Labyrinth Gate (24 page)

As reply, he laughed, gathering her closer to his embrace and letting one hand go free to unbraid her hair until she could shake it loose to tumble down around her shoulders.

“Sanjay,” she said in a low voice, “we’re almost out of—” Giggled when he whispered in her ear. “If we do this many more times, we’re going to start running the risk of starting a family, and I’m not sure—”

He prevented her from continuing with a long, extensive kiss. “Considering the alternative, it’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he murmured.

“Easy for you to say.”

He began with great concentration and precise thoroughness to undo the row of tiny buttons that ran down the back of her gown.

“How long until dinner?” she asked.

He pulled back from her, smiling, his eyes lit by equal parts of mischief, desire, and need. His hands cupped her face, and he brushed his lips against hers. “We can be late.”

“Y
OU’RE LATE,” SAID KATE
as Chryse, her hair braided neatly and coiled like a spiral at the back of her head, pulled out a chair and sat down beside the older woman. “And somehow, given the look on
his
face—” a glance here towards Sanjay, who sat across the table from them, next to Charity “—I don’t imagine it was Maretha’s catalog that kept you.” She grinned.

Chryse could not help but grin back as she accepted a plate of chicken and vegetables from one of the cook’s helpers. “I see Mistress Cook has outdone herself today.”

“Yes. We almost had a riot when Mog and Pin discovered that their favorite hen—filthy creatures, if you ask me—was one of the chosen sacrifices for dinner.”

“How was it averted?”

“Julian.” Kate chuckled. “He threatened to stop tying Mog’s cravats every morning.” She cast a glance towards the head of the table, where the earl sat attending to his meal in disapproving silence while the professor, at his right, outlined in great detail the work accomplished on the Evening Palace. “By the way, you’ve thrown off the seating arrangements this evening. A mortal sin.”

Chryse leaned closer to Kate. “Is it true there’s to be a bonfire tonight as part of the celebration of midsummer eve, and that they’re burning an effigy of His Blackness on it?”

Kate took a bite of food to smother her chuckle and succeeded only in choking. She quickly took a deep gulp of wine, but Julian, ever alert, caught her eye from his place at the earl’s left and managed to convey with the merest lift of an eyebrow his disdain at their levity. He spoiled the effect immediately by allowing his lips to quirk upwards as he turned his gaze in response to a quiet comment from the earl.

“A bonfire is quite right,” said Kate, recovering. “I believe the men are out right now, building it up. The locals made the effigy. Evidently it’s a northern tradition.”

“Pierced by an arrow,” said Maretha suddenly from her seat at Chryse’s right. “Although I never have understood where that fits in. And clothed in the skin of a deer—the effigy, that is. The locals quite insisted on it, though some of the Heffielders complained to Mr. Southern, saying that it was godless superstition and quite unchurchlike.”

“And what did Mr. Southern do to quell
this
latest revolt?” asked Chryse.

Now Kate chuckled openly. “He’s leading a prayer service.” She paused, listening. “There, I thought so. When the wind drops you can hear them singing.”

It was one of those moments when all conversation, bidden by some imperceptible command, lulls to silence. The four lanterns hung from the tent crossbeam cast a subdued glow on the eight figures seated at table, shading into gray on the three cook’s helpers who waited expectantly at the corners of the tent for their services to be called for. In the fourth corner, a smaller table sat with a single lantern placed in its center; over the earl’s protests, Maretha had installed Lucias and the two children here, and now even Mog had, by some unknown prompting, fallen silent.

The voices, mostly deep with a scattering of high harmony, seemed more a trick of the breeze than a human gathering, heard through the fluttering canvas from such a distance. ‘Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; Her Son they may kill, Her truth abideth still—’

“Which leads me to believe,” Professor Farr continued, drowning out the hymn, “that the writing at the evening palace contains a detailed description of the ritual procession and sacrifice—”

“An’ then,” piped up Mog from the other direction, “I saw another one, truly I did. Only he were no bigger’n you, Luke, peering at me from t’other side of the water. With a halo just like the Baby Jesse. Well, I think it were a halo.”

“Hell to pay now,” murmured Kate.

Maretha turned in her chair to regard the small table with a quelling eye. “Master Mog.” Her voice was stern. Mog’s gaze shot to her, his eyes widening as he realized that he had been caught out. “Haven’t I told you
not
to wander too far north, and
certainly
not as far as the river?”

