Gossamyr (15 page)

"A suitable disguise?" she wondered innocently, while
keeping a keen eye to the confused intruder.

He stretched his gaze up and down the costume. Her heavy plaits
were concealed, as were her legs, arms and any hint of feminine
shape. Seeing his dismay, she lifted the hem of her gown to reveal
beneath the leather-bound braies of such strange color.

Ulrich smiled. "My lady, you commit most delicious
blasphemy."

"Who be you?" The man actually growled at her!

"Who be you?" she countered in equal gruffness.

"H-he thinks I resemble a man who tricked a bushel of eggs
from his lady wife," Ulrich offered, a wince multiplying to a
nervous blink.

"You are the one," the brute spat. A meaty fist gripped
Ulrich's shirt and lifted him to tiptoes.

"I have not been to Juvisy before this day."

"Two days hence! I would not forget your ugly face."

Gossamyr smirked. The smelly man lied. While she knew little of
Ulrich, the man was no thief.

A swing of her staff whacked the tormentor on the back of the
neck. He went down smoothly and without a sound. The iron club
settled in a plume of dust at their feet. She offered a smile to the
gaping soul shepherd.

"You will stop that!" Ulrich hissed.

"Why? You were in danger. That weapon must weigh two stone."

"Da-danger? Only from the return swing of your staff!"
He stepped over the fallen man and tugged her past the dribbling
fountain. "You should not have done such. A woman has her
place."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Women, they are—" Gossamyr caught herself
against his chest, and he shoved her off "—well, they are
to keep
behind
their males. They rely on their men to protect
them."

"Really?"

"Indeed! They cook and keep the home and tend the children.
They do not humiliate their partners by beating on the evil
ironsmith."

"I see."

"Do you?"

She shrugged. "Not particularly."

"Obvious."

"Methinks such subservience sounds perfectly silly. In Faery
all are equal. Women fight alongside men. Male fée tend their
children and play with them as much as their mates. And since when
did we become partners?"

"We are partners of the road." Ulrich slung his
saddlebag over his shoulder and wandered to the shade beneath a
massive oak stretching its gnarled limbs across the market square.
The flickering white hide of the goat, tucked amongst a holly bush,
revealed its hiding spot.

Gossamyr punctuated her frustration with a stab of her staff to
ground. "I thought you were in a hurry?"

"Why think you so?"

"Be there not a damsel in need of rescue?"

"Sure,"he said with a dismissive gesture. "But I
also said time was no concern."

"Why not? Does your damsel sit in a high tower at her
tapestry gathering wrinkles in your absence?"

"She is dead."

"Dead?"

Ulrich turned his shoulder to her.

"Oh, no." She rushed him and gave a shove to make him
face her. "This is not some sort of evil psychopompery?"

Beringed fingers twisted before his face. "I don't believe
there is such a word as psychopompery."

"Blight! It is what you are, isn't it, soul shepherd? What do
you intend to do with this dead woman?"

"I plan to bring her back to life. Unhand me. Your closeness
is naught seemly. Keep back. Do you know you've a problem with
standing too close?"

Gossamyr swayed back at that remark. "What do you mean?"
She wrinkled her nose and looked him up and down. Too close? How to
have a conversation without the reassurance of a noncombative scent?

"Yes." He pressed two fingers to her shoulder and made
show of carefully taking a step to measure distance between them.
"See here. About an armshot. That is the proper distance."

"For conversing? Do you mean to tell me there are rules
regarding—"

"Merely propriety, my lady. It is gauche to stand so close to
another. Unless you've a desire for more intimate converse?"

"Intimate? Like—"

"Yes. Like."

She looked about. Across the way a man conversed with one of the
washing women, the brown-eyed child yet clinging to her skirts.
Indeed, a goodly distance, an arm's length, separated them. Not close
enough to scent one another, as was custom in Faery.

"Why did you not say something to me earlier?"

"I did. But you are not adept at taking orders."

"Orders, no. But helpful suggestions, of course. So I must
stand back?"

"Unless you wish us a greater intimacy."

Gossamyr took another step back. "Certainly not."
Intimacy bruised one's heart.

"You've only half the costume," he remarked. "You
do realize that is not a proper gown?"

