"Not for long, I hope." He turned her face up to his. "Will you want me to return?"
The pain in her eyes was proof enough even without her words. "How can you ask me that?" He kissed her, and she clung to him, their pa.s.sion igniting again.
When he was gone, Siobhan stood at the window, watching the first streaks of dawn appearing in the sky. She was tired, but she would not sleep. Somehow she must find this pa.s.sageway out of the castle. "Forgive me, love," she whispered to the shadows. "I have to send him away."
After he left Siobhan and just before the dawn, Tristan knelt at his daughter"s bedside, stroking her golden hair. "Papa," she murmured, smiling through a yawn.
He kissed her forehead. "Do you remember when I went away to Scotland?" he asked her. "You were a very little girl."
"I do remember." She touched his cheek. "You had to go to war."
"Yes." He smiled at her, his precious little child. "But I came home again. Remember?"
"I remember." Her eyes were serious, too wise for such a cherub"s face. "I do not wish for you to go."
"I do not wish it, either." He opened his arms, and she sat up to hug him. "But if I go, I will always come back to you, I promise."
He pressed her close and kissed her. "Do you believe me?" "Yes, Papa." Her little heartbeat throbbed between them, so strong, a comfort to him now rather than torture. He was a horrible father, but she was strong enough to survive. "Are you going now?"
"No," he promised. "Not now." He drew back and kissed her cheek. "I will see you tomorrow night."
Siobhan returned to the manor just after dawn to find chaos. "What is it?" she asked, catching hold of a weeping maid as she came down the stairs. "What has happened?"
"The baron, my lady," the girl said, her eyes wide with horror. "The monster has killed him."
"No..." She started up the stairs. "It can"t be." Tristan had left her only minutes before sunrise. How could he have returned to the manor and murdered Callard? But then he had been hungry when he left her the first time, so hungry his own precious child had been in danger. Who is the baron of Callard? he had asked her, and she had pretended not to care.
Gaston was standing over his master"s shrouded body, looking down at the corpse with no expression on his face. "What happened?" she asked him.
He looked up, a strange light in his eyes. "See for yourself." He threw back the shroud, and she had to put a hand to her face to keep from being sick. The baron"s face had already begun to swell with decay, and the stench was unbearable. But even so, the marks on his throat were impossible to miss. "Enough?" Gaston said, raising a brow.
She nodded, turning away as he covered the body again. "Holy Christ," she murmured, her legs weak beneath her. "How did we come to this?"
"Do you not know, my lady?" he asked. "Is this not your work?"
"My work?" She turned back to him, appalled. Gaston was the one who had convinced Sean she had murdered Angus with a dog. "Can you still believe these murders are mine?"
"Why not?" He sounded strange, not like himself, but this new tone was no improvement. "Perhaps your creature is something more vicious than a dog."
Before she could answer, Master Nicholas came in, followed closely by Silas. "My lady, come away from there," he ordered, putting an arm around her shoulders.
"Yes, Lady Siobhan, by all means," the king"s clerk agreed, holding a handkerchief over his face. "I have questioned the baron"s household." He fixed Gaston with an angry glare. "It seems there was a plague already with them."
"A plague?" she repeated. He knows, she thought, still looking at Gaston. Somehow he knows Tristan is a vampire.
"So it would seem," Silas said, his voice low and even. "Come away now. All will be well."
"Take this corpse away from here at once," Master Nicholas ordered Gaston. "All who served the baron will go with you."
"As you wish, of course," Gaston said with a bow. He looked at Siobhan. "Let us all pray that will help."
"Now, my lady," Silas said more sharply. "Please."
"Yes." She met Gaston"s eyes with her own. "I am sorry for your loss, Gaston. May you find better fortune at home." The corner of his mouth curled in a smile that was familiar but strange on his face, as if it belonged to someone else. "You know well how dearly I will miss you."
"Aye, my lady," he answered. "I do." "Come," Silas ordered, leading her out.
She took hold of his arm on the stairs. "You have to help me, Silas," she said, her mind racing. Michael was coming across the hall, and when he saw her, he hurried to embrace her.
"Are you all right?" he demanded.
"Yes, I"m fine," she promised, grateful for his hug. Ever since Tristan had returned, Michael had seemed distant, not himself.
"Callard is dead."
"I know," he nodded.
"Do you know I didn"t kill him?" She looked back to include Silas in the question.
"Of course," Silas nodded.
