Part 1 (2/2)
By morning, the state of the s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sengers was one of abject misery. Every roll of the vessel drew groans from those lying prostrate on their pallets. The air trapped in the makes.h.i.+ft sleeping accommodations smelled sourly of sickness as Arnault made his staggering way to the little princess's curtained alcove.
Here he found Bishop Narve and Freu Ingabritt, the little Maid's favorite lady-in-waiting, attempting to ease the child's sufferings with infusions of herbs and other folk remedies. The elderly prelate was cradling the little girl in his arms with a grandfather's tenderness, singing softly to her in the Norse tongue.
The simple rhymes and melodies were those of folksong and lullabye.
”How is she?” Arnault asked from the entryway.
The bishop looked up, his expression grave. ”Not well, Frre Arnault. So young a child is too delicate for rigors such as these. If this storm does not soon abate, I fear she may not survive the journey.”
All that day and the next, the s.h.i.+p rode the storm like a leaf in a millrace, making but little headway.
Towering waves tossed the s.h.i.+p like a toy, often cras.h.i.+ng over the prow and sending sheets of foam racing the length of the deck. Crew and pa.s.sengers alike spent their fifth night at sea without heat or comfort. On the morning of the sixth day, the s.h.i.+p's timbers began to crack, and the hull began letting in water. As most of the able-bodied were set to bailing, others helped move Princess Margaret and her attendants out onto the deck, in case the s.h.i.+p should founder and they be trapped inside.
Oilskins and blankets were rigged to create a berth for them under the forecastle, but this was poor shelter at best. The little Maid herself seemed wholly insensible to her surroundings, and lay white and motionless in Bishop Narve's arms, with only the merest flutter of a pulse to show that she still lived.
Arnault and Jay took their turns in the bucket brigade with the rest of those who were still on their feet, working in relays in a ceaseless effort to keep the hold from filling with water, but Jay clearly was unhappy with the arrangement.
”This is no fit occupation for a knight,” he grumbled, as he and Arnault labored alongside the crew and the military escort.
Arnault was fighting the temptation to inquire whether Jay would prefer the alternative, when there came a sudden shout from the masthead lookout.
”Land ho! Land ahead, off the port bow!”
Abandoning their labors, the two Templar knights made their way forward. Peering hard through the rain and sea spray, Arnault was just able to make out a rocky headland jutting from the waves at the outermost limits of visibility. The deck shuddered underfoot as the s.h.i.+p came about, its prow bearing hard on this newfound landmark. Catching sight of the captain on the forecastle, Arnault clambered swiftly up the ladder to join him.
”Have you any idea where we are?” he asked, pitching his voice loud above the roar of the wind and waves.
The captain gave a tentative bob of the head, not taking his eyes from that speck of land. ”By my reckoning, we've reached the Orkneys. I would guess this to be one of the outlying islands. There should be settlements, if we can make it to sh.o.r.e.”
The land loomed closer. A ragged cheer went up from the crew as the s.h.i.+p cleared the headland and the fury of the storm somewhat abated, though rain continued to fall. Beyond, sheltered by a ridge of high ground, lay a stretch of calmer water fronting a beach of pebbly s.h.i.+ngle. Even more welcome was the sight of a plume of smoke trickling skyward from what appeared to be a substantial farmstead, perched on the gra.s.sy slope overlooking the lagoon.
Details became clearer as they drew nearer the sh.o.r.e. Built Norse-fas.h.i.+on with walls of turf and roofs of slate, the compound encompa.s.sed several barns and a number of outbuildings, all cl.u.s.tered around a central dwelling, the source of the rising smoke, vented off by holes in the roof slates. Encouraged by these clear signs of habitation, the captain drew as near to the sh.o.r.e as he dared before ordering the anchor dropped and the s.h.i.+p's boat put over the side. While preparations were made to ferry the little princess and the sickest of the other pa.s.sengers ash.o.r.e, a delegation was sent ahead to commandeer a.s.sistance from the farm.
