When Rosalind walked Nicholas to the front door after a lovely tea an hour later, Willicombe clearing his throat discreetly not six feet behind them, she said, "You know Uncle Ryder is standing not twelve feet away, back by the drawing room door, ever vigilant. I believe Willicombe is his forward guard."
He looked down into those blue, blue eyes of hers. "I don't doubt I'll be doing the same thing when our daughter is your age."
Her jaw dropped and she pressed her palms to her cheeks. "Oh, dear, that brings such a clear picture to my brain. It is appalling, Nicholas. I am only eighteen."
"I know," he said and smiled down at her. He lightly cupped her cheek with his own palm. "Only consider all the time you and I will spend bringing this about. Will you marry me, Rosalind? Will you let me be your Orlando?"
"A man who knows Shakespeare. It is a powerful temptation, Nicholas, but—"
"Perhaps it is I who am not worthy of you. Look at me, a merchant of Macau, an earl through an accident of birth, detested by his father. Not at all worthy of you."
She chewed on her bottom lip. Finally, she raised her face to his "Perhaps I would not lose all my nobility if I married you."
"You would not lose a whit. Indeed, you would gain in worthiness."
"Very well, then it is time you spoke to Uncle Ryder."
Nicholas raised his head and nodded first to Willicombe, then toward Ryder Sherbrooke, still standing against the door of the drawing room, his arms still crossed over his chest. "Excuse me, Rosalind ."
She watched Nicholas walk back to her uncle and speak to him low, then he came back to her, lightly patted her cheek, and left.
Ryder merely nodded to her and went back into the drawing room, where she knew Uncle Douglas waited.
17
The following afternoon Nicholas emerged from the Sherbrooke estate room looking thoughtful. When he walked into the study, Grayson said, "It's about time you came. Rosalind wouldn't translate the Rules of the Pale until you got here."
Nicholas nodded toward Rosalind, smiling automatically when he saw her. Good, she thought, it was done. She was going to marry Nicholas Vail, a man she didn't know at all. She hoped she would have fifty years to learn all his bad habits. Her Aunt Sophie had once told her that Uncle Ryder still came up with a new crop of bad habits every single spring and it required great ingenuity to stamp them all out. Rosalind was smiling as "she lowered her eyes to the ancient book and read:
The most amazing thing has happened. The Dragons of the Sallas Pond have sung to me that they believe me ready to join the wizards. Because the Dragons can read a man's thoughts, they sang to me that the wizards were men like myself who maintained the balance of the different worlds tied to the Pale. These men, the Dragons of the Sallas Pond sang, were only wizards, not gods. One Dragon told me his name was Taranis. I remembered quickly enough that Taranis was the Celtic god of thunder. The thunder god of the Celts and a Dragon of the Sallas Pond, also a god, both carried the same name?
Taranis told me to sit between his mighty scales and hold on. For the first time I saw the Pale from above, where clouds the color of eggplant rolled like mighty waves through the sky. On and on Taranis flew, his powerful wings nearly soundless in the still air. I looked down to see many rivers and lakes, all as thin as thread, but never ending, and so blue they looked like raised veins on a man's hands and arms, but it was the fortress of black stone I saw atop a huge mountain that froze my blood.
Taranis sang to me that this was the pride of the wizards, that the fear it engendered helped them to maintain their veil of power. The wizards' fortress, brooding like a black vulture atop Mount Olyvan, was called Blood Rock. I saw the reason for the name. Streaks of blood snaked down the black rock, like the rivers on the land below. The streaks were as red as blood just shed.
We were welcomed by a young man who greeted Taranis with great deference, almost reverence, I thought, and bowed low to me. He told me his name was Belenus—/ remembered that Belenus was the Celtic god of agriculture who also was the giver of the life force and brought the healing power of the sun to earth and to man. The Romans called him Apollo Belenus and named the great May first festival after him, Beltane. Another Celtic god? When Taranis left, Belenus invited me into a small room hung with rich crimson draperies and gave me a bronze cup of witmas tea. It tasted of strawberries stirred with garlic.
