D. A. Houdek

Deb Houdek Rule

Web designer - Science Fiction author - Civil War historian - Genealogy researcher

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Of All the Western Stars

by Deb Houdek Rule

Chapter 17

Lisette greeted the day reluctantly, the sun already well high in the sky, with eyes gummy and sore from crying. Muscles abused the day before screamed in agony as she struggled up from the unfamiliar bed. Taking an absurd pleasure in the pain, she welcomed her misery as a penance for the sin of living to enjoy another day of life while her sister lay dead.

With aching lethargy, Lisette dressed in unadorned black velvet. It was a dress of her mother’s passed on to Lisette. It fit well enough, though it was an older style, with a high neck and tight sleeves without draping. To her velvet cap, Lisette attached a veil of black silk. The only jewelry she wore was her simple gold cross at her throat and the ruby betrothal ring on her finger. Its cheery shine and vibrant color was, today, an affront to her.

Throughout that long day, as family and friends arrived at Weston Manor, Lisette felt herself as isolated and removed as if she were in a ship alone, adrift on an endless, glassy sea. The grieving of the household was pushed aside in the greetings and chatter of the arrivals. The servants and staff, solemn and weeping the evening before, were caught up in a flurry of cooking and preparations for the sudden rush of visitors and, Lisette noted darkly, readying the feast that would serve both funeral and wedding.

Sitting alone, yet surrounded by people, Lisette nodded at the suitable times, smiled when encouraged, answered "yes" and "no" when it seemed likely that she ought, but later could not have said whom she had seen nor who had spoken to her. The day passed in a numbed blur of faces and well-meaning platitudes.

Geraint appeared briefly when his step-mother and her entourage arrived late in the afternoon, disappearing again as soon as he had formally greeted her. Surveying his placid face, Lisette wondered what thoughts he hid below that sedate surface. Lady Cicely approached Lisette, the now-familiar expression of sympathy she’d seen on so many faces this day, fixed upon her face.

"I am so sorry for you, dear child, for your loss. Yet at the same time I cannot help but rejoice that you shall so very soon be my own daughter," she said, seating herself on the bench beside Lisette.

Lisette clutched at the older woman’s hand, her throat closing up as the pain of the previous day overwhelmed her again. "I tried to reach you," she whispered hoarsely. "You could have saved her with your medicines. But I failed and now she’s dead."

"Oh, you poor girl! It was through no fault of yours that your sister died, but God’s will." She sighed. "Your mother told me of her illness. I know of this sickness and I tell you truly, I could not have saved her. Her illness was beyond my poor powers."

Lisette stared at her. "But… But… You saved Ashur. And he was so near to death you were certain he’d die. But you stitched his wounds and mixed medicines and he became soon well."

Lady Cicely shook her head sadly. "My poor skills didn’t heal that man. That, too, was in God’s hands." Her voice lowered. "I’d wager that foreign man has a pact with Satan… or is blessed by angels," she added briskly with a wry grin. "And that, neither, is within my power to know."

Staring blankly at the Lady Stafford, Lisette realized that she’d erred yet again. Everything had been leading her toward Ashur. Had she but sought him out, all might have been well with Alyce. For herself, on this the grim day of her wedding, she renewed her prayer that Ashur might appear as a sign to change this path upon which she seemed committed.

Lady Cicely patted Lisette’s hand and stood. "Come now. Join Geraint and me for a walk down to the Church. We’ll hear a Mass together. It will soothe your soul." She looked around the crowded Hall. "Now where did that lad go? Well, perhaps he’s gone ahead… never seems to find his fill of devotions, he does. Come, dear. ‘Twill do you good."

Lisette let herself be led from the Manor down the path toward the village. Some of their guests were walking toward the Church in clumps. Her mother and father elected to remain behind to meet those yet to arrive. Several of the townsfolk, their faces more familiar to her than many of her own kin, but whose names she had never learned, approached her shyly, offering their condolences to the family. The butcher’s wife pressed her hand warmly, and a scurvied little girl handed her a wildflower. Lisette smiled sadly at the child, thanking her and promising silently to send some good food and medicines to her.

