The Master of Blacktower, page 17
The doors at the far end of the hall creaked and swung open. Through the crack peered Randall’s sleepy, inquisitive face.
“Good morning,” he said, blessedly inane. “Is something wrong?”
“God Almighty,” said Gavin furiously. “You, too? Is this a stage performance? Get out of here, Randall.”
“Randall, stop them,” I cried, tiptoeing. “They mean to fight.”
“So I observe.” Randall closed the doors carefully behind him and advanced into the hall. “Gavin, are you out of your senses? Dueling is outlawed in this civilized state, whatever the custom may be in such places as France. You may incur a legal charge.”
I groaned aloud. It was the most halfhearted plea for reason I had ever heard.
“Lady Mary,” Randall continued, bowing, “do help me put some sense into these two.”
“You are a gentleman, Mr. Gordon,” said Lady Mary, turning the full magic of her smile and her eyes upon him. “You heard the terms Mr. Hamilton used to my brother earlier. Now that you’re here—why don’t we let them get it out of their systems?”
She laughed gently, reducing the whole affair to a sparring match between two angry little boys, and Randall’s chest expanded visibly.
“I expect you’re right,” he said, fingering his cravat. “A little exercise, just to calm them…I’ll stay, to ensure fair play.”
“Fair play? Do you think this is a game?” Gavin pulled off his coat and threw it on the floor; with one impatient hand he wrenched his collar open. “Come sir, en garde. Let’s be at this before the rest of the household arrives.”
Andrew bowed. He removed his own coat and stood waiting.
I picked up my skirts and fled. There was only one way to stop them now—to put myself physically between them.
My velvet skirts weighed like lead, when I would have flown. Once again, I came near regretting my sex. If I had been a man I could have run unhampered along the unending corridors, and descended the stairs in three bounds. If I had been a man I could have stopped them—and I would have stopped them, instead of muttering and looking pompous, like Randall! They were mad, all of them, with the strange masculine insanity that prefers bloodshed to reason, violence to talk. Gavin’s sullen arrogance, Sir Andrew’s impudence, and Randall’s pomposity—I don’t know which I hated most.
I fell on the stairs and rolled down half the long flight before I could stop myself. I was up again, and running, almost before I stopped rolling. The door under the stairs resisted my strength; I swung on it with my whole weight until it gave, with a shriek of rusty hinges. Rust on the hinges, rust on the sword blades; they had not been used for years. The boy had been in Paris; they had academies there to teach the art of fencing, the French regarded it as brave and chivalrous.
Even before I reached the hall I knew I was too late. There was no mistaking the sharp ring of steel on steel.
The sun was above the mountains now. It made a dazzle in the hall, and turned the slender steel blades into wheels of fire.
Gavin was still on his feet; more, he was holding his own. They must have crossed swords as soon as I left the gallery, for both of them were already breathing hard. Sir Andrew moved carefully, as if a first, unsuccessful attack had taught him to respect his opponent. They circled warily, the movement of their feet matching like steps in a dance. Forward and back; left and back. The blades touched coyly, with a gentle chiming sound.
Then there was a flurry of movement and a bright musical crash whose echoes rang among the rafters. Sir Andrew bounded back, his shoulders hunched; and Randall, clearing his throat, lifted one arm.
“Halt!” he called. “First blood!”
Gavin gave him a sardonic look, but lowered his point obediently. Sir Andrew, head bent, was examining a narrow trickle of red on the fine lawn of his shirt sleeve. Randall started forward, but the boy waved him back.
“It’s only a scratch,” he muttered.
“Still, sir, you are wounded. I think the demands of honor are met.”
“Honor be damned,” said Gavin, almost before Randall was finished speaking. “Again, Andrew—unless you’ve thought better of it.”
I turned to the woman who stood near me, watching the scene with detached interest. “Hasn’t this gone far enough?” I asked. “If Andrew refuses to go on, there won’t be any more fighting. You can stop him, if you will.”
Her head pivoted on her slim white throat. She didn’t look at me, but at some ineffable vision in the air beyond me; and the look on her face turned me cold.