Belenus had a great red beard that covered his face, leaving only bright blue eyes showing beneath his shag of more fierce red hair. He had big square teeth and he seemed to grow younger even as I spoke to him and drank the witmas tea. I drank a great deal of witmas tea during our time together and the taste changed with every sip, from strawberries and garlic to harsh green tea to a sort of beef broth. I was a wizard, I thought, and so I tried to change the witmas tea, but it ended up filthy black mud. It was very humiliating, but Belenus only laughed.
I met another that day as well, Epona, and she wasn't a wizard, she was a witch, known to the Celts as the horse goddess because her father hated women and thus mated with a horse; she was the result. She represented, I knew, beauty, speed, bravery, and sexual vigor. It was a good thing that her father gave her his face, I thought, since her mother's would not have gained the same result at all. The Romans, naturally, adopted her and held a festival in her honor each year in December. Odd that she was fully human and yet her mother was a horse. As to her sexual vigor, never would I have guessed at that moment what would come to pass with the witch Epona.
Belenus told me the other wizards wished me to join them. I knew deep down that if I did not remain with them, perhaps my blood would join the wet streaks on the fortress's walls. And so I remained for close to a year. But one morning I thought hard that I wished to leave Blood Rock, where I seemed to forget as much as I was told, surely because of a spell they'd cast upon me. Soon, as I stood on the ramparts, hungrily searching the horizon through the eggplant clouds, I saw Taranis flying to Blood Rock to fetch me.
"That is why you remember so little," Taranis sang to me. "They knew you would not choose to remain with them. I had hoped you would, for all the Dragons worry about the future with that vicious crop of wizards up there."
On odd days I remembered the wizards had given me the name Lugh, pronounced "Loo," the Celtic "shining god" who was a fierce warrior, magician, and craftsman. It was a very important name—the Romans had Latinized it into Londinium, which later became London.
Rosalind paused and drank some water. She said, "The Celts. This is very odd. Why are there Celtic gods in the Pale?"
"Why not?" Grayson said. "If there are Tibers, surely we can accept Celtic gods." He shrugged. "We still didn't learn anything at all useful, but I will say that this is a powerful story. I can see the fortress of Blood Rock clearly in my mind."
Nicholas said, "You think it is a fiction, spun out of Sarimund's brain?"
Grayson shrugged. "Were there not so many odd things about how I came upon the book, I should say yes immediately. But there were odd things, more than odd, really. Magical things. I find myself enjoying it as I would any good tale."
Nicholas rose and prowled around the room, pausing here and there to pick up a cushion or a teacup or a book off a table. He said, "I don't like any of this. It is as if Sarimund is playing with us, perhaps mocking us, and perhaps this Blood Rock is something he created to ease the boredom of his time in the Bulgar."
Rosalind said, "There are only a few pages left. Shall I finish them today?"
Grayson consulted his watch and rose. "Let us finish it tomorrow. I must be off. I have an engagement."
"Aha," Rosalind said, grinning shamelessly at him. "An engagement with the lovely Lorelei? Will her father be hanging over your shoulder the whole time? Perhaps her four sisters will giggle in a circle around you?"
"I am not the one scandalizing my parents," he said. "Look at the two of you—engaged! I tell you, Rosalind, it fair to curdles my belly to think of you married, and you wore
pigtails only weeks ago, I would swear it. Nicholas, I will tell you about her misspent childhood, how she was as bad as any demon I ever created, led all the children into mischief, always with a wicked smile, drove my parents and Jane—Jane is the directress of Brandon House—quite mad. Yes, Mother is right, you were a Devil's spawn, Rosalind."
Nicholas sat down on an embroidered green wing chair, stretched out his long legs in front of him, and crossed his hands over his belly. "Tell me one evil deed this Devil child executed, Grayson—only one, because I don't wish to be-come disillusioned."
Grayson struck a thoughtful pose and grinned at Rosalind as he said, "When she was fourteen, she decided to visit the band of gypsies camping on the eastern corner of my father's fields. I refused to go with her, and since she was afraid to go alone, one evening she took a dozen of the children to the gypsy camp, all of them wearing kerchiefs on their heads and banging cymbals and bells and hitting sticks on bottles, and whistling. The gypsies were surprised and amused and, luckily, welcomed them.
