Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

the trip was frisky and alert after two months of running free in a rich paddock, and Vanessa, in the fine traveling clothes that Christopher had bought for her, looked far away but rather genteel. The delAurvre signet glittered on her hand.

Ranulf would be her escort for the short trip down to Saint Blaise, but Christopher rode with her as far as the edge of the village. There, the road passed through a gate and turned down toward the lowlands. He could see Saint Blaise in the hazy distance, and Malvern Forest was close enough that, given the drop, a man with a strong arm might have pitched a stone into it.

At the head of the road, he reached out to her, took her hand. He had never offered or asked for a kiss, but she must have seen that he needed one, and so she leaned out and touched her lips lightly to his. “G'bye, Christopher,” she said.

“Farewell, my dear lady.”

That was all. She went down the road with Ranulf. By mid-afternoon, she would be in Saint Blaise, starting a new life. And perhaps she would now have a few tools with which to make it a happy one.

Christopher rode back toward the castle. He acknowledged the bows and curtsies of the townsfolk, but he hardly saw any of them. Vanessa still was not free, and so neither was he. Only that dratted monkey was free, and it did nothing with its liberty save pelt people with fruit.

Was he any different? Since he had risen from his bed on Christmas morning, he had acted the part of the ape, grinning and mocking, tossing fruit at all the customs and mores and sacraments of his society. Only since Vanessa had arrived had he really taken on, once again, the attributes of a civilized man.

A civilized man. At the gate of the castle, he dismounted and handed his horse over to a stable boy. He looked down at himself. Silks and velvets again. Even a sword. The baron of Aurverelle.

He laughed, suddenly. Howled. He could not stop. By the time Jerome and Pytor—summoned by the panicked gate guards—came running to see what was the matter, he was so weak with his sobbing mirth that he was leaning against the whitewashed wall, tears streaming down his face.

“Dear God, my lord,” said Jerome. “What's the matter?”

With an effort, Christopher managed to stop laughing, but his tears still flowed. “I'm the baron of Aurverelle,” he said. He took Vanessa's pendant in his hand, held it up before his eyes. The moon and star flashed. “That's what's the matter.”

No. He would never forget her.

Townsfolk were staring at him, frightened, and he realized that, as he had moderated his excesses for Vanessa's sake, he would have to do so for his people, her peers. He straightened. Composed himself as best he could. “I'll talk with you about those free companies now, Jerome,” he said, tucking the pendant into his tunic. “If we let them get away with this, they'll be eating off our plates by next spring, whether Yvonnet pays them or not.” He wiped at his eyes. Vanessa was gone. And he was the baron of Aurverelle. He would rather have been the monkey.

Pytor and Jerome exchanged glances. It was quite obvious to Christopher that they were wondering whether he was going to begin once more to caper like a bear.

“Master should rest,” said Pytor. “Master's harper has said that she would be willing to play for him at any time. Would he care for a song?”

Christopher blinked. “Harper?” What idiot had decided to see if the baron was really mad. And a woman at that?

“She arrived late last night,” Pytor explained. “I did not wish to disturb master. I gave her a room—it was not seemly to ask her to sleep with the men in the hall.”

“Yes, yes. But why do you call her my marper?”

Pytor squirmed. “She played for me, master. She's very good. I . . . I thought . . . I . . . ah . . . offered her a position.”

Pytor was trying to help, Christopher realized. The good-hearted seneschal had not wanted him to be lonely or unoccupied, and so he had allowed a wandering harper—they were all glib ones, those harpers—to talk him into a permanent post.

“Fine, Pytor. Thank you. But I don't want her to play. Not now.”

Pytor shuffled his feet. “Some other time, then, my master?”

Christopher turned toward the gate. Pytor was trying to help, and doubtless the harper was good. But there were free companies to deal with, and there was also a cask of wine in the castle. He was not sure how he felt about the free companies, but with Vanessa gone, he had nothing left to believe in save the monkey and the cask. And he could not drink the monkey. “Yes, yes,” he said absently. “Some other time. Maybe.”

***

“Thankee, Ranulf.”

Patterns pressed close about Vanessa, and she saw them all as she and Ranulf halted that afternoon before the gates of Saint Blaise. There was a part of the pattern for Saint Blaise—a sea of housetops bright with money, blue slate glowing in the yellow sun—and there was a part for each house, and there were individual lines and mazes for all the people within. The gate guards in their fine livery participated, as did those who came and went before them. All a part of the multitude of patterns that wove through her mind, that always wove through her mind.

And all the patterns indicated that she would enter Saint Blaise and deliver herself and her letters to Martin Osmore, the mayor. The end was death, of course. Vanessa had been living with that knowledge for years now, ever since she had, for the first time, gropingly deciphered the maze of images, faces, and voices in her head. Whether it came at the stake or by hanging in any one of a thousand violet ways, it was still death that faced