Mesmerized

by Candace Camp

  Alys took the small gold cross on a chain from around her own neck and hung it around Elwena’s. She removed her wedding band and placed it on Elwena’s finger, along with two other of her rings. Then she handed the woman the cunningly carved rosary. It cost her a pang to give it up, for it was beautiful, and she had brought it with her from her father’s house, so it in no way had anything to do with her husband. She had prayed upon it many a time, her fingers rubbing over the engraved beads until it was a wonder there were any pictures left. But it was her prized possession, and nothing would convince Sir Raymond that her body had been found as the presence of the rosary with it would. Besides, she knew, Elwena would have far more need of it as she lay dying than Alys would, running away.

  She put it in Elwena’s hand, and Elwena’s fingers closed around it, instinctively rubbing the sacred gold beads. Alys reached inside her loose shift and untied the leather thong she wore there around her waist and pulled it out of her clothing. From the thong dangled a small, engraved gold ring, a token given her months ago by Sir John, which she had worn daily against her skin, a secret reminder of him and of their love. Smiling a little, she caressed the trinket, then slipped it on her finger in place of her wedding band.

  Elwena pulled out a small leather pouch and handed it to Alys. “Take this. It is for the boy. Everything I have saved for him.”

  Alys nodded. It was heavy for its size, and it clinked with the sound of coins. She put it in the sack along with the rest of her possessions.

  “ Put the casket on the far wall, my lady, far from me.”

  Alys was puzzled, but she did as the woman asked. As she had worked, John had stripped the outer tunic from the soldier he had killed. Though stained with the man’s blood, it carried the emblem of Surton’s men and would allow them to pass whoever they might meet outside with much less problem.

  “Put your tunic on him,” Elwena said. Her voice was growing weaker. “And change your sword with his.”

  “He’s one of their own,” Sir John pointed out, though he did as she bade, struggling to get the tunicon the dead body and buckling his own sword belt around him. “They will know him.”

  “I will take care of his face,” Elwena replied grittily.

  “There won’t be enough bodies here. They’re bound to wonder what happened to the other two,” Alys said.

  Elwena shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Many will tell them I’m a witch, for there are a number who believe it.” She flashed a smile reminiscent of her old cocky grin. “I didn’t discourage it. They will probably think I flew from the window. It doesn’t matter what they think or make up to explain it, as long as they trumpet it around that the two of you are dead. And they will. It will be a matter of pride for them to have defeated Sir John and to have killed Sir Raymond’s wife.”

  “She’s right. They will want to believe that you and I are dead, and that makes it easy to dismiss whatever doubts they have. Come, my love, we must go. The fire is growing,” he said.

  He was right. The air was becoming thicker with smoke, its acrid scent tickling her throat, and one could feel the heat near the door. John laid his sword beside his enemy and picked up the other man’s weapon. Alys picked up her sack.

  Elwena hugged her son to her for a long moment, then spoke quietly and firmly to him. He nodded solemnly, tears streaming down his face, and Elwena hugged him again and kissed him. Alys came overand took his hand, and he stepped away from his mother.

  Alys bent down to the other woman and handed Elwena her own dagger. She could not leave the woman without some protection, and Elwena’s dagger had snapped off in the arm of the soldier. Elwena’s fingers gripped the hilt, and she offered Alys a small smile.

  “Take the candle,” Elwena said, nodding toward the stool. “’Tis dark in there.”

  Lighting the candle was a difficulty, for there was no lit candle or burning fire in the room. But John sheathed his sword and picked up one of the longer rushes and carefully slid it between the wooden door and its frame, low to the ground, so that it reached the outer side of the door and caught the flame burning there. Then he pulled it back with even greater care and dipped it into the bowl, lighting the crude candle. He turned to Elwena.

  “We are ready.”

  “See that stone?” Elwena pointed to the wall across the room from her. “The fifth one up from the floor? It is smaller than the others. Pull it out.”

