“But you will come to want him. You see, he wants you, I’ve seen the lust for you in his eyes. He can’t hide his feelings from me anymore. I know him, have known him all my life. I have wondered, though, what it would feel like to have him touch my belly and my breasts as he did you. Ah, and he put his fingers inside you. Did you enjoy it? Did he caress you?”
“No, he didn’t. He’s a doctor. I was horribly embarrassed.”
“You’re lying. Every woman wants Benjie. I’ve seen it over and over again.”
“He’s old, even older than you are. But you know, Bess, when they put you in Bedlam, you’re not so old that you won’t survive another twenty years or so. I do hope you will enjoy telling all your stories to others as mad as you are. Do you think they’ll listen or just start scratching their lice?”
Bess Treath yelled her fury, threw the gun to the ground, drew a knife from her cloak pocket, and ran at Caroline.
“No, damn you, no! Stop!”
Caroline whipped the sword from behind her back at the same moment Coombe dropped through the opening, yelling, “No, Bess Treath, leave her alone!”
Bess Treath whirled about, immobile for just an instant. “I shot you, you mangy little bastard. I shot you! You damned little pest, you left Goonbell, and I knew you’d run away in your shame, in your mortification. That’s why I left the bloody knife in your room, so everyone would know you’d killed all those women. Why did you come back?”
“I always planned to come back. I brought his lordship’s mother back with me, and his sister.”
“A lie, you little bastard. His mother is dead. She betrayed his father, like all the lying sluts. I’ll bet he even killed her. I wasn’t told about her so I know you’re lying to me. No, he didn’t tell me and he would have. Aye, that lying slut would have wanted Benjie just like all of them did and then I would have killed her too.
“You were supposed to stay gone, then when Caroline died, all would think you’d sneaked back and done it. Damn you to hell!”
She lunged toward him, the knife arched high, ready to come down into his chest.
Caroline raised her own sword, so light it was, and its steel blade glittered silver and sharp in that dim moonlight, and she screamed, “Here, Bess! Here, come to me! Coombe is wounded, he’s no worry to you, leave him be.”
Bess Treath turned and stared. “That sword, where did you get it?”
“Why, it was here, just for me, here for me to kill you. Come here, Bess, yes, that’s right, come here.” Again, Caroline held the mighty sword easily in the grip of her right hand, and beckoned with her left hand to Bess Treath. From the corner of her eye, she saw Coombe easing toward the gun Bess Treath had flung to the ground. She saw the blood dripping from his shoulder. He looked weak and pale. Suddenly she knew she didn’t need him to get that gun, she just knew it.
Bess Treath screamed, a scream filled with madness and fury and perhaps even of acceptance, and lunged at Caroline.
Caroline lifted the sword, swung it back and forth in front of her, the fine steel hissing cleanly in the air. Bess Treath stopped suddenly so that glittering sharp blade tip wouldn’t slash through her. She was heaving with madness, with fury, and again she raised that knife, but she couldn’t get past that long swinging blade.
Caroline jumped forward, that magnificent sword extended its full length. Bess Treath managed to leap to the side, and the sword only slashed through her cloak over her right shoulder. She yelled in pain and rage.
“I’ll stick this knife in your belly and kill that bastard of yours first!” She ran straight at Caroline, straight into that high swinging sword.
The blade slid cleanly into Bess Treath’s chest.
Bess Treath just stood there a moment, hanging on that massive sword, a good foot of it protruding from her back, and she just looked down at it, then back at Caroline, who stood so close to her now, holding the handle, just holding it there as it drained her life away. “I knew it would have to end someday,” Bess Treath said. “But this sword, how do you ho
ld it so easily? It’s huge. It must weigh as much as you do. You’re but a weak woman. It’s not possible.”
“It seems you’re wrong,” Caroline said. She watched Bess Treath weave there, silent now, then fall hard sideways.
Caroline pulled the sword from her body. She looked at Coombe, who now held the gun in his hand, standing there, staring at her, down at Bess Treath, pale and sweating, and Caroline said, “I’m so glad you weren’t the one to drug my tea. Your shoulder is bleeding. We must get you back to the top of the cliff, Coombe.”
“It isn’t really all that bad,” he said, trying to keep a grip on himself. “I managed to climb down, but I feared I would be too late. She was strong, so very strong. What is this chamber?”
“It is King Mark’s treasure chamber.”
Coombe just stared at her.
“Come,” Caroline said. “I’ll show you.”
“But I must tell you first—” Coombe gave her an oddly helpless look, took one step, sighed, then slowly crumpled to the sandy floor.
“Tell me what, Coombe?”