The Herald of Day Read online

  The Herald of Day

  Book 1 of The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy

  Nancy Northcott

  This is for Gerri Russell, a loyal, generous friend and a brilliant writer who always believed in this book.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  More About Richard III and the Mainwaring Curse

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Falstaff Books

  About the Author

  Also by Nancy Northcott

  Chapter 1

  Dover, England

  September 1674

  Most of Dover’s folk turned out for the witch’s hanging. Merchants in fine silk and linen mingled with farmers and laborers in stained homespun. Shoulders hunched against the damp salt air, they chatted while they waited.

  To see justice done. Or so they thought.

  Miranda Willoughby knew better. Although she hid her own powers, they would alert her to anyone else’s gifts, and she’d never caught a whiff of magic around old Mistress Smith. But saying so wouldn’t save the woman. It would only win Miranda a hanging of her own.

  “Black Bess, now,” said a short woman, “she danced like a hen on a hot slate b’fore she died.”

  Her burly, male companion shook his head. “That don’t compare to Jack Dawes, the highwayman—took near half an hour dyin’.”

  Their anticipation rasped across Miranda’s magical senses as harshly as rough surf scraped the shore. Standing by a small cart in the midst of the crowd, selling hot bread from the inn where she worked, she steeled herself against the callous talk.

  She’d known how people would react and so had pushed to be the maid chosen for this duty. While her limited magical skills could do little to ease the doomed woman’s passing, Agnes Smith would at least have one person in the crowd who recognized the injustice of her death.

  “I seen a double hangin’ in Canterbury,” the inn’s driver said from the cart seat. “Pair o’ thieves danced a merry jig.”

  Standing by the front wheel, his friend nodded and grinned.

  Miranda gritted her teeth. If only she could stop this. But Mother had died before she’d had the chance to teach Miranda more than summoning and glamours, and they were no use here.

  She and the inn’s driver had arrived early to secure a spot near the hanging tree, a stout oak. The noose dangled from a thick limb above the crowd’s heads. Swaying in the moist ocean breeze, it taunted her with her lack of power.

  To her right, a narrow, rutted dirt lane ran toward the town. The sheriff would bring the doomed woman that way.

  The pie-seller’s stand to Miranda’s left did brisk business, and a juggler near the road collected coins in his upturned hat. Shrieking, laughing children chased each other through the fringes of the crowd.

  A sturdy, blond man in rough woolen garb stopped beside her. “A hot cross bun, mistress.”

  He barely glanced at her, which was no surprise. Men didn’t favor plain women, and she’d used her magic to become so. Her dark brown hair appeared thin and limp, her form scrawny, and her face pox-marked. In homeliness lay safety that was well worth its cost to her in other ways.

  She uncovered one of the three pails in the back of the cart, where warm bricks kept the buns hot. A sweet, yeasty scent rose from the pail. Reaching in, she said, “That’ll be a farthing, if you please, sir.”

  He passed her the coin and accepted his bread.

  As he turned away, a shout rose from the crowd. They surged as one toward the road. Their bodies obscured her view of the approaching wagon, but its lone passenger, her aged face twisted with fear, stood high enough for Miranda to see.

  People stooped, picking up rocks and dirt clods. Threw them at that helpless woman.

  Miranda gripped the edge of her cart, the weather-worn wood biting into her palms. What use was power if you didn’t know enough about it to help someone in need?

  The sheriff’s wagon rattled its way toward the tree. The crowd followed, gleeful over the woman’s helplessness. A stone flew through the air and hit her shoulder. With her hands tied behind her, she couldn’t deflect the missile. She cringed, turning into the path of a dirt clod that struck her temple.

  Shuddering, Miranda swallowed against nausea. If she lost her breakfast, she’d draw attention she couldn’t afford.

  The wagon stopped under the tree, and the sheriff’s men pulled the old woman out. They pushed her up onto a ladder below the noose and put the rope around her neck.

  The sheriff stood in the wagon to read the sentence. The wind kept his words from carrying clearly, but Miranda caught some phrases. “For the crime of witchcraft ... Squire Mason’s cows ... ”

  Miranda frowned. Cows, hah! This had more to do with Squire Mason’s desire for the old woman’s land. Everyone knew he’d tried to buy her little plot at an absurdly low price, which the widow had resented. That resentment had opened the way for the witchcraft accusation. As had the old woman’s eccentric ways and homely, pox-scarred features.

