Gillian clapped a hand to the girl’s mouth, stealing an anxious look around them. But the garden was silent except for a faint breeze that rustled the bushes and trees, the distant cry of a nightjar.
Nanette pried her fingers away. Although she appeared much distressed, she managed to speak in a quieter tone. “That witch-hunter is supposed to be dead. Agatha Ferrers was especially charged with the mission. She set out after him weeks ago.”
“Obviously Agatha failed. I assure you Aristide is very much alive. As for Agatha, I leave it to you to determine what must have happened to her.”
Nanette shuddered and crossed herself. “Poor soul.” The girl immediately brightened. “But we should not grieve for her. The Silver Rose will resurrect her when the time comes.”
“Er—yes.” Gillian wrapped her arms tightly about herself and shifted her feet. She was never entirely comfortable when Nanette talked like this, her eyes agleam with an almost fanatical enthusiasm.
The girl cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive sparrow. “Oh, Gillian,” she said sadly. “You don’t believe?”
“I am not sure,” Gillian hedged. “I want to. But the promises that you tell me this sorceress makes seem so incredible. Spells that will restore youth and beauty, bring one back from the dead. Even the Dark Queen is unable to do that.”
“The queen is as nothing compared to the Silver Rose. She can perform miracles. I have seen her do it myself. Only the other day, the child of one of the women at our camp, a little girl no more than two, fell into the pond and drowned. The Silver Rose kissed her, breathed life back into her. I saw it myself.”
“Truly?” Gillian faltered.
Nanette nodded vigorously. “That is why you must continue to have faith.”
“It would be easier if I was ever permitted to meet her, at least to know who she is.”
“That will come in time,” Nanette soothed. “The lady is very cautious about who she trusts. I have been telling her all about you, how clever you are, how you were the only one who was kind to me when I ended up with child and was driven from this castle in disgrace.”
She tossed her head, preening a little. “Of course I was immediately allowed into the inner circle because I offered the ultimate proof of loyalty, the sacrifice of my babe.”
“I can hardly offer any such proof as that,” Gillian remarked bitterly. Over the years, the Dark Queen’s potions had helped Gillian rid herself of a number of unwanted infants. The last abortion over two years ago had been a particularly bloody and painful one. Gillian had thought she would die. The midwife who attended her told her how lucky she was. Her womb was damaged beyond repair. She would never conceive another child.
Gillian supposed she should have been grateful. And yet those evenings she sat alone, neglected and forgotten while the other ladies attended some court revel, Gillian found herself thinking of all those small lives that were lost to her, imagining how old this child or that one might be, if she had permitted it to live.
“Was it hard for you, Nanette?” she asked softly. “To leave your little boy to die?”
“It wasn’t a little boy to me. It wasn’t a babe, it wasn’t anything but a devil, a curse forced into my womb when I was raped by that drunken guard.” Nanette’s face contorted and she looked as though she was about to cry. Her nose dripped again and she rubbed it fiercely.
“Forget about all that,” she sniffed. “Just tell me why that witch-hunter was here tonight. What would the Dark Queen want with the likes of him?”
“I am not entirely sure. I had to listen outside the door and it was difficult to hear everything. But I believe she means to help him in his hunt for the Silver Rose.”
“Scelerat!” Nanette exclaimed and spat.
Gillian leaped back. “Nanette! That is disgusting.”
“No, disgusting is a witch using the services of a witch-hunter.”
“This is not the first time the queen has done so. She will use anyone who can serve her ends.” Gillian expelled a frustrated sigh. “The queen is so beleaguered trying to thwart the ambitions of the duc de Guise, she would not even have noticed the Silver Rose if that Paillard girl had not tried to kill her. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Our lady deplored Lucie’s actions as much as you do. The girl simply got overzealous and acted on her own.” Nanette shrugged. “She paid the price for her folly.”
