Shadowheart (15 page)

Beyond, the gale lashed the castle, raging through the open galleries and whistling in the shuttered windows. The lantern’s fitful light showed his bedchamber, the great arcade doors creaking and straining ominously. Elayne realized that driven rain was seeping over the thresholds.

“Mary and Joseph,” he muttered, gripping her elbow. “On guard.”

He pulled her into the chamber. As they ran across it, the wind rose to a yet higher scream, as if it boiled up at the very hope of reaching them through the walls. An ungodly cracking rent the air. The lantern flame vanished into utter blackness. She heard wood strike stone, the deafening thud of timbers collapsing. The arched doors burst open as if smashed by a battering ram. The explosion of wind threw her back, tearing her from his hold.

He shouted at her. Elayne had no time to cry out. She groped for something to cling to against the invading whirlwind; in the dim confusion she found his arm reaching for hers. He gripped her elbow with an agonizing clench, dragging her with him through the roiling darkness. She could feel the whoosh of wind at her back, heard the scream of air rushing past into hollow passages. He yanked her forward; she knew not where. With a deep boom, some unseen door closed behind them. The storm receded to the faint bellow of a distant beast.

Elayne drew in a gasp of air. “God defend us!” She had never experienced a tempest of such savagery, that pounded and screeched and attacked like a living thing. She crossed herself in the blackness. “God spare us.”

“You are not hurt?” His grip on her arm did not lighten.

“By mercy, no.” She had a moment of vast gratitude that he had led her from the headland when he did. The force of the tempest had increased a hundredfold; she would have been carried long since into the sea if he had not brought her away to shelter.

Abruptly he plunged on, finding his way through the tunnels without a flicker of light, pulling her along behind him. She tripped over the hem of the robe, stubbing her toes and cracking her elbows until he stopped so suddenly that she collided with him.

Light poured into the tunnel as he opened a door. She heard the storm again, though not so loud, along with human voices. There was a peculiar geometry to the corridor before them: corners and ceiling that did not seem to meet in the expected places.

He glanced aside at her. He released her arm, sending prickles to her fingertips, and slid his hand up behind her loosened hair to the nape of her neck. She felt the strength of his fingers in her hair. With the faintest pull, he drew her toward him.

Elayne resisted. Standing in the half-light, he smiled at her. A dark smile, as if there were a mortal secret between them. He curled her hair about his fist and bent his face into it, drawing a long breath. Her lips parted on a silent whimper, a secret moan of bitter pleasure.

Abruptly he let her go. With a decisive move, he turned to face the blank stone of one wall. To her shock, he walked right into it.

It seemed to disappear as he did it; become an opening that she had not realized was there. He looked back at her.

“Come.”

Elayne stepped forward, almost expecting to find the stone spring up before her. But it did not. For an instant, from the corner of her eye, it seemed as if a red figure leaped at her from behind. Elayne jumped ahead in startlement, but the figure disappeared as if it had never been. With her heart beating hard, she saw that they stood in the gloom of an unlit gallery overlooking a huge stone-walled kitchen. Wind whistled in the chimneys. The smell of smoke and cookery hung thick from the activity below.

A deep-voiced dog barked, and at the same moment a young man shouted joyously, “My lord!”

The multitude of faces below turned up toward them. In the clamor everyone pushed forward. The white puppy came bounding up the stairs, leaping on Elayne’s damp robe with frantic exuberance.

Il Corvo stepped to the rail. The dark mantle he had thrown about his shoulders flared, showing a blood-red lining. Talk ceased instantly. All in his household fell to their knees. The sound of the storm rumbled beyond the heavy walls like a hidden breath that made the torches shudder. Elayne saw Margaret’s yellow head, and even the Egyptian magician’s bald pate, lowered deferentially among a throng of boys and girls. The great dogs roamed between the tables and cook-pots, pure white, the size of wolves.

