A Rose in Winter

by Shana Abe

  When the ocean breeze stilled, the stench was al­most unbearable, and Damon wondered how anyone could live this way. But it was not his business. He would be away from this place as soon as possible.

  They walked the horses slowly down the narrow street edging the docks and piers, jostling with the crowd. Damon was looking for a small boat like the one that had brought him over but with room for the horses. He passed one because it looked too rick­ety, another because the owner looked too greedy. He would find the right one. There had to be a craft for them.

  Beside him Solange rode quietly, keeping her gaze pinned on the harbored ships as well. He noticed her hood had fallen back, revealing the thickness of her braid, the perfect feminine features of her face. He was about to instruct her to pull it back on, when she gave a little cry and pointed to the sea.

  He followed her gaze and saw the boat that had cap­tured her attention. It looked good. Not too small nor too large, solid wood, with an old man mopping down the deck.

  He turned to Solange. "Wait here."

  Without giving her time to answer, he handed his reins over to her and dismounted, approaching the man.

  Solange watched him go, feeling the apprehension in her grow with every step he took. Iolande was fitful as well; she didn't like the crowds and it took more than Solange's usual efforts to calm the horse. Tarrant stood obediently beside them with his reins in her hands, but she could tell he was disquieted also. Both horses shook their heads, rolled their eyes.

  The people jostled past but looked up at her curi­ously, at the fine horseflesh, the lone woman mounted and waiting. Belatedly she realized her hood had fallen back, and so she reached around to pull it up again. As she did so her eyes fell on the movement of a familiar form walking through the mass of people.

  A profound chill stole over her. Time seemed to slow, every movement she made counted out in eons.

  Casually she lowered her head, keeping the hood as far down as it would go, while she pulled her hands back in close to her body. Iolande responded by taking a step sideways, allowing Solange to turn her head and scan the crowd again from beneath the edge of the ma­terial covering her face.

  Where was he? Had she imagined that man who looked so like the captain of Redmond's guard? It had been so quick, she wasn't certain she had actually seen anything at all. There were so many people. She was jumping at nothing.

  Nevertheless, she dismounted to be less conspicu­ous. Damon was still speaking with the old man, who was shaking his head with pursed lips. That didn't look good. She walked between the two horses, keeping them as buffers against the passersby. Stroking the nose of Iolande, she gradually turned her head again toward the buildings and warehouses lining the docks. The crowd was finally beginning to thin, taking the loads of fish with them.

  She looked back at Damon, who was doing the talking now, obviously trying to persuade the reluctant fisherman to take them over the channel, then back at the wharf, where the people were slipping away down the streets, into the buildings.

  Except there, back the way they had come, was a small knot of people surrounding something she could not see—a man, or several men, and a few were shak­ing their heads, but some were nodding and looking around, looking toward her. They parted, and she saw the familiar orange and green tunics.

  At that instant the world became very quiet. There was her heartbeat, pounding so hard it flooded her senses. There was the gasping of her breath, the la­bored breathing of fear. Above her circled a pelican in a lazy spiral, a seemingly harmless quirk of the winds and its own inclinations, drawing the eye right to her.

  She ducked her head and walked the horses past the boat with Damon on it, down the wharf. She could not let them see him as well.

  It took all her willpower not to mount up and flee, but she couldn't leave Damon behind. She had to pray he would notice her moving off" and guess the reason for it. She had to hope he would be clever enough not to come chasing after her.

  A quick glance over her shoulder showed him still talking, the old man still shaking his head, pointing to the mast, to the deck of the boat.

  Her heartbeat thudded over the words, over all the noise. She couldn't get the breath to scream, she couldn't inhale deeply enough to shout at him. She was having trouble moving her feet, her hands.

  She paused as if to check the shoe of Iolande, and as she bent over she looked up again, risking a direct look at where she had seen Redmond's men.

  And they were looking back at her.

  There was no help for it now. Still holding the reins, she scrambled up onto Iolande and turned both horses around to the ship with Damon on it at a full gallop, scattering people in her path.

  He had seen her. He was running toward her, ask­ing her something she could not hear, and because she couldn't speak over her heartbeat, she threw the reins down at him, looking wildly past him to the soldiers, who were running on foot now, coming so close.

  Damon needed no further encouragement. He vaulted up into the saddle and followed her lead, though she didn't know where she was going. She steered Iolande past the last of the crowd with a deli­cacy of footwork that left Damon filled with a combi­nation of admiration and dread.

  The hood was free, her cloak billowed back behind her like a banner, the tail of her braid unwinding in the wind. She was heading for a side street, one of the many leading into the town, the closest one to them. She was almost upon it, when from the shadows of the building stepped a woman holding a child.

  No, oh, no, she thought, but it was far too late to stop. Even as the woman screamed in fright and turned to run, Solange felt the familiar tensing of Iolande's powerful muscles, felt the neatness of the jump that carried them over the woman and safely down again past her.

  Behind her, Tarrant followed in their wake, but the woman had retreated to the wall of the alley, still screaming. Damon and his horse pounded harmlessly past her.

