FOURTEEN

 

 

"Allegreto," she said.

He had lain in a dead sleep for the whole of the day, propped against the palfrey’s saddle. When she had returned to the salt house, when she had tugged the stallion’s gear inside, when she had noisily overturned a heavy tub to sit upon and sent crystals of salt flying across the dirt floor, he had not stirred. It was a little frightening, for she had never yet known him to fail to wake alert at the slightest sound.

She had called him "pirate," and shaken his shoulder as evening came on. She had given him a rousing lecture on just how it felt to be abducted and dragged away from all she knew by an assassin and murderer who was afraid to go to Hell. She had shed tears of hot annoyance and pain as she struggled to push the ring onto her finger again—it was too small, and her joint was inflamed from pulling it off; she informed him in no uncertain terms that it was his fault if she could not wear it. But she shoved it over her knuckle in spite of how it hurt, and there it was now, hiding his secret words.

He breathed steadily. Untroubled, as if she were on watch over him, like Zafer and Dario. As if he trusted her.

She had napped a few hours in the quiet afternoon, while the horses munched outside. No Riata killers came to slay them. No one came at all but the water birds stalking slowly through the reeds and a pale, speckled frog that hopped to the door, sat there for a lengthy time contemplating her with round yellow eyes, and then hopped leisurely away.

She pulled all of the papers from the saddlebags, but they were only brief letters of introduction to men she had never heard of, and lists of words that made no sense. The only thing she found of value among them was the contract that betrothed her to Franco Pietro. She had hardly glanced at it when she had signed it, but she read it now as if the words were written in flame. Make known that when I give my consent, I will take the most puissant and excellent lord Franco Pietro of Riata and Monteverde to be my wedded husband...

When.

When she gave her consent. It did not say that she gave it yet.

She had no vow to Franco Pietro. In truth, by all that she had ever read of the ecclesiastical courts and marriage suits in the documents that Lady Melanthe had provided for her education, Elayne was not betrothed at all.

She remembered her godmother in fierce negotiation with Lancaster—the long hours of argument over dowries and gold and this paper, while Elayne stared out the window, deaf to it all. She thought of how the pirate had faced Countess Beatrice and smiled at the mention of the contract and its words.

"Allegreto," she said again, because when she called him by that name, his eyelashes flickered a little, and he turned his head and sighed.

It sounded so strange on her tongue.

She did not want to become attached to him. She tried to think of Raymond, tried and tried. She loved Raymond. For this pirate, this dark and beaten angel—she felt desire and sin, but not love, or anything like it.

"Allegreto," she said sharply.

He swallowed and smiled a little, then made a faint groan.

"Awaken," she said. "The night comes on."

He winced and let go of a slow breath. He closed one fist, bending his arm upward. "Mary and Jesus," he muttered, without opening his eyes.

He spread his fingers. He closed the other fist, as if testing it, and then he sat up all at once, exhaling sharply.

"God bless," he said, leaning on one arm. "I can scarce move."

"It will be worse tomorrow," Elayne said.

He blinked at her with one eye. The other had swollen shut completely. "What promising news," he uttered, his voice slurred.

She offered him the wine flagon. With a painful effort, he sat up against the saddle and drank. He remained still, staring at the floor for a long time. Elayne ate a few bites of bread and left the rest in the rumpled crown of his hat for him.

"How long since we left Venice?" he asked abruptly.

Elayne frowned, reckoning. "Not yet a full night and day," she said.

He looked up at her, then toward the door, where the reeds and bushes cast long shadows. "The galley—when did it sail?"

"They were drawing anchor as we disembarked it," she said.

He made a soft curse and tried to stand. On the second attempt he made it to his feet with a sound of agony. "We must move on. Without the rendezvous. I’ll have to conjecture what was arranged. But we must be at Val d’Avina before they reach it."

Elayne rose. "Val d’ Avina? Where is that?"

He gave her an odd look, and a short laugh. "You don’t know? Depardeu, is there nothing they taught you of Monteverde?"

Her eyes widened. "It is there?"

"In the mountains," he said. "High up the valley, at the mines." He lifted the wine again and drank deeply. "Zafer and Margaret are bound there, in guise as Il Corvo and his new bride, that fine unknown lady who carries Morosini’s letters of introduction for her comfort." He wiped his mouth. "With Franco Pietro hot at their heels, if God wills."

"Franco Pietro!" she exclaimed, taking a step. "No! I thought we were bound for some castle in Bohemia!"

