“Is just esperimento,” Orlando replied. “With the dissoluzione e coagulazione.”
“Dissolution and coagulation, the two essential forces of nature,” Phillipa said, recalling Orlando’s famous treatise of several years ago.
“S!” Orlando perked up, as he always did when he discussed matters of metaphysic with Phillipa. “I heat the zolfo—what you call sulphur—and the mercurio, the quicksilver, and...how you say...distill them. I break them down and bring them together. Is very noble work.”
“I’m sure it is.” Hugh rubbed his jaw. “The, uh...the snakes gave us pause.”
“Ah. Yes, well, I need the organic materiale as well. Is very complicated.”
“And the talisman scratched into the floor?” Phillipa asked.
“Talis...ah, the magico cerchio. S, is part of it. Is very complicated.”
“We’re very intelligent,” Hugh said. “Explain it to us, won’t you?”
“Is very hard to explain,” Orlando said. “Many people, they don’t understand. Other scienziati, other metaphysicians, they say is sorcery, this alchemia. But is science, very old science of the Cosmos. You have heard, perhaps, of the search for the philosopher’s stone?”
“The philosopher’s stone!” Phillipa exclaimed. “You’re not one of those ‘sons of Hermes’ who are trying to turn lead into gold, are you?”
Orlando grimaced. “Is very small part of the whole. Very, very small part. We search also for the Elixer of Life, and for the Alkabest, which will dissolve any substance...”
He went on to expound on the origins and practice of this ‘Hermetic philosophy,’ which, as far as Phillipa could tell, was an attempt to rediscover forgotten secrets of nature by conducting experiments from ancient Eastern texts. The alchemists’ premise seemed to be that all elements of nature, even minerals, contained a life force, with sulphur representing the active pole and quicksilver the passive. The disintegration and reformation of these two opposing primordial forces, Orlando told them, was akin to the coming together of man and woman in sexual congress.
This discourse left Phillipa more mystified than ever. If Orlando’s research into this mystical Eastern pseudo-science was intended to turn the tide for Queen Eleanor, it did not seem like much of a threat. And why was Orlando suddenly so willing—even eager—to reveal what he’d been so tight-lipped about before?
“The active principle,” Orlando continued excitedly, “it is sole, and the passive, it is luna. Think of the sun as man, and the moon as woman. Very much separate, very much apart. But bring them together...” With a smile, he gestured toward Hugh and Phillipa, still holding hands as they stood before him. “From the chaos of nature is formed something new, something altogether wondrous. Is magico, no?”
Hugh, seeming discomfited, released Phillipa’s hand to rake his fingers through his hair. “That’s...fascinating, Orlando, but there are still some things I don’t understand. Why did you come all the way to England to conduct your experiments? Surely it would have been simpler to remain in Rome, where you presumably have your own laboratory, your own equipment.”
Orlando shook his head forlornly. “My laboratorio, it burn down.”
“Oh, dear,” Phillipa said. “From one of your experiments?”
He nodded glumly. “And my assistente, he die.” Orlando executed a somber sign of the cross. “Is much bad feeling for Orlando then, very much scorn. They say is dangerous, my work, as well as foolish. After the fire, I have no place to work, and nothing that I need. The materiale, it is very...what is the word? Cost very much monete.”
“Expensive,” Phillipa supplied.
“S, the mercurio most especially. Very ‘spensive. The lady Clare, she has much monete, and much big heart, no?”
“Er...” Phillipa’s gaze darted toward Hugh, who appeared to be biting his lip.
“She bring me here to finish my work where there is no one to laugh at Orlando, no one to say I am not man of learning but sorcerer. And she buy much that I need. Without her, I could not do the work of my heart. She is very great lady.”
Phillipa was about to ask if there was anything Clare expected in return for this bounty when there came a loud crack, as of a tree being cleaved by lightning, although the sky was clear. It was so startling that Phillipa jumped, the air leaving her lungs in a shrill little outcry.
Hugh gave her that crooked smile of his. “I rather like this new squealing of yours.”
