The Penwyth Curse Part 16

"Stop worrying about it. We'll find out the truth."

She nodded. She had no idea now what to believe. One thing she was very certain ofa"she wasn't at all afraid, not of him at any rate. She knew Bishop would protect her if attacked, knew to the soles of her leather shoes, finely st.i.tched by the weaver Crake, who was so old his hands shook as he sewed.

"Merryn, did your grandmother and grandfather write the Penwyth curse?"

"Not that I know of." She paused a moment. "There were whispers, of course. And I wondered because the second part of the curse spoke so specifically to mea"red hair, green eyes. But I truly don't know."

He nodded, gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet. He wanted to kiss her, wanted to bring her hard against him, but he knew he wouldn't. It wasn't the time. He was being pushed and prodded to ride ever northeast. And so they rode throughout the morning, staying close to the beach. The sea was beautiful, the water glistening beneath a bright sun as far out as she could see, and the sea air settled on her skin. As the afternoon lengthened, fog billowed from the water over the land and over them as well. Bishop pulled Fearless back from the cliffs because of the thick fog.

The sun was lowering behind them when Bishop said, "If there is a curse and we don't get rid of it, then you will die alone and sad, just as Crooky said. No man could risk wedding you."

"I know. But there is a solution, Bishop. You must ask the king to make me Grandfather's heir. I can protect the western end of England from all possible invaders. Truly, my father and grandfather taught me strategy, taught me to use a bow and arrow, to throw a knife. It's true that I do not wield a sword wella"they are too heavy for me. But I have guile, Bishop. I have incredible guile. If the French wish to invade, why, I'll drive them into the sea."

"I'm strong, Merryn, and I can wield a sword, and yet I have eleven soldiers always with me."

"Except for now."

"Yes, that's true, and I am taking a risk, not just with my own life but also with yours. So who will be your soldiers, Merryn? Who will fight for you to protect Penwyth? Surely not all those old men?"

She was silent.

"A man-at-arms must be able to draw back a bow and aim it as he holds it steady; he must be able to fight on horseback; he must be able to see the enemy creeping up on him and fight him with his bare hands if necessary. He must wield an axe, and as you know, they are heavy, those axes. All those old men must die one day, Merryn, and then what will you have?"

"They have never died for as long as I've been alive."

"You are only eighteen."

"None died during my father's lifetime, either."

Silence fell between them and time pa.s.sed.

He said, "Let us say that you do stave off any enemies of Penwyth and England. Who will come after you, Merryn, when you die? What will happen to Penwyth then?"

She remained silent. He heard her whisper, "Must I laugh because there's nothing else to do?"

17.

SOMETHING WAS PUs.h.i.+NG him ever forward, and the shortest way to the northeast was along the coast. Just as something was pus.h.i.+ng him away from taking her virginity.

They skirted villages, several small keeps of no particular significance. Bishop was wondering where were all the thieves and bandits and a.s.sorted other people who would whistle even as they killed him, when Merryn saw dust rising in the distance and pointed. "A band of horses," he said. He couldn't afford to fight now, couldn't afford to be killed, because Merryn would be helpless. He slowed Fearless and rode him a bit inland into a small copse of larches. Bishop dismounted and stood by Fearless's head, holding his nostrils to keep him from whinnying. They waited silently until the dust cloud disappeared to the south.

Then they rode, stopping but once so Fearless could rest. They were drawing close, Bishop felt it in his bones.

"Will you know once we get there?"

He smiled over her head. "I'll know."

"How will you know?"

"I'll know." That was exactly what the prince would have said. Bishop nearly fell off his horse. What was going on here? He was suddenly afraid that he would know exactly where he was when he got to where he was going.

He tightened his hold around Merryn.

The skies darkened toward evening of that second day. Bishop said, "There is a cave close to the sea, just ahead."

"How do you know of this cave?"

"I just do," he said. "And I have no idea how I know. I also know that it will rain soon. We will be protected in the cave."

"Just a while ago you really didn't know where we were going, did you?"

He shook his head. "Did your grandmother have red hair?"

"You've seen my grandmother. Her hair, even when I was a child, was stark white, never a bit of red, but truly, I really don't know."

"And your mother's mother? Was her hair red?"

"My mother's mother. I never knew her, but I remember hearing my grandfather talking about Constance, my grandmother, and how she'd just gone away, probably spirited away by the devil himself. Then he looked at me sideways, as if he were wondering if I'd be spirited away too. I didn't understand."

"And your mother? Did she have red hair?"

"My mother had hair blacker than a sinner's heart. My father loved to tell her that, and then he'd push her against the wall and kiss her." She was silent a moment, then twisted about to look at him. "I just remembered. My mother told me when I was very little that I had the look of my grandmother, that she had hair that was like flame it was so red."

