Perfect Shadows (38 page)

“Oh,
Hal, I thought that you had done with me! And I love you so! I wanted to die,”
Libby sobbed into his chest. Her searching fingers found his rough cropped
hair, and she pulled him to the window, thrusting the heavy curtain aside, to
view him in the fading daylight. “Oh, Hal!” He turned his head, to hide the
worst places from her, then kissed her, fiercely, urgently. His lust, quiescent
with her for weeks now, flooded him, and he shoved her to the floor, tearing at
her skirts and at his own clothing, stifling her protests with his lips,
plunging his tongue into her mouth as he plunged his body into hers, grimly,
again and again, without respite, until he finally collapsed on top of her,
pinning her to the floor beneath him. He could feel her shivering under him,
taste the tears on her lips. He started to pull away from her, wondering what
had possessed him, how he could explain to her what he could not explain to
himself, but she caught him, pulling him close again. “No, Hal, no.” He tried
to find the words, and she hushed him, laying her slender fingers across his
lips. “I know, my love. I know.”

“I
love you, Libby,” he said. “Whatever I say or do, I do love you, and someday,
God willing, I shall prove it.”

Jehan
and Rhys appeared at the quay promptly at dawn, supporting Kryštof ’s slumping
body between them. He reeked of brandy and of wine, and Richard looked on in
disgust. The seamen nudged each other and smirked as they made their way on
board. The first mate stepped forward with a grin.

“Well,
where d’you want him?” Jehan growled. He found this pretense distasteful, an
affront to the dignity of his master, and thus to his own, but the ruse was
tried and true, giving the vampire a perfect excuse for staying below decks. No
one expected a man in a drunken stupor to be up and roaming about. “Gentry!
Drinkin’ and whorin’ all night, and most likely puking all day,” he grumbled,
as the first mate showed them to the tiny cabin they would occupy on the
crossing.

“Aye,
drunk as a lord! Well, and wouldn’t we all be if we had the chinks,” the mate
laughed, and left them.

“It’s
not you who’ll be cleanin’ up after him!” Jehan snapped, and watched the
retreating man’s back shake with laughter. They cast off not long after. Jehan,
denied his wolf ’s shape for the voyage, and no kind of a sailor in either
form, gritted his teeth and settled in to wait out the journey.

“I am not pleased, Christopher.” Geoffrey’s voice was cold, but
not so cold as my blood upon hearing his words. I said nothing, waiting for him
to continue. I did not have to wait long. “I have taken back your custody,” he
continued, “and not just because you have come here to Paris. Nicolas is
clearly unable to provide the sort of discipline that your circumstances
require; I am not. But neither am I unreasonable, and I understand your need
for a measure of privacy. The gatehouse here is well appointed—you will keep
your household there, unless, or until, you abuse this trust. For tonight, you
will stay here, with me.” Richard watched all this in silence, and watched me
led from the room like an errant child bound for punishment. His expression was
unreadable.

Richard was able to suppress his hostility and revulsion to
women through sheer force of will, but found that sudden encounters would still
leave him shaking and sick; his very beauty attracted exactly the sort of
attention that he could least tolerate. We settled in, and Richard continued
trying to teach me, now with slate and chalk, to read and write, with but
indifferent success.

My household being too small to support my need for blood, not
long after our arrival I had taken to prowling the Paris streets, both to
accommodate my needs and to allay the growing temptation to take Richard. One
dark night, about a month into our stay, I saw someone I knew.

Poley, with his mincing steps and faded finery, crossed a pool
of lantern light and vanished in the dark, unaware that he was no longer alone.
He had stumbled up the steps to his mean lodgings, was fumbling with the lock,
when I quietly said almost in his ear, “Allow me,” and pulled the heavy key
from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He whispered my name as he recognized my
voice, and knew that a dead man stood beside him in the darkness. He stood
paralyzed just inside the door as I crossed the room to the meager fire and lit
the candles with a spill from the dirty mantel. The soft light revealed his
thoughts as it revealed my features: those of a stranger, or at least I didn’t
look like Marlowe, or not exactly, but there was a resemblance . . . Poley caught
his breath in a ragged gasp as I turned my head and showed the eye patch that
covered my right eye. “Well, well, Robin, how are the mighty brought low! Is
this the best that Cecil can do for you?”

