A Glimmering Girl (9 page)

“You can see him with this.”

“Aiee! I’ll touch no glimmy glass.” The captain backed away and crossed himself. “I want no wyrding ways on my ship!”

“This is not of the wyrd,” Ross said. “This glass is from the holy land. There’s no magic in it.” Cynically, he added, “None but God’s power.” He searched for the boat and let out a breath of relief. Sarumen and Aethelos had made it to shore.

“The holy land, you say?” Captain Raymond eyed the scoping glass with less fear and more curiosity.

“All captains in the East have them,” Braedon said.

“Try it.” Ross offered the instrument. “Look through this end.”

Captain Raymond put the glass to his eye and jumped backward. Just as Ross had done the first time he looked through one, the captain reached out, trying to touch what he saw. He put it down, took his bearings, held it up again.

The look came over him. Delight that in an eyeblink surrendered to desire. His eyes shifted rapidly. For a moment, he looked ready to push Ross over the rail in order to keep the glass.

“Sir Ross, on the shore. Look. Are they fighting?” Braedon had no need of any aid; he had the eyes of an eagle.

Ross snatched back the glass. Sarumen and Aethelos weren’t fighting, but they were having an agitated conversation. Aethelos broke away and pointed to the
White Lady,
and Ross followed the prince’s gesture.

“Sun and moon.” He felt sick. “Princess Meline is still on board. Aethelos must want to go back for his sister.”

“Aye, and no doubt Lord Sarumen is explaining to the royal personage that it’s not possible.” Captain Raymond fairly gloated, as if this proved his own point.

Helpless, Ross watched Aethelos push the boat back into the water and jump in. Sarumen shook his head in frustration and joined the prince. They set out for the foundering ship, now perched at a bizarre angel. Horrendous groans of breaking wood carried over the surface.

“She’s taken on too much water,” Captain Raymond said. “She’ll split in two from the weight. Mark my words.”

The princess fell into the sea where drowning men ignored her and tried to swim toward Sarumen and Aethelos in their little boat. And oddly enough, the swimmers
were
all men. Watching Meline, Ross understood why. Her massive gown had taken on the weight of the water, and she simply had not the strength to keep to the surface. Her head went under once, twice, and she never came up again.

The others grabbed on to her would-be rescuers’ boat and pulled it over.

“Captain Raymond, you must give me a boat.” Ross had to save Sarumen and the prince.

The captain’s face was fixed in a no, but his eyes lit on the glass in Ross’s hand.

With a sinking feeling, Ross knew what he had to do. He held up the instrument. “The glass for a boat.”

“Done.” The captain held out his hand, palm up. “But no men. You’ll do your own rowing, my lord.”

“I’m no lord.”

“I’ll go with you, sir,” Braedon said.

“Good lad.” Ross clapped the boy’s shoulder. “But I’ll not risk your life yet again so close to home. Stay with the
Vengeance.
Bring my trunks to Tintagos Castle for the baron’s keeping until I return.”

Ross clasped Braedon to his chest in a heartfelt embrace. After nearly four years saving each other’s lives, this parting was as sudden and as unexpected as any death.

“Tell my father my last thoughts were of him,” Ross said. And for Braedon’s ears alone he whispered, “Tell Rozenwyn I would have married her.”

“I will, sir.” Braedon’s face reddened at the mention of marriage. There were tears in his eyes, and he choked. “I promise.”

Ross pulled away from the
Vengeance
, mad to reach Sarumen and Aethelos.
Brother Sun and Sister Moon, guide me and give me strength.

“Sarumen!” He screamed with all the power he had in him. He listened for an answer. None came. “Aethelos!”

Sick at heart, he kept to the east beyond the reach of desperate and drowning men. He had thought he was done with living among the dying. It all came crashing down on him. So senseless. So meaningless.

“Tintagos!” It was Sarumen. “Ross!”

Ross scanned the surface frantically. He spotted a pale form streaking away from the others, a man’s bare arms cutting expertly through the waves. Ross hurried to intercept him.

Sarumen grabbed on to the side of the boat. “Lean away to balance my weight.” He pulled himself into the boat. He was entirely naked.

“My lord, you must be frozen.” Ross took off his cloak and handed it over, but he couldn’t help staring.

Sarumen was perfect. His skin had no blemish, no scar. His muscles were well formed but not garish. It had never occurred to Ross that a man could be called beautiful—but it was the only word that fit.
Beautiful.

He traced the scar on his own face, from the corner of his right eye down to his jaw. “The prince, my lord.” He focused on the moment. “Is he…”

“Gone,” Sarumen said. “Damned fool. I told him to remove his boots and tunic, that they would drown him. Out of modesty or pride, who knows, he didn’t listen. He pulled me under with him. I threw him off to get to the surface for air, and then I couldn’t find him.”

“Great gods.”

“I should have gone down with him.”

“What good would that do?”

“King Henry…”

“No man can fight the ocean, my lord,” Ross said. “I’ll go with you to the king as your witness. I saw you fight for his son’s life.”

“Thank you, Ross. You have my gratitude,” Sarumen said. He spat out a rueful laugh and fixed on the doomed
White Lady
, but he seemed to stare through the ship to another world. “What are they all going to do now?”

Ross looked for the
Vengeance
and spotted her on the horizon, well away.
Damn Captain Raymond for a coward.
He turned the boat toward the shore.

“On second thought, I won’t accept your offer.” Sarumen took up another set of oars and pitched in. Immediately they picked up more speed than one extra pair of hands should account for. The man was strong besides. “I’ll face Henry alone. If he won’t take my word, I doubt he’d take yours.”

“You’re a brave man, my lord.”

