The Penwyth Curse Part 5

"No, I am not blind. Are there no young men hereabouts?"

She paused a moment, pushed hair out of her eyes. "So you want comparisons, do you? Well, no young men to speak of, at least none I could consider marrying." She paused, then frowned. "I came to tell you that my grandfather is ready to talk about how long you will be staying at Penwyth."

"I will remain here until everything is resolved."

"Then you will leave?"

"Why are you so anxious that I leave?"

She said nothing to that. As for him, he didn't say anything either, because he was looking into those green eyes of hers, the color of a spring leaf freshly rained upon, and he was as hard as the castle stone he was leaning against.

He said, "Do you fear that I will lift the curse and then another husband will ride in and force you to wed yet again?"

"Given that it's happened four times, only an idiot wouldn't be concerned."

"What do you mean exactly that I look excellent?"

"What? Oh, you wish me to fill your gullet with compliments, do you? Very well. You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen in my life. The blue is so dark as to be nearly black."

Beautiful eyes? A man with beautiful eyes? Hmmm. "You force me to be honest here," Bishop said, looking down at her. "My eyes are nothing out of the ordinary. It is your eyes that make me want toa"well, never mind that."

"Make you want to what?"

"I have forgotten, and you would do well to forget it too. You know, Merryn, I really am quite competent as well as excellent-looking. I will lift the curse, then we will see. You could consider trusting me."

"Trust a man who just rode into Penwyth hours ago, flinging his orders about? I don't think that's possible. Not after the four husbands who did the same thing. It occurs to me that you are here to lift the curse and then take me, just like all the others, only you're smarter."

She was smart herself. He said, stroking his fingertips over his chin, "Do I have other excellent parts?"

"Your feet."

He grinned. "What would you know about my feet?"

"Your feet are big and that's good because you're a big man. I think all of your parts work well together."

"So my parts are in harmony."

"Exactly so. Do you want to know more about your excellent parts?"

He very nearly nodded, but he had to keep his focus here, and that meant he had to avoid looking into her eyes. So she thought his eyes were beautiful, did she? He said, "How odd it would be to marry a girl who had already been wedded to four other men."

"I will tell you what is odd. To be wedded to four different men and have each of them drop dead before your eyes."

"Mayhap G.o.d will give you a man who will outlive you."

"That's a nice thought, but I will not hold my breath waiting."

He wanted to tell her that it wasn't going to be all that long a wait, but he didn't. Instead, he turned to look east, toward a field where he saw six large stones in a rough circle. He pointed. "The stones set uprighta"I have seen many of them in Cornwall, and also in the western part of France."

"I do not know about the ones in France. The ones yon are called Menya Alber, and have stood there for as long as any can remember. There is also a place called Lanyon Quoit that is perhaps a burial chamber, but so old it probably existed before men walked on the earth. And if that is so, then how can it be a burial chamber? There is also the Nine Maidens Stone Circle, not far from Penwyth. It is said that the maidens were girls who danced on the Sabbath and turned to stone."

"I can feel the age of them," he said. "I can smell their age in the air. It makes my skin itch to think about it."

She blinked, said, "Mine, too. How odd that we are the same in this."

"Let me add that I also admire your feet, perhaps more than you admire mine."

She couldn't help herself. She looked down at the toes of her dusty old slippers sticking out from beneath her equally old gown. "My feet? You cannot even see my feet. Are you trying to drive me mad with jests?"

Without a word, he came down on his haunches and lifted her gown until he could see the narrow cords that bound the slippers to her feet. He untied the knot, eased one slipper off her foot. "Ah," he said, and raised her bare foot to set it on his thigh. "Would you just look at that foot? I thank the saints it is reasonably clean."

She wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h her foot away, but she didn't do anything, just watched him look at her foot. Then he was running the pad of his thumb over each of her toes. Her toes quivered and curled. Then his hand cupped around her foot, stroking the arch. He said, "I was wondering if your feet would be too big. What a blessing that they are not." He looked up at her and smiled. "What do you think about the curse?"

