The Fool's Mirror

by Alex Dylan

  Melisande met his smirking eyes as he stood up again and tried to keep her expression as blank as possible.

  “Although, from what I overheard, and you will pardon me for the sin of eavesdropping,” he said, “it would appear that the Lady Melisande might soon acquire a new title, which would greatly assist in ending my confusion.”

  This time Melisande couldn’t keep the sneer from her face. Mark chuckled darkly.

  “Lady Phillice, perhaps you can provide a hint as to the identity of Lady Melisande’s paramour, as I believe the lady herself is too shy to speak out.”

  Ruth harrumphed in disbelief and Lettice watched Melisande with wary eyes.

  Phillice simpered, “Oh sir, it is nothing to concern yourself with, just the amusement of we ladies, but you must surely know the young gentleman who danced with Lady Melisande when you were last here, before all the trouble with…” she tailed off as Lettice turned a deathly shade of pale.

  “Oh dear,” she said, flustered, and put her fingertips over her mouth to cover it. “I have spoken too rashly. Your pardon.”

  “What’s that, what’s that?” pestered Ross, drawing himself into the conversation.

  Phillice looked anxiously at the inquisitive Ross; then at Melisande, whose eyes were flashing warningly; then at Lettice, who seemed to be deciding whether to cry or scowl; and back to Mark A’Court, who looked openly curious.

  Mark bowed to the ladies and returned to his seat next to Ross. “Nothing of consequence. What about this big black stallion, Middlemore? One of Markham’s Arab bred, I’d wager, if I’m any judge of horseflesh. What do you think of his merits as a hunter?”

  Suitably distracted, the men began again to discuss the various horses parading in the ring in front of them.

  Melisande breathed a small sigh of relief to herself but Phillice hadn’t quite finished causing damage. “Ladies, we should not dwell on the deaths of traitors and criminals,” she hissed at them in a loud whisper. “We did what we could. I know Master Nortbie pleaded most eloquently; such a shame he couldn’t save your apprentice, Mistress.”

  Lettice barely stifled a hiccoughing sob and Ruth looked sharply at her. “Pull yourself together, girl.” Phillice worried a thumbnail, baffled as to why everyone seemed suddenly upset. She looked helplessly at Melisande, who glared back at her with thunderclouds in her eyes. Phillice started to well-up, “Oh Mele, don’t you be cross with me too! I thought you liked Master Corwin and he you. I’m doing my best; it’s just that everyone expects so much from me. I wish you’d make me one of your special tisanes, I feel like I have such a headache coming on.”

  All eyes turned to Melisande. Ruth was regarding her suspiciously, and Melisande could see she was itching to ask questions about the brewing of potions. Lettice had perked up at the mention of Heughan but for some reason, was now suffused with anger and giving Melisande a look that she instantly recognised as pure jealousy. Phillice was beseeching her with little-girl round eyes, knowing full well she only had to turn on the tears to get Ross’s full attention. Melisande felt stifled with their selfishness.

  “I’ve got a headache myself and I’m going back to the Castle,” she snapped, rising from her seat. Sorcha jumped up too, at her lady’s side in attentive readiness. Phillice sniffed angrily, suddenly annoyed that she was the only one who didn’t have a personal lady’s maid.

  “And who’s supposed to attend me if you leave? Can’t your girl stay here with me?”

  Melisande’s reply was stilted, “Sorcha is my lady’s maid and she tends to my needs. You should find your own household staff, Phillice, not try to poach mine.” She flicked her skirts behind her, preparing to leave.

  “Lady Middlemore,” said Ruth, causing Melisande to look back over her shoulder only to see that Ruth was addressing Phillice. “My maid and I would be pleased to attend you and see you appropriately chaperoned.” Phillice beamed delightedly but Ruth hadn’t finished. “You should try to secure your own reliable servants, of course, not simply accept those who have been poorly trained and have ideas above their station. I am surprised that these matters haven’t been addressed before now; it seems so remiss. Although not my place to say so, begging your ladyship’s pardon.”

  Melisande stiffened.

  Ruth smiled toothily and said to Phillice, “However, it would seem that some people have their own affairs to attend to and are too busy to be bothered with anyone but themselves.”

