Ariadne's Diadem (7 page)

The Mediterranean evening had already closed in as the ever-young god of wine, pleasure, and wild nature arrived in the grove, attended by a retinue of scores of Sylvanus’s mischievous brethren. The purple-robed deity was tall, handsome and dazzlingly golden, and led a panther on a silver chain. He wore a vine and ivy leaf wreath, carried a long wand topped by a bunch of myrtle, and his eyes were ablaze with fury as he commanded Sylvanus to come forth from his hiding place.

The terrified faun crawled out on all fours, and his goat tail trembled in the air as he pressed his face to the grass. “Have pity on me, oh, mighty Bacchus, oh, Great One...” he whimpered.

The panther growled, and Sylvanus forgot his fear for a moment in order to give the animal a look of loathing. As far as he was concerned, it was little more than a large tomcat with airs and graces above its station.

Bacchus poked Sylvanus with his wand. “Save your attention for me. Faun!”

Sylvanus cowered again, and the gathered fauns began
to snigger at his discomfort, although they were immediately silenced by the god’s baleful glare. Then Bacchus stretched out a foot and pushed Sylvanus to the edge of the pool. “You’ve let me down, Sylvanus,” he accused.

“F-forgive me, Master,” Sylvanus whimpered, eyeing both the god and the shining water that was once again within inches of him.

“Forgive you? Why should I do that? Your task was to guard the grove, but you failed! Now my Sweet One’s crown has been taken, and all because of
your
folly. Can you give me one good reason why I should spare you?”

“Give me one more chance. Lord, and I vow I will redeem myself!” Sylvanus pleaded.

Bacchus bent to stroke the panther. “You are not a cat with nine lives, Faun, merely a worthless creature who has displeased me. Your time has come.”

Sylvanus squeaked with terror and hid his face again. “Please! I beg of you! Remember that the Lady Ariadne liked me, and would not wish to see me die!”

Bacchus had raised his staff, but then paused. “You presume by mentioning her name,” he breathed, glancing up at the deep turquoise sky, where the first evening stars had begun to appear. He had commemorated his adored Ariadne in the constellation known as the Corona Borealis, named after the very wedding diadem this inept failure of a faun had allowed to be stolen!

Sylvanus’s tail shook with dread. “Let me save the diadem for you. Liege, let me go after the Englishman and punish him as I punished the duke!”

“That is another thing. The man you turned to marble is innocent of attacking the woman Teresa.”

Dismayed, Sylvanus clasped his arms over his head. His goat tail became very still, and he drew his hooves up until he could have been rolled into the pool like a ball.

Bacchus snapped his fingers and nodded at one of the other fauns, who immediately ran to Sylvanus’s hiding place and returned with Gervase’s clothes, which were placed respectfully at the god’s feet. The silver buttons of the greatcoat winked in the half-light, their maze pattern very clear to see. “Ah, the defenses of Troy, how well I remember them,” the god murmured, touching one of the buttons with the end of his staff. A flood of knowledge immediately swept through him. He saw the maze at Llandower Castle and the old duke issuing his ultimatum to Anne. He saw Gervase being told he must marry Anne if he wished to retain his inheritance. He saw how very much the man who now lay entombed at the bottom of the pool resented the match, and he saw also Hugh, the new Duke of Wroxford, lying in the arms of Kitty Longton. Last but not least he saw Anne riding through the early evening sun along the bank of the Wye.

A thoughtful expression entered the god’s eyes, and he prodded the terrified faun. “Get up,” he commanded.

Sylvanus couldn’t move.

“Get up!” Bacchus ordered, poking him more harshly.

Sylvanus uncurled and rose unwillingly to his hooves, then stood with his head bowed as he awaited sentence.

“You’re right to remind me that my Sweet One liked you, and for her sake I will indeed give you another chance, but don’t think I intend to let you off lightly.” Bacchus hooked the greatcoat with the end of his staff and tossed it toward Sylvanus, who caught it. ‘Touch one of the buttons,” the god commanded.

Sylvanus obeyed, and the knowledge flooded through him, too.

“There are conditions to be met before you will have fully redeemed yourself in my eyes, Faun. You will go to the place called Llandower Castle, where the diadem will soon be brought. It must be given
willingly
into your hands, do you understand?”