Her breath whooshed out of her. Still, she left her foot where it was. She felt his hard thigh beneath her sole, the soft wool of his trousers, and the warmth of his big hand now closing about her ankle to steady her. This was all very odd. His fingers were now molding themselves around her heel. She said, "My feet aren't too big. My grandmother has always told me my feet were just like hers and therefore perfect." He was making her foot feel warm. It was absurd. She said not another word until he replaced her slipper and tied the cord together again. Slowly, he rose.

She looked at the wine stains on his dusty gray tunic and said, "You will sleep in the steward's chamber. I will send a servant to fetch your tunic. It must be washed. I do not want it to be ruined, at least by my hand. I know no more about the curse than you do. It is odd to see so many young men."

A black eyebrow went up.

"You and your men. You are all young."

"Dumas, my master-at-arms, is nearly forty, a grand old age."

"You call nearly forty a grand old age? Our master-at-arms, Crispin, has reached his sixty-eighth year. As for you, you have yet to reach your twenty-fifth year, despite all that experience I see in your eyes."

"To gain sixty-eight years and still talk and walk and make sense and lift one's arma"that's an amazing thing."

"Aye, it is. I don't want you to die."

Bishop thought that sentiment boded well. "Why not?"

It was as if she'd just realized what she'd said. She closed down like a clam.

"Is it because you admire my excellent parts so much?"

"That could be a small measure of it," she said, and looked down at the foot he'd stroked.

He grinned. "I have been here for nearly four hours. I am still breathing." He pressed his palm to his stained tunic. "My heart still beats." He took her hand and flattened her palm against his chest.

"Aye, it beats. Very strongly. I believe it is beating faster than it was just a moment ago. Why is that?"

He quickly moved her hand. "My heart beats just as it should," he said. "I think I may be safe, particularly since my death would mean yours and your grandfather's as well. The writers of the curse couldn't have intended that."

"No, they couldn't."

"I will discover the truth, Merryn. I must. You know I cannot leave. If I did, my task unfinished, the king would knock my head into a stone wall."

She smiled at that, and showed him a deep dimple on her left cheek. It was the first glowing smile she'd given him. "You fear the king more than ancient curses?"

"Oh, aye, I do. Do you believe the curse was fas.h.i.+oned especially for you, that some Druids hundreds of years ago said, *This is for Merryn de Gay and none other'?"

"Do you believe my hair is as red as fire? A wicked red?"

He looked at her wild red hair, blowing fiercely around her head in the dry wind. He nodded. "Aye, at least as red as fire, and beyond wicked."

He reached up, touched his fingertips to her hair. Slowly, never looking away from her, he wrapped some strands around his finger, over and over, until he was tugging her toward him.

She shook her head and he released her hair. She said, "And are my eyes as green as desire?"

"No, your eyes are as green as l.u.s.t."

"Oh." She blinked at that. If he wasn't mistaken, and he knew he wasn't because he was, after all, a man, she blushed.

He said, "What do you know about this key? *The enemy will fail who uses the key'?"

"An odd line, but I know nothing at all about any key. No one does, not even my grandfather."

"So the curse is for any and all females with red hair and green eyes who just happen to live at Penwyth?"

She said nothing.

"All right, tell me this. Is there a mare in season within the walls?"

"Why, yes, my mare, Lockley. There isn't a stallion about to cover her."

"My Fearless will cover her, willingly. He whinnied when he heard her; he caught her scent."

"I will think about this. I want to know his bloodlines, Sir Bishop. I want to inspect him, see that he is worthy of Lockley."

"I will swear upon Saint Cuthbert's scabbed knees that Fearless's withers are the finest in the land."

"You jest. I don't know anyone who jests like you do."

"Do you consider it one of my many excellent parts?"

"I have known you for a very short time, only the length of a well-attended banquet. This is all very odd."

"You may inspect Fearless. If it will gain him the mare, then he will doubtless allow it. You must explain his reward to him simply, no difficult words. As a wizard, I have merely to think my words to him and he understands."

"You claim you can predict rain. Just maybe your d.a.m.ned destrier can understand what a person says as well. I don't believe a man can be a wizard. Wizards are old and bearded, and they have strange mad lights in their eyes."

"Even a wizard must begin young."

"I still don't believe it. You are a man, just a man, albeit a clever one."

"So you believe me clever?"

"No. I didn't mean to say that."

"You will see. Now, the curse. The Celtic Druids had no written language."