“Rise,” their master said. He spoke in the quicksilver tongue of Monteverde. “I have contrived to recover my bride, as you see.”

“God is great!” the young man exclaimed, and a chorus of other voices echoed him. He wore an infidel’s headpiece, a turban topped with a scarlet cap, fancifully embossed with brightly hued patterns. “My lord, we have been fraught with dread.”

“No one has gone out in search?” the pirate asked softly.

“No one, my lord!” The youth lifted his chin, a handsome, dark-eyed Ottoman with the forceful look of a man full-grown, though he was yet beardless. “We have bided here as you commanded, though it was painful to check ourselves.”

“Well done, Zafer,” Il Corvo said.

The young man exhaled a visible breath. He nodded. “My lord.”

“Make a place for us. Dario—see to a meal laid. Fatima, set your pretty feet to bring us claret wine. Zafer, Margaret, come up—I desire your attendance.”

The assembly burst into motion. Behind Zafer, who mounted the stairs three at a time, Margaret hurried up to Elayne. The maid’s blue eyes brimmed with tears. She fell to her knees at Elayne’s feet, holding the damp scarlet hem to her lips. “Your Grace, I was so frightened! I never meant to displease you so, that you would depart from the castle and stay out in such a storm!”

“It was no fault of yours,” Elayne said, misliking the apprehension in the young girl’s voice. She reached down and raised the maid, fending off an eager puppy. “ ‘Twas another entirely who displeased me.”

Margaret’s eyes widened uneasily. “Not Fatima, my lady?” she whispered, bending close.

“No,” Elayne said firmly. “Not Fatima.”

“Who then displeased you, Princess?” The maid was urgent. “Any fault should be remedied.”

Elayne picked up the excited puppy, hefting it in both arms. She looked over her shoulder at the pirate.

“I’ll order myself tossed from a cliff,” he said cordially. “Go down now, and dispose yourself in comfort as you may. Zafer—make ready to depart.”

The pup squirmed and twisted. Elayne looked down, struggling to hold it and disengage its scrabbling paws from her deep sleeve. As she did, a flash of light burst in the smoky room—a flare that threw everything into blinding relief, a sizzle like lightning had struck inside.

She pivoted. Through the vivid after-shapes that danced in her eyes, she saw no one behind her. The pirate and Zafer were gone.

There was a moment of full silence, and then the others went about their business without any sign of bewilderment.

Elayne blinked. She looked along the whole length of the gallery where they had been standing not moments before, up the curved ribs of stone to where the ceiling vanished in smoky darkness. The walls stood solid—or seemed to. There was no other stairway. The black stone gave back shimmers and shadows in the erratic light of the torches below.

Margaret courtesied with perfect serenity, as quickly turned to smiling as she had been frightened a moment before. Elayne realized how young she was; how young they all were, the assembly of this castle.

“Will you let me help you down the stairs, Your Grace?” the maid asked.

To move from the underground darkness into a cheerful throng required a stretch and twist of spirit that left Elayne feeling remote from her very self. She could not seem to connect the easy mirth and chatter of his household with what had happened to her deep in his hidden chamber— with the person she had become there, violated and violent in return.

She descended the stairs beside Margaret, with the puppy still in her arms, hardly knowing how she should conduct herself. No one offered any guidance. The pirate had assembled a strange court in his island exile. Not even with Queen Anne’s youthful entourage had Elayne bided among so many young people at one time. Not one of Il Corvo’s household seemed to have more than twenty years, and most of them were much younger. The guard that greeted them on their first night had been of middling years, but she had seen none other such since.

While they seemed handy enough at their kitchen tasks, with no elders to hold high spirits in check the atmosphere of merriment bordered on glee. A troupe of boys and girls decorously bore a multitude of tablecloths into the cavernous chamber, under the distracted eye of a young man who was directing the setting-up of the single trestle. When he turned his back, the children began covertly pinching one another. A squeal broke out. The group hurtled past Elayne trailing a sail of damask cloth. The puppy barked, scrambling free of her arms to join the game. Its sharp teeth closed on the cloth.