  John did as she said, edging his fingers into the cracks around the rock and wiggling it out. To his surprise, it came easily, and inside the hole was a lever. He reached in and turned it, and there was a click.

  “Now push the wall to your left—low—and it will go out. Just put the rock back in its place and whenyou get on the stairs, shove the door closed. No one will know the door’s there.”

  He reached down and pushed, and, amazingly, the heavy stone slid back and to the side, leaving them a small opening. He replaced the small rock in its hole, covering the lever. Then he crawled through the opening, finding a set of stairs curving downward, so narrow that his shoulders brushed both sides.

  Alys turned and said, “Goodbye, Elwena.”

  Elwena nodded. “God speed, my lady.”

  Alys guided the boy through the door, then crawled in after him. They slid the door closed and started down the stairs. The light of the candle was little enough in the gloom of the staircase, and they moved carefully down the steps. The stairs seemed to go on forever, an endless, curving path of uneven stone.

  But at last they reached the bottom and stood before the blank stone wall. There was a lever set into this wall, also, and, taking a breath, John lifted it. With a click, the door unlatched, and John inserted his fingers into the crack between the stones and pulled back. The door slid open easily.

  Cautiously, John eased his head out, then the rest of his body. He motioned for Alys and the boy to follow. She did so, clutching Guy’s hand tightly.

  It was still day. It amazed her. It seemed as if so much time had passed that it should have been night. But it was only late afternoon, the sun casting long shadows across the bailey. The scene was chaotic. There were fires dotting the courtyard—sheds burningand stacks of hay, whether set by carelessness or pitch-flame arrows or for sheer perversity, she was not sure. The storage shed had been broken open and the tuns of wine rolled out. Soldiers, obviously having partaken of the contents, staggered around, shouting and laughing boisterously as they carried out other goods from the shed. There were no longer screams around the castle. The battle, it seemed, was over, except above them in the tower.

  There were people about, but they paid no attention to them. John wrapped his hand around Alys’s arm and strode off purposefully, dragging Alys with him as if she were a captive. The boy, his hand firmly in Alys’s skirts, trotted with them. They looked neither to left nor right, and Alys kept her head down.

  They did not pause until they reached the shelter of one of the sheds that lay in front of the castle wall. Protected by the shed on one side and the wall on the other, they stopped and looked around. No one, it seemed, had noticed their progress or, if they had, they had paid no attention to it. With John wearing Surton’s mark, it seemed that no one questioned them.

  “We shall slip along the wall here and out the rear gate,” he whispered to her. “If anyone should stop us, I’ll silence him quick enough. All right?”

  Alys nodded. She looked up at the tower. There was smoke billowing out of the small window. It seemed far too much for the burning door to be creating. And in that instant she knew what Elwena had done. She had said she would take care of the soldier’s face, and now Alys realized that she had meant to burn it. She must have pushed the rushes against the door and set them on fire, and soon the rushes, the pallet, the enemy soldier, all of the room, would have been on fire, everything burning but the stone.

  Alys had not thought of it at the time, but now she saw that Elwena’s black hair would have given her away as the woman who had run acr
oss the great hall, not the lady of the castle who had fought her way up the stairs. She had doubtless decided to set the room ablaze in order to conceal her identity and that of the soldier. Alys shivered at the thought and hoped that the smoke had overcome her, or that Elwena had plunged her own dagger into her heart before the fire took her.

  John nudged Alys, and she nodded. He took off along the wall, moving swiftly through the lengthening shadows. No one stopped them or even seemed to notice them. They reached the door in the wall, standing wide open. No one guarded it, and they slipped through it and out into the field beyond. They ran then, John picking up the boy and carrying him.

  They ran across the field and into the woods beyond, escaping to a new life.

  17

  Slowly the scene disintegrated, as if turning into smoke, and once more Stephen and Olivia were standing beside a bed, the golden rosary between their locked hands.

  Dazed, Olivia lifted her eyes from their joined hands and looked at Stephen. He was staring at her with the same sort of amazement as she was certain was on her face.

