The Night Dance (12 page)

Rowena was standing by the bedchamber window when two man servants carried Lord Liddington out on a pallet. When they had awakened Mary and told her that the man was dead, she’d hurried off in a panic to inform Sir Ethan.

Sir Ethan had returned to the bedchamber with Mary and, upon examining Lord Liddington, determined that he still manifested a faint heartbeat.

“Thank God!” Eleanor had gasped.

Their father had looked at her sharply. “Do you know what has befallen this man?” he challenged suspiciously.

“No,” Eleanore had lied quickly. “I’m just glad he lives.”

“He is barely alive,” Sir Ethan had grumbled. “I will bring him to rest in a spare bedchamber and summon a doctor.”

“Now will you cancel this absurd contest?” Mary had asked him, wringing her hands anxiously.

“Not at all,” he’d told her. “It is more important than ever before to discover what is going on in my very own home.”

“Very well, sir,” Mary had agreed obediently. “Shall I have the girls line up their slippers for your review?”

He glanced around the room and saw the ruined slippers scattered about just as dirty and torn up as they were every morning. “Don’t even bother!” he’d grumbled angrily as he left.

Now, as the door slammed shut behind the departing servants carrying away the comatose Lord Liddington, Rowena turned toward the window. She could see Bedivere below her, gazing up at her window. A shiver ran through her as she wondered what she would have done if it had been him that they’d poisoned with their sleeping potion.

She crossed the room to where Eleanore lay on her bed, deep in thought, and sat on the end of the bed. “It’s over, you know,” she said.

“What’s over?” Eleanore asked, propping herself up onto her elbows.

“We can’t poison another man,” Rowena pointed out, a note of incredulity in her voice. Wasn’t this fact obvious to Eleanore?

“We didn’t poison him,” Chloe disagreed, joining them on the bed.

“He’s just still sleeping off the effects of the potion,” Helewise added as she came closer along with the remaining sisters.

“His heart was
barely
beating,” Rowena reminded them. “We couldn’t even see any breath coming from him.”

“But he didn’t die,” Bronwyn insisted.

“I’ll add water to the potion,” Eleanore said decisively. “It will weaken it so that the next man will wake up in the morning.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” Rowena argued. “It’s a huge risk to take.”

“He will,” Eleanore snapped at her irritably.

“Of course he will,” Ione said, and the rest of the sisters murmured their agreement.

Rowena scowled at them angrily and returned to her own bed. What was wrong with them? How could they gamble with a man’s health like that? What if they put the next man in the same sort of living death as Lord Liddington? What if they actually did kill the next man to come through?

What if the next man was Bedivere?

Just as her sisters did, Rowena knew the lure of the island, the pull to go toward it, no matter what. It was a strong urge offering the reward of instant pleasure, the powerful feeling of being attractive, and the thrill of the dance. Her sisters, though, seemed more powerfully caught in its thrall than she.

Right from the start, she’d hung back; she’d had reservations and misgivings. Perhaps, she considered, it was because her need for the things the island offered was not as great. She, of them all, was the only one who knew what it was to be kissed by a man, to feel herself desired and even loved. She did not need a fantastical stag prince to spin her
around a dance floor. She would have much preferred to dance with Bedivere.

Still…there was a need that compelled her to go with them through the trapdoor each night. She had been staring into the bowl she’d found that day in the forest, the one in which she’d seen the figure Eleanore had said was their mother.

The island had made her sisters forget about finding their mother, but she hadn’t forgotten. Every time she went through that opening it was with the intention that she would not go to the island. Instead, she would search the cavern and underground passageways for her mother. But each time she got into the cavern, the enchantment would pull her like some hypnotic spell and she would forget her quest just as her sisters did.

Rowena took the bowl out from under her bed and stared into it. It began to glow. She was tempted to alert her sisters but instead she kept her concentration on the light, resolved to discover what it might reveal.

The woman appeared again.

Leaning closer, Rowena saw that she appeared to be floating, her long hair dancing at the side of her face, her gown flowing around her. She reached out and gathered together a handful of small lights. Cupping them between her hands, she reached out, presenting the twinkling lights.

The lights…could they be…the sparkling lights in the lake?

As the golden glow faded from the bowl, Rowena
looked up and was faced with her sisters who had been observing her curiously. “What did you see?” Brianna asked.