“Orlando?” Phillipa said as the Italian leapt up off his stump and began running.
Hugh grabbed Phillipa’s hand again and together they followed Orlando into the woods, catching up with him as the narrow path opened up onto the craggy riverbank. About fifty yards downriver stood two figures with their backs to them—Istagio leaning over a flat-topped boulder, striking a fire-iron against a flint, and Edmee watching him from a distance. When the flint sparked, producing a faint glow from whatever it was he was lighting, Istagio hurriedly backed up to where Edmee stood, both of them covering their ears.
“Istagio!” Orlando yelled something in Italian as there came another sudden crack, accompanied by a flash of white light from the top of the boulder. Shreds of something sprayed in every direction. Phillipa’s ears rang.
Orlando scurried up to Istagio, berating him in furious Italian. He and Istagio both seemed to be talking with their hands as much as with their mouths. Orlando yanked Istagio’s leather case away from him, causing its contents—a number of light-colored little cylindrical objects—to spew out, scattering in the tall grass.
Still castigating Istagio, Orlando fell to his knees and began searching through the grass for the little cylinders. Hugh loped over to him in order to help; together they gathered them up and returned them to the leather bag.
Edmee turned and walked back toward the path as Orlando continued to rebuke Istagio. When the maid passed Phillipa, she caught her eye and looked toward the heavens; Phillipa smiled and shook her head.
Hugh came up to Phillipa then, grabbed her arm, and led her to the path as well. When they were several yards into the woods, he paused, reached into the kid purse hanging from his belt and withdrew one of the cylinders.
“You took one!” Phillipa exclaimed.
“It seemed like the thing to do.” He turned the little object over in her hands. It was a tube made of parchment, tied off at both ends; from one end there protruded an inch or so of cord.
Unsheathing his jambiya, Hugh slit the tube lengthwise, revealing its contents—a fine black powder. He emptied some of the powder into his palm; it glittered in the semidarkness of the woods.
“What is that stuff?” Phillipa asked. Whatever it was seemed to have a very violent reaction to flame. She’d never seen anything like it.
“I think I know,” Hugh said as he studied the powder. “In the Levant, I met an Englishman, an Augustinian friar, whose mission it was to spread Christendom to the Orient. He’d been farther east in his travels than any European I’ve ever met, all the way to China. He told me once of a children’s toy that would pop when lit. Perhaps...”
He looked up and met her gaze, and she knew he was remembering that little iron ball they’d found on the floor of the cellar.
Istagio came bulling past them, herded along the path by Orlando, still ranting furiously. The word “stupid,” Phillipa realized, was recognizable in any language.
Hugh grabbed Orlando’s sleeve as he passed. “One moment, if you would.”
Orlando continued his diatribe as Istagio disappeared down the path, although he switched to English. “I tell him so many time! Is...how you say, segreto, our work!”
“Secret,” Hugh translated.
“S, is not for showing off to...” Orlando trailed off, staring at the slit-open packet of black powder that Hugh held out to him.
“Is this what you were making when you burned down your laboratory in Rome?” Hugh asked.
Orlando sighed pensively. “The lady Clare, she will be very much angry if she
know you see this thing.”
“So this is where your alchemical experiments have led,” Phillipa said. “This is why you were brought to Halthorpe.”
“Were you promised a laboratory and equipment,” Hugh asked, “as long as you agreed to reproduce the Chinese powder?”
“Are you developing some sort of weapon?” Phillipa asked. “Is that how you’re paying Clare back for—”
“Prego!” Orlando spread his hands beseechingly. “You have see too much already. I will be in very much difficolt if I speak to you of my work.”
“You mean this part of your work,” Phillipa said. “Clare knows we’ve been snooping around. She wanted to mislead us, didn’t she? She told you to tell us about the alchemy—but not that you were using it to make the black powder.”
“And she made you hide all evidence of it yesterday,” Hugh said, “knowing I would steal the key to cellar if the opportunity presented itself.” He chuckled humorlessly. “And I tumbled right into her trap.”
