Claire Delacroix (30 page)

Gawain’s bold gaze swept over me and he gave a low whistle. He smiled cockily, so much more suave and slippery of manner than Merlyn that I was astounded that I have ever given any credence to anything he had said.

“I have come to challenge your inheritance, of course.”

I slammed the door behind myself, unwilling that any others should hear his lies. “On what grounds?”

Gawain pursed his lips. “Ravensmuir should have been mine, of course.”

“You are not the eldest son.”

“But I was the favored one and I was the one who labored at my father’s side while Merlyn sought his own fortune.” Gawain pushed to his feet to pace, showing the same lithe grace as his brother. “And my father made a promise to me, as well.”

“So you say.”

“It is true that our father had no time to commit his pledge to me to vellum.” Gawain pivoted suddenly to face me and I dreaded what he would say. “But only because Merlyn ensured as much.”

I did not believe it for a moment. Words fell gilded from this one’s tongue and appeared to do so effortlessly, as if they carried no weight of conviction with them.

Whereas Merlyn’s words came slowly, burdened with import and history, burdened with truth.

I knew who I believed, who I trusted. I folded my arms across my chest. “You may once have deceived me with your honeyed lies, but no more, Gawain.”

“Believe what you desire of Merlyn.” Gawain shrugged, abandoning his argument too easily. “But know this of your neighboring earls, Ysabella. They will be anxious to see you wedded, to ensure the security of this holding so close to their own.”

“And what has this to do with you?”

Gawain smiled. “If I challenge your suzerainty before the company on the morrow, who do you think will be believed?” There was no time to respond to his threat before he continued. “Perhaps you and I could come to a mutually acceptable arrangement, one that will also solve the dilemma of Ravensmuir having no laird.”

“What manner of arrangement?”

“We could wed, of course.” His shrewd gaze locked with mine. “Then you would have the joy of living at Ravensmuir and I would have the satisfaction of holding sway over all its properties. It could be said that we would both possess what we desire.”

“I will not wed you!”

“You may have no choice.” Gawain smiled at me, supremely confident.

My greater fear was that he spoke aright, that the earls would indeed find his solution appealing. On the other hand, I dared not tell any of them that Merlyn lived lest I make matters worse.

But why did Gawain come to me first? I straightened, for I have cowed before an empty threat before. Perhaps the earls would not approve of him as laird any more than I did. “Merlyn spoke aright in one matter, Gawain.”

“How so?”

“He said you were the most cunning and audacious thief he had ever known. This is the boldest ploy to steal an inheritance that ever I have witnessed.”

Gawain’s features tightened, then a slyness dawned in his expression. “What if I have something else with which to wager?

“Unless you mean to confess to your lies, or say your farewells, there is nothing you might say that I would care to hear.” I swept past him, my skirts swishing regally across the floor.

He waited until I was at the foot of the stairs to the solar, then spoke quietly. “Not even that Merlyn lies wounded and in need of your aid?”

I spun to face him.

Gawain’s expression revealed nothing. “If you have no interest in my tidings, that suits me well enough. I, too, much prefer my brother dead.”

I hastened back to Gawain’s side, hating the satisfaction that lit his gaze. “Was it you who assaulted him?”

He laughed. “I am not a killer, Ysabella, but a thief. I might neglect to fetch aid for a man mortally wounded if his death would suit me well, but I would not plunge the blade into his flesh myself.”

I studied him, uncertain whether to trust him or not. “Tell me where Merlyn is.”

Gawain wagged his finger at me. “Not so quickly as that! Let us make a small wager first.”

“I will not wed you.”

“You might show some care in not insulting me,” he chided. “Especially as I hold the key to so much.” He came closer, leaned against the wall like a man of leisure directly before me, and spoke softly. “Let us be honest, Ysabella.”

“I thought that talent beyond you.”

He grinned. “A first attempt, then. It cannot hurt.”

“What do you want?”

“Let me be blunt. I do not want to wed you, and I suspect that you do not want to wed me. I do not really want to possess Ravensmuir...”

“Then why...”

