What he said surprised her. A frown twitched his craggy brow: “You were on your way out, no one knew, and you came back for a wetling.”
She felt the hair rise on the back of her neck, the blood drain with the rage from her face. “We are a reckoning folk and warlike, but we are not Sparta,” she said coldly. “We turn back—even for the wetlings.”
“At your own cost?”
“They depend upon the currency of our charity,” she retorted. “They have no other wealth.”
The bolt flew, but in Bloodburn it seemed to be swallowed up in a fathomless carelessness, though in Kinloss it struck a nerve; the woman turned her cheek into the child’s crown of hair and hid her face from Margaret.
“Why did you try to go,” he asked after a moment, “if you are so sure of his coming?”
Here it comes
. Her fist closed; blood sang in her ears. “Do you know duty—and, if not, how could you understand?”
He got up; he was taller even than she. She had the impression of some Egyptian obelisk—a totem of a death religion—being raised in her face, its cold cultic shadow making her pupils jump wide open in her eyes. She saw his hand draw back, but she had the time to note—there seemed to be an awful lot of time in that single moment—that he did it without rage, without even a sense of pleasure. The whole lack of personality in the cruel will put the blood back in her face.
She caught the hand before it struck her. The blow shocked through her and it was all she could do to stay on her heels, but she stopped the blow before it could strike her and something sang golden and bloodily in her heart. The big fist under her hand clenched, hard as stone; she could feel the old stark veins pulsing under her fingers.
“Do not you ever strike at me again,” she murmured.
Bloodburn looked down into her eyes, his eyes passionless, fixed, his heavy face a mask for whatever grinding will was moving beneath. Whatever he thought of her, whether of scorn or respect, she could not see, only after a moment he took his hand out of hers and put it back at his side.
“Get into the house,” he told Kinloss, “and take Lady Margaret with you.”
He left deliberately, following the garden path back the way Margaret had come. In silence she and Kinloss watched him go. She knew she could make a break for it then, Kinloss would not stop her, but by now Bloodburn was on the alert and she knew the chances of her reaching the nearby wood and some measure of cover were slim. She turned in beside Kinloss.
They did not speak of the cub nor of Margaret’s capture, nor even of what Bloodburn meant to do with her. On silent feet, with a little swishing of her skirts, Kinloss led the way back into the darkened halls of the house—a house not unlike Rupert’s, Margaret noted now that she was not mazed with sleeplessness and pain. The lady of the house led the way into a little bower not unlike Margaret’s. Hesitant at the door, Margaret watched Kinloss cross to a low crib and lay the child down: the beautiful lean figure, crowned with light and golden hair, caught in a mirror-shard of one of those most tender moments, touched her sympathetically. Unlike Margaret, Kinloss had known no respite, no brief breath of companionship, let alone love. She knew at once the woman would not accept pity; Margaret felt she no longer had it in herself to offer that. She did not like strangers, as a rule, but she stepped outside of herself and into the room, shutting the door behind her.
“He was angry with me when I grabbed at him. What a little prince!” She strode to the mother’s side and looked down at the bloom of baby face. “I was not great enough to touch him, in his mind.”
Kinloss smiled. “He shows signs of pride even now.”
“A congenital trait of humanity,” said Margaret, goaded by a spasm of philosophy.
Kinloss stood away from the crib, motioning for Margaret to follow. “He will not go to sleep if he can see us. Will you take a change of clothing? You are much alike to me in size and stature.”
Margaret watched the woman cross the room through bars of sunlight and pause, hesitant, waiting for an answer. An enormous wardrobe loomed in the background—full, no doubt, of gowns fit for a lady, a lady fit to be queen. Without looking at herself she was conscious of her own wild appearance, of tattered reds and golds hanging about her like the plumage of a bird of paradise when it has been blown by unchancy winds out of next world over: her leather bodice showed through, her hair was tousled from her tumble in the rosebush, and her jewellery—which had not been taken from her—shone out fiercely against a skin darkened by dirt.
“For a little while,” she replied, “until the War-wolf comes.”