"My father was even more surprised when at the stroke of midnight several of the gypsies appeared at our door leading the children, who'd all drunk some gypsy punch Rosalind had given them. The children were vilely ill for the remainder of the night. As I recall, my father spanked you good and proper, the one and only time, as I remember."
"Yes, he did, but it wasn't fair. There were so many other times when it would have been fair, but not that one. I intended us to have a marvelous lesson, perhaps sing songs with the gypsies, learn how to dance as they did, you know, twirling about the huge campfire, skirts swinging. Then I saw a little gypsy girl drinking punch out of a big barrel. When I told her we were thirsty, she gave us all some. How was I to know that it would make everyone so sick?"
"You were sick as well, Rosalind ?"
Grayson said, "No, she was the only one who wasn't ill. I was certain you didn't drink any of the punch. You didn't, did you, Rosalind ?"
"Yes. I drank at least three cups and it tasted so good. I don't know why I didn't get sick." She was aware Nicholas was giving her a brooding look. There was calculation in that look, she was sure of it, and what did that signify?
18
Tuesday afternoon, Nicholas, Rosalind , and Grayson were seated in Nicholas's small drawing room at Grillon's Hotel, cups of tea on a silver tray next to Rosalind's elbow, brought to them by Lee Po, Nicholas's man of all affairs. The two men had spoken quietly in what Nicholas told them was Mandarin Chinese. When Lee Po had bowed himself out, Grayson said to Nicholas he'd never before heard sounds like that coming from a human throat.
Nicholas laughed. "Lee Po says the same thing about English, though he speaks the King's English like a little Etonian." He shrugged. "Since I lived and traded in Macau, it was necessary that I learn Mandarin. Lee Po corrects me regularly. However, I'm not able to correct his English."
Rosalind laughed. "Why didn't he speak English to us?"
"He tells me no civilized tongue should sound like a knife chipping ice."
"Where did he learn English?" Grayson asked.
"He was married to an Englishwoman, ten years, he told me, before she died in childbirth with their only child. She'd been a missionary and a teacher."
"How very sad," Rosalind said. "Why is he so completely loyal to you?"
Nicholas looked off into the distance, seeing something neither Grayson nor Rosalind could see. "I saved his life when a Portuguese governor wanted to hang him."
Rosalind gave him a shrewd look. "What did you do to the Portuguese governor?"
He smiled at her. "I merely told him what would happen if he attempted anything like that again."
Rosalind said thoughtfully, "Lee Po was looking at me rather pointedly. Does that mean he knows we will marry?"
Nicholas nodded.
"It's time to see if my tongue can form these strange sounds. How do I say thank you to him?"
"Shesh shesh is how you would pronounce it."
Rosalind said it over a couple of times, then called out, "Shesh shesh, Lee Po!"
She heard him mumble something and grinned at Nicholas. "What did he say?"
"He said you are welcome, redheaded soon-to-be ladyship of his vaunted lordship."
"You made that up!"
He gave her a crooked grin that made her knees lock. It was powerful, that grin of his.
Grayson asked, "Does Lee Po know about the book?"
Nicholas nodded. "I believe Lee Po knows about everything that is important to me."
"Speaking of the book," Rosalind said as she opened the Rules of the Pale, "we haven't much time. I must be fitted for my wedding gown in two hours. I believe we have time to finish."
Grayson said, "Lorelei told me she is to accompany you. She told me she helped select the pattern."
Rosalind rolled her eyes at Grayson. "She simply agreed— with great enthusiasm—with everything my Uncle Douglas said. I had some ideas, but do you think anyone listened to me, the future bride? No, not even the assistant with the tape measure."
Nicholas laughed. "Your Uncle Douglas told me you have unfortunate taste in gowns, Rosalind , and that is why he has selected nearly all your clothes for your season. He then questioned me about my own taste. I told him I had never had the opportunity to select a woman's gown and thus I didn't know if I was gifted with this special talent. However, I told him that Lee Po assured me I have very fine taste indeed, so we would see. I do have a bit of news for you, Rosalind."
