by Alex Dylan
She inhaled long and deep, breathing in the fragrance of the tuberose which was fast filling the room. It was a strange smell, reminiscent of rotting corpses, with an underlying sweetness which was overpowering. Melisande darted the tip of her tongue round her lips, parting them and moistening them. As Heughan watched, she plunged both her hands between her legs, cupping herself, mounding her palms between her thighs. The thin fabric of her shift was trapped and stretched taut. Her full breasts strained to escape as she knelt up high and arched her back, thrusting them forwards.
“Come to bed, Lord of the May,” she whispered breathily.
* * *
In the languor of the aftermath, Heughan stroked the tattooed symbols encircling her waist and debated whether to ask her about them. He recognised certain ones, last glimpsed on the maps he had loved so much as a child. Elusive memory whirled, eddied and was whisked away on the current of time. He watched it float away to the dark edges, where the monsters still lurked.
He traced the outline of a star on her inked girdle with one finger. “What is this?”
She writhed under his touch, deciding how to answer. “My story,” she said. “We all need to know who we are and where we come from.”
Heughan kept his thoughts to himself, lying on his back, watching shadows collecting on the ceiling. In his mind, he heard the reedy echoing of music blown through foreign woods He saw the dancers’ naked feet twirl and stamp, looked into their veiled exotic eyes and watched them vanish with the susurration of wind on sand.
In Carlisle the northern wind breathed a harsher sibilance through the stones and Melisande nestled closer. She fitted comfortably, and he felt oddly at ease. Neither wanted to speak and break the moment, so they lay wrapped around each other, breathing together but thinking separate thoughts until they drifted into sleep.
Heughan woke when she moved; he felt cool air flow in to fill the warm space she left behind. He turned sleep-slowly to watch her flit to a dark niche and vanish. Curiosity slapped him into full alertness. He dressed quickly and followed, slipping behind a thick screening curtain. Heughan frowned at the blank wall facing him. He lit a candle from the embers of the fire and carried it over to the corner. It flickered in a slight draft. Heughan felt along the edges of the sandstone blocks but couldn’t find any gaps. There was a pattern of five dots carved into the wall. No doubt it was the work of a bored guard, worrying the stone with the sharp end of his dagger. Curious, though, that there should be a guard in a corner without a door. Heughan fitted his fingers into the pattern. To his surprise, he felt the stone give under the slight pressure of his hand. He pushed fully and a door swung open. The Castle was full of surprises.
He blew out the candle and slipped between and beyond where a spiral staircase led both upwards and down. Heughan put his back to the central column and slinked cautiously upwards, listening carefully. His skin rippled with the frisson of arousal. He shook it off. There was no doubt in his mind that the lady was doubly-dangerous. He wasn’t armed, apart from his dagger and his wits, but he was certain that Melisande was carrying the same weapons. Experience told him one at least was sharper. Perhaps the same wasn’t true of all her senses though, for as the staircase opened out onto the top of the tower, Melisande was revealed sitting with her back to him, gazing up at the night sky.
“Well Heughan,” she said, without bothering to turn round. “I see you found another of my secrets.”
He cursed himself for his complacency.
“Witch,” he said, stealing up behind and cloaking himself about her.
She sparkled with a half-smile and no denial. She was studying the stars, and Heughan’s curiosity was piqued by a book she held. It looked old to him; the uneven edges of the papers were well-thumbed. He glimpsed annotations and stained markings, writing in different hands and colours, some symbols that seemed familiar or perhaps merely half-remembered.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
“Looking for answers,” she replied enigmatically.
“In the stars or in that?” asked Heughan, indicating the book.
“Both,” she said.
Heughan kissed the back of her neck. “Are you a fortune teller?” he asked lightly. “You promised to answer my questions. Is my future written in the heavens?”