"I do, yes," Michael agreed. "Siobhan, I"m so sorry-"
"It"s all right," she cut him off, softening her words with a touch to his cheek. "But you must tell me the truth. Did Sean say aught to you of pa.s.sages underneath this castle?"
He hesitated for barely more than a moment. "Aye, love," he answered. "He said your mother told him some druid"s tale of a battle on these lands, of pa.s.sages dug to hide some treasure being used to escape." He glanced at Silas. "We found tunnels underneath one of the shelters in the wood with queer pictures painted on the walls. He thought they might lead to the castle, but he was afraid to tell you. He thought you might be frightened of them, that you might refuse to use them."
"He was probably right," she admitted. "Silas, what does Tristan know of this?"
"I don"t-"
"I know you were digging," she interrupted. "I saw you. I spoke to Lyan"s wizard, Orlando."
"And what did he tell you?" he asked.
"Nothing," she admitted. "But he is a stranger. You are my friend."
After a moment, he nodded. "They found the entrance in the forest as well." He glanced at Michael for a moment. "Orlando thought there might be an opening here in the castle underneath the motte."
"The druid"s hill," she said, looking away. In her mind, she could see it as it had been, surrounded by the forest. Memories that seemed to belong to someone else flashed through her head, another village burning, not her own.
"But there"s nothing there, my lady," the scholar continued. "We dug in the dungeons, the kennels-the motte is solid."
"No." Her hand strayed to the pocket of her gown and the hilt of the sword she had concealed against her leg again. The night she had found it, the earth around it had crumbled underneath her hand. "I don"t have to dig." She looked up at Silas. "Stay here. If anyone asks for me, tell them I am overcome with grief, that I have gone back to the tower to my room." She caught Michael"s hand. "You come with me."
"Siobhan, wait," Silas said, catching her arm. "If we are friends-"
"You are Tristan"s friend as well," she cut him off. "I do not ask you to betray him." She took both of his hands in hers. "Nor will I, I swear. Whatever happens, wherever I may go, I will come back." She smiled. "I will not allow your castle to be hurt again." "Wait for Tristan," he urged her. "Wait until tonight, tell him what is in your mind-"
"I can"t." Framing his face in her hands, she kissed his cheek. "All will be well. I promise."
She crossed the courtyard quickly, trying not to run, with Michael following behind her. All around them, the baron"s servants were loading their wagons with an air of desperation, but she barely saw them. In her mind, she was a child again, running for her life through a patch of woods long gone.
She half-walked, half-slid down the rocky slope into the ditch, catching Michael as he almost fell. "This is madness," he muttered, straightening up again.
"Yes," she admitted. "But it"s our only hope." She skirted the edge of the hill, looking up at the sun, half-risen in the east. "My father"s house would have been there," she said, pointing. "So I would have come from this side..." The briars were still there, blocking their path. "This is it." Shrugging an apology to Michael, she dropped to her stomach and crawled.
"You can"t be serious..." He did the same, cursing as he came.
She straightened up against the rocky cliff. "This is definitely it." Her stomach twisted with remembered fear; she could almost hear the voice of the Norman behind her. I will catch you, poppet! But that man was dead, and she was a woman grown. She ran a hand over the wall as Michael scrambled to his feet beside her. "Give me a boost."
He looked up at the sheer cliff with the tower high above. "A boost?"
"It"s not far," she promised. Somehow she knew exactly where to find the entrance, as if she had always known. Shaking his head, Michael bent and put a shoulder underneath her rump, heaving her up the wall.
Before, when she was a child, she had climbed high enough on solid rock to be out of reach of her pursuer. But this time, the cliff opened before her, her hands breaking through the crumbling earth so quickly, she almost tumbled through.
"G.o.d"s b.l.o.o.d.y feet," Michael breathed.
"Aye," she answered, crawling through the hole.
The pa.s.sage dipped down sharply but was tall enough for her to stand almost at once. The morning light beamed down from the hall to illuminate a narrow cave, its walls painted with figures. "Come in," she called back to Michael.
He swore another oath as he reached her, more blasphemous than the first. "What is this place?"
"I don"t know." The floor was littered with piles of trash that gave her a shiver of foreboding. "Do you have a flint?" she said, taking a dusty torch down from the wall. He struck a spark and lit it, confirming her fears. The trash was bones, the long-dead skeletons of the fallen.
"Does this lead to the forest, do you think?" Michael asked, following her deeper.
