confidential agent, mistress to two Kings, and more. In later life she had chosen
obscurity as the companion of the Dowager Duchess of Wessex, herself a woman
who shunned the limelight. Even so, only the veriest of green-heads would hold
Dame Alecto at naught.
„I had thought you in Bath with Her Grace of Wessex,“
Lady Roxbury managed to say. She lay back against the mounded lace-trimmed
pillows, trembling with the effort of showing an untroubled countenance to her
visitor.
„And so I might yet be, did you not need me more,“ Dame Alecto replied. She
unpinned her wide, plume-trimmed scarlet bonnet and set it upon the bench at the
foot of the bed next to a slightly-battered hatbox done up in coarse string. Her hair,
titian in her youth, had faded almost to pink with age, but was still elaborately
dressed beneath its rich lace cap. She studied Lady Roxbury intently through eyes
that Time had washed to silver as she unclasped her wool traveling cape and laid it
beside the bonnet.
Lady Roxbury managed a bleak smile. „I shall soon need nothing at all,“ she said
wryly, „or so my physicians tell me. I wonder who shall have Mooncoign when I am
gone?“
„You would be better employed in wondering who will do that which you ought
to have done, when you are not here to do it,“ Dame Alecto snapped. „Who will
take your place, Lady Roxbury?“
Such plain speaking was not something her ladyship cared for at any time, and
still less at a time like mis. Ignoring the effort it cost her, she forced arch indifference
into her voice as she replied.
„I dare say Wessex will find someone. But you have not come to tease me
because my dying releases your mistress’s grandson from his betrothal?“ – It
suddenly occurred to Lady Roxbury that, though Bath was a. day’s journey away,
she had received her death-sentence from Dr. Falconer only hours before. Even if
the doctor had talked, there was no way that the Dowager Duchess could have
known of it and dispatched her henchwoman hither. Lady Roxbury struggled upright
against her pillows, groping for the tasseled cord that would summon Knoyle to her.
„Your betrothal is a minor matter, beside the Great Work that you have left
undone. Or do you forget who you truly hold these lands of, Lady Roxbury?“ Dame
Alecto’s gaze was silver and ice; a formidable thing to face. But it was a formidable
woman who faced it.
„I hold them of the King. I am Roxbury,“ the bed’s occupant replied. But the
bellpull slipped unrung from her pale jeweled fingers. Whatever was afoot, she
would face it herself, and not spread gossip to the servants’ hall.
„And have you sworn no other oath?“ Dame Alecto demanded, still standing at
the foot of the great bed as if she would summon Lady Roxbury from it.
It was on the tip of her ladyship’s tongue to end this wearisome interview when
sudden images rose up unbidden behind her eyes: Midsummer’s Eve four years ago.
She had been one-and-twenty, and Mooncoign’s steward had summoned her from
Town – had brought her, over her protests, to the Sarcen Stones that lay at the edge
of her land, to show her to the Oldest People, and to take her promise that Roxbury
and Mooncoign would always do what must be done for the People and the Land.
She came back to herself to meet Dame Alecto’s gaze. There in the moonlight she
had promised, but who would take care of her people and her land once she had
gone? For the first time Lady Roxbury regretted her death as more than her own
loss. It was a mystery no longer as to why Dame Alecto was here or how she had
known to come. The Oldest People had avenues of information unknown to the
human world – but even they could not change the appointed time of one’s dying.
„If you can tell me how I may fulfill that oath, I shall be indebted to you,“ Lady
Roxbury said dryly.
„You must summon another to take your place,“ Dame Alecto answered.
She moved from the foot of the bed to its side, to fling back the heavy velvet
coverlet and draw Lady Roxbury from her deathbed. She tottered and would have
fallen without Dame Alecto’s strong support The room spun and reeled about
Mooncoign’s mistress, and the young Marchioness trembled as if in the grip of an
arctic chill. The edges of her vision darkened and curled like the edges of a painting
thrown upon a fire to burn. She barely noticed as Dame Alecto half-led, half-carried
her to a chair before the fire and seated her in it, wrapping her in her heavy winter
chamber-robe, its silk velvet folds still smelling faintly of cedar and lavender from its
months in the clothes press.
„Mooncoign is not in my gift,“ Lady Roxbury protested. Dame Alecto had
poured out a cup of the cordial that Dr. Falconer had left her, now Lady Roxbury
held it to her lips and breathed in the strong scents of brandy and laudanum. She
sipped at it and felt the pain in her chest recede.
„Nevertheless, you may choose your successor – if you dare. Look into the fire,“
Dame Alecto commanded, „and tell me what you see.“
Gypsy foolishness, Lady Roxbury thought scornfully, but spellbound by the force
of the older woman’s personality, made no overt demurral. She stared obediently
into the pale translucent flames on the hearth. At last she was warm, no, more than
warm, hot, burning, a creature of fire –
„Creature of fire, this charge I lay – “ There were others in the room, standing
about them in a circle, chanting, their voices blending into the thin music of the
names –
„Tell me what you see,“ Dame Alecto repeated.
The fire shimmered before Lady Roxbury’s eyes, and to her feverish mind the
flames became a portal, a window, the curtains a stage upon which fire-phantoms
capered –
The tumbrel lurched and swayed, moving slowly through the streets of Paris.
All about the cart the mobile surged, jeering and catcalling, come to see the
Marquise de Rochberré brought low at last. Sarah gazed out at them icily, as if
she wore silks and jewels instead of a filthy calico shift; as if her head were
elegantly dressed with feathers and lace instead of shorn nakedly bare –
„We can do nothing for her, whose pride was greater even than yours. Look
again,“ Dame Alecto commanded.
