She was in purgatory. She had self-murdered, the worst of all sins. She had eaten a robust helping of oysters upon hearing of Roland’s death, once she knew she wasn’t with child, and died. She had followed dearest Roland into death, an act of love she knew he would cherish for eternity.
She had been such a romantic fool.
She could not tolerate oysters, something her priest did not know. But God knew. Turning her into a ghost was His punishment, and no mistake about it.
It had taken her some time to find Roland in the ghostly half-world of sprites and elves and spirits, but find him she had, in the very place of his eternal enemy, the Earls of Banfield and their many progeny. The grim Castle Keyvnor, on the rough coast of Cornwall was their haunting place, for how could she leave him when she had died to be with him, to share whatever fate he faced?
She was still a hopeless romantic.
Once Roland got over the shock of being a ghost, and of Nell being a ghost, and of them being together in ghostly togetherness for all eternity, or until God changed his mind about them, Roland had become quite changeable in his affections for her. He had been more devoted as a hot-blooded lover than he was as cold, gray vapor. Roland had not been as touched by her sacrifice as she had imagined he would be.
They had been making war and peace upon each other for 300 years, as close as she could tell.
God certainly had a very long memory.
Roland had just disappeared in a fury of outrage and venom and all the usual passions to which he was endowed. Theirs had always been a tempestuous, passionate, volatile relationship. She was as passionate as he was, perhaps more so, and there had been the stray thought that she might have been in the grip of some nameless, ill-conceived passion when she had devoured those long-ago oysters.
Yet, had she not died for love? Was that not noble, after a fashion?
Still, after a few years of being ghostly, one did tire of it so. There were so few amusements. Even passion dimmed with the years, though when one was given a surfeit of passion as one’s natural bounty, that same passion did not dwindle swiftly.
Hence, the passion of their latest fight.
There was a girl, a quite ridiculous girl, from Bocka Morrow, the fishing village near the castle, who was aware of Roland, ghostly Roland, and who had convinced herself she was in love with him and planned to do herself a mortal injury so that they could spend eternity together.
A familiar tale, to be sure.
Roland must be quite pleased with himself, getting girls to do themselves in over love for him. Naturally, Mary, the ridiculous girl, could not have gotten this idea into her head without considerable help from Roland. Roland had, for all that he could in his present state, been unfaithful to her with the village idiot.
Roland, the scoundrel, had denied it. She had screamed her accusations at him, quite appropriately considering his crime. He had snarled denunciations at her, his eyes blazing furiously. Mary had been standing near the beech tree that she and Roland had watched grow from sapling to maturity, their tree, if anyone could have a tree, and Roland had been hovering quite near to Mary when Nell caught them together. What more proof was needed?
As things between Nell and Roland had always proceeded swiftly and thunderously, they did so again, and Mary, the imbecile, had been caught in the midst of their argument. Mary, her mouth agape like the idiot she was, her hair standing on end, her dull shawl flying around her like a bat until it got swept up and tangled in the highest branches of the beech, had eventually screamed and run back toward the village down the path. Roland had cursed Nell and disappeared in a swirl of mist and cloud. Nell was tempted to follow Mary, to see if Roland was following Mary, but she could not make herself spend one more moment looking at the horrid girl.
Mary, for all her rank stupidity, was quite lovely. She had a mass of curling black hair, flawless skin, crystalline blue eyes, and long graceful fingers. Mary was fifteen years old and as completely ridiculous and effortlessly beautiful as all fifteen years old were. Nell remembered her own fifteenth year quite vividly. She had been fifteen when she’d seen Roland for the first time; her hair, tight red gold curls tumbling down her back, had been her glory. Her skin had been alabaster, her eyes the blue green of a shallow sea, her features elegant and her form slender. Roland had become entranced with her with his first look.
Naturally, he denied all that now.