"The curse has come down from father to son or daughter from each succeeding generation. It was Lord Vellan's grandfather who finally had a scribe record it. There's nothing more to it than that."

She was lying and he knew it. He felt frustration boil in his belly. What was going on here? He said, "It is said that the Druids put their prisoners in wooden cages so they could burn them at night for warmth and sacrifice. Can you begin to imagine the smell of that?"

"When my third husband vomited up white foam, I remember that the stench was beyond anything."

He did not want to imagine that. He said, "Very well. Now, the Witches of Byrnea"a small cult of women who paint their bodies with white lead, color their hair black as a rotted tooth, and rub their teeth with the red berries of the brickle plant to show their ferocity and their desire for raw flesha"even the Witches of Byrne are difficult to find now, since they despise men. It is difficult to continue if there is no man to plant his seed in a woman's belly."

She said, "My grandmother told me that the Witches of Byrne don't despise men. They merely don't trust them. They observe the horror that men bring, know that those same men would destroy them if they could. Surely you don't deny that?"

"Your grandmother?"

"Aye, Lady Madelyn. You will meet her soon."

"She is as old as Lord Vellan?"

"Aye, and like my grandfather's, her wits are as sharp as the point of Crispin's sword."

"You spoke of the harshness of men. I imagine that women, like men, would bring horrors if they had the chance. The truth is that men themselves have few choices." He shrugged. "I live the best I can. I wouldn't kill a witch unless she threatened my life. Isn't that fair? And just?"

She brushed away his words with a sweep of her hand. "You have few choices? You are a knight. You ride to Penwyth from the king. I have never ridden anywhere at the behest of the king. You take it as your right to give orders to females. You have men to do your bidding. You can do exactly as you please. You took off my slipper and played with my foot. What you claim is nonsense."

He said, "There is death all around us, Merryn, an inevitable end to all of us, men and women alike. We all want to survive, and that means knowing how to think, how to act, how to defend ourselves. A man is honorable or he is not. I believe a woman too is honorable or she is not. But honor is nothing if your very survival is at stake. It is true what I said: I live the best I can. I do not kill unless I have to. Look at you, Merryn. Your survival depends upon a curse."

"It's a difficult thing, all these dead husbands, living in the shadow of this curse."

"I know the words to the curse. Indeed, I very nearly have it memorized. Tell me what you know, Merryn."

She studied her thumbnail, then slowly shook her head. "I don't know anything."

He smiled down at her, but not too far down, for she was tall, mayhap as tall as Philippa de Fortenberry. "Robert Burnell, the king's secretary and the Chancellor of England, is a very learned man. Before I left the king, he gave me all the parchments he had collected on the Celtic Druids and the Witches of Byrne. Reading of them made the lice jump out of my hair."

"Another jest." She looked at his thick black hair blowing off his neck in the hot, dry wind. "I always wanted black hair, thick just like yours, with the sun gleaming through it."

"You think my hair is excellent?"

"Aye, it is, I admit it. You say you're a man of otherworldly knowledge, Sir Bishop, a man who understands curses and magic and dark waysa"in short, a wizard."

"I am. It is my habit to open myself to those of the otherworld, to those in other times, to let their knowledge seep deep into me so that I may understand what they are, and why they still keep themselves close to this earth." By the time he finished speaking, he'd lowered his voice almost to a whisper. He nearly had himself believing what he was saying.

He watched her rub her arms. A little fright, that was good. What was she keeping from him? He said, "Aye, and now I must gather more information to reach the beings that put this curse into motion."

There was a sudden gust of hot wind. It whipped her hair loose from its plaits and back from her face. He saw that she had small ears, nicely shaped. She hadn't been beautiful to him just four hours before, but it seemed that he might have been mistaken. He reached out his hand yet again to touch her hair, but this time he didn't. He dropped his hand back to his side. At least, he thought, his children wouldn't be ugly, and that would surely be a relief to their future spouses. The dimple in her left cheek was long gone. She was still too afraid to smile.

"Tell me of the husbands."

She couldn't keep the remembered horror out of her eyes as she said slowly, "I watched them all die. The first one, Sir Arlan, was seated next to me, since he was my bridegroom, and we shared a trencher. I watched him eat. He fed me from his knife. I was a child, and yet I never doubted that he would be my husband until I died."