The Silver Rose (46 page)

“It’s not always wise to believe the evidence of one’s eyes,” he advised. “But we can discuss that later. For now, we have more serious business to attend to, I believe.”

He took a step back, squinted at her, then said evenly, “Stand still, Ariel. You’re shaking . . . with anger, not fear, no doubt . . . but if you move so much as an eyelash, you make my task impossible.”

His eyes were steady, once again clear and blue as glacial ice. Ariel took a deep steadying breath as she balanced the apple on her head. She dropped her hands to her sides and faced him, her eyes still fierce yet exultant with challenge.

The Great Hall fell completely silent. It was as if not a rustle of air breathed through the group of men and women. Even Ralph was transfixed. Something primitive, elemental, surged between the man with his pistol and the silent and immobile girl. It was contained in their eyes. An overpowering, almost sexual tension that thrummed in the air.

Simon took his time. On some detached plane, he was aware of the absurdity of indulging in such a primitive reaction, such an irrational response to challenge. But on another plane, he knew what this was about. It wasn’t about rational thought and civilized reaction. It was about trust. The wild, untamed side of Ariel had chosen this crazy challenge as a leap of faith. Not intentionally and she was probably not even aware of it in the curious exultation of
this moment. But that was what was happening. She was challenging him to deserve her trust.

He raised the pistol, supported it on his forearm lest the slightest quiver of a finger prove their undoing. He sighted. For a minute Ariel’s eyes filled his sights. Huge, glowing, defiant, yet filled with an emotion that stunned him as he recognized it. It was need. Ariel, who never needed anything from anyone, needed him to make this right for them both.

He moved his sight to the apple, until it filled his vision. The small black tip of the stem showed at the bright green apex. Gently . . . oh, so gently . . . he squeezed the trigger.

The report was so violent in the deathly hush that the girls screamed shrilly almost in unison, and even men used to the sounds of a battlefield flinched. Only Ariel didn’t move. After a minute she raised a hand and almost wonderingly touched her head. Her scalp still felt heavy where the apple had rested, and her hair still seemed to crackle from the rush of air from the bullet. But the apple, in two neat segments, had flown to the floor, and her hair wasn’t even parted.

Simon laid the pistol down and limped over to her. He took her hands in a firm clasp and said with not entirely feigned sternness, “Of all the insanities, Ariel! I cannot imagine how you persuaded me to do such a thing.”

“You did it because you wanted to,” she returned. “Because you
needed
to.”

“That is
not
what I needed to do with you,” he said dryly, catching her chin between finger and thumb. “I have let you run us both ragged for too long, my dear girl. The worm is about to turn.”

“Oh?” Ariel exclaimed. “What worm? I was the worm who wasn’t allowed to have her horses!”

“Could someone explain what’s going on?” Jack inquired somewhat plaintively. “Worms and horses seem an unlikely combination.”

“Not in my wife’s scheme of things.” Simon reached behind
him for his cane. “Come. Let us discuss these improbable bedfellows in privacy.” He made her hand fast beneath his arm and turned with her toward the stairs.

“What’s that?” Ariel said suddenly, resisting his encouraging pressure.

“What’s what?” Simon’s voice was impatient.

“That!”
she said, breaking free of his hold and running toward the open doors. As she reached them a blood-spattered figure staggered through into the hall.

“Edgar!”

“The ’osses!” Edgar gasped, falling to his knees, one hand pressed to his shoulder, which hung at an odd angle. Blood poured from a gash on his head, blinding him. “The ’osses, m’lord. Men . . . men in the stableyard . . . after ’em. . . can’t ’old ’em off.”

“Oh, you bastard swine son of a filth-eating sewer rat!” Ariel cursed Ranulf, who was already on his way out of the hall. Ariel looked wildly around. “You, girl!” She pointed to one of the girls who seemed less vacuous than the others. “Get help for Edgar from the kitchen.” Then she was off her plait flying behind her.

Roland and Ralph, both in the dark about the true nature of Ariel’s racing stud and their brother’s own plans for it, took a minute or two before they set off in pursuit of brother and sister.

“Go on,” Simon gritted as his friends hesitated when he limped toward the door. “For God’s sake, go on. . . . Keep an eye on Ariel. I’ll follow as fast as I can.”

