Chapter 28 #2
His smile matched hers, and he began to draw her closer to him.
“Sybilla!” a woman shouted. “Sybilla!”
Sybilla turned from Julian’s arms to try to locate Alys’s form in the pressing crush still being held off by the king’s soldiers.
She spotted her youngest sister’s blond hair and round form on the fringe of the crowd near the wall, being blocked by a guard.
Piers was beside her, and behind them both, Sybilla saw Cee and Oliver.
She held up a hand toward them, signaling that she had seen them.
She turned back to Julian. “I have to go to my sisters,” she explained. “I need them to meet Lady de Lairne. Right away, I feel.”
Julian stared at her for a moment. “I understand,” he said. “But Sybilla, I must—”
“Lucy. I know,” she interrupted. “I don’t know when I will get away.
Not tonight, at any rate. I would try to convince Lady de—my aunt,” she corrected herself, “to come back to Fallstowe with me. To see the place where her sister lived, the home where we grew up. Perhaps . . . perhaps she would even stay.”
Julian smiled down at her. “I think that is a most wonderful idea. I will have Erik accompany you back when you are ready to depart.”
Sybilla looked askance at him. “He’ll not try to murder me for corrupting you?”
Julian laughed and shook his head. “He is the only one I would trust with your life, save me.”
“Very well,” Sybilla said, anxious suddenly to be away, not from Julian but . . . away to somewhere very important.
He saw her impatience, and Sybilla could not help but notice the way his eyes lingered on her mouth, as if he wanted to kiss her but was hesitant.
“Yes, well . . . we shall be waiting for you at Fallstowe.” He touched her face gently. “Safe journey.”
Sybilla’s heart melted inside her chest at the tenderness showing through his stoic reserve. Julian should know by now that she did not give a damn what anyone thought of her. She reached up with her right hand to grasp his neck and then rose on her toes even as his arms went around her back.
And she kissed him before all those who were gathered in the king’s court. Thoroughly. It would be talked about for years.
Sybilla had made her wishes known immediately to the guard holding her sisters and brothers-in-law in check, and now, with Piers and Oliver having gone to help Julian outfit for the return journey to Fallstowe, Sybilla, Cecily, and Alys raced through hidden corridors, on the heels of the soldier, to the section of rooms where Lady de Lairne stayed.
“But how did she know to come?” Cecily was asking, even atop Alys’s own questions.
“Is it truly over, Sybilla? Are you free?”
“It’s over, and yes, I’m free,” she said absently, her eyes on the soldier’s back in the shadowy corridor. “I don’t know how she knew. It’s one of the many questions I hope to have answered shortly.”
“But what of Evesham?” Alys insisted. “You must tell us! We don’t know anything.”
“I will tell you,” Sybilla promised. “I’ll tell you everything very soon. But now we must hurry.”
“Why?” Cecily asked. “Sybilla, slow down, please!”
Sybilla didn’t answer, only chased the soldier around a sharp corner, her slippers hissing against the stone. The man stopped suddenly and stood to the side of a nondescript door.
“Lady de Lairne’s rooms, my lady,” he said solicitously.
“Thank you,” Sybilla breathed, although her eyes were on the thick wood of the door as her sisters came to a breathless halt to either side of her.
“At His Majesty’s request, I shall wait for you to emerge to lead you on to a guest chamber.”
“We might be a while,” Sybilla said faintly, raising her right hand to let her fingertips lightly graze the door.
“No matter,” the guard said, stepping a respectable distance away to give the room’s occupant privacy when the ladies entered. “This is my duty.”
“Sybilla, Cee,” Alys whispered suddenly. “Listen!”
All three women inclined their heads toward the door to better hear the faint notes wafting weakly through the thick wood.
It was a woman’s voice, singing a song the sisters were familiar with from their childhood.
Cecily turned to look at Sybilla and Alys, her eyes wide with surprised pleasure. “She sounds just like Mother!”
“Exactly like Mother,” Sybilla said faintly, and felt the frown crease her brow. She raised her fist and rapped on the door.
