“When my third husband vomited up white foam, I remember that the stench was beyond anything.”
He did not want to imagine that. He said, “Very well. Now, the Witches of Byrne—a small cult of women who paint their bodies with white lead, color their hair black as a rotted tooth, and rub their teeth with the red berries of the brickle plant to show their ferocity and their desire for raw flesh—even the Witches of Byrne are difficult to find now, since they despise men. It is difficult to continue if there is no man to plant his seed in a woman’s belly.”
She said, “My grandmother told me that the Witches of Byrne don’t despise men. They merely don’t trust them. They observe the horror that men bring, know that those same men would destroy them if they could. Surely you don’t deny that?”
“Your grandmother?”
“Aye, Lady Madelyn. You will meet her soon.”
“She is as old as Lord Vellan?”
“Aye, and like my grandfather’s, her wits are as sharp as the point of Crispin’s sword.”
“You spoke of the harshness of men. I imagine that women, like men, would bring horrors if they had the chance. The truth is that men themselves have few choices.” He shrugged. “I live the best I can. I wouldn’t kill a witch unless she threatened my life. Isn’t that fair? And just?”
She brushed away his words with a sweep of her hand. “You have few choices? You are a knight. You ride to Penwyth from the king. I have never ridden anywhere at the behest of the king. You take it as your right to give orders to females. You have men to do your bidding. You can do exactly as you please. You took off my slipper and played with my foot. What you claim is nonsense.”
He said, “There is death all around us, Merryn, an inevitable end to all of us, men and women alike. We all want to survive, and that means knowing how to think, how to act, how to defend ourselves. A man is honorable or he is not. I believe a woman too is honorable or she is not. But honor is nothing if your very survival is at stake. It is true what I said: I live the best I can. I do not kill unless I have to. Look at you, Merryn. Your survival depends upon a curse.”
“It’s a difficult thing, all these dead husbands, living in the shadow of this curse.”
“I know the words to the curse. Indeed, I very nearly have it memorized. Tell me what you know, Merryn.”
She studied her thumbnail, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t know anything.”
He smiled down at her, but not too far down, for she was tall, mayhap as tall as Philippa de Fortenberry. “Robert Burnell, the king’s secretary and the Chancellor of England, is a very learned man. Before I left the king, he gave me all the parchments he had collected on the Celtic Druids and the Witches of Byrne. Reading of them made the lice jump out of my hair.”
“Another jest.” She looked at his thick black hair blowing off his neck in the hot, dry wind. “I always wanted black hair, thick just like yours, with the sun gleaming through it.”
“You think my hair is excellent?”
“Aye, it is, I admit it. You say you’re a man of otherworldly knowledge, Sir Bishop, a man who understands curses and magic and dark ways—in short, a wizard.”
“I am. It is my habit to open myself to those of the otherworld, to those in other times, to let their knowledge seep deep into me so that I may understand what they are, and why they still keep themselves close to this earth.” By the time he finished speaking, he’d lowered his voice almost to a whisper. He nearly had himself believing what he was saying.
He watched her rub her arms. A little fright, that was good. What was she keeping from him? He said, “Aye, and now I must gather more information to reach the beings that put this curse into motion.”
There was a sudden gust of hot wind. It whipped her hair loose from its plaits and back from her face. He saw that she had small ears, nicely shaped. She hadn’t been beautiful to him just four hours before, but it seemed that he might have been mistaken. He reached out his hand yet again to touch her hair, but this time he didn’t. He dropped his hand back to his side. At least, he thought, his children wouldn’t be ugly, and that would surely be a relief to their future spouses. The dimple in her left cheek was long gone. She was still too afraid to smile.
“Tell me of the husbands.”
She couldn’t keep the remembered horror out of her eyes as she said slowly, “I watched them all die. The first one, Sir Arlan, was seated next to me, since he was my bridegroom, and we shared a trencher. I watched him eat. He fed me from his knife. I was a child, and yet I never doubted that he would be my husband until I died.”
“So you didn’t believe the curse.”
“I will tell you, when my grandfather stood there and quoted the curse in a loud, clear voice, I believed every word. It would have sent me on my way.” She paused a moment, and he knew she was seeing the scene from four years before. “Did I believe it? No, I did not.
“Then, it was so sudden that I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. Sir Arlan jerked, shuddered and quaked, then fell forward, his face in the beef chunks and gravy in the trencher. One of his men, a very brave and foolish man, rose up and yelled that my grandfather had poisoned his master. He, too, died. All the other men fled Penwyth within the hour.”
“That sounds like poison, not some bloody curse.”
She was silent a moment, then nodded. “Aye, I thought that it must be poison, but you see, he and I ate from the same trencher. He speared pieces of beef on his knife and slid them into my mouth. I drank from his goblet. How could it be poison?”
He looked down at her. “It could be poison, if you were the poisoner and clever about it.”
“I was a young girl. I did not kill him. It would not have occurred to me to kill him.”
What was she keeping from him? Bishop said, “Then, I believe, there was Sir Gifford de Lancey, the second husband. Tell me about him.”