“Oh, no,” she said gently. “I’ve no intention of stopping him.”
Sir Andrew was turning back his cuff to keep the blood from trickling down onto his hand. There was still time. I darted forward.
Lady Mary’s hand shot out and ringed my wrist. There was the strength of a man’s in her slender arm. I struggled, plucking at the long pale fingers with all my strength; but the moment’s delay had been enough.
The blades rang together. There was a difference in the sound, and in the men. Their movements were quicker and more violent. The steel chimed like a carillon of bells. Gavin’s dark hair curled damply on his forehead; he tossed it back with an impatient jerk of his head. Five minutes…ten. They seemed like as many hours. Gradually Gavin began to lose ground. His feet never lost their precision, but step by step they retreated.
I stood still, held by the woman’s delicate hand with its iron fingers, and by the deadly beauty of the duel. The muscles of Sir Andrew’s back and sword arm moved with an animal’s refined grace under the thin cambric of his shirt. It was hard to believe that the responsive agility of the two bodies was designed for murder, or that death could hang on anything so beautiful as the two slim, shining blades.
Sir Andrew advanced, forcing the pace, and Gavin turned. I could see Sir Andrew’s face now. His moustache had lost its curl; it veiled a mouth set in a humorless white grimace. His eyes were narrowed to slits.
Gavin leaped back to escape a vicious thrust which he was unable to parry. The blade passed within inches of his left side. Perspiration streaked his face and ran down his bared throat, soaking his shirt. Back, and always back. He was moving clumsily now, and was wholly on the defensive. He didn’t try to attack; it was all he could do to parry Sir Andrew’s thrusts. The fifteen years between them were telling. Sir Andrew was breathing hard, but his arm seemed tireless.
Then the end came. Gavin’s sword arm drew back, in a gesture so awkward that even a novice could see the danger he was in. It left his right side completely exposed. I gave a stifled shriek and fought the restraint of Lady Mary’s hand; and as I cried out, Sir Andrew’s blade went home.
For a moment—surely not more—while his foil was sheathed in flesh and muscle, he was weaponless and off guard, and in that moment Gavin’s blade completed the circle it had begun. He went back, and then forward, all in one movement, tearing Sir Andrew’s sword from the wound and extending his body in a long lunge that made arm and sword one line. The line ended in Andrew’s breast. I saw the tip come out through the boy’s back.
For the space of a long heartbeat spectators and duelists were frozen. Gavin’s body was still extended in the deadly grace of the thrust, and Andrew stood upright like a beetle impaled by a pin. Then Gavin withdrew. Over Andrew’s face came a look of childish surprise. His eyes were still open, inquiring, as he started to fall.
Lady Mary made a sound deep in her throat. When I looked at her I saw that her proud face had crumpled like wet paper. With a shriek of “Andrew! Andrew!” she darted toward him, and was in time to throw her arms about his shoulders as his body folded. She went down with him, dragged by his weight. His head lay on her lap as she crouched on the dusty floor, with her rumpled skirts making a bright blue pool of color around her. She pressed her hands to his pale cheeks, moaning.
It was a terrible sound. It pierced the heart. I went to her, walking on limbs that felt wooden and weak at the same time, but before I could touch her Randall brushed me away with a brusque, “This is no place for ladies, Damaris!” Later, this comment was to strike me with ironic amusement, but then it seemed uncommonly apropos. I looked down at the wounded man. He didn’t look wounded; he looked dead. There was no color left in his face, it seemed to have concentrated in the crimson stain on his breast. He looked very young, like a boy asleep. I forgot that, a few minutes earlier, those closed eyes had been as cold and feral as an animal’s. Lady Mary’s sobs wiped out my former dislike of her. There was pity and anger in my heart as I turned from the victim to the murderer.
Gavin’s scar stood out like a fresh brand. Save for that fiery mark his face was as white as his shirt. His right hand was still clenched on the sword hilt; the other clasped his wounded arm, so tightly that the cambric of his shirt bulged out above the black-gloved fingers. His eyes were riveted on his fallen opponent, and on his face was an expression of bitter regret.
