Suzanne Robinson (6 page)

Wheedle hauled on the rope and backed into him. She whirled around, dropped the rope, and gawked at him. Behind Pen, Dibbler and Sniggs had been holding torches and urging the pig on with whispers of encouragement. They too subsided. Pen rammed her shoulder into the outraged pig’s bottom. Freed from the restraining rope, the sow squealed and twirled around in circles. Pen toppled to the side, knees high and skirts askew. The pig vanished through an open door.

“Saints, Wheedle, what—”

Pen stopped as he left the shadows and stepped into the torchlight. He glanced at her legs; she tugged her skirts down to cover them. Appalled and yet fascinated, he walked down to her with stately grace despite the foolishness of the circumstance. He offered his hand and frowned at her.

“Am I to believe, Mistress Fairfax, that you, a gentlewoman, have opened an inn for pigs?”

Pen scowled up at him, scrambled to her feet, and dusted her hands. Brushing wisps of hair from her face, she shrugged her shoulders.

“Marry, Tristan, I warrant it appears so. Bad Margery!” She dashed past him as the sow appeared in the doorway, pulled the door shut, and returned to him. She brushed straw and dust from her cloak. “In truth, my lord, I’ve abducted her.”

Pen surveyed her retainers with approval, as though she took great pride in their accomplishment.

He rubbed his temples, for his head had begun to ache again. “You stole a pig? A pig?”

Her amusement disappeared, and she turned on him.

“Stole? What mean you? I don’t steal, sirrah. I have abducted Margery from my meanest enemy for good reasons.”

Tristan hardly heard her as he realized she had been wandering about the island at night, that she had an enemy from whom she could expect danger, and that she’d also risked the welfare of her servants.

“Jesu,” he said. “You’ve hazarded yourself and endangered these people as well? God’s breath, woman. You’re not fit to command a cattle pen, much less a castle.”

He heard her mutter something under her breath but couldn’t catch it, for she turned her back and dismissed her servants, who were listening in avid silence. When they were gone, she whirled around to confront him. Gone was the practical manner of an enterprising adventurer. Her golden eyes had taken on the glint of metal, and her breathing had gone shallow and quick. Tristan began to forget his disapproval of her as her fury provoked his senses. He was so distracted that he failed to attend to her words.

“And if you suppose that I’ll endure another of your chastisements before my servants, you’re deluded, sirrah. You’re an ungrateful, sirrah. And you think being a man gives you the privilege of judging me and requiring me to answer to you.” Pen looked him up and down as if he were a dog that had soiled a precious Turkey carpet. “I, sirrah, am not a thief.”

For a moment he could think of nothing to say. Blood rushed to his face. He was blushing! She’d made
him blush like a child. Thoroughly furious, he began to walk toward her, but she sidestepped to keep distance between them.

“Thievery, mistress. Taking something to which you have no right, something that isn’t yours.”

He took a quick step toward her, and she shuffled backward. She was facing him and feeling behind her with one hand. That hand met the empty space of the stairwell. He grinned as she glanced behind her. Both of them remembered her last experience with stairs.

“Don’t,” he said as he stalked to her, “call me sirrah.”

He reached for her with both arms. Too late he saw that she’d braced her hand against a wall. Her foot came up and jabbed him lightly in the chest. Air burst from his lungs. He grunted and stumbled back while she whisked around and vanished into the darkness of the winding stair. He straightened, rubbing his chest, and gazed after her half in puzzled irritation at her recklessness and half in admiration for the way she burst into sunlike radiance when aroused.

“God preserve me,” he said to himself as he remembered Mistress Fairfax’s passion. “I’ve been rescued from a sulfurous, roaring storm by a most savory and inflaming pig thief.”

On the other side of Penance Isle, the foxes, weasels, and hedgehogs of the fields and forests were just recovering from the spectacle of the abduction of the pig called Margery. Many of them still gazed in astonishment upon the stately courtyard house of Much Cutwell, for it was from the rear of this magnificent brick and stone abode that the parade of thieves had come, squabbling and bickering all the way.

Much Cutwell spread itself over four acres, had fifty-two staircases, three hundred sixty-five rooms, and no sow, of course. Within the house, Sir Ponder Cutwell, owner of this sprawling modern edifice, trailed through the gallery and down the main staircase, his sleeping cap askew, his spindly legs working hard beneath the expanse of his belly. His knee joints cracked as he moved, and with him floated the odor of the cloves he chewed to combat his foul breath. He was muttering to himself.

