Perfect Shadows

chapter 18

I sat in the brightly lit room where the unconscious boy rested, the cause of his coma obvious in the odor of the drugs borne on his shallow breath. He had scarcely stirred when Sylvana had cleaned and dressed the burns on his chest, and had lain still and pale all the day with only the faintest sign of breath on a mirror to show that he lived. His breathing had deepened as night fell though still feeble, and he stirred now and then. I had sent the exhausted Rhys to rest, but the man would obey no further than to doze in his wolf ’s shape near the fire. Many candles had been lit and the sweet smell of the wax blended agreeably with the fruitwood of the fire, and the kettle of broth that warmed there. When Richard cried out and struggled out of his dark dream I was holding him even as he opened his eyes, and the candles served to allay his fears almost at once. He collapsed sobbing against my chest, clinging as a small child will when delivered out of a nightmare.

The angry tapping sound of her heels was audible for some time before the figure of the Queen became visible in the dancing shadows of Whitehall’s Privy Gallery. I slipped out of my concealment and waited for her, watching the intermittent glitter of her jeweled gown as she moved through the pools of light scattered the length of the gallery. I dropped to one knee before her, and she clouted me lightly over the ear before grasping my hair to tug me to my feet.

“I pray you be brief, my lord, since you will be secret,” she snapped. “I have set the entire court to playing hide-and-go-seek, like a pack of children, and it will not be long before some booby finds his way here. They think that my brain is going soft,” she added, a sour smile quirking the corner of her mouth. She reached for my hand, dropping the ring I had sent her back into my palm. I watched my knuckles whiten as I held it tightly for a moment before returning it to my finger. She nodded occasionally as I spoke and then dismissed me with the promise that the matter would be seen to. I melted back into the shadows as muttering voices signaled the approach of others, and stifled a gasp as the Queen chose to join me in my concealment.

“It may not be too late,” Percy’s harsh tenor voice was unmistakable. “Her Majesty must take such an accusation seriously, even if the girl herself is missing. We must say that he has spirited her away, and killed her.”

“And then if she is found? Old Bess may be fast slipping into her dotage, but her brain has not yet completely gone to mush. This is finished and I’ll have no more of it; I have in mind something quite different for our night-crow,” Essex retorted, and I, hoping that the movement would not be noticed, caught the enraged Elizabeth to my chest, clamping her arms to her sides and tightly covering her mouth with my own to keep her from crying out. She struggled furiously for a moment before relaxing into my kiss. When the gallery had been quiet for a few minutes I released her, dropping again to my knee as she stepped back from me, then reeling with the blow that she cracked across my face. I raised one hand to my cheek, forestalling a second blow with the other.

“Majesty, wait!” My voice was hoarse with emotion. She glared at the hand gripping her wrist, crumpling the starched ruff into a limp ruin. I loosened my hold, and she stood over me, the unspoken question of why she should not call her guards plain on her face. “Majesty, it came to me that they could kill you then, and blame me, and who would disbelieve them?” My voice shook with the force of the vision that had overwhelmed me the moment that Elizabeth had begun to step from the arras. Her eyes flashed for a moment, then softened.

“It was my lord of Northumberland, then, that imprisoned you last summer? No, you need not reply, I see the answer plainly enough in your face. But you do wrong my lord Essex, cousin. My person, old and bent as it is, is safe with him; he will not harm me, whatever he thinks of my wits. I forgive you your rough care of me, for I see plainly that it was care, and your impertinence has already been punished. Your fears for your safety seem well grounded, cousin, and I agree that your plan is a good one. The letters you ask will be delivered to your house in Chelsey tomorrow. My lord,” she continued in a tone so quiet that even I was hard put to hear, “why did you kiss me when you could have kept me still another way?”

“I wanted to,” I answered, not sure if the surprise in my voice was due to the rare vulnerability she showed by her question, or to the unexpected truth of my answer.

“Go now, before I discover a reason to take you back behind the arras,” she spluttered, and as she turned to go, I saw the unmistakable glint of a tear on her painted cheek.

My head full of my plans, I was unprepared for the tumult that greeted me when I reached home. Sylvie and Eden held each other, weeping, at the foot of the stairs; I could hear Richard sobbing above, and the low murmur of someone attempting to comfort him. I started up the stairs, but Sylvana called me back.

“What was done to yon child I know not, my lord, but he will not endure the presence of a young woman, not even his own sister. She went to bring him a bit of broth, and he . . . he attacked her. She’s not hurt, just her feelings,” Sylvana added, and looked down at her square and capable hands for a moment, clenched into fists, then raised her eyes to me again. I nodded and went wordlessly up the stairs. I recognized the soft voice before I reached the little room at the far end of the passage. Hal sat on the edge of the bed, rocking the boy as if he were a child. He turned at the sound of my steps and sent an ironical smile over his shoulder. He gently disengaged Richard’s clutching hands, and stood to face the door. I slowly crossed to the bed, holding out my hand and sitting on Richard’s other side.

