‘You know your simples, demoiselle. What is this?’
‘It is a plant named dwale,’ she answered, faint distaste in her face. Abruptly she started for the vanished gateway, catching up her skirts in one hand as she strode through the impeding weeds and he followed, puzzling over this odd girl's unfriendliness which yet caused him no offence. Few women found him unattractive; the hot south had taught him that. And her attitude was entirely impersonal.
She checked suddenly and lifted her head like a deer. A moment later he too heard the faint squeaking of high small voices somewhere within the bailey. Then round the corner of a great bramble-thicket came first one little boy and then another, picking blackberries and chattering quietly while he dropped them into a wide basket the other carried. The elder glanced apprehensively about him as though he expected Reginald de Warby's malignant ghost to take him by the scruff at any moment. He could not miss Hélie's black tunic and the girl's white wimple, and dropped his basket with a yelp to cross himself.
The younger child was of tougher material. He eyed man and girl, a knowing grin lighted his alert purple-smeared face, and he nudged his palsied companion with a sharp elbow and squeaked something in his ear that brought the colour back to his face with a copy of the knowing grin. Hélie stifled a heart-felt curse. The cloak thrown over his arm and the deplorable state of the lady's wimple merely corroborated the only conclusion that could be drawn from their presence together in this secret place. Neither menaces nor bribes would avail to close such youthful mouths on so succulent a scandal, and to proffer either would make matters worse. They were bad enough; these were no serf-brats, but from the manor; both had shoes on their feet, and the younger wore a tunic of good blue cloth and had been washed within the week.
Durande de Vallaroy was regarding the children grimly, her lips compressed with unuttered dislike that startled Hélie, who still cherished the common masculine delusion that all women sentimentally doted on all brats. Then he saw that her gaze was directed at the younger, and after a second look at that urchin he decided that she was amply justified. He was a handsome, sturdy child, very fair, and not above seven years old, but his bright blue eyes were agleam with malicious triumph, and the depth of his instant detestation surprised Hélie. It was the due of a well-tried adult foe.
The boy put his feet together and his hands behind his back in a parody of good manners, and said demurely, 'I am sorry I interrupted you, my lady.' The older child opened his mouth, closed it, flushed scarlet and squatted to gather up the fallen fruit, glancing over his shoulder in scared fascination.
Durande de Vallaroy ignored the impertinence. 'What have you been eating, Roger?’ she demanded sharply.
Startled, he scrubbed the back of a nearly-black paw across his purple mouth. 'Only blackberries,’ he answered defensively. ‘Why not?’ Then he looked past her at the tall plants of dwale with their shining black fruit, and his face lighted with elemental greed. The girl caught her breath, suddenly rigid.
'Eat blackberries until they ooze from your ears if you wish,’ she said harshly, 'but do not touch these fruits!’
‘They are not your cherries, lady,’ the brat coolly pointed out.
Hélie took a step forward, but a hand on his arm halted him. The girl was in deadly earnest, still disregarding his insolence. ‘They are not cherries. If you eat them they will poison you. Understand?’
‘Have you put a spell on them, lady?’
For all his size Hélie could move very quickly, and by his manner the brat had never known chastisement. Until all chance of escape was past he made no move to avoid retribution, and then effectively ensured that it reached him by snapping like a fox-whelp at Hélie’s hand with sharp little teeth. He kicked and pummelled and screamed in fury, but Hélie set his foot on a conveniently-placed stone, swung him across his bent knee, twitched up his tunic-skirt and applied the flat of a large hard hand vigorously and repeatedly to his bare hinder end until it was scarlet as fire and his own palm felt scorched.
Hélie, righteously satisfied, hoisted the urchin up by the slack of his garment and set him on his feet, snarling through tears of rage and humiliation. If he had not noticeably learned deference to his superiors, some caution in offence had been inculcated in him, because he stood still and uttered no word of his obvious opinions.
‘Hear me, whelp! This time I have been lenient, but if ever you dare offer a lady insolence again I will lay my belt about you. You understand?'
The whelp gulped and nodded, eyeing him and the girl with purest malevolence. Hélie dispassionately clouted his tender tail.
