The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

The skies darkened toward evening of that second day. Bishop said, “There is a cave close to the sea, just ahead.”

“How do you know of this cave?”

“I just do,” he said. “And I have no idea how I know. I also know that it will rain soon. We will be protected in the cave.”

“Just a while ago you really didn’t know where we were going, did you?”

He shook his head. “Did your grandmother have red hair?”

“You’ve seen my grandmother. Her hair, even when I was a child, was stark white, never a bit of red, but truly, I really don’t know.”

“And your mother’s mother? Was her hair red?”

“My mother’s mother. I never knew her, but I remember hearing my grandfather talking about Constance, my grandmother, and how she’d just gone away, probably spirited away by the

devil himself. Then he looked at me sideways, as if he were wondering if I’d be spirited away too. I didn’t understand.”

“And your mother? Did she have red hair?”

“My mother had hair blacker than a sinner’s heart. My father loved to tell her that, and then he’d push her against the wall and kiss her.” She was silent a moment, then twisted about to look at him. “I just remembered. My mother told me when I was very little that I had the look of my grandmother, that she had hair that was like flame it was so red.”

He couldn’t believe this, didn’t want to believe this. No, it was simply the same choice of words, nothing more. He said, all indifferent, “Did it seem that fire came from her hair?”

“That’s a strange thought, but you know, I remember my mother said my grandmother liked to leave her hair loose, particularly when the wind was strong because it looked like fire whipping about her head. I don’t remember anything else, Bishop. My mother died when I was only six years old. There is so much I never heard her say because she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My hair isn’t all that red.”

“It’s quite red enough.” As red as Brecia’s hair, rich, rich red.

He looked into Merryn’s smiling face, at the incredible hair framing that face, and thought, She’s herself, not some phantom, just herself, and that is very fine indeed.

Bishop directed Fearless down to the beach just below Tintagel Head, an immense promontory that belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall. The going was treacherous. The rocks were sharp black spikes and spires, poking up like thick fingers or lying like fists on the dirty sand. The water was dark with seaweed and driftwood. Seabirds were loud above them. He pulled Fearless to a halt in the dying light. “See, yon is a Celtic monastery.”

Merryn looked at the ruin standing jagged and fierce atop the promontory. “It is very old,” she said. “It looks haunted and sad.”

“The monastery is not so very old,” he said, then wondered how that could be so.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Bishop?”

“Aye, I’ve been here,” he said, but she didn’t believe him. He dismounted and lifted Merryn down from Fearless’s back.

“Is this a magic place?”

He laughed. “Certainly not. It’s just a place that is somehow important, for a reason I have yet to learn.”

Fearless didn’t balk when Bishop led him into the cave through a tall, narrow opening overhung with the tangled branches of a bowed old oak tree. “We won’t go very far in,” he said over his shoulder.

Fearless whinnied. Bishop stroked his neck. “Here,” he said, “we will stay here.” Bishop handed Merryn some of the supplies.

To her surprise, once inside the cave, she saw that there was wood stacked against the wall. To her even greater surprise, Bishop seemed to accept it with no question at all.

When night fell but moments later, the fire was their only light. The walls of the cavern weren’t damp. They were actually warm, as Merryn discovered when she happened to lean one of the tent poles against a wall. Warm to the touch. How very odd.

“Do you know, Bishop, everything about this cave is odd. Just feel the warm walls. It is almost as if the cave is somehow welcoming us. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

She was right.