“Yes,
Master.”

“But before you can receive the diadem, you must help the other man complete
his
task.”

“What other man?” Sylvanus was puzzled.

The god pointed at the water. “The wrong cousin was punished for what was done to the woman Teresa, but even so he
was
guilty of trying to steal the diadem, so I am going to send him to England as well. He will have to assume a new identity and win the heart of the bride he treated so badly. He will remain a statue by day, but at night will be turned into flesh and blood again in order to woo her. Without ever knowing who he really is, she must tell him she loves him. It will not be easy to make her confess, for she is a young woman of great integrity who now considers herself honor-bound to the man called Hugh. There is only one circumstance that will afford any advantage at the moment—the lady is temporarily alone because her parents have gone to Dublin. There will be several days, or rather nights, before Hugh arrives.”

“What if she cannot be won?”

“Then the duke will remain a statue throughout eternity, and you. Faun, will stay in England with him, provided I spare your miserable hide, that is,” the god said harshly, and the other fauns sniggered again, for they always took mean delight in each other’s misfortune.

Sylvanus swallowed, resigned to what lay ahead. “What is to happen to the man called Hugh?” he asked then.

“His fate I will leave to you and the duke. If you both succeed in your allotted tasks, you will have the pleasure of punishing him as you both see fit.”

Sylvanus shuffled his hooves. “When are you sending us?”

“At this very moment,” Bacchus replied. “However, first I must make one thing clear. You are not to employ your power to make men and women irresistibly drawn to each other. What the duke achieves must be done without your intervention, is that clear?”

“Yes, Master.”

Bacchus pointed his staff at the grass and conjured into existence a marble plinth about four inches high. Then he pointed the staff at the pool. “I grant you the power of communication. Englishman. Have you heard everything?”

Gervase had indeed heard and was able to reply through thought.
“Yes.”

The answer seeped up through the pool to Bacchus and the fauns. “Do you accept my conditions?” the god inquired.

“Yes.”
Gervase felt he had no choice; besides, it offered the only way to escape from this dreadful petrified imprisonment.

Bacchus waved his staff, and the water bubbled and seethed as Gervase began to rise slowly to the surface. Naked, white, and dripping, with weeds draped around his arms and another more private portion of his anatomy, he was suspended in midair for a moment, before being drawn to the bank and deposited on the low plinth, for all the world as if he graced the garden of a villa in ancient Rome. He gazed in amazement at the golden magnificence of the young god, whom he had expected would be a much older personage, grown fat from a surfeit of wine. He was also startled to see the immense gathering of fauns peering curiously at him from behind their master. The panther growled, and Gervase flinched, at least he would have done so had he been capable of even the slightest movement.

Bacchus eyed him critically from head to toe, and then used his staff to remove the waterweed that was draped so embarrassingly around Gervase’s more outstanding lower regions. “Hardly Hercules, but nevertheless a fine enough specimen of humanity,” he conceded, “although whether Miss Anne Willowby will ever think so remains to be seen.”

“Is there no other way I may make amends for my part in the theft of the diadem? Must I really win her love?”
Gervase asked.

“Yes, you must, but be warned that you have been wrong to dismiss her as a schemer.” Bacchus told him briefly about Anne’s reasons for entering into the match, knowledge he had absorbed from the buttons on the greatcoat, along with everything else.

Gervase felt chastened, for he’d said some very harsh things about her. “
I
concede I was at fault, but can you tell me why my father chose her in the first place?”

Bacchus smiled. “Oh, yes. Her great probity revived memories of his first wife.”

So that was it. Gervase’s mind cleared. His mother was his father’s second wife and had always known that she stood in the shadow of her predecessor.

Bacchus turned to Sylvanus. “Well, Faun, it is time to commence. Pick up the duke’s clothes.”

The faun obeyed.

“Now climb
upon his back.”

Sylvanus gaped. “Climb? But—”

“It is the only way to be absolutely certain you both arrive in exactly the same place at exactly the same moment. Climb!” The god’s staff quivered at the faun, who hastened to do as he was told. It was no easy matter with an armful of clothes and a pair of riding hoots to contend with, for his cloven hooves found little purchase, but at last he managed to haul himself up to put his arms around Gervase’s neck, his furry goat legs around his waist, and wedge the clothes between himself and the cold marble.