‘Mend your manners! Now ask the lady's pardon!'
He clenched his fists, realized that he had no alternative and said without contrition, ‘I ask your pardon, lady.'
Hélie loosed him, and he backed to the bramble-patch, his face distorted by a malignant wrath that seemed oddly familiar and unchildlike. Understanding came to Hélie, and remembrance of an old scandal. The older child, who had crouched stiff with fright over his blackberries, snatched up his basket and scuttled away, hiccuping sobs, but the intransigent whelp retreated to a reasonably safe distance and snarled at them.
‘If my father was not dead he would kill you!' he spat. ‘And she is a witch!' He fled on the last word, vanishing beyond the brambles.
Hélie raised an inquiring tawny eyebrow. ‘Robert's bastard?'
‘Yes. An unmistakable resemblance.'
‘Physical and moral. I should apologize for doing violence in your presence, demoiselle.'
‘I have longed to warm his rump these last two years!' she declared emphatically.
‘It needed warming.'
‘Robert would not suffer anyone to correct him. He was proud of his spirit.'
‘Saw himself renewed in him,' Hélie commented dryly. ‘Proud indeed, if he acknowledged one stray bastard out of the crop he sowed. The mother?'
‘She was once his mother's tirewoman. His favourite leman. He was even faithful to her after his fashion; wherever else he pleasured himself, he always returned to her. He gave her the hut by the gateway; no concealment.'
And no regard for his betrothed wife's dignity, Hélie reflected. His brows knitted as he pursued an elusive memory connected with the gateway, and then cleared. Blue cloth, of course, of the kind often given to upper servants as their Christmas livery; the woman's gown and the boy's tunic had been made from the one piece. ‘A buxom high-coloured wench with a bold bearing?'
‘You saw her?'
‘As we rode out.’ He hesitated, for she had troubles enough to weigh on her, but it would be no kindness to withhold so grave a warning. ‘She made the sign of the Evil Eye against you.' He raised his clenched right hand with first and little fingers out-thrust.
The girl nodded unmoved. 'She claims I destroyed Robert by witchcraft.'
He gaped in horror and outrage. 'She dares utter this monstrous slander?' he exclaimed. 'Openly—without penalty?'
‘I do not think her talk has blown to authority's ears, but it is the servants' gossip,' she answered coolly.
He frowned, perturbed. Her very calmness, her matter-of-fact acceptance of life's harsh usage, troubled him deeply. Most girls would have railed and protested innocence, broken down in tearful wailing, implored of him knightly championship, and he would have fled as from the embraces of a succubus. He had been trapped once in that coil. This girl expected nothing of him, and truth shone like a light in her.
'I heard his death came suddenly, but surely—?' he began slowly, and let the question fall under the steady gaze of her dark eyes.
'Suddenly and strangely, of a sickness none had seen before.'
'Tell me.'
'It came on him at night, soon after he had gone to his bed. First he vomited, and then fell into red fever, crazed and raving and fighting foes only he could see. Then his throat closed, and he fell into a stupor and died before dawn. Most odd of all, his eyes turned black.'
'Black?'
&n
bsp; 'The pupil gaped to swallow all the blue.'
Hélie visualized that nightmare in the crowded bower of Warby, the dying man raving and threshing on his bed, the wavering candlelight and the half-dressed throng, distracted women scurrying and helpless men muttering as the strange sickness worked its will. Horror tingled down his spine, and he crossed himself, automatically murmuring, 'God rest him.' Then he shook himself back to the present moment and asked pertinently, 'What foes did he fight?'
'All who conspired to hold him from my dowry,' she answered dryly. 'My cousin and his father and myself, for the most part. There was little sense to it; threats and ranting and triumph.' She grimaced.
Enough, mouthed over and distorted by gossip, to furnish that evil accusation. 'Demoiselle,' Hélie said soberly, 'that woman must be silenced.'
'The power rests with Hermeline, who is more apt to believe her,' she replied with brutal truth.