"Nay, Princess. We go to Monteverde." He smiled at her, his face an evil mask of bruises. "And I do not intend to meet your betrothed with honey and sweet affection, of that you may be certain."

 

* * *

 

She had not realized they were so close to Monteverde lands. A dread grew on her as they rode steadily all through the night. She looked toward the dark masses of villages under the rising moon and feared them now, instead of hoping for sanctuary. The marsh and canals and water were not under the hand of the Riata, but they led inevitably to rivers and towns as dawn broke, a rich province of ordered fields and vineyards, of dogs that barked and roads with loaded donkeys and early travelers upon them. She barely remembered the vellum maps that Lady Melanthe had unrolled, so full of unfamiliar names and drawings of castles and churches and hills, but she thought these must be the tributary lands that lay between Venice and the mountains of Monteverde.

The palfrey paced rhythmically ahead of her, tireless as the leagues and hours fell away. The land was flat; the highways dry. When full day came, she could see a precipice in the far distance, a serrated wall of crags that seemed to spring up from the level horizon like dragon’s teeth against the sky.

The pirate did not stop to rest. Their pauses were brief, only long enough to let the horses drink in the swarming marketplace of a walled city, and take a loaf and cheese from a hawker to eat while they were still astride. Though he pulled the unkempt hunter’s hat down low, people noticed his battered face and blackened eye, offering witty condolences and advice to stay out of street fights. He only returned a hellish grin, shrugging.

She could not imagine what he must be enduring. Even she began to feel the soreness of hours in the saddle after all her months afoot. But his palfrey was a smooth-gaited beast, well-suited to its task. It held the steady pace all the night and full into midday, the sweat darkening its shoulders and neck and flanks, the stallion trailing gamely behind. Just as Elayne was near to begging that they rest the animals, Il Corvo pulled back on the palfrey’s reins and brought it to a halt in the midst of the open road.

The sharp mountains were close now: sheer, jumbled faces of gray rock mantled by dark green brush. And they had begun to seem like mere hills, for beyond them rose peaks such as Elayne had never imagined, massive slopes that faded into clouds and misty distance, robed in green and blue. They were startling, so near to the flat lands of Venice, looming unexpected and majestic.

The pirate looked forward and back along the empty road. Here, the neat vineyards had been abandoned to brush and undergrowth. Weeds bloomed in the derelict hayfields and gave way to overgrown ravines. He made a sound low in his throat, like a man not happily surprised. Slowly he walked the horse along the edge of the road, looking down at the ground.

"This way," he said. He pulled the uncomplaining palfrey onto a smaller track, through a gap in a rotting wicker fence. The trail led down into a heavily wooded vale.

"Let us pause for midday," Elayne said as they descended a path among the trees. A cool breeze touched her cheek. "The horses must rest."

He nodded, lifting his hand. The path rose, and the horses labored uphill. She realized that there were flat paving stones among the weeds, and a terraced edge. A road had once climbed the rise. Against the hill, a wooden hut with a poorly thatched roof stood aslant, as if it might at any moment collapse onto itself.

A woman, holding her face covered up to her eyes with a black mantle, looked out the doorway apprehensively as they approached. She watched them silently. Then her eyes widened, and she dropped the veil. She stepped into the path.

"Saint Agatha’s blessing on you," the Raven said.

"My lord!" she whispered, and then seemed to recall herself with a start. "Commend you to her goodness!" she responded, bowing down to the ground.

He watched her a moment. "I was not expected, then," he said softly. "You had no message."

She lifted her face, young and quite pretty. "Nay, my lord! Nothing!" She looked toward Elayne, and stared as if she were a ghost.

He made a gesture with his head, up the hill. "Bid Gerolamo attend me there."

"Aye, my lord. But God comfort you! You are hurt." 

"I heal," he said. "Be quick now."

She nodded and bowed hurriedly, turning to run down some hidden track among the trees. The palfrey heaved itself up the hill, its head lowered.

Elayne let the stallion follow on a loose rein. As they reached the top, she saw sunlight sparkle ahead through the brush. The view opened suddenly, blindingly...a vast lake, with the sun dazzling across its shimmering surface, a lake so huge that vapor nearly obscured the mountainous shore on the far side. The horses stumbled and lurched down a sharp incline. Their weary hooves sank into pebbly sand. Small waves washed the shoreline, water as crystalline and clear as the Middle Sea, darkening to blue and purple at its heart.

