Fallen Angels (45 page)

She stared at him. He was so confident, so utterly confident. She remembered the guillotine, the commonplace machine of death that soaked blood onto the cobbles, and she knew that he had made her watch so that she would see the horror and not be afraid. He walked through terror and he was confident.

Yet Ababina had talked of his fear. Like the men and women who climbed the steps of the machine he had learned to hide his fear. That, she thought, was the secret of fear.

She looked back to the lights of the town. The carriage lamps had crept closer now.

She was frightened of the next day. She knew she must hide that fear.

She drank wine. She sat with her knees drawn up and she looked into the darkness beneath her. 'Mr Skavadale?'

'My Lady?'

She paused before asking her question. They had waited so long and now she would start to lead them towards that private, secret place. But first he must tell her a truth. She looked at him. 'Did I really need to come?'

The wind stirred the pines. He did not look at her. 'You had to come for Lucifer to come.'

She frowned. He was evading her. 'We'd beaten them already, hadn't we? Toby's alive, I'm alive, Lazen is safe!' She stared at him. 'Lucifer's beaten, Mr Skavadale!'

'He still lives.' He looked at her, seeing the taut expression on her face, and he knew that she was demanding the truth from him and that without the truth there could be nothing between them. He had told her half truths and now he must go further. He spoke gently. 'You need not have come, my Lady. We could have protected you. We could have killed Larke, and that would have been sufficient.'

She said nothing. She had known all along, she supposed, that she had come, not for Lord Paunceley, and not to defeat the Fallen Angels, but to be with this man.

He smiled. 'But we do want Lucifer.'

'Of course.'

They had said the words as if to reassure each other that their purpose was not to go to that mysterious place of love where only the truth would do. They were being polite still, fearful of the trembling moment.

The carriage lights crept into Auxigny. She heard, above the water's sound, the hiss of air on an owl's wings. She thought she saw the bird slide menacingly across the dark sky, a night-hunter seeking blood in the valley.

The silence stretched. She was staring at one small, yellowish light in the town that twinkled faintly like a star, sometimes seeming to disappear, then becoming bright again.

She turned to him in the silence and saw that he was looking at her. Neither spoke.

She had known this moment would come, and, now that it was upon them, there was an embarrassment in her. For one year she had dreamed of this man, dreams as forbidden as lust, and now she was with him, high over the world, in a private place to which, she knew, he had purposefully brought her.

She turned away from him. She stared at the tiny, flickering light in the town and she thought how she had been used by men in this affair. By Lucifer, by Culloden, by Paunceley, even by this man who sat beside her. The thought made her frown. She had come into a world of deceit and shadow, a world where the Gypsy hunted just as the owl did that swooped into the great chasm of darkness. He had brought her to this place of rock and water and solitude for a hunter's purpose.

She touched the rock with her fingers. 'Did you ever hunt foxes?'

'Yes.'

'I remember my first hunt. I was frightened.' She stopped, and the Gypsy, knowing better than to say anything, said nothing. She stared, huge eyed, over the valley. 'I was only a child and they took me to where the fox had been killed. They blooded me.' She turned and looked at him almost defiantly. 'My father cut off the fox's brush,' she said, 'dipped it in blood, and smeared it on my cheeks. I should have been excited. Every child wants to be blooded, but I hated it. I felt sorry for the fox.' His hand made a gesture in the darkness, but what the gesture meant she could not tell. 'Do you know what I'm saying?' she asked.

He smiled at her, his teeth white against his dark skin. 'I know that you still hunt.'

'Yes.' She paused. 'I like it. I don't know why. It's the horses, I suppose. Foxes have to be killed,' she shrugged, 'but it's the horses. It's the excitement. You can gallop a horse in exercise, but it's to no purpose, is it? Not really. But in a hunt!' She shook her head. 'In a hunt it's different. You don't care about the obstacles, you ride for the life of it, for the sheer life of it! But then comes the end, and I never go close.'

'Never?'

She shook her head. 'Never.'