“M-m-marlowe?” Poley stammered, then slumped to the floor in a
faint. I knelt on the filthy floor, and dragged him up until my teeth found the
vein in his throat. I drank his blood, though the taste of it disgusted me, but
I had to take enough to exert my will over the repellent little man. He woke
again, and struggled against me, but his strength was no match for a normal
man’s, let alone mine. I forced his eyes to meet mine, charging him to remember
this encounter as no more than a drunken dream. He would obey any command I
gave him, and fall into trance at a word from me. I ordered him to sleep for a
time, and before he woke I had gone.

I had arrived back at the manor in good spirits. Poley’s being
in Paris promised some diversion, at least. I joined Geoffrey in the Hall,
delighted to see Hal lounging by the fire. He had arrived an hour or so after
my departure on my night’s adventure, and Geoffrey had invited him to the Hall
to await my return. Hal had never actually met Geoffrey, only seen him at court
from a distance, and seemed to be finding the man’s physical presence somewhat
overwhelming. I had seduced him: Geoffrey would need only to snap his fingers
to have anyone he desired groveling at his feet. Hal didn’t seem to know
whether to be vexed or thankful that he presumably was not desirable. Geoffrey was
well aware of the effect that he was having on my lover, and would have
withdrawn but that he wished to speak with me.

I noted Geoffrey’s savage amusement and Hal’s sullen frustration
as I joined them, my own amusement spilling out in soft laughter. “It is good
to see you, Hal. You will stay in the gatehouse with me? I have had a chamber
made ready,” I added, catching a subtle movement from Geoffrey indicating that
he desired Hal’s absence at the moment. I arranged for a footman to take Hal
across the grounds, and to settle his luggage, stealing a kiss in the shadows
before sending him away.

“I have had a letter, Christopher, from Rózsa. She will be
joining us here for the summer, and as this is her home, I can scarcely ask
that she stay away. Your young ward—” he broke off, and I nodded gravely. I
told Geoffrey that Nicolas had suggested the house in Brittany, should that
prove necessary. We talked for a time of Richard, of his recovery, and the
strain that his proximity was putting on my fortitude. Geoffrey was at least
sympathetic, having gone through something of the sort with Rózsa years before.
“It is never easy, never, but these things have a way of working themselves
out, given time, and time we have in abundance. And now, your Southampton is a
man of ready wit, but little depth, I think. He has never had to fight, so it
seems, and thus has weaknesses where he most should be strong. But there is
good metal there, under the dross.” Geoffrey turned his gaze from the hearth to
me, piercing me with steely fire. “Go now to your guest, Christopher, though he
will be but the companion of the moment—do not think that he would join us, for
he would not. Indeed, I feel that he will break off with you soon now and that
is no bad thing.”

Those words came back to me a few weeks later. We had begun to
spend most of our time pushing at each other, Hal and I, he vainly rebelling
against my mastery, and I refusing to yield an inch. Richard had been the cause
of no little contention between us as well, since we both found the boy
attractive. The position that Cecil had arranged for Hal was largely show and
make-work, and he, in his enforced indolence and boredom, had been playing at
provoking my jealousy, idly and without much direction. Knowing that I desired
Richard, Hal had set out to seduce the lad himself, but Richard had shied away
from any intimate contact. He would need more time and effort than Hal was
willing to grant him, even though it might provide his other desire: the
destruction of his intimacy with me.

It was as if Hal were demon-ridden, I sometimes thought, for no
sooner would a thing approach a certain completion or perfection than he would
set about its ruin, helplessly and unable to stop himself, as well attested by
the disastrous conclusion of his career at court. He was still drawn to me, and
even as he longed to provoke me, he seemed to long also to placate me, and his
ambivalence made him irritable.