“Softly!” Elayne said, reaching out to catch the damask.

They all halted, five or six wide-eyed faces turned to her, as startled as if a tree had spoken. The pup tugged and shook at the cloth.

They were just of an age with her sister’s child Maria, nine or ten years, except for one young boy who could not have been more than six. But having checked them, she hardly knew what to say. It was herself who was usually the object of a scold—Maria had always been the best of children, docile and eager to please.

Elayne felt a moment of exquisite longing for her home, where Cara’s reprimands were the worst fate she’d had to fear. This brood looked as scared of Elayne’s disapproval as she had been in awe of her sister’s reproach.

“For pity, ‘twould be a shame to injure this fair cloth,” she ventured, uncoupling the puppy from its fervent assault on the rich fabric.

She received a series of ragged bows and courtesies in reply. The children edged away from her, folding the damask with more care to keep it from the floor, and then hurried off with a sudden burst of giggles. The pup danced away after them and then bounded back to Elayne.

“Ach, they are rude babes, my lady, forgive them!” Margaret whispered in English. “My lord has not yet taken that company in hand.”

Elayne’s glance passed over the Egyptian. He instantly stepped forward, sweeping an extravagant bow. His age was impossible to guess, but he was by far older than anyone else in the chamber. He fluttered his long fingers and opened them, presenting a coil of golden cord and a jeweled collar. “A leash for the noble whelp,” he said. “If Your Grace will honor my poor conjuring.”

Elayne gave a regal nod, as she had seen Queen Anne do when she received presents of her courtiers. The majestic effect was somewhat spoiled by the puppy’s vociferous objections to finding itself curbed when she fastened on the collar. The dog flew about like a hooked fish, fighting the leash, and then sat down and tried to bite through the cord.

“Come here, then, little witch.” Elayne knelt and untied the leash, knowing too keenly herself the sensation of be-jeweled confinement. She rubbed the pup’s ears and set it free. Perversely, it stayed at her side, licking her fingers and jumping on her hem when she rose.

“Margaret—where are the elder folk?” she asked.

“Oh, Dario is here—” Margaret waved toward the young man who had finally placed the carved bench to his satisfaction in front of the vast, blackened hearth. “My lord took Zafer with him. Fatima has gone to the cellar. She will return in a moment with refreshment for my lady.”

Neither Zafer nor Dario appeared to have more than a year or two beyond Elayne’s own seventeen.

“They are the eldest?” Elayne asked.

Margaret glanced at her. She gave a shrug and lifted her hand. “Your Grace, I know not. I believe so. Will you take this place of honor? Here is Fatima with your drink.”

Elayne recognized the same comely Moorish maid who had served Elayne and Countess Beatrice in their captivity. As Elayne sat down at the trestle, Fatima approached with great deference. She knelt before the table, placing two goblets. “Will you take wine, Princess?” she asked.

In all the days that Elayne had nursed Lady Beatrice, this maid had not once seemed to understand her French, nor Latin, nor Italian. But Fatima spoke now in the tongue of Monteverde with more fluency than Elayne owned in it herself.

Elayne gave a short nod. Fatima beckoned a young boy to her side, one of the merry crew that had sailed about the chamber with the damask cloth in tow. He made a deep bow, serious now, rubbing his fingers quickly on his shirt before he took the jar. His hands were barely large enough to hold the heavy vessel as he poured an unsteady stream of rosy liquid and placed the goblet before Elayne. He stepped back with another nervous bow, kneeling down to one knee.

Elayne gave him an encouraging smile and reached for the wine.

“Hold!”
Il Corvo’s voice froze her, ringing harshly in the great high chamber. Elayne let go of the goblet. He strode forward from nowhere, his hair dewed with moisture, the dark mantle flaring. “Taste it, Matteo!”