“As we all may well do,” Gillian fretted. “Stirring up the Dark Queen is like—like prodding a sleeping tigress, and then if you pair her with Simon Aristide—”
“You worry too much. As soon as I report this back to the lady, I assure you the witch-hunter will be eliminated. Do you have any idea where he is at the moment?”
Gillian hesitated, assailed by a sudden memory. During their brief liaison, she had always had difficulty persuading Simon to spend the entire night with her. But she could remember how pleasant it had felt to wake up with his strong arms about her. For such a ruthless man, he could be so amazingly gentle.
She sighed, shaking off the recollection. If their positions were reversed and Simon saw her as a threat, she doubted he’d have any hesitation at all about seeing her struck down. There was nothing personal in any of this. One did what one must. Simon would understand that as well as anyone.
“Aristide is . . . is staying at the Brass Horse Inn.”
“Lucie’s old home?” Nanette laughed. “That’s perfect. If the witch-hunter is destroyed there, it will be a fitting tribute to her memory.”
“Knowing Simon, I doubt he’ll remain in one place for long.”
“We’ll find him and finish him wherever he is. There will be no mistakes this time, I promise you. So stop worrying.” Nanette gave her arm a hard squeeze and beamed up at her with that glazed look on her face. “Our day is fast coming, Gillian. When none of us need walk in fear of any man, nothing but power and glory for the Silver Rose and all her devotees.”
“Yes.” Gillian tried to smile, stifle the feeling she might merely be trading bondage to one witch for another. But it hardly mattered if she was. She had gone too far to turn back now.
Chapter Ten
THE MORNING SUN FILTERED PAST THE SHUTTERS, PAINTING stripes of warmth across the bed. Miri stirred and rolled over, half-expecting Necromancer to clamber atop her chest and assault her face with the rough lap of his tongue. But as she forced her eyes open and focused on the room’s bare stone walls, she groaned, remembering where she was.
She could have used the comfort of her cat’s warm purring presence. From the moment she had crossed the threshold of the Brass Horse Inn, she had found it a bleak place and would be glad to be gone from here, no matter what dangers lay on the road ahead.
Easing back the covers, she struggled to a sitting position and stretched, feeling a little stiff. The bed had been comfortable enough, but she had passed an uneasy night. Thankfully she had not been beset by one of her strange dreams. No harrowing nightmares about palaces overrun with salamanders and monstrous-sized chess pieces, the shattered white knight left broken and bleeding.
But she had had a difficult time dozing off, far too conscious of the man just outside her door. She wondered how Simon had fared last night, stretched out on the floor, across the room’s threshold. She felt guilty he had been obliged to do that and resolved not to allow such a thing again. After all, she had been the one to insist upon accompanying him, overriding all his objections. She ought to bear her share of the difficulties and inconveniences of the situation. And yet, perhaps Simon had been wise to put the barrier of the door between them, far wiser than she.
She had seen the longing in his gaze, had been fully alive to the danger of it, the more so because she had felt her own pulse quicken in response. That tender kiss he had pressed upon her brow last night had affected her as deeply as his fiery parting embrace at the cottage, although in a far different fashion.
She had been raised in an atmosphere of love that had easily found expression in
physical demonstrations of affection, warm hugs, busses on the cheek. Despite the kinship she felt with Necromancer, the other creatures of her forest home, she had not realized how starved she’d been for human contact until Simon had erupted back into her life.
But her craving for intimacy went even deeper with him, becoming something more primal. Simon’s hungry gaze, the mere caress of his fingers down her cheek had been enough to arouse womanly urges she had allowed to remain dormant inside of her for so long. The ache for a man’s touch, the warmth of his mouth on hers, the hot, hard feel of his hands exploring her most intimate places as he tumbled her onto the bed.
Although Miri’s face warmed at the thought, she wasn’t ashamed of the feeling. Simon was a strong, healthy male. She was a female still in the prime of her childbearing years. Pen two such creatures up together and the urge to mate was natural. As a true daughter of the earth, she knew this.
