The Pearl Savage (37 page)

Queen Ada came stalking toward him,
her rare pearls swinging between her knees and an image came to him
of strangling her with those pearls. It made a smile come into place
where none had been before. His anger at Clara clawed like an animal
in a cage wishing to be free.

Bracus looked upon the Prince,
taking his measure as a male. He was without a moral compass, Bracus
knew, to harm a female as he had attempted with Clara. Bracus was
unsure of the communion between this Prince and the Queen. He would
watch but signal the Band to be ready.

The Queen saw the smile on
Frederic’s face and her step faltered, an internal alarm going off,
which she promptly ignored. Instead, she thought: more wine will make
all this dreadfulness go away. Clara will return to the sphere with
the Prince, marry him, and she would have grapes aplenty. Immensely
satisfied with her internal musings she rushed forward and as she
neared the horse Clara had a sudden, internal portent and shouted a
moment too late, “Mother, no!”

Too late, her guard responded to
Clara’s anguished cry, fierce hate and love intermingled in a
confusing tide of emotion. Ada turned her head to gaze at Clara just
as the Prince hooked his fist in the pearl’s that hung around Ada’s
neck, jerking her close to his horse. With his opposite hand a small
dagger arced, piercing her chest as he dumped her body away from him,
her side hitting the horse on the descent then landing on her back.
The pearls wrapped the hilt and fell about the grass like black
beetles let loose from a jar.

There
was utter silence for a moment when nothing stirred, not a
savage,
guard, bird, animal, even the flies ceased their droning. Then the
world slid into an abyss of clashing metal and diving swords. The men
launched themselves at each other and Clara hit the ground, Evelyn
crawling after her.

She reached Ada and lifted her head,
cradling it as blood welled brightly. A shiny flood of rubies
cascaded down her pale flesh, soaking the deep purple velvet and
turning it to black.

Her eyes were becoming glassy and
Clara knew she would not last in this realm much longer. After so
long living in fear Clara found an abiding sadness taking residence
in her heart. All the lost time with the Queen, her mother, now gone.

With the sounds of battle all around
her she held her mother’s dying head and saw that she was trying to
say something.

“
Yes…
my Queen,
mother,”
Clara said.

The name felt foreign on her tongue.

“…not… not… your…” Queen
Ada gasped, her dark eyes bulging in their sockets.

“What are you not?” Clara asked,
Evelyn beside her crouched in a semi-fetal position.

“
…your
mother
,
”
she whispered, her breath coming in shallow breaths.

Clara felt her mouth open. She had
just told Clara that they were not mother and daughter.

Queen Ada raised a claw-like hand
and beckoned for her to move closer.

Clara did.

Queen Ada grasped her ruined blouse
and jerked Clara against her, their chests touching, new blood
mingled with the old.

With her last ounce of breath she
said, “The mermaid…” and died.

Her hand loosened from the tangle of
clothing Clara wore. Those eyes that had looked into Clara’s a
thousand times with loathing, disappointment, anger and disdain…
saw her no more.

CHAPTER 33

Clara
let her mother’s head slide out of her grasp, falling to the grass,
the flesh still warm and reached for Evelyn, who grabbed her hand
like a lifeline. Looking about, Clara could not make out one from
another, the Queen’s guard blended with the Prince’s. Only the
savages
stood out in stark relief, their movements choreographed like a
beautiful, macabre dance of violence-in-motion. She and Evelyn
huddled together, the horses scattered about as far away from the
battle as they could be.

She
saw Henry laying on the ground with his throat open and spraying
blood leaking through his fingers while his mouth opened and closed.
She turned to Evelyn, burying the girl’s head in her bosom, marking
her with Ada’s slick blood. She watched one of the Prince’s guards
remove his head with a saber of some length, then he turned his
attention to Clara. He sheathed his sword, making his way toward her,
blood splatter from ruined throats decorating his uniform in a
ghastly crimson pattern of death. Clara did not pause, jerking the
girl to her feet and ran to where the Band’s horses stood. She could
feel her pursuer gaining and fought not to turn, the girl as fast as
she
.

She was almost upon the horses when
Evelyn was ripped from her grasp and she turned without hesitation,
launching herself at the Prince’s guard, understanding the futility
even as she moved against him.

She
knew what it was to be unprotected
.

The guard had Evelyn tightly held
and Clara came at him like a wild animal, latching onto his forearm
trying to meet her teeth as they connected with his flesh. He howled
and released Evelyn. He lunged at Clara but she managed to avoid his
fist as he was off-balance with a bleeding and throbbing arm.

Matthew’s attention swung to Clara
and saw her leap upon the guard. He let the dead guard slide down his
body, then heaved him to the ground in front of him.

He
ran to Clara
.

Clara was playing a deadly dodging
game with the guard. He would rush forward and she would back behind
a horse. He would slap its hindquarters, it would trot off, revealing
her.

Clara now stood before the guard.
Evelyn had the sense to make her way into the midst of the horses,
camouflaging her position. The guard’s focus was all for Clara, which
was what she had wanted all along.

To
protect Evelyn
.

“
You
are coming with me Princess, that is Prince Frederic’s order. Do not
attempt to bite me again,” he ground out, warily approaching her
and she stifled a wild bubble of laughter. That a big brute such as
he would be wary of
her,
then her eyes dipped to the wound that her mouth had caused and it
was a disaster upon his arm.