By the time the boat could return to the s.h.i.+p and bring the little princess and the bishop ash.o.r.e, the farm owner and some of his household had gathered on the sh.o.r.e with oilskins and warm blankets and even a cart for those too ill to walk the short distance to the farmhouse. The little Maid herself was swaddled in furs and tenderly carried to the farmhouse by the bishop's canon, with Bishop Narve trailing anxiously beside them.
The two Templars were among the last of the s.h.i.+p's company to arrive. Gratefully accepting a bowl of hot broth from one of the maids, and changing his sodden mantle for a dry blanket, Arnault s.h.i.+fted his attention to the other end of the long, smoky room, where the farmwife and two girls he judged to be her daughters were clucking anxiously over a small, white-faced form bundled into a bed before the roaring fire. From their tight-lipped expressions, he inferred that there was little sign of improvement in the Maid's condition.
Bishop Narve and his canon joined the women a moment later. Arnault was taken aback to see that the old man had donned a white vestment and stole over his sober clerical array; the canon bore a lighted candle and several other items. The bishop made the sign of the cross over the child's frail, unconscious form and laid his hand on her brow as his own head bowed in prayer. From the s.n.a.t.c.hes of Latin that reached his ears, Arnault realized that the old man was administering the viatic.u.m, the Communion rite reserved by the Church for those at the point of death.
”If I were a va.s.sal of the house of Canmore,” Jay remarked in an undertone, ”I would be on my knees in prayer.”
”G.o.d may yet vouchsafe a miracle,” Arnault murmured.
Sick at heart, he drank down his broth and withdrew to an adjoining room of the house with others of the company to await further developments. Jay followed, but joined one of the men of the princess's military escort miserably warming his hands over a brazier of hot coals. Having no desire for his own comfort, Arnault made his way numbly to the opposite side of the room, where an alcove heaped with sheepskins suddenly beckoned with an insistence that, after so long without proper rest, would not be denied.
He folded to his knees like a man sinking into quicksand, but he made himself s.h.i.+ft to sit with his back against the wall as his heavy eyelids closed, stubbornly dragging his exhausted mind toward something approaching a suitable composure for prayer-or would appear to be prayer, or sleep, to anyone observing him.
Thus blind to his surroundings, he could still feel the wayward motion of the s.h.i.+p, tugging him insistently toward the sleep his body craved, but he applied long familiar disciplines to turn his focus inward, drawing a deep breath as he sought the still point at the center of his being and then conjured an image of the little princess before his mind's eye: not the frail, colorless doll barely breathing before the fire in the next room but the solemn, wide-eyed child for whom he had developed a distant fondness while he waited for her s.h.i.+p to sail from Bergen.
With body and mind now bending to the will of soul, he slowly found himself apparently drifting with disembodied lightness back to the threshold of the central hearth chamber where the little Maid was being tended. The sensation of being in two places at once was one he had encountered before, a state over which he had some control. Conscious of having temporarily left his physical body behind, he willed his consciousness closer toward the ailing princess. The area surrounding the child's bed was like an island of light in the midst of softly muted shadows.
He caught his breath slightly as he sensed that the source of the brightness was the little Maid herself-not the fragile, wasted sh.e.l.l of her physical body, but the s.h.i.+mmering angel-form of the virginal soul softly overlaying that body. Joining the two was a silvery cord as finely spun as spider silk.
A faint flutter of relief briefly suffused him, for he knew that as long as that link remained unbroken, there was reason to hope for the little girl's recovery. But even as he allowed himself to hope, he became conscious of a chill descending suddenly upon the room, not at all related to the rain and storm outside.
All the lights in the room guttered and shrank as a shade of moving darkness seemed to permeate the room. Cold as Arctic winter, a darker core of it billowed toward the little Maid. Even as her spiritual aspect recoiled, flickering faintly brighter, the shadow-ent.i.ty struck out at the fragile silver lifeline linking body and soul.
Horrified, Arnault tried to interpose himself in spirit, but to no avail. An icy buffet dashed him aside even as the little Maid's lifeline snapped. Though her soul broke free in a flash of silvery light, the shadow swooped to engulf it. Defensive instincts flaring, Arnault surged between them in spirit, deflecting an almost overwhelming wave of sheer malice as he called on the Light to aid him. But this time his intervention was enough, if only barely.