He stopped beside the table, glaring down at the kneeling boy. The child had already dropped his face to the tiled floor, quaking. “Matteo,” the pirate said in a voice of ice. “You fail me. Drink of what you poured. Discard the rest. And then I do not wish to set eyes upon you again.”

The boy raised his pallid face. Still on his knees, he crawled forward. He lifted the goblet and took a sip.

“Drink deeper,” the pirate demanded.

The child took a full swallow, and then another. The entire household watched in silence. Matteo appeared as if he might retch, his mouth screwed into a tight, unhappy rose. Elayne watched with horror. It was an undisguised tasting for poison, credence without the pleasant rituals she had seen at court that made it seem only ceremonial.

For long moments everyone stared, but beyond the grimace, Matteo seemed to take no ill effect. He sat upon his knees, very still, his head bowed in disgrace.

Il Corvo turned his brutal look upon Elayne. “Never …
never…
take food or drink without credence.”

She had forgotten. Lady Melanthe had warned her of such; this pirate himself had taken advantage of her trust to stupefy her when he pleased. He sat down, dismissing Matteo with a disdainful motion of his hand. The boy backed away on his hands and knees, in full health enough to rise and run when he reached the wall.

The pirate watched him go. He looked around at his petrified household and narrowed his eyes at the maid. “Fatima. Matteo’s life is in your hands. If you allow him to make such a mistake again, you will be the one to put a poison cup to his lips yourself. Replace the wine.”

Fatima went to her knees. “You command me, Your Grace,” she said breathlessly.

She rose and turned, hastening after Matteo. Elayne gripped her hands in her lap.

The Raven looked aside at her. “Remember this, my lady. You, too, are responsible for their lives. Do not allow yourself to be imprudent, or to be served carelessly. If there is any injury to you, those who caused it—by mistake or by malice—will suffer an ill fate.”

She tried to appear composed, sitting with her back rigid to control her trembling limbs. “He is but a child,” she said faintly.

“The better to do murder unobserved.”

“Do murder!” she echoed. “The boy cannot yet have eight years to his life.”

“I had but nine, at my first,” he said. He took the seat beside her, throwing off his red-lined mantle. “I do not ask so much of Matteo yet, if it comforts your gentle heart. But they all know the price of an error in my service.”

Two of the littlest boys bore his cloak away, their faces solemn and scared. At his order, Margaret brought a golden dish and set it upon the table. Stiffly Elayne offered her hands to be rinsed from the pitcher of perfumed water. The fragrance did not mask the scent that lingered on her, the scent of lust and coupling—the scent of a manslayer.

The one called Dario came forward. He was a thick-muscled, broad-shouldered youth with blunt strong features, but he bowed with a precise elegance, taking the napkin from his left shoulder and drying Elayne’s hands.

“Your pardon for this crude meal, my lady,” the pirate said gruffly. “It is not what I intended. We will have a proper feast in Monteverde to celebrate our marriage.”

“ ‘Tis no matter,” Elayne said in a stifled voice. If she never had a feast in Monteverde, she would be pleased.

“Pour into three cups,” he instructed Dario, and watched as the youth performed a careful ritual, tasting deeply at each before he served it.

The Raven took a slow sip of one goblet, and offered it to Elayne from his own lips. She drank a convulsive swallow, assured at least that this was safe. He lifted the next cup and held it out to her. But as she raised her hand to steady the goblet, he drew it sharply away.

“Do not drink of this,” he said. “Be careful. Smell it.”

She lifted her eyes in mistrust. He met her look under his black lashes, a steady stare. Elayne drew in a breath over the cup.

“Do you smell it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It smells of spice.”

He offered the first goblet again. “Look in it. Observe the color.”

Elayne looked at a claret wine that seemed ordinary in its honey-red color and sweet scent of spicery. “I see nothing.”

He held up the second cup. “What of this?”

She frowned down at the silver goblet so close to her nose. He tilted it—and she saw the thin film that threw transparent colors across the surface.

