Claire Delacroix (37 page)

“Me? Never!” Malachy bounced to his feet. “That is a lie!”

Tarsuinn leaned closer to me, his manner confidential. “It is a sly rogue, my lady, who pretends to care nothing for the woman who has seized his heart forever.”

“Fiona! There would be a sorry fate!” Malachy grimaced, his expression so eloquent that I began to laugh. The pair exchanged a glance, then began to chuckle themselves. They embraced and tussled a bit more, then Tarsuinn winked at me.

“It is good to see the lady smile.”

My smile broadened that they had such a care for me, and I thanked them before beckoning Tarsuinn that I might look at his wound. He amiably peeled off his tabard, then pulled back his slashed chemise, revealing the gash in his shoulder to me. He sat down as I indicated, his back to me, a last beam of sunlight touching the bloody gash.

“How bad is it?” Malachy demanded, peering over my shoulder.

“It is deep but cleanly wrought, at least.”

“That will teach you to face a dozen men at once,” Malachy chided with affection.

“They would have finished me, were it not for your timely arrival.”

“Ah, now he is sentimental with gratitude.” Malachy rolled his eyes, then winked at me. He fetched some water at my request and I rinsed out the wound until the blood ran clear, ignoring the two’s bantering accusations. Malachy finally waved off his companion’s teasing with disgust and stomped into the woods, probably to relieve himself.

“You should stitch it closed,” counseled a woman behind me.

I jumped even as Tarsuinn did the same beneath my fingertips. I turned to find Adaira standing there, and marveled that she had approached so silently. She reached for Tarsuinn’s shoulder, her twisted fingers feeling along his wound, even gently probing its depth so that he flinched.

“Fiona is dead,” she said afore any of us could summon a word. “She died as she lived, grasping for what was not hers to have.”

Tarsuinn glanced back, a query in his expression, and Adaira nodded. “She tried to raid my lady’s chamber when the flames rose around the keep. She was trapped there and, despite her entreaties for aid, none would risk their life to save hers. She perished there.”

Tarsuinn frowned and looked away. Malachy dropped his gaze, as if ashamed to have mocked her so recently.

“Do not mourn her or her kind,” Adaira said gruffly. She gave his wound another prod, then nodded. “Yes. It must be stitched to heal aright. Have you a needle?”

I finally found my voice. “What brings you to my side? What trouble have you yet to wreak?”

She tilted her head to regard me, as if puzzled by my manner. “I come to aid in healing, as always.”

“You healed nothing in pressing those arrows into my hands, for that ensured that I would be considered guilty of Fergus’ demise,” I said hotly. “And you healed nothing in offering me a means of killing the babe in my womb.”

Adaira shrugged. She produced a needle and eased me out of her way as she set to stitching Tarsuinn’s wound. He grunted as the needle bit into his flesh, but she passed her hand over his skin and his tension eased. “It will not take long,” she told him. “And treated thus, it will heal with only the barest scar.”

He nodded and bent his head, surrendering to her ministrations. She ignored me as she worked, her fingers showing a familiar grace in this task that my more youthful fingers would have lacked.

“Why, Adaira?” I asked when it was clear she would say nothing to me. “Why did you try to incriminate me?”

She pursed her lips. “There are greater forces in this world than the life of one unborn child, greater matters to be resolved.”

“Not to me.”

“Understand, my lady, that I knew you would never be found guilty of this crime you did not commit. The desired end is more likely achieved in any situation when there is more than one path leading to it.”

“I do not understand. You wished for me to be imprisoned?”

Adaira frowned as she concentrated on her stitching. “There are many ways to be rid of a babe - you spurned my potion, as I anticipated you might. The shock of this charge and whatever response was wrought from those in Inverfyre’s court could well have induced you to lose the babe, as well.”

My hand curled protectively over my belly. “Why would you desire me to lose my babe? How could you do this ill to me, to him?”

Adaira knotted the last stitch and bit off the thread, in no haste to sate my curiosity. She threw back her head then and recounted that old rhyme.

“When the seventh son of Inverfyre,

Saves his legacy from intrigue and mire,

Only then shall glorious Inverfyre,

Reflect in full its first laird’s desire.”

“No doubt you do not know the whole of the tale,” she said.

“I have heard all of the verse.”

Adaira smiled. “Ah, but the meat of the tale was never included in the verse you heard.”

“Why not?”

“The troubadour who wrote the chanson put no credit in the truth. It is common for men to despise what they cannot hold within their hands, to disbelieve what cannot be proven in their own experience. The tale was an uncommon one and he, like many others, was too much the skeptic to grant it credit.”

“What truth is this? And what has it to do with my child?”

“Patience, my lady, patience.” Adaira took a seat upon an old log and sighed as if tired. Her features seemed more lined and I recalled that she had found her son murdered on this day. My heart twisted in sympathy, though still I could not face her with the same warmth as once I had.

She cleared her throat before she spoke. “There are those who believe that the tale of Inverfyre begins with Magnus Armstrong’s arrival, but they are wrong: the full tale began long before. Even the tale of Magnus himself, who was called thus solely in that time, began long before. Magnus did not come to this place by choice or by chance, he did not find his home at Inverfyre by accident. No, he returned to Inverfyre by compulsion. He may not have been aware of what he did, not at first, but his soul knew the site of Inverfyre and the debt he was pledged to pay there. The soul keeps a reckoning that cannot be denied.”

“You talk in riddles,” I said with some irritation.

“The truth is oft like that.” Adaira gestured in the direction of Inverfyre. “These woes are not new. Inverfyre, under all its names, has long been a contested land, and the combatants of each epoch have oft had much in common with the combatants of the past. It is a place of some witchery, a place that casts a light into the heart of all those who pass its threshold, a place that condemns many of them to return again and again.”