A peninsula ran out from the shore, a low saddle of land thrusting into the lake. At the end of it, like a crown set upon the water, stood a castle—four tall towers and a fifth that surpassed them, strong and beautiful, soaring upward against the mountains and the sky.

A castle—and broken—its crenellated walls breached, its stone harbor torn open, its inner courtyard empty and exposed to the lake’s shimmering reflections.

 

* * *

 

The place was deserted, given over to doves and echoes. The towers stood untouched, but no contents had been left within the pale walls. The pirate walked through it silently, without expression. They had left the horses tied on the shore and waded knee-deep, barefoot among reeds and grasses, to reach the arched water-water-entry. The breached iron gate still lay visible under the crystalline lake, growing streamers of vivid green moss.

Elayne curled her muddy toes, rubbing them clean on a sprig of grass that poked up through sun-warmed pavement. The frescoes on the inner courtyard walls had been spoiled by hammers, the faces of graceful ladies and proud mounted lords hacked and gouged away. The pirate seemed uninterested, passing the great hall and the towers; instead he led her down a stone stair to another water-gate, this one choked with plumy reeds and grasses. Little fish darted between the sunlight and shade, startled by their arrival.

He reached up to a huge lion’s head boss of lead set in the stone. He put his fingers behind the snarling teeth, set one foot against the wall, and with an effort that made the muscles stand in his neck and shoulders, pulled outward. The lion’s head grated away from the wall a tiny distance. He let go, drawing a deep breath, and turned to the water.

At first Elayne saw nothing happen. Then she realized that a dark line was growing at the edge of the small quay. As the water level dropped, a wall appeared, separating the lake from the pool under the arched gate. The reeds at the edge bent and laid down in mud, but the bottom of the pool was deeper. With a gurgling sound, the water line fell, revealing a stair and another arch.

Just inside the arch, under the wall, there was a door.

She recognized it instantly, though the metal had turned black with age. In the relief, the dogs and bear, the shepherd; tarnished but defiant, like the words engraved down the center. Gardi li mo.

Elayne followed him down the wet stairs in wonder. At the bottom he cast a glance at her, a half-smile in the dim water reflections. "Do you remember?"

Elayne pressed the first letter. She remembered that much. The shepherd’s staff, then the last letter. She reached for the bear. But the pattern had been irregular after that; she could only guess. The darkened bronze gave beneath her fingers as she tried the sheep.

"Nay," he said, stopping her hand. "Watch again."

She felt a little ashamed that she had not recalled it correctly. She watched intently as he made the pattern, repeating each letter to herself under her breath. The lock clicked, the panels came apart, though they required some pushing to force them fully open. This door did not give so easily as the one to his island strong-room. He had to put his shoulder against it and shove, wincing as he did it.

A stone stairway lay before them, dry and empty, turning up and up the inside wall of a square tower, a dim, echoing well of stone. Light entered from arrow-slits at each landing, bright beams slanting across the dim height. Doves cooed and rustled somewhere above her, but the floor and stairs were strangely clean.

He closed the door and began to mount the stairs. Elayne hefted her boots under her arm, took a deep breath, and started up after him. Halfway to the top she had to stop and catch her breath, leaning on the plastered wall, looking out the narrow slit through a wall nigh as thick as a man’s height. She could see only a sliver of the lake below.

This was a Navona stronghold. It must have been, with that motto upon the secret door. Though the walls were breached, the gates torn down, it had not been destroyed. Only made unfit for defense. She had read of such, in some of the copies of royal writs among the papers she had studied. It was an insult, a deliberate mark of disdain, to slight the walls in such a way.

He passed from her sight above. She forced her aching legs to mount the stairs. Her knees were trembling by the time she climbed past the beams that supported the upper floor. She expected to emerge into a guard room, or outside, but instead there was a tiny landing, with no protection from the giddy drop, and another door: bronze again, embellished with the dogs and sheep and bear.

He waited beside it, looking at her expectantly. Elayne leaned her hand against the wall, still panting from the climb as she repeated the secret pattern. This time she made it work. The lock made a familiar sound, and the panels slid open smoothly. She turned the latch. The door swung full open on silent hinges.

Rich colors caught her eye, and a flutter of motion as birds took off, shadows on the outside of the shuttered windows. There was a great bed hung about with red-and-gold damask. A soft, fringed carpet beckoned her bare feet. A large chest and a throne-like chair and stool, a cupboard—even a mirror the size of a woman’s face, framed in a gilded sunburst and hung on the frescoed wall.

