Awaken My Fire (46 page)

"Noble knight of Suffolk, state your grievance in plain language and be quick about it."

"Ye know it well." Bryce lifted his head and narrowed his eyes, but said in an even, level tone, somehow frightening because of it, "I've come to answer the threat you made to Lady Roshelle Marie St. Lille of Lyons and Bourges. The threat that promised to take from her the maid Joan of Orleans, to use and abuse her before you promised to bring her death."

The words were said utterly without feeling, and yet the Suffolk knight conveyed his utter disdain and contempt for the man, any man, who would threaten a helpless lady in such a despicable manner. As if the Grand Duke of Burgundy amounted to no more than an offensive worm, to be crushed beneath the man's boot.

Which was how Bryce felt.

The Burgundian guards shifted nervously beneath the gentle pounding of the rain, their silence filling with amazement. Amazement not for the deed the knight challenged, for they each knew the duke was capable of a good deal worse. Rather, it was the very simplicity of the man's honest emotion that struck their silence: the just cause to avenge a distressed and wrongly used lady's honor. It had been so long since any had heard an honest chord at Burgundy, and the men exchanged nervous glances, torn between awe and respect and laughing outright at his foolishness.

A powerful tingling raced up the duke's spine and shot through his nerves, warning and exciting him. Much better than he had anticipated! He would watch this fool unravel nerve by nerve, savoring every moment. "And what if I said the lady led you false, that she hath lied, no doubt to steal you from the bosom of the very person you seek to protect?"

Bryce studied the strange depths of his eyes through the veil of rain, wondering what devilish trick let him know of the brief struggle between Lady Roshelle and himself for Joan. A fiend for sure, and he wanted to get on with it.

A gloved hand wiped the rain from his face as he straightened. " 'Tis a poor trick to shake me faith." His blue eyes narrowed as his gloved hand rested impatiently on his sword's rip guard and pommel. "I need only place Lady Roshelle's tear-filled eyes alongside these false words that spill from your mouth with an ease the devil himself would envy."

The silence filled with the sound of rain.

"Indeed!" A brow lifted, a grin followed. The idiot was literally too stupid to question his own righteousness. "These moments before you die," the duke said, his voice rich and soothing. "Tell me, have you no fear at all, Bryce de Warren?"

"I have nothing to fear."

"Nothing?" he questioned, fascinated by the very idea.

"I've done my best and that's all God could ask of me."

As if mocking the idea, the duke tossed back his head and laughed at this.

Bryce ignored the madman as best he could. "On with it. I grow weary of waitin'."

The duke bit his lip to contain his laughter, his eyes alive with excitement as he felt the murderous rage start to fill him, the excitement of a kill. Yet this idiot was so maddeningly righteous, the day of his death bringing him not a moment of care! He wanted to see this knight's fear before he watched his death.

So, he said, "As my challenger, you concede me the right to choose the weapons—"

"It be your right," Bryce agreed as if he had been asked.

The duke felt a twinge of irritation, one curiously bordering humor. This was too much! Yet he knew, in the way he had, the man was loath to use the French saber, that it sat uneasily in his hand those few times he had held one. Pleased with the sudden knowledge, he said, "So I choose the Spanish long knife and the French saber."

The French saber was as good as an English sword, and so, the Spanish blade of no consequence except for the end. "Good enough," Bryce said.

Two guards raced away toward the armory to fetch the weapons.

Dark brows arched over darker eyes. Good enough? Was it not the very worst possible choice of weapons for an Englishman? Was the man trying to trick him?

The duke watched as Bryce calmly withdrew his sword, handing it to one of his men. Then he cracked his thick gloved knuckles. Instead of the fearsome anticipation of God's judgment, this knight had the indifferent air of a man waiting for a maying party.

Something was wrong here; the duke's gaze flew about the rain-washed straws, searching for the familiar spirit. This was a trick, one of his tricks. He knew it! He felt it. Yet nothing stirred in the surrounding area and his gaze returned to rest hard on the knight.

Bryce ignored the intensity of the duke's gaze as best he could. Within minutes, the guards returned with two sets of weapons. He withdrew his hands from the warmth of his gloves. He slipped his right hand into the pommel of the French saber and whipped it through the air, adjusting to its heaviness. Luckily, since arriving at Reales, he and Vince had started sparring with them. True, he was soaked through his clothes, but then so was the duke. He gripped the Spanish long knife in his left hand and turned to face the duke.

The duke raised his saber and with a vicious edge snapped, "A good day for dying, Bryce de Warren, is it not?"

"Aye." Bryce raised his saber, lightly touching the

duke's and putting in his mind that this man would threaten

torture and finally death to the sweet, innocent and simple

maid Joan. "I go with God."

I go with God—-Papillion's dying words...

The terrible ringing started in his ears. His dark eyes filled with rage, sudden, fierce rage as he stared into the knight's familiar blue eyes. Before the steward had even called out the on-guard, and completely taking a stunned Bryce by surprise, the duke swung with all his might. The blade ripped through the steely muscle of Bryce's right hand. Bryce cried out with a shocked grunt as his saber dropped to the ground, shocked by the sheer injustice of that swing. The onlookers stared in disbelief at the blood soaking through the wet cloth of his tunic.

Rodez found himself staring at the gold ring.

"Remember, Rodez, the simplest tricks are the best."