"Oh? But it covers. A bit large, I tightened the seams at the
shoulders here." She gave a tug to the sewn ties that circled
the sleeve and connected it to the body of the gown. "There was
a thick black robe, but 'twas cumbersome. This headpiece will conceal
my hair and neck until the glimmer subsides. I found all this in the
chest of that coach."

"You
stole
holy garments?" Ulrich crossed
himself.

"I left coin. They are holy?"

"You have stolen a nun's headpiece, fair lady, and likely her
undergarments. And the rosary!" Yet Ulrich's smile only grew as
he entreated the heavens. "Blessed Mother, forgive this woman
her sin."

"And who be you to invoke the holy?"

"I appreciate the finer points of the Catholic church. Trust
me, there is but the one God. And be you layman, mage or faery, we
all came from the same place. Well, mayhap."

"I have no wings," she insisted. "You'll gain no
remuneration by displaying me in a market square."

"Think you must be a spectacle to bring me profit?"

"What do you mean by that?"

But the market square suddenly filled with a gush of life. One man
spewed out from the tavern doors across the way to stumble forward
and land the ground in a cloud of choking dust. Gossamyr's sneeze
went unnoticed as a roar of men followed, cursing and shouting and
kicking at the fallen man.

Shouts of plague and a bloody sickness carried over to Gossamyr.
Stifling another sneeze, she nudged Ulrich with an elbow to clear her
view. "What is about?"

Head bobbing to and fro, Ulrich discerned the melee. "Best to
avoid confrontation," he cautioned. "We've our passage to
Paris to concern— Oh! There she goes again, folks. Headfirst
into trouble. Staff in hand and rosary beads swinging. What a
perfectly delightful young thing. If I were not a married man—
Hades, I'm not, am I? Or am I? Definitely
not
the same."

Unfazed with Ulrich's attempts at steering her from danger,
Gossamyr pushed through the throng. Dodging deftly to avoid a boot to
her bare toes, she slid toward the center of the ring of mortals. The
man on the ground crooked his arms over his head to fend off blows,
but in the moment he looked up—perhaps to sight an escape—his
eyes met Gossamyr's.

She shoved aside a peasant stinking of dung. "Stand off!"
she shouted. Roughly jostled, she made way to the man lying on the
ground.

Mayhap it was because of her forceful shout, but more likely
because the shout had come out in a female voice, that all the men
ceased their violent antics and stepped back.

Women rely on men to protect them.

No time. And no desire. There were no protective fée lords
to question her actions this day. Besides, this was the first clue to
the Red Lady she had seen.

Gossamyr swept her eyes over the open cuts on the man's arms. From
the kicks, no doubt, for the short, but deep lacerations looked to be
self-defense wounds. He had vomited into the dirt from the torture.
Slapping a palm to his forehead, she twisted his head to look into
his manic eyes. Red with blood. But surrounding his eyes, where the
dirt and dust and the browning from the sun had not touched, she
noticed something even more remarkable.

Faery dust. Minute, likely unnoticeable to the untrained eye. A
scan of his exposed flesh did not sight a blazon.

"What be this?"one of the attackers said, gasping from
exertion. "Sister, there is nothing you can do for this man."

Sister? Ah, the wimple.

"Put him from his misery!"

"He is touched with the plague."

"'Tis the falling sickness!"

"He contaminates our village. Ride him out!"

The crowd held no mercy for this poor one. Gossamyr needed to get
him from them if she might gain opportunity to question him.

She bent to study the victim's eyes. "fée?" she
murmured so only he could hear. "Glamoursiege?"

"Wi-Wisogoth."

One of the oldest and most revered Faery tribes. If he yet wore
the blazon it painted across his back.

The fée sobbed and grasped at Gossamyr's arms, pleading for
mercy. "I am but a victim," he murmured. "I do not
want to die."

"Unclean!" shouted out from the crowd. "Plague!"

"This be not the plague," Gossamyr shouted, hoping to
divert the madness that ebbed about the circle. She could hold her
own against a Faery evil but this crowd of mortals honed an edge of
uncertainty to her confidence.

The redness in the fallen fée's eyes formed a sheen of
viscous blood. Gossamyr studied the flesh on his face. It was red,
most likely from struggle—but no, the very pores were bright
little pinholes of blood. Or was it blood? The fée bled ichor.

