Twilight Magic (30 page)
He handed the torch back to Emma. “Stay here while
I see where we are.”
The door groaned, but it opened, and Darian eased out. Freedom had never smelled so good. By the sliver of moon, he glanced around, again grateful for good fortune.
He went back into the tunnel, took back the torch, and doused it in the dirt. “It appears we are at the very south end of the palace grounds. The livery is to the left. What say, Perrin? Go for horses?”
“Lead on.”
Darian grabbed hold of Emma’s hand and swiftly led them the few steps to where they entered the stables. To his delight, his horse occupied one of the stalls, the saddle and his satchel resting nearby.
Hands on hips, Perrin glanced around. “The postern gate must be close.”
That made sense to Darian. He was almost ready to begin saddling up when the thought struck him that taking his horse might be a bad idea.
“Perrin, is your horse still in the stables at Westminster?”
“Should be. Why?”
“Emma and I can get to the other side of the Thames more secretly if we are not on horseback. You take mine, I will use yours, and we can trade when we next meet up.”
As they’d surmised, the postern gate wasn’t far from the stables, and the guard, sleeping beside it, was so easily tied up and gagged that Darian began to fidget over how easily they were making their escape. Still, not one to overly question good fortune when it came his way, he closed the postern gate behind them, hoping to never again cross paths with Bishop Henry.
With his satchel in one hand, his other arm draped over Emma’s shoulders, Darian watched Perrin ride west on his way to Wallingford.
“Will William accept Perrin back into the band?” Emma asked.
“I suspect he will, but that is between Perrin and William.”
She slipped an arm around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder, her weariness overcoming the strength she’d shown all day.
He gave her a squeeze. “Let us find a place to catch a few hours’ sleep. On the morn, I believe we shall forgo the bridge and find a ferry to take us across the river.”
“By morn, the bishop’s guards will know we have escaped and will be searching for us.”
“Then we will have a care not to let them find us.” He looked down into her worried eyes. “You did well, Emma. If not for your vision of the door, we would not have escaped so easily.”
The compliment earned him a sleepy smile. “Perhaps, but we are not out of danger yet.”
“Nay, but I vow, we will sleep in a bed in Rochester tomorrow night.”
And the night after that, they would be in Canterbury. Darian turned Emma toward the river to find a secluded spot along the bank, where they could wait for the dawn, determined not to think about what would happen in Canterbury.
True to his word, Darian found a lovely inn in Rochester, and Emma eyed the bed in the private room with both gratitude and trepidation.
Tonight might well be her last night with Darian, and she could barely look at him for fear of bursting into tears.
This morn, they’d caught a ferry easily enough and found Perrin’s horse right where it should be. The ride to Rochester hadn’t proven a strain, except for growing distance between them. They’d ridden for leagues pressed close together with barely a word spoken between them.
Darian was still very quiet as he lit the charcoal in the brazier, and Emma struggled to find something to say to lighten the mood. If this was her last night with Darian, she wanted to spend it in laughter and loving, not pondering what she’d done wrong.
“Perhaps we should spend an added night on our journey to Canterbury. You are becoming more proficient at choosing inns.”
With the brazier beginning to glow, he rose up slowly, a soft smile on his face. “Am I? Good, because I have been giving thought to... after. I am assuming you do not wish to stay in Canterbury. Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
The answer came out without thought, and Emma realized why. ’Twas truly her only safe haven, a place of comfort if not serenity. Among people who loved her. And if the king wished her to reside somewhere else, then he could damn well take time from the war to deal with her.
And joy of joys, she couldn’t possibly travel all that way on her own. She needed an escort, and just as she’d reasoned at Hadone that ’twas sensible to enlist Darian’s aid in getting to Bledloe Abbey, so did that reasoning seem sensible now.
“Would you be willing to take me to Camelen?” “Certes.”
Wonderful! Tonight would not be her last night with Darian, no matter what happened in Canterbury, which brightened her spirits considerably. Except for one thing.
“Must we go through London?”
He shook his head emphatically. “Nay. We can go to Dover and take a ship to Southampton—unless being on the water would be overly taxing for you.”
