A Glimmering Girl (19 page)

“You already have,” Sir Ross said. “Helped to ease his passing. When he saw you, his eyes softened. He saw something in you that made him content and… happy.”

“I can’t think what.”

“I can.” A trace of a smile played over Sir Ross’s lips. He spoke more to himself than to her, looking at his father. “You made him think of someone he loved.”

She prepared the infusion of sage and rosemary, mentally chanting the wyrding words. Sir Ross returned to the other side of the bed and held his father’s hand while she pressed a cloth soaked in the wyrded water to the baron’s face and forehead.

“You make a good steward, Sir Ross.”

“I lived rough for years on the Crusade,” he said. “It was learn to care for myself or starve.”

“You had no squire? An important knight like you, I’m surprised. And somewhat insulted, when I think about it.”

“Insulted. What…”

“Consider the honor of Tintagos! What did the world think of our own baron’s son riding to the holy land, and at Lord Sarumen’s side, with no squire? Highly improper, sir.” She was only teasing him, distracting the poor man from his distress. 

“Then I confess I did have a squire, and a very good one. A young lad called Braedon of Bodmin. But I did learn to boil water in my travels, and picked up a few other skills as well.”

Igraine’s capricious brain brought up the image of Velyn making love to her in the guise of the fisher king, and she speculated on the sort of skills
Sir Ross might have.

“Where is Braedon of Bodmin now?” She jumped to a more appropriate and safer topic. “A good squire doesn’t leave his master in a time of crisis.”

“In Bodmin, as a matter of fact, gone to see his family,” Sir Ross said. “There was no advance warning my father would be poisoned.”

“Of course not.”
Igraine, you ass. You wanted him to
forget
his troubles.
“Do you know when it happened?”

“Earlier tonight, here in this room and before my very eyes.” He nodded at the fire where shattered glass covered the hearth and the surrounding floor. “I can’t prove anything, now that I’ve destroyed the evidence, but the goblet bore a black rose, symbol of House Sarumen. At first I thought Quinn had been sloppy or arrogant, but he’s no fool. It wasn’t a mistake. He used the goblet on purpose, to send me a message.”

“Quinn…” Igraine abruptly stood—and forgot what she was going to say.

She hadn’t seen the man in years. Well, except for taunting him in falcon form. This fear was irrational. Nonetheless, the castle suddenly felt like a cage, and like a wild animal, she went to the open window. No, no. She couldn’t transmogrify again in front of Sir Ross, but at some point she’d find her way to the roof and escape the castle in peregrine. Better that than seeing Quinn again.

“The blackguard is gone.”

Magic words. She let out breath she didn’t know she was holding, and her whole body relaxed.

Sir Ross was behind her, so close she felt the calming vibration of his voice. “He fled Tintagos hours ago, apparently after sending up the poisoned wine. Of course no one knows which servant brought it.”

Igraine turned from the window and was faced with Sir Ross’s chest. She looked up and felt as if she could fall into his deep brown gaze.

“Is there nothing else to prove he did this?” Rozenwyn had been right. Despite worry and sadness, his scar did make him handsome. Igraine suppressed the urge to trace it with her finger, from his weary eye to his full, soft lips. “Surely running off in the night shows guilt.”

“Normally it would, but Quinn had cause to leave immediately for London.” Sir Ross’s gaze traveled over her, moving from her eyes, lingering on her lips. He lifted a lock of her hair and smiled at the apple blossoms. For a minute, it seemed he would press one to his lips, but he moved away. “At the end of tonight’s banquet, word came that King Henry has died.”

“The king is dead.” Better to let Sir Ross think this was the first she’d heard of it. Very probably he didn’t know what a glimmer glass was, and it was bad enough he’d seen her change from animal to human shape. Twice. “I remember hearing that the bishop was here as his envoy.”

“Yes. To secure my father’s oath of fealty to Mathilde in the event of Henry’s death.”