Bacchus looked at Gervase. “By the way, I have caused Miss Willowby to fall from her horse and then into a deep sleep perilously close to a riverbank. She will slip into the water and drown unless you reach her quickly. Do not forget that she must live if you are to be released.”

As both Gervase and Sylvanus wondered to what purpose the god had done such a thing, Bacchus gestured again with his staff, and a great wind sprang up from what had been utterly still. The flowing purple robe billowed, and the company of fauns shrank together as the water of the pool was whipped up into countless little waves. Sylvanus clung on with all his might, and Gervase felt the plinth shudder a little, then suddenly the wind snatched them both, whirling them high into the evening sky.

There was a roaring and rushing of air, and Naples and its bay fell away behind. The twist of smoke from Vesuvius meandered heavenward for a time, but then Italy itself was lost from view as they swept northwest. They were so high that the air was bitterly cold, but although Gervase felt nothing through his shell of marble, poor Sylvanus’s teeth chattered. He bleated wretchedly, scrabbling with his hooves as he lost his grip for a moment. How he wished he were back in his cozy hiding place. More than that, how he wished he could
swim,
for then he would never have landed in Teresa del Rosso’s debt, and none of this would have happened!

A journey that should have taken weeks was over in a few minutes. Suddenly, England was below them, clearly visible in the northern twilight. Sylvanus peered down at an alien landscape of neat fields, lush meadows, and scattered villages, with trees that were just beginning to show their cloaks of spring green. He and Gervase flew above a river that flowed from north to south like a silver ribbon, through a beautiful tree-clad valley that was sometimes rich farmland, sometimes tree-hung cliffs and rocks. Sylvanus saw a gorge with white rapids, a dell with a stone-edged spring, then a house in grounds where there was a maze that was laid out in the same pattern as Gervase’s buttons. In the very center of the maze stood the sort of little white rotunda that cried out for the finishing touch of a statue, and Sylvanus knew instinctively where Bacchus intended them to end their journey.

They plummeted downward, spinning and swinging wildly from side to side as if some great power were trying to pinpoint an exact spot. In the final moments the faun looked upstream and dimly saw a young woman in a nasturtium riding habit, lying on the very lip of the riverbank, then to the east he saw two bobbing lanterns as old Joseph, Martin, and the lurcher set out in the wrong direction toward the bluebell woods to look for Anne, whose riderless horse had returned only moments before.

Gervase and Sylvanus arrived with a thud on the floor of the rotunda. After the rushing of air, suddenly everything was silent. Beyond the maze rose the moonlit rooftops and battlements of Llandower Castle, and in the distance they could hear the searchers calling Anne’s name.

Chapter Seven

The rotunda consisted of a domed roof supported on elegant Corinthian columns, between two of which it was walled to provide some protection from the prevailing southwesterly winds. Otherwise it was open to the elements, which Sylvanus knew only too well as he slithered down from Gervase’s back.

For an English spring evening, the temperature was mild and pleasant, but a faun from the Mediterranean found it disagreeably damp and cold. His teeth chattered as he hastily donned Gervase’s greatcoat, which was far too big for him, before taking the rest of the clothes and throwing them across an ivy-covered stone bench that stood in the shelter of the walled portion of the rotunda. Then he paused for a moment, sniffing the air a little curiously before he turned to Gervase and brought him to life by reversing the magic words he’d used in the grove.

“Come on, for your Miss Willowby is in danger. I saw where she is, so I know which way to go,” the faun said, and trotted to the edge of the rotunda, where he waited impatiently for Gervase to dress in the now rather crumpled pine green riding coat and cream breeches.

Gervase felt oddly normal as he pulled on his top boots. He wasn’t stiff or awkward; indeed it was as if he hadn’t been marble at all. He straightened at last and looked in dismay at the high, seemingly impenetrable hedges of the maze. “Miss Willowby may be in danger, but fast we have to find our way out of this damned puzzle.”

“It’s no problem to me because I’m familiar with the defenses of Troy, but I must say I’m surprised that anyone can wear a plan of the maze on his buttons and not know it by heart.”