  Don’t speak, don’t say a word, Melisande told herself. Just put one foot in front of another and keep moving. She couldn’t help herself. She rounded on Phillice and Ruth and dropped a deep curtsey.

  “I do beg your pardon if I have offended,” she addressed herself to Phillice with excessive politeness. “Lady or no, as chatelaine there are duties that I need to attend to.”

  “Leave Jon O’ the Ward to see to supper. Surely, you don’t need to make any more conserves or pickled preserves or whatever it is you’ve been bothering with? There can’t be a pot in the whole Castle you haven’t filled up this last week. Anyone would think you were expecting a siege.”

  “There are some things that I have to take responsibility for myself and some people who have genuine need of me.”

  “I need you,” said Phillice quietly with a pout to Melisande’s proud, straight back.

  “No, Phillice. You don’t need me. You need someone to make you feel as if you are Lady Middlemore. Very well. Sorcha, you will attend to Lady Phillice’s needs. Remain here with Lady Middlemore.”

  “Oh, but you can’t do that! Who will chaperone you?” Phillice began, slightly scandalised. “You must find a man to escort you through the crowds. Perhaps Master Nortbie?”

  “I need no chaperone, and I certainly don’t need to borrow someone else’s husband,” Melisande said, whipping about and stalking away. No one moved to stop her.

  Mark A’Court leaned sideways in his chair and watched Melisande picking her way through the crowd, which shifted and swallowed her. He smiled thoughtfully.

  By the time the fair was ending and dusk was settling onto the low meadows beyond the sally-port, Willie found himself having a hard time keeping control of so many horses. These weren’t the well-trained little hobbies that the reivers used, accustomed to each other’s familiar smell. These were sharp little ponies with a mite too many brains and more teeth than he felt easy with. He’d already smacked one or two noses as they’d tried to nip him. Cheeky buggers, he thought, outraged, outstaring one especially bold piebald, which had had the good sense to look away; eventually. “Bloody Roddy,” he muttered under his breath, pushing yet more horse rumps out of the way, avoiding surreptitious kicks and having his toes trodden on. “Where the hell are you, yer useless dago, when a man needs you?”

  * * *

  Heughan made his way up the dark twisting stairs, his shoulders brushing on the rough sandstone. He remembered the way clearly; the smell of beeswax candles, the small spiral of light above him growing with each step like a flower opening.

  He tasted the falling chill of night in the air. Even through his gloves, the stones leached the heat from him as he touched their cold dampness in turn. These walls have dripped with blood, he thought as he climbed. His mind wandered and he marvelled at the skill of the Norman builders.

  ‘We all learnt from them’; a saying from his childhood. His mother had been of Norman blood, he had always known it. Other women and even men had held their tongues, and some their breath, in her presence. Even in the dirt-straw days of the farmstead, she had a grace and certainly a beauty that he knew marked her out as special.

  He slowed his climb as he came towards the landing, when he heard the murmur of voices which he hadn’t expected; strong insistent voices. It worried him. Like the cry of a tiny infant, this was pain not hunger.

  He drew back his cloak, took off his gloves and stowed them. Limbering his shoulders, he loosened his sword just a little as he reached the hidden door, pressing himself against the wall in the s
hadow. The heavy velvet curtain was drawn but light and sound came bleeding through the edges. Even out on the dank staircase, he could hear the fire crackling as though unusually ablaze, though the evening was not yet especially cold.

  “Leave me. For your own sake, leave me now,” he heard Melisande say in a strong, barely concealed whisper.

  “For my sake? I’m not the one in danger, my girl,” replied the dark honeyed baritone of none other than Rodrigues. “You should have left hours ago. Come, come quickly, and I may yet save you,” he said.

  “Not anymore, Don Rodrigues. I’m all grown up now. I know you have noticed,” she said archly. “I am my own woman now. It is for you to be mindful of me, Brother.”

  Heughan was desperate to stretch, he hated hiding behind curtains unable to move, even now as a grown man with a sword in his hand, but he was frozen, listening intently.