“Better I risk a vision than again pass by Winchester Palace. But what of you... after? Will you return to Earl William’s service?”
He sat down on the bed, his clasped hands dangling between his knees. “ ’Tis all I know how to do, though ’twill not be the same as before. I damaged William’s faith in me, and I am not sure I can regain it.”
Knowing how much he admired William, and how much the earl had done for Darian over the years, Emma understood his sorrow. She sat down next to him on the bed, not sure if he needed compassion or a distraction.
She decided on the latter. “Have you given thought to doing something else?”
“Such as?”
Emma shrugged a shoulder, having no suggestion in mind. “What do mercenaries do when they are no longer mercenaries?”
He gazed off into the distance, beyond the walls of the inn. “Thomas wants to purchase land in Kent, build a cottage, and find himself a plump wife to cook his meals and share his bed. Philip thinks that a good plan, too, only he would go back to Flanders.”
A wife and cottage.
She swallowed hard against the heartbreak that someday a very fortunate woman might share Darian’s life until death did they part. Perhaps in Flanders.
“Will you go back to Flanders?”
“There is naught for me in Flanders anymore. But I may have no choice when the war is over. The Flemish in England are here by the king’s leave. When we are no longer needed for his army, he may well send us all home. ’Twould certainly make Bishop Henry happy, and I can think of few others who would miss us.”
Bishop Henry could go to the devil!
“I would miss you!”
He stared at her hard, setting her insides to churning and her heart to thumping.
“How much would you miss me?”
“Very much.”
“But not enough to remain married to me.”
Her thumping heart ached so much, the tears began to flow. She’d refused him once, with good reason, and those reasons hadn’t changed. He sought to protect her from the king’s machinations, out of a sense of duty. Not because he wanted
her
as his wife.
“Oh, Darian, if only—”
He put a finger on her lips, hushing her refusal. “When Thomas and Philip spoke of cottages and wives, I began thinking the arrangement sounded wonderful, but only if
you
were the wife standing in the doorway to welcome me home. I love you, Emma, and would never ask you to—”
Emma grabbed his hand and pulled it away from her mouth, her tears falling faster now, but for a joy-filled reason!
Darian loved her! ’Twas all she’d needed to hear. “Ask,” she commanded.
“But you are a princess. A cottage would never do—” “A cottage would do me fine!” How could the man be so stubborn! “Have pity, Darian! I love you, too! Ask!”
His eyes went wide with surprise, and the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You do? You love me?”
Emma never got the chance to answer. Darian’s mouth possessed hers, his kiss a mix of elation and demand. They fell onto the mattress and celebrated with kiss after kiss, leaving Emma breathless and dizzy.
“This is not wise,” Darian said with no conviction in his tone, only relief. “Princesses do not marry commoners.”
“Since this one already did, I see no reason to discuss it further. We have dealt well enough together so far, have we not?”
His smile spread wider. Mischief glinted in his eyes. “In some ways, better than others,” he teased.
“In one way, best of all. You still have not asked.”
In a movement quick and lithe, Darian rose from the bed and shucked his tunic.
Emma held her breath as her vision became reality. Naked from the waist up, his smile glorious, Darian held out his hand in invitation, just as she’d envisioned him doing so many years ago.
“Will you be my wife, Emma? Share my life, whatever that life might be?”
Emma took Darian’s hand and joyously stepped into the vision she’d begun to doubt would ever happen. She hadn’t understood his declaration of love had to come first. With understanding came a serenity and ecstasy so sublime her eyes filled with tears.
“Gladly, my lord. I know not what that life might be, but I cannot envision my life without you.”
“Pray do not ever try.”
“Never,” she promised, and sealed their fate with a kiss.
T
he decision to visit Camelen was easily made. The decision to tell Gwendolyn about her visions and how badly she’d handled them had caused Emma many a sleepless night—without reason, as it turned out.
Gwendolyn had taken the news very well, indeed, and didn’t seem upset over the burdens she’d assumed whenever Emma suffered one of her headaches.
But now, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Gwendolyn on the edge of the bed in the lord’s bedchamber, Emma learned she wasn’t the only sister who had kept secrets from childhood on.
