Lady Knight by L J Baker

dark
corridor to find an external door in the unfamiliar grove house.
    Aveline walked out into a courtyard washed in grey light. A cat bolted away from
the door with silent haste. Aveline sucked in air that proved barely less
oppressive than in her borrowed bedchamber. The coolness still nestled behind
her ribs and cradled her heart.
    “I come to obey your summons,” she whispered to the night.
    The murmur of snores and footfalls of her entourage carried from the main
courtyard on the other side of the modest stable block. Most of her servants
slept in blankets on the ground for want of better accommodation at this grove
house. The Lady of Barrowmere and her large retinue lodged half a mile away at
the manor house of one of her dependents.
    Lady Eleanor of Barrowmere. Finding her at Highford had been an interesting
surprise, and not unwelcome for relieving Aveline of the necessity of holding
the bride-to-be’s limp hand all the way to the basilica door. Aveline should
have known Lady Eleanor’s connection to the new countess. It was unlike her,
too, to have forgotten that the lady’s husband had died. Wealthy widows made
marriage prizes second only to heiresses.
    Aveline strode across the courtyard and past the solitary kitchen building
wreathed in the stench of rotting food scraps. She paused to take her bearings.
The grove must be that way. She headed for the ghostly trees, where she found
the well-beaten path and turned to follow it.
    Her feet trod the dust stirred by countless priestesses and worshippers. She
might be the most important woman called this way by the unspoken will of the
Lady of Destiny, but for certès she was neither the first, nor would she be the
last.
    The first pool looked black. Shadows from the surrounding trees stretched
towards it and bled into it. Aveline halted only long enough to sight the way
through to the sacred water. Only initiated priestesses trod this path. Aveline
pushed a low branch out of the way. In the morning, she would tell the senior
priestess that she needed more careful maintenance of the area. That should put
the fear of the Goddess into the servile creature.
    At this grove, underground springs fed both holy pools. Not even the whisper of
trickling water broke the silence. No, not silence. Rustlings of unseen
creatures moving across the dry twigs and leaves of the forest litter cracked
the night.
    Aveline stood listening. On a night like this, cloaked in moonlight and
solitude, she felt like parts of her dissolved – as if the sharp edges that set
her as a thing apart from the rest of creation blurred, and the outer reaches of
herself merged with the greater whole. Not lessened, but more alive to the rest
of the Goddess’s will. The Goddess called her with divine murmurs and hearing
required more than ears.
    Aveline knelt at the edge of the sacred pool and muttered the prayer of
beginning. She stroked the surface with two fingers. Even the water was tepid
this summer’s night. She lifted her wet fingers to trace the quartered circle on
her forehead and put her fingers to her mouth to touch blessed water to the tip
of her tongue. She smelled sex on her hand from her energetic encounter earlier
with the nubile young priestess. She smiled. The Goddess would understand.
    Aveline opened her purse and found the small bottle by touch. The moonlight
drained all colours, so the syrupy liquid inside the precious glass looked dark
grey rather than the brown it was under the sun. Aveline settled to a more
comfortable cross-legged position before tugging the tiny stopper out and
letting a single drop of the bitter syrup fall onto her tongue. She shuddered as
she carefully replaced the stopper and bottle. Her tongue curled and her eyes
watered. A searing heat burned down towards her stomach but did not touch the
chill inside her.
    Aveline put a fist against her chest and plunged her other hand into the blessed
pool. She shuddered as the bitterness hit her stomach and made it clench.