But that had been long ago. Ghosts wandered a colorful world, but they did not have color. Her hair was gray, her skin was gray, her eyes were gray, as were Roland’s, yet somehow, being a man, he carried it all off. It was quite unfair of him.
Ghosts, dead and not gone, drifted on currents of invisible air, their life force spent. She looked hideous now. There was no denying it. She did not appear corrupted, it was not to that state, but her hair did not gleam like a golden river in the sun (Roland’s first compliment to her) nor did her skin glow like the whitest, purest wax candle (King Henry). How could Mary, even in her grubby skirt, not defeat her in a war of beauty?
Nell wandered away from the gnarled beech, letting herself drift back towards Castle Keyvnor. The castle was busy now, the Lord Banfield having died and not having gone to ghost, and his will was being read soon. The family, his great extended family, was coming from far and wide to hear the reading of his will. It might distract Roland from Mary. Though probably not.
They had seen so many die in this place, had seen so many born, so many marriages; she almost felt herself to be more of a Banfield than any living Banfield possibly could. She had seen the castle grow and then wither until infused with enough currency to grow again. The grounds had extended, becoming increasingly clipped and restrained, wilderness tamed, until a billowing sort of false Eden became the fashion in gardens and hedges were destroyed that had taken decades to mature. She missed the formality of the hedges.
Nell walked toward the setting sun, the light shining up against the branches of the wood. Mary was no where to be heard, the single scream having sufficed. Roland she could not sense. He must be far off, hiding, if he was any judge at all of her mood.
After more than 300 years, he should know her moods exceedingly well.
Roland was not a cold-hearted man, even if he was merely a vapor within the mist. He was trying to avoid Mary, that ridiculous girl, not seduce her. What could he possibly want with a fifteen year old girl? In his present condition. If he still had hot blood in his veins . . . but he did not. It was getting so that he could hardly remember being hot-blooded.
Mary had been following him about with a moody, theatrical air, making proclamations of ‘sensing the ghost’ and similar rot, and generally making a royal nuisance of herself. Roland could have ignored her, and would have, if Nell had.
Nell had taken an instant dislike to Mary, not without cause, and the whole thing had blossomed from there. Now that the Earl of Banfield had died, his relatives surging into the castle yard like the spring flood, Mary’s theatrics would likely be buried in the tide of horses and carriages rushing into Bocka Morrow. The castle yard was being swept, the dead limbs trimmed from all the most obvious trees and the autumn leaves burned. A will reading did bring them out, like termites from a dead oak.
“Looking for her?” Nell said at his elbow.
“Just looking,” he said. “Lots of activity. Looks to be an exciting autumn. For once.”
They were sitting on the roof of the inn, a slate roof on a stone building, the clouds building for rain. If they had possessed hot-blooded bodies, the position would have been uncomfortable in the extreme. But nothing was uncomfortable any longer. He missed his body, even after all these centuries. He’d had such a good time in his body, really made use of it, one could say. And Nell had said, more than once.
“You always did enjoy a crowd,” Nell said, flinging back her mane of hair with a graceful hand.
“I remember you dancing until the candles sputtered out, more than once.”
“Yes, well, I was
n’t going to leave you alone, was I?”
They stared in silence at the carriages rolling through Bocka Morrow. They had begun arriving yesterday, a trickle to start, building now to a flood tide. Grand carriages of various colors in shining lacquer for the deep pocketed among the relatives, plain black coaches for the lesser endowed, smartly dressed gentlemen with mud splatter patterns upon their coats riding gleaming horses from black to roan to gray. All Banfields or friends of Banfield. He felt the echo of hot-blooded hate rise in his throat.
“A pretty party to send off a minor lordling sitting upon a rocky coast on the edge of the world,” he said.
Nell looked askance at him, the ends of her hair lifting in a ghostly wind. “You still hate him.”
“I do. He cut my throat, the dog.”
“He acted in the name of the king.”
“As did I. He enjoyed it, draining me dry,” Roland growled. “There’d been bad blood between us for years.”