He briefly considered speaking a few hard words himself to the woman, and then decided that, since he possessed no authority in Warby to enforce his will, he would only make matters worse. The less heed paid to her talk the better for her victim. Such noxious gossip could destroy any chance of a worthy marriage, force her into a convent, perhaps even bring her within reach of the King's justice, and yet her innocence was patent to anyone who spent half an hour in her company. He thrust his sun-bleached tawny hair impatiently back from his brow. 'At least you go from Warby next week,' he growled, finding the only mitigation of her state.
'In four days,' she amended. ‘But why concern yourself so for me, my lord?'
'No one else seems to,' he retorted, as brutally truthful as she had been. He was a fool, he knew, and this was no coil of his to meddle in, but every decent instinct of his manhood impelled the offer from his tongue, almost against his will. 'Demoiselle, if you need a man's aid, call on me.'
She did not overwhelm him with professions of gratitude. The wariness returned to her eyes, and for a moment she surveyed him silently. 'Because there is no one else?' she asked coolly. 'I thank you, my lord.'
If she stood arraigned before King John's self she would call on no man for succour, he knew; life had taught her to trust none. Pity warred briefly in him with spurned pride and won. 'Remember it,' he said stiffly, 'if you need a champion.'
Her dark eyes narrowed slightly, and suddenly she grinned like a lad. 'As you proved yourself by young Roger's hinder end? A memory I shall surely cherish, my lord.'
She had strong white teeth and a tiny dimple at the right corner of her mouth, and laughter closed her eyes to glinting slits. He stared like a zany; this was another girl and a stranger. He grinned back.
'I wish it were a nobler deed to remember, but I found a certain ignoble satisfaction in it myself.'
He returned to pick up the cloak he had dropped among the berried plants of dwale, tall and somehow sinister as they advanced among these ill-reputed ruins—but, he rebuked himself, that was his new knowledge acting upon a too-vivid imagination.
'Would these fruits truly harm the child, demoiselle?' he asked doubtfully.
'Five or six would kill him. A handful would suffice for a man.' Hélie retreated as though he had stepped among scorpions, and she added, 'So I was taught. It is rare. Until today I had never seen it.'
'Taught, demoiselle?'
‘When I first went to Collingford seven years ago I was attended by Oliver's old nurse. She was a wise woman skilled in simples, and she taught me her art.'
'In Satan's name, how came the vile stuff here?'
'They tell odd tales of Reginald de Warby. Some seem to be truth.'
He nodded grimly, and without further speech accompanied her from that haunted ruin to the gap that had been a gateway. Her bay palfrey nickered softly as she appeared, and stretched an eager nose to her caressing hand. Hélie jerked free the loop that tethered the horse to an oak sapling, and held the stirrup for her to set her foot in it before he stooped with clasped hands to lift her into the saddle. She swung up lightly as a bird, and settled the skirts of that deplorable gown, which was too tight across her breasts and too short in the waist, obviously made for a smaller and stockier woman. She gave him a curt word of thanks and looked faintly bewildered, as though that commonplace courtesy had seldom been shown her.
As he stepped back she indicated the unmistakable evidence of a horse's having been tethered to another sapling nearby. Hélie, his highly developed faculty of inquisitiveness unusually stimulated, investigated. He kicked at the weather-flattened, crumbling pile of droppings, and noted the growth of grass about its edges. The horse had browsed on the leaves of a hawthorn close by. The damaged twigs hung dry and brittle, their remaining leaves shrivelled and brown. He snapped one thoughtfully. 'About a month. Early harvest.'
'We knew it was no peasant,' she answered the thought behind his statement. Peasants had no time to waste in harvest, and seldom rode horses.
He moved closer to the hawthorn. The horse must have brushed against it. In nesting-time he would not have expected the birds to leave him the traces he sought, but so late in the summer there was a good chance. His golden-green lion's eyes peered intently, and his hands picked delicately about the spikes. For as long as one might take to say a Paternoster he persisted, and then returned to the lady's stirrup and held up a tuft of short hairs and three or four long ones.
‘A grey with dark points, and tall.'
'My cousin rides a grey. Fulbert of Falaise at times, and one of his sergeants. Also Hermeline.'
'I reckon we can omit Hermeline from the list,' he commented dryly. He could imagine no likely reason for her presence in this place—nor, indeed, for any other's. He considered the hawthorn bush again, but it had no other secrets to yield up. It would be interesting, though, to discover who had been here, and why.