  They were in a circle with a fountain in the middle, a meeting of streets that was all but abandoned. Damon caught up with her and motioned her to slow down. She didn't want to—hadn't he seen those men? Didn't he know they would find their own mounts and fol­low? Didn't he realize they would do anything to get her?

  But he didn't realize, because she hadn't told him. She slowed Iolande to a walk down a long cobblestone lane and then stopped.

  Her breath was corning in short, staccato bursts. There was a deafening buzzing in her ears. She could see Damon's mouth moving but still could not hear him. He appeared angry, but she was unable to explain. How could she, when it was all she could do to drag the air into her lungs?

  Damon paused, looking at her, then reached over and took one of her hands which had clenched around the reins. She could see his lips form her name, an in­quiry. The anger had melted into something else, something she did not have the presence of mind to identify. His eyes became hooded and bright.

  She felt his hands rub hers. Slowly her fingers un­curled, and the warmth returned. The buzzing around her faded as she stared up at him. She could hear again.

  "... better?" he was saying. He let go of that hand and took the other, rubbing it as he did the first. She blinked at him.

  "We have to go," she said abruptly.

  "Aye," he agreed, not letting go of her hand. "We'll go."

  But they didn't move. Tarrant shifted on his feet, crunching on his bit. The alley smelled strongly of gar­lic and brine.

  "They'll come after us," she said somewhat desperately.

  "Don't worry," Damon replied. "We're safe for the moment."

  His fingers massaged hers in a way she found suddenly disturbing, the way he drew out the movements, fol­lowed the lines of her palm to her wrist with long, deep strokes. Wherever he touched her it felt peculiar, a tingling sensation that warmed her whole hand and trav­eled up her arm. He said nothing now, just studied her, moving his hands around her own in that way that was making her short of breath again.

  But it was not fear that
made her heart pound so fiercely now.

  Oddly enough, she felt like crying. It was the shock of things, she told herself sternly. Don't you dare cry. Keep your wits about you.

  She stared down at their joined hands and felt the tears well up. It was baffling, this turn of events. She was angry, yes, angry that the touch of the man she had longed for for so many years would have to come in this way. It was not fair. It should have been so different.

  She looked up at him again and watched his face change back into his usual hard mask. He released her hand.

  "We'll go now. Follow me and don't stop until I tell you to, and for God's sake, keep that damned hood on."

  He took them back through the maze of alleys of the town, always a casual walk when there were people nearby, otherwise a trot.

  Once they accidentally stumbled across a duo of men in Redmond's colors, and only the overheard snatch of conversation saved them from rounding the corner, where they stood talking to a group of peasants.

  "Are you positive they have not passed by?" one asked. "A dark-haired woman on a roan mare, a man with her on a black stallion with a white blaze?"

  Another man spoke. "The reward is rich, my friends. Think it over. . . ."

  They retreated slowly, cautiously, and wandered around a few more of the twisted streets until she real­ized where they were going.

  They had reached the gateway to Calais they had entered what seemed a lifetime ago. They were headed back for Du Clar.

  They will not think to look for us coming toward them," Damon explained patiently. "We have been spotted in Calais. They will comb the city, and when they cannot find us they will either assume we secured passage to England or that we fled farther north."

  "What makes you so certain of this?" Solange was visibly upset to be backtracking. She didn't trust his plan, and that bothered him, though he didn't want to admit it. A part of him could understand her reluctance to follow his reasoning, given the fiasco Calais had turned out to be. But he wanted her to trust him. He would not have turned his life upside down for any­one but her, dammit, and the least she could do was trust him.

  They had traveled on through the day and night; now dawn was breaking again. It seemed he had not slept in weeks, months.

  "It will work," he said gruffly. "I passed a fishing village on my way out to Du Clar. They had boats, siz­able ones. We will gain passage from there."

  "It is too close to Du Clar."

  "You are exaggerating. It is some distance from the estate, and perfect for our needs. I should have thought of it before. Your dead husband's men will have passed it already."

  '"What makes you think there won't be soldiers still there?"

  "There won't be." He prayed there wouldn't be. His entire plan hinged on the fact that they had passed by the village days earlier. The soldiers would surely have already been there and gone, if they had even no­ticed it at all, it was so small. All he could recall were a few miserable boats and some squat houses lined up along a beach. But it would do. It would have to. He tried to inject some authority into his voice.

  "If you want to get to England, Countess, you had better listen to me."

  She gave him a cold look. He edged Tarrant a little closer to her mount and tried a diversion.

  "Or you could tell me why those men are so intent on finding you."

  "I am with you, Damon Wolf, on the promise that you will get me to England. If you wish to make in­quiries into my former life, please feel free to do so. But I will not be here to answer your questions."

  She gave her horse some invisible signal and they bounded ahead into the countryside. Well, at least he got her going in the right direction.

  By noon they were both too exhausted to continue. Damon kept pushing them, however, even as Solange complained she simply couldn't stay upright in her sad­dle any longer. Besides, she said, the horses needed the rest more than they did. It had been more than a full day since they had last slept.

