A Lady Under Siege (8 page)

Kent and Sylvanne, riding close behind, couldn’t help but listen to this banter. Kent turned to her and asked, “And you m’Lady? Ever further from your home?

Sylvanne stared straight ahead. “I have no home,” she said.

“I sympathize with your circumstances. I’m certain your mood will improve when you come to know my Lord and Master, Thomas of Gastoncoe. A more honourable man you are never likely to meet.”

“Honourable?” Mabel shouted indignantly from the cart. “What’s his purpose, stealing a wife away from her husband?”

“I know on the surface of things it’s easy to assume the worst in his actions,” answered Kent. “But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Lord Thomas has a daughter, barely twelve years in age, who now lies gravely ill with the same enigmatic and untreatable affliction that robbed him of his wife, whom he loved ever so dearly. It’s said that, of late, this Lady whom you chaperone, the lovely Lady Sylvanne, has come to dominate his thoughts so thoroughly that he believes she alone holds the key to the salvation of his daughter. It was for this reason he wished to consult the Lady.”

“Does he not have physicians?” asked Mabel.

“He has consulted as many as could be sent for. All have failed him. Wife dead, daughter waning and wasting away, one day he gave a most unexpected order: Bring Lady Sylvanne to me, says he, but to attain her, refrain from violence as much as you are able. Deliver her in good health and good spirits, using the powers of your persuasion.”

“Powers of persuasion?” Mabel repeated incredulously. “Since when is starvation persuasion?”

“It’s the fault of her own husband in his obstinacy,” Kent retorted. “From the beginning our two hundred could have easily stormed and overpowered that ramshackle excuse for a castle, with its no more than twenty able-bodied defenders—”

“Twenty-six, plus some boys who were willing, but deemed too young,” Mabel corrected him.

“Our master’s orders were to avoid bloodshed at all cost. He felt that his prize, if gained by bloodshed, would thereby be disposed to hate him, and would be no prize at all. You may or may not know it, but he sent emissaries several times to the Lady’s husband, begging simply for a meeting and a chance to speak privately with her. But all petitions were rejected, out of jealousy and mistrust.”

“That’s a husband’s right,” Mabel asserted. “It’s his duty, in fact, to shield his wife, to keep her close, housebound. He can’t be lending her out like an ox at ploughing time.”

“She’s not to be compared to an ox, that one,” Gwynn interjected. “More like a doe, with her big eyes and quiet demeanour. Our Lord will be well pleased to possess her, whether or not she knows anything of wondrous spells or miracle cures for the daughter.”

“Tomorrow will bring us answers,” said Kent. “What say you m’Lady? Any special aptitude for healing the sick or curing the lame?”

Sylvanne, silent all this time, turned and glared at him with such a fiery rage in her green eyes that he feared she might be a witch, or a demon. As if spooked by her seething emotions, her stallion reared up and shook his mane furiously. Kent leant over to take the reins, calling out calming words to soothe his favourite mount, but the horse was in a lather and wouldn’t be pacified. “This is quite out of character,” he said. “Perhaps he needs a feed. Next stream we cross we’ll stop for water and grazing.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” said Gwynn, shifting uncomfortably in the cart. “I fear the sores of my feet have been replanted on my poor arse.”

11

M
eghan was at her desk in her little cubicle on the eleventh floor, scrolling through the font choices of a new design software, when Jan stepped in and asked, “How are you doing?”

“Not great.”

“Poor thing. How’s Betsy?”

“I haven’t told her about Seth and baby on the way, if that’s what you mean. One thing at a time. I think she’s got a crush on our neighbour.”

“Your neighbour. The drunk?”

“The same.”

“I saw him once, the day you moved in. He waved over the fence. I thought he was kind of cute. Shaggy and cute.”

“In the daylight he can be charming, it’s at night he’s trouble.” She told Jan all about the picnic table incident, and couldn’t help but laugh, describing how she’d watched two drunken lovers zipped in their sleeping bag tumble off the table into the dirt. “They were rolling around on the ground like cats in a sack, going
ouch ouch ouch
, but in a silly, giggly way, and then they wriggled out, and I swear to God,
steam was coming off their bodies
.”

“They were naked?”

“Of course they were naked. And then they just ran in the house, laughing their heads off like fools.”

“Wow.” Just picturing it put a big grin on Jan’s face.

“I know. Happy, carefree, drunken fools. I actually felt a bit jealous. She looked so beautiful by moonlight. Like out of a fairy tale. A nymph from a fairy tale.”

“Speaking of which, how’s your Lady under siege doing?”

Jan was her closest confidante, the only friend with whom Meghan had shared the whole story of her dreams of Sylvanne and the siege. Jan’s reaction had been more amusement than concern—she treated it like a soap opera, eager for each new plot twist. “Come on, out with it. Something’s happened,” Jan cajoled her.

“She’s left the castle. Gerald is dead,” Meghan blurted out. And suddenly a surge of grief welled within her, Sylvanne’s genuine grief at the loss of her husband, and she began to cry uncontrollably, sitting there at her desk. Through her tears she managed to say, “This is crazy.”

To her relief Jan was supportive. “It’s getting serious,” she said. She dabbed Meghan’s eyes with a tissue and then stood behind her chair, rubbing her shoulders until the sobs subsided. “Maybe you need some help. I do know a therapist— someone who’d be perfect, and I can help get you in,” Jan suggested.