There was no answer after several heartbeats, and yet the singing continued. Sybilla reached for the door latch.
“Sybilla,” Cecily hissed, disapproval clear in her tone.
But Sybilla did not heed her sister, engaging the mechanism that held the door shut and pushing. It was unbolted and swung open soundlessly.
The volume of the tune increased minutely as the three women stepped inside the chamber.
They were faced with a curtained bed jutting into the room, perpendicular to the door.
The side drapes were closed, but Sybilla could see one footpost, indicating that the end of the bed had been left open to the hearth ablaze before it.
“I’ve got gooseflesh,” Alys whispered, rubbing briskly at her arms. “Is she hard of hearing?”
Sybilla led the way slowly, cautiously, toward the foot of the bed.
“Lady de Lairne?” she called calmly, although inside her chest her heart thrashed against her ribs like the splintering of a great tree.
“It’s Sybilla Foxe. I’ve brought my sisters, Cecily and Alys, to meet you, and to talk with you. ”
“Should you really be calling her Lady de Lairne, though?” Cecily wondered aloud on a whisper.
Sybilla paused to look down at her usually meek younger sister. “Would you rather I shout ‘old woman’?”
“I see your point,” Cecily conceded.
They rounded the bedpost then, and no one was prepared for the sight that greeted them on the mattress. Sybilla reached out instinctively and found the hands of her sisters, just as they in turn were reaching for hers.
Lady de Lairne lay on her side facing the middle of the mattress, her elegant and matronly skirts arranged just so on the coverlet.
Her soft gray hair was uncovered, caught at her nape in a short plait.
Her eyes were closed in her pale, still, wrinkled face.
Her hands lay slightly away from her chest on the bed.
And she was not alone. A silvery mist mirrored the old woman on the bed, and as the sisters stood and stared in the gloom of the chamber, the mist began to take clearer shape: a young woman in a long, plain gown, with hair the color of old, well-oiled wood.
She was holding both of the old woman’s hands in her own, smiling at the still countenance, and singing so quietly that it would not have disturbed the flame of a candle.
“Mother?” Alys said in a choked whisper.
Sybilla’s body went ice-cold.
The child was of the village wise woman.
We looked enough alike that no one could tell us apart.
What do I care now? I am an old woman. I have no family save you to know the truth.
I will save you, as your mother saved me.
“Mother?” Alys asked again, still quietly but with a hint of desperation in her voice as the song finally came to an end.
The sparkling young woman at last turned her head slightly on the pillow to acknowledge the three sisters standing at the foot of the bed, peering in.
“Shh, girls,” she said with a smile. “My lady sleeps.”
Sybilla felt her knees twitch as if they would buckle, while at her side, Cecily gasped.
“Forgive me,” Cecily pleaded quietly. “Forgive me the terrible things I have said and thought of you.”
“I miss you so, Mother,” Alys wept quietly.
“Shh, shh, girls,” Amicia Foxe admonished again gently. She looked to Sybilla. “Well done, my own.” Her voice had an echoey quality, as if coming up—or down—from a great distance. And then her eyes landed on all three sisters in turn. “Take care of each other.”
And then Amicia Foxe sparkled away into nothing in the quiet room, to be followed in only an instant by the sound of the chamber door swinging open behind them.
All three women turned, realizing that none had closed the door behind them upon entering.
And yet they had heard the click of the latch, a squeaking of old hinges, and now the giggling of what could have been two very young girls sneaking out of the chamber to find a bit of mischief.
A door slammed, causing them all to jump, and yet they could still see the corridor clearly through the doorway.
Sybilla looked back at the bed once, and the figure on the mattress seemed somehow hollow now, deflated. And on the coverlet next to Sybil de Lairne, directly where Amicia Foxe’s ghost had sparkled only a moment ago, lay the missing miniature portrait.
“One of you fetch the guard,” Sybilla said, telling herself that her voice was firm, not at all shaky, as her eyes found the corpse of Sybil de Lairne once more. “Hurry.”