Mog was silent. Pin and Lucias stared at their plates with an intensity the food did not merit.

“Lord Vole, I beg of you to take our young Master Mog firmly under your wing, since he appears to admire you so.”

Julian started, surprised more by Maretha’s addressing him from down the length of the table than by the request, but he swiftly inclined his head in a gracious assent. “I am sure,” he said smoothly, “that Master Mog and Mistress Pin would be well served if they learned a bit about surveying techniques.”

“’Cor.” Mog regained his spirits quickly once he had seen that no physical punishment was to ensue. “Just like a real foreman.”

“Indeed,” said Julian so repressively that Kate and Chryse both smiled.

“Rankles, don’t it,” said Kate to Chryse, but loud enough that Julian could overhear her, “being compared to a commoner.”

“But it also,” continued Julian, his gaze fixed on the far table, “means that you will have to attend to your morning lessons with Miss Farr, and show me daily progress in your letters.”

“Aw.” Mog’s glance towards Charity, who had flushed slightly, taking this comment by Lord Vole as some sort of encomium, revealed clearly that not only did he consider her of little account, but that this opinion had worked to prevent his progress at these very lessons. “Why can’t—” He stopped, wincing. “Ow, Pin. Why’d you kick me?”

Her hissed whisper, meant to be hushed, reached at least as far as Chryse’s ears. “Be polite, you knobhead. Ain’t her fault she’s dull, an’ allays sending us off so she can—Lady knows—anyways, she’s nice ’bout it.
An’
she’s pretty. Could be worse. We could have
him.”
By the emphasis, it was clear
him
referred to the earl. “Count yer blessings, ’stead o’ complaining.” Spoken with all the sagacity of an ancient.

Chryse, Kate, and Maretha met each other’s eyes and burst out laughing. Sanjay, who up to this point had been entirely silent, eating his supper with a smug air of satisfaction, hurriedly engaged Charity in a nonsensical conversation about the supplies brought up from the nearest village two days ago, together with several goats and another crate full of chickens. The professor continued to talk, oblivious to all else. Julian considered Pin and Mog thoughtfully. And the earl, raising his glass, sipped at his wine while his black eyes surveyed, one by one, the assembled company, pausing for the longest time on Lucias and, of course, his wife.

By the time they finished their supper, the prayer service had evidently finished as well, because as Sanjay, Chryse, Kate, and Julian strolled out into the warm evening breeze, there was no sound of singing to accompany them as they walked slowly over to the laborer’s camp, where the bonfire had been built.

“One forgets how long it stays light this far north,” said Chryse. “It must be going on ten and I can still see.”

“It turns back from here.” Sanjay took her arm as they made their way along a path only in the past weeks beaten down through the grass that covered the ruins. He laughed abruptly. “The year is like that. It just came to me.”

“Like what?” asked Kate.

“Like a spiral, turning in, and then turning out again. Strange how something so obvious comes as a great revelation.”

“Truth always comes as a great revelation,” said Julian. “But it only arrives if you are ready to receive it.”

“You’re philosophizing again, Julian,” said Kate. “I’m not sure I trust you in this mood.”

“Again?”

“Yes. It’s becoming a habit with you these days.”

“Lady help me,” he said with feeling. “I sincerely hope that I am not becoming a bore.”

Kate merely laughed.

“Well,
I
didn’t think of it,” said Chryse. “Spirals and the year, that is, or you becoming a bore.”

Sanjay grinned. “Maybe you thought of it first, my love, and I just chanced to be the first to say it out loud.”

Before me? Not likely.”

Behind, they heard Charity’s high voice as she chattered to her cousin about some aspect of housekeeping brought to crisis by the exigencies of the polite life lived in the confines of a wilderness camp.

Out of the half-light several figures appeared. They halted, and Thomas Southern materialized from amongst them and came forward. “My lord,” he said, a little curt, acknowledging Julian, and greeted the other three in turn. “Where is—” Maretha and Charity and Professor Farr caught up to the others, Lucias and the two children tagging along at their heels. “Your ladyship.” Southern inclined his head to Maretha, including the professor and Charity in the gesture as well. “The workers have asked that you light the bonfire.”