"Hold," he said, catching her arm before she could enter. "Let me make certain of it."

With a quick move he sent one of his daggers spinning across the chamber. It stuck hard in the window shutter, rattling the wood. He stepped inside the door and looked up, running his hand all along the frame. Then he made a slow circuit of the room, his other knife at ready, as if some attacker might spring from the walls.

He reached the far window and pulled his dagger from the wood.

"You are sure that the galley sailed as we left Venice," he said. "One day and half another past now?" She wet her lips and nodded.

"Come in," he said. "We’ll be safe here. Use the bed, but touch nothing else. I’ll return as soon as I’ve seen Gerolamo."

Safe here. He said so. As the door closed behind him, she dropped her boots and went straight to the bed. She climbed onto it and fell back against the pillows with a great sigh, asleep almost before she let her eyes fall closed.

 

* * *

 

Elayne awoke with a sneeze. In the first moments of fathoming where she was, she saw half-open shutters with a sky glowing vivid blue beyond. The doves cooed and rustled on the sill. She lifted her head from the pillow. Dust motes made her sneeze again.

There was a startled move beside her. She looked around as the pirate rolled upright in the bed, hand reaching for his dagger. For one perilous instant he stared at her, a stranger with murder in his grip, and then his hand relaxed and he made a groan, turning over into the pillows.

His face was not so swollen, but colored now in shades of blue and violet and green that would have done justice to an artist’s palette. Dried smears of blood still marked his nose and jaw.

"I loathe horses," he said, half-muffled in the pillow.

Elayne sat up. She smiled wryly. "They served us full well," she said. "I hope your man took good care with them."

"Aye, I told him all you said to do." He turned on his back with a stiffness unnatural to him. "My own servants don’t get better treatment."

"That palfrey is a rare animal," she said, crossing her legs carefully. She was a little sore herself. "I’ve never seen a finer pacer."

"It is yours, then, and welcome." His gaze drifted down to her lap. "God knows I hope never to mount the vicious beast again."

She felt herself flush at the way he observed her. She moved quickly to close her legs and rearrange her skirt over the rumpled damask bedcovering. "We are not to ride further? Is this Val d’Avina?"

"Nay, d’Avina is leagues from here yet. But we will go by the lake, when Gerolamo arranges for it. Until then, we wait here. We have two days of grace, if I told Zafer what I meant to tell him."

"You do not remember still?"

He stared at the bed canopy. He squinted, as if he were looking far into the distance, and then shook his head. "It is maddening!" he said. "I recall the wine with Morosini…then nothing. Nothing after. I know what I intended—we can only pray God that is what was arranged. But I thought they would expect us here, and they did not."

Elayne slid from the bed and curled her toes in the rich carpet. She went to the window, pushing the shutters full open. The setting sun blazed just above the mountaintops. The air was so clear that she could pick out valleys and deep ravines on the far side of the lake, miles away. Angled shafts of golden light played through parting clouds and onto the water, like a perfect vision of Paradise. "What is this place?" she asked in wonder. "Is it yours?"

He laughed, a bitter sound. "Ask that of the Riata."

She looked back at him. He sat propped up in the great bed, a lithe shadow in the richly appointed room. It was clearly the residence of a wealthy man, but there was an air of austerity to it, a graceful simplicity, as if the owner had chosen the finest of each thing he wished to have, and no more.

"This chamber was not violated," she said.

"Aye. We kept some secrets, it seems." He scanned the room with a cool glance. "I’ve never been in it before. It was one of my father’s chambers."

She remembered that he was a bastard son. He had called Gian Navona a devil; he had said that his father had tried to drown him for disloyalty. She looked at the room and its furnishings with a new perception, but still they only seemed to speak of subtle elegance, not evil.

"It is not what I would have expected," she said.

"Did you imagine a torture chamber? He did not like blood on his own hands." The pirate rose suddenly, swinging his long legs off the bed. He walked to the mirror and peered into it. "Mary, look at me!" he exclaimed with a harsh laugh. "He would have been revolted. And I cannot even remember a simple assignation! Forgive me, my sweet sire. Have mercy. Don’t kill me in my sleep."

He stared at himself for a long moment. The late afternoon shadows made a dim reflection of his face, a rippled distortion in the mirror.

"Don’t kill me," he whispered.

Elayne stood up straight. "Your father is dead," she said firmly. He closed his eyes, his lashes trembling, and blinked them open.