“I’d like that, I think,” Meghan said. “I’d like some answers. Or even just to talk.

“Good. Her name is Anne Billings. She’s my brother’s ex-wife but I’ve always liked her, a lot more than my brother actually, and she and I stayed friends after they split. You’ll like her too, she’s super smart but very down to earth. She has a private practice but she’s also a professor at the university, and these dreams of yours sound right up her alley—her PhD was all about Wicca, or witchcraft—apparently in academic circles she’s made a name for herself that way, using psychology to study mysticism and the paranormal. She’s at least sympathetic to stuff like that—if any psychologist is going to take a real interest, it’ll be her. I’ll call her for you, see what I can do.”

12

B
etsy kissed her mother goodbye and locked the door behind her, then headed up to the computer. She had only two friends she was allowed to chat with, Sam and Brittany, and neither of them was online. Saturday afternoon. Brittany might have gone out of town for the weekend, and Sam was probably at ballet. Now what? She was instantly bored. This was the second time she’d been truly alone in her life, the second time in less than a week. The first time she’d felt only excitement, this time she felt abandoned. She wandered back downstairs and turned the television to a music channel her mother didn’t like her watching. The video showed a singer who looked to be about fifty under his pancake makeup and there were devils in it with blood coming out of their mouths. She watched until it ended and then turned it off. Now what? What she really wanted to do was go outside and jump on the trampoline, but her mother had laid down the law: no jumping without a grown-up watching you. What about Derek, she had asked. Her mother had made a pained face and said, Derek is on the wrong side of the fence, and Derek is to stay there. No jumping on the trampoline until I get home.

So. No jumping, but she hadn’t said anything about just
lying
on the trampoline.

The taut black surface of it was hot from the afternoon sun. She lay on her back watching the sky, then played with the orange sunlight through her eyelids, making it lighter and darker by scrunching her eyes shut. Presently she heard sounds from the back yard next door. Derek was working on something again. She heard knocks and clatterings and opened her eyes to see a fifteen foot square of mesh netting, framed on thin pipes, being leaned up against their shared fence. The pipes were junky, salvaged plumbing pipes, and the mesh looked tattered in places, but several layers thick.

A minute later there was a whipping sound, a sharp
whap
, and a golf ball flew into the net, where it was snared like a bird on the wing. The force of it stretched the netting, and the ball slid down to become entrapped in a little bulge of netting that hung over the fence onto Betsy’s side.
Whoosh, whap
. Another ball flew into the net, fell and joined the first, resting like eggs in a farm wife’s apron.

“What are you doing?” Betsy called out. She stood up on the trampoline to see over top of the fence, and bounced a bit to get a better look.

“Ah. Good morning, didn’t know you were there,” Derek greeted her. He’d dragged his picnic table to the back of the yard to make some space for himself. At the top of her bouncing arc she could see a half dozen golf balls at his feet. Betsy watched him tap one away from the others, and take his place over it. “Pay attention,” he said. “You’re about to witness impeccable form.” He took several practice swings and finally addressed the ball, staring at it for what to Betsy seemed an agonizingly long time. Then he swung.
Whoosh, whap—whap
!” The ball struck the fence below the netting and ricocheted back at him like a bullet. He tried to twist his head out of the way but it smacked him on the skull just behind his ear.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” he shouted. Betsy stopped bouncing and stared at him. She covered her mouth to hide her grin. “Don’t you fucking laugh!” he shouted at her. But then he smiled himself.

“Do you want your balls back?” she asked, hopping down from the trampoline and going to the fence.

“Of course I want my balls back, what do you think?”

“You should ask nicely,” she scolded him.

“Screw you to that. Not everyone is as polite and civil as you, little girl.”

“I’m not, really. What’s to keep me from keeping these?”

“I’ll come over there and wring your scrawny little neck, that’s what.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t try me.”

Betsy went to the knothole in the fence. On tiptoes she could see him through it. “I can watch you practice golf from here,” she said.

“No you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll show you.” He picked a ball from the ground, came over and stuck it through the hole. “A well-struck shot would knock your eyeball out the back of your skull,” he said. Betsy stepped back and watched as the ball fell though the hole and landed at her feet. She scooped it up and rubbed her fingers over the funny dimpled surface.

“Now I have three,” she said.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“She’s inside,” she lied. “How come you like golf?”

“Well it’s like this, my dear. As Willie Nelson said to Bob Dylan, once you start playing golf, you can’t hardly think about nothing else. Direct quote.”

“Who’re they?”

“Old geezers. Nobody important. Would you like to try?”

He tossed his golf club over the fence, and it came down so close to her that she jumped aside in fright.

“Watch it! You almost hit me!”

“Just making sure you’re awake. It’s a six iron, perfect place to start.”

She dropped her golf ball and picked up the club, holding the grip experimentally, waving it like a baseball bat through the air. “Seems silly, trying to whack a ball with this,” she said.

On his side of the fence Derek retrieved another club from a bag lying on the ground. “You’re right, it is very silly,” he said. “Something for men of leisure to fill the empty days. That’s my excuse, anyway.”

She took a tentative swing at the ball in the grass at her feet and whiffed completely. She tried again, and missed again. On the third try she connected, and the ball popped up and tapped lightly against the fence.