Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

It was
with shock that Spencer realized, as the Fool leaned forward and pressed his
ear against the door to listen, that Sansano thought that they were on the
other side of the door. Now, wild hope made him even shakier as a strange, sick
smile stretched across the Fool’s face. The beast reached down for the door
knob, his knife clutched tight in the other arm, which was tense with the
promise of violence, and as the Fool turned the knob this way and that, there
was a faint click and Spencer’s eyes widened as the door opened to the Fool,
allowing a burst of stale, cold air into the room. The breeze seemed to take
shape, dancing around the chamber, whistling between the bars and making the
cobwebs sway.

Sansano
gave a grim laugh and stepped over the threshold, his knife flashing. Spencer
squinted, trying to make out what lay on the other side of the door, trying to
understand what could possibly be making those noises, but then another breeze
ruffled his hair, soft, soothing and familiar. He turned to Daphne, a gasp on
his lips, suddenly realizing who was behind the noises, who had unlocked the
door, who was trying to save them.

But the
gasp was a mistake, and the Fool, just a few steps within the new passage,
heard him. Terror came back, clenching his chest in an iron grip as the fool
whirled, his face hellish with rage. The knife came up, his eyes widened. And
then a great gust of wind tore through the room, howling past them and rushing
against the door, which gave a great, mournful creak and then slammed shut with
a resounding bang.

In the
incredible moment that Spencer and the two girls turned to each other, smiling
unsteadily, eyes wide with hope, he heard the Fool give a great curse, and
Sansano could be heard trying the knob again and again, trying to free himself.
Lorna started to whisper something, but Spencer covered her mouth, afraid that
the Fool might somehow be able to free himself. But Daphne shook her head, wide
eyed. “
She
did this,” Daphne whispered. “She helped us.”

“I knew
she was trying to,” Lorna said, pushing Spencer’s hand off of her face.

Daphne’s
smile was like a beacon, but as relieved as he was, Spencer couldn’t quite
ignore that subtle click-click coming from the round door, where the Fool kept
unsuccessfully trying to open the door that had closed on him. Nor could he
forget that the ghost had just locked the Fool in with the book. Lorna looked
up at him and followed his gaze, and her own expression darkened.

“Daphne.
Daphne!” She tugged on her sister’s sleeve.

“What?
What?” Unexpectedly, Daphne leaned forward and closed her sister in an enormous
hug.

Lorna
was nearly knocked over by the force of her sister’s embrace, so she reached
back for Spencer’s hand, and somehow he found himself drawn into the hug, until
they were all standing there in the center of the abandoned chamber with their
arms around each other.

Daphne
broke the hug first, leaning back, all traces of a smile gone from her face.
“We should go,” she said, and Spencer could see fear written plainly on her
face. He wondered what would happen to the Fool beyond that door. Daphne
obviously had some suspicions, and Spencer wasn’t sure if he wanted to know
what she suspected.

Daphne
shook her head, as though trying to banish some disturbing thought or image
from her brain. “He’s locked in there. Even if he finds the book he won’t be
able to leave with it. We should go get help.” But her last word was barely
audible, for as she finished speaking there was a second sound. At first it was
unidentifiable, like a strange rumble deep in the earth, but then Spencer
realized. It was a growl. A long, low growl, so very loud and so very deep that
he couldn’t imagine what sort of beast it came from. Spencer looked to Daphne,
but for once in her life she was speechless. The growl sounded again and her
lower lip trembled slightly.

That was
when the Fool cried out. His scream was shrill and horrifying, a shock after
how confident and threatening he had been only minutes earlier. Now he sounded
like a child confronted with his worst nightmare. After that first cry there
was total, deafening silence, and then they heard another sound, whispering, as
though he were praying or begging or trying to appease whatever it was that had
terrified him so.

Daphne
swallowed, looking sick to her stomach; there was a strange feeling in the air.
Spencer saw Lorna looking up, and knew that she felt it as well. It was a
strange sense of… satisfaction? The spirit was content. He could feel it, taste
it in the air around them. As the growls continued and the Fool’s pleading grew
louder, Spencer could feel the ghost’s relief.