White Bird Dancing, a warrior of the Cree, gazed down at the pale skin village
from which her father had stolen her as a babe. Around her a dozen of her brother
warriors lay concealed, awaiting the signal that would commence the raid –
„That one has the spirit that we need, but we cannot reach her – nor do I think
she would help us if we could. Again.“
The deck of a ship, the wooden railing salt-harsh and slick beneath her hands.
She was Sarah Cunningham of Maryland, and in a few moments the ship that
bore her would dock in Bristol Harbor. There was no one she could turn to, no
one who could help her –
„That one,“ said Dame Alecto decisively, and the fire-pictures dissolved, leaving
Lady Roxbury blinking dizzily, me jumbled memories of half-a-hundred Sarahs
inhabiting all the worlds of What Might Be capering through her brain.
„What have you done to me?“ she demanded at last. „You have bewitched me!
Pictures in the fire – I do not have time for such shabby hoaxes!“ That former
Sarah’s life lay like a shadow in her brain; the unimaginable childhood in an
independent America that was not a Protectorate of the Crown; the self so like
Sarah’s own and the temperament so different.
„As much a hoax as the oath you swore among the stones,“ Dame Alecto said
imperturbably. „You must summon this other Sarah to you, Lady Roxbury. She
rides not to fortune, but to Death, do we not interfere – and so we may take her
without breaking the Great Law. You, child, will take her death, and she – “
„Will have my life? Her? That Puritan churchmouse?“ Lady Roxbury demanded
indignantly. She gasped for air, choking on the struggle and then surrendering to
another spasm of coughing. It seemed to her that she could feel her life ebbing with
every wracking spasm – and with her life, all the things that she might have done,
ought to have done; the things that needed desperately to be done
„That child? She will never do what I might have done!“ Lady Roxbury cried
breathlessly.
„She will do all that you could have – and more. She will save England – if you
have the courage to bring her to us,“ Dame Alecto said.
Lady Roxbury lay back against the ornate brocade of the chair. Behind her closed
eyes the room seemed to spin; she could feel Grandma Panthea’s painted gaze
upon her, and felt the weakness pulling her on a blood-dimmed tide toward an
eternal starlit ocean. Eternal peace, eternal rest, but not yet, not yet…
She raised her head proudly.
„Say what you want of my life, madame, but never say I lacked courage!“ It was
madness to follow this madwoman, but fate had left her no choice. She was
Roxbury; her death would leave no promises unkept.
Dame Alecto nodded approvingly. „You must go at once, and alone. Take your
fastest chaise and drive like Jehu to that place where you swore your oath. You must
reach it by sunset. Can you find it again?“
Lady Roxbury was a notable whispter, audacious to the point of suicide. Her
cattle were prime blood-and-bone, the best to be had – by money or favor – in all of
Europe.
Yet such a race with the sun as Dame Alecto proposed was a wager even she
would have hesitated to accept. Miles of narrow country lanes separated her from
the Sarcen Stones, and the day was far advanced.
„I could – did I have the strength to hold the ribbons.“ The admission of
weakness was made with bitter reluctance. „If that is what you wish, madame, then
you have come too late.“
„Would you have listened had I come earlier?“ Dame Alecto said.
Lady Roxbury did not answer, but she knew Dame Alecto’s accusation was just;
until Dr. Falconer’s visit this morning she had still believed, deep in her heart, that
some special providence would allow her to escape her death sentence. She watched
as Dame Alecto turned away and undid the strings of the hatbox she had brought
with her. From among its contents Dame Alecto selected a small silver flask. It
glittered in the pale afternoon sunlight.
„This will give you your health again for sufficient time to do what must be done.
There is a price, as for all such tampering; the drink will consume all the hours left to
you and distill them into this brief span. When it is over, there will be nothing left. Do
you understand?“
„Give it to me.“ Lady Roxbury’s voice was steady as she held out her hand. She
closed her fingers about the flask’s fluted body, and seemed to feel the power of
what it contained burning against her palm. She closed her eyes again, fighting the
veils of darkness that danced across her sight.
„I will leave you now. And I trust Your Ladyship will pass a pleasant afternoon.“
Alecto Kennet’s voice was neutral.
Lady Roxbury did not answer. From behind closed eyes she listened to the
sounds of fabric upon fabric as Dame Alecto donned cloak and cape. After a
moment Lady Roxbury heard the door to her room open, then close, as the woman
took her leave. Whatever came next, Dame Alecto had no part in it.
She does not care for me at all. The unexpected revelation gave Lady Roxbury
momentary pause. The Marchioness of Roxbury was not one used to considering
the feelings of others, and never had been in all the brief quarter-century of her life.
But soon she would be Roxbury no longer, and the title would pass, not to her child,
nor even to the Grown, but to a stranger snatched from Might-Have-Been – or so
Dame Alecto said.
And I am fool enough to believe her.
To believe – or simply to snatch at anything that offered escape.
Lady Roxbury lifted the brandy decanter from the side table and splashed a
half-inch of dark amber liquid into the glass in her hand. Before she could change her
mind, she uncapped the flask and upended it, discharging its contents into her glass.
The fluid was dark and syrupy. It swirled slowly through the brandy, turning the
liquor blood-red and faintly iridescent. With only a moment’s hesitation, Lady
Roxbury raised the glass and gulped its contents down.
It was as though she had drunk the flames of the hearth. A hot bright fire beat
through her blood, driving out the heavy giddiness and fever-chill of her illness. She
gasped at the strangeness of it, and then drew a deep breath for the first time in a
fortnight. Her chesj; was clear. Her lungs were whole.