d see the squashed remains of another such creature behind her. But it seemed that this one had traveled alone. Shaken by an uncontrollable revulsion, Clarice tried hard to recoup her poise. As a rule, even the smallest spider terrified her, and she’d never seen one so large that its features were distinguishable before.
She followed O’Hannon again, her confidence wasting away by the moment. She told herself that as soon as she saw Dominic everything would be all right.
“Oh, no!”
The cry was surprised out of Dominic. With no cloak to muffle his voice, Clarice heard the anguish in his tone quite clearly. She heard little else, despite her own cloak. O’Hannon had left her several paces off while he approached Dominic. They communicated with a series of hand-signals so quickly that their fingers seemed to be nothing but blurs. After just a few gestures, Dominic had cried out.
Clarice was not in the mood for further discussion. She walked up to the two men, put back her hood, and said, “I’m coming with you and that’s all I have to say. I can go on repeating it for as long as you please but it seems a dreadful waste of time.”
“Are you sure it’s not yourself that’s from Ireland?”
O’Hannon asked. “She makes sense, man. If you’re going, you’d best be gone.”
“He’s still shackled,” Clarice protested.
‘That’s not going to stop Dominic Knight, the grand fellow that he is.”
“Dub up, O’Hannon. Clarice, only your mother or my king can get these off me. Do you think your mother would?”
“Not even if I ask her, which I can’t. I’m not going back up there again. Can you travel with them on?”
“I can, in a wagon.”
“Good. Is there one?”
O’Hannon said, “Just me own. With me lovely mare to pull it along.”
“But I thought...” Clarice began. Instead, she put her hand on O’Hannon’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. The Irishman flushed a painful red.
“You’d best have this as well,” he said, reaching for his knife. He dropped it, fumbled it up, and handed it to Dominic. “I’ll be gettin’ that back,” he said gruffly. “With all the rest.”
“You have my word on it.”
Clarice noticed the guilty glances each man threw her way when they thought she was not looking. She wondered what plot they’d hatched between them, but did not ask. She felt certain that she’d not approve, but at the moment she’d make a deal with the devil himself to get Dominic out of this place. They hung the cloak of silence around his shoulders to muffle the perpetual jangling of his chains. He could only shuffle along, yet managed to keep up with the other two.
They came to the wagon which stood, perhaps by coincidence, in the front rank directly before the gate. Glancing up, Clarice saw guards pacing on the parapet. Their attention, however, seemed directed outward. No one appeared to be watching the wagons.
O’Hannon whispered hoarsely, “Can you be drivin’ a horsecart, my lady?”
“As well as yourself, O’Hannon,” she said, trying to be lighthearted but afraid her chattering teeth gave her away.
O’Hannon’s laugh sounded forced as he silenced Dominic’s protests. “Sure, you could drive it yourself, man. But with her droppin’ in as though by special wish, it’s more sensible for her to do it. Or do you want to risk driving right off the mountain with her aboard?”
Dominic growled beneath his breath. Clarice pretended not to know that he wanted to swear and asked him if his bruises were paining him much. “Not as much as my damned pride,” he said. “All right, already, O’Hannon. Boost me into the wagon, then go get your bloody horse.”
Clarice sat in the hay with him beside her beneath the arched wooden hoops and canvas roof of the wagon. It was small; he had to lie with his knees bent to fit in the bed. The light that came through the loosely tied flaps in the back was dim and flickering. Yet she could see that Dominic wore his fiercest look. She didn’t think it was for her; rather, she knew he was trying his best to hide the shame of his limitation.
She said, “I’m sorry to be so adamant about escaping with you. But I cannot stay here any longer.”
He reached for her hand, his chains jingling. “I’m sorry too, Clarice. I shouldn’t try to make up your mind for you. That’s what Mati
lda is doing.”
“At least you both do it from motives of love.”
“Don’t compare my love to that—
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “No matter what you think of her, remember she is my mother. I don’t approve of what she has done, or her reasons, but she is my mother. I will love her and you both. You’d better accustom yourself to it.”
“Even while you try to escape her, you still love her?”
“Once I love, it is for always, Dominic.”
“I know it.”