  “Did you—”

  “Was that—”

  They spoke at once and stopped together. Olivia let out a shaky little chuckle. She sat down on the chair behind her, feeling rather weak.

  “Are you all right?” Stephen bent over her solicitously.

  “I—I’m not sure. Did we just see what it seemed we saw?”

  “We can scarcely deny it. The battle…the flight…my God.”

  He straightened up, shoving his hands back through his hair in a familiar gesture. “They did not die.”

  “No. Do you suppose he never knew it? Sir Raymond, I mean. Do you think he believed them dead and so didn’t hunt for them, as they hoped? He did marry twice again after that, though from what was said about him, I don’t suppose that the thought of bigamy would have deterred him from doing what he wanted to.”

  “No. I imagine not. And what an odd alliance—Lady Alys and his mistress.”

  “She sacrificed herself to save her child. She knew it was his only chance.” Tears swam in her eyes. “It must have been a horrible death. I cannot imagine how she got the courage to set the rushes on fire, knowing the pain it would bring to her.”

  “That was why she wanted Alys to put the casket on the other side of the room, so the fire would not spread to it. She must have scraped all the rushes together close to her and that soldier. Otherwise, the heat would have damaged the box and its contents—”

  “But the rosary—it was in her hand—it must have been the center of the fire—and it survived intact.” Olivia looked down in awe at the rosary, still wrapped around her hand.

  Stephen’s gaze followed hers. “It would take—”

  “A miracle?” Olivia asked, looking up at him.

  So focused were they on the rosary and the past that neither of them heard the door open quietly. In fact neither of them heard a thing until an unearthly voice growled out, “Bitch! Whoremonger!”

  Before Stephen could turn, something thudded against his back, and he went down hard onto his knees. Olivia jumped to her feet, gazing in horror into the contorted face of the woman she knew as Irina Valenskaya.

  Only it was not Irina Valenskaya anymore, but a strange distortion of her, her height, her clothes, her hair, her face—but with the ice-cold eyes of a stranger.

  And Stephen, on his knees, had the hilt of the knife she had plunged into him sticking out of his back.

  Olivia screamed. In the next instant, Irina was on her. She grabbed Olivia by the shoulders and shoved her hard toward the open door to the secret room. Olivia staggered and fell, and then Irina was on her, her hands around Olivia’s throat, choking her. Olivia struck out with her clenched fist, the rosary still wrapped around it, and connected with the woman’s cheek. Irina’s hold loosened, and Olivia slid back, struggling to get away from the woman’s clutching hands.

  She managed to get onto her knees, but then Irina slammed into her again, knocking her down. They rolled across the floor, kicking and hitting and scratching.

  Stephen, the knife still in his back, managed to get to his feet and stagger across the floor to them. He reached down and grabbed Irina around the waist, pulling her off Olivia. Olivia struggled to her feet as Irina, insanely strong, turned and hit Stephen with all her force in the stomach. He staggered back, and she wrenched herself away from him. Irina grabbed the golden casket from the bed and slammed it into the side of Stephen’s head. He staggered sideways and went down. Irina, still holding the casket, charged at Olivia again. She slammed into her, and the two of them tumbled backward into the small inner room. The casket fell from her arms, and the contents spilled out over the floor.

  “Mine!” Irina roared in a harsh, deep voice, the same voice that had rushed out of Howard Babington days before. “Bitch! I will have what’s mine!”

  She straddled Olivia, her hands digging into her throat, painfully strong. Olivia struggled, her hands around the other woman’s wrists, trying in vain to pull them away. She could not breathe. The darkness seemed to swirl around her, a harsh buzzing filling the air. She gripped the rosary, its beads cutting into her hands.

  And then suddenly power rose up inside her, filling her with a strength she had never known. She smashed her fist once, twice, hard against the other woman’s throat. Irina’s hold loosened, and Olivia rolled hard to the right, sending Irina toppling to the side.