She knew better than to take her
eyes off him but too late she was wrapped in his embrace and an evil
look overcame him as he searched for some place to take her.
Suddenly, his eyes bulged and his body stiffened, a surprised cry
escaping him and his arms loosened about her. He slid to the left,
falling in a crumpled heap to the ground. A dagger stuck out of his
back, a thick agate embedded in its hilt. She looked up and it was
Matthew who calmly crouched above the guard, taking the dagger out
and wiping it casually on the guard’s uniform before sheathing it.

“Clara,” he said, moving toward
her.

Her lip trembled and she told
herself that she would not cry. Her relief was as profound as any she
had ever known as she burst into tears. He drew her into his body,
shielding her from the war which raged about them, the sounds of
swords finally diminishing until the clatter ceased.

An unnatural silence took hold of
the meadow, the sun slanting along the ruined and bloodied grass, the
whole of it looking like it was on fire.

****

As soon as Clara could gain a
measure of control, she backed away from Matthew, shaky and spent.
Looking about her, she saw the Queen dead, looking as pale in the
repose of death as she had when she lived. Clara shuddered, feeling
numb.

Charles approached her at a jog.
Following her gaze his eyes landed on Queen Ada and he flashed back
to her, wrapping his arms around her. But she could not cry any
longer, her emotions depleted.

He
pulled away and looked down on her. “I am so sorry, Clara,” he
thought but for a moment. “I know she showed you every unkindness,
but she was still your mother
.
”

No,
she was not
,
Clara thought, but said nothing. She would reflect on that disturbing
revelation at another time. At present, she needed to take stock of
what had happened.

Quite
a lot, apparently
.
Her
eyes took in the battlefield where no less than thirty new corpses
lay. As she looked, she grew more frantic. The Prince did not appear
to be among them.

He lives.

Her eyes flew from one Band to the
next, all alive, gore and blood covering some from head to toe. Bile
rose in an indelicate lump, surging upward. Clara clamped her hand
over her mouth and raced to the border of the field where she spent
some time purging the contents of her stomach, which was small;
nevertheless, her body heaved.

A small hand landed on her shoulder
and she turned, seeing Evelyn, holding a flask and a cotton cloth,
one in each hand. Clara took it gratefully from the girl, noticing
that she looked a little better. Having all the enemies gone and
still living yourself may have something to do with that.

Finally Clara stood, feeling much
fresher and the first thing she noticed was the Queen’s body covered
in a loose shroud and by itself, a mound of white in the sea of blood
and grass, the other bodies in a third pile. Clara swallowed, pushing
herself to walk past the hills of the dead. She found the Band, who
had marked her progress back into the meadow’s center.

She saw them all, they were injured,
true. Yet they had fought over thirty of the Prince and Queen’s
respective guards and all stood before her in various states of
injury.

Clarence and Philip lay on the
ground beside the band, Jacob attending them both. He must be a
healer she thought absently as she came forward and went to
Clarence’s side, bending down beside him as she tucked her long skirt
under her knees.

“My Queen,” he said in a clear
voice.

Clara just stared.

She whipped her head around and
looked at Charles, who formally bowed. “My Queen,” repeating what
Clarence had uttered from his back, without a hint of sarcasm.

She was Queen now.

Clara
curtsied at her subjects, her friends
,
as if she were on the royal dais instead of in this bloodied field of
death. Their acknowledgment of her new royal status the most surreal
of her young life.

The Band watched this knowing that
now the former monarch was dead, there would be no need for
negotiation with anyone but Clara.

All eyes turned to her.

She looked at each one. Then
surprising them all, asked, “What has become of the Prince?”

Bracus stepped forward. “He
slipped out of our grasp, he and his weasel of a guard.”

Jabez,
Clara supplied internally.

“
They
will need to be found,” she said with halting authority. No one
ordered the Band about
,
“As he will try to…” she found she could not finish without
emotion overtaking.

Charles
nodded, approaching her side. “We will find him
,
Clara
.”

She looked at him. “What of our
guard?”

He shook his head “All dead, Queen
Clara.”

“Just Clara, please. She is no
longer here to force formalities.”

No
one asked who
She
was.

Clara looked at Matthew and Bracus,
their intense eyes followed her with an uneasy intensity. Of course,
her eyes followed Matthew as if magnetized. She sighed. Things were a
mess, that was certain.

They began the ugly task of rifling
through the belongings of others, taking all that they found useful;
food and drink was of a critical importance. They gathered what they
could and departed the meadow, leaving behind the gore for the
creatures of the Outside.

Ada’s body was dragged on a
contraption of wood poles strung together with a leather bottom.
Clara could make out her profile through the roughly woven shroud and
it tightened her heart.

She looked away.

After eating in the woods, they
drank their fill and traveled back to the clan. A long line of horses
with the ransacked gear made a train-of-sorts, the Band its caboose.

CHAPTER 34

The Sphere

Clara dipped the ink quill into the
glass jar of ink, while six anxious faces watched her pen strokes as
if enthralled.

The truth of it was this:

They were now at peace with the Clan
of Ohio, their sworn allies, this fourteenth day of July, in the year
of the Guardian, twenty and thirty.

Clara
looked up at all that watched, at the sea of faces in the Gathering
Room who witnessed the event with a mixture of excitement and
curiosity. Here were the reported
savages,
present in the sphere, their President and their people aligning.

It was an historic occasion.

Clara stood, the hot wax dripping
from the Marker’s personal seal. Stepping forward before it could
cool, she pressed the royal crest from the ring that she wore into
the soft wax, waiting, then releasing it with a light pull. The mark
of the sphere with the oyster and pearl at its center stood out in
stark relief and the treaty was complete.