Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
It took scarce more than a day for Evander Douglas’s leg to go from a swollen, streaky-red mass down to smooth, pink skin.
Within a sennight, he was lumbering around the manor house as usual, stealing morsels from the kitchen, and gaming with the other knights in the great hall at all hours of the night. In short, he was good as new.
I should have been impressed with myself. Relieved to have healed something as incurable as elf-shot was reputed to be. A simple illness should be as nothing after that.
My mind lay elsewhere. I kept thinking back to the forest when I placed my hand upon the Dark Fool’s chest. The life, rich with possibility, numinous and verdant, that had radiated from my outspread fingers, turning autumn into spring. “Would you command the very seasons?” Amadan had asked me.
I had. What that meant, I was scared to find out.
To Evander Douglas, I was the woman who had saved his life.
“Bess Grieve,” he boomed, when we sat to dine, shouting halfway across the great hall, and drawing the attention of everyone around.
Then he swung his leg out from under the table and shook it for my approval, a display that would have been unseemly were it not for his innocent pride.
“Thanks to you, I am dancing as good as ever.”
“Cor, don’t blame the lass that ye’ve the gait of a goat,” said one of his fellows, and the two knights were soon engaged in a friendly battle the likes of which my brothers used to engage in back home.
I smiled and tore off a piece of bread, glad to have the focus taken off me, glad also Evander was doing so well.
And while I still took my meals at the back of the hall, far away from the baron’s table, and thus my shepherd king, I no longer took them alone.
Minor gentry would sit beside me, worthies from the town of Peebles who had come to the manor for the harvest boon.
They even greeted me when we met in the hallways, whispering to one another as I passed.
I performed miracles, they said, had the gifts of a saint, which made me uneasy.
I had no miracles. Only Mairi Grieve’s knowledge, and maybe a bit of magic all my own.
But this was not a place where magic was acknowledged. Any feat beyond understanding was immediately credited to the Christian Lord.
The presence of iron still hung over me, like a portcullis about to drop upon my head.
It threatened to burn me if I brushed my fingers against the door hinge, or while I adjusted the candle in its sconce.
Crosses were everywhere, too, mocking me with a salvation I would always be denied.
They hurt my eyes and caused bile to rise in my throat.
That was as nothing to the pain I felt watching Thomas as he sat beside Margaret at the baron’s table.
She laughed and smiled most decorously, eyes sparkling with good humor when he wiped her lips with his napkin.
There was a spot for her in this manor house, guaranteed by birth rather than her efforts; her status born from her father’s importance, not her own.
Look to your companion, I thought at her, while my anger yet again curled grooves into the stem of my goblet. See how quickly your standing can disappear when those ties are severed. See how beholden you are to keeping your lord’s good will.
I saw it firsthand, in the behavior of my shepherd king.
We passed in the hallways, and his shoulders softened, ease passing across his features like a meadow bathed in the sun.
He appeared glad to see me, wanting to take me in his arms. But there were witnesses, always; he dipped his head in greeting and proceeded on his way.
Thomas was attending chapel on Sundays, or so the Dark Fool made me aware, though I had never known the shepherd to be pious.
’Twas his father’s influence, I was certain.
Among the manor-born, custom is king. Before long, Thomas too might wear the heavy cross around his neck, and then he would truly be locked away from me, no less than in a king’s treasury behind armed guards.
Worst of all was how he looked at his father.
At the baron’s table during supper, Thomas kept his eyes glued upon de Lyne, more than he ever did with Margaret, possibly even more than he did with me.
Thomas would speak, and though I could not hear him, seated so far away in a hall teeming with men, I could read the eagerness in his posture, how he leaned forward in his seat, waiting for the baron to react.
If he nodded, Thomas’s face would be aglow with pleasure.
If he disapproved, I knew, however brave the mask Thomas showed the world, inside he was crumpling like a kicked puppy.
He will always be kicking. Oh, Thomas, be careful. I wished I might give my counsel aloud, or at least offer the comfort of my embrace.
But we were never alone.
At night, I slept in my attic chambers, while the autumn winds howled and troubled my rest. Beneath the roaring gale came the cry of a wolf, the sound of a flute played soft and low, the Dark Fool’s menace plaguing me even now.
I kept telling myself he had promised to let Thomas alone, and yet I did not trust him, for a trickster can bend his promises so far, they might as well be broken.
Amadan’s truth had no more meaning to it than others’ lies.
And perhaps, deep inside, it was not the threat he posed to Thomas that worried me most, but the danger he might pose to me.
I slept poorly under the creaking rafters, and craved the presence of Thomas beside me.
Sometimes it felt like he was not even real, that we were ever doomed to see each other only as shadows on the other side of a veil.
I needed to be reminded of the bond we shared, to hear his slow breathing in the night and feel the shape of his body against mine.
Without Thomas, and with no Morven, nor even the shadow fae upon the walls, the bustling manor remained the loneliest place I’d ever been.
’Twas the baroness who insisted I be brought down from the attic and finally given a proper room. I came to look in upon her in her chambers, and found her sitting upright, her color high as she shooed away murmuring priests.
“I am not dying,” she insisted. “Save your prayers for someone who needs them.”
’Twas nearly laughable, the expression on the priests’ faces as they moved past me, heads bowed more in contrition than reverence, censers of incense dangling useless from their folded hands.