“My Margery, my Margery. Beshrew that girl. I’ll have her hanged for a thief, the hagborn piece.”

Trailing his yellow bedgown and robe across the floor, Ponder shuffled into a dining chamber like an animated custard. He started and stumbled into a chair upon perceiving that the chamber wasn’t empty. His guest sat with his legs propped on the dining table. Beside a candle sat a bottle of wine. Ponder glanced at muddy boots, clothing of black silk trimmed with gold, and a dark visage surrounded by ebony hair and eyes. Disheveled as he was, the guest managed to make Ponder look even older and more ungainly than he was while himself resembling a beautiful blue-black raven.

Ponder glanced at the sword at the young man’s side. His gaze slid away and landed on the wine bottle. He found a goblet and filled it. Draining it, he mumbled to himself.

“The devil take her, stealing my prize sow. I should have burned her out of that castle years ago when she spurned my offer of marriage. She spurned me, and after I took so much trouble in wooing her. Cost me, did that wooing. It isn’t right. Not right. The vile creature, depriving me of my land, my castle, mine. Old King Harry gave it me, he did. His son had no right to take it away. None.”

“Give o’er, Cutwell,” the young man said.

“Foul thievery, that’s what it was. I’ve tried salting her fields, poisoning wells, naught avails me.”

Ponder’s dark-haired guest sprang to his feet. The chair flew back and slammed against a sideboard as the young man roared at his host.

“Stop your tongue, lackwit! By the trinity, I’ll hear no more. Why didn’t you tell me the girl found a man washed up on the beach?”

“By my faith, what man?”

The guest planted his hands on the table, leaned toward Ponder, and stared like a snake gazing at a field mouse. “Before he sailed for France, my ship’s master told me that your steward mentioned a young castaway lodged at Highcliffe Castle. I don’t pay you to worship pigs, Cutwell. I thought this man drowned with the rest of those bastards in the storm, and now I find him lolling and taking his ease under my very nose.”

“Upon mine honor, I didn’t know.”

“That, my fat host, is the trouble.”

The guest released Ponder from the prison of his gaze and studied the candle flame. He cradled his goblet in both hands, revealing well-groomed, strong fingers capable of snapping Ponder’s neck. After a few minutes of silence broken only by Ponder’s agitated breathing, the guest spoke again.

“God has brought him near to me, and I will study to make of him an instrument, ere I take his life. For indeed, Mistress Fairfax’s guest must not leave Penance Isle alive.”

Muttering to herself, Pen preceded Nany Boggs up the stairs the morning after abducting Margery, set two pails down, and paused at a window slit to gaze across the castle walls to the sea beyond. Offshore she could see the fog bank that had crept in early that morning. She glared at the fog and muttered to herself again.

“Thievery, by the saints. And who made him God’s apprentice to sit in judgment?”

Behind her, Nany Boggs glared over a pile of clothing.

“No good will come of this, mark you.” Nany grunted as she joined Pen on the landing. “You should send him to Much Cutwell.”

“I’m no thief. What? Send him to Ponder Cutwell’s?” Pen wavered on the brink of temptation, then drew back. “Nay. Ponder wouldn’t shelter Christ himself without profit, and there’s no profit in Tristan. Mark you, he might hold him for ransom if he could discover who Tristan is.”

“So be it, but I like it not.” Nany snorted at the view through the arrow slit. “That be another sign. Whoever heard of fog in bright sunlight?”

“Tush, Nany. If I can endure, you can.” Pen picked up her pails and climbed to the next floor, where she
set them down again and turned to the nurse. “Give those to me and go away.”

Nany relinquished the clothing but remained at the door, arms folded over her bosom. Pen entered her chamber. Still muttering under her breath, she tiptoed past the curtained bed that contained Tristan. Placing the clothes on a chest, she crept to the bed and drew back the hangings to reveal a rumpled pile of covers surrounding a long body.

“Good. It would be a blessing if you slept for the next three weeks.”

