The Penwyth Curse by Catherine Coulter Page B

mortal man’s brain.”
    Lady Madelyn’s tale was meant to paralyze a man with fright. It was enough. It was too much. He realized they were playing with him. No one could be as artfully mad, as artfully perverse, as these people. It was all a ruse to frighten him, to make him ride as fast as he could away from Penwyth.
    Bishop rose slowly from his chair. He looked from the old woman, gowned so beautifully this evening in a long-ago style, to her husband, to their granddaughter, with her pretty feet and small ears. He wiped Beelzebub’s cheese off his knife and eased it back into its sheath strapped to his forearm, inside his tunic sleeve.
    He looked yet again from Lord Vellan to Lady de Gay and said, “My craw is full to overflowing with all your crazed words meant to terrify a man. They do not terrify me. They enrage me. I have had enough of it.”
    No one said a word. No one’s attention faltered, except for two of the wolfhounds, who began to snore. “Listen, all of you. I have told you all that I am a wizard. I have told you all that it will rain, that the drought will cease. I have told Lady de Gay that she birthed five children. I have told you that I understand otherworldly spirits and their ways, that I can hear ancient voices and understand them. I will not tolerate any more of these mad, mad puzzles, your ill-disguised threats cloaked in mystical trappings.” He looked at Merryn. “I will not tolerate your secrets and your lies.” He paused, then spoke louder, reaching every ear in the great hall. “I will now give you my own curse.”
    The two snoring wolfhounds stirred, then looked up at him. Bishop stood tall. He raised both arms above his head, his palms out, stretched to the beamed ceiling. He closed his eyes. His voice boomed out deep, thunderous as a prophet foretelling doom on the heads of the people. “I pronounce that this spot of earth upon which I standwill flow with endless rain until all my inquiries are answered clearly and truthfully.”
    â€œEndless rain would be a pleasant thing, Sir Bishop,” Merryn said, not a whit moved, not even mildly alarmed. “It is not our fault that you are too dimwitted to understand words spoken to you.”
    â€œAnd those words not spoken to me? Am I too dim-witted to understand them as well?”
    She crossed her legs and kicked her foot up and down. There was that damned sneer on her mouth again. He was so mad he wanted to spit, to hurl her into the moat once it was full again.
    Then he looked around the great hall. The servants and the soldiers were all of them frozen in place, their faces showing their fear. That pleased him. He looked at Lord and Lady de Gay. They were calmly chewing on bread and cheese, acting as if they hadn’t heard him. But the wolfhounds, all six of them, were alert now, all eyes on him, standing tall like soldiers ready for battle. Or waiting for more white bones.
    â€œWe have answered you as clearly as we can,” Lord Vellan said, and just maybe he looked a bit apprehensive, the old fraud. Good.
    It hit him then that he’d just up and announced a flood. He’d done himself in with a curse—he who knew nothing of curses or their origins, he who had no power at all. A flood. He couldn’t believe his own stupidity.
    But maybe his curse had come from somewhere deep within him. After all, he’d known about Lady de Gay’s five children. He was a blockhead.
    It had been happenstance, it meant nothing at all. He was a fool and a blockhead. He could but hope that it would rain at least two days. Were two days of hard rain enough to fulfill the curse?
    There was no hope for it. He had to do something dramatic, something so shocking that it would shake them to their very core. He was smiling as he turned to Merryn, grabbed her arm, and jerked her to her feet. Her mouthopened to yell at him, but he slammed down his palm, and she couldn’t even