“I will go and see to the wench,” Hal said, and slipped away. At his words Richard’s tears broke out again, and he buried his face in his hands. I let him cry for a moment.

“Eden is not much harmed, Richard,” I said gently. “She is frightened, and hurt that you do not want her. She does not know what they did to you. She does not know about the ceremonies that were practiced in that place.” Richard raised his eyes to look at me, shame and anger mingled with fear on his face.

“That is where Eve died,” he whispered. “Tied down in that—that place—as I was, like some animal. I thought that I would die there, too, and I would not have cared, only, not like that. Not like that!”

“Like what, Richard?” My voice was just sharp enough to jerk an answer out of the boy.

“He told me, about the . . . what they were to summon that night. It wanted v-v-virgins, and they had thought that Eve was. She was not and instead of—of—it devoured her, and took hours to do it, while they huddled in the darkness, waiting for it to finish, and hoping that it did not think to look for them.” Richard’s eyes, enormous in his thin face, glinted madly in the candlelight. “He told me, told me not to let—her—take me, because then it would be me. They gave me water, but it tasted foul, and I was having dreams, dreams that made me, my manhood—hard, hard enough to hurt. Then she came, I could smell her in the dark, fouled and filthy and I tried to beg, to beg her not to, but I was gagged, and I knew that he had told her that she would be my death, but she only laughed, and she— with her mouth, made me hard, and then she—she mounted me, and clawed at the burned places, laughing when I tried to scream, kissing me with her mouth, her vile, filthy mouth—” he broke off, racked by tearing sobs, letting me fold him into a protecting embrace.

“How did you come by those burns, Richard?” I asked.

“The earl. He questioned me. About you.” I waited, and before long I had the whole tale of the accusations they had meant to make against me. It was well I was leaving, I thought. I soothed the boy, telling him not to worry, and he rested his head on my shoulder, the sobs becoming softer and more infrequent until they became no more than an occasional shudder.

I waited patiently for the weeping to subside and nodded for Jehan, waiting at the door, to bring the tray that he carried to the bed and leave it there. Richard, at my urging, tried to take a few mouthfuls of the bread sopped in broth, but the sight of it revolted him, and his hands were shaking so that he could not fill the spoon. I took the bowl from him, and, gently pushing him back to rest against the pillows, fed him, talking all the while of inconsequential things. He looked surprised to see that the bowl I returned to the tray was empty. He took the small cup offered him and managed to sip the brandy it contained without spilling it.

“My lord of Southampton was very kind,” Richard muttered, fighting against the sleep that was overwhelming him. “I thought that I hated him.”

“Sleep, Richard. I shall send Jehan or Rhys to sit with you. Now, sleep,” I repeated, gratified to see the boy’s eyelids droop, then caught the cup that fell from the slack fingers.

Hal was standing by the fire, fondling the reliquary on the mantel, just as he had been those few short weeks before, the night that he had first become my lover. He turned and smiled before kneeling to draw the poker from its resting place in the coals and plunge it into the waiting flagon. The scent of boiling wine, sweet with spice, filled the room as I settled into a chair by the fire. Hal drew the cushion from the other chair, tucking it under him as he sat leaning against my legs and staring at the fire. He poured the wine into the waiting cups and passed one up to me.

“It is arranged, then? Where will you go?”

“The letters will arrive tomorrow, and I think that I will go first to Blackavar. I must consult with Nicolas and Geofri, then I will go . . . I don’t know, somewhere obscure, until Richard is fit to travel abroad. After that, oh, Paris, probably, or Brittany. I should not be out of reach of London for a few weeks yet. I must make some arrangements about the women, though. Richard will want to be away from them for some time to come, I am afraid.” I saw the question that Hal refused to ask, and told him the entire ugly story, omitting nothing.

“Do you think that Robin knew what use Harry meant to make of the boy?” Hal asked, and spat into the fire.

“I doubt it. I doubt it very much indeed. Percy can be very discreet when his skin is on the line, and Essex has no stomach for murder, so I deem. Richard said that you had been kind to him,” I finished, my hand resting on the auburn curls spilled across my knee.

“I felt that I owed him that, at least, seeing as how it was my arrogance that sent him from the house and into that coil in the first place.”

I slid from the chair to join him on the floor. “And he’s ruined your shirt,” I said, reaching for the tear-stained silk, smiling as Hal caught my hand, and raised it to his lips.

“You can buy me another.”

I nodded. “Then I must be sure to have my money’s worth,” I said huskily, and ripped the fine silk from his body, smiling at the desire this act kindled in his eyes.