by Alex Dylan
Willie glared at him.
Melisande shook her head. “It wouldn’t help any of us. The passage might lead around the other side of the tower to the old dungeons, but even if we could get through, it is sure to be guarded.”
“And this is where they’re holding folks now?” Jack asked, lifting the lantern to inspect the masonry more closely.
For a while they stood surrounded by the dark as though a solution might appear if they were patient. Melisande felt drawn to the walls at the far side. Carlisle Castle was a testament to the art of the amateur sculptor. So many of the walls near guard posts were pockmarked with artistic anarchism; mermaids, wild boar, helmeted knights, roses, the dice marks of the quincunx.
From the intermittent light of Jack’s lantern, Willie watched Melisande touching the stones until, as Jack swung the lantern abruptly away, she completely disappeared. Willie cried out and Jack dropped the lantern, plunging them into darkness. He scrabbled on the floor, trying to retrieve it, and when he did, Melisande was in front of him once more
Heughan crossed his arms and said reprovingly, “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” but he smiled as he spoke, remembering the hidden walls in her chamber. Of course, Melisande would find a way. She knew the secrets of this Castle better than he.
“It comes out in a cellar. We only use it to store the wine now. Have a look for yourself.”
Heughan nodded and eased himself along the passage, hugging the walls between the shadows and the gloom. A short while later, he reappeared, signalling them to follow him. As Jack shouldered through the narrow gap behind the casks covering the wall, the lantern closed and the narrowing snatch of light slanted unexpectedly. Heughan held up his hand to stop them. He peered cautiously at the casks slumbering peacefully and motioned to Willie. Willie frowned and crouched down with Heughan to take a better look. His face split into a big grin and he patted Heughan on his shoulder enthusiastically.
Their path ended in a set of sturdy sandstone steps, which marched upward with the precision of military geometry. There was daylight ahead of them and they hung back in the angle of the dark.
“Where does this lead?” asked Heughan.
“The Outer Ward, near the Barrack Stables,” Melisande replied, “but it’s in full view and you can be seen. I can go this way; as chatelaine I have every reason to be here and if anyone queries me, I’ll simply say I’m checking on the wine.”
Willie and Heughan smiled broadly.
“That’s nae wine you’ve got down there,” Willie said. “That’s gunpowder.”
Heughan nodded. “Twenty-two casks of it. Smuggled it in myself,” he said cockily, “though I never have guessed that you’d stow it away so conveniently close to hand.”
Melisande frowned, “That’s insane! Supposing someone had found out? Anyone could have tried to broach one of the casks.”
“Call it the luck of the Irish,” Heughan smiled. “Jack, have you seen enough? We should go.” As his companions eased back through the crawl space, Heughan pulled Melisande to one side, feeling the warmth of her breath upon him. He inhaled her essence, the scent of rosemary on her skin and hair, the tang of bitter-orange on her leather cloak, and allowed her to fill his mind before he spoke.
“You need to persuade Ross to let you into the dungeons.”
Melisande looked at him with wide eyes, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do. And yet I am confident that somehow you will find the words to make him do your bidding,” Heughan replied calmly. “We need to know for certain what’s beyond these walls.”
“I need to know where my book is or who has it.”
“Do you understand exactly what’s at stake here? Exactly how many lives are risked? You have the recipe. You can work it out. There doesn’t need to be any more killing. Say you’ll help me. I need you, I need your knowledge.”
Impulsively, he grasped Melisande around the waist and kissed her passionately, tasting her, wanting in that moment to consume her, absorb all that she was into himself. He held her close. “Roddy told me once you were the key.” He felt her stiffen slightly. “Trust me, Mele, and I will help you,” he promised, looking deep into her eyes. “Find out what you can and seek me at Roddy’s.” He brushed her lips swiftly and disappeared into the runnels, following the others.
Melisande pored over Heughan’s paper with its alembic and diagrams. The symbols were very familiar to her. It was a clear enough set of instructions. Most of the items she had already. She would need a quantity of storage pots, easy enough to come by under any pretext if you were chatelaine, and a bucket of a more unusual ingredient. Time to visit the stables and check on that gelding with the heaves.