He couldn't believe this, didn't want to believe this. No, it was simply the same choice of words, nothing more. He said, all indifferent, "Did it seem that fire came from her hair?"

"That's a strange thought, but you know, I remember my mother said my grandmother liked to leave her hair loose, particularly when the wind was strong because it looked like fire whipping about her head. I don't remember anything else, Bishop. My mother died when I was only six years old. There is so much I never heard her say because she died."

"I'm sorry."

"My hair isn't all that red."

"It's quite red enough." As red as Brecia's hair, rich, rich red.

He looked into Merryn's smiling face, at the incredible hair framing that face, and thought, She's herself, not some phantom, just herself, and that is very fine indeed.

Bishop directed Fearless down to the beach just below Tintagel Head, an immense promontory that belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall. The going was treacherous. The rocks were sharp black spikes and spires, poking up like thick fingers or lying like fists on the dirty sand. The water was dark with seaweed and driftwood. Seabirds were loud above them. He pulled Fearless to a halt in the dying light. "See, yon is a Celtic monastery."

Merryn looked at the ruin standing jagged and fierce atop the promontory. "It is very old," she said. "It looks haunted and sad."

"The monastery is not so very old," he said, then wondered how that could be so.

"You've been here before, haven't you, Bishop?"

"Aye, I've been here," he said, but she didn't believe him. He dismounted and lifted Merryn down from Fearless's back.

"Is this a magic place?"

He laughed. "Certainly not. It's just a place that is somehow important, for a reason I have yet to learn."

Fearless didn't balk when Bishop led him into the cave through a tall, narrow opening overhung with the tangled branches of a bowed old oak tree. "We won't go very far in," he said over his shoulder.

Fearless whinnied. Bishop stroked his neck. "Here," he said, "we will stay here." Bishop handed Merryn some of the supplies.

To her surprise, once inside the cave, she saw that there was wood stacked against the wall. To her even greater surprise, Bishop seemed to accept it with no question at all.

When night fell but moments later, the fire was their only light. The walls of the cavern weren't damp. They were actually warm, as Merryn discovered when she happened to lean one of the tent poles against a wall. Warm to the touch. How very odd.

"Do you know, Bishop, everything about this cave is odd. Just feel the warm walls. It is almost as if the cave is somehow welcoming us. But that's impossible, isn't it?"

She was right.

He just shook his head, and stretched out his arms. He felt the smooth sand beneath his palms, no hidden pebbles or sticks, and the air was clear and sweet. Fearless, once inside, immediately settled down to eat from the bag of oats from St. Erth's stables. Every once in a while, he looked around him into the part of the cave that extended beyond their campfire, into the deep shadows, alert, as if someone was calling to him, and he shook his great head and blew.

Once Merryn had settled beside Bishop, both sitting atop the flattened tent, she said, "Can you tell me why we're here yet?"

"Did I tell you that your hair is redder now than it was this morning?"

She touched her fingers to her hair. "No, you didn't. That isn't possible, Bishop."

He said nothing, merely lay back against the cave wall, folded his arms behind his head, and stared at the cave ceiling. "It's true." Even in the dim light he saw flames dancing around her head. I'm going mad, there's nothing else for me to do.

The fire was burning down, but the warmth didn't diminish at all. The air was still, calm, warm. Bishop looked at the opposite cave wall, at the faint shadows cast there by the fire. As he watched, one of the shadows suddenly seemed to spread, darken, and grow larger. Merryn didn't notice. She was drawing Penwyth Castle in the fine sand with a stick. She didn't seem to notice anything at all. But Fearless did. He was nodding at that shadow.

Bishop couldn't look away from it. The shadow was s.h.i.+fting, darkening here, lightening there, until it became a man. A man, he thought. It was a man, nothing else. Then it s.h.i.+fted again, twisting back on itself, and was only a shadow again, falling into strange forms like clouds in a summer sky.

But it was more than a simple shadow. He said nothing to Merryn. He didn't want her to be frightened.

He realized in that moment that he recognized the man buried in the shadow. Bishop felt his heart begin to pound, loud, deep beats, but he wasn't afraid. He waited quietly for the shadow to come to him. It moved. When it finally covered him, and he felt the sweet, dry air inside the cave fill his body, his fingertips began to tingle.

He heard Merryn's voice as if from a great distance. She was calling to him, but he couldn't quite grasp what it was or who she was. Slowly, he rose and stood in the middle of the cave, the shadow twisting around him, wrapping him tightly, and he said, "My wand. Where is my wand?"

And it was suddenly there, in his hand, and he was staring down at it. It wasn't more than a foot long, beautifully worked, but still stark, elegant, and it fit into his hand as if it were part of him. It pulsed with light and power; he could feel that power fill him, become one with him, and he smiled into the fire, which was burning fiercely once again, much larger now than when he and Merryn had built it an hour before.