“I’m a practical man, Ross. I’ll call on your service another day, when it will be of better use. But for now you’ve earned your peace. Go home to your father and your girl.”

« Chapter 8 »
Tailor and King

Traveling with Lord Sarumen, Ross couldn’t go home. Not directly. The two arrived at Windsor in the middle of the night, whereupon Sarumen hastened away to inform the king of the disaster of the
White Lady
and Ross was installed in one of the earl’s permanent rooms in the castle.

The next day as Ross was finishing his breakfast, two odd fellows came to see him, sent by Sarumen.

“You’re to have an audience with the king.” The taller of the little men, a tailor, picked at the fabric of Ross’s tunic. He rolled it between his thumb and finger and sniffed. “My art is definitely needed here.”

“You’re in the best of hands,” the shorter one, the assistant, said. “We dress Brienne, you know.”

“
Shush!
” The tailor grabbed his unfortunate helper’s hat and slapped him across the face with it.

“Ow!”

They were a rather strange pair, the master short and wiry and the helper shorter and wirier. Both had striking green eyes. They refused to take refreshment or to remove their slouch hats and worked speedily and obsessively.

Within a few hours, they produced an exquisite tunic of light and dark blue brocade, fawn breeches, a white linen blouse, a fine hat, pair of black boots, and an embroidered dark blue cloak.

“Honeysuckle and hazel?” Ross admired the embroidery work.

“Lord Sarumen tells me you’re from Tintagos,” the tailor said.

“And so I am.” Ross fingered the cloak’s red, white, and gold silk threads. A master touch: honeysuckle and hazel were symbols of Tintagos Castle—and of its doomed lovers, Tristos and Isolde, more famous to the outside world than Galen and Diantha. “I will treasure all these things.”

“Of course you will,” the assistant said.

“Shall I try them on?”

The assistant gasped, then gave his master a wary look and stepped out of range.

“If you feel you must.” Like a child, the tailor stuck out his lower lip. “In a thou… in all my years, no one has questioned my fit!”

Ross suppressed a chuckle and shed his clothes, purchased only days ago in Normandum. Even without the dousing of seawater, they would have been shabby and coarse beside those made by the tailor who dressed Brienne—whoever she was.

“Well.” He stared at a stranger in the full glass produced, from somewhere, by Short and Shorter. “I’m confounded.”

A grown man looked back at Ross, his face roughened by years of sun and wind and dry heat. His hair had lost its bright orange tones and darkened to a tolerable chestnut color. His eyes were still dark brown. Perhaps darker. They’d lost their eager look, their optimism.

“When did you become so sad?” He said to his image, tracing his scar with his thumb. The scar was taken now for a battle wound, a mark of glory, but he’d given it to himself when he was ten years old.

He’d gone fishing with his father on a rare day together, just the two of them, away from the castle. They’d ridden northeast, beyond the Ring and the mist, through the Small Wood of ash and yew, until they came to what the baron called
the sacred lake,
fed by a freshwater stream and loaded with trout.

Nine hazel trees grew in a crescent on the northern shore, and he and his father had cut wands from the trees for their lines.

“These trees were planted in the time of legend, by the Dryades, nymphs of trees and forests. The trout eat the hazelnuts that fall into the water,” his father had told him. “A fish of the sacred lake which has eaten seven hazelnuts gains all the wisdom in the world. If you eat that fish, that wisdom will pass to you.”

“If the fish has eaten six nuts, will I be somewhat wise, Father?”

“No more than you are now,” the baron had said.

“If eight nuts, will I be wiser?”

“A man can’t have more than all the wisdom in the world, my son, so I think not.”

Then Ross had stumbled over his line and fallen on his own knife.
Stupid, stupid,
he’d thought, even as he swooned with the pain that seared his cheek.

Without hesitation, the baron had scooped him up off the ground. “Never fear, my son. All will be well.”

Ross had believed it. Safe in his father’s arms, nothing bad could possibly happen. The baron had carried him to the hunter’s cottage on the west side of the lake, laid him on a bed by a window, and had rummaged through a cabinet as if he knew exactly where everything was.

Lord Tintagos had brought out a fat, rolled beeswax candle and tinderbox. He’d lit the candle and taken hold of Ross’s hand. Then they… waited.

Soon, without knocking, an old woman opened the cottage door. “I came as soon as I saw the flame.”

“Thank sun and moon, Kaelyn. It’s my son!”

She was the only wyrding woman Ross had ever met, before or since. When she got closer, he saw she was younger than he’d first thought—perhaps his father’s age. She was neither pretty nor ugly, but her blue-gray eyes were full of fun.

She had cleaned the wound and applied a soothing salve. “You’ll have a dashing scar, young Ross,” she’d said cheerfully. “It will drive the girls mad.”

At the time, he didn’t care much for girls or driving them mad, but he smiled now at the memory. Kaelyn had been right. Women—including Rozenwyn—had found his scar attractive. He looked at the man in the mirror. Would she still?

Ach
, no use entertaining such vanity. He turned to thank the tailors for the clothes, but they had gone.

Ross searched the room for quill and parchment. The gift of clothes fit for court was no trifle. Sarumen wasn’t ready to grant him leave to go home. He wrote to his father.

My lord, I am home. At all events, in Sarumos… 

No. Ross tore off the line he’d started and threw it into the fire. It would not do if the letter fell into the wrong hands. He started again.

My lord, I am home. At all events, in London, at Windsor with Lord Sarumen. The earl has brought news to King Henry that William Aethelos, the king’s son and heir, has been drowned at sea. I’ve assured the bearer of this message he’d be well paid and given a meal upon its safe delivery.

I hope to be home soon and to find you well. I send you my love and my highest regards.