Gawain’s voice hardened. “What I truly desire is the relic my father promised to me.”

“If Avery did not give it to you, he must have changed his thinking.”

“He had no chance to change his mind,” Gawain retorted, uncharacteristically angry now. “Merlyn knew our father’s favor turned to me and he killed him before he lost all he sought to gain. Merlyn wanted Ravensmuir, he always wanted Ravensmuir, but then he wanted everything else, as well. He knew our father was going to grant the relic to me, and he prevented that gift in the most effective way possible.”

I stepped away, not liking the vindictive tone.

“You cannot shy from this truth, Ysabella,” Gawain said, pursuing me. “Merlyn murdered our father.”

* * *

XII

“No!” I cried, not certain what to believe.

“Oh yes. My father wished to feign his death. He made the mistake of soliciting Merlyn’s aid.” Gawain’s expression turned grim. “But only Merlyn returned from their adventure. Only Merlyn strode into this hall.”

“Perhaps Avery did feign his death.”

Gawain glared at me. “Then how did his corpse come to wash upon Ravensmuir’s shore three days later, his pockets filled with stones?”

I looked away, struggling with this revelation about my spouse. I fiercely wanted Merlyn to be innocent of this. “Where is he?”

“He made the mistake of asking me for aid,” Gawain snarled. “After all he had stolen from me. My brother lied in his assessment of me, for he is the more cunning thief of the two of us. That relic should have been mine five years past!”

I felt sickened by not only these tidings, but Gawain’s bitterness. “What do you want of me?”

Gawain smiled. “The relic.”

“Merlyn might have sold it.”

“No. He has sold nothing of merit these past years.” Gawain rolled his eyes. “Genuine articles, if you can believe the whimsy of that. His fortunes must have been failing.”

“I thought you worked together.”

“After he killed our father? After he stole my legacy? After he refused to traffic in any relic which he knew had been stolen?” Gawain scoffed. “No longer are we partners! He may have denied me my due all this time, but I will have the relic now.”

“Merlyn might have moved it.”

“No. He has returned here and sought it as diligently as me.” Gawain caught my shoulder suddenly, granting me no chance to escape his grip. “I know it was in the chapel. My father told me as much, though he never told me where. I came back to search not a month ago and turned every stone in that chapel. It was not there and it was not there because Merlyn moved it.”

“You cannot know...”

“I think he found it, and that is why I sent word to him to meet me here, that we might make a wager. Sadly, Merlyn is now in no condition to share tales.”

My innards clenched. “Take me to him!”

But Gawain did not move. “I think you know where the relic is, Ysabella. Surrender the relic to me and I will tell you precisely where Merlyn lies bleeding.” He arched a brow. “You had best hasten your choice. The blood was flowing quickly when I left him.”

“Wretch!”

Gawain smiled. “Have we a wager?”

He gave me a choice that was no choice, and I hated that he knew it. “I have found something, but I am not certain what it is.”

“Then let us hasten to it and be certain.”

“Tell me where Merlyn is.”

Gawain smiled coolly. “Of course. After you surrender my relic.”

We glared at each other. Gawain knew that he could out-wait me.

I hated him then, hated that he knew so well how to win his desire of me, hated that he would steal what I believed should rightfully be Merlyn’s own.

And hated still more that there was nothing I could do about it.

“Once you have your prize, you will leave Ravensmuir forever,” I insisted, my teeth gritted.

“If it is what I seek, you will never see me again.”

“Now that is a wager worth taking.”

* * *

We made haste across the grass to the chapel, assuming that all in the keep were to busy to note our sudden need to pray. The pigeons fluttered when I pulled open the door, though it was darker within than the last time I had been here.

“Look there.” I pointed to the bundle behind the crucifix and Gawain’s gaze brightened.

“Have you opened it?”

“I cannot reach it.”

He laced his hands together to give me a boost, but I hesitated before I stepping into his grip. “And Merlyn?”

“Fetch it first.” Gawain smiled. “Face the truth, Ysabella. I can take this token now, with or without your aid, and you will only have your due of me if I am pleased with your assistance.”