  She was correct, of course, but he told himself there were no suitable locations to stop. The fields they trav­eled now were too exposed. And the more land they could put between them and Calais, the better.

  The landscape was gradually changing as they went on hugging the coast, growing wilder, rockier, less fer­tile. They encountered a slanting wall of limestone that stretched far ahead. Damon remembered it from be­fore, a good sign.

  Solange finally stopped him by refusing to ride far­ther. She had found a secluded meadow of tall, wild wheat grass that had been unharvested. The dry fronds waved in the breeze invitingly. There was a grove of trees for the horses, she pointed out. It was ideal for their needs. She was going to stay there and sleep and didn't really care if he wanted to or not.

  With that, she led her mare to the grove, patted her down, and then stretched out in the meadow wheat. She closed her eyes and rolled away from Damon, wrapped in her cape.

  He contemplated her from atop his steed. She was right. He knew she was right. There was no reason for them not to stop here for their slumber except the nag­ging reluctance that kept him immobile, watching her. He simply didn't want to be next to her. He didn't think he could take that. Despite the peril of the past few days, his attraction to her had not abated. It was more than a nuisance. Seeing her stretched-out form on the grass made him think of her lying in a different place.

  Like his bed.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes, as if to rid himself of the vision. She was right, they had to rest.

  Grudgingly he joined her, setting Tarrant loose amid the trees with the mare, making a bed for himself as far from Solange as possible while still keeping her within a safe distance. The wheat stalks surrounded him in a fantasy of delicate reeds. Slowly he relaxed.

  He dreamed of her.

  He woke once and thought he heard her singing: a sweet, clear voice reflecting the heavens. But perhaps it was part of his dream.

  When he woke again it was to moonlight and crick­ets. Solange was already up, feeding the horses and her­self some of the leftover apples from an orchard they had encountered two days before. Both horses crowded close to her as she murmured to them, a string of soft syllables he couldn't make out.

  He stretched and strolled over to them, helping himself to one of the apples in an open pouch. It was hard and sweet, just the way he liked them.

  Solange greeted him without turning around.

  "Sleep well?"

  He grunted in response, intent on finishing the ap­ple. Somewhat to his surprise, he discovered that he was ravenous. He tossed the core over his shoulder and reached for another.

  "Damon, how much farther, do you think, to your village?"

  He had been calculating that from the moment he started eating. He adjusted for the possible time they would lose for caution, traveling a circuitous route. It wasn't too bad, actually.

  "Another day or two, I suppose." He couldn't help but add, "Are you so eager to be rid of my company, then?"

  She shook her head. "It's just that . . . bad weather is coming. Very soon, I think."

  He stopped chewing. "Are you certain?"

  "Yes."

  "What kind of weather?"

  "Sleet, perhaps snow as well. That's all I can tell."

  Wonderful. It was all they needed, to be caught in France in the miserable flush of winter. It didn't occur to him to doubt her words. She had always had the knack of predicting the weather. As a boy he had seen her proven right again and again. Her attempts to in­form the adults had been rebuffed, but she had always let him know exactly what to expect outdoors. Damon rapidly finished the second apple and this time gave the core to Tarrant, who was nudging him.

  "How much time before it hits?" He almost didn't want to know.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  "Solange, how much time?"

  She turned to look at him. The moonlight gave her a ghostly air. "A day. Two days. No more."

  She had been generous in her estimate. The storm hit al
most eighteen hours later, a driving, greasy sleet that pelted their skin like bee stings. They were soaked immediately in the frozen slush, skin red and eyes tear­ing. The path they had to follow led them directly into it; the horses kept their heads bowed low with each plodding step.

  When it grew so fierce it became impossible to see, they took shelter in a small cave Damon discovered in the cliffs, with just room enough for all of them. They formed a huddled, dripping mass. Damon had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, then gave up trying altogether and slumped on the ground against the rough limestone wall. Solange sat beside him, peering out from beneath the legs of Iolande. All four watched the storm rage by the oval mouth of the cave.

  From the scraps of wood that littered the floor of the cave they managed a sullen, smoky fire. It was shielded from the winds by a small outcropping of stone, but it offered little real heat.

  The next day was no better. It was cold comfort to think that the men searching for them were endur­ing this weather as well.

  The sleet remained constant, but now there was a thick coating of ice over everything. There was plenty of water and they ate the last of the apples, but their stomachs were not full by any means. Damon could not hunt when the game stayed hidden, and so they waited, while the skies emptied above their heads.

  He had finally found the one thing that could blunt the sharpness of his desire: exhaustion. And it affected her too. He could see it in the purple smears under her eyes, the way she slept like she had melted onto the rough ground, no matter how awkward her position, no matter how cold it became.

  By the morning of the third day he would wait no longer. The small cave had been tolerably warm, thanks to the fire and the body heat of the horses, and so they were mostly dry but starving. Solange had developed a translucency to her skin that made him deeply uneasy for her. He could not sit around and watch her vanish before his eyes. Or, worse, go into that deep sleep she had found and not wake up again . . .