The Shadow of Albion Read Free Page B

moonlight she
    had promised, but who would take care of her people and her land once she had
    gone? For the first time Lady Roxbury regretted her death as more than her own
    loss. It was a mystery no longer as to why Dame Alecto was here or how she had
    known to come. The Oldest People had avenues of information unknown to the
    human world – but even they could not change the appointed time of one’s dying.
     
    „If you can tell me how I may fulfill that oath, I shall be indebted to you,“ Lady
    Roxbury said dryly.
     
    „You must summon another to take your place,“ Dame Alecto answered.
     
    She moved from the foot of the bed to its side, to fling back the heavy velvet
    coverlet and draw Lady Roxbury from her deathbed. She tottered and would have
    fallen without Dame Alecto’s strong support The room spun and reeled about
    Mooncoign’s mistress, and the young Marchioness trembled as if in the grip of an
    arctic chill. The edges of her vision darkened and curled like the edges of a painting
    thrown upon a fire to burn. She barely noticed as Dame Alecto half-led, half-carried
    her to a chair before the fire and seated her in it, wrapping her in her heavy winter
    chamber-robe, its silk velvet folds still smelling faintly of cedar and lavender from its
    months in the clothes press.
     
    „Mooncoign is not in my gift,“ Lady Roxbury protested. Dame Alecto had
    poured out a cup of the cordial that Dr. Falconer had left her, now Lady Roxbury
    held it to her lips and breathed in the strong scents of brandy and laudanum. She
    sipped at it and felt the pain in her chest recede.
     
    „Nevertheless, you may choose your successor – if you dare. Look into the fire,“
    Dame Alecto commanded, „and tell me what you see.“
     
    Gypsy foolishness, Lady Roxbury thought scornfully, but spellbound by the force
    of the older woman’s personality, made no overt demurral. She stared obediently
    into the pale translucent flames on the hearth. At last she was warm, no, more than
    warm, hot, burning, a creature of fire –
     
    „Creature of fire, this charge I lay – “ There were others in the room, standing
    about them in a circle, chanting, their voices blending into the thin music of the
    names –
     

 
    „Tell me what you see,“ Dame Alecto repeated.
     
    The fire shimmered before Lady Roxbury’s eyes, and to her feverish mind the
    flames became a portal, a window, the curtains a stage upon which fire-phantoms
    capered –
     
    The tumbrel lurched and swayed, moving slowly through the streets of Paris.
    All about the cart the mobile surged, jeering and catcalling, come to see the
    Marquise de Rochberré brought low at last. Sarah gazed out at them icily, as if
    she wore silks and jewels instead of a filthy calico shift; as if her head were
    elegantly dressed with feathers and lace instead of shorn nakedly bare –
     
    „We can do nothing for her, whose pride was greater even than yours. Look
    again,“ Dame Alecto commanded.
     
    White Bird Dancing, a warrior of the Cree, gazed down at the pale skin village
    from which her father had stolen her as a babe. Around her a dozen of her brother
    warriors lay concealed, awaiting the signal that would commence the raid –
     
    „That one has the spirit that we need, but we cannot reach her – nor do I think
    she would help us if we could. Again.“
     
    The deck of a ship, the wooden railing salt-harsh and slick beneath her hands.
    She was Sarah Cunningham of Maryland, and in a few moments the ship that
    bore her would dock in Bristol Harbor. There was no one she could turn to, no
    one who could help her –
     
    „That one,“ said Dame Alecto decisively, and the fire-pictures dissolved, leaving
    Lady Roxbury blinking dizzily, me jumbled memories of half-a-hundred Sarahs
    inhabiting all the worlds of What Might Be capering through her brain.
     
    „What have you done to me?“ she demanded at last. „You have bewitched me!
    Pictures in the fire – I do not have