by Lucy Blue
“Very good,” Simon answered, nodding, and the groom actually touched his forehead before he went back out, a gesture she had not seen any of her father’s retainers make since he had died. They loved her; they called her “my lady.” But to many of them, she would never be more than a child. “Isabel,” Simon was saying now, turning to her. “We’ll talk more when I return.” He took her by the shoulders, as gentle as before, and kissed her cheek.
“If you return,” she corrected. The same shiver she always felt when he touched her moved through her again, but now she found it annoying, another sign of her weakness. Was she Susannah now, living to have her head turned by some handsome man and to blazes with everything else? Charmot was in danger; she had no time for such games.
But Simon smiled, amused, not annoyed. “You wound me, my lady,” he teased. “Do you doubt me?”
“Why should I not?” she retorted. “It’s not as if I know you.”
His smile changed just a little, and a darker light came into his eyes. “You’re right, little cousin,” he said, letting her go. “You do not.”
“So you will ride this Malachi, master?” Orlando said.
Simon turned away from her to face his servant with the same challenging smile. “Yes, Orlando, I will.” He took Isabel’s hand and kissed it again, much more carelessly this time, and Brautus frowned. “We will be back before your dinner is cold, my lady.” Making her a bow, he left the hall with Kevin behind him.
“Come, my lady,” Susannah urged, hurrying to her before anyone else could speak. “Let us at least change your gown.”
Simon followed Kevin out to the courtyard, still pretending a confidence he wished he could feel. He knew Isabel’s wolf was no danger, obviously, at least not to him, but that was the least of his worries. The men of Charmot seemed ridiculously willing for him to lead them—Kevin had adopted him as “my lord” with a speed that made him feel rather dizzy. Then as he emerged from the castle, young Tom came running to him, carrying a sword. “It was Sir Gabriel’s,” the boy explained, handing it over to him. “Since you’ve none of your own.”
“Thanks,” Simon said, belting it on because he couldn’t think how to refuse. The others nodded or mumbled their approval—“he’s the old lord’s kinsman, after all,” he heard one of them say.
But he wasn’t Sir Gabriel’s kinsman, or even a man at all, for that matter—a lie he could live with on its own. But something else was apparently killing the innocent in the woods around Charmot. Something else like him. The girl who had offered herself to him so sweetly at the Chapel of Saint Joseph had found another monster who had treated her even worse. Had she welcomed her death the way she had welcomed him? He shuddered to imagine it—and who or what had killed her? He actually found himself thinking back over the past day and night, trying to think if he could have done it, as if the murder of an innocent might have simply slipped his mind. But of course he had not.
“Careful, my lord,” Kevin said as they reached the horses, breaking into his thoughts. The groom took the bridle of the same massive black destrier Simon had thought meant to batter his skull to a pulp when he first arrived at Charmot—Malachi, Isabel had called him. “Malachi doesn’t often take to strangers, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all right,” Simon said, making himself smile. “Neither do I.” And besides, he was a vampire; no horse would let him come close enough to touch him, much less mount the saddle. He had told Orlando he would ride this beast, but that had been the voice of stupid pride, not reason. Malachi was watching him now, his great head lowered in warning in spite of Kevin’s best efforts to make him look up. As soon the vampire drew closer, he pawed the cobblestones with one warning hoof, snorting his displeasure. “Easy, Malachi,” Simon said, adopting the low, crooning tone he had learned from his father almost before he could walk. “You should remember me…” He drew closer, still expecting the horse to bolt. “You tried to kill me once already.” He reached out and touched the horse’s velvet nose, marveling as he allowed it. The other horses, a small brown mare and the team hitched to the wagon, had become increasingly restive as he approached, but when the stallion allowed him to touch him, they instinctively relaxed.
“Aren’t you a beautiful boy?” Simon said softly, hardly daring to breath as he caressed the horse’s neck. Malachi tossed his head and nuzzled his shoulder, and the vampire laughed aloud.
“He is,” Kevin agreed with a smile. “You are a horseman, my lord?”