She laughed gently and turned to pages in the book depicting concentric circles of naked women tethered to different stars. She stopped on a page where two fishes chased each other in the centre and then pointed to a forking collection of stars low on the horizon, two straight paths which merged into a single line. “That’s Perseus, the slayer of monsters, the quaestor who travelled to distant shores seeking adventure and exotic women, and found them both. A man of destiny.” She looked shrewdly sideways at him. He laughed at her blatant flattery. She pointed to a large square constellation to his right, “There is the noble steed, Pegasus, the winged horse for the hero.”
“So where are the exotic women?” Heughan asked, feigning wide-eyed innocence. She pointed at two zigzag lines of bright stars directly in front of them.
“Two?” Heughan asked with a raised eyebrow, and she slapped him playfully with the flat of her hand.
“In your dreams!”
“Not in yours?”
Melisande pointed to the lower of the two lines, “Andromeda, with the chained girdle about her waist.”
“Like you?” He felt her stiffen and knew that he had said something wrong.
“Waiting for a hero to rescue her? I don’t need rescuing,” she said bluntly.
Heughan cupped a hand over one of her breasts and stroked around it with the flat of his palm to distract her. He nuzzled her neck and said softly, “You can’t blame a man for trying.”
Suddenly, she was terse. "You want to know if the stars have meaning for you, but do you dare to face the answers you seek?
From a pouch in the back of the leather cover, she withdrew a thick deck of cards. “Arrange them as you wish,” she said, “and then pass them back to me.” He took the cards from her curiously, flicking through the brightly-painted images before handing the shuffled cards back to her.
She turned over the first card to reveal The Fool. He laughed. “Aye, a fool I am all right for agreeing to this nonsense.”
“The Fool is the seeker of truth – the querent,” she smoothed. “The man looking in the mirror represents someone who searches for an answer within himself. He is prepared to travel to find what he seeks, but mark the hare,” she pointed to the creature darting between The Fool’s feet, “Wisdom might trip him up.” She turned the next card.
Two of Wands. A card of decision, a card of location.
“The explorer seeks a new horizon. His boundaries are too small. Lands across the sea call to him, offer him more promise, more opportunity.”
He felt the thrill of excitement, sensing forbidden knowledge, an answer perhaps to the heresy which said the earth went around the sun. Was the earth truly round and not flat? He wanted to find where the edges of the map should lie, the tantalising blank spaces and the places where the monsters lurked. If the earth were round and there were no edges, perhaps there were no monsters after all. He was intrigued and looked enquiringly at Melisande.
“What opportunity?”
Nine of Pentacles. Material success for past efforts. A card for reassessment.
The centre coin showed a hawk. Melisande hesitated. Conflicted, she wondered what to tell Heughan. His own sigil was the pinioned hawk. The card showed that someone of influence constrained him. Did that mean her?
“Plans come to fruition. Life gets easier.”
“Can’t you be more specific?”
“If you are expecting absolutes,” she told him, “you will be disappointed, because I can only show you possibilities.”
Three of Pentacles. Building something lasting.
“Careful planning pays off. Build on strong foundations for the future.”
Heughan frowned at the familiar sigh
t depicted in the image of the card. The coins reminded him of the gilded gingerbread, and of Nick Storey’s carvings in the Cathedral. Jolted, he realised they were the same trefoil images. He pondered if there was a coincidence.
The Two of Swords. Decisions about beliefs. Painful choices.
Heughan rubbed his hand over his face thoughtfully. Crossed swords protecting an eye and a heart. “Why all the flowers?” he asked, pointing at the rose motifs in each corner. “Are these women’s weapons?”
When Melisande finally answered, she had grown strangely quiet. “She hides her eyes. The eyes of a woman hold secrets. Secrets that others seek are deliberately withheld, so no one knows who to trust anymore. This is an important card for you. You will have to make a decision between two alternatives, and eventually, you will have to face what you fear.”
He folded his arms and hugged his hands under his armpits. “She hides her heart also. Masks it with ambiguity. A cross can be a show of strength, an unyielding border. Or the sign of ultimate sacrifice. She fools you into feeling pity, and you forget that she can scythe your head off with those two long swords. I say it’s for you. Always armed with sharpness.”