Jack gave him one last concerned look, then nodded, and loped off toward the sounds of battle coming from the stableyard.

Simon’s mouth was set in a dour line as he hobbled, forcing himself to an almost impossible pace toward the arch to the stableyard. Once there, he stared for a minute in disbelief. Ariel’s Arabians were standing in a shivering string
to the far side of the yard in the charge of a gang of gypsies. A pitched battle was being waged on the cobbles in the fitful glare of pitch torches.

The men of the Ravenspeare stables were fighting with staves, pitchforks, stones; and their opponents, dark clad, faces smeared with soot, wielded the same. As Simon watched, trying to distinguish the figures, Ariel plunged into the midst of the melee.

Simon opened his mouth to bellow at her, but then his own friends had dived forward and she was lost to view in the encircling company. Simon’s eyes darted around the wild scene as he tried to decide where his own intervention should be made. His gaze fell on a tall, slim figure standing on a water butt, his sword in his hand, his head thrown back, his eyes glittering in the light of the torch behind him.

Oliver Becket.

Becket cheered on his men with a rousing cry, then yelled across the yard, “Ravenspeare! Let’s show this rabble how it’s done!” He leaped from the barrel into the fray.

“A mill . . . a mill!” Ralph squealed excitedly, racing forward, head down, sword waving without direction.

Roland’s eyes flicked toward Ranulf, who hadn’t responded to Becket’s call to arms and stood glaring angrily at the fracas, ripping at a fingernail with his teeth. Roland glanced at the Hawkesmoor, who, still unflappably, was taking in the scene with a soldier’s observant eye.

The two battle lines swayed, then a flame shot up from the thatched roof of the barn. A horse screamed in fear at the smell of smoke. Ariel dodged sideways out of the grappling lines.

She darted to the horses. “Do something useful, you thieving dolts! Get them to leeward of the smoke before they stampede!” She kicked, punched, pulled, grabbed, at the ragged, filthy youths, some of whom somehow found themselves leading the high-strung beasts out of the direct line of the smoke, while others raced to douse the flames, filling buckets from the pump.

Simon’s friends stepped backward as Ariel abandoned the fight and, like the earl, they stood and took stock, the immediate need for action now lessened.

The Becket contingent were all hardy scrappers, from the gypsy encampment for the most part, and they followed no rules of combat. The Ravenspeare men, those whom Simon and Edgar had employed to guard the horses, were not natural fighters. They were grooms, field hands, gardeners, and it was clear to Simon once he’d sorted out the confusion that his men were getting the worst of it.

The barn was now merrily afire, the flames shooting up into the star-studded sky. Simon listened, hearing a dull rumbling roar from across the fields. It was a roll of voices, gathering momentum, like impending thunder. And then the sound became distinct. It was the panicked chant of “Fire!” on the tongues of a great crowd. People poured into the yard, men and women, armed with buckets, flails, pitchforks.

One of the Ravenspeare men gave a sudden unearthly shriek and fell to the cobbles, a knife jutting from his arm. At the sight, the crowd, who had come ready for anything, charged into the melee, to the rescue of the sons and husbands of their own villages.

“Oh, God, you have to stop it!” Ariel was suddenly at Simon’s side, her face black with soot, her hair flying from its pins. “They’re going to kill each other. All of them. It’s a Romany fight.”

The local people loathed and feared the gypsies. Brawls were constantly breaking out, and it would take little to start a full-scale battle between the two camps. And the wounding of one of their own was all the tinder needed.

“Ravenspeare! Call off your men!” Simon bellowed over the noise. “For God’s sake, man, this is no good for anyone.”

Ranulf’s eyes glittered. “Call off yours, Hawkesmoor. The horses are mine. Get out of here and take my damnable sister with you, and I’ll call off my men.”

Ariel jumped forward and was pulled back with an
unceremonious jerk as Simon grabbed and hung on to her arm. “You murdering bastard!” she gasped at her brother. Words were futile but they were all Simon was allowing her. “You wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn if every man here died.”

“Why should I?” he laughed. “Yield your horses, sister, and I’ll grant the lives of your precious peasants.”

“Jack, take my wife.” Simon thrust Ariel from him and she spun into Jack Chauncey’s arms, too startled for a minute to speak.