“No!” The
fool’s shout was jarring and sudden. There was a bang from the other side of
the door and then they could hear him beating his fists on the door. “No! No!
Noooooooooooooo!” The growls became snarls, his cries turned incoherent, and
then there was a sound more disturbing than all the others put together, a dull
crunch crunch
that reminded Spencer of the noises that his cat back at
the Haligorn made when she caught some wild creature, a mouse or young bird,
and devoured it whole.

“No!”
That cry was Daphne’s, not the Fool’s, and when Spencer turned to her he found her
with her face in her hands. He couldn’t tell if it was guilt or merely horror
that made her tremble, but from her cries you would have thought she was
suffering through the attack along with Sansano. Lorna grabbed her sister
around the middle, and Spencer pulled her hands from her face and held them.

A soft
breeze touched his hair as he clasped Daphne’s hands, and he knew what it
meant. “We should go,” he told Daphne. She nodded, and he could practically see
her regrouping, pulling herself together, stitching up the places where her
usual composure had failed her and setting her jaw so that her face wore its
usual haughty expression, but in his hands, hers were as cold as ice.

“Yes,”
she said, and they could still hear that soft, sickening crunching as they moved
to the exit with Lorna right behind them.

There
was no need for them to fetch help now. No need at all, because the Fool was
gone, and because none of them really wanted to think about what had just
happened, let alone answer questions about the experience. It was better to
pretend that none of it had occurred. They walked as if in a dream, retracing
their path through the castle until they were back in the entrance hall, back
in a corridor with windows, above ground. The fatal moon glowed down at them as
if it were any other night and they hadn’t just brushed lips with death in a
chamber where a beast devoured a man at the bidding of a woman long dead.

Chapter 11

Frost still clung to the boots of the Hunter
as he was ushered to the Queen’s audience chambers with the winter wind
grasping at his heels. Arthur closed the door behind him, and stood guard
stoically at the door. The Queen was ensconced in her elegant chair, with the
white silk shawl about her shoulders weighed down by the blood-red ruby brooch
pinned to it. Arthur knew that Tryphena had been impatient for the arrival of
her assassin, but she betrayed no sign of it as she surveyed the man
critically, as though confirming to herself that he would be capable of the task
commanded of him.

“My lady.” The man went to one knee at once,
and Arthur was struck once more by how very average the man was in appearance.
There was nothing to betray him for the deadly force that he was. His eyes were
clear and alert, but not overtly menacing. He was middle aged and of average
height and build, the thick fabric of his tunic and cloak hiding the strength
of his arms and whatever weapons were secreted about his person. The garments
themselves were well made, but otherwise unremarkable. In short, there was little
to distinguish him, and had he come that day on behalf of the miller’s guild or
the league of merchants, Arthur would have scarce blinked an eye at the sight
of him. That fact was only made more chilling given what he knew about the man and
what he was capable of.

“You are well?” Arthur was unsure if the
Queen was exchanging pleasantries for the sake of appearances, or because she
was digging for information about how the Hunter had occupied himself these
past years since he was last employed against enemies of the Crown.

“Ready and able to serve the crown, my lady.
How may I be of service?” He cut right to the heart of the matter, smoothly and
elegantly, sounding more like a diplomat than a man of the sword, but when the
Queen gestured for the hunter to stand, Arthur caught the flash of a blade from
the depths of the man’s cloak. 

The Queen eyed him appraisingly for a moment
longer and then stood. “There is a man, a newcomer to the city. He has been
watching me, watching the castle. I will furnish you with his description and a
list of places where he has been sighted, and you will kill him.”

“It is done, my lady.”