One day he got a letter, tear-stained and incoherent, from
London. He crumpled it and cast it blindly across the room, where it bounced
off Jehan’s muzzle, waking him from his doze by the fire. He got up and padded
from the room to fetch me, and a few minutes later, still sluggish from the
day’s trance, I slipped in.

“You’ve had a letter? Is it bad news?” I yawned and apologized.
I was preoccupied and stared into the fire fingering the place on my lip, cut
by my own sharp canine tooth. I was uneasy about the way that Hal had kissed
the cut, licking the blood away with seeming relish. Did that count as an
exchange? A few drops, only? No, it was impossible. But I was uncomfortably
aware that he took some few drops any chance that he got.

“I must go to London. Libby’s pregnant, and the Queen has locked
her away in the Fleet prison,” Hal blurted, pacing, then turning on his heel to
face me. “I will marry her,” he stated defiantly, as if expecting an argument,
but I had played these scenes more than once in my former life and recalled
enough of them to know better. I merely nodded then poured the wine. I offered
a glass to Hal, who took it from me with an air of unease that he was unable to
completely hide.

“Her Majesty will certainly imprison you, an you do,” I
commented blandly.

“She may try! I will be back in France before she knows I was in
England. You cannot keep me here, Kit,” he added, the merest hint of a threat
in his voice.

“Hal, I would not even try. I am, and hope to remain, a friend
to you. All I ask is that you not burn all of your bridges, or at least, not
spectacularly. It may be that you will have need of friends, and that sooner
than you think.” Hal strode from the room without a further word and I watched
my retreating lover’s rigid and angry back, then turned to the lesson that
Richard had set me. It was useless, and worse, it was maddening, to stumble
blindly through provinces where once I had flown, to live as an ignorant beggar
where once I had been a king. I thrust the copybook aside and went across to
the manor to speak with Geoffrey. We talked the night away, and I suppose that
Geoffrey sensed my restlessness, for he commanded me to share his bed, as he
ever did when he felt the need to reassert his mastery. When I woke the next
evening, Hal had gone.

Within a week word had come from Robert Cecil of the events in
London, and I, in Poley’s chambers, pocketed both the cipher and Poley’s
translation. Poley himself sat slack-jawed against the far wall, his eyes white
slits in his face, while I made free with his correspondence. I had
appropriated the position of Lord Robert’s confidant in Paris for Geoffrey, and
he fed the English spider only such flies as he saw fit. Poley had reported the
presence in France of the Sybrian exiles, and had been instructed to observe
and recount our movements. This had gone on for weeks, with Poley unaware that the
messages he sent had been prepared by other hands, indeed, unaware that he had
a visitor at all. I folded the flimsy papers into a small purse and tucked it
into my doublet for Geoffrey to read to me later. I made up my mind: I would
take the shoddy little man back to the manor, and this night would be his last.
I bound him hand and foot, gagging him with the filthy rag he used for a
kerchief, then set off to hire a horse to carry him. I was damned if I would
carry the verminous little villain upon my own horse.

It would be Christmas soon, and the snow lay already thick upon
the ground, muffling the horse’s hooves. Poley had awakened before we reached
the manor, struggling madly against his bonds for a few minutes before
resigning himself. Rhys met us at the stable, taking the horses and vanishing
into the dark building.

I slung my squalid burden across my shoulder easily and made my
way into the cellars through the outside entrance. There was a little room
there, caught against the foundations of an older building when the present
house had been rebuilt. It was a somewhat damp and a bit airless, but I wasn’t
overly concerned with the little assassin’s comfort, only with my own revenge
for that day in Deptford, over seven years before. I dropped the man to the
floor and took the candles from the serving-wench who had accompanied us to
light the way. I perched the candles on the outcroppings of the rough
foundation stones, and stood over my victim in contemplation. Poley struggled
into a seated position, then gasped as he recognized me.

“Good evening, Robin,” my smile was no more than a feral baring
of teeth. “I see you remember me, after all. What else do you remember?” I
stooped and plucked the gag from his mouth, letting it fall to the floor.