“Because of the
White Lady,
and Aethelos drowning,” Igraine said. “To ensure a smooth succession.”

“Just so,” Sir Ross said. “I’m impressed a wyrding woman cares about politics.”

“Only when politics might harm the wyrd,” Igraine said. “I know that—” She stopped from saying Quinn hated the wyrd. She didn’t want to have to explain how she had met him. “I know the bishops in the east would like to see us all disappear.”

“Quinn in particular seems to hate your kind,” Sir Ross said. He raised an eyebrow. “A wyrding woman must have once rejected his advances.”

“You may be right. And does… does Tintagos support Mathilde?” Igraine didn’t want to talk about Quinn any longer. She might as well find out what Zoelyn would want to know. In fact, the abbess might have her glimmer glass focused on them even now.

Igraine returned to the baron and checked his forehead—it was hot—and took his hand in hers. It was clammy. His lips were turning blue. It didn’t matter anymore what the baron wanted. There would be a new baron by tomorrow.

Sir Ross sat down on the other side of the bed. He seemed ready to talk, and Igraine wished she could put a thought in his mind.
Please. Say nothing about the pelican. Nothing about the pelican… or the fish!
If Zoelyn heard him acknowledge her shapeshifting, Igraine would be faced with a terrible task.

As it was, she might have to do it anyway.

“During the banquet, before all his knights, my father swore fealty to Mathilde,” he said.

Igraine exhaled.
There, Zoelyn. You can relax.

“But with the king in fact dead, he saw it would be better for Tintagos, for the people of Tintagos, to side with Stephen—for the very reason that the church is behind him.”

“And do you agree?”

“I understand the reasoning,” Sir Ross said. “But Lord Tintagos did swear fealty to Mathilde in front of witnesses, so that way lies the honorable path. And she’s Henry’s daughter. Stephen is but his nephew.”

“They’re both grandchildren of the Conqueror,” Igraine said. “They both have sons who would continue the dynasty.”

“Mathilde would continue with Henry’s reforms. Let matters spiritual be subject to the church and her bishops, and leave matters material to the monarch and his,
or her
, lords. I’ve seen far too much of a church’s meddling into the affairs of state. Christian or otherwise, it generally leads to crucifixions, heads on pikes, and a new generation hell-bent on revenge.”

Sir Ross shuttered the window, put more wood on the fire, and opened a cask of wonderful wine he’d brought back from Normandum. They talked through the night, the topics drifting drifted away from politics and to more homely things. Ross’s hopes for the people of Tintagos, Igraine’s commitment to be their wyrding woman.

“But don’t you want to marry, have a home, children?” Sir Ross said. “I thought all women wanted that.”

“I’m a daughter of the high gods, Sir Ross. No decent man would want me, and I’d take no less than a decent man.”

The knight blushed, and she knew he agreed with her assessment of her situation.

“I’m happy with my life,” she said. And she had been—until now.

The first light of sunrise slipped in through spaces in the window shutter, and Sir Ross got up to put more wood on the fire. Igraine went to open the window for fresh air when there was a knock at the chamber door.

“I told them all to leave us alone,” Sir Ross said, but he opened the door.

“Sir, Prior Marrek has come,” said the servant outside.

“Very well.” Sir Ross’s shoulders slumped, as if he’d truly accepted the inevitable for the first time. “Come in, prior. It was good of you to return so quickly.”

“Of course,” Marrek said. “Nothing at the priory was so important.”

Igraine’s old friend looked surprised to see her in the baron’s chamber, but he made no remark. He went straight to the dying man’s side and began administering the unction.

Sounds of the baron’s final breath brought Sir Ross to the bed. He kissed the baron’s forehead and said quietly, “Farewell, sweet and good father.”

Igraine wanted to go to Ross, to comfort him and kiss away the tear running down his cheek. But with Prior Marrek’s arrival she suddenly felt like the outsider she was.

Worse, she was sick with indecision. She knew what she had to do, and she couldn’t do it.