“Prego, I beg of you!” Orlando implored. “I am making volta di segretezza.”
“A vow of secrecy?” Hugh said.
“It will go very badly for me if she find out I tell you about the...” He nodded toward the parchment packet in Hugh’s hand.
“But you didn’t tell us,” Hugh said.
“Yes, but...you know.”
Hugh shrugged. “Not through any fault of yours. Phillipa and I would have no reason to speak of this to Clare...unless you did first.”
Orlando’s eyes lit with comprehension: Hugh and Phillipa would keep their mouths shut if he would—and all of them would be spared Clare’s wrath. The Italian nodded. “Is agreed. We keep each other’s segreto, yes?”
“Yes, but...” Phillipa touched his arm. “Orlando, you know you shouldn’t be doing this work.”
He looked taken aback that she would say such a thing. “Is good work. Is great challenge to the mind.”
Just like Uncle Lotulf, Orlando embraced the intellectual pursuit while ignoring its practical application. “But think of all the harm that could come of it.”
Orlando shook his head vigorously. “All knowledge is good. All learning is worthy.”
“I’ve always thought so,” Phillipa murmured. “Now I’m not so sure.”
* * *
Phillipa swam out of a fitful sleep that night to the realization that it was, if anything, even hotter than when they had retired. The air felt thick; her night shift clung damply to her.
What had awakened her this time? she wondered, and then it came to her. Hugh, sleeping behind her with his arm around her, as usual, had stirred; perhaps it was his restlessness that had roused her. She was about to speak to him when he moved again, his hips flexing slowly, pressing and releasing. She felt the tension in his flanks, the hard column of his sex grazing the small of her back. She was stunned; he hadn’t attempted any intimacies since his first night at Halthorpe, when he’d told her they shouldn’t be together like that anymore.
He moved again, another lingering, sinuous thrust.
“Hugh?” she whispered.
His hand twitched; he sucked in a breath. He’d been asleep, she realized; she’d awakened him. He went very still for a moment, and then his breath left him in a long, tremulous exhalation. “Sorry, I...I was dreaming.”
He lifted his arm from her and moved back so that he wasn’t in contact with her—not easy in this narrow bed. She heard the straw in the mattress crackle as he shifted his position.
She sat up and gathered her sweat-dampened hair off her neck, thinking she should have braided it before bed, given the heat. Hugh was lying on his back, his left leg bent at the knee, his right arm draped over his eyes. Tonight, for the first time, he had dispensed with his shirt and gone to bed in naught but his underdrawers, probably because of the heat, but possibly also because, having revealed to Phillipa how he came by the scars on his back, he felt less inclined to hide them.
Moonlight filtered through the arrow slit closest to the bed, painting a streak of iridescence across Hugh’s glistening body—the hard-packed planes of his chest, the taut ridges of his belly. Bands of muscle defined his long arms, his powerful legs. He was the quintessential male animal, lethally strong, achingly beautiful.
Phillipa rose from bed. “Would you like a drink of water?”
He shook his head without uncovering his eyes.
She poured a cup of water from the ewer on the wash stand and drank it, then filled the basin, dampened a washrag and bathed her face and the back of her neck.
Her night shift stuck to her, an oppressive weight in the heat. She pulled it away from her skin, thinking how delicious it would be to peel it off and sleep without a stitch on. Odd; she’d never slept in the nude before, never even wanted to, no matter how warm the night. Now, imagining it, she wondered why not. The linen sheets would feel soft and cool against her bare skin, the straw beneath just slightly prickly. If a stray breeze crept through the arrow slits, it would caress her like a lover’s breath.
She looked over at Hugh, still lying in the same position. Even with his upraised leg, she could see the rigid shape beneath his drawers.
Think of the sun as man, and the moon as woman, Orlando had said. Very much separate, very much apart. But bring them together...is magico, no?
It had been magic, making love to him that first time—although, if she had it to do over again, she would have let him undress her. A thousand times I’ve imagined what you look like without your clothes on, he’d told her. Every night, I dream of holding you naked in my arms.
Was that what he’d been dreaming about just now?