The crushed sapphires betrayed the longing of the caged bird before they were quenched in the shadow of the downturned head. Kinloss strode to the wardrobe and flung back the door panels; a scent of lavender wafted across the room.
“Come, you are d-darker than I am,” said Kinloss with a telltale stutter. “Will purple do, do you think?”
Margaret murmured something discreet and polite—she could not afterward recall what—but with some surprise she watched the woman pull out a linen gown the colour of a cyclamen’s blood, which could, if Dammerung had been arguing it, have been called a sort of purple, but it was not the purple she had been expecting. A second later she put her well bred shoulder to the surprise and shoved it out of the way.
“This robe has seen better days.” She tugged hard at the cord toggles of her rags and flung it off her; a cool breeze swept through her thin underdress. “I am sorry to see it go—it was a handsome thing, once. I will give this back,” she added as Kinloss passed her the rouge gown, “as soon as the War-wolf comes with my things.”
But Kinloss put out her delicate chin and shook her head. “It is a small thing,” she admitted in a little, hard voice, “but I do what I can. Keep the dress and do not bother yourself if you cannot return it to me.”
Who would remember you, that is what you must be thinking.
Not as tall as her husband, Margaret was still taller than Lady Kinloss and could look a little downward into the cold, proud, crushed blue eyes and see into the face of a woman who had once been a great lady. Her hands slowed on the open neck of the dress. She had raised her foot to slip it through the hole—she put it down again, gently. She put out one hand and found the other’s shoulder: it was an aged, thin shoulder, and the hollow of the other’s collar-bone seemed to empty into her back.
“You have seen hardship,” she said boldly, “and, I think, some tears. Do not speak to me of doing me a little thing. All the great men of the Honours are turned out in full regalia to do a great thing for the likes of
you
. You owe us nothing. We lay our heads at your feet.”
One pale shard of eye, watery and swimming in the colour of a chicory-blossom, hung fixed on Margaret’s gaze; she saw distinctly the pupil swell open with emotion—anger, perhaps, or was it the terror of a hope kindled in the distance? The pale lips, lips that caught suddenly on the sharp corners of words and stumbled, opened in a pink curl, a sudden glint of teeth…
Curse it!
There was a harsh knock at the door. Impulsively Margaret thrust her feet into the dress and hauled it up over her shoulders.
Dost eat? Dost eat a thing?
she wondered vehemently as the fabric skimmed over her knees and stuck, obstinately, at her thighs.
To put a little healthy fat on your bones would be to do a little thing for me, and no mistake!
With brute force and coaxing that would have warmed Dammerung’s wily heart, she got the gown on and stood with her back to the wall as Kinloss crossed to the door and fiddled with the bolt.
The gap at her back where the buttons had been left undone was very chilly.
A stranger at the door said clearly, “My lordship sends for the Lady Margaret without dawdle, madam.”
“She will be right out.” Kinloss shut the door. Her face was white again. Margaret saw one of her hands—the other was lost in the folds of her gown—was shaking badly. Her own stomach clenched.
Shore up. A little longer and it will be over.
“I heard,” she said aloud, lifting her chin. “Do up my buttons and I will go at once. And—thank you.”
The woman went round and stood at her back, her cold fingers tugging and wrestling with the little pearl buttons. There seemed to be a lot, or else her hands were slipping at every twist. Margaret could feel the tension thrumming in Kinloss and listened in the silence to an ominous, dark music that the other’s soul was singing like a dirge.
“I can guess,” her voice was limned and hard with steel, “by your silence that these summons bode no good.”
Kinloss could not speak, and in her silence Margaret felt her first pang of terror.
Shore up. No panic; panic will blind you from a way out. Shore up your defences.
She grasped the lower edge of her bodice under the linen and gave it a tug and a twist to get it back into position. She did not say good-bye—to say good-bye was to admit defeat—but went quietly to the door with her heart’s blood hot in her neck and went out without a look back.
The corridor was dark and lit with only a little sunlight at the far end.