“I think our mother is trapped below the lake,” she told them.

“For all these years?” Bronwyn questioned doubtfully.

“Wouldn’t she drown?” Cecily added.

Rowena recalled what Bedivere had told her. He was searching for a magical figure in a mystical lake. “Our mother wouldn’t drown if she were the Lady of the Lake,” she said as the truth struck her.

“
Our
mother?” Mathilde questioned with a small laugh of disbelief. “Are you saying that
our
mother is the Lady of the Lake?”

Rowena nodded. “Yes. I have come to believe that she is.”

“Has someone told you this?” Eleanore asked suspiciously.

Rowena could not tell them about Bedivere, how he sought the lady who so perfectly fit the description of their missing mother. But the more she considered it, the more certain she became. “No one has said anything to me,” she lied to Eleanore, “but it makes sense. It explains why I seem to see her in water—why I am seeing her at all. She is contacting me through her magic.”

“Or perhaps you are contacting her through inherited magic of your own,” Bronwyn offered seriously. This sobering thought made Rowena draw in
a slow, quavering breath. She supposed it was possible, recalling her visions of Bedivere.

“If that’s so, how do we free her?” Brianna asked. “We swam in the lake. We even dove below the surface, and we didn’t see her.”

“I don’t know,” Rowena admitted.

At that moment Mary entered with a basket of fresh, new slippers. “How is Edgar?” Eleanore asked her eagerly.

“Who?” Mary asked.

“Lord Liddington,” Eleanore explained.

Mary began distributing the slippers to each sister. “The physician has come to see the poor man. He’s doubtful that Lord Liddington will awaken any time soon, if ever.” She stopped and looked at them searchingly. “Girls, what happened? I was awake all night, and I didn’t see or hear anything.”

The sisters would have laughed at this had the situation not been so dire.

“Maybe he had an illness before he got here,” Eleanore suggested.

“Well, then heaven knows what this next man will bring in with him,” Mary muttered.

“What’s he like?” Chloe asked.

“He’s a poor, coughing madman,” she told them. “Just the other day he came begging at the front gate, wanting a meal. I sent one to him, but he didn’t even have the sense to wait for it.”

“Why did father give
him
a number?” Brianna asked, complaining.

“He turned him down but someone must have given a ticket to him,” Mary said. “You girls better hope he doesn’t get to wed one of you, though I dare say that he’d be quite handsome if he wasn’t such a mess.”

Rowena’s hand went to her throat as she realized who Mary was talking about. Bedivere! Her beloved would come in and be the next to fall prey to the poisoned goblet her sisters would insist on offering him.

Should she tell them about Bedivere, explain to them this was the man she loved more passionately than life itself?

She waited for Mary to leave and then spoke to her sisters. “You cannot hurt this man,” she insisted. “It’s wrong!”

“What’s he to you?” Eleanore asked. The subject seemed to make her irritable now and her voice was sharp.

“I have seen him from the window,” she said cautiously, still deciding how much to tell. “He seems like a good man.”

“What did he do, wink at you and win your heart?” Chloe teased.

“And what if he did?” Rowena replied.

“The beggar?” Mathilde questioned.

“A person’s fortunes may rise or fall as the wheel of fate spins,” Rowena answered. “But a person’s character remains constant.”

Eleanore got off her bed and approached Rowena in a bullying, dominant manner that Rowena didn’t
care for. “I will dilute the potion as I said I would, but I will not have some beggar exposing our nightly pleasures to our father.”

“And what if I tell him where we go?” Rowena countered boldly.

“If that is your intention I will tie you up and shove you in the closet,” Eleanore threatened.

“Let’s not fight,” Isolde intervened. “Rowena, the man will be all right. Eleanore will dampen the potion and he will awake in the morning as he should.”

Rowena walked toward the window and gazed out. If she did reveal their secret to Bedivere, their father would seal up the opening and she would have no chance of searching for their mother.

There was a possibility that her father might take up the search himself. But what if he didn’t believe her?

She wished she could be sure of what to do, but at the moment her mind spun with indecision.

Bedivere tied a hammock he’d made from a discarded horse blanket between two trees, and tried to sleep. He managed to slumber for brief moments, but he was too anxious to give in to completely unconscious sleep. He had to know if the first man to enter, a strapping, well-dressed fellow, would come out of the manor.