  “I am not yours!” Olivia cried, crawling to her feet. Her hand touched metal and closed around it. It was the hilt of a dagger, and it felt familiar in her hand. “For all eternity, I do not belong to you!”

  Olivia surged up, her arm swinging forward just as Irina leaped at her. The dagger sank into Irina’s chest. Surprise flashed across Irina’s face, and a fierce, primitive shriek burst from her mouth. The evil of centuries past burned out of her eyes at Olivia and then was gone. Irina collapsed on the floor.

  Olivia stood for a moment, staring down at her foe, stunned.

  “Stephen…” She broke from her trance and started out of the room.

  The outer door burst open, and Rafe’s voice shouted, “Stephen? Olivia? Who screamed? What the devil happened to the footman out here? He’s knocked out.” His footsteps advanced into the room. “Good God! Stephen!”

  He hurried toward his friend, unconscious on the floor. Then he looked up and saw Olivia walking toward him, a blood-stained dagger in her hand. Behind her, on the floor lay Irina. He gaped at her.

  “Stephen…help him.” Olivia managed to say, then fainted away at Rafe’s feet.

  When Olivia came out of her faint, she opened her eyes to see Belinda hovering over her. “Belinda?”

  “Oh, thank goodness!”

  Olivia sat up slowly, feeling a little dizzy. She was lying on her own bed. “How did I get here?”

  “Rafe carried you,” Belinda answered. “He sent for me to look after you, and he went back to stay with Stephen.”

  “Stephen!” Olivia gasped and swung her feet off the bed, about to stand up. “Where is he? Is he—”

  “He’s alive,” Belinda assured her quickly. “We sent for the doctor. Rafe had some of the footmen carry him to his bed. He—he’s still unconscious.”

  “I must go to him.”

  “No. Wait. You are too weak,” Belinda protested.

  Olivia ignored her, getting out of bed. “I am fine. I fainted, that’s all.”

  “But you should rest—” A single look from Olivia silenced her, and she followed Olivia out the door.

  Olivia strode down the hallway and into Stephen’s room. She stopped just inside the door at the sight of him. His eyes were closed, and his face was as pale as the sheets. Her heart hammered in her chest. She went closer to the bed, looking across it to Rafe.

  He shook his head at her, saying, “He hasn’t awakened yet. It looks like he got quite a blow to the head.” He gestured toward the side of Stephen’s face, where bruises were beginning to form on his cheek.<
br />
  “I bandaged him up,” Rafe went on. “You get pretty good at that kind of thing out in the mountains, where there’s no doctor around. The blood stopped flowing, at least.”

  Lady St. Leger sat on the other side of the bed, looking pale and worried. Rafe pulled up another chair for Olivia, and she sat down, her eyes fixed on Stephen.

  The minutes passed by at a nerve-racking slow pace. At last the doctor came and shooed everyone but Rafe out of the room, saying that he might need the other man’s help. The constable arrived, as well, and took Olivia into another room to ask her a seemingly endless number of questions. She answered abstractedly, her mind on Stephen and what was going on in his room.

  When at last she was able to return to his side, she found the doctor gone and Stephen still sleeping in his bed. Lady St. Leger, who was once again seated beside his bed, said, “Dr. Hartfield patched him up. He said he should be all right. By some miracle, the blade apparently missed both his heart and his lungs.”

  “Thank God.”

  “He gave him laudanum for the pain.”

  Stephen continued to sleep through the evening and into the night, whether from the concussion he had received or from the laudanum, Olivia was not sure. She could not leave his bedside. What if he were to die from this? She did not think she could bear to live if he did.

  It was in the pale light of dawn that Stephen finally stirred, his head rolling from one side to the other on his pillow.

  Olivia, watching him, leaned forward hopefully. She put her hand over his where it lay on the counterpane and whispered, “Stephen…my love…”

  She recalled then that his mother was also in the room, and she glanced across the bed. Lady St. Leger was asleep, her head lolling against the wing of the chair.