A Flight of Arrows by A.J. MacKenzie (most recommended books txt) 📗

serious eyebrows and the thin, firm-set mouth. A strong face, he thought, and yet her chin was surprisingly soft, her eyelashes as delicate as silk threads. A perplexing face, a mixture of hard and gentle, like the soul that lay beneath it.

‘Why did you go to Rouen?’ he asked quietly.

‘The queen told me I would find Rollond de Brus there. I thought I could talk to him and he would not betray me. I was wrong,’ she added.

‘You knew him from before?’

‘Of course. His, like mine, is a prominent family. He is a cousin of the kings of Scotland, the Bruces. There was talk of a match between us. I knew Rollond wanted me for his wife. I was less certain.’

‘Why?’

Tiphaine looked down at her hands. ‘He is a very comely man; many would say he is beautiful. When he suggested we become lovers, I was more than willing.’ She glanced up at Merrivale with a wry smile. ‘And why not? You would not buy a horse without riding it first, would you?’

‘Was this what he said?’

‘That is what I said. And I will tell you the truth. I found the ride very agreeable at first.’

She waited to see if he was shocked. ‘What happened?’ Merrivale asked.

‘After a time, once the delights of fornication had worn off, I began to realise his true nature. He is beautiful, but no one admires his beauty more than he himself. Narcissus could not rival him for vanity. And he knows the power that his charm gives him over women; oh, and men too, and that is what he lives for. There is not a single particle in his body that has ever given a thought for the happiness and well-being of anyone other than himself. I realised that I was just another mirror, into which he looked in order to admire himself more fully.’

She paused. ‘I left him. But when I did so, I did not realise how much I had wounded his pride, or how badly he desired to revenge himself on me. When I walked into the castle at Rouen, he was overjoyed. I was foolish enough to believe that he was delighted to see me once more. Too late, I learned how wrong I was.’

‘Yes,’ Merrivale said. ‘We all learn too late.’

Silence fell. The words lay between them, almost visible in the air, settling like dew on the grass.

‘I asked you once if there had ever been a woman in your life,’ Tiphaine said. ‘You did not answer. I assume that means there was.’

‘Yes,’ Merrivale said finally. ‘There was.’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes. But she is unobtainable, at least to me.’

‘Did you love her?’ Tiphaine asked quietly.

He considered the question for a long time. ‘Love,’ he said finally. ‘Such a small and insignificant word. It hardly begins to describe the turmoil of the soul, the terror and ecstasy and lunacy that burn like fever-candles… yes, I did love her. But those words don’t do her justice, nor me.’

‘Tell me about her.’

‘What can I say? She was everything. She was Iseult and Morgana and Blanchefleur all rolled into one. She was the fire and the flame; she was the lily, and the rose.’

Tiphaine’s voice was low. ‘But it ended.’

‘Yes. It turns out that the storybooks are all wrong. Our wishes were not granted. The kindly fates did not bring us together. No Olympian gods turned us into stars and planted us in the night sky to shine for evermore. No smiling Virgin looked down from her ikon and granted us eternal bliss. What we had turned to ashes and left us with nothing. And I still don’t understand, Tiphaine. Why give us happiness in the first place, if only to take it away?’

‘What happened?’ she asked, echoing his own words.

‘She was unobtainable. There is really no more to say.’

Tiphaine did not speak again. After a while, she turned and kissed his cheek, her lips soft as a bee’s wing as they brushed his skin, and then she rose and went inside the tent.

Memories, the herald thought. As if we do not have enough cares in the present world, the past sends its phantoms to plague us as well. He shivered as he shrugged on his tabard once more, and he knew that it was not the cold that made him shiver.

He walked away from the tent, looking out towards the orange glow in the east. Ten miles to the Somme, he thought. Irrational hope suggested that there might still be a way across; after all, they had triumphed at Poissy when all seemed lost. Reason told him this was a lie. Lightning did not strike twice.

Something rustled in the darkness behind him. Nell Driver’s voice screamed, ‘Sir Herald! Look out!’

That half-second of warning saved his life. Merrivale turned, and the cudgel that had been aimed for the crown of his head hit his left shoulder instead. The padding of his tabard absorbed most of the blow, but it was still hard enough to numb his arm and make him wince with pain. He stumbled, a second blow thudding into his back, and then the man behind him was grappling with him, trying to slip something around his throat. A few yards away Pip was fighting with another man in the shadows. With his good hand, Merrivale caught hold of the bowstring his assailant was trying to use to choke him and pulled it forward, shuffling his boots to locate the other man’s foot and then stamping down hard. The man grunted, his grip on the bowstring slackening, and Merrivale ripped it out of his hands and spun around, hitting him with a back-handed blow across his jaw that knocked him onto his back.

Pip was down on her knees, and her attacker had looped his own bowstring around her neck and was pulling hard. Choking silently, she scrabbled at the string, trying to pull it free. Merrivale ran straight into the man, knocking him sideways. The man stumbled but stayed on his