The water fell and seethed in the pool. A sickle moon of brilliant clarity was rising in the north, its light silvering the pines beneath them. Campion was looking at the stars, tracing the sword of Orion's belt. 'I think you told me a lie once.'

'I did?'

She looked at him. 'So I'll ask you again.' She could feel the heavy, golden seals of Lazen trembling against her skin. She paused, because she knew she was going into a place of dreadful mystery. 'What happens at the end of your story? When man finds his creature?'

'The last creature that God made?' His voice was as soft as the small wind in the pines, as soft as the air on an owl's wing.

'Yes.' She was remembering him standing on the steps of Lazen's small temple. 'You said you didn't know the end.'

He smiled. He was staring into the great empty night above Auxigny. 'She will be fairer than the dawn, and in her eyes, stars. At her feet grow lilies, and in her hands, love.' He stopped, and though it was not a cold night, it seemed to Campion that her skin crawled with chilliness. He looked at her. 'We make our own endings, my Lady.'

She shook her head. 'You know better, don't you?'

'I do?'

'Because there isn't an ending, is there?' She was staring at him with a frown. 'The hunt is everything, isn't it? There's no joy in an ending. Do you find your creature, discard it, and hunt another? Is that the story's ending, Mr Skavadale? That there is no ending, just another hunt, another chase?'

He shook his head. 'No.'

'You enjoy this, don't you? You're a clever man among clever men and you're playing a game. Lucifer hunts Paunceley and Paunceley hunts Lucifer, and if either did not exist then they would find another enemy. And Toby!' She looked down into the dark valley. 'He likes the hunt, doesn't he? Do you all hope that it will never end?'

'You need not have come,' he said simply.

'I know.' She would not look at him.

'And you need not go to Auxigny tomorrow.'

'I know that.'

She had been used by these men and brought down paths reeking of blood, and she had come willingly because, when she had first seen this man, she had thought him more splendid than any man she had ever seen. She understood, well enough, that Lucifer's death was desirable, that the Fallen Angels should be broken, but she understood, too, that her part in their downfall was foolish. She had come, like a besotted child, come for the moment itself, and suddenly the years beyond this moment seemed dark as night.

She had wanted love, but now she was scared of it, as if the glory of the moment might fade and she saw what Uncle Achilles had tried to tell her, that love's instant could be as bright and brief as the fall of a shooting star. She was frightened.

The Gypsy stood. She heard him walk to the fire, heard him add wood to the blaze, then heard his steps as he came and crouched behind her. She could smell the good smell of horses and tobacco on him. His voice, as it had been at the temple, was like the darkness itself, soft and beguiling, gentle in her hearing. 'So ever since the world began, my Lady, the Rom have hunted for the creature that is fairer than the dawn. We have ridden the mountains, we have crossed the dead lands, and always we have been hated and scorned because men fear us. We have been cold, we have been hungry, we have seen our children die, and we have listened to men ask us why we do not build houses and grow crops to be like them.' He paused. Her hand was pressed to the golden seals at her breasts.

His voice was gentle. 'The story does end, my Lady.'

'How?'

'The Gypsy finds the creature, and he knows she cannot be beaten or whipped or broken, so he gives her the one thing that he wants from her. He gives her love.'

She thought that the beating of her heart would fill the whole chasm of the dark and come echoing back from the high rocks until the whole night was filled with her trembling. 'You know what love is?'

'Love is wanting for the other person what they want for themselves, ft is never seeking to change them, ft is seeing them in the morning and in the evening and being glad that they live.' And as he spoke he reached forward and stroked her hair, as gently as the touch of silk, stroking the shape of her head to the skin of her neck. 'And you will forgive me, my Lady.'

Forgive you?' She did not move from his touch.

'When I say that I love you.' He leaned forward and kissed her neck and still she did not move. 'And forgive me when I say that I wanted you to come here, and that I have not used you, but that I have wanted you, and for that temerity, I am sorry.'

He leaned away from her, and her neck was cold where his warm touch had been.

There was silence between them. The moon was as bright and sharp as metal, its light cold and silver.

His voice was still soft. 'And you must know that no harm will come to you. You only risk love.'