  Rodrigues shifted uncomfortably; his reivers called him ‘brother’ but Melisande meant it differently and they both knew it. He looked around, mentally checking his daggers.

  “Your men call you ‘El Diablo’, do you know that? What is it you call yourself?”

  Melisande stood framed by the fireplace, staring at Rodrigues. Her cards were laid out on the table in front of her. She could sense his unease.

  “Don Rodrigues do Córdoba, is it? I see you in the cards, El Diablo. I see your many shapes; The Six of Pentacles, The Master who dominates others, The Devil who holds the reins of power, The Hierophant who serves the Church. Perhaps I can call you as I first knew you?”

  Rodrigues looked at her gently. He smiled.

  “Yes, my old Brother Vincent, it is you. I want it to be you.”

  Rodrigues slumped into a chair beside the memory of his young Melisande, a lithe bud of a girl, bright and challenging all these years. Of course she knew, he mused. She could read the cards, the stars and men’s hearts. Of course she knew.

  “I have been waiting for you for such a long time. Yet always instead you send Heughan, as though I wasn’t going to realise your substitution. Does he even know how you used him? You taught Heughan our song, the one you wrote just for me. You sent him to me with tuberoses and after all these years of secrecy, you revealed yourself completely. Why?”

  “I wanted you to know, my darling,” he said carefully, “but it didn’t always seem so pressing. There were occasions when I thought you suspected. I have always been so tempted by you and yet I restrained myself. Why encourage danger when I could see you were safe and I had you near me?”

  “You left me in Carcassonne; a mere child,” she hissed back.

  “Yet old enough in the ways of the world to keep things hidden from me even then. We would both be dead this long time if we had stayed together. I have killed many men to assuage my guilt at leaving you, believe me.”

  “In the service of your god, more like,” she said vehemently.

  “Sometimes the two are the same. When God brought us to this place together, I realised it was a chance for redemption. I watched over you, even though you never knew. I took action when it was needed to protect you, when word reached me of how you had been ill-treated…”

  Melisande made no immediate reply. Heughan wanted to look around the curtain and read the expression on her face, but he knew they would see his shape in the curtain. He stayed back against the wall, listening hard.

  “You knew?” Melisande asked huskily. “You killed Walter?”

  “Indirectly, yes,” admitted Rodrigues. “I dropped a hint in the right ear, an Armstrong ear. Walter was not the man I would have chosen for you, but when you became pregnant by him, I told myself that it was God’s will and that my penance should be to accept it.”

  “Walter used me like a whore,” snapped Melisande, “but nothing he did would ever have put a babe in my belly.”

  “I know,” said Rodrigues quietly. “It was only afterwards that I learned the truth from Sally. When I found out how Ross had abused you, invoked droit de Seigneur…”

  “Do not speak of it,” Melisande snapped. “You know nothing of truth. You pretend to be my protector but you persecute me just the same as the others. You believe the cloaked lies that your masters pass you, and you in your turn feed to others.”

  “God has led me back to you and kept us alive this far,” he replied. “I have to believe there’s a reason for that.”

  “Did your god tell you to silence Kerr and kill Hamish? Is there a reason for that also?”

  “Hush, girl. What are you talking about?”

  “You thought you could hide him amongst all the dead reivers? Smuggling deceit is what you do so well, is it not, Brother? But you took me for granted again; your weakness is ignoring the common world, and especially when women are involved. That’s your true blind side, Vincent.”

  He said nothing.

  “You asked me to clean up the dead for your fake Christian burial, to save their souls. Did you concern yourself with Hamish’s soul as you smothered him and stuck him between the ribs?”

  “Quiet, girl! You know nothing of this.”

  “I know everything,” she continued unabashed. “Death never hides from me. I can read it as if I were reading the cards. I saw the mark of your ring on his face, that big ruby you always wear. Hamish was knifed by an assassin’s blade. I foretold his death to Heughan. Ten of Swords. The man betrayed. Stabbed in the back. That was you. Or did you have Heughan carry out your orders?”

  She recoiled at his expression.

  “You let Heughan blame me. He nearly killed me! All the time you knew the truth but you would not defend me. Isn’t that what really happened with my father? You betrayed him to the Inquisition when he wouldn’t give you what you wanted. Now you have come to tell me that we have turned the last bend in the winding road, we have reached the end, have we? Are you to kill me too?” she asked.