The small stone church, its single tower taller than the highest house in the village, stood amidst the tombstones of the fenced churchyard. A century’s worth, and more, of Westons lay buried there, lives reduced to names inscribed in stone, Lisette considered. Looking away from the churchyard, she turned toward the village green. She didn’t see Geraint in the crowd gathering there. As they stood in the early evening air, Lady Cicely struck up a conversation with a Thomas Spring and his wife, of Lavenham. Master Spring was a business associate of Lisette’s father, a cloth merchant of ever-increasing wealth, who had become a friend. Lisette thought it kind of him to travel so far so quickly to be here. There were many kind and thoughtful folk here. Why then did she find herself searching for another face? A face she knew she would not see? Why did this place in her heart yearn to meet Ashur’s radiant eyes?

She listened for a bit to Master Spring relating the details of a Flemish cloth acquisition, not really hearing his words. The conversation was too cheerful for her bleak mood, so Lisette edged away to lean against the stone churchyard fence. How could anyone speak of the ordinary today? How could they think of trivia like food and drink and business? A light breeze blew from the direction of the river, tasting good after the close atmosphere of the manor house, with the smell of too many bodies that had traveled too far and too many perfumes to mask the odors of those bodies.

Distractedly, Lisette gazed about the quiet churchyard. For a brief time, she was able to shut off her thoughts and simply relish the clean, fresh air. Then her eyes came to rest on a nightmare surging up from the very pits of hell. A shovelful of dirt, and then another, was tossed up from a long narrow hole in the earth. They meant to put Alyce in there and cover her up. Lisette shoved her hand tightly to her mouth and gulped repeatedly. Forcing her eyes away, she turned to stare at the far side of the churchyard near the trees to the river.

There, in the shadows of the low hanging trees, a couple walked slowly, their hands gripping. Still in the shadows where, no doubt, they thought themselves unseen, they faced each other. Lisette saw the woman wipe at her eyes. They were talking, but were too far distant to hear. Then they embraced, hugging and kissing each other with an intensity that nearly brought tears again to Lisette’s eyes. Such love must be between these two, and a forbidden love, at that, to hide so in the shadows. After they parted from their embrace, the man took the woman’s hand, raising it. Perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight on the tears swimming in Lisette’s own eyes, but she thought she saw a glitter on the woman’s hand as the man lifted it into the light. A love token? The man kissed the woman’s hand and they hurried off in separate directions, the man disappearing behind the Church. The scene brought to Lisette an image of the morn after May Day, after the night that sent her world spinning off course. She remembered seeing a young couple parting in the meadow, the woman kissing her hand and waving. Had that been the night she received her secret lover’s token? How much more fondly, with how much more love, had it been put on her finger than this lump of gold been put on hers by her oft-absent betrothed?

Lisette stared at the spot the couple had stood for a long time, her thoughts a tangled skein, without focus or direction.

"Mistress Lisette." The low voice behind her should have startled her, but her nerves were too dulled to react. She turned slowly to see Geraint standing behind her. "Shall we go in now?" he asked, a hint of worry on his face.

Lisette turned around to see that the crowd had gone, with Lady Cicely waiting for them on the Church steps. "Yes," she answered, taking Geraint’s arm. When next she walked up these steps it would be to bid farewell to Alyce, then too soon after to become a wife. One more day… by this time tomorrow he would be her husband.

Ashur paced the length and breadth of the estate house like a caged veldebeast. Within the limits of sixteenth century capacities, the servants were solicitous of his wishes, but they were as distant and removed as the positronic systems and robotic servants he was accustomed to in his own time. The library provided some amusement, though most of the material tended toward ponderous religious texts, with few written in English. The little Latin he could puzzle his way through did not make entertaining reading. As pitifully few books as this library held, Ashur did find pleasure in the feel of real, bound books in his hands. He doubted there were so many real books in the entire city of Penrose.

Ashur tossed down The Canterbury Tales, and rubbed his eyes. Reading the ornate lettering was as difficult as interpreting the convoluted Middle English language and spelling. Still, the stories were as he remembered them. Somewhat amazing they’d survived so long, and followed humankind to the stars.