I growled something unflattering as I stepped onto his hands, then steadied myself with one hand on the wall. I reached up and tugged the bundle free. It was about the size of a loaf of bread, round and not that heavy. It was wrapped in rough cloth and bound securely with twine.

It was heavy with dust. I sneezed and almost sent us both sprawling. Gawain seized the bundle, his expression triumphant.

“Is it what you seek?”

He looked like a child anxious to open an unexpected gift. “Who can say?” He examined the quantity of dust, the state of the knots and the aging of the twine. “This has not been touched in a long time. More than a year.”

“We do not have years to linger over this task. Open it!”

Gawain took his knife from his belt and carefully cut the twine that surrounded the package. He laid the bundle upon the trestle table that was the altar, for a finger of sunlight touched there, and carefully unwrapped the outer layer of cloth. He frowned at the wax barrier within. He gave the package a thorough examination which created a most undesirable delay to my thinking.

“Make haste!”

“Nothing good comes of haste,” he chided.

“What of Merlyn?”

“He is more resilient than you know.” Gawain studied the package anew, and I was surprised by his thoughtful expression. Satisfied by some criteria I could not name, he carefully cut through the wax. There were two more layers of cloth, as if someone sought to ensure that the contents were protected.

I leaned closer with each layer that he removed, my curiosity growing. It could be a jeweled reliquary, I surmised, or the hilt of a great blade with a fearsome relic trapped within it. I had heard once of a spherical crystal, actually wrought of two crystals shaped as half-globes, then set together with a fragment of the true cross between them.

I was so expectant that I cried out in dismay when Gawain finally peeled back the last layer of cloth. He held an utterly unremarkable piece of wood.

“Wood? It is wood?!” My incredulity quickly turned to annoyance. “What manner of madman would take such care to wrap a piece of wood? Why would anyone hide such a thing in the first place?” I propped my hands upon my hips and huffed. “What a waste of time and anticipation!”

Then I fell silent in terror that Gawain would not keep our wager, that Merlyn would languish untended.

But Gawain did not look disappointed. He turned the wood in his hands, lifting it into the ray of sunlight. His expression was inscrutable, which should have warned me that I was missing a detail of import.

“And it was hidden behind the crucifix.” Gawain made a sound beneath his breath that might have been a laugh. He smiled, then ran his finger across some letters carved deeply into the wood upon one side, no doubt to draw my attention to it. He gave me such a wicked look that I knew the inscription was critical.

“`And Pontius Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. and the writing was JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.’“

I stared at him, recognizing the passage all too well. “That is from the Bible, from the account of Christ’s crucifixion.”

“Yes.” Gawain examined the letters again. “The gospel of St. John. Chapter 19, verse 19, I believe.”

I watched him, my mouth working in silence for a long moment. “You cannot mean what I think you mean!” I sputtered that he would try to tell me such an outrageous lie. “This is not the True Cross!”

“No,” he agreed altogether too easily. “If anything, it is what is known as the
Titulus Croce
. The sign that was hung over the crucified Jesus to explain his crime.”

“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” I whispered.

“Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, in the Latin, abbreviated to INRI.” Gawain traced this last upon the table with a fingertip, leaving marks in the dust gathered there. I recognized the letters from the inscription over the crucifix in Kinfairlie’s parish church.

“That is not what is writ upon the wood.”

“Nazarenus,” he said, writing again in the dust. “Of Nazareth.”

“It is still not the same.”

“But the Romans wrote it like this: NAZARENVS. And if we include the beginning of the next word, which is rex, or king: NAZARENVSRE.”

I stared at the wood. That was indeed what was carved there, at least in one line.

“And this line?”

“The Greek. Sadly, I do not read Greek as well. The third line is probably Hebrew, which I do not read at all.”

God in heaven, what if it was genuine? What if the desire to possess such a prize was at the root of all this wickedness?

I was rationally unable to accept this, though I looked at the wood with newfound awe. “No, it cannot be. It makes no sense. Such a relic would be precious, it would be secured in some place, probably in Rome itself, and guarded vigilantly.”