“I was.” Still bracing himself to be tossed over the horse’s head, he swung onto his back, but the stallion allowed it with barely a snort of protest. “I haven’t had a horse of my own in some time.” He took the reins, so elated to be in the saddle again, he didn’t dare question how it could be so. Malachi pranced to one side as if eager to be off, and he laughed again—what would it be like to give this beast its head, to let him gallop as far and as fast as he would? But now was not the time.
“Come,” he said, bringing the stallion about with the lightest tug on the reins. “We promised Lady Isabel we would be quick.”
Susannah helped Isabel out of her muddy gown and shift. “You might be a bit more kind to your cousin, my lady,” she said, going to the wardrobe. “You could marry worse.”
“Don’t stand on ceremony, Susannah,” Isabel said with a laugh. “By all means, speak your mind.” She scrubbed a smudge of mud from her nose as she peered into the mirror. “I think I’ve been quite kind enough to Simon—too kind, in fact.”
“That is Brautus talking, not you.” She took out a gown, looked it over, and put it back. “Listen to him, and you’ll find yourself in a convent.”
“I wish a convent would take me.” She gave her reflection a rare long look and almost laughed again. This was not a woman who should be contemplating marriage. Her nose was red now from its scrubbing; her cheeks were pale and drawn from worry and too little sleep; and her unladylike red hair looked like she’d been nesting swallows in it from her day’s adventures.
“You do not.” Susannah took out Isabel’s best gown and a clean shift. “The last lady I served went into a convent when her husband died, and I thought we would die ourselves.” She loosened Isabel’s ruined braid with expert fingers and picked up the brush. “You might as well be buried in a grave as that.”
“Never mind trying to put it right,” Isabel scolded, reaching for the brush. “Just put it back in the braid.” She noticed the gown her maid had chosen. “And I am not wearing that.”
“Why not?” Susannah held the brush out of Isabel’s reach until her mistress gave up and let her continue. “What are you saving it for?”
“My clothes are the least of my worries at the moment.” She winced as Susannah attacked a particularly stubborn knot. “I want to talk to Brautus before Simon and the others get back.”
“Let him talk to that horrid little wizard—they deserve each other.” She pulled part of Isabel’s hair back into a braid as before but left most of it loose on her shoulders. “You shouldn’t have to worry about wolves and murders—let the men take care of such things.”
“Don’t you think I’d like to?” Isabel retorted. “Here, stop fussing and give me that silly gown.” She stepped into the shift and gown and let Susannah lace up either side. “Why are you suddenly so keen for me to marry Simon, anyway?” she teased. “I thought you wanted him for yourself.”
“I did,” the other girl admitted. “But that was before I saw him shaved and dressed like a proper nobleman.” She turned Isabel toward herself and examined her mistress’s face with an obviously critical eye. “He’s much too fine for me. Besides, it’s you he wants.” She gave each of Isabel’s cheeks a pinch.
“Ouch! Have you gone mad?” Isabel demanded, swatting her hands away.
“You need color—”
“What color? Black or blue?” She turned back to the mirror to look over the damage and stopped, surprised. She did look better, softer and more girlish with her hair halfway undon
e. Even the livid marks Susannah had left on her cheeks had produced their deserved effect, painful or not. “Simon doesn’t want me,” she insisted. “He is on a quest—”
“Oh aye, he does, quest or not.” Susannah laughed, clearing away the other gown. “I’ve had a bit more experience in such matters than you, my lady. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“I will have to do no such thing,” Isabel retorted, turning her back on the mirror. “I need a protector for Charmot, Susannah, not a husband.”
“Isn’t one the same as the other?” the maid said, un-perturbed, as she went to fetch Isabel’s slippers.
“No, it is not.” Her father had thought this way, too, and so did the king, she supposed—he had sent her enough prospects to make her think he did. But it still seemed wrong to her, this idea that she and Castle Charmot were in essence the same, part and parcel of a single prize or burden. “I want my husband to love me, Susannah, not just my castle.”
The other girl smiled. “Then you’d better start brushing your hair a bit more often and wearing better clothes.”