Under that look my anger melted. “Gavin, Gavin, don’t be grieved. Perhaps he can be saved.”
“He can be saved. The thrust was too high. Too high.” Gavin flung the blade away with a savage movement that sent it clattering across the flagstones. “The devil take me for a blundering fool—it was too high!”
“You—meant to kill him?”
His eyes focused on my face, and I shrank away from what I saw in them. “Good God, are you still here? Get out. Take your jackanapes of a lover, and go.”
“Go where, Gavin?”
“Castleton, Edinburgh, London, I don’t care where. Just get out.”
“You want me to leave Blacktower House,” I said stupidly.
“At last you grasp my meaning.” He blinked, and I thought he swayed a little. But the whole room was suddenly unsteady; the floor swung to and fro under my feet.
“This is no place for you, Damaris,” he said less violently. “It’s not a place for any decent Christian soul.”
“Wherever you are is the place for me,” I said desperately. I was past caring whether I was overheard, by Randall or Lady Mary. At my words Gavin’s face smoothed out and hardened. The corners of his mouth, twisted by the scar, lifted in an unpleasant smile.
“By God, I believe you took me seriously last night,” he exclaimed. “I’ve underestimated my own talents!”
I felt the blood draining out of my cheeks, but I was incapable of speech. I stood staring dumbly at him while his eyes raked me from head to foot with an intolerable amusement.
Then he said, “Stay, if you want to. But in justice to both of us I ought to remind you that I never mentioned marriage.”
I raised my hand and struck him across the face. He staggered back a few steps at the blow, as he had not done under Andrew’s thrust. The marks of my fingers took shape, redly, across the pallor of his unscarred cheek. His smile did not alter.
I turned, blindly, and found myself staring at Randall’s crumpled shirt frills. He had heard then—heard everything. I didn’t care. I didn’t even care when he took my arm in one fat, possessive hand, and pulled me against him.
“That boy’s not badly hurt,” he said, in a voice that oozed satisfaction. “Get some of the servants, Damaris, to carry him upstairs.”
“He’ll find no shelter in my house,” said Gavin coldly.
“He’ll have to find it, whether you like it or not,” Randall said, with a sneer. “If you pack him off he may die, and if he does—by heaven, I’ll see you before a magistrate charged with murder, sir! Don’t worry, we’ll all be out of your hospitable house as soon as we can—eh, Damaris?”
Gavin’s brows came together in a scowl, but he did not reply. Randall ostentatiously turned his back and, towing me with him, returned to the little group on the floor. I went without demurring. It was rather pleasant to have someone to tell me what to do.
“Take care of the lady,” Randall said in my ear. “Poor thing, she is quite distraught. Small wonder!”
She urged them on, I thought, but I didn’t say it. What difference did it make, to try to allocate the blame for what had happened? They were alike, the three of them—brutal, murderous, false. Still, she was a woman, and she was near collapse. The face she turned up to me looked as old as Mrs. Cannon’s.
“He will live,” I said gently. “Come with me now, while the servants tend to him.”
She rose obediently, stumbling like a feeble old woman. There was no bellpull in the hall, so I went to the door, put my head outside, and shouted for Angus at the top of my lungs. I thought he would be about—horrid old ghoul that he was—and when he made his appearance I gave the necessary orders.
Angus pushed rudely past me and looked on the scene of battle.
“He’s no deid, then,” he remarked in a disappointed voice.
“No one is dead,” I snapped. “Get the men to come at once.”
“Och, aye, the men are here,” said Angus calmly. “They was all watchin’, like maself.”
I turned away from him in speechless disgust. Lady Mary would not come with me; she would not leave Andrew. So we waited until the men lifted him onto a small mattress in order to carry him easily. He was still unconscious; his golden lashes were like silk against his cheeks. There was a terrifying amount of blood on his white shirt, but since Randall and Gavin had both diagnosed the wound as not necessarily fatal, I assumed it looked worse than it was. I wasn’t really much interested.