At dawn he opened his eyes and saw a physician entering through the front gate with a servant from the house. He worried that something had happened to Rowena and could sleep no more. He began to glance anxiously up at the window for a sign of Rowena but didn’t see her.

The sun was well up in the sky when the physician came out of the manor. “Good doctor,” Bedivere accosted the physician as he rode his horse up the trail. “What’s happened?”

“The first competitor has fallen ill with a mysterious malady,” the physician revealed. “He is in a comatose state, not quite dead and not quite alive.”

Although Bedivere was sorry for the man, he couldn’t help but feel relief. He grew eager to be called, to have his chance to see Rowena again.

Servants came out with food during the day to feed the twenty or so men who had camped out, awaiting their chance. Finally, around sunset, a man servant came to the front door and called out, “Number two!”

The servant appraised Bedivere skeptically when he stepped forward, but Bedivere handed the man his card and the servant had no choice but to admit him.

He followed the servant through elegant hallways on the first floor until they came to the part of the house made of hand-hewn beams and wooden floors, an older part of the manor that obviously predated the rest. Bedivere took note of this as well as of every other detail of the manor. He didn’t yet know what information would prove valuable to him in this quest, and his training as a knight had taught him to mark the details of each new location carefully.

Mary met him and the servant outside the bedchamber. She delivered a stern warning against any improper advances on the sisters. “You are simply to report what you discover,” she instructed. “Take no action.”

Bedivere nodded and waited as she unbolted the door. His heart raced at the thought that in seconds he would see her.

And then, quickly, he was inside the bedchamber faced with twelve curious young women. His gaze darted from one to the other, searching, until he came to Rowena and he smiled at her with his eyes.

She returned his warm gaze but was cut short by Mary’s sharp voice. “This is Bedivere of…”

“…of the North Country,” he supplied politely.

Mary cast a disapproving eye on him. “Yes…very well…” The servants came in with the towels, pitcher, and basin as they had the night before. “You can wash up and I’ve taken the liberty of providing you with a new tunic, vest, and leggings from our clothing supplies,” she said.

“Thanks for your kindness,” he said as he followed her and the servants into the adjacent room.

Mary went out again and drew the drape shut behind her. “A wash up and new clothing should make him a bit more presentable,” she told the sisters in a conspiratorial whisper that Bedivere could easily hear as he pulled his tunic over his head.

“He’ll be gorgeous!” Ione stated in a loud whisper. Her comment pleased him and he began to wash, hoping Rowena would agree with her sister.

“Now I see why you like him so much,” Chloe said to Rowena.

“He carries two swords,” Helewise had observed. “I wonder why. The one in the scabbard on his belt is quite spectacular.”

“Did you notice that his left hand doesn’t move?” Eleanore commented. “It’s been injured in some way.”

Rowena shushed her harshly, but it was too late. Bedivere had heard this last comment, and it made him acutely self-conscious of his defect. He looked down at his useless hand, hoping Rowena did not find it as repugnant as the distaste in Eleanore’s voice implied.

He finished washing and dressed in the new clothes, leaving his sword and Excalibur lying on the
bed. He pulled open the drape and gazed about the bedchamber. The sisters stared at him with such frank admiration that it made him nearly forget his insecurity over his hand.

He noticed that Mary was speaking to someone through the locked door. She felt his gaze on her and turned. “The door is now bolted from the outside,” she told him. “The windows do not open. There is no way out.” She pointed to the silken slippers parked under each sister’s bed. “Can you tell me how these slippers are being destroyed each night?”

“No, I can’t,” he admitted, “but by morning I hope I will be able to explain it to you.”

He realized that Rowena was looking at him intently as if trying to convey some message. He raised his eyebrows quizzically and, with a nearly imperceptible nod of her head, she indicated that he should step back into his room.

He did this, drawing the drape closed. He waited, not knowing what she wanted him to do next.

“Stay inside, sir,” Mary called to him. “The girls will be changing into their nightclothes.”

“I’ll stay put,” he agreed loudly.

He sat on the bed and shut his eyes, excited by the nearness of her, the knowledge that she was right next door.

Out of a slit between the drape and the doorway, he saw Rowena’s back as she inched slowly toward his room. He stood to be closer to her. “Drink nothing,” she whispered without turning around.