Jane Feather: The Silver Rose

Then Jack took Simon's hand, pressed it, and stepped back, the others joining him beside Ariel. She looked up at Jack, unable to frame her fear, and he gave her an almost quizzical smile and took her hand.

Ranulf looked over his shoulder at his two brothers, standing behind him. He grinned at them. "The final game of the tournament, my brothers. A fitting end to our wedding celebrations, I believe."

Ralph sniggered. Roland merely raised an eyebrow.

Simon lifted his sword in salute. Ranulf returned the courtesy.

The two women hastened, breathless, along the uneven lane. The sounds of mayhem, the smell of smoke, the clash of weapons, grew ever closer and more immediate, drowning out any words Jenny formed. Her mother's hand was on her arm, guiding her because they were going too fast for the younger woman's blind feet to step true. Ahead of them the hounds barked, every now and again turning back as if to herd the women onward.

Sarah had heard the sounds first. So faint behind the snug walls of the cottage, for a minute she believed she was imagining them, except that the dogs had raced to the door and stood, ears cocked, every line of their graceful, powerful bodies straining.

And then Romulus had thrown himself at the door, raising his voice in a great baying cry of anxiety and distress. Remus had promptly followed suit.

"What is it? What's the matter with them?" Jenny had rushed over to them, trying to calm them, but they had continued to batter the doors, giving vent to that unearthly cry.

Sarah had fetched her cloak from the peg, and Jenny, in bewilderment, had donned her own. The minute she had opened the doors, the hounds had shot out like gray cannon-bads, and as the women had hurried in their wake, they returned again and again, rounding them up, herding them along toward the smoke-filled skyline and the sounds of battle.

"Is it Ariel, Mother?" Jenny's voice was barely a whisper. Sarah merely took her hand in a tighter grip and hurried her along.

They reached the stableyard just as the violent hubbub seemed to be dying down. Jenny blinked as if she could somehow clear her blind eyes as she stood clutching her mother's hand. Ad around her, Jenny could feel the press of people. She could smell the reek of blood and stale humanity, and the stench of fear twitched in her nostrils. But she could hear no words to help her form a coherent picture of her surroundings. Her mother's hand gripped hers, and Jenny clung to it as the only solid beam in a frightening maelstrom that had no shape for her.

Sarah stepped a little forward into the yard. She saw the two men with their drawn swords, facing each other in the torchlight. She saw the circle of faces, eager, curious, malicious, surrounding them, watching the spectacle of death. She saw Ariel, the dogs now at her side, although she seemed unaware of them. She seemed to Sarah to be in a trance, her face bloodless, her lips blue.

Swords clashed and Ariel jumped as if it wasn't the sound she'd been expecting. Nausea was bitter in her throat, filling her mouth, and she thought she wouldn't be able to stay on her feet. And then she saw what was happening.

Simon wasn't moving. He stood rock solid, foursquare on the cobbles, and he was driving back Ranulf's attack with the sheer power and force of his upper body. But then she saw that he was moving, but they were small sideways shifts, mere flickers of his torso, taking him out of the line of Ranulf s snaking blade. And again and again, he caught his opponent's blade and forced it back.

It was as if Ranulf's opponent were a many-armed Hercules, Ariel thought in disbelief. Wherever her brother placed his blade, Simon's blade was waiting for it. Neither man was using the slender tempered steel of a dueling rapier, but Simon's weapon seemed somehow thicker, sharper, broader, and yet it moved as if with a life of its own.

Ranulf feinted, lunged beneath Simon's arm, trying to throw him off balance, hoping that he could slide behind him, forcing him to turn. Simon sidestepped. It was more of a hop than a step, and for one impossible second he was poised on the ball of his strong foot. Then his great cavalry sword flashed up and under, the blade crashing against the underside of Ranulf's hilt, and the other man's sword crashed to the ground.

Simon bent awkwardly and picked up the fallen sword. Suddenly all the grace seemed to have gone from him. That impossible pirouette was now just an image in the minds of everyone who had seen it. He straightened, and Ariel could see immediately that he was in pain. The white lines were drawn deeper than usual from his nose to his mouth, and his lips were set.

"Ravenspeare." He handed the sword hilt-first to Ranulf, who was staring flabbergasted. "The horses are now to be transported to Hawkesmoor."

"No!" Ralph surged forward, his eyes wild and staring. "You think you can better a Ravenspeare, Hawkesmoor!" He had a knife in his hand.

Ariel's shriek brought Simon swinging round, but Ralph was already upon him, his hand raised to plunge the knife into the Hawkesmoor's neck.

Sarah's thin body was suddenly between the two men. Ralph couldn't have halted the knife's stabbing trajectory if he'd wanted to. Sarah fed to the ground in a flutter of dark material, her hand pressed to her throat, where blood pulsed strongly between her fingers.

"Sarah," Ariel whispered, moving forward like a somnambulist. Simon had fallen heavily to his knees beside the fallen woman, his hands pressing a fold of material against the wound.

"Mother! Mother! Where are you?" Jenny's voice broke the hushed stillness. She came toward the group, her hands outstretched as her feet stumbled over the uneven cobbles. Ad her usual sensory antennae had deserted her in the evil-smelling place where the people crowded thickly against her.

"Sarah?" Ariel bent low, pressing her ear to the woman's mouth. "No," she whispered. "No. It can't be." She raised her eyes to Simon, whose hands were still pressed to the wound in Sarah's throat.

Ariel reached up for Jenny's hand, pulling her down to the cobbles beside her. Jenny laid her hands on her mother, feeling her breast. Tears slipped soundlessly down her cheeks as she laid her face against Sarah's.

Sarah opened her eyes. For a moment they were unclouded. Her gaze moved slowly over the three faces bending over her. With a supreme effort she raised her hand and touched Jenny's tear-wet cheeks. Her hand moved to Ariel, who bent her head lower for the benediction, clasping the hand, pressing a kiss in the palm.

Then Sarah turned her eyes to Simon. She reached up and touched his face as she had touched it twice before. Then she kissed her own fingertips and pressed them against his mouth.

Instinctively his fingers closed over hers. He stared down into her face, and incredibly she smiled at him, a smile of deep, abiding pleasure as if what she saw she found good.

And Sarah's thoughts were as unclouded as her eyes. The son must not know his mother. The mother died at Ravenspeare hands and the son must not know that. It was time for the blood and the violence, and the passions that only flared to destroy, to cease.

Her hand moved blindly toward Ariel again, grasping her wrist with astonishing strength. Her fingers grappled with the bracelet with sudden urgency, as if there was something she had to do, and quickly.

"What is it?" Ariel whispered. "The bracelet… you want the bracelet?" With feverish fingers she unclasped it and Sarah took it with that same strength, crushing it in her hand. The bracelet connected the blood of the past. The bracelet would go with her to the grave, together with the secrets it carried.

Again Sarah looked at Simon. And then her gaze traveled slowly and lovingly over the faces of her daughter and the girl who was all but her daughter as they clung together beside the only mother either of them had ever known. She let her hand with the bracelet fall to her side, but her fingers remained closed tightly over it. Now her eyes clouded, but that same smile was on her lips.