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.
It was Ariel who leaned over and closed her eyes. "There are no words," she whispered, taking Jenny in her arms.
Simon rose slowly and awkwardly to his feet. He looked down at the dead woman, at the glitter of gold between her closed fist. Why? Why the bracelet? His own elusive memory played hide-and-seek, and yet he knew in his blood and bones and sinew that the woman Sarah had taken a secret to her grave that was almost his, but that she would not have had him share.
The death-the shocking random suddenness of such a death-sent the crowds slinking away, melting into the smoky shadows. Ralph stood held fast by two of the cadre. His eyes were bemused, his expression sullen, like a small boy kept from the playground.
"Ravenspeare, I want your brother arraigned for murder," Simon said steadily.
"He's a Ravenspeare. Not a common criminal!" Ranulf declared, but much of his bluster had vanished. He had been defeated in passage of arms by the Hawkesmoor, and his idiot young brother had finally gone too far.
"He killed in cold blood," Jack Chauncey said. "Before witnesses. He will stand trial."
"And he will hang," Ariel said with soft vehemence, looking up from Sarah's body. She stood, drawing Jenny up with her. "I am shamed by my blood."
Men were lifting Sarah's body from the cobbles, bearing her into the castle. Ariel slipped her arm into Jenny's and guided her after them.
"You would pursue this through the courts, Hawkesmoor?" Roland asked, his voice alone of the three brothers calm, dispassionate. "The scandal will benefit no one."
Simon rested on his sword point. He was anxious to get to Ariel, and suddenly he knew he had had a lifetime's worth of the Ravenspeare brothers. "Wed?"
"Banishment," Roland said succinctly. "We'd send him to the colonies to make his fortune there. One of our ships is leaving for Virginia from Harwich at the end of the week. Let him go."
Ralph began to bluster but both of his brothers swung
round on him and he collapsed, seeming to lose all his stuffing as he hung from the hands holding him upright.
"You expect me to trust your word?" Simon's eyebrows lifted incredulously.
Ranulf took a step forward, but Roland raised an arresting hand. "Steady, Ranulf. The man has cause enough to doubt when he's been set upon in the back by that cub."
"We'll see it done," Jack said. "If that's what you want, Simon."
Simon looked down at the cobbles, where Sarah's blood glistened fresh and red. He raised his sword. "Ravenspeare. Swear before these witnesses, on your sword, over the blood of the woman your brother killed, that there will be no more blood shed between our two families. We may not live as friends, but we will live in peace. You will swear on your sword oath that your sister's children will be the currency of truce."
Ranulf glanced at Roland. Roland's nod was almost imperceptible, but it was the cool word of wisdom that the elder had learned to accept. He stepped forward, his face grim, his eyes dark burning holes of rebellion. He raised his sword and repeated the words the Hawkesmoor dictated. Each word was wrenched from him as if with red-hot pincers, but not even Ranulf, earl of Ravenspeare, would be forsworn on such an oath before so many witnesses.
Simon remained in the stableyard, somehow unwilling to leave the small patch of earth where the woman Sarah had given her life for his. He leaned on his sword, gazing down at the cobbles, feeling a great sense of peace invade him. Despite the blood and violence of the last hours, he felt purified in some inexplicable way. The woman's smile, the touch of her fingers, had been a benediction, had conveyed something… a feeling of love… that filled him with warmth and peace and strength.
And he thought that she had not died in vain. That from her death had come the first seeds of peace.