She smiled secretively. In that moment, she was so vulnerable his instinct was to pull her to him. Sometimes she seemed like two different women trapped in one body; light and shadow in the same place. Heughan considered what effect that might have on a person, musing what a brightly sunny Melisande might look like; it was a surprisingly attractive prospect. Perhaps the bitterness of her past experiences kept her turned inwards to the sorrowful dark. The longer he looked at her, the more overwhelmed he felt. Burdened with a sense of loneliness that didn’t quite belong to him, he wished, not for the first time, that they had remained in bed.
He shook the sparring thoughts away. With two swords his lady might be twice as desirable but was also doubly dangerous. He should never let himself forget that. Worse followed.
Ten of Swords. The card of betrayal.
“A man’s death. There’s a traitor in your midst.”
“Cecil,” Heughan said. “Roddy said 10 is Cecil’s number. Perhaps it’s he who dies. Or is he the betrayer?”
Melisande shook her head. “I see a man who looks across the seas to another horizon. Swords represent a fighting man. He is trapped betwixt two armies. See the pattern of waves made by the swords? He dies within view of safety but caught out by the sea.”
Heughan thought of Seamus and felt the guilt of his death afresh. “You show me the past. It is the future I seek.”
Melisande shook her head again. “This is the imminent future, not the past.” Heughan scrutinised the card intently, trying to resolve it into meaning.
“Traitor in our midst, you say? What did Mark A’Court want from Ross? Why did he come alone tonight?”
“He had papers to present for Truce Day. He wanted Ross to foul them and answer for hot trod. Ross won’t do it though. Not after last time. He won’t ride out against anyone unless he has a personal grudge or a vested interest.”
“So why the drama, if that’s all there is to it? You dressed up a dull message with a cloak of intrigue just to excite Roddy and draw him to you. What’s all the nonsense about four hundred men? What are they supposed to be fighting? Ross’s inertia? It would take a whole army!”
“Or just one very determined and ruthless man.”
“So you don’t really know for certain if there’s anything to be worried about?”
“Just one very determined and ruthless man.”
Heughan exhaled with a grunt of exasperation and ruffled a hand through his hair, sending his noisy, cluttered thoughts flapping into the night like bats disturbed from their roost. “We’ll have answers soon enough. One way or another.”
“You want me to tell your future or someone else’s? Last card, Heughan.”
The Tower. Sudden Change. Enlightenment.
Long tongues of flame licked into the night sky and falling figures plummeted downwards with outstretched arms. Meanwhile, two men escaped from the ruins, looking pleased with themselves. This time Heughan didn’t need Melisande to interpret for him. The meaning was immediately clear to him; resolution. The destruction of the Castle and Ross Middlemore’s power in Carlisle. He liked that idea immensely, and he said so out loud.
Melisande’s eyes glinted and she said flirtingly, “I told you that you tasted of sedition,” Heughan remembered.
One by one, Melisande began to pick up the cards and stow them away. “Come back to bed,” she offered to Heughan.
He nodded but didn’t make a move to follow her. He stood sentry alone, with his thoughts focused on a distant horizon where a weak light gathered strength. It looked suspicious to him. Sudden change? How quick was sudden?
His back was to her. She turned a card for herself that he couldn’t see.
Queen of Cups, reversed. A wronged woman. Never forgive. Never forget.
A card for her own element of water echoing the constellation of Cassiopeia she saw in the night sky now right in front of her. Frowning to herself, she thought some more about the present political situation. Perhaps this card wasn’t meant for her personally; it could also represent a queen overturned and an uncertain future. It was a neat conclusion. ‘An elegant solution,’ Rodrigues would say. As though he had arranged it.
It was also too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Like Cassiopeia, this queen was turned on her head, and the card reversed meant a deceitful person who was not to be trusted. Who though? Heughan? The thought sobered her and she shivered, turning back down the stairs to a bed grown cold with solitude. Warmth was a fist curled around the knife nestling under her pillow.