“Why, thank you, Thomas,” said Maretha, trying to hide what she considered to be an irrational surge of pleasure at this tribute. Seeing his face, she smiled. “You look as though you don’t approve.”

The tautness of his expression softened abruptly. “Of the honor they mean to give you I approve most heartily, my lady. It is the heathenish practice itself I cannot, as a good churchman, condone.”

“I think it all rather exciting,” said Charity, a little wild, and with a hint of challenge.

“Ladies are, of course, allowed their diversions, Miss Farr.” His voice was level, with only a brief glance at her. “I would not presume to forbid them.”

“How very sober of our Mr. Southern,” said Kate in an undertone. “He reminds me of that horrible vicar who used to prose on so when we were children. Do you remember, Julian?”

“Judge not, lest ye et cetera,” replied Julian. “Quite put one off religion, not that we Haldanes have had any bent in that direction in any case. Rakes, heretics, and black mages, every one.”

“Black mages! Julian, this is a tale I’ve never heard.”

“And High Summer’s Eve is scarcely the time to tell it, Kate,” he answered, reprovingly. “It was the second cousin of the fourteenth of our line, back in King Henry’s time.”

“How far back does your family go, Lord Vole?” asked Charity, coming up alongside the others. Maretha had gone ahead with her father, together with Southern and his companions.

Julian raised one eyebrow in that quelling way he had perfected. “Why, to the Conqueror, of course.”

Kate laughed. “A bit more hauteur, Julian. It lacks that edge of scornful arrogance.”

“Does it? But then, I should hate to usurp the earl’s place.”

“I hadn’t realized, your lordship,” continued Charity in a louder voice, “that your lineage was so very—” She paused, glancing at the group in front.

“So very long-winded?” finished Julian, amused by her obvious efforts at flirtation. “I fear it is, Miss Farr. Distinctly tedious.”

“Oh, I am sure it is not—”

Kate fell back, letting Chryse and Sanjay lag with her. “I feel no need to subject myself to this,” she said.

They trailed along at a leisurely pace, arriving at the edge of the worker’s campsite in time to see the assemblage gather. The last sticks were placed with careful precision around the edge of the stack, and the effigy itself brought forward. It proved to be a large burlap sack stuffed with old rags, with a smaller sack tied on above to symbolize a head, and it was, indeed, pierced by an arrow through the chest and wrapped in a rather tatty-looking deerhide. A worker climbed laboriously to the top of the stack and set the effigy up against a pole set there for that purpose.

When he had climbed down and gotten clear, Maretha threw the first torch. The fires licked this way and that along the stack, finding a path up the line of the driest tinder. Soon the bonfire blazed merrily, roaring and sparking, the deerskin effigy lost in smoke at the height. The gathered workers applauded, as if Maretha herself was responsible for the cheerful flame.

Suddenly, as if the effigy had come to abrupt, terrified life, a long, drawn-out scream cut through the night. In the hush that followed, every person there seemed paralyzed by surprise or fear.

A chittering like the migration of hundreds of small beasts broke the hush, starting far away, swelling until it seemed to surround the camp, and fading as it passed beyond. The alien nature of its very sound, touched by unspeakable magics, set into relief the stark humanity of that first scream.

Chryse found that she was gripping Sanjay’s hand so tightly that her fingers ached when he shook free of her and strode forward into the close glare of the bonfire.

“Mr. Southern!” he called. That man, followed closely by Maretha, hurried up to him. “I suggest we make a quick accounting of who is missing.”

“The earl,” said Maretha instantly, but Thomas Southern was already calling out to his two group foremen to have all the laborers assemble in neat rows.

“The children.” Chryse came forward, too, but behind her Kate answered, “I’ve got them,” and Chryse turned to see Mog and Pin huddled against her legs.

“What’s that?” cried Charity, starting violently and grasping Julian’s arm.

“What? What?” asked Professor Farr, standing next to his niece with a look of befuddlement on his face.

The sound rose high on the breeze—the rush of water that one hears in the distance as one nears a stream, but accelerated, until the stream indeed seemed to be coming to them, nearing, like a wave, or a river diverted from its course. It rushed, growing in intensity, and with a roar poured over them. Some cowered, some clung to their neighbors, but all, regardless of fear or determination, hunched down, bracing for the onslaught.