Knights (25 page)

Gloriana scrambled over the shallow wall surrounding the graveyard and hurried to the place where Aurelia St. Gregory had been buried. The sentinel angels had fallen to dust long ago, but the crypt itself was there yet.

Standing very still, closing her eyes and holding her breath, Gloriana willed herself back to the century she knew, back to Dane.

Nothing happened. When she looked again, after an interval of very hard wishing, Kirkwood was standing before her, hands in the pockets of his trousers, head tipped to one side, expression sympathetic.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why did this happen?” “I don’t know,” Kirkwood replied gently.

Gloriana started resolutely toward the tower; it was that or dissolve into tears of defeat and sorrow. Once, while she and Dane were prisoners there, she had been flung from that world into this one, though the effect had lasted only a few moments. Perhaps she could find a passage into the past after all.

Kirkwood, to his credit, did not try to stop Gloriana, but simply followed her into the tower and up the
inner staircase. The place had changed greatly, of course, but she knew her way to the high chamber and climbed steadily toward it. All the while, she was going over the first transition in her mind.

There was a gate.

Gloriana had wandered through it as five-year-old Megan when summoned by the lady Elaina, who had soon brought her to Edwenna. But where, exactly, had this gate been? The memory stayed just out of reach, like a mischievous child playing a hiding game.

The upper room was lined with tapestries, none of which had existed in Gloriana’s time, and there were glass cases all around, filled with relics of Kenbrook Hall’s glorious past. Bits of tile from the Roman baths. A jade chess piece, once held in the warm curve of Dane’s fingers while he pondered his next move. A dagger with a jeweled hilt, originally a gift to Edward, to commemorate his knighthood.

Gloriana stood with her hands resting on the glass, her heart pounding, and said her husband’s name, once, softly, like a prayer.

Kirkwood put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Tell me what’s happening inside you, Gloriana,” he said.

She was trembling. How could she say what it felt like to see such things displayed as artifacts of another time in history? There were no words to explain.

“Please help me,” she said.

Kirkwood drew her into a brotherly embrace, and she clung to him and let her head rest against his shoulder.

“I shall try,” he promised, but he sounded uncertain, and little wonder. What Gloriana was asking might very well prove impossible, and they both knew it.

I
n his heart, Dane had known all along that he would not find Gloriana, but the knowledge did nothing to relieve him of the desperate need to search for her. When at last he fell into the bed in the tower room, half blind with fatigue and sorrow, he sought her still in the dark, misty twists and turns of his dreams.

She was elusive, his Gloriana, and yet somehow near enough that he could almost catch the special, spicy scent of her skin, almost hear her voice. He awakened when the first light of dawn touched his face, as weary as if he had never slept at all.

For a time, Dane sat on the edge of the marriage bed, staring at the table where Gloriana had been sitting on that curious occasion when she had vanished before his very eyes. He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair, baffled. He did not wonder, as other men might have done, if he’d been hallucinating on that occasion, or fallen victim to some clever artifice. During his career as a soldier, Dane had learned to trust his own senses and perceptions implicitly, and he did not doubt them now.

He stood and crossed the room to brush his fingertips
lightly over the back of the chair where Gloriana had sat to eat, to play chess, to work her special and singular magic. She’d gone back, he was certain, to that other world that had spawned her in the first place.

For a moment, Dane’s grief was so profound, so soul-shattering, that he could not even breathe. His vision blurred, and his throat closed as painfully as if a strangler’s fingers had shut tight around his windpipe.

A rap at the door startled him into a semblance of composure. The hinges creaked.

“Dane?” It was Gareth’s voice, gruff with worry and impatience, and he carried a lamp, for light spilled into the shadow-ridden chamber, creeping slowly across the floor. “Where is your wife? God’s blood, man, you would not believe the rumors—”

Dane turned slowly to face his brother, regarding him in silence. Here was a peril he had not considered in his anguish and confusion. Of course the handmaiden, Judith, would have given her account of Gloriana’s abrupt disappearance—it had happened among the gravestones of Kenbrook Hall, to make matters worse—to everyone who paused to listen. Any hint of sorcery was deadly among these people, who ascribed all out-of-the-ordinary events to the provenance of Satan.