“It seems a waste to me, to think of him still. He has the victory over you yet, just in that.”
“I do not answer to you, girl, nor to him. Nor to anyone, by God.”
“And so you are suspended in this halfway world. Be answerable to God and He may release us both from this gray land of shadows and mist.”
Roland only grunted. They had spent years on this contested ground. He had nothing more to say on the topic. He hated Banfield, all of them, and he would not apologize for it.
“Who’s that, do you reckon?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Has to be a Banfield, one way or t’other,” he said, crossing his arms in disgust.
“He came yesterday with some others. You were too busy with Mary to pay him any mind.” Roland said nothing. He had noted the coming of this rider on splendid riding stock yesterday; the man was out upon his stallion today, getting the feel of him and doing a fine job of it, too. He had not mentioned it to Nell. He did not mention every passing thought to Nell, a fact which annoyed her, which only made it well worth doing.
“Halesworth’s boy, do you think?” Nell asked. “He has the look of him.”
Roland looked, saw no resemblance and said nothing. To be honest, he had paid more attention to the man’s stallion. He cared for horseflesh, always had, and the passing centuries had not changed that.
“What a likely looking lad,” Nell said. “So handsome, on his fine horse.”
Roland grunted and said, “A Banfield brought him. Only a Banfield would bring friends to a will reading. Appalling want of taste.”
“Hmm, perhaps. Though I do remember you once attending your great-aunt’s funeral procession drunk as any sailor on his first night ashore in a year.”
“That was entirely different.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
Nell smiled at him and crossed her hands over a cocked knee, studying the gentleman. As he moved past Bocka Morrow and toward Castle Keyvnor, Nell drifted off after him. Roland drifted off after her. He sensed a wager in the making. He had a nose for such things. In fact, it was as a result of a lost wager that he gone drunk to old Aunt Eldith’s funeral. The old girl would have understood entirely.
The castle yard was in a fury of activity today, bodies clustered everywhere. Nell floated above the man on the stallion, looking acquisitive. Definitely a wager in the air when Nell got that particular look. She had not seen him arrive yesterday. Very little that the living did was of interest to the dead. Still, this level of activity was unusual for Keyvnor and the centuries did tend to drag on.
Two carriages pulled into the courtyard, startling the distracted stallion. The imp ghost, that Banfield boy who’d drowned, was worrying the horse, sending him back upon his rear hooves, front hooves flying at the gray imp tormenting him. The two carriage drivers, holding nothing but Banfields, did not even turn their heads at the commotion.
Roland looked at the imp in deep disapproval. Shocking mistreatment of horse flesh. The boy should be whipped and then scolded, and then whipped again for good measure.
Too young to be a ghost, completely unsupervised and bored beyond bearing, and too young to bother learning how to bear it, Paul was a continual problem. Roland hated the Banfields, every one, but this boy, drowned years ago, had deserved a better end. As to that, Roland deserved a more peaceful afterlife.
Out of the two carriages stepped six young women, looking quite the worse for the ride. Their clothing was askew and their hair mussed. Still, they were very nice looking girls, very nice looking, even though he could see at a glance that they were Banfields, through and through. Allan Hambly and his wife also exited the carriages, looking tired and worn through. Roland smiled at the sight of that.
The man on horseback whirled, holding his seat and his temper. Remarkable bit of showmanship and form. The fellow got his mount under control, looked at the stallion with stern disapproval, rightly so as he could not know Paul was the cause of it all, and then looked across at the girls standing in the yard, fussing with their garments, ignoring him entirely.
“They don’t look attached,” Nell said.
“Attached? Attached to what?”
“To whom, is the correct parlance, Roland,” Nell said, smiling a wicked sort of smile. “I don’t believe those ladies are attached.” When he only scowled at her, she added, “They are not married, Roland. Everyone should be married.”
“We were not married.”