Chapter 17: Best Laid Plans
Crowtrees Wood, Near Carlisle
Some days later when the rain had finally abated, they took the hobbies out as far as Crowtrees Wood. Rodrigues insisted on lending Heughan his own big bay so that Melisande could ride pillion. The rest of them were more agile on the small ponies and could be alert to the ever-present threat of ambush. Melisande hadn’t said a word throughout the whole journey, and Heughan had the prickly itch down his neck at the back of his jack that warned him trouble was brewing.
The horses stumped their way through the leafy carpet dappled with brindled summer light in a silence broken only by the raucous cries of the birds for which the woods were named. Willie twitched every time a black pocket of rooks lifted in a noisy flap of aerial manoeuvring and began a song under his breath to reassure himself,
"As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the ither say,
“Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?”
“Shut the fuck up, can’t you, La’l Un?” said Heughan irritably. “I don’t like that bloody song and you know it.”
“Let the man sing,” contradicted Rodrigues. “Where’s the harm?”
“His bloody singing’s dinning my head for one thing, and it’ll give us away, for another.”
“Nonsense! The crows are doing that by themselves. There’s nothing we could do to move about any more quietly in these woods, and well you know it. What’s one more voice in all of this?”
“It’s Willie’s god-awful caterwauling that’s set the corbies off in the first place. You can’t tell one from t’other, and if he hadn’t opened his blasted mouth, neither would they have.”
The crows added their opinions; cackling in a round of syncopated noise. Willie ignored all of the bickering and carried on tunelessly,
"Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We’ll theek oor nest whan it grows bare."
“I’ll sit on your fucking neck in a minute if you don’t stop,” growled Heughan, but he couldn’t keep the grin from his face at Willie’s look of mock reproach. He loved his irrepressible, cheeky humour. The crows chewed up a loud discordant crescendo, which quite drowned out Willie, so under the pressure of a doubly unappreciative audience, he bowed to the inevitable and gave it up as a bad job.
The woods opened unexpectedly into a circular clearing and there were the vardos, the distinctive canvas-covered barrel wagons, dotted about. Heughan’s men reined in quickly, forming a tight group together. They needed no signal from him; they were well practiced in their manoeuvres. They remained at the edge of the clearing, not encroaching. Rodrigues had vanished. Heughan reckoned he’d taken himself off as pricker to scout around the periphery. He scanned the scene in front of him. The gypsies had made no attempt to conceal themselves. The small children around the central fire had paused as the men had ridden up but given them only the most cursory of glances before carrying on with the more important business of tormenting a hedgehog with sticks until it rolled itself into a prickly ball. Heughan calculated which steading was missing its chickens as he watched a couple of women plucking freshly-killed birds.
Jack called out a greeting to the women. They looked up at him warily before continuing with the chickens. Heughan was scanning the hollows where the land fell away, trying to discern if there were men or horse concealed amongst the hummocks. He could see neither and it bothered him. Sweat pooled irritatingly in the hollow behind his knees and in the small of his back, where Melisande had wrapped hot hands around him. He rolled his shoulders to ease the weight of his jack.
“Sing ‘Tam Lin’,” Melisande suggested quietly into his ear.
“Nae, not that,” said Willie, close enough to hear the exchange.
Melisande smiled gently at him, “Our secrets, our ways,” she said and put her forefinger to her lips, telling him to be quiet. He was going to argue with her but caught the full power of her slate eyes looking straight into him, and suddenly, all the snappy responses inside him were scattered like the dust motes floating down in the sunlight through the leaves. Willie put his hands over his ears. Heughan cleared his throat and began to sing,
"O I forbid you, maidens all,
That wear gold in your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there."
His voice carried clear and true in the little forest amphitheatre. Even the crows stilled themselves to listen.
"There’s none that goes by Carterhaugh
But they leave him a wad
Either their rings, or green mantles,
Or else their maidenhead."
Willie belatedly found his voice and the courage to heckle Melisande. “Aye well, seeing as it’s my laird that’s singing, I doubt there’s a maidenhead left intact hereabouts, so I hope yer had brought some ither token, m’lady?” he enquired spiritedly.