She smiled at him. “Put your head down and try to sleep. I don’t think you’ve slept since you were captured.”
“I won’t until we’re free. But I will, with your good leave, close my eyes a few moments.” His head fell back and in less time than she would have believed possible, he was asleep. She tugged the cloak of silence up to his mouth, in case he began to snore, and waited for O’Hannon to return with the mare.
Looking at Dominic was a pleasure she’d been too much denied. Watching him sleep, she realized why she’d been so determined to escape La’al with him. It wasn’t just for her freedom, or for his. Neither was it because she couldn’t bear not knowing what became of him or because she wanted to share his dangers.
He had given her the reason himself, in the dungeon. Her smile widened as she pictured his reaction when she began to seduce him. Then it faded as she realized she had not the faintest idea how to set about it. She straightened as she remembered whose daughter she was. If her mother could learn to maneuver an army, surely she was capable of seducing her own beloved Dominic.
He snapped awake a few moments before O’Hannon brought the horse. There were sounds of others nearby, also backing animals between the shafts of wagons. Peering cautiously out, Clarice saw that not every wagon had a horse. She wondered how she would have managed if O’Hannon had expected her to drive a giant wolf or a thing with the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, the head of a crocodile, and the mane and forelegs of a lion. She expressed this in a whisper to Dominic and heard him answer, “Exactly as you will now, probably.”
O’Hannon harnessed the horse to the wagon. As though talking to it, he said, “Follow the wagon on your right. When you cross the causeway, you’ll see the ones ahead turn left into a field. Don’t follow them there. That’s where we’re massing for the march. Keep going straight until you come to the place where the road splits in three. Take whichever looks most likely to throw them off your track. They’ll be after you the minute you fail to turn into the field.”
“Thank you, O’Hannon. I hope you won’t be punished. ...”
“No. There’s a friend of mine waiting to knock me on the head and drag me into a cupboard where I’ll be found in the morning with a blinding headache, no doubt.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this for us.”
“No? You will though soon enough. If we don’t meet again, my lady, ‘tis been a blessing knowing you.” His head turned away. “There’s the signal to be ready.” More loudly, he said, “Ach, wouldn’t you know it, though?”
Someone in the darkness asked him what was wrong.
“The fool I am, I’ve gone and forgotten me water bottle. Don’t start without me, now.” He hurried away to the sound of coarse laughter and a few ribald jokes.
“What did he mean ‘I’ll know soon’?” Clarice asked.
“Never mind now. Be ready.”
“Can we trust him?”
“We’ve no choice.”
Clarice half-expected shouts of discovery to attend her slipping onto the driver’s perch. She’d left her provisions in the back with Dominic and wore the cloak over her head, more to conceal her hair than for any magical properties. Her hands were shaking. She had to draw several deep breaths before she was calm enough to take the reins. She did not dare let her anxiety be transmitted to the horse or she’d be too difficult to control. She couldn’t imagine O’Hannon having any but mettlesome horses.
The groan of the portcullis raising awoke all the hair on the back of her neck. The first of the wagons rolled through the gateway and out onto the narrow causeway. Clarice could feel the sweat gather between her breasts. It trickled down cold as ice water.
Behind her, Dominic whispered, “We’re next. Don’t hurry it.”
“I’ve been driving to an inch since I was a child,” she said proudly, forgetting he could not hear her. She decided her actions would have to speak for her and not just while driving.
Anticipating every instant to hear shouts or shots, she drove steadily and calmly through the gate. The causeway, paved with white stones, stretched out across an abyss so deep that the bottom of it could not be seen from the bridge. It was so narrow that the rims of her wheels on both sides whispered against the stone work of the inch-high curb as she drove over. Any flaw in her control over the horse and they’d go tumbling down to the rocks below.
On the far side it widened out, the road taking a downward dip within a hundred feet of the end of the causeway. The wagon in front of them had already turned off. Now everyone in the fortress would know something was wrong. How soon after that would Matilda realize her daughter had left her?
Clarice stifled a pang for her mother’s pain and drove straight on, slapping the reins down on the mare’s back. Her hood blew back from her face and she couldn’t help laughing at the wind in her hair.