Arrested in mid-flight, the shadow briefly turned on him, furious to be kept at bay. At the same time, the roof beams of the house seemed to melt away, simultaneously opening the way to the vault of the heavens.
Fast as summer lightning, the little Maid's child-spirit soared upward. Living stars dropped out of the sky to meet her, surrounding her with a host of bright companions to guide her safely on her homeward flight.
The shadow again attempted to follow, but again Arnault surged upward in spirit to block and restrain it.
The shadow at last wrenched free with a violent twist, but too late to pursue its quarry. Flinging a parting blast of hatred in Arnault's direction, it disappeared into the night. The violence of its departure snapped Arnault back into his body with a dizzying spin of images that left him gasping for breath, heart pounding, momentarily too giddy to move.
Groggily, hardly able to see, he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, catching his balance against the wall of turf, momentarily uncertain whether he possibly could have been dreaming. In the same moment, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, as Brian de Jay asked, ”What's the matter? You look as pale as death-as if you'd just seen a ghost.”
Before Arnault could frame any kind of response beyond a blank blink, a sudden doleful cry went up from the next room. Shaking himself loose, Arnault rushed to the doorway-and halted on the threshold in time to see Freu Ingabritt drawing breath for another wail. Beside her, Bishop Narve had tenderly gathered the little princess to his breast, his lined face contorted in a soundless grimace of grief. Around them, the little princess's other ladies-in-waiting were clinging to one another and weeping, their shoulders shaking with m.u.f.fled sobs.
As Jay murmured something unintelligible at Arnault's shoulder, the farmwife came mournfully toward them and the others crowding close behind, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her ample ap.r.o.n and the sorrow of a mother who has lost children of her own.
”Poor, wee lamb,” she managed to whisper. ”May our Lord and His dear Lady Mother receive her kindly.”
Arnault drew a short, sharp breath and drew back, stunned, letting the others mill past him as he attempted to comprehend the enormity of what had just occurred. Mingled with the stark political implications of the Maid's death was his sinking certainty that his own experience had been no mere foray into dreams. The shadow he had glimpsed, and with which he had sparred, was no gentle angel of death, bringing welcome release from suffering, but rather, some malevolent ent.i.ty come to destroy the innocent.
All at once he felt the need for fresh air. Closing his ears to the sounds of grieving, he wrapped himself in his blanket and stumbled outside. The rain had ceased, but the sky was still stormy, the wind still tossing at the s.h.i.+p anch.o.r.ed just offsh.o.r.e, now become a funeral barge instead of a wedding s.h.i.+p. Mercifully, Jay had stayed within.
This was not the first time Arnault had encountered evil in spiritual form. But such ent.i.ties rarely entered the world of men save in response to human summoning-which meant that the attack on the little Maid had been no chance occurrence, but deliberately contrived as murder. Arnault did not doubt the testimony of his inner senses; but when he tried to imagine who could have compa.s.sed such a deed, and in such a manner and for what purpose, his thoughts reeled back on themselves in bewilderment.
He turned his face to the wind while he asked himself once again whether what he had witnessed could have been his own fantasy. But he knew with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that there was no question of that.
He dared not confide in anyone in the present party; certainly not the brash and insensitive Jay. But he would certainly convey his suspicions to the appropriate superiors at the earliest opportunity.
The closest of those superiors, and one who might be strategically placed to ascertain who most might have benefited from the Maid's death, was currently a.s.signed to the princ.i.p.al Scottish preceptory at Balantrodoch, just south of Edinburgh, where Brian de Jay was Master. Arnault had orders to return to Paris for rea.s.signment after concluding his escort duties to the now dead Queen of Scots; and news of the tragedy would have to be carried abroad in any event. But since transport back to France could be arranged most expeditiously from farther south, he decided that traveling with Jay as far as Balantrodoch could be easily justified. In fact, certain of his superiors in Paris would expect it.
One thing was certain: If the little Maid's death had been compa.s.sed by agents of the Dark, Arnault's a.s.sistance eventually would be called upon to counter their intentions.
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