  “I came only to return to you what belongs to you. I meant it when I said these would be damning evidence if they fell into the wrong hands. Your herbs, your almanack, your mould,” he apologised, producing them one by one and placing them on the table. “This though, Mark A’Court wants,” Rodrigues said quietly, producing her book from under his cloak. “Whatever it is, I want to give it to him, in return for your safety. That’s all I care about.”

  “Lies!” she hurled at him. “You came back for the gold. Adam Routledge gave me the last piece of the puzzle. Now I see all your secrets laid bare. When Adam started digging up gold, he brought it to you. You remembered the shipwreck from many years ago. You’ve always been greedy. That’s the real reason you’re here. You had to be certain whether I’d found anything on Hamish or if Adam had talked.”

  “Oh my little meddlesome Melisande! You never could resist a mystery, could you?” said Rodrigues sympathetically. “How many times over the years in one guise or another have I tried to warn you that curiosity would kill you? I meant Hamish to disappear into the ground, just one more victim, unremarked amongst the rest. You bring calamities down upon yourself by interfering with things you don’t have the capacity to understand. I’m here because of the promises I need to keep. And first among those is a holy vow to protect you…”

  “You don’t protect anyone but yourself. The rest of us are just things to be traded. You’ll keep on buying and selling until you get what you want.” She rolled her head back and brushed away angry tears.

  “The only thing that I have ever wanted was peace for us, for all of us. You have been in grave danger for many months now. A message went astray, it was whispered into the wrong ears it seems. Someone has misinterpreted it, and you have become the object of their curiosity.”

  “What message?” Melisande asked.

  “A message concerning the transference of power. It’s been mistaken to mean a tangible object, possibly a book that Cecil’s spy, Doctor Dee, was searching for, possibly some other lost treasure. If there is no gold, then the cost we have to pay is this book, which you must give up to me.”

  “N
ever. I’d destroy it first!” replied Melisande in that defiant tone Heughan knew well. “My father’s life’s work is in there.”

  “This is the codex? This really is the ‘Key of Solomon’?” Rodrigues held the book at arm’s length, suddenly wary. He looked at it with alternate reverence and suspicion, as a man would look at a snake poised to strike. He dropped it to the table, and she grabbed at it immediately. She gathered up her cards and reunited them with her journal, hugging them all close.

  “Give me the book, Melisande. You cannot possess it. Destroying it will surely condemn you; not owning it will save you,” menaced Rodrigues.

  Heughan pricked his ears. It wasn’t a tone of voice he often heard Rodrigues use. He was clearly annoyed. And afraid. Heughan heard his fear in the undercurrent.

  “Melisande, tell me the truth…” Rodrigues hesitated, sweating. He sucked at the air, trying to draw some strength from it, as though he could breathe into himself something other than rancour. It was not enough for him. The fight went out of him. He pleaded with Melisande. “Tell me how to use the necronomicon. Let me save you. Let me use it to save you.”

  She stifled a sob. Her eyes snapped shut, narrowed to the thin crack of light that escapes from under the dark dungeon tunnel when the door is slammed shut.

  She rounded on him, hissing, “It’s not yours to take. Only I understand it. You cannot hope to control its power, you hypocrite.”

  “I don’t need its power, it’s your heritage, not mine. I swore an oath to your father, Josef, to watch out for you. I have done my duty by him,” Rodrigues winced.

  “Done your duty,” mimicked Melisande in mocking tones. “I trusted you, Vincent, I loved you and yet you abandoned me to destiny.”

  “I couldn’t stay with you, my darling girl. I had nothing to offer you. I had made my vows. I couldn’t ask you to live a lie.”

  “Yet here we are anyway! I might have made you many things, but you would never have needed to become a coward.”

  “Yes, I would. I sold my soul to save you, Melisande. I thought that you would be safe if I put as much distance as possible between us. So I ran. And the Hounds of God chased me down anyway and tortured me. God help me, Mele, I resisted as long as I could, even when they pushed my face into the flames…”