The quiet assurance in the hunter’s voice
seemed to rile the Queen more than soothe her.  “See to it that the body is
never found, but search it first. All of his belongings are to be returned to
me. Do not investigate them, just bring them to me. If you find papers on him,
do not read them. You are to treat this with the utmost discretion. In
particular, you are not to speak to this man. I do not want you to have any
contact with him before you dispatch him. There will be no conversation, no
confidences. Do not give him the opportunity for any final words. Do you
understand?”

The Hunter frowned slightly, as though he too
scented panic. Unlike Arthur, he was bold enough to inquire. “Who is this man?”

At first Arthur did not expect his mistress
to answer, for she remained silent for several long seconds after the question
was posed. Then she turned, to gaze over her shoulder at the ice-brittle forest
and the snowy mountains, and he had the impression that she was remembering
something, though whether it was good or bad he could not say. “A priest. A man
I knew a long time ago.”

***

“I think I’ve found something.” The words,
whispered by Daphne into the quiet darkness of the library, were a welcome
sound. It was not the first time they had stumbled across something interesting
in their long stints in the library following the death of the Fool, but so far
nothing they’d turned up had aided them in their identification of the spirit
or their study of the book. Spencer had his doubts about whether they would
ever get anywhere, but after hours amongst the eternity of the stacks, the
scent of decaying leather bindings was beginning to make his head spin, and he
welcomed the idea of a break. He climbed down from his ladder and joined Daphne
and Lorna at one of the great oaken reading tables. 

Daphne was staring down at a volume of royal
history, and one picture in particular seemed to have caught her attention. She
tapped the page, indicating a portrait of a serene young woman with dark blue
eyes. It was an old painting, he could tell by the strange way in which the
woman’s apricot colored hair had been wound around her head, and by the old
fashioned crown of golden leaves that ornamented her hair and framed her face.
In one hand she held a book close to her chest, and with the other she seemed
to be releasing a dove, which had been captured mid-flight in the painting,
with its body still perpendicular to the ground, wings of shimmering white
swept up and back. Given the stir that the dove was causing, you would have
expected the young woman to look a little distracted, but she was staring
evenly out at the viewer with perfect solemnity.

Spencer nodded excitedly, wiping the dust
from his brow with a sleeve. “This could be her.” It was hard, too hard, to
exactly transpose the visage of the spirit onto the portrait of a woman who was
depicted as flesh and blood, but the two seemed a close enough match. His gaze
passed over her serious expression and delicate fingers. “Who is she?”

“This is Lavinia Lucretius. She lived over
two hundred years ago. I think the timing matches the date that our book was
bound and painted.”

“I think I’ve seen her picture in the
Portrait Hall.” Lorna put in. “We’ll have to take you there sometime; it’s a
strange place.” She told Spencer.

“Thanks.” He responded uncertainly.

 “Was she a Queen?” Lorna asked.

“No.” Daphne stared down at the page,
smoothing one finger over the face of her ancestor. “Her mother was, and her
sister was, but not Lavinia. She would have been, but she died too young. The
year before the book was bound, actually. This portrait was commissioned the
same year the book was completed.”

“This was painted after her death?” Spencer couldn’t
help flinching.

“It was commissioned to commemorate her
memory.” Daphne confirmed. She took in his faintly unnerved expression and
rolled her eyes. “It’s quite common, Spencer. A portrait in the Hall is the
most fitting way to remember someone.”

Perhaps, but he still found it eerie. Perhaps
that was why the artist had drawn such pallor in her cheek, such an
otherworldly gravity in her eyes. Something about the dove’s swift flight from
her fingers gave him chills.

“It’s beautiful.” Lorna murmured.

“I hate it.” Spencer said, almost in the same
breath. Daphne seemed offended. “What happened to her?” He asked before Daphne
could argue.

“That was the hard part,” Daphne told him
with great self-satisfaction. “I had to check three different books. Most of
them just listed the day she died, but this one quotes her mother’s
announcement. The Queen addressed the court the following day and told them
that Lavinia had died of a fever in the night. She was buried nine days later.”

“A fever?” Spencer would have expected
something a little more sordid if Lavinia was indeed the woman who stalked the
halls at night.