What have I to do with the wicked? What good am I among them, that I should walk with them or perish with them? I scorn them. I would crush them under my heel—if my heel were big enough. As the Lord lives
, she took a deep breath and did not let it out until it had rearranged into their proper positions all the organs in her middle,
I will detest their lies and habits forever. Get me from them. They have nothing to do with you or your ways, and so they have nothing to do with me. In your rough and ready compassion, pluck me from among them like a brand from the fire.
Her lips curled; her eyelids fluttered hard in a sudden impulse to shut against the bitter irony.
I am standing a little too close to the wicked. I will smell of smoke when you smite them. I hope you do not mind the scent of it.
She was taken to what appeared to be a study, lined with bookshelves, with the windows facing advantageously south. There were no lamps lit. In the half-light and gloom Margaret stopped in the doorway and looked warily around, first for Bloodburn and then for a way out.
There was no way out. The servant stood directly behind her and she stood in the only doorway that opened on the room. Bloodburn was standing at one end of the desk with his arms at his sides; facing him was a man between them in age—he could not be much more or much less than forty—with black, white-grizzled hair and a tough, homeless face. He looked sullenly round as Margaret stepped into view. For a moment their eyes met: she saw an answering flicker of surprise in the man’s face before the eyes were dropped again toward the floor.
“Get in here,” said Bloodburn.
She took one more step inside the room, her hand put surreptitiously back with a finger in the doorframe lest the servant should choose to jerk the door shut, and looked with a faint air of offence from one man to the other. “Why, what is this? A tea party?”
“Do you know this man?” Hol demanded. “Look at me, for I will know if you lie:
do you know this man?
Was he in with you on your ill-planned attempt at escape?”
To tell the truth was easy. “He was not in with me for anything. I have never seen the man before in my life.”
The man winced, his brow clenching. With the movement the sunlight showed up a conspicuous discolouration of the flesh between his brows in the shape of a T. Anxiety shivered through her flesh.
Did I say the wrong thing?
“Have you not? Perhaps you have not. Huw Daggerman is not a man easy to miss in the crowd.”
“A pretty name.” She recovered herself as quickly as possible. “What has this to do with me? I am come from Capys and the Mares: I do not know your people. What is the meaning of this?”
“When my men went to repair the glass you broke they found him in the chamber rifling through my possessions. It is not the first time he has been caught thieving.” The man Huw Daggerman’s eyes flickered upward, still sullen, but certain of his fate—it made his countenance awful. “Mayhap it will be his last.”
“One job I have left,” the man said, taking the time to toy with a little smile, “and that is to cheat you of my scream when I die. I never scream.”
Caesar’s face cracked, like white marble, into sardonic pleasure. “Man is a creating god when it comes to ways of making other men suffer.”
“I would not punish him for a thief,” Margaret broke in. Her stomach was betraying her with a sick, uneasy feeling. Bloodburn swung his head toward her, grey, bullish brows lowered. Huw Daggerman did not take his eyes from Bloodburn. “Rather punish him for a fool. Who comes to a broken window—itself already conspicuous—and says, ‘Oh yes, it would be a good idea to plunder here.’ What rot! Do you make that mark on his brow for thieving? Give him a smart one on the hand and a slap on the back of his head—there are no brains in the latter, it would seem: it will do him no harm.”
Bloodburn’s hand moved to a walking stick that lay across his desk. His face, gone suddenly too like Rupert’s, spoke murder. “No one,” he breathed, “least of all a woman, tells me what I will and will not do, nor councils me in aught.”
Margaret saw Huw Daggerman shift his shoulder toward her out of the corner of her eye, but her gaze was on the walking stick, swinging slowly in the air, a moment from pulling back to strike her.
“I warned you not to strike at me again.” It was with an effort that she kept her voice level. Those old shoulders did not appear to have lost any of their sureness: it would not take long to beat her to death.
“There are worse ways to go,” said Bloodburn.
“See here—” Daggerman blurted, quite out of his station.
Bloodburn turned and struck the man a cruel blow to the jaw. With a grunt he went over and down across a chair, breaking one of the chair’s legs, and landed hard on his side as his hands were tied at his back. Impulsively Margaret started forward but stopped, conscious of the walking stick wavering between them.