“Damn you,” Gareth rasped, “will you speak?”

Dane sighed. “If you’ve heard that Gloriana vanished, I suppose it’s true.”

“You
suppose
it’s true?” Gareth echoed, rousing exasperation in Dane, where only misery had been before. “God’s breath, Kenbrook, human beings do not simply dissolve into the air!”

Dane found wine and, despite the early hour, poured himself a portion. Gareth, who would have to
serve himself if he wanted refreshment, must have risen before cock’s crow in order to reach Kenbrook Hall so quickly. Or, perhaps, he had not gone to bed in the first place.

“No,” Dane agreed, at his leisure, after a sip or two, which did nothing to brace him up. He set the goblet aside, with a murmur of disgust. “They do not. But Gloriana is no ordinary mortal.”

Gareth glanced nervously toward the great doors of the tower room, which stood slightly ajar. “What is she, then, if not a flesh and blood woman?” he asked, in a troubled whisper.

Dane might have laughed at his brother’s tragic expression had the situation not been so grave. “Gloriana
is
a woman, Gareth. You may rest assured of that.” He could not help lifting his gaze to the bed he had shared with his wife and recalling, with bittersweet longing, the brief, tempestuous pleasures they had known there. “She is no witch, no sorceress, no minion of the devil, if that’s what your precious vassals and peasants are saying.”

“They are simple people,” Gareth pointed out, sounding mildly defensive and still taking care to keep his voice low. “And what
should
they think, when one of their own is witness to something like that?”

“Gloriana is not evil,” Dane said. He paced as he spoke, because he was too restless to sit. “And I cannot explain what occurred, because I do not understand it myself. I will tell you—and may the Holy Virgin preserve you if I find you’ve uttered a word of this to another living soul—that I once saw Gloriana fade like so much smoke. It happened in this room where we now stand—she was here, and then, in the next instant, she was gone.” Dane paused to sigh again, tilting his head back to flex the aching muscles
in his neck, and when he met his brother’s gaze, he knew he was revealing a great deal. “The difference being, of course, that she reappeared almost immediately.”

Gareth at last succumbed and raised Dane’s discarded wine goblet to drain its contents in a single swallow. Then he went to the threshold, checked the passageway for eavesdroppers—a belated effort, it seemed to Dane—and closed the heavy doors. While he pondered his younger brother’s words, Gareth refilled the goblet from the ewer on a table at the edge of the room.

“Hearing such a tale from the others—well, one allows for the fancies of common folk. They have their legends and stories and the like. But to hear it from you, Kenbrook, is another matter entirely. I don’t believe you have, or have ever had, a whimsical bone in your body. God help me, if you swear you saw such a thing, I have no recourse but to believe you.”

Dane’s smile was humorless, his soul a hollow ache within him. “Thank you for your confidence—however reluctant you might have been to give it.”

Gareth acknowledged Dane’s remark with a lift of the appropriated goblet, a slighter motion than before. His brows were knit together in a deep frown as he pondered the matter at hand. “What in the name of all that’s holy are we to do about this?” he muttered. “Even if the poor lass manages to find her way back to us—and I pray she does—she’ll be in the worst sort of danger.”

Dane, who had slept in leggings and a shirt, took fresh clothing from a chest near the bed and began, without self-consciousness, to change. “Yes,” he allowed, “there will be those who want to see Gloriana burned for a witch.” A shudder moved through him
at the images that came to mind; he had seen a similar execution in Europe, and it had been hideous. He strapped on his sword belt and, once again, met Gareth’s eyes. “She will return—she must. And I will kill anyone who tries to lay a hand on her. You may tell Friar Cradoc I said so, and please urge him to pass that vow along to the sheep of his flock.”

Gareth flushed slightly. “Cradoc is a devout man and a wise one. He will not urge the body of Christ to violence. In fact, I think we should tell him the whole truth, insofar as we know it, and ask for his aid and counsel.”

Dane’s hand came to rest upon the hilt of his sword by reflex rather than will. “No one is to be told,” he said evenly. “
No one,
Gareth.”