In her newly ring-bedecked hand, Emma held a scroll tied with a scarlet ribbon, and in the other hand rested a trefoil-shaped gold pendant. Both objects she’d seen in her visions. In one vision they’d sat on a table. In the other a little girl, who Emma knew would be Gwen’s daughter, had worn the pendant.
Emma glanced at her sister, whose pregnancy was now beginning to show, and who glowed with happiness in her marriage to Alberic and with the impending birth. Emma hadn’t yet decided whether to tell Gwen she would give birth to a daughter.
The decision could wait. First Emma wanted to know why Gwendolyn hadn’t told her about these ancient artifacts and of their significance.
“Mother gave these to you before she died?”
Gwen nodded. “Hours before, with little explanation of their power and no instruction on their use. With Alberic’s help, I have since learned how the magic works.”
“Magic?”
With barely a pause for breath, Gwendolyn told Emma of the ancient spell written on the parchment. Of the ring Alberic now wore—which apparently couldn’t be removed from his hand—and the trefoil pendant, both necessary to the working of the spell.
A spell handed down through the ages from mother to daughter to granddaughter in an unbroken line of matriarchal inheritance to the descendants of Pendragon. A spell entrusted to them by Merlin the Sorcerer. A spell to recall King Arthur from Avalon at the time of England’s most dire need.
Emma gaped at Gwendolyn. “Recall King Arthur?” Gwen sighed. “I know this must sound impossible, but I swear, Emma, it is true. Unroll the scroll and tell me what you see.”
Emma saw words she couldn’t read, though they looked oddly familiar.
“Ancient Welsh, perhaps?”
Gwen smiled. “Then you see the same language I do, perhaps because we are sisters and Mother could have passed the scroll to either of us. When Alberic looks at the scroll, he sees mostly Welsh. Rhys the Bard sees the language of the Moors. So you see, there are guards in place so no one can read the spell who is not meant to.”
It took Emma a moment to absorb that the words on the scroll appeared in different languages to different people.
“Can you read it?”
“A few words only. As can Alberic. The phrases he can read appear to him in Norman French.”
Emma stared at the scroll. “I see no Norman French.” Gwendolyn laughed lightly. “Because you are not meant to read the spell, Emma. I am, as will my daughter after me. I always wondered why Mother gave the artifacts to me, not you. Perhaps because you were already burdened with the visions?”
Which explained much, especially the vision of Gwen’s daughter wearing the trefoil pendant. Emma suddenly knew what she was supposed to tell her sister, though she didn’t know why, or if it was important for Gwen to know.
’Struth, now that Emma had decided to accept future visions she couldn’t avoid, those from the past became clearer, their meaning understandable. Sweet mercy, she’d spent so many wasted days in bed with headaches she shouldn’t have suffered.
“You must give your daughter the pendant when she is very young, Gwen.”
“I intend to. I shall also explain both the spell and the responsibility to keep it secret and safe. I do not want her to suffer the torments of doubt and confusion I did.”
Emma knew well how doubt and confusion tormented the mind and hurt the heart. Visions had caused Emma’s torment; ancient magic had caused Gwendolyn’s. And they’d suffered alone because their mother had told both of them to keep silent.
Emma shook her head at their blind obedience. “We should have shared our secrets earlier. Neither of us would have suffered so much if we had talked of our fears.”
“I tried to talk to Father about mine, but it hurt him so much to speak of Mother that I ceased.”
“After Mother died, I could not bring myself to tell him I had envisioned her death.” Emma sighed. “Ah, Gwen, how young and hopeless we were.”
Gwen took the scroll and pendant and placed them in their velvet pouch. “Perhaps we were, but no longer. I am happy and content.” She winked. “I believe you are, too. Your Darian is both handsome and attentive. And our husbands seem to get on well. I would say that is cause for celebration.”
So would Emma, if not for Nicole.
“Does it seem selfish for us to celebrate our happiness when Nicole still lingers in Bledloe Abbey?”
Gwen frowned. “Did you not say she seemed satisfied to reside with the nuns for a time?”