Laughable, that is, until their heavy crosses got too close to me, and I feared I might be ill right there in the baroness’s room.
I swallowed my nausea and gave her a weak smile. “You are looking well, milady.”
And indeed, she was. The chamber itself even seemed brighter—perhaps the candles had been fewer before so as not to hurt her eyes. Her handmaiden sat and tended to her stitching, looking up to favor me with a friendly smile.
The baroness herself was clear-eyed and well groomed, no straggling tendrils of hair sticking to pasty cheeks. Her color was good, and she had put on weight, now her appetite was restored.
She clasped her hands together as I entered. “And there she is, the woman responsible. Ought to call you Saint Roch or Triduana, for how well you have been looking after me.”
I squirmed, about to protest that I was surely no saint.
The baroness silenced me with a frown. “You look dreadful.”
A mortal woman, I think, would have been offended. However, I found the candor refreshing, particularly in a place of so much protocol and so little honesty. I made ready to reply but interrupted myself with an enormous yawn.
The handmaiden looked alarmed. “Saints have mercy on your—”
“I am fine.” I cut her off, cringing at her pious utterance. I looked towards the baroness. “Have not been sleeping well, is all.”
A look of maternal indulgence crossed her face, and she patted her coverlet beside her. “Come here. Sit by me.”
I obliged.
She took my face in her hands. “Where have you not been sleeping well?”
“I beg your pardon?” My cheeks grew warm, and I hoped this was not the typical Christian fretting I had been unchaste.
I would no doubt be sleeping better if I had.
“Where are they keeping you, love?” the baroness persisted. “Are your quarters not comfortable?”
Oh. Well, no they weren’t, now that she asked. “His Grace did place me in the attic.” I hoped it would not sound like a complaint.
“Nonsense.” Baroness de Lyne shook her head. “That is no meet reward for all you have done. We can have you moved down here, to replace Marjory here at my bedside. In case I get ill in the night.”
The handmaiden dropped her stitch and let out a tiny yelp.
Poor thing. I had no desire to replace her. “Surely that will not be necessary,” I said quickly. “You look well, and Marjory is no doubt better accustomed to your needs.”
Marjory’s head bobbed like a little bird’s.
The baroness sighed. “Very well, then. But we shall find you quarters more suitable than the attic. I insist upon it.”
And who was I to disagree?
My new chamber was larger than I had ever dreamed of, and designed for someone of much greater status among the mortals than I.
I’d my own fireplace, rather than shivering in the drafty attic.
My window was shuttered, I had easy access to the garderobe, and there was even a low second bed for the servant I did not have or require.
My room was big enough for two, surely, and if I alone commanded such spacious accommodations, Thomas’s would surely be large enough for the both of us.
If only I had the opportunity to bring that up.
With my new respect came additions to my wardrobe, again at the insistence of the baroness. Margaret of Roxburgh did bring me a new kirtle, not as fine as her own—in two colors, no less—but finer than any I had worn in my life.
“Her Grace insisted you be properly attired,” Margaret told me, with a downward glance at the hem of my kirtle.
Too short? I wondered. Too mud-stained? Or simply out of fashion? Most likely it was all three.
I stared at her forehead until three small blemishes appeared, marring the perfection of her high-plucked brow.
“You’re to be measured for two others as well.” There was more than a hint of condescension to her tone. “I hope you appreciate Her Grace’s generosity.”
“Of course,” I told her. “You must thank her for me.”
Margaret made a cursory nod and muttered under her breath as she took her leave.
That one and I are never going to be friends.
Along with new clothing, I must have a new way of wearing my hair, no longer in dangling plaits but arranged into proper ram’s horns like Margaret’s, though I demurred at plucking my hairline.
Away went my well-worn kirtle, and the boots I had dragged through the dust so.
I felt like a fine lady indeed, but I did not feel like myself.
Thomas put his finger right upon it when we met one another in the hall. “But where has my wood nymph gone?” His manner was teasing, and his eyes did twinkle, but there was a sense of loss in his tone.
Does he truly miss her? Is his attention not wholly taken up by Margaret of Roxburgh after all?
I fell against Thomas, and whispered into his chest, “She is more with you now than she has ever been. But I fear she will wither in this place.”
He encircled me with his arms. “Ah, lass,” he said, squeezing tight, careless of any around who might judge and disapprove. “The things I would do wit’ ye if we were only home.”
He was still mine, the baron’s son. This Thomas de Lyne was all a pretense, and my sweet, amorous shepherd still lingered inside.
Then let us go. Through the fae-haunted forest, back to my business and your flocks, to the dog Cullen and the brownie Morven, to the life for which I gave up Faery. There is nothing I desire more.
But it could not be. Thomas yanked himself away, standing rigid, straight, as if he played the soldier at arms. “Your Grace,” he said and dropped to his knee as his father passed.
No, if Thomas de Lyne pretended, the shepherd king was awfully good at it. ’Twas worse than glamour, worse even than the shifting shapes of the Amadan Dubh, how he, like all these humans, switched from one mask to another.
And here I was, in my elegant new garb, doing the same thing.
I soon learned the true reason behind my new wardrobe and the new courtesy towards me. ’Twas not only from the baroness’s sense of gratitude.
I was to meet with the baron himself.