Tarsuinn nodded. “I have heard of this, my lady.”

“I have not!”

Adaira smiled. “You have been protected from the truth of your birthright, as all noble ladies tend to be. Gilchrist called it whimsy but he could not abandon Inverfyre either.”

“I do not understand.”

“One hears of ghosts in this land, of souls condemned to haunt a locale or rest uneasy. This is a tale of ghosts, if you will. Two souls I speak of, two souls whose fates are entwined like two plies of a rope. And like the plies of that rope, neither can be strong or complete without the other.”

I sat down, compelled despite myself by this tale. Tarsuinn turned to watch Adaira, something in his expression hinting that he had heard part of this tale afore. Malachy came out of the woods, his hand upon the lace of his chausses and halted to listen.

Adaira nodded. “Magnus Armstrong was drawn to Inverfyre to meet his fated partner, to lay an ancient crime to rest, to release these two souls from the confines of Inverfyre. It is the fate of these two to return time and again to Inverfyre. By divine compensation, they have the chance to set an old wrong to right, to seek each other anew each time their souls don a cloak of flesh.”

She shook her head. “But the gods are not kind. No, they are tricksters, each and every one of them. They give with one hand while stealing with the other. The chance of winning eternity together was what they offered, but memory of the tale was what they stole. By the time Magnus understood the price of his own ambition, he had betrayed his destined lover yet again and lost her companionship for yet another mortal life.”

I had an inkling of what she would tell me, but I held my tongue, content to wait for counsel I doubted I would like.

Adaira tapped her fingertip on my arm. “Your son is Magnus Armstrong in new guise, as well as all the other men Magnus was afore. The wheel turns, the soul takes flesh again, and each course through the world is destined to teach some morsel of a higher truth.”

“But if this is fated to be, why do you try to stop my child from taking his first breath?”

“Because he comes too soon!” Adaira hissed, then rose to her feet. She flung her arms skyward, looking virile and powerful. “Magnus comes too soon! Aye, the gods will have their jest - they will ensure the failure of these fated lovers solely to entertain themselves with mortal folly.”

“You tried to aid this couple by delaying my conception of a child,” I guessed.

Adaira sighed and glanced about herself, as if surprised to find herself here. “I tried only to grant them some small chance of success. I tried to serve the greater good - the cause of love immortal, if you will - but I have failed. You will bring Magnus to the world, though I fear he is destined to fail again.”

I felt a quickening within me, the babe shifting within my womb. It was almost as if he heard her tale and would endorse it, as strange as it was.

Adaira’s milky gaze fixed upon me, her expression grim. “My efforts have been futile, though they have cost me dearly.” She sighed again, and shrank, her shoulders slumping and her head bowed. “I have paid more than my due in this battle.”

“But you cannot see all of the future, Adaira,” I said. “What if this child is not Magnus?”

“I told you that you wove a new thread into the warp of Inverfyre and I did not lie. You would have conceived no child, not for another decade, had you done as you were bidden.”

I folded my cloak around myself. “I am not sorry to carry this child.”

“I know.” Adaira shook her head and seemed to shrink again. “And despite myself and all I know, I cannot mourn that Magnus will return to Inverfyre sooner than I believed.”

I rose to my feet, wanting only to console her, but Adaira abruptly drew up her hood and wrapped her cloak about herself. She turned away from my touch and walked briskly into the woods. She faded with every step until she had disappeared so surely that she might never been among us.

Tarsuinn shivered and Malachy shook himself as if waking from a dream. I rubbed my upper arms, suddenly chilled. We exchanged glances, then spoke as one.

“You knew this tale?” I asked Tarsuinn.

He shook his head. “I heard another. It was of Magnus Armstrong, but far different in its details.”

“The one your father told,” Malachy said with a nod. “That the peregrines permitted Magnus to take their young because he was one of them.”

“What is this?”

Tarsuinn smiled a little sheepishly. “My father insisted that Magnus had lived as a man by day and flown with the falcons by night, that he had an agreement with them that saw to the prosperity of all.”

“It is the manner of tale a falconer would recount,” Malachy amended. “Though it is reputed that Magnus had an uncanny ability to find eyasses just as they left the nest.”

“There is an interval of but a day when it is ideal to capture them,” Tarsuinn said. “And Magnus was said to be infallible.” He shrugged. “I always thought it a fable, concocted to explain his expertise as more than human talent.”

“And similarly, the tale of his lost love trapped in the guise of a peregrine.”

Tarsuinn nodded. “An explanation for the fact that he took a wife late and for duty solely. It was well known that there was only a cursory affection between Magnus and his bride, that their nuptials were conducted that Inverfyre might have an heir.”

I marveled, for I had never been told these tales.

Tarsuinn touched my arm briefly and I looked up to find his gaze filled with understanding. “Your father believed these tales to be fictions, my lady, and further, to be malicious hints of sorcery in his lineage. It is no surprise that you were spared them.”

I smiled for him, for he spoke aright. All of us proved anxious to forage for a bit of food, all of us wanted to search alone. But as I plucked mushrooms and shoots, I wondered. What had I set awry in my decision to seek out Gawain?

And what fate awaited my son?

* * *

XX

I slept like a corpse, so exhausted that I did not care whether or not we were found. Indeed, I knew not where we would flee, where we would find sanctuary. I could not even think of possibilities in my state.

I awakened with the dawn’s first light, noting immediately that Tarsuinn and Malachy were still both lost to dreams. I rolled over, planning to consider our situation, and yelped to find that I no longer lay alone.

Gawain clapped his hand over my mouth. There was soot on his face and mire in his hair, blood on his tabard, but his eyes gleamed with his usual devilry. He winced at his quick move, then sighed most eloquently as he lay back with feigned weariness. “Truly, I grow too old for this trade.”