Kissing the Bride (Medieval 4)

Jenova rallied.

“Tell me then,” she said, and took his face in her palms, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Tell me why Jean-Paul hates you. Make me understand, Henry. And it must be the truth. I will not have lies. Do you understand me clearly?”

Henry gave a bleak smile and nodded. He drew away from her and sat down on the seat under the window. After a moment Jenova sat down beside him. And waited. Very soon he began to speak, his voice low and tentative, as if he were remembering an old, half-forgotten dream. As if it were something that had happened to somebody else.

“It happened at le château de Nuit. Aye,” he grimaced, when she gave him a sharp look, “the place I said I had never heard of. Perhaps in a moment you will understand why I lied about that, Jenova. It happened many years ago. After I left your home, where I was so very happy, I went to le château de Nuit. I always think of it as walking from sunlight into darkness. For that is what I found at that cursed castle. The darkness of endless night…”

Chapter 22

The lumbering old wagon took him along roads that seemed devoid of all human life. Even when they passed through villages, there was not a single peasant or barking dog or waving child to be seen. All the cottages were shut up tight. It was as if the wagon were cursed, and him with it.

Henry did not know Count Thearoux. The count was a distant cousin by marriage of his mother’s, but not one he had ever met before. As a boy who was constantly being passed about from relative to relative, Henry was used to finding himself in strange places with strangers. He managed. He was bright and confident and could normally find himself a niche somewhere. He had no choice, really, did he?

He would miss Jenova. She was like the other half of him, and she had wept when he’d left. Henry had wept too, but in private, for he was almost a man and it was not proper for men to cry. It was Jenova’s mother who had sent him away. She had disapproved of him from the beginning, and when Jenova had shown an equal wildness to his, she had used it to declare he was a danger to their daughter. Henry thought she was probably afraid Jenova would want to marry him in a year or two, when they were old enough. Jenova had already said she had no plans to marry anyone, not until she was an old lady, but her mother hadn’t believed her. Henry smiled—well, her mother would soon find out just how stubborn Jenova could be.

The wagon was climbing now. Above him, among the bare rocks and windblown trees, was a gray castle of thick stone with tiny windows. It looked like many other places he had seen, and he did not think too much of its repellent air until they reached the gates and passed inside.

The horse’s clomping hooves echoed in the stillness. The wheels creaked. From somewhere above them, behind one of those little windows, a voice called out and was silenced.

For the first time Henry began to wonder what sort of place this château de Nuit might be.

The driver drew to a halt and, climbing down, went to lift Henry’s trunk from the back of the vehicle. Henry, too, climbed down and stood there, at a loss what to do. As he gazed about at the apparent emptiness of the place, he heard a door open.

“Ah, Beau Henri! I have you here at last!”

Surprised, Henry turned and found himself facing a big man with a heavy paunch, his head shaven bare, his face ugly but creased into a beaming smile.

Cautiously Henry smiled back. “Monsieur?”

“I am Count Thearoux. You are welcome to my home. I am sure you will make many friends here.”

Friends? What friends? There was no one else here.

The driver was climbing back onto his wagon, preparing to leave. Suddenly Henry did not want him to go. The man had been grumpy on the long journey, but he had shared his meager meals and seen that Henry was warm at night. He seemed like a last link with Jenova, and Henry had the embarrassing urge to cling to him.

“Come, Henri!” Thearoux was already turning away, toward the door in the keep. Henry followed, glancing over his shoulder as the wagon disappeared through the gate and back the way it had come.

Alone. He was all alone.

The door swung inward with a creak. Henry walked through and jumped as Thearoux slammed it behind him. It was gloomy in here; a single torch threw wavering shadows down a long passageway.

“I have you now,” the count said softly.

Henry stared, thinking he had misheard, but the next moment the man gave a hearty laugh, making a joke of it, and Henry felt obliged to smile also.

“Are you alone here, my lord?” he asked tentatively, following Thearoux’s swinging gait along the ill-lit tunnel of stone.

“Alone? Not at all. There are others here. They are sleeping now, but you will meet them soon. Much of our work is done at night.”

Perhaps Thearoux was mad, Henry thought uneasily. Perhaps he had come to the home of a madman. What would Jenova think when he told her of this! But then he remembered, with an ache where his heart should be, that Jenova would not hear of it because he would never see her again.

There was a door open on the right. Thearoux did not stop or go in, he kept walking down the passage. But Henry looked in, and then paused, blinking, trying to make sense of what he saw. There was a great wheel in the middle of the room, bound in iron, and there were spikes along the length of it. The walls were hung with what looked like blacksmith’s tools. Strange long-handled pinchers, and lengths of chain, and other objects that made no sense.

“Come on!”

Thearoux was ahead of him, and still puzzling over that room, Henry hurried to catch up. They rounded the corner in what was, he realized, a passage that followed the inner wall of the keep. Ahead there were stairs, winding upward. As they climbed, Thearoux huffing and puffing, Henry began to hear sounds.

Soft moanings and groanings. A ragged