  Miranda’s hand rose to the pox scar illusions on her cheek. Her disguise could have liabilities she hadn’t expected.

  “Hanged by the neck until dead,” the sheriff finished. He rolled his parchment with a flourish and jumped from the wagon.

  “I’m innocent. I done nothing!”

  The crowd’s derisive shouts drowned the old woman’s screech. “Nothing anymore,” a man yelled, and everyone laughed.

  Sickened by the cruelty, Miranda stepped on the hub of one of the cart’s wheels, boosting herself above everyone’s heads. Her eyes sought the condemned woman’s in the probably vain hope of making her last sight a kindly one.

  “Now,” the sheriff yelled.

  Someone kicked the ladder away. Mistress Smith’s body dropped, pulling the rope taut. She thrashed wildly in the air. In her reddening face, her eyes bulged. Her desperate, pleading gaze met Miranda’s.

  Miranda’s stomach lurched, and she tasted bile. Swallowing frantically, she murmured, “Ease,” and tried to push power into the words. “Stop the pain. Stop.”

  It wasn’t working. Desperately, she whispered, “Stop!”

  Nothing changed. Oh, if only she could do something. Anything!

  Wrenching pain lanced through her head, and the crowd vanished. Purple-gray mists swept around her, swallowing the shouting, hooting voices.

  Beneath her feet lay solid shadow, and the nasty odor of rotten eggs pervaded the dank, foggy twilight. Her neck and arms tingled with magic. With cold foreboding.

  The fog receded, revealing a white boar—with blue eyes, not small, black, piggy ones—lying on a carpet of deep blue bordered in mulberry. It struggled to rise, its eyes dark with pain and mute appeal that wrenched her heart.

  Above it loomed a red dragon bugling in triumph. White and green striations shimmered on the undersides of its spread wings. Blood dripped from its talons and f
lowed from gouges in the boar’s side. She’d always loved tales of dragons, but this one’s joy stabbed into her with the certainty that the creature was evil.

  Summon the boar’s knight, said a voice in her head.

  Knight?

  As she backed away from the gory tableau, the reeking fog closed around the images. A man’s face flashed into her mind, his strong, stern features framed by a knight’s helm. Clad in gleaming, silver armor, he galloped a black charger through the swirling vapors to confront the dragon.

  On his left arm, he bore a shield emblazoned with twin stripes of mulberry and blue down the middle and a white rose backed by the rays of a sunburst in the center. Etched boars and sunburst roses covered his armor.

  Beneath straight, dark brows, his blue eyes narrowed as he eyed the dragon and its prey.

  If he opposed the dragon, did that mean he was a force for good? Her instincts said yes, but how could she know?

  The dragon roared, a ground-shaking threat, and the knight’s expression hardened. He slammed his visor shut, drew his broadsword, and spurred his mount to charge. The dragon belched flame.

  No! He’d be killed.

  The fog closed over the scene, then cleared.

  Miranda found herself sitting on the ground by the cart, surrounded by half a dozen anxious townsfolk and the inn’s driver. The vision, or whatever it was, was over. Gasping in relief, she clutched the arm supporting her.

  Its owner was the last man who’d bought a bun. “Did you hit your head, mistress? Are y’all right?”

  They were watching her—all looking at her face. Staring. Oh, no—were her glamours—? But she could feel her power still shrouding her, holding them in place.

  Shaky with relief, she scrambled upright. “I’m quite well. I thank you. I must have lost my balance.”

  Of course she had. That had felt like a true magical vision, as unexpected as it was disturbing. Until today, though, she hadn’t used her magic for anything other than her glamours in years. Not since coming to the inn. Why would such a vision come to her now?

  And why would a man fight a dragon for a boar?

  She could worry about that later. Now she couldn’t afford to draw so much notice. “I’m all right. Truly.”

  “Been hexed, more like,” said an elderly woman in stern tones. “No tellin’ what a witch’ll do at the end.”

  If only the explanation were that simple, but Mistress Smith’s limp body dangled at the edge of Miranda’s vision. The old woman had passed beyond caring what anyone thought, God rest her soul.