She stared into the night. 'Tell me how the story ends.'

She thought he would never reply. The moment seemed to stretch, and the sound of the water was like a torment to her and she felt her heart throbbing the gold against her skin and she knew that she trembled, and when he did speak she almost jumped because his voice was so near. 'I want to be with you always, my Lady, to be astonished.'

She was shivering. 'Astonished?'

'At God's last creature.'

His hands touched her shoulders and, obedient to their pressure, she turned. The moon touched her blue eyes silver, shadowing the places beneath her cheekbones and mouth. Very slowly he leaned forward. He kissed her. His lips brushed her cheek and his hands held her shoulders and he whispered softly in her ear. 'And I would marry you.'

She held him, her arms about his body, and she pushed her head against the leather of his coat. 'I thought when I first saw you that you didn't notice me.'

She sensed that he smiled. 'I thought you would never notice me, my Lady.'

'I used to look for you in the Castle. I'd go to the stables just to see you.'

'I used to hope that you'd come.' He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her eyes, and she kissed him back and still she trembled. She had her eyes closed, not daring to look at his face. When he kissed her she shuddered. She moved her cheek against his cheek as if she could melt into him, as if she could hide in him.

He drew his face from hers and raised his hands to her hair. He pulled the combs and pins loose, releasing the pale gold to flood onto her shoulders. He gently stroked her hair. 'Why did you come, my Lady?'

She thought he was more beautiful than any creature she had ever seen. 'I wanted to know how your story ended.'

He gave her a quick smile. 'The ending is what you make it.'

'I know.'

His hands were suddenly still on her hair. 'So what is your ending, my Lady?'

She saw the worry in his eyes, the flicker of fear, and she understood that he had risked foolishness in asking her, that his confidence was a mask, and his gentleness a sign of what was masked, and she wanted to hug him because of it. Instead she touched his face, his thin, savage, hawk's face. 'I will marry you.'

He smiled a smile of such happiness and such relief that she wanted to laugh. His eyes were searching her face as though he would draw into his memory a picture of this moment that would last forever and he shook his head in wonderment, took her shoulders in his arms, and held her as if he would never let go of her, never again spend a moment without her.

She wanted to say something, she wanted to laugh with happiness, but there was nothing to say, not even when he leaned away from her, took her hand, and drew her to her feet. He smiled, he stepped towards the fire, and she went with him onto the grass. His dark, splendid face was lit by the flames. 'I love you.'

She looked at him, knowing the bravery it must take for a gypsy to ask a Lady to marry him. She knew what he asked now. 'I know.' She could hardly speak.

He let go of her hand and, without letting his eyes move from her eyes, he put his fingers to the laces at her throat.

The fear, delicious and tremulous, beat like wings at her. She stared into his oddly light eyes. He watched her, and because she made no move, he pulled the laces free, put his hands on the collar and pushed the coat from her shoulders.

The coat fell.

She swallowed. Her heart was beating like a young colt's when it fought against the bridle. Still she stared at him, and he leaned forward and she shut her eyes and his mouth was warm on her mouth and his tongue flickered on her eyelids and his lips brushed her cheeks and she pressed her face into his face as his hands, strong and firm, stroked her from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. She shivered, and she felt the small juddering as his fingers pulled at the knot of her skirts.

He took his face from hers. She kept her eyes shut. She felt the strings at her waist come loose and she held the skirts with her fingers. Her heart was pounding the seals at her breast.

His fingers touched her face. 'You have only to say no.'

She could hardly make her voice sound. 'Tell me you love me.'

'I know no better way, my love.'

She felt his breath on her face, then his lips touched hers, warm and hard, and she kissed him back, her eyes closed, and his hands were at her throat, his strong, quick hands, and the night air was cool on her skin as he undid the buttons one by one.

She could not have believed, not in all her waking dreams, that she could feel such fear and such delight and such apprehension and she hid her face on his face, fearing so much, fearing that he would despise her, that he would laugh at her, and then his strong hands were at her shoulders, his palms warm on her bare shoulders as he pushed the blouse back.