Awaken My Fire (37 page)

"There is nothing to say.” She shook her head. “I—"

He swept down on her again, lifting her up. His eyes were ablaze with fury and he said, "You can start by telling me how he threatens you."

Vincent watched the unnatural fears spring into her eyes. She shook her head again, panicked. "You are wrong! There is no threat! He has my lands and that is enough for him-"

A hand came to her mouth. "A lie. I know you, Roshelle, I know thy spirit, for I have touched it. You are like a caged winged creature; I have felt the longing in you to be free, to be gone. You would have left Reales long ago. Somehow he keeps you here—"

She shook her head. "Please, just let me go!"

The fear magnified many times. "Why? Do you imagine he has spies here, that they are listening to us as we speak?" He watched her wide, frightened eyes sweep the dark space, jerking from one shadow to the next. A barn owl flew from its perch with a screech. She shuddered.

"I see. I should have known. A threat to you would not work. Your unnatural courage again. He threatens someone you love—"

"Tell him, Roshelle!" Cisely begged on her knees. "They will help us!"

"Hush!" Roshelle looked at Cisely. "He cannot help. No one can help."

Wilhelm heard this with mounting alarm, Roshelle's terror making him want to kill the man responsible. "Be it you, Cisely? Does he threaten you?"

Cisely shook her head; she, too, was crying now.

Vincent looked from Cisely to Roshelle and back again before he realized. "Tis the maid Joan. Which is why you objected to Bryce's courtship of her."

"Dear Lord," Wilhelm said, thinking of Bryce, of his simple sense of justice and right, the kind of man who never saw a shade of gray. "The Duke of Burgundy is reputed to be the best swordsman in France and the Continent beyond, perhaps in all the world. Now Bryce be good, but—"

"Not that good," Vincent finished. "And his damnable fearlessness, too."

"Aye, a fearlessness that oft made me wonder if he was as simple as the maid he loves. We must keep this news from him."

"Aye."

The suggestion of a sword fight, that the fate of Rodez might possibly be decided with a sword, brought anguish to Roshelle as she remembered a day long ago, just after her tenth birthday, when three knights came to Orleans to present Rodez with a challenge. They were only three of probably dozens of men with a grievance, and the only thing different about them was that they had the courage to offer the grand duke a challenge. For he had split with Papillion by then and had come into not just his inheritance, but his full, awful power. With Charles and Louis, she had watched the match. Watched with unrelieved terror as first one, then another of these brave knights was slain. Just before Rodez's sword pierced their hearts, she saw the strike of horror on their faces. Desperate to help, she had closed her eyes, and thinking she could somehow save the doomed man, she cast her thoughts into his so she could wield the sword with his strength and skill. And with success at first, the swordsman seized ah advantage. Rodez was tiring, weakening, and if he could just-

Suddenly Rodez's face transformed into a woman's. Numbing horror gripped the good knight as he saw this, the lovely face of a woman he had once loved, and in the same instant Rodez lunged, his sharp blade piercing through heart and flesh, and she had screamed . . .

"Roshelle, Roshelle." Vincent thought he understood the anguish on her face. "You must know I would extend my protection to your women, to Joan, that I would never let him hurt you or yours."

"You think so, milord. You think 'tis a matter of swords or bravery or battle. If only it were so, if only it were me. You do not know yet how diabolical he is. And he promises me that someday he will come for her. Someday…"

"The day you leave Reales, he had said. Or the day she leaves ..."

"Why does he ? When he has your lands—"

"He torments Roshelle for the same reason. Everything he does is for one reason and one reason only," Cisely said in a distant and forlorn whisper. "Revenge. He will spend his life exacting revenge against Papillion, and therefore Roshelle, because she had the extraordinary blessing and curse of Papillion's love."

Vincent studied the sadness and hopelessness in Roshelle's eyes, so like in his dream. 'Twas the rhyme and reason of his dream, to warn him of this threat stealing her happiness.

Yet the white tower, what did the white tower mean?

"You see," Cisely answered his confusion, whispering still as if it were dangerous to speak of it out loud, "Rodez had once been, like Roshelle, Papillion's student. Yet not at all like Roshelle. For some reason, perhaps the perversity of Rodez's nature, all of Papillion's teachings became twisted, changed, used in his relentless thirst for the power of the occult—which Papillion condemned. I remember their fighting spilling through the halls of Orleans, a tension so thick—" She shook her head. "It became a battle of wills. Louis always said that Papillion knew what he had helped to make and he was desperate to change Rodez before he lost him completely. But it was too late. From the first day of their liaison, it was too late. In the end Papillion had no choice but to banish him from his life, and forevermore he was banished."

Wilhelm did not understand. "Blood for banishment, but-"

"Nay," Roshelle said, her whisper strained. "Twas only the beginning, a beginning that ended the day Rodez tried to kill Papillion. I was there. I saw it. The jeweled knife at his throat and, and then it was as if he decided, he suddenly saw death was not enough—" A violent shudder passed through her and Vincent thought she was going to faint and he caught her up again in his arms. "The Archbishop of Orleans sought Papillion for over a year, you see. Since the night of my wedding feast. I had not been there when it happened, but I have heard the story many times, tales of black magic: cups and bowls secreting a foul-smelling soup, spilling all over; bewitched creatures appearing everywhere, cats and dogs and insects and birds; and bishops falling into possession." She shook her head. "Papillion could make miracles, aye, but he would never condescend to a magician's simple tricks, much less tricks tainted by the occult arts, all those stunts that horrified the good lords and ladies in the hall. And yet everyone assumed he was responsible. 'Twas Rodez who orchestrated those horrors at my wedding, knowing full well that the church would blame and persecute Papillion for them.