She scowled at the tangle of soft locks just above the covers. In the torchlight last night they had gleamed like polished ebony. Saints, what was she thinking? The owner of those locks had accused her of dishonesty and carelessness with the lives of her folk. She, who had devoted herself to the welfare of Highcliffe, who scraped and saved and racked her wits for means to their survival.

She was trying to teach Ponder Cutwell a lesson so that he’d stop trying to force her off the island. Who was Tristan to pronounce her stratagem worthless and foolish? He knew nothing of how few were the choices of people like Twistle and Dibbler.

“Cursed interfering arrogance,” she hissed.

She yanked the hangings together. “Sir No-Name.”

Why had she been cursed with this disapproving invader? That storm, it had been some evil enchantment, a phantasm that brought him to Penance to wreak havoc with her peace. He was interfering with the life she’d worked so hard to build, a life far happier than the one she’d left.

Now she could hardly remember her old home in England. It had been too long since she’d left. Of course, her leaving had been a necessity. Too many
careless mistakes on her part had revealed her gift. Saints, but people caught the fever of the mad just because she’d been given a gift from God. They accused her of mischief and sorceries when all she did was know things. Even Mother and Father had been frightened. For no reason at all. Well, not no reason, for they would have suffered along with her if she’d been condemned for using sorcery.

Pen remembered her errand and set a pair of newly polished boots beside the bed. She loved Highcliffe and the wild beauty of Penance Isle. She even loved battling Ponder Cutwell. But she had to admit that, after five years, she’d grown lonely despite the company of her servants and the villagers who lived beyond the castle walls. There was no one to share the burdens of Highcliffe, no one with whom she could talk as a friend. Efforts to discuss the doings of court and country came to naught when the only candidates were the likes of Nany, Twistle, Dibbler.

Cousin Osbert, who had inherited her father’s title, wrote of the queen, her ministers, and Parliament to her. But neither Wheedle nor Turnip realized the dangers to England from the Catholic kings of France and Spain, nor the death threat that was Mary Queen of Scots. Pen sighed as she stared at the dark blue velvet bed hangings. Now she had some idea of how beleaguered Queen Elizabeth must feel.

If only Tristan had been an old man. She could have endured an old man. But she couldn’t spend more than a few minutes in his company without suffering both fear and some kind of titillating possession. Her gift hadn’t failed her in its warning. In the past it had saved her life, though she’d been forced to leave home as well.

In the end, she’d acquiesced to her exile when she
was fifteen, because of the young men—like Will. By then she’d realized how impossible it would be for her to bear the company of noblemen who strutted about with their pride hanging from their sleeves, their swords always ready for drawing. And these same strutting coxcombs, how quickly their swaggering turned to slinking when they found out about her. How could she respect a man who feared her?

But now she wished Tristan feared her. Pen picked up her skirts, and with a last glance at the bed left the chamber, still grumbling. She picked up her pails while Nany stood by in red-nosed disapproval. She handed one to her nurse.

“Come, Nany, time to feed Margery.”

Determined to lighten her spirits, Pen began to hum. On the floor above, she opened the door to the pig chamber. A mistake, for Margery was leaning against it, and the portal banged against her billowing flank.

“Reeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Margery’s tiny legs shuffled, and she rounded on Pen. “Uff-uff-uff, reeeeeeeee!”

“Hush, Margery.”

“Reeeeeeee.”

“There’s a nice piggy-wiggy. Look. Pen’s brought her some nice slops and mash.”

Pen stuck the pail under Margery’s nose, then emptied it into her trough. Nany did the same, but refused to remain to watch the enriching sight of the island’s largest pig partake of her feast. Pen spread hay from a basket left outside the room. She was standing in the doorway, admiring Margery’s enthusiasm for her food, when she heard someone speak.

“Upon mine honor, am I never to rest an entire night?”

Whirling around, Pen beheld her guest looming over her, a frown marring his face, his hair disheveled and
his clothing only partially fastened. She glanced at the edge of his unlaced shirt and saw black hair. Discomfort assaulted her, causing her foul mood to return. He yawned, and she marveled that he still managed to frown while doing it. Stuffing his shirt into his belt, he glared at Margery.

“I wasn’t dreaming. There is a pig below my chamber.”

“Aye, and a fine one,” Pen snapped as she closed the door. “But concern yourself not with Margery. I won’t keep her here long. Just until I find another place to hide her.”