He turned and walked toward the back of the cave. The air was redolent with the smell of incense, a heady odor that filled him just as the huge shadow had. No, not incense, but the smell of a thick oak forest. Where was it coming from?

He didn't know. He didn't really care, he just kept walking. The cave seemed to go on forever, yet he knew it didn't. He knew also exactly where he was going. He was striding through the cave, the roof now high above his head, the pa.s.sage widening with each step he took. And his wanda"surely just a finely wrought stick of some sort, but he knew it wasn'ta"he held loosely in his right hand. It felt natural there.

He called back to Merryn, "Stay where you are. I'm all right."

He heard her say something, but it was faint and distant.

Suddenly there was a low noise that was sharp and steady, a buzzing like a hive of bees flying toward him, louder and louder until he clapped his hands over his ears. The buzzing stopped.

He lowered his hands, realized that he didn't have his wand. No, he had to have his wand. Where was it? He looked down at the floor of the cave, searching, but he didn't see it. Rather, he saw a small circular set of stones some three feet high that surrounded a hole. Flagstones, just like the sa.r.s.en stones at the huge meeting place on the plains of southern Britain. He knew what sa.r.s.en stones were, knew the feel of them. He knelt beside the circle of stones and looked down into the hole. He could see nothing at all, just blackness. He had no idea how deep the hole was. He leaned down, reaching, but felt only air. He cupped his mouth and called downward, "Where are you? Come to me now."

Nothing, just blackness.

He called out again, this time louder. "I await you. Come to me now."

A light flickered far down in the blackness, just a small pulse of light, flickering wildly, like a candle flame in a wind. It grew stronger and stronger. He didn't move, just watched the light come upward, and when it nearly reached him, he drew back as if stung by a bee from that buzzing hive he'd heard just moments ago. No, it wasn't a bee, not a brief p.r.i.c.k but a full-bodied hit, something elsea"

A hand slapped him.

He reeled back, but not far enough.

A hand slapped him again. Hard.

18.

Present.

Penwyth Castle.

LORD VELLAN, CHESTDEEP in his bathing tub, said to Crispin, "What do you mean there's another band of men outside the walls? Another brainless a.s.s is here to claim Merryn? But the king himself sent Sir Bishop of Lythe."

"It seems this man doesn't know about that, my lord. He's got at least twenty men, and he's demanding to come in. He's demanding to wed Merryn."

"He can't do that," said Lady Madelyn. She stroked the soapy sponge down her husband's back, thinking his bones were too thin and meager now. She could feel the bones through the sponge. On the other hand, it was no surprise, for she'd felt his bones through the sponge for more years now than she could remember.

Lord Vellan ran his fingers through his wet, grizzled white hair, his magnificent hair still so thick, his pride. "By all the arrows that pierce Saint Sebastian, it is madness, their leader is mad. Aye, I will come."

Ten minutes later, Lord Vellan climbed the ladder behind Crispin, ready to catch him, for Crispin's balance wasn't all that good anymore. Both men were panting by the time they reached the top of the ramparts. Lord Vellan looked down at the bald-headed man who'd just pulled off his war helmet. The man looked up. Lord Vellan knew when a man was determined, and this one was. He was young, and like all young men Vellan had known, he believed himself invincible. Vellan said to Crispin, "This isn't good." He yelled down, "Who are you and what do you want?"

The man smiled, showing very white teeth, a full mouth of them, something Vellan hadn't seen in his own mouth or any of his men's mouths for many a long year. "Old man, I have come to claim Penwyth. I have come to wed the heiress."

"If you take my castle, you will die."

The man threw back his head and laughed loudly. The men behind him looked uncertain, then slowly each man began to laugh. It was a pathetic effort. Lord Vellan could see that they weren't nearly as convinced of their master's invincibility as he was himself. The man waved his hand, covered with black gauntlets that went up nearly to his elbows. His tunic was black, as was the rest of his garb. What affectation was this?

The man shouted, "Just look, it is as I was told. All those ancient old sods wearing chain mail, helmets covering their gray heads, none of them strong enough to fight off a frail woman. Aye, Lord Vellan, I have heard of the four husbands, how all of them died right after wedding your precious granddaughter."

"Aye, all of them did. Are you mad that you want to be the fifth one?"

"I won't die. You have a strange poison, all realize that now, despite the wild tales carried around by these husbands' former soldiers. Aye, I've heard some of their tales. They speak of witches flying over their heads, flinging black smoke into their eyes, and strange white-garbed priests grabbing throats and choking the husbands to death. I've even heard that the devil himself strode in to stomp the husbands beneath his cloven hooves. Aye, there are all sorts of stories, but they would frighten only boys, not men.