'If you were a hound,' the girl observed unexpectedly, 'you would now be nose-down on the trail.'
He chuckled at the hit. 'I suppose it is no concern of mine,' he admitted, 'but I have never let that deter me when a puzzle was there to unravel. And speaking of hounds, demoiselle, it would be inadvisable to let either the hunt or those brats reach Warby before us.'
'Us? My lord, you need not trouble yourself to escort me.'
'My pleasure, demoiselle.' He read aright the sudden hardening of her face, and reached to grip her rein close to the bit just as she tightened it to lunge away. The palfrey shied and snorted, but the firm grasp quieted him. Hélie smiled up into her suspicious eyes. 'Does my company displease you?'
'You would do better to let me ride alone, my lord,' she said flatly.
'Oh no, my girl. That whelp will hasten his scandal to market. If we return apart and ashamed we confirm it. Our only way is to be brazen with the truth.'
'There will be a great outcry,' she said in a low voice, her hands gripping the reins so that the leather bit into her skin in little white ridges.
'And I must be present to answer to your uncle and cousin.'
'I care nothing for them,' she said impatiently. 'But Hermeline will be enraged.'
'So she will,' he said agreeably, 'but that need not disturb you.'
'She is nothing to me,' she said slowly, her hands fast on the reins and her eyes intent on his face, 'but it is not just that Hermeline should blame you. The fault is mine. I followed you.'
'And you reckon I should be happy to cast all the blame on you?' he demanded, amused and yet touched by her generosity. ‘There is too much of me to hide behind a lass's skirts. Besides, there is nothing for us but brazen effrontery.'
'But, my lord—’
'I set a high value on my virtuous reputation,' he declared primly.
She smiled rather wryly. 'But Hermeline—'
'I am in no way pledged to Hermeline, demoiselle,' he stated firmly. She looked sharply at him, and then surrendered. He led her mount round by the ditch to where he had left his own, not entirely trusting her tendency to generosity, and as he looked about him a fragment of bright blue wi
nked at him from a distant thicket and vanished. ‘The cub is still spying on us,' he told her. ‘We shall forestall him and his tale.'
3
THE outcry fulfilled all Hélie's forebodings. The first whispers had run before they rode in, for the hunt had returned without them and thoroughly fluttered Hermeline’s hen-roost. When their approach was cried from the gate-tower every soul in Warby above the age of understanding, scenting a truly toothsome scandal, found business in the bailey. Hermeline had poised herself affectingly at the head of the hall steps, a slight black figure against the grey stones, clear above the avid throng. The idiotic choice, Hélie realized angrily, of a blatantly selfish fool; she would seize all attention and humiliate her foe without considering the feuds and enmities a public scandal might bring.
His lips tightened, and he felt the blood rise in his face. Deliberately he delayed to lift Durande de Vallaroy from her saddle, and to deliver their mounts to a couple of wooden-faced grooms. The tall girl stood apparently unmoved, her head erect and her full lips steady, but when he took her fingers formally in his to lead her forward, they were cold and slightly trembling. Hard anger on her behalf banished all his own embarrassment. He gripped fast in reassurance and marched her briskly to the company gathered about the steps. His lips parted for a brief explanation, but no chance of uttering it was granted him.
‘Hélie!' cried Hermeline on a low note of reproachful grief, and flung herself down the stair in a flurry of wide skirts, reaching her hands to him. It was his cue to spring forward and receive her in his arms, but he ungallantly relinquished that rare privilege to Oliver de Collingford, who tenderly set her on her feet and supported her for a lingering moment. In utter astonishment she stood staring, and then held out her hands again, tears brimming over her lovely eyes and gemming her lashes.
‘Hélie, Hélie, how could you betray me with that one?'
'Since there is no pledge whatsoever between us, my lady, there can be no betrayal,' Hélie retorted bluntly. Incredulous surprise smote all hearers with paralysis, and he turned on the company in lion's wrath. 'Is a demoiselle's fair fame to be chewed over before every greasy scullion in Warby?' he demanded savagely. 'Inside!'
Power of Darkness Page 4