"Until then Papillion had always happily coexisted with his church fellows, and though there were some priests who were jealous and suspicious of his ways, there were always many more who loved him as a friend and teacher." She shook her head sadly, remembering the betrayal of so many. So many. "Of course, Papillion made fun of the archbishop's summons," she continued softly, her voice carrying no emotion, yet weighted with unmasked pain as she spoke. "So whenever the archbishop's men showed up at the forest house, Papillion would be seen lecturing or ministering in Orleans—sometimes from the very steps of the archbishop's house. It got to be a entertaining charade of cat and mouse, one that kept the entire court amused for over a year—Papillion's cleverness in duping the foolish old archbishop and his bumbling band of men time and time again. How we had laughed. We all thought, we knew, there was nothing he could do to Papillion. Papillion was protected and loved by everyone at court—by Charles, his family and counselors, and though Louis was gone to the Tower by then, his stamp still sat on every decree of Orleans. Everyone, all at court and half the church, loved Papillion. As if love was a force to contend with, as if love mattered at all…"

A small fist clenched against his bare chest as she said the last. "At last, as he tended a dying friend's deathbed, they came and he was taken away. Within the next twenty hours he was tortured and tried and killed as a heretic of the Christian world." The image of Papillion's tortured body floated into her mind and she felt suddenly dizzy—

"Roshelle—"

Tears sparkled in her blue eyes, and she tried to banish them. "Roshelle." He stood over her, peering down through the darkness at her pain-marred face. "What happened then? He did not stop?"

"Nay. He will never stop. He exists only to bring destruction and death to anything and anyone Papillion loved! To anything Papillion's love ever touched. To torment me . . .

"I remember Papillion's garden, a secret place of flowering blossoms from Passover to Michaelmas where they say my mother oft walked. Papillion kept the roses for her memory, long after she died. He always planted roses, simply because she had loved them so. When he was torn from me, I, like a cotter maid, spent weeks planting the seeds and tilling the soil. I wanted it to blossom again. And it did.

"I remember the day the roses blossomed in a rainbow of colors between red and white. A sad kind of joy burst in my heart! Life and love renewed and begun again. That day I stood in the middle of the garden, drinking in the simple beauty and breathing the heavenly scents of the roses, and I felt his love all around me again.

“
Until I looked up. Rodez stood there watching me. I panicked. I did not know how he got there. There was no announcement in Orleans of his arrival from faraway Flanders, and yet there he stood. He said only, 'Behold your fate, Roshelle,' and suddenly, as I watched, a fire grew. The roses caught a flame. All around me, the roses burst into flames. Their petals turned to brown and finally black . . ."

The expression in her eyes alarmed Vincent and he said with feeling, "Roshelle, 'tis but a dream you tell. 'Twas only a long-ago nightmare—"

"Aye," she surprised him by agreeing. Papillion had once asked her what the difference was between a needle prick in a dream and one when awake. Nothing really. For they both bring the same pinch of pain. "I have sometimes thought it must be a dream, that it could not have happened. It seems so long ago, too…"

He glanced at Wilhelm, who nodded, both men seeing that, whether dream or no, it did not matter to her. She lived in another world, a dark world of magic and miracles and sinister shadows, and what frightened Vincent the most was the idea that nothing and no one could pull her out from this world and into his.

"What did Papillion do to him?"

"Papillion kept him from love, or so he thinks. Papillion believed Rodez just used it as an excuse for the black seed he let grow in his heart; hate demands a focus, and Rodez found his."

The blue eyes retreated as she remembered how, at the forest cottage, she would catch Papillion staring out at the distant landscape but really seeing his memories. Tears would come to his eyes. Only later did she know he was remembering Rodez as a boy. "I should have known," he'd whisper. "I should have seen it coming, growing and taking shape before my very eyes. Sometimes I think I did know, I did see, but 'twas too terrible to confront…” Then he'd draw her into his arms and he'd say, “The love in thine eyes, Roshelle, the love that pounds in your heart and shapes every movement of thine hand, it is my gift..."

"Roshelle." Vincent's voice drew her back to the difficult subject. “What happened then?''

"I do not know everything. I know it started when Rodez fell in love, for the first and last time, he knew love."

"With this woman Terese?"

"Oh, no. 'Twas with his wife, Angelique."

"His wife?"

"Aye, a long time ago now—"

He had heard about this. "Wilhelm?"

"Aye." Wilhelm nodded. "Tis said that years ago Rodez Valois abdicated on a marriage contract with that Spanish duchess, Anna Marie Guardairia, the one who later married Frederick of Austria, and he did so to marry a poor baroness. This young girl had nothing, no dowry to speak of, only a few parcels of worthless farmland to the north of Flanders—or so 'tis said."

"He loved her that much,” Roshelle nodded. “Angelique would never be content to be his mistress. She would have no liaison with a man except with the sacrament of marriage. So, he tossed away a fortune and bribed the church to find reasons for breaking his marriage contract. And then he married her."

"What do you know of the woman?"

A distant look came into her eyes again. "I only met Angelique once, but once was enough ..."

"Enough for what?"

"Angelique, you see, was touched."

"Mad?"

"Nay, milord. Or, not exactly." Roshelle shook her head. "Angelique was touched by God's grace; the holy spirit lived and breathed through her soul. She was not meant for this world. I remember Papillion was very upset when Rodez announced his plans ... I was so young then, but I still remember Papillion said that Angelique's blessing would be Rodez's curse in this world, or so he would think ..."

"Does she live with him now, his whore underfoot?"

Roshelle shook her head. "Shortly after her marriage to Rodez, she took a vow of silence. She lives the cloistered life at the Abbey de la Sainte-Chapelle, but rumor has it that she went mad, that he made her go mad, and all because she would not love him more than God."