To Willie’s great surprise, Melisande threw her head back and erupted with mellifluous laughter. She took the mantle from off her own hair and tossed it out in front of Heughan, beyond the horse. The light silk rippled in the breeze, fluttering like a green dragon curving slowly down. One small child caught it nimbly before it was sullied by the ground and ran away to a wagon with it.
“What now?” Heughan asked.
“Now we wait,” Melisande said, patting his hand and watching the vardo where the small child and her mantle disappeared behind a vibrant patchwork curtain. A minute passed. Long enough for Heughan’s impatience to make him edgy. Mentally, he had planned the escape if they had to fight their way out. He readied his hand round the pommel of his sword, tensing as he caught a flicker of movement from the curtain. The small child ran past him and tugged insistently at the hem of Melisande’s dress.
“Lift me down, Heughan,” she said.
He tipped his chin, “No, I don’t like it. Where are their men?” “Where’s Roddy?” Willie asked.
“Right here, lad,” answered Rodrigues, trotting into view at the head of a party of a dozen swarthy men. He exchanged a look with Heughan and shook his head imperceptibly.
“Are we hostages now?” asked Heughan, outwardly calm but without relaxing his sword-hand.
“Nay, lad, more like a Truce Day,” Rodrigues said. “Hand the lady down and leave the women to it.”
Heughan held Melisande tightly around the waist as he lifted her from the horse. She met his eyes with confidence and smiled secretively. He smiled back, wishing he was in on the secret, uneasy with the lack of control. Suddenly, he was confused again and Melisande was gone, walking briskly to the vardo with her small companion skipping alongside her, holding her hand and chattering in the gibberish language of childish enthusiasm.
The curtain moved back and then she was gone from his sight, leaving the men to look each other over, assess themselves as well-matched and settle down to use their daggers to worry sticks, or dirt from under their fingernails, rather than each other.
It took a moment for Melisande’s eyes to adjust to the gloom of the vardo after the dappled brightness of the day outside. She sensed the woman’s presence before she could make out her form.
“I am Lady Melisande,” she said. “I am come to speak with the drabarni.”
“Welcome, my lady,” the whisper said. “I am Airlie.”
The older woman was seated on plump cushions and had veiled herself with Melisande’s mantle in the Eastern style. Melisande was transported to her father’s house in Granada, a long time ago and far away. She glimpsed the remembrance of strange visitors; tall, graceful men with tattooed faces and dark blue turbans, women covered from head to toe with only one eye and one hand, also elaborately inked, showing. She looked more curiously at her hostess, who invited her to sit with a graceful wave of her hand. Melisande gathered up her skirts and folded herself onto the cushions, tucking her feet to one side. Airlie placed a circular chased metal tray between them with cups of something to drink and jujubes, offering them to Melisande with smooth elegance. She took them without hesitation, letting Airlie see her trust and confidence. She noticed the smile reach Airlie’s dark, intelligent eyes, even though her face was shrouded.
“I know there is a reason beyond modesty that you wear the veil,” said Melisande. She saw Airlie’s eyes crinkle with brief unguardedness.
“Please, I mean no offence,” she reassured. “I see the mark of the triple goddess on your hand. I know the stories; your mother saw the hare in the light of the full moon, and it marked you out with special powers. Is it true?”
Airlie turned her palm to look at the etched pattern of the moon, crescents and stars hiding amongst the lines as though she had forgotten they were there. If she was surprised at Melisande’s recognition, she gave no sign of it. Airlie’s whisper poised between them. “Truth is a strange beast. I wonder if you have the mastery of it.”
Melisande looked inquisitively at her; she saw that Airlie’s eyes were bright with a challenge. She glanced down at the tray and noticed unfamiliar Tarot cards.
“I am the servant of truth and seek to master none but myself,” Melisande said.
Airlie tipped her head to one side and considered her with the dark thoughtfulness of a raven. “Very well,” she replied after a long pause and touched the mantle, “as a courtesy for the fine gift you gave me,” she offered the cards to Melisande.