"Whence have you been?" she asked.

"I've come...from Paris." A thick glob of crimson
gurgled up over his lips.

The surrounding men stepped back, cursing and crossing themselves.
Whispers to—what Gossamyr guessed—various saints rapidly
volleyed over and above her head.

"What is it, Sister?" Ulrich called.

"Grant me a moment."

"That's right," Ulrich addressed the crowd. "Step
away. Allow the sister of the cloth to examine the victim. No trouble
here. Be on to your private matters."

Gossamyr avoided touching the red substance, for there was no way
to determine its virulence. "Paris? You are Disenchanted?"

"Yes," rasped out in a sputter.

"Winged?" He wore a cape. If the villagers saw—

"No longer."

Bone, she thought. But the absence of wings would only keep back
suspicion of Faery. How to convince the angry mob to allow her to
bring him away with her? Surely, if they suspected he was contagious
they would escort her and him from the village.

Keeping a close huddle over the fallen fée, Gossamyr used
her body as a shield.

"Did you meet any women? Touch them?"

"So many... Gorgeous and giggling and— There was one,"
the man gurgled. "Pretty. Pale and... wearing plush as white as
snow. Her hair...like rubies... So curious the marking on the side of
her face."

"What did she do to you?"

"She—" a macabre grin carved itself in the flesh
on the man's face, and then his eyes flickered shut"—kissed
me. Her kiss, it was marvelous. Like Faery. Her breath...drenched
with...home."

Crimson gushed from the man's eyes.

"What be this substance? It cannot be blood."

"The red," he said on a sigh.

His face, lush with the bloodlike tears, reminded Gossamyr of her
three-day crying jag that had changed her life, so subtly, and yet,
for ever after. Tears salted with loss. Mortal tears were valuable to
the fée—much sought after and traded for incredible
sums.

Shinn had instructed Mince to clean away Gossamyr's tears—not
mortal complete—following her fall to misery. What the
nursemaid had done with them, Gossamyr had never questioned.

The man's head fell limp in Gossamyr's palm. Dead. From a kiss.

Gently, she set his head upon the ground and, using her staff,
stood and made eye contact with the circle of morose watchers. 'Twas
a remarkable moment to stare down so many mortals, and yet such
fascination quickly grew bleak.

"'Tis the plague!" rose up from the crowd. "Do you
see the blood?"

"Silence!" Gossamyr's shout eddied a nervous stillness
to the marketplace. "It is not the plague. Nor is it—"
No explanation for the red. "It is merely..."

How to explain without causing greater panic? And without
revealing herself?

Threading her fingers through the beads hanging about her neck,
Gossamyr pondered her dilemma. The sea of frightened faces circled
her, seeming to move like a wave soon to crash upon the rocks. Aware
they thought her a woman of their mortal religious ranks, she perused
her options. How soon before the revenant parted from the body? The
one death she had witnessed years ago had taken little time. Shinn
had explained length of dying was unique to the individual fée.
If only there were a way to stop the essence from leaving the body...
or mayhap, guiding it to safety?

Gossamyr glanced to Ulrich. Could the soul shepherd help?

"Sister, help us!"

Studying the rosebud beads soaked in lampblack coiled about her
finger, Gossamyr struck on an idea. Might she use their faith? A
faith she knew naught. But all religions revolved around worship of a
greater good, of a divine being, yes? The wooden cross dangling at
the end of her necklace sat in her palm. A symbol they revered.

"This man...suffers a rare sickness,"she said. Grasping
the cross and holding it forth, she made show to wave it over the
fallen fée. "There is no risk to others who might touch
him."

"Be you a surgeon, Sister?"

"No, but I have seen this before. He must...be
buried...beneath the... shadow of a cross." She caught Ulrich 's
disapproving grimace. "Yes. Er, before vespers."

"Why, Sister?"

The only reason she could summon on such short notice; that was
why.

Twinclian
occurred only with the untouched essence—a
sacred extension of the body. The fée were averse to mortal
consecration, so an Enchanted fée would never rest. But such
might control this Disenchanted's
twinclian.
Might that keep
the revenant at bay? Give Ulrich opportunity to attempt his soul
shepherding?