“Must I, in faith?” So she could either be a castle or a coiffure and a dress. Was Susannah right? Was this how Simon saw her? And Brautus, too—his first thought had been that Simon was trying to charm her to get at Charmot. “Enough,” she decided. “I am going downstairs.”
Simon rode back over the drawbridge at a gallop, following the wagon Kevin had driven ahead. “They’re here!” he heard someone shout from the battlements. “They’re home!”
Kevin’s wife, Hannah, rushed out to meet them, throwing herself into her husband’s arms as soon as his feet touched the ground. “It’s all right, girl,” he soothed her with a laugh, hugging her close even so. “We never saw a thing.”
Isabel walked out onto the steps, silently counting the cottagers as the women and children climbed down from the wagon into the arms of their men. Everyone seemed to be accounted for, even ancient Mother Bess, Kevin’s grandmother, who had not left her own hearthside for as long as Isabel had been alive. “We brought them all, my lady,” Raymond said, coming to join her. “Most had already heard and were glad enough to come, once they had an escort to protect them, and Sir Simon convinced the rest.”
“Did he, in faith?” Simon was still on horseback; indeed, he looked as if he had been born in the saddle, as if he and Malachi were one. So why had he arrived at Charmot with no horse of his own? “How did he do that?”
“He told them the woods were not safe, and that you had charged him with the duty of bringing them into the castle,” Raymond answered. “I cannot tell you how it convinced them, but it did. Blind old Mother Bess had already told her own grandson to sit on an acorn and hatch an oak, that she’d not be run out of her home by any beastie, wolf or not. But when Sir Simon spoke with her, she said, ‘As you will, my lord,’ as pretty as you please.”
Simon saw Isabel watching him and waved. She had changed her gown, he saw, and her hair was different, and when she waved back, she almost smiled. But something was still troubling her, he could tell. Something more than a wolf in the forest. As he watched, Orlando emerged from the castle as well. He touched Isabel’s arm and spoke to her, but his eyes were on Simon, their meaning unmistakable. They didn’t have time to rescue peasants, not with the Chalice so close and another vampire so close on their trail.
They had seen evidence of others of Simon’s cursed kind many times before, often at the very haunts they had chosen to search themselves on their quest for the Chalice. But none had ever killed so near to them or so openly as this. Whoever had killed the girl at the church had found her less than a day after Simon had fed from her himself. Out of this whole countryside, his rival had found the same prey. It was a warning, a threat. For the sake of the people of Charmot as much as for their quest, he and the wizard could not linger here.
One of the women from the wagon had a small child, barely more than an infant, and seeing her, Isabel left Orlando with a happy cry of greeting. She took the little one from his mother and lifted him high in the air, both of them laughing, and what passed for a heart in the vampire’s chest clenched more tightly than a fist. What madness was he playing at to even speak to this girl? What could he give her but pain, and what sort of monster would he be if he pretended otherwise?
Isabel kissed little Euan on either cheek and handed him back to his mother. “He’s beautiful,” she said. “Come, bring him inside.” Simon had dismounted, throwing the reins to Kevin, and was coming toward her fast, his face set with a grim, determined scowl. “Raymond said you brought them all,” she said as he reached her.
“I suppose,” he answered, barely meeting her eyes. “Everyone seems to be safe.” He walked past her to Or lando. “Come, wizard; we’ve lost too much night already.”
“Simon, wait.” She put a hand on his arm, and he started as if she had struck him. “I need to talk to you,” she reminded him, confused. “You said—”
“I can’t,” he cut her off. “I’m sorry, my lady, but we have no time to lose. My quest is too important.” He looked at her at last, and she saw anguish in his eyes, the same pain she had seen there his first night at Charmot when he told her of his curse. “You must forgive me—”
“I won’t,” she cut him off in turn. “I can’t.” The others were moving past them into the castle, and she lowered her voice, not wishing to be overheard. “Simon, Charmot must have your help, not as a cursed scholar but as a knight.”
“I cannot be a knight,” he said. “I told you—”
“Then you’re going to have to pretend.” Kevin and Hannah passed up the steps and through the arch, among the last to go in. “You’ve made a good show of it already tonight.”