Picking up the crumbled note, Ashur read it again in the waning light through the library windows. Lisette was getting married tomorrow, burying her sister in the morning and wedding that tedious android, Geraint, in the afternoon. What matter to him, Ashur asked himself for the thousandth time. These people were the past, ancient history. To Ashur, and his era, their lives were lived out, dead, buried and lost to a millennia gone by. Lisette meant nothing to him. She was a living anachronism, no more to him than a means to find his ship. Oh, perhaps he could find temporary pleasure in her naive charms, nothing more. Certainly the course of her life was nothing to him.

Why, then, couldn’t he get her out of his mind?

The vision of Lisette, eyes glowing with a purity and innocence that was rarer than bound books among the jaded, too sophisticated women he knew, swarmed up before him. There, too, was the spark as she scolded him, the concern in her voice when he cried out in pain, the feather touch of her fingers, the ardor of her kiss. What a incomparable and precious jewel she was, a single bright star in Ashur’s darkest of skies.

Ashur grimaced. How would this dear lady react to him if she knew him for what he was, knew what he’d done, the staggering horror and destruction he’d committed. She’d shun him. She’d have to. Lisette was a good and decent person by any era’s standards. There was no way she’d look fondly upon a murderer. It would be best, best for her, if he never spoke to her of his feelings, never betrayed his desire for her in any way. Her world was too good for the likes of him. Looking again at the paper announcing Lisette’s marriage, Ashur nodded to himself. Her future was already written, written inviolably in his world’s past. He must not score across the course of her life, not tarnish it with the vileness he brought from a future beyond her dreams, beyond her nightmares.

Nodding to himself, Ashur moved to the window, staring out at the twilight. Capella would be in the sky tonight. It would be in the sky every night that he was here in this time. He could look at it alone, a fugitive and castaway more alone than any other in all of time, or he could fight for some measure of happiness in this world. He wanted Lisette at his side, wanted her hand in his as he faced the demons of his actions. By the Great Nebula, he’d not give up so easily. He’d not surrendered before, he wouldn’t now.

With an easy grin, the pressure of indecision gone, Ashur crushed the paper between his fists. Of course he was being a fool, he’d been one before.

Striding out of the library, Ashur barged into the kitchen, startling some of the servants out of an obviously unscheduled break in their work. Their chatter broke off abruptly. The head of the household, a thin, elderly fellow named Tom, scrambled to his feet, straightening his coat and brushing from it the sugar spilled from the pastries they were eating. Ashur carefully saw none of it, waiting just beyond the threshold of the kitchen.

"Yes, milord," Tom wheezed.

Ashur wondered how old Tom was. From what he’d seen, he could have been anywhere from forty to one hundred. Time was hard on these people.

"You know the Mistress Lisette Weston?" he asked.

"Indeed, milord. A courteous and comely young lady, she is."

"Then you know, as well, that the Duchess Agnes has gone to attend both her wedding and her sister’s funeral?"

"Oh, aye," Tom paused to cross himself. "Poor little lass, I knew her too."

Ashur nodded. "Very well. Where, then, are these events taking place?"

Tom looked vaguely puzzled. "Why at Houghton Church, milord. By Weston Manor."

"And where is that? How would I get there?"

It took nearly an hour to dredge the necessary information from old Tom. The elderly butler didn’t read or write, couldn’t fathom the idea of a map, and was excruciatingly uncertain about basics such as the difference between north and south, left and right. Apparently he’d never even been so much as five miles from this place in his entire life. The idea of going so far as Houghton struck Tom as more implausible than Ashur would have viewed a trip ten thousand light-years into unknown space. Eventually, however, after consultations with the rest of the house staff, Ashur felt confident that he had a reasonable set of directions.

He then sent Tom into spasms of horror when Ashur announced he would be leaving at once.

"At night?! Oh, merciful Mother, no. You must not travel at night. It’s not safe. You don’t even have a sword." He bustled off muttering, "I must find you a sword. One of the old Duke’s must be here about somewhere."

Ashur stepped outside into the night and reconsidered his hasty plan. No streetlights shone on the unmarked roads of Tudor England. No global positioning satellites would guide him. He didn’t even have so simple a thing as a magnetic compass. Blast! He had no choice but to wait until morning.

Ashur spent a good part of the night pacing, until he fell into restless dreams of striving to reach his beloved wood nymph as she faded into the shadows until he couldn’t even see her.