Heughan remained distracted by the strange lights. At this time of year, sometimes there were only a few hours of dark silence either side of the moon before the birds recommenced their paeans to the green man. It was a time of persistent skies filled with lingering grey brightness. It energised him and exhausted him by degrees. At first Heughan thought there was lightning out at sea. He strained to hear a faraway thunderclap but there was nothing. Strange luminescence lit the Solway Firth. Heughan watched entranced as rippling spires of light coloured the night sky purple and orange, like an ominously darkening sunset over the city.
Bursts of brightness showed the underside of gently curled clouds, the sparkle of stars revealed in softly dark sky strangely void of sound. Here at last was his needfire, his warning of impending doom. He inhaled with the calm satisfaction of a man who has anticipated the worst possible outcome and is pleased not to be disappointed. As waves of orange light washed the horizon, he searched for sight of tell-tale plumes of smoke that accompanied fire, sniffing the air for the smell of burning or gunpowder, anticipating the dull thud of cannon shaking his feet. There was only the silence of the dark riven by the compelling light. He frowned, confused. He was abruptly cold. He could feel his guts shrinking smaller to hide within him, yielding to his other self. The one who would be prepared to make a fight of it. The one who would face overwhelming odds, even such an enemy who could cause the whole night sky to burn.
The blood rushed in his ears. He heard the hooves pounding on the boggy turf, the snorting of horse breath, steaming sour grass into his face and leather harness scraping. The wind plucked his hair from behind his ears; he pushed it back with his sword hand, feeling the blood smear against his face, catching the metallic trickle at the edge of his mouth. The Lochmaben kirk and the hills ahead of him were burning; he saw once more the panicked silhouettes outlined against the flames, fleeing into the smoke which consumed them.
His legs were tired, muscle-hardened, shaking from the strain of keeping his horse turning. He urged the beast onto the sands. The sea was at his back, malevolent and heaving, trapping him. He felt a guilty rush of panic and fear; fear that chilled him to the bone…
Heughan collapsed with his back to the parapet, not trusting his legs to hold him at the great height. The dampness of the stones seeped in
to his spine. He stretched his hands out along the wall, spreading his fingers to grasp the crevices, anchoring himself as a tree spreads its roots. He watched the unnerving heavens, waiting for his ragged breath to calm.
Shouting at the postern gate drew his attention.
There was the sound of the Night Watch grunting as they struggled with the heavy wooden bars. A solitary rider in unfamiliar livery was admitted. Heughan peered around the parapet to see the rider walk his horse to the Barrack Stables. He braced for the sound of activity, expecting the garrison to be roused from their beds, hoping that Willie and his lads still inside the Castle wouldn’t be caught out. Long minutes passed. The night eased back into deeper stillness.
Slinking back down the tower staircase, Heughan felt as shaky as the young boy who had vomited up his burden of guilt into the sea. His heart hammered hard against his chest. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and snaked down his neck, running down his back, a wet corpse finger scraping at his terror.
He fought against himself, fought to keep his head above the dark which threatened to drown him. The blood pounded in his ears. He panted in shallow breaths, focusing on the moment. Don’t think, he told himself. Just keep going, got to keep going…
He was past the door to Melisande’s chamber. He kept moving.
He could hear the roar of the bore, huge and massive, racing towards him. He saw Seamus mouthing empty words…
He edged round the bottom of Lady Mary’s Tower. There was someone waiting there. His mother’s eyes silently pleaded with him…
His sister screamed as she was torn away…
Willie punched him on the arm. “Whusht but you look like a wraith,” he said looking concerned. He grabbed Heughan’s chin and twisted his head sideways, the better to see the bite marks on the side of his neck. “So it’s true then? She’s a succubus and drained you of your vital fluids?”
Heughan grinned wanly. “Willie lad, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Aye, well you wait ’til you see whit I found out,” said Willie proudly, “it’ll bring some colour back to your cheeks.”