Phillipa sought out her moonlit reflection in the looking glass tacked over the wash stand. A butterfly smiled back at her.
Without looking in Hugh’s direction, lest she lose her nerve, Phillipa pulled her shift over her head and hung it on a peg. She would have expected to feel painfully exposed, standing naked in the same room with a man, even Hugh; instead, she felt an exhilarating sense of rightness.
A film of perspiration clung to her. Wringing out the washrag, she skimmed it over her throat and along each arm. She dipped it in the basin again and squeezed it over her chest, her nipples puckering as the water trickled in rivulets down her breasts and belly and legs. Dropping the cloth back in the basin, she gathered up her hair and plaited it in a single braid, securing it with the leather thong Hugh had tossed onto the wash stand after untying it from his own hair. She turned toward the bed.
He was watching her, still lying on his back, his right arm curved over his head, his chest rising and falling as if he’d just raced up a hill. His eyes were luminous in the shaft of moonlight that played over his face, his expression that of a man who’d just seen a statue of an angel spread its wings and rise into the heavens.
His gaze was riveted on her as she came toward him and sat on the edge of the bed. She trailed a feathery caress down his cheek.
He closed his eyes, his throat moving. “This isn’t wise, love.”
She lowered her mouth to his. “It isn’t supposed to be.”
* * *
Early morning sunlight was gleaming through the arrow slits by the time Hugh and Phillipa uncoupled for the third time, drenched and sated, their chests heaving. Phillipa’s body hummed like the strings of a lute that had been played all night, making the most sublime and joyous music imaginable.
Lying on his back next to Phillipa, Hugh lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, his own hand still slightly unsteady. “God, Phillipa,” he whispered.
When she’d taken off her shift and come to bed, and he’d told her it wasn’t wise, she had worried, for a moment, that it had been a mistake. But the touch of her lips against his had seemed to galvanize him. He’d banded his arms around her, pulled her close, kissed her with such raw hunger that she’d felt as if her heart were going to burst.
She’d reached down to untie his drawers, her fingers grazing his straining flesh as they f
umbled with the task; he’d growled, arched his back. He yanked at the drawstring, snapping it, kicked the drawers off and rolled onto her, crushing her into the mattress. That first time had been hard and furious, two beings thrashing together in a violent struggle to fuse into one.
The second time had been slow, so slow, a dreamlike dance of two sweat-slicked bodies. He’d touched and kissed her everywhere, his caresses rhythmic, deep, the heat of his mouth intoxicating...and she’d done the same to him, until they were both trembling and moaning, quivering on the edge. She’d felt as if she were filled with glittering Chinese powder, and Hugh was the flame. When he lunged into her, she exploded. He drove her to a second paroxysm before surrendering with a roar to his own fierce pleasure.
After that, they curled up front-to-back and fell asleep—at least, Phillipa did, only to awaken at dawn to the slippery glide of his fingertips on her throat and chest, her breasts, her belly, the slick heat between her legs. He’d pressed into her from behind, rocking them both to delirious fulfillment.
Now, gazing at the ceiling rafters as she lay side-by-side with him on the damp, rumpled sheet, her hand in his, Phillipa knew with absolute certainty that her heart, her soul, her body, would forever belong to one man and one man only—Hugh of Wexford.
“I love you, Hugh,” she said quietly.
He squeezed her hand and held it to his lightly furred chest. She felt the swift, erratic thudding of his heart.
“We shouldn’t have done this.” His voice sounded as if it had been scraped raw.
She turned her head to look at him. “Does it frighten you so much, to be loved?”
“You think you love me.” He met her gaze, his eyes all-too-transparent in the morning sunlight. “You don’t feel what you think you feel.”
“I know what I feel. And I think I know what you feel, too.”
He looked back at the ceiling, but not before she saw something grim and bleak chase the warmth from his eyes. “This was a mistake—I knew it from the beginning.”
“I remember,” she said. “You told me you didn’t want to be the man a woman couldn’t bear to look at the next day when she realized it really was just about sex.”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 60