She was grumbling under her breath, but not under enough. "Here I am a grown woman with taste, good taste, I tell you, and yet it's a gentleman who has the final word in what I wear. It's not fair. And now here you are claiming Lee Po worships your bloody taste."
"I understand. Now, I said I had some news for you, along the lines of taste as a matter of fact." At her raised eyebrow, he said, "I'm to accompany you to Madame Fouquet's shop. Your Uncle Douglas wishes to test me."
Grayson burst into laughter. "Test you? Ah, and will you let Nicholas measure you, Rosalind ?"
But Rosalind was studying him, her fingertips tapping her chin. "I fear we will see, Grayson, that his lordship is a toady."
Grayson laughed, shook his head. "Uncle Douglas doesn't like toadying. Only agree with him two out of three times, Nicholas, no more than that or he will blight you. Now, we need to finish up the Rules. Hopefully Sarimund will spin us more than just a fine ending to this tale." They heard the front door to the suite close.
"Where is Lee Po going?"
"He is visiting an ap o thecary shop in Spitalfields, at my request."
"And what request was that?" Rosalind asked. "You are not ill, are you?"
"Never you mind. Read, Rosalind ."
Rosalind frowned at him as she carefully opened the book, cleared her throat, and read:
I realized I hadn't been much of a wizard here in the Pale and so I cast a spell upon a red Lasis. To my surprise, it turned great eyes to me, came up and butted my shoulder, and sang to me, soft and sweet, its voice rather high. The red Lasis said his name was Bifrost, and he was the oldest red Lasis in the Pale. He had waited for a very long time for me to speak to him, since, of course, a red Lasis never spoke first. It was considered rude. He told me I was a mighty wizard, despite the fact that I'd let those boneheaded wizards and witches in Blood Rock roll my brain around like an empty gourd. He sang to me that it was time for me to leave, that I had left my seed in Epona, which was why they had wanted me to come in the first place. A good thing, he sang to me.
Left my seed? He saw that I was both appalled and disbelieving, though faint memories stirred, memories I'd forgotten, truth be told. He told me the tea they served me had left me senseless save the most important part of me. It was foretold, the red Lasis sang in his lovely airy voice, that Epona would birth a wizard who would be the greatest ever known and he would rule in the Pale until Mount Olyvan sank into dust.
I would have a son—only I would nev
er see him. I knew it would hurt me deeply, but not until later when the reality of it sank into me. I told Bifrost that I was ready to leave but I didn't know how I'd arrived in the first place, only that I'd awakened and I was here, but I had no idea of where the door—or whatever it was that got me here—was located so I could get back. He sang a laugh, which was very pleasing to the ear. He then sang that the Dragons of the Sallas Pond had brought me to the Pale, that this was how they judged possible new brethren for that vipers' nest of wizards and witches upon Mount Olyvan. He sang they didn't want me, however, that I was too set in my ways, but my son would do, a son I would never know. Bifrost sang to me that he would ensure my son knew about me. Then Bifrost sang that he would show me how to leave. But he did nothing at all. I saw him trap a Tiber in a pit and kill it with a fire spear through its big neck, and set to his meal ferociously. Then he left me. I felt abandoned. I did not understand Bifrost or anything else in this outlandish place. And I was leaving my son here.
When I finally fell asleep beneath a sharp-toothed angle tree I dreamed I was in a mighty desert storm, sand whipping around me, choking me, blinding me. There was no escape and I knew I would die. Then the storm stopped and I saw I was back in the Bulgar. I felt wonderful. I had no idea what Bifrost had done, but I knew it was magic, ancient magic from a strange otherworld. And Rennat, the Titled Wizard of the East, was there standing over me, and he kindly asked me if I had slept well the previous night, and I nodded. The previous night? He said even a single night spent away from all the other gray beard wizards was good for the spirit. Only a single night?
Is the Pale naught but a dream? Did this mean I also had no son? That none of it really happened, that my stay in the Pale was spun from my fevered brain? I told no one about this. What would I say?
It was on the following day when I was bathing that I saw the healed scars from a Tiber's claws on my leg and knew the Pale was real and yet, and yet—how could I believe in a place that seemed to be someplace else, perhaps sometime else as well?