“I know, and I should not have done it.” Orlando had joined them, but he said nothing. “But you needed to bring those people inside—”
“Yes, we did,” she agreed. “Now we need to protect them, to protect Charmot.” She let go of his arm. “I’m sorry, Simon; I know how dearly you want to break this curse of yours, and I want to help you. But you will have to help me first.” She took a deep breath, bracing herself to go against a lifetime of conditioning. He was a nobleman, her kinsman; she was supposed to obey him or at the very least keep out of his way. But she could not. “I will not give you the key to the catacombs until you hear what I have to say and promise you will help me.”
Simon could hardly believe what he was hearing. This innocent girl, this delicate creature he feared so to harm, was telling him he had no choice but to do her bidding, his own desires be damned. “And if I refuse?”
“You and Orlando can go.” Her little jaw was set; her mouth was a thin, determined line even though her lower lip was trembling. “Orlando didn’t seem to think the wolf we saw was any threat to you; I shall pray God he was right.”
She was serious; that much he could not doubt. How she meant to eject them from her castle was a mystery, though he supposed Kevin and the others would come to her aid if called. “You cannot turn me out,” he said, using a touch of his vampire powers of persuasion, a talent that had already served him more than once that night. “I am your kinsman.”
“What use is a kinsman who will not help me when I need him?” she answered, looking him square in the eye.
“She has a point, master,” Orlando said slowly, and Simon thought he could detect the faintest hint of laughter in his tone. “Besides, what harm can there be in listening to her request?”
Everyone else was finally gone from the courtyard; the three of them were alone. “Where is the key?” Simon asked.
“Why?” she said, taking a step back. “Would you take it from me?”
“Of course not.” He shook his head, nonplussed. In truth, he didn’t know if he should be angry or amused, the vampire held hostage by a redheaded slip of a girl. “I just thought perhaps Orlando might take it and begin his study while I hear your suit.”
Isabel reached into her pocket but didn’t take out the key. �
��And you will do as I ask?”
“If it is within my power, yes.” She still didn’t look convinced. “You cannot expect more than that.”
“No,” she grudgingly admitted. The problem was, with this stupid curse, he seemed to think that the simplest things were outside his power when clearly they were not—taking a stroll in the daylight, for example, or eating a decent meal. “I suppose not.” She pulled the key out of her pocket. “Come inside and have some food while I explain.”
“I’m not hungry,” he answered, sitting down on the steps. “Give the key to Orlando, and you can explain right here.”
Now he was just being stubborn—just like a man, she thought. “Very well.” She held out the key to the wizard. “Here, Orlando.”
“Thank you, my lady,” he said, taking it. “But perhaps I should listen as well.”
“Why?” Simon said. “Can Orlando assist me in my task, my lady?” He wasn’t even looking at her now, just sitting on the steps and glaring across the courtyard— pouting, she would have called it if he hadn’t been a man full-grown.
“Not really,” she admitted, giving Orlando a smile. “Go on, master wizard. I promise he won’t be long.”
“Yes, go,” Simon ordered. He looked back at Orlando and managed a ghost of a smile of his own. “I think I can manage if she tries to throw me out.”
“I don’t want to throw you out,” she said as the dwarf left them alone. She hovered over him for a moment, then sat down on the step beside him, apparently oblivious to her gown. “I want you to stay.”
“That’s a comfort,” he muttered, unable to help himself. He could be managing this problem a great deal better, he knew, with a great deal more diplomacy. But he couldn’t seem to reason past her saying she would send him packing if he didn’t do as he was told.
“Simon… there is no Black Knight.” She was turned toward him slightly with one leg tucked beneath her so that when he looked up, their eyes met. “Or rather, he is no demon. He is a man, an old man, one of my father’s old retainers. His name is Brautus— you saw him yourself a little while ago before you left.” She paused as if waiting for him to speak, but he said nothing—he had already deduced this much on his own. “Ever since my father died, he has been pretending to be the Black Knight to drive off men who want to marry me and claim Charmot, not because he is evil but because I asked him to do it.”