But as her gaze fell upon the locket she had left resting atop her folded breeches, Miri wondered why she had never experienced any such natural urges with Martin. A troubling question and one she did not feel up to examining too closely. At least not this early in the day.
She stumbled out of bed and set about the task of performing her morning toilette and getting dressed. She had slept only in her shirt and the dawn air was cool against her bare legs. There was some fresh water left in the ewer and she splashed it over her face, washing the sleep from her eyes. Tucking the locket down inside her shirt, Miri struggled into the rest of her discarded clothes. She started to braid her hair when a knock sounded.
Miri tiptoed over to the door. Before she had a chance to call out, Simon’s voice echoed through the panel. “Miri, open up. It’s me.”
She made haste to unlatch the door and swung it open, catching her breath at the sight of him. He looked haggard, as though he hadn’t slept all night, his face pale beneath his beard. But there was something else about his face, the grim set to his mouth, the darkness clouding his gaze that filled her with foreboding.
“Simon, what’s happened?” she asked anxiously as he stalked into the room, closing the door. “What’s wrong?”
———
MIRI SANK DOWN on the edge of the bed as Simon finished relating the events of the previous night, the details of his meeting with the woman who had been a figure of nightmare to Miri ever since her childhood.
Catherine de Medici, the Dark Queen. Miri shivered, rubbing her arms. Although Catherine had been her family’s longtime adversary, she had only ever come into close contact with the queen once, that fateful August Miri had gone to stay with Gabrielle in Paris.
She had accompanied her sister to a tournament held on the lawns of the Louvre, the courtly display of arms nothing but an elaborate façade, masking Catherine’s plot to dispose of Captain Nicolas Remy, the man who had eventually become Gabrielle’s husband.
The queen’s attempt on Remy’s life was but one more incident in the havoc that Catherine had wrought in Miri’s family over the years. Although she had once claimed friendship with Evangeline Cheney, the queen had employed one of her seductive courtesans to seduce Louis Cheney, breaking his wife’s heart. And it had been Catherine who had first set the witch-hunters upon Faire Isle, seeking to recover the incriminating pair of gloves she had used to murder the Huguenot queen, Jeanne of Navarre. Lovely but deadly apparel that had nearly succeeded in killing Gabrielle as well.
But the worst thing that Catherine had done was something Miri had only witnessed in her dreams. She had been tormented by nightmares of St. Bartholomew’s Day long before the massacre had ever happened, visions of the Dark Queen uncorking her miasma, using her dark arts to incite an entire city to hatred and a lust for blood.
Three years later when Miri had finally seen Catherine in the flesh, she had been expecting someone far more sinister, not a plump, matronly looking woman. There was no denying the queen had a dark aura, eyes that were far too piercing, but Miri had found something pathetic about Catherine as well. The queen was possessed of strength, intelligence, and extraordinary perception, gifts that could have been put to better use than a life wasted in bitterness and a lust for power.
But Miri’s pity for the woman did not blind her to how dangerous Catherine could be. She raised troubled eyes to Simon.
“My God. Why—why didn’t you wake me when those men came to fetch you?”
Simon was availing himself of the last of the water in the ewer in an effort to wash the grit and weariness from his face. “What? And have you dragged off to face the Dark Queen as well? Especially when I had no idea what the she-devil was after.”
Miri shoved to her feet, saying with a thread of impatience, “I thought we had settled this matter of our partnership last night. You have got to stop protecting me!”
As he reached for the sword he had left propped in the corner, she demanded, “That is what you were doing, isn’t it? The reason you went alone to meet with Catherine.”
Simon paused in girding on his sword to glance at her with a slight frown. “Yes, why else?”
“I—I don’t know.” Miri searched his face, tried to dismiss the dark suspicion that nagged at her, but it refused to be quelled. “It is just that you worked for the Dark Queen once before.”
“That was Master Le Vis’s choice, never mine.” Simon buckled his belt with a sharp tug. “Believe me, I would just as soon steer clear of Madame Catherine as you would.”