He looked up at the blue eyes. The ringing became a frenzied roar in his mind. With his fingers gripped tightly around the saber and long knife, he grabbed his ears, Bryce cried out with a loud war cry, and with the Spanish long knife raised, he lunged. Like a stick frozen in ice, the duke did not move, his mind seized by the roar of beastly laughter.

With his great strength, Bryce thrust the blade deep in

his heart. ,

The ringing stopped abruptly. Rodez looked down at the novelty of the knife through his chest. With one moment left, he looked back at Bryce and, seeing Papillion instead, he uttered with viciousness, "The girl is already a day long dead."

The blue eyes blazed with the knowledge. The duke contorted with pain. With shaking strength and vicious fury, Bryce withdrew the knife to plunge it again. And again.

The body dropped lifeless at his feet.

Bryce struggled to stand, lifting his face to the rain-filled heavens. Rain washed his face of blood and tears, and his agonized cry sang loud and long in the stilled and stormy sky.

Time was her enemy, grief her companion.

The grief felt sad and sweet and deep.

Roshelle lay unmoving on the bed, as if her stillness had the awesome power to slow the march of time. Time that led ever closer to her fate.

The trumper sounded outside.

Roshelle closed her eyes and listened. There was a secret in this grief. As if Joan's spirit hovered nearby, singing her sad song: "To know love, however briefly, is to never regret it."

She knew the truth of the words; she felt them in her grief. She had been given the miracle of Joan's life and love for such a short time. Yet in those five precious years, there was not a moment of regret. Not even the weight of her grief could make her regret. The grief felt so heavy and painful, manifesting in an intense longing to see Joan smile one last time, to reach out to touch her one last time and say good-bye.

Yet this was not so with Vincent.

When she peered into the waiting darkness of the future to see the world where he did not exist, she knew regret. A regret so strong and deep and powerful, it would wash away her life. It was a simple and vivid fact in her mind, as hard and cold as any reality: she could not live without knowing he did.

She would die a thousand times to save him.

Words echoed through her mind, words of Vincent's disbelief: how can mere words manifest in reality?

You think that old man's death owed itself to the curse?

A coincidence—surely! Was not Edward drunk?

I believe I rescued you!

As I recall, your screams brought me to the door!

At what point exactly will a man die?

Kiss me again, Roshelle, and see if I won't trade my life for another...

Words were superficial now; they had always been superficial. For he did not believe in the curse; he had never believed in it—'twas but an amusing farce to him and his.

Yet this amusing farce had kept her safe and alive to at last come to know his love. She did not know how Papillion's desperate measure to keep her safe worked, but then, much of life remained a mystery. She also did not know the mechanism that kept a heart beating throughout a lifetime; or how the sun shone throughout the millennia; she did not know how stars were spread across distances so great no mortal imagination could follow; or even how a tiny green bud knew which day to open its leaves to feel the sun. Life itself was a miracle she could neither explain nor understand. So, too, the curse. Vincent had reached into her heart and touched her soul. He would die, and with his death would come a regret more powerful than any reason she had for living.

She would die with him.

It was strange, too, that within the pattern and texture of life she knew she was not meant to die. Not now. She did not know how she knew this, but she did; her fate-one so dearly paid for—was to find peace at last, a place where she could spend her life exercising the gifts Papillion had given her. Compassion and kindness and healing: she was meant to help women bring their children into the world and to ease the discomfort of the dying and help the hundreds of calamities in between: the broken bones and rotted teeth, the fevers and pneumonias, the aches and pain and weariness brought by hard labor and headaches and bleedings. These gifts would vanish, though, vanish as if they never were, if he was taken from her in death…

The door opened. Cisely slipped inside. Like Roshelle's, her eyes were red from tears. She wore a gown of midnight blue for mourning, a sheer white apron over that. She held the ends of the apron in each hand.

She came to the bedside. "Look, Roshelle."

Her blue eyes lifted. Inside the apron were three meowing kittens, Hanna's litter. Joan's cat, the one she loved so.

Roshelle reached for one. Gentle hands enclosed the small furry ball and brought him to the warmth of her breast. She closed her eyes, rewarded with the vivid image of Joan's face. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

A sad and sweet and deep grief.

Help me, Papillion.

Noises from outside. The sound and thunder of hooves riding into the courtyard drew Cisely's gaze. Instantly she was afraid. Like Roshelle. Cisely lifted the other two kittens onto the bed before rushing to the alcove to look down into the courtyard. Roshelle slowly came to stand by her.

Papillion, show me.

The men of Suffolk crowded into the courtyard, over thirty and more arriving. Arrows were strung into bows, swords were drawn and hands tightened around pommels as if they waited the order to attack. Four mounted men remained seated as they let their horses circle and dance amidst their loud, obscene curses and raucous noise.

"Who are they?" Cisely's brows drew together. "Why do they not dismount or stop? Oh, look! He smashed it to pieces!"

A stallion's hooves crashed over the piggery man's wooden cart as if it were no more than doll-size, and as Roshelle watched, listening to their hoots and calls and curses, she grasped the point to it. A demonstration that they were wild beasts who lived outside the restraints and conventions of the world.

"Like brigands from an outlawed army, they are!"

Roshelle nodded and gasped. "They will be killed!"

"How do they think to come here like this?"

Suddenly Vincent emerged on the steps of the keep.