“How well I know it!” she snapped.
How like Nell to be annoyed by that fact. Women always were unhappy about being unmarried. It was completely commonplace.
“I don’t know how you can determine if they are married by just looking at them,” he said. “They all look perfectly ordinary to me.”
“That is why,” she said. “Each one of them looks so very ordinary. If they were in love, if they were married, they would sparkle.”
“Sparkle,” he said. “I’ve yet to see anyone sparkle, and I have been looking about for a few centuries now.”
“From the inside,” she said. “Love sparkles. To make a lifelong commitment to another produces the most miraculous glow in people. I’m not surprised you’ve never noticed; it is not like you to notice such things.”
“And it is like you?”
“Obviously,” she said, blinking at him in a most superior, self-satisfied fashion. Most unsatisfactory. “I think those two would make a beautiful couple,” she said, pointing to the rider who had kept his seat and then to one of the girls who had lurched from the carriage. She had an elfin look to her, somehow. Her features were small, her eyes and brows tilted up at the corners and her chin was narrow. Her hair was a unremarkable shade of dark blonde and her eyes the light blue of a cold winter sky. “Though he is rather dark. Do you think he’s a Spaniard? They are so . . . hot-blooded,” Nell said on a shiver of delighted laughter.
Of all the phrases to use, Nell had hit upon the one to cause him the most annoyance. She had a rare talent for it, and had even before three and more centuries of practice.
“There is no point in denying you dallied with that Spaniard in court,” he said. “I knew it then and I know it now.”
“I did not dally. I flirted. There is a difference,” she said, looking far too pleased with herself. “Do you think he might be a Spaniard? She might not be a good match for him, if so. She looks rather delicate, don’t you think?”
“Yes, she does,” he said, stroking his bearded chin. “She’s quite the delicate beauty, isn’t she, now that I study her. Quite delicate coloring, too. Always attractive in a woman.”
It was just the thing to say. Nell had lost her vivid coloring; white skin, shining blue eyes, flaming red gold hair, upon death. She mourned the loss still. He had been dirt brown of hair and eye; he did not miss one instant of it.
“You think them a match, eh?” he said, floating down over the girl, looking her up and down. The girl shivered and pulled her cloak more securely about her body; she had a nice shape to her, lithe
and trim. “I suppose she could do worse. He has quite a fine seat, if you hadn’t noticed. He handled that stallion with ease and grace. Essential quality in a man.”
“She won’t fall in love with him because of his horsemanship,” Nell said. “She will fall in love with him because he is handsome and kind and devoted. Those are the essential qualities in a man.”
“I suppose he should turn water into wine as well,” Roland said.
“Don’t blaspheme! Would you extend this purgatory?” she said, crossing herself.
“Women,” Roland said, shaking his head. “You expect too much of a man. He is simply a man, not a saint with candles at his feet. This one, whoever he is, looks healthy, rides a good horse well, and has the self-restraint not to punish his mount for a wild moment of fright. Let that be enough for any woman, even this elfish girl of miserable parentage.”
“She cannot help her parentage, which even you must confess,” she snapped. “Get away from the poor little thing! Can’t you see you’re chilling her to the bone?”
Roland looked at the girl. She was shivering incessantly and looked a trifle blue about the lips. Her sisters, for that they were, he could sense the Banfield blood in them, looked at her in perplexity as they walked into the hall of Castle Keyvnor, unfastening their cloaks. She clutched hers to her chin.
One of the girls, the plainest of the pack, lost her cloak in the frosty, ghostly gale that was the essence of him.
Being a ghost was the opposite of being hot-blooded.
The man who had not been thrown from his horse had dismounted and joined a party of fellows, discussing women, as any hot-blooded man would do and should do. The introductions had not been made and were not likely to be made in the castle courtyard. Far too casual a setting for such a thing, at such a time. They were here for a will reading, after all. The event was dangerously close to developing a party atmosphere.
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