The Valcourt Heiress (Medieval Song 7)

“No, I will not leave until I know where you have hidden Merry. You have but an instant, madam, or I will slit your throat.”

“Merry? What a silly name,” and yet again her fingers touched his cheek, her eyes met his, deep, fathomless. He wanted to slam his knife to the hilt so it would come out the back of her neck, but he felt as if he were moving away from her. Yet this beautiful woman was beside him, both her hands on his face now, drawing him away from himself. He felt his knife fall from his fingers, but they couldn’t be his fingers, for he was not really here now, he was above, or mayhap he was beyond this cursed tower. Was that his knife he heard thud softly onto the blue carpet with its strange symbols? He felt his sword slip from his hand, but it wasn’t his hand, it was another’s. He heard his sword land hard on the stone floor. But he’d been standing on the thick carpet. Was it his sword he heard, or another’s? He heard the witch laugh, but he didn’t see her now. He was alone, and he was nowhere at all. He felt empty, a shadow. He called out, “Where are you, witch?”

She didn’t answer him. He heard nothing now, felt nothing. He was moving away, faster now, into darkness where soft air swirled warm on his face. He thought he saw a flash of fire, but then it was gone, a blur of red and gold, but there was no heat from it, only cold, blistering cold. From a great distance, he heard a soft laugh, the witch’s laugh, then he heard nothing at all.

40

A hand slapped his face, once, then yet again, harder this time, then Gilpin’s scared voice. “My lord! Please, you must wake up!”

Garron opened his eyes and stared up into his squire’s white face hovering above him, seeming somehow detached, floating.

“Thanks be to all God’s blessed angels, you are alive! Oh, considerate and generous Lord who occasionally hears his servants’ prayers, I will burn a hundred candles to your blessed Holy Mother for saving my sweet master. What happened, my lord?”

He frowned up at Gilpin, whose head was once again sitting on his neck, and tried to make sense of what had happened. He said, “I was gone, where, I do not know. Somehow, she sent me away.”

“She, my lord?”

“The witch was within the tower. She said she was Merry’s mother, but she couldn’t be, Gilpin, she was young and beautiful, all golden and white, but her eyes were this cold ancient gray, like an old tombstone, or dirty ice. She drugged me, the bitch must have rubbed some poison into my skin when she stroked my face.” He remembered her fingers pressing into his flesh and shook his head. It all seemed so long ago, yet, strangely, it felt just an instant before. He felt he could reach out his hand and grab her by her long hair. It felt like madness. His fingers flexed. “I wanted to slit her throat, but I couldn’t kill her until she told me where she’d taken Merry. But then I was gone from myself. You woke me up.” He slowly sat up, Gilpin supporting him. “I failed, Gilpin. I couldn’t find Merry. Where are we?”

“We are where we were, my lord, at the edge of the forest. Arnold and John are standing guard over us.”

He felt sunlight on his face and looked up. “It’s morning.”

“Aye, it has been for several hours now.”

But how could that be? It was just dawn, wasn’t it? “Tell me what happened.”

“I saw you climb the wall and drop into the enclosure. Then, a very long time later, you simply walked out of the gate in the stone wall. I called to you, but you simply walked past me toward Arnold. He spoke to you, but you just continued to walk past him back into the forest. It was as if you had something important to do and everything in you was focused on it. You carried your sword in one hand, your knife in the other. You said nothing at all to any of us. Both Arnold and John yelled at you, yet you refused to stop, just kept walking. I grabbed your arm, but you shook me off. All of us grabbed you, but you had great strength, my lord, and you merely knocked us aside. Then you stopped, looked back at the tower, your eyes closed, and you simply fell over. You didn’t move, my lord. We thought you were dead. You said the witch drugged you?” Gilpin looked toward the tower and crossed himself.

Garron remembered the witch speaking to him, he could still hear her light laughter close to his face, laughter at him, and her fingers were touching him, and he knew she’d rubbed a drug into his flesh for he remembered the sickly sweet smell. Then he remembered his knife and his sword falling from his

hands to the floor, then movement and blackness. Until now.

He saw both his sword and his knife on the ground beside him.

He rolled over and came up on his feet. He did not feel light-headed or dizzy. He didn’t feel like anything had happened to him at all. He picked up his sword and his knife. “We must return to the enclosure.”

Garron knew they were frightened, but they went with him without hesitation. Arnold and John searched the connecting buildings and the stable. They didn’t find the cart, didn’t find the horses, they didn’t find anything at all, only ruin.

The black narrow door of the tower was locked. They heaved and shoved, but it held. They could cut down a tree and ram it, but Garron didn’t want to take the time.

Suddenly, without warning, the door swung open. Arnold and John stumbled back. Garron said, “It is all right. Our last blow pushed it in. Don’t be afraid. Come, let’s see what is inside.”

But just like the connecting buildings and the stable, there was nothing at all inside. It was a hollow tower that reached some thirty feet into the air. The air pulsed with magick, and Garron knew all of them felt the strangeness of it. John crossed himself. Arnold stared at him, but Garron only shook his head.

“It’s a ruin,” Gilpin whispered, “naught but a ruin, for a hundred years it’s been falling in on itself.”

“The Devil’s work,” Arnold whispered so low Garron scarce heard him.

Garron nodded. “It is a ruin,” he said, “and isn’t that curious?” He stepped back out and looked at the black door. The white painted sickle with three crooked black lines through the middle of it shone bright, as if they’d been painted on only yesterday. At least something hadn’t changed. Why did the witch leave the sickle? He didn’t look away from it, from the three crooked black lines running through the middle. He lightly touched his fingertip to it, expecting, he supposed, for the paint to be still be wet, but it wasn’t. Her face appeared clear in his mind as he touched those crooked lines, and he said to her, I will find you, witch, and when I do I will kill you.

He said to his men, “There is nothing for us here. Let us return to London,” and without a backward look, Garron strode to Damocles.

Thunder sounded overhead, black clouds formed over them. Not a minute later, cold rain poured down upon them, and the daylight vanished. They endured, there was nothing else to do.

She’d created an interesting illusion for him, then drugged him. He felt his failure to his bones. He’d lost Merry and he didn’t know what to do about it.

An hour later they met Whalen and the other soldiers at the edge of the forest. Whalen shook his head, his face grim. Garron said, “We did not find her either.”