Melisande picked up the cards and held them between her palms, testing their energy. She cleared the crowded chattering from her mind, chasing idle thoughts out with the same ferocity as Sorcha taking a besom to the chamber floor. She cut the cards and dealt them into three piles. She hovered over the left one and turned the top card: The High Priestess.
Melisande smiled; the secret curving of her mouth that lit her eyes with the grey-ice glint of wintery sun. The High Priestess wore the crown of the triple goddess. She sat on a throne between two pillars, holding a scroll and the sigil of a hawk, with a pomegranate on her lap. Airlie sat back with a shocked look of surprise.
“My lady,” she said, half apologetic, half admonishingly. “You are indeed the keeper of secrets, holder of ancient wisdom.”
She looked again at the card and appraised Melisande thoughtfully.
“Caught between two men, the master and the apprentice, trusting neither, you protect the secrets from them both.”
“I put my trust in no man and trust nothing but the reliability of the path of the moon and the patience of water’s flow,” Melisande answered.
She floated her gaze down the card until it came to rest at the veil worn by the High Priestess. “I should very much like to see what is behind the veil,” she said, without meeting Airlie’s eyes.
She hovered over those cards on her right and turned the top card: Temperance. An angel, the fierce gold blaze of the sun’s disc behind her head, echoed in the mark on her forehead. Oblivious, the angel calmly filled two cups with water.
“A tale as old as time tells of an angel who kissed you in your mother’s womb, to make you forget anything you saw in your previous incarnation. The angel who blessed your unborn soul with a gentle heart was the Morning Star, his kiss so hot it seared y
our face and cleft it in two. Temperance is the card of the traveller and teacher. That’s why you cover your face against the ignorant, who would too readily confuse angels and demons.”
For a long while, Airlie said nothing. Her soft hands rested on top of her lap quite still. Melisande heard her extend the hush to the greenwood outside; even the rooks had stopped cawing. Airlie exhaled with a small sound and eased the veil away from her face. Melisande saw with compassion that the woman’s heart-shaped face had a gaping fissure running from her nose to upper lip, as though a hot knife had sliced through her. She was still contemplating the obvious incompleteness of the underlying bony structure, picturing the arrangement of the bones and tissue, when Airlie spoke gently.
“A soul does not forget so easily, does it though, my lady? And a kiss from such a devil gives more than takes away.”
Melisande was curious. “You believe your power comes from this?” she indicated the ruin of the woman’s face and shook her head. “No, this is simply a rent of flesh and bone and could be spliced, if you so wished.”
“I do not wish it,” said Airlie plainly. “This is who I am. I have had long enough in this life to become accustomed to it.”
“And yet, you like me, are still seeking mastery of yourself.”
Airlie slowly nodded her agreement, “Wise words that suit you now. But the pomegranate of the High Priestess is the fruit of abundant love or death. The path of water fills two cups that nourish each other and still overflow. It is essential to remain clearly aware of both your current path and your greater purpose. So, my lady, what are we here to arrange together?”
Melisande turned the final card that lay between them.
Death.
Airlie sighed. “The goddess will ask for sacrifice if you would take a life. Both cups must remain filled. Are you prepared to pay what she demands, because payment will cost more than coin?”
* * *
Willie had amused himself by whittling a horse for his young son Archie out of a fallen branch. By the time he had finished, Melisande had been gone long enough for his stomach to begin asking if hedgehog tasted anything like chicken. Before he had an opportunity to find out, Melisande returned. He caught the look she exchanged with Rodrigues and Heughan, meeting the eyes of both in turn. Willie watched her closely but he couldn’t see any discernible change in her features, and yet suddenly, Rodrigues was clasping hands to the elbows with the gypsy men, muscling Heughan away from the pillion, shouting at Willie and the rest to look lively. Willie risked a sneaky, shy look at the drabarni watching them from the front of her wagon. She tipped her head quizzically like the rest of the corbies in the woods, and he could have sworn she winked at him. He rammed his hat onto his head and hopped up smartly onto his pony. “Is that it then?” he asked Heughan. “What are we doing?”