The first shout came from behind them. On instinct, Clarice glanced back. She saw nothing of their pursuers, but Dominic had turned around in the hay so he could peer out between the flaps. “They’re not following us,” he said, his voice bouncing with his body.
“They’re not?”
“No. They’ve no orders. But the watchmen have seen us and it won’t take them long to tell the officer in charge. Then they’ll be after us.”
The road dropped off even more abruptly after about the first mile. Suddenly, Clarice found herself driving down a twisting mountain road in the dark behind a horse who’d decided that the racing season had begun. She tried to slow her, knowing how dangerous this descent was, but found it hard to convince the horse when every nerve in her body demanded greater and greater speed.
“O’Hannon didn’t mention this,” she called over her shoulder during a momentary level place. When Dominic didn’t answer, she risked a quick glance at him. He sat wedged in the back corner, both hands wrapped around a wooden roof strut. The crystal chains tinkled unceasingly in a way that gave Clarice an instant headache. His neck and teeth were set, throwing his jaw into high relief. She thought of his battered body and tried even harder to slow the horse’s pace over this jagged road.
“We’re at the fork,” she announced anxiously after what seemed eternity. She walked the horse, who had now had the edge taken off her enthusiasm.
“Here already?” He knelt behind her, looking out.
“The horse was in a hurry. Are you all right?”
“Fine. Take the left-hand fork until you come to a large stand of trees. I’ll direct you from there.”
“Are we going to join Forgall’s army?”
“No. They’ll be following and I’m not leading them there.”
“But I thought—”
“The first thing I’m doing is taking you home. This is no place for you. Don’t argue. For once in your life, let someone else take care of you!”
“Everyone is always trying to take care of me, Dominic. You, my mother, even my sister and her husband. Even Morgain tries, when he remembers I’m around. Everyone has done such a wonderful job that I’m tempted to give the profession a try myself. I’ll start by taking care of myself and you. We’ll go right.”
“Clarice...”
“Sit back.”
She drove in the moonlight until even Dominic, who seemed to have a map of the Living Lands imprinted in his mind, was lost. “If nothing else, you’ve succeeded in losing part of Matilda’s army. That’s good. Unfortunately, you’ve lost us as well.”
‘Then I can s
top driving before we find ourselves. There’s a stream through those trees. We can water the horse.”
She did everything, from unharnessing the mare to rubbing her down with a wisp of hay before hobbling her for the night. She gave her an armload of hay within distance of the small stream and returned to the wagon. Moonlight streamed in the rear, through the tied-back flaps.
“I’ve always wanted to play ‘gypsy,’" she said, settling into the hay. Then a curious look crossed her face. “Ow. What am I sitting on?”
She reached behind her and pulled out an opaque amber bottle. Dominic sat up to take it from her hand. “Ten thousand blessings upon the Irish!”
He pulled out the cork with his teeth. With his eyes closed in ecstasy, he waved the bottle beneath his nose. ‘The one thing even the People cannot surpass.”
“What is it?”
“The water of life, my sweet one.”
“Oh, good, I’m thirsty.” But when she put it to her lips after he drank, she smelled good whisky. She took a healthy gulp and then sputtered, tears coming to her eyes. “That’s good,” she said, her voice rasping and then she coughed again.
“You’ve had it before?”
“Once or twice.” She suddenly felt a little shy. Would this be a good moment, she wondered, to seduce him? Food first, she decided. “Let’s eat. I’m afraid it’s not much.”
“You are always apologizing for what you feed me. Don’t worry so much. I’m a soldier; I can eat anything.”
They ate what she’d smuggled away from her uneaten luncheon. She refused to take the lion’s share that Dominic insisted on offering. Though she could have gladly eaten three times as much as she did, she made sure there was something left to break their fast on the morrow. Then she left the wagon again to soak a cloth ripped from her petticoat in the stream. She washed her face then brought the dripping rag in for him.
When they were both clean and dry, Clarice suffered another attack of shyness. She had no patience with herself! Tomorrow would bring battle—possibly even tonight if her mother’s troops found them. Knowing Dominic as she did, she felt certain he’d find some way to enter the fray. Tonight—this moment—might be her only chance to know his love. Dithering wasn’t going to make that happen.
Magic by Daylight Page 27