"I know it does." Somehow she knew exactly where to go. A great, smothering sadness overwhelmed her, as if she had known these people who were dead, had lived among them. Her mother had said they were descended from Merlin, though Sean had said it was not so. But Sean had been wrong often enough. The day after Tristan"s return, she had dreamed of the druid"s tower, of living inside. The wolf has found us, a voice had spoken, and she had been afraid.
Farther along the pa.s.sage were more skeletons, and a great section of the cave seemed to have collapsed. But the narrow pa.s.sage led on. "Bring the others here," she said aloud. "All of our men, one by one so we won"t be noticed-we"re brigands, we can manage it. I will be in the manor house playing lady-come and get me when you"re done." "And then what?" he asked, still looking aghast at the bones that littered the floor.
"I have to find Sean," she answered. "You have to help me convince him to go away, to France or to Scotland-"
"He won"t," he cut her off. "You know he won"t give up your father"s people."
"I will protect my father"s people." She met his sudden stare of shock without flinching. "I am coming back, Michael. I mean to stay with Tristan."
"Stay with...Siobhan, are you mad?" he demanded. "You said yourself, he is a demon-"
"And he loves me," she said. "And I love him. I cannot betray him, and I cannot leave him." She put a hand on his arm, pleading with her eyes. "But I cannot let him murder Sean, either. So Sean must go away."
The day wore slowly on. Siobhan sat in the solar with Master Nicholas and Silas, barely listening to their talk, her spinning in her lap. "Twas odd, she thought, trying to occupy her mind with something more benign than her plan to find her brother or what might follow after-in truth, every time she tried to imagine what she would say to Sean, she felt sick. She had not picked up a spindle for years after her mother"s death, but in the past few days, she had discovered she still had the knack. Twisting the thread, she could almost imagine her mother was beside her, that her life had been what it was meant to be and she was the lady she pretended. She found it strangely relaxing.
"What can that be?" Master Nicholas complained as shouts were heard from the guardsmen on the wall. The king"s clerk was still obviously shaken from the baron"s death; he was nervous as a cat.
"Nothing dire, I hope," Siobhan said with a smile as she stood up. "I will go and see."
"Are you certain, my lady?" Silas said, standing up as well.
"Of course." Giving them each a gracious nod, she made herself walk slowly to the door.
She quickened her pace as she crossed the courtyard and climbed the steps to the top of the wall with a pounding heart. What now? her mind kept repeating. Dear G.o.d, what now?
The riders, hooded and cloaked, were waiting on the other side of the moat. "They"ve only just reached us," Sir Sebastian said, standing beside her. "Hail there!" he called. "Who comes?"
The larger of the riders threw back his hood to reveal a black helmet crowned with a demon"s horns. "Brautus of Charmot!" he called back. The second rider lowered her hood as well-a woman with striking red hair. "And this is the d.u.c.h.ess of Lyan."
CHAPTER 18
Master Nicholas was in danger of tripping over his own clever tongue, he was so eager to fawn over the d.u.c.h.ess. "Your Grace, you honor this house," he said, ushering her to a chair. "But I fear for your safety. The plague the guardsmen warned you and your man of at the gates is no joke."
"I have no fear of plague, master," the d.u.c.h.ess answered. She glanced over his shoulder at Siobhan and smiled as if they had a secret. "They say it only afflicts the unrighteous, do they not?"
"Aye, Your Grace," he agreed with a laugh that sounded rather forced. "They do indeed." He turned back to Siobhan. "Lord Tristan should be here, my lady," he said, an edge of reproach in his tone. "Surely he can be disturbed-"
"No, master," the d.u.c.h.ess interrupted. "Lord Tristan and my husband are of the same order, and I can a.s.sure you, he cannot."
She was beautiful, the most delicate, feminine creature Siobhan had ever laid eyes on her life. Beside this vision, her own disguise was a joke. "But if you would fetch me my servant, Orlando, I would be most grateful."
"Me, my lady?" Master Nicholas said, surprised.
"Yes, please." She smiled at Siobhan again. "I would speak to Lady Siobhan in private." She maintained her gracious smile as he bowed and murmured, "Of course." But as soon as he was gone, she was out of her chair and closing the door behind him.
"Are they well?" she asked, turning back to Siobhan. "Your Tristan and Simon, are they all right?"
"Yes," Siobhan answered, still rather stunned by the change. "They...I suppose they are fine."
"And Kivar?" she demanded. "Has he appeared?"