“Impossible. We cannot manage this situation alone.” Gareth spoke earnestly, then paused to take a breath. He proceeded with caution, as though trying to soothe a snarling hound, lest it make a lunge for his throat. “Elaina must be consulted. She has an understanding of these matters. In any event, she’ll have heard the tale by now.”

Dane lowered his head and, with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, rubbed his eyes. “Have you forgotten that Elaina is counted mad?” he asked.

Gareth approached, laid a strong, swordsman’s hand on Dane’s shoulder. “She may be the sanest of us all,” he replied. “Come—let us ride to the abbey together, seeking the lady’s advice.”

“There is something else I must do first,” Dane answered. “I’ll meet you at the stables within the hour.”

His elder brother hesitated a moment, then nodded and, bearing his lamp, took his leave. Dane went to a small chest where Gloriana kept her fripperies and took out one of the narrow golden ribbons she sometimes
wove through her hair. After tying the strand around his left wrist and pulling the sleeve of his shirt down to cover it, he, too, left the tower chamber.

He made his way to the chapel. According to legend, the sanctuary was built on the sight of an altar where the ancients had worshipped their goddess. Now, of course, the place was a bastion of Christianity.

Dane, never particularly religious, hesitated on the threshold. There were no candles burning here, as at Hadleigh Castle, where Friar Cradoc was probably offering the mass. He moved by memory down the narrow aisle, passing between the cold stone benches.

At the front, he knelt, his head bowed, and silently prayed.

He did not petition heaven for Gloriana’s return, although he wanted that more than anything else. His prayer was a simple one: he begged that his wife be kept safe from all that might do her harm.

The weather was chilly and cold, and the now painfully familiar sight of Kenbrook Hall reduced to a single tower deepened Gloriana’s despair. After a short struggle with the door handle, she got out of Lyn’s car and moved slowly over the rough ground toward the ancient, tilting stones that marked the graves of Dane’s mother’s people.

Lyn stayed behind her, obviously trying not to intrude, yet ready to offer his help if she needed him. The borrowed clothes, jeans and a shirt, were soft and supple, allowing her to move easily. She wore an oversized jacket, one of Lyn’s, and shoes that were slightly too large for her feet.

Gloriana found the crypt where Aurelia St. Gregory lay and rested her forehead and both hands against
the cold marble, willing whatever force had taken her away to send her back.

Nothing happened, except that a chill crept into Gloriana’s bones, and Lyn finally came, took her arm, and led her silently back to the waiting car.

She wept and was grateful that Kirkwood did not speak, but simply drove.

He took her to an eating establishment, located roughly where the tavern of Hadleigh Village should have been. The rain was coming down harder than before, and smoke curled from the brick chimneys at either end of the structure, offering the heartening prospects of light and warmth.

Gloriana glanced at her rescuer, who remained in the driver’s seat, his hands resting on the wheel. With every passing day, the twentieth century seemed more familiar, more substantial, more
permanent
. Would she never find her way back home?

“I think something nice and hot to eat might be just the thing,” Lyn suggested gently. “Shall we go in?”

Gloriana glanced once more at the smoking chimneys and nodded. She had no appetite, but she was fairly sure she was breeding, and she knew she had to put aside her own feelings and tend to the needs of her unborn child. Dane’s child.

The inside of the tavern, which Lyn referred to as a pub, delivered on its promise to raise Gloriana’s spirits. There were fireplaces at either end of the long, wide room, with bright blazes kindled on their hearths, and the trestle tables, with their benches, were similar to those at Hadleigh Castle. The lanterns, suspended from the ceiling on long, rusted chains, though powered by that twentieth-century phenomenon electricity, were fashioned to resemble the old oil lamps Gloriana remembered so fondly.

She felt a bittersweet twinge, made up of both longing and relief, as she took in her surroundings. The pub was nearly empty, and a servingwoman in a scandalously short dress ushered them to a table next to one of the fireplaces.

Lyn ordered fish and something called chips for both of them, and the servant went away, humming cheerfully.

The food, when it arrived, was hot and fragrant. Gloriana recalled the potatoes as french fries, and said so.