As the others crowded around the impromptu stretcher I saw Gavin making his way to the door. He was supporting himself with one hand against the wall, and his feet were unsteady. Something twisted painfully inside me, like a bad tooth coming back to life after sleep. I made myself turn away. He was no concern of mine. He had made that eminently clear.
It was Randall who tended the boy’s wound, his hands moving with a competence that surprised me. Randall had his virtues, undoubtedly. It was a pity that none of them interested me.
There was nothing I could do for the lady, except have a cot moved into Andrew’s room. She refused to leave him or to look at anything but his pale face. So we left them there together.
When we were out in the hall, Randall let out an enormous sigh. “What a mad night!” he said unoriginally. “You have plunged us into adventure, Damaris—with a vengeance!”
“I wish you would stop harping on my part in all this,” I retorted. “Heaven knows it began innocently.”
“Oh, of course.” Randall patted my shoulder. “Well, we can’t leave today, as we’d planned. That’s out of the question, with the place in such a turmoil.”
“We can’t leave this house until Sir Andrew is out of it,” I said.
“What?” Randall gaped for a moment. Then, displaying more mental quickness than I had expected, he stammered, “Do you really think Hamilton would…Damn it all, Damaris, I don’t like the scoundrel myself, but he wouldn’t—”
“I didn’t mean that,” I said, knowing that I lied. “But half the servants have run away, and most of the others are worthless; Mrs. Cannon is of no use at all. With two wounded men and an invalid girl in the house, I can’t simply walk out and leave them. If anything should happen—”
“Two? Oh, yes, Hamilton managed to get himself punctured, too. I’d forgotten. But, hell’s bells, Damaris, it wasn’t much of a wound; he walked out on his feet, didn’t he?” Randall wrestled for a moment with his conscience, or some other organ; his face grew longer, and finally he groaned dismally. “I suppose you’re right. If something did happen, and the story got about, our part in it might be misinterpreted—only by malicious people, mind you, but still—oh, hell!”
“I’m sorry, Randall. Get some sleep. You’re tired, I know.”
“Gad, yes. Might as well go to bed. Maybe this time,” he added, with a wry humor which was new to him, “I’ll be allowed to stay in it for a few hours. Good night, my dear. Or good morning, rather.”
He kissed me on the cheek, rather absently, and ambled off down the hall scratching his head. With an emotion that was almost affection I watched his big awkward figure until it vanished around the turn in the corridor. Poor Randall; he did the best he could. To blame him for being insensitive and a little stupid was to damn him for being himself and not another man. If only he were someone else’s husband, I thought, I might get to be quite fond of him. Just then, though, more than anything else, I envied him. He was going to lie down and go to sleep, untroubled by any emotion more grievous than vexation. I rather doubted that I would be able to sleep.
At least I could take off my dress. It weighed on my weary limbs like armor, and I hated the sight and feel of it. Someday—after I was Randall’s pampered, wealthy wife—I would have another ball dress; perhaps even a velvet dress. But not green velvet.
I was turning into my room when I realized that the fourth door down from mine stood open. Someone was in the opening. The figure was hidden, but two thin pale hands were clamped around the doorframe, so tightly that even the nails were white.
I reached the girl just in time to keep her from falling. As my arms went around her, her knees gave way and she fell heavily against me. She turned her head from where it lay against my breast, and looked up at me, her eyes enormous in her pale pinched face.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
“No, oh, no! He’s not dead, nor even badly hurt. Who told you?”
“No one. I heard them coming up the stairs. I was waiting…I saw him when they brought him up. Oh, God—I thought he was dead!”
She turned her face into my bosom and began to sob.
I had been through too much that night to be much moved by her tears. I half led, half carried her back into her room, and put her into her bed. Then I pulled away the hands she had lifted to her face and looked directly into her eyes.
“If he had been killed,” I said, “it would have been your fault. You brought this on—you are the cause of it. If you hadn’t tried to run away…”