She offered a silent prayer,
Igdrasil, ease the baron’s way. Brother Sun and Sister Moon, please accept him into heaven.
Then, as she had done before and would again—for this was her life—she hoisted the potions bag over her shoulder and quietly slipped out of the room, leaving the normal people to their personal and private grief.

Outside the baron’s room, the castle was freezing cold. Halfway down the stairs, she called out a wyrd for a thick cloak and warmer shoes. Halfway through the entry hall, Sir Ross caught up with her.

“You’re leaving me?” He looked stricken, as if she had betrayed him.

It isn’t like that.
“I think I must.”

“Prior Marrek has sent for the nuns.” Again pain flitted over his face. The women would wash the baron’s body and wrap it in a winding sheet for burial. “I need to get out of here for a while and clear my head, and… and we have to talk.”

“No, believe me, Sir Ross! We don’t have to talk.” He didn’t know what he was asking for. Talking about what had happened last night would force her to act. “If only you could forget—entirely—that I was here.”

“I could never—
I will never—
forget last night. Igraine, will you ride with me?”

« Chapter 19 »
Nine Hazel Lake

Exhausted and hungry, feeling like a ball of consternation wrapped in a blanket of conundrum, Igraine followed the fisher king through the castle gate, riding at full speed.
Fisher king.
She couldn’t think of him as Sir Ross—or as Lord Tintagos. That would make him too real, her task more pressing.

Not yet.

He headed east then north, to her relief, away from Igdrasil—away from Avalos. She was about to make the wrong decision, and she didn’t want Kaelyn or Zoelyn to push her to the right one.

Everything Igraine knew to be true screamed to her that it was imperative she wyrd away Sir Ross’s memory of her entrance into the baron’s chamber in the form of a pelican. He couldn’t be allowed to retain knowledge of her power of transmogrification. It wasn’t the sort of magic mundane humans could tolerate in another human.

That kind of knowledge sparked the fear that gave rise to words like
witch
and
demon
and
put her to the fire!

Igraine knew exactly what Zoelyn would say—and Kaelyn would agree.

People like a wyrding woman to cure fevers and make crops grow more robust. In times of sorrow they want the wyrds’ prayers to Brother Sun and Sister Moon, and generally they enjoy the harmless naughtiness of buying a love potion they only partly disbelieve in.

A reality-bending spell like the Great Wyrding was acceptable, confined as it was to the distant past, to legend, no more threatening than the legendary
Excalibur,
kept safely hidden away by the Lady of Nine Hazel Lake.

But the ability to shape-shift was too much, impossible to comprehend with equanimity. Too threatening to the natural order of things. A mundane human couldn’t be expected to handle such knowledge well, especially a human with power.

And Sir Ross was now the baron of Tintagos.

He hadn’t spoken since he put her on her horse, and he didn’t slow his horse’s gallop until they reached Nine Hazel Lake. At the hunter’s cabin he dismounted and came to her, his arms outstretched. She automatically leaned into them, falling into his strength as he pulled her down and stood her on her feet.

She pretended to straighten her clothing and wriggled her fingers to set an obscuration boundary around them both. She was definitely
not
interested in putting on a show for nosey wyrding women with glimmer glasses.

He grabbed her by her cloak and pulled her close, his brow furrowed, his gaze fixed on her mouth. Her breath was coming in pants; she didn’t know if he wanted to hit her or kiss her.

“Was it you?” He was pleading now. Tears threatened to spill from his eyes.

He glanced at the hunter’s cabin, but she didn’t have to ask what he meant. It’s why he’d brought her here, to this lake, where he’d caught a fish and it had turned into a woman.

“It was me,” came out in a whisper.

He pursed his lips and fingered her cloak, then clasped the material in a bunch and held it up to her face, anguish on his. “Are you fae?”

“I am not.”

He let go, and she stepped back.

“Faeling, then.”

“I… I’m a daughter of the high gods.”