“Oh—” she said. “I see it.”

“At last,” he said in a tone of great congratulation. “ ‘Tis fortune that it’s only a drop of olive oil.” He pushed the third goblet over the cloth toward her. “This one contains bane enough to kill us both. Smell it.”

Gingerly Elayne sniffed at the last goblet—one of the cups that Dario had tasted not moments before. He stood by, erect and unconcerned, bowing his head when she glanced at him.

The faintest odor of burnt syrup, of almonds blackened beyond mere roasting, tainted the scent of the last cup. It seemed to go instantly to the back of her nose and linger there. She pushed the cup hastily away. “But he drank of it!”

Il Corvo looked up at Dario with a slight smile. “Enlighten the princess to what passed.”

The youth bowed to his waist. “Your Grace, there was no bane in it when I drank. My lord diverted you with the second cup and envenomed the last one while you were distracted with looking at what he showed to you. It is a common ruse.”

“Common?” she repeated weakly. Her voice rose. “This is common in Monteverde?”

“No doubt they are clumsier about it,” the Raven said, “and easy to detect. But you make a credulous target. You must learn to take notice of what happens around you.”

“Helas,” she cried, “God forfend that I ever came here!”

The pirate scowled. “By Christ, can you not yet see what true profit it is to you?” He waved his hand for Dario to remove the cups. “Madame, you were bound for Monteverde and certain death in your innocence. Whatever I have done, whatever I may be—there is no one alive who can school you better in the wiles of murderers, nor keep you more surely from any human menace. Do you doubt me?”

She stared at the white tablecloth before her, where a cup of the claret had left a mark like a bloodstained new moon—a mark of poison, or of sweet safe wine; she knew not which. Once she had trusted her dark angel to keep her from all harm. But that happy illusion was broken now; it was an assassin who proclaimed himself her protector with such forbidding certainty.

There are a hundred dangers,
Lady Melanthe had warned her, in a voice of anguish.
There is no time to teach you.

Her godmother had known this pirate.

Elayne could not reason that Lady Melanthe had somehow sent her to him. To her family’s enemy. To the same assassin who declared that he would have killed her himself if she had wed Franco Pietro of the Riata.

She could not reason it, and yet she remembered Lady Melanthe’s cool ruthless demeanor, her own sister’s awe of the countess, the respect tinged with dread that was never spoken. And she knew that her godmother was closer in spirit to the Raven than to anyone else Elayne had ever encountered.

“I am yours,” the pirate said to her. Softly. Simply. He watched her out of shadowed eyes. “To my death.”

She took a deep breath, staring at the shape of the half-moon stain. There was yet the hot soreness inside her, where he had taken her, left his man’s seed in her body. Black mystery and pain, and she wanted it again—she wanted him before her, his head arched back, at her mercy. The strength of what she felt, the power he gave her to hurt him—her desire for it shocked her. Thunder cracked and rumbled overhead. Sullen smoke curled from the chimneys, the tempest exhaling like a living thing from the darkest corners of the lofty kitchen. The grave faces of children gazed at her from the shadows.

“Do it, then,” she said, lifting her eyes. “Teach me what arts of malice that you will. I am certain that you know them all.”

His lip curved in dry mockery. “I could not teach you one-tenth of what I know of malice,” he said. “But I can put you on your guard against it.”

Zafer appeared at that moment, emerging from the smoky shadows, his tabard and exotic headpiece darkened and dripping with rainwater. As the Raven looked toward him, the young infidel made a bow, but no words passed between them. There was only a glance, a moment that seemed to convey some grim meaning between the youth and his master as the storm wailed outside.

“Attend me well, then, my lady,” the pirate said, turning back to her. “Place no faith in such useless concoctions as the powdered horn of a unicorn or the color of a moonstone—such false alchemy is for fools. Open all of your senses. Each poison has a character of its own. Each murderer has a nature that betrays him, if you observe closely enough.”