“I’d like to believe that, Simon. But you have not exactly been forthcoming with me. I sensed as soon as we entered this inn that there was something amiss here and yet you chose to tell me nothing of Lucie Paillard’s tragic history.”
“There didn’t seem to be any point,” Simon began impatiently, only to check himself with a heavy sigh. “I am sorry. You are right. I should have told you. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess I am just too accustomed to being alone, keeping my own counsel.”
He stalked over to her, gripping her by the shoulders. “Miri, I promise you I am not engaged in any plot with the Dark Queen. If that were the case, I would not have told you anything about my meeting with her, would I?”
“No. No, you wouldn’t have.” Miri conceded.
“I completely deplore having anything to do with Catherine de Medici, but I had little choice but to agree to her involvement. And she might prove of some use. The Silver Rose is her enemy as well. She wants to see the woman’s evil activities brought to an end as much as we do.”
“No, I fear what the queen wants most is to gain possession of that Book of Shadows.”
“And I mean to do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Simon squeezed her shoulders gently. “Miri, I realize how hard it has been for you to place any faith in me again, but I swear to you that I’ll find a way to thwart both of these witches, the Dark Queen and the Silver Rose.”
Miri nodded, even managed a slight smile, but she insisted, “We will find a way. All I ask is that the next time you are summoned to any mysterious meeting, you remember I have a stake in this, too. Since you have told me what happened to Lucie, I am more afraid for Carole than ever. I can’t speak for Lucie, but I can tell you that Carole is only a desperate, unhappy girl. How is this sorceress able to do this, lure such—such normal young women away from their homes, bewitch them into committing such fearsome acts?”
“I don’t know,” Simon replied. “Lucie’s case was a bit different from what you have told me of the Moreau girl. She was much doted upon by her parents, even after she got herself with child by some young man she refused to name. Gaspard Paillard offered a considerable dowry to get her a husband, an older man, an earnest and respectable miller who was willing to marry her despite everything, but Lucie would have none of it. It was then that her father lost all patience and threatened to keep her locked in her room until she came to her senses, but her mother, Colette—”
Simon broke off at the mention of the woman’s name, his mouth thinning as though at some unhappy recolle
ction.
“Simon, what it is?” Miri asked.
“Nothing. I just remembered something I have to do before we leave here. You finish getting ready while I—” He grimaced. “While I keep a promise I never should have made.”
———
MIRI FINISHED doing up her hair, tucking the braids beneath the concealment of her hat. Simon had instructed her to wait for him in the room while he set about the difficult task of informing the Paillards their only child was dead. But Miri found herself unable to do so.
As soon as she stepped out into the hall, she was assailed by the sound of a woman wailing, the voice full of such shrill anguish, it pierced straight through Miri’s heart. She hastened down the stairs, only to freeze on the threshold of the taproom.
Madame Paillard doubled over, clutching her stomach as though she had sustained a mortal blow, her face streaked with tears. Her husband made no move to go to her aid. Hunched into one of the chairs, Monsieur Paillard sat and stared at nothing, a hollow expression on his face. It was Simon who attempted to place a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder.
Madame Paillard turned on him with a feral cry. She dealt Simon such a ringing slap across his cheek, it caused Miri to wince. The woman fell upon him, pounding him with her fists, raining blows and curses.
“Damn you! Damn you to hell.”
Miri pressed her hand to her mouth, expecting him to pin the woman’s arms, thrust her away from him. He was so much stronger, he could easily have done so. Instead, he stoically accepted the abuse as Madame Paillard sobbed and railed. “Why d-didn’t you do s-something? You—you are a witch-hunter. You’re supposed to protect us from evil. If you had s-stopped those terrible women from ever coming here, l-luring my girl away, she would never have—never have—Lucie! Lucie!”
Her arms grew slack, her rage dissolving into incoherent sobs. As she collapsed against Simon, his arms came around her, awkward at first, then more tenderly. He cradled her head against his shoulder, mumbling something incoherent, his face a dark mirror of the woman’s pain.