Simon drew his sword. He took a step toward Ranulf. “So, it must be as it’s always been, Ravenspeare.” His voice was without a trace of expression and his eyes were cold and flat. “We will settle this in blood, as such things have always been settled between our two families.”

Ranulf drew his sword inch by inch from his scabbard, his mocking gray gaze never leaving his brother-in-law’s. “You think I can’t best a cripple, Hawkesmoor?”

“Yes, I think that.” Simon stepped back, clearing a space around them with a sweep of his sword. “Tell your pander to call off your men first.”

Ranulf’s mouth twitched at this contemptuous epithet. But his eyes were greedy, too greedy for revenge upon the Hawkesmoor to defend his best friend too strenuously.

He bellowed over his shoulder, his voice rising above the tumult. “Call off your men, Oliver. I have a better way of settling this.”

Oliver, emerging from the fray, looked stunned. But he had danced to Ranulf’s tune for too many years to question the notes, even now in the midst of this splendid mayhem that he alone had created. He turned with a slashing sword back to the fray, cursing and beating through the throng.

“Quell it, Jack.” Simon spoke quietly as he stood waiting. The cadre moved into the fray, using their swords with quiet, unemotional efficiency as they would when quelling a riot. Men fell back, bleeding, moaning, the wildness dying
from their eyes as they realized how lost they had been in the blood madness.

Ariel stood still, her heart in her throat. The barn’s damp thatch was now sullenly smoldering, and the torches threw garish light over the stableyard as the two men paced out a dueling piste. From all sides, eyes watched them.

How could Simon match Ranulf in an even contest? Ranulf had two sound legs. He was fast. He was not plagued with debilitating aches and pains.

Why were his friends not fearful? She could see nothing on their faces as they conferred with Simon and paced the piste.

Then Jack took Simon’s hand, pressed it, and stepped back, the others joining him beside Ariel. She looked up at Jack, unable to frame her fear, and he gave her an almost quizzical smile and took her hand.

Ranulf looked over his shoulder at his two brothers, standing behind him. He grinned at them. “The final game of the tournament, my brothers. A fitting end to our wedding celebrations, I believe.”

Ralph sniggered. Roland merely raised an eyebrow.

Simon lifted his sword in salute. Ranulf returned the courtesy.

The two women hastened, breathless, along the uneven lane. The sounds of mayhem, the smell of smoke, the clash of weapons, grew ever closer and more immediate, drowning out any words Jenny formed. Her mother’s hand was on her arm, guiding her because they were going too fast for the younger woman’s blind feet to step true. Ahead of them the hounds barked, every now and again turning back as if to herd the women onward.

Sarah had heard the sounds first. So faint behind the snug walls of the cottage, for a minute she believed she was imagining them, except that the dogs had raced to the door and
stood, ears cocked, every line of their graceful, powerful bodies straining.

And then Romulus had thrown himself at the door, raising his voice in a great baying cry of anxiety and distress. Remus had promptly followed suit.

“What is it? What’s the matter with them?” Jenny had rushed over to them, trying to calm them, but they had continued to batter the doors, giving vent to that unearthly cry.

Sarah had fetched her cloak from the peg, and Jenny, in bewilderment, had donned her own. The minute she had opened the doors, the hounds had shot out like gray cannon-balls, and as the women had hurried in their wake, they returned again and again, rounding them up, herding them along toward the smoke-filled skyline and the sounds of battle.

“Is it Ariel, Mother?” Jenny’s voice was barely a whisper. Sarah merely took her hand in a tighter grip and hurried her along.

They reached the stableyard just as the violent hubbub seemed to be dying down. Jenny blinked as if she could somehow clear her blind eyes as she stood clutching her mother’s hand. All around her, Jenny could feel the press of people. She could smell the reek of blood and stale humanity, and the stench of fear twitched in her nostrils. But she could hear no words to help her form a coherent picture of her surroundings. Her mother’s hand gripped hers, and Jenny clung to it as the only solid beam in a frightening maelstrom that had no shape for her.

Sarah stepped a little forward into the yard. She saw the two men with their drawn swords, facing each other in the torchlight. She saw the circle of faces, eager, curious, malicious, surrounding them, watching the spectacle of death. She saw Ariel, the dogs now at her side, although she seemed unaware of them. She seemed to Sarah to be in a trance, her face bloodless, her lips blue.