"Yes," he said. He took a breath. "Yes. I brought him back and buried him in the duomo at Monteverde. Haps I’ll take you there, hell-cat, in time—and you can light a candle to keep him dead."

For once, she did not object to his name for her. "Do you fear a mortal man’s memory? You told me that you could keep your wits in the face of any fell thing."

"Did I!" He turned from the mirror. "I must have neglected to mention my father." He looked about the chamber. "We should be cautious here. There will be things even I don’t know."

"You are ever comforting! What things?"

He reached out and touched the sunburst frame around the mirror, running his fingers along each gilded tip. "There," he said, holding his forefinger behind the frame. He tilted his head toward the bed. "Watch."

As she glanced toward the bed, there was a snapping sound and a flash of motion from the canopy. A needle the length of her hand stood buried in the bedclothes where the pirate had been lying. It wavered for an instant and then toppled.

"The poison will have long since lost effect," he said. "But it would hurt."

Elayne put her hands over her face and sighed through her fingers. "Do you know what is unspeakable?" she said, drawing her palms down and looking at him over her fingertips.

"My murderous family?" he asked lightly. "Or my murderous self?"

"I am not even discomfited anymore."

He smiled in the gathering gloom, as if it pleased him. "I’ll disarm everything. I know my father’s mind well enough to find what is here."

"Of course," she said.

"Close the shutters now. We want no sharp-eyed fisherman to notice such a change." He nodded toward a large sack that lay upon one of the chests. "There is meat to break fast, if you want it," he said. "And then we will go down to bathe." His lip curled. "I cannot bear myself. I reek of horse."

 

* * *

 

"Is it safe here?" Elayne asked, looking down the little beach in the last of the silvered light. Rosemary and citron trees grew along the base of the castle walls, and even palms, a strange sight against the dark background of snowcapped mountains.

He paused, holding a pair of robes he’d taken from his father’s chest over his arm. "You are learning to ask," he said, with approval. He moved ahead without giving an answer to her question, barefooted still, a soft shadow in the dusk. They followed a faint path that wound between the water and the castle walls. As he passed by one of the citron trees, he yanked down three of the yellow fruits from a low-hanging branch and carried them in his palm.

The air was warm even as the sun set across the lake, but the water looked chill. Elayne carried a linen bag with soap of olive oil and herbs. She could smell the faint heavy scent of it, mingling with the rosemary, as familiar as Cara’s coffer where she stored her Italian treasures.

Beyond the castle, a row of arches stood, black silhouettes against the day-glow. He led her along the ancient pillars that lined the shore. The lake seemed to be all around them now, at the farthest end of the peninsula. A faint white mist rose from the water ahead, a citron-scented haze that drifted through the trees.

There were steps carved into the rock. In the fading light she followed him down to a bathing grotto. Antique columns and marble tiles formed a spacious vault, the clear blue water reflecting and shimmering against pale stone. Wild rosemary bushes grew among blocks of stone and broken friezes. The trunk of a huge olive tree overhung the entrance, its twisted branches and silvery leaves shielding the grotto from the lake. Steam rose from the smooth surface, drifting and vanishing into the evening air.

The pirate dropped his burden onto the carved and fluted capstone of some ancient fallen column. Without hesitation he released his waist-belt and laid it out over the flat shelf edge, with the daggers’ hilts turned toward the water. He pulled the loose volume of his doublet and cape over his head, tossing them aside, revealing vambrace guards of leather and metal strapped to his forearms, and another knife sheathed along the inner side. He turned his fist up and unbuckled the straps.

While she stood wide-eyed on the last step, he untied his hair and released his breechcloth. His back was to her as he stood for a moment, then lowered himself with a soft groan and a stiff move to sit naked on the edge, his bared arms and chest and loins awash with shadowy blue light—flawless, each muscle and limb formed in perfect harmony, the skin of his back and shoulders smooth and unscarred under the black fall of his hair. He paused only an instant, watching the steam, and then slid into the water.

He went fully under in the purple depths, and then rose like some lost water god, sending waves and ripples to the walls as he shook back his head and swept his hands over his face and hair.

He caught the shelf with one hand, turning to her. His blackened eye gave his face a strange asymmetry in the failing light, as if half of a pagan mask had been painted upon his temple. He tilted back his head and opened his arms on the steamy water with a fierce sound of pleasure.

"Heaven," he said, with the vapor rising around him, his voice echoing in the vault. He looked toward her, unsmiling. "Come join me. This is as close as I will ever come to it."