  Miranda mustered a weak smile. “I thank you, all of you. I’m quite well now.”

  “You missed the show,” a man said. “Glad you’re well, mistress.”

  Nodding her thanks, Miranda let the driver help her into the cart. The sooner she escaped all this attention, the better.

  Wind rattled the window panes of the inn’s empty common room, whispering of change and danger and warning. The glass blocked most of the chill, but Miranda shivered. Her hands tightened on the broom. The shadows the firelight cast over the familiar plaster walls and beamed ceiling felt ominous. Threatening.

  There’d been no eerie wind the night Mother died, thirteen years ago, but Miranda had felt just as unsettled and anxious, on top of her heartbreak and grief. She’d been only nine then, but she’d never forgotten those feelings.

  She set her jaw against the old pain. Perhaps she was imagining things, overwrought about today’s injustice.

  The hours since this morning’s hanging had been too busy for pondering strange events. Now that she had time and quiet, she should puzzle out the strange vision, not chide herself over what she couldn’t help.

  As though summoned by her thought, the purple-gray fog blotted out sight and sound and scent. She stumbled. Caught herself on a bench.

  The fog swirled aside to reveal a bedchamber. A young man, brown-haired and sturdy, writhed in pain on the floor. He was dying, and before his time, she somehow knew. From somewhere near, triumph poured over her like flood waters.

  Miranda shuddered. Who could glory in that?

  Skeletal creatures rushed, shrieking, out of the mists, and a cry choked in her throat.

  “Miranda?” A familiar voice broke into the torrent, ending the horrible visions. Short, blonde Lucy, the friendliest of the other maids, hurried into the room.

  “Are you ill?” Lucy picked up the broom.

  Miranda didn’t remember dropping it. “I’m all right,” she managed. At least her glamours had remained steady.

  “You’re gray as an old sheet. I’ll do this.”

  Miranda pushed herself to her feet. “My thanks, but I’m almost finished.” Perhaps Lucy’s calm presence would help keep at bay the warnings that seemed to hover in the air.

  Lucy reluctantly surrendered the broom, and Miranda turned back to her task. The dying fire gave off little light and less warmth. Even with her unusually keen sight, she could barely see the worn, oak floorboards. She had once swept up a shilling, but tonight the broom caught only the usual rubbish, bits of tobacco, scraps of food, and too much tracked-in dirt.

  Lucy settled onto a bench. “I can’t believe we’ve had a witch so near. Why, she came in here from time to time. With her potions.” She shuddered.

  Miranda’s fingers clenched on the broom. “Those potions were once well received.” She couldn’t stop the words, unwise though they were.

  What would Lucy say if she knew how close she sat to a true witch?

  “Well, we’re safe now, anyway.” Lucy paused, eyeing Miranda. “Ned says some of the farm lads would show an interest if you’d talk sweet to them now and again.”

  “And if I looked more fetching.” Miranda forced a smile to push away the twinge of longing. Lucy and Ned would probably wed soon and then start a family. They didn’t realize how fortunate they were, sharing an honest, open love.

  Not having to keep secrets.

  Lucy sighed. “If you didn’t wear dresses what make you look like a stick—a crime, as well as you sew—or scurry away as though the lads had the plague, they’d overlook a few scars.”

  “I am as I am,” Miranda replied. She pushed the last bit of dirt to the door. “I’ve no money for new dresses.”

  “Oh, Miranda.” Lucy shook her head.

  Miranda shrugged. Of course she wanted beautiful dresses and flattery, but safety lay in avoiding attention. Peace of mind lay in shunning, as her mother had not, ties to a man who couldn’t know what she was. “Would you open the door, if you please?”

  Lucy pushed aside the heavy latch, and Miranda whisked the dirt out before the shrieking wind could fling it back in their faces. A chill that owed naught to cold ran down her back.

  “I’ll bank the fire.” Lucy knelt by the hearth.

  “My thanks.” Miranda set the broom in its corner, then threw the bolt on the door. Lucy meant to be a friend, but Miranda couldn’t risk becoming close to anyone.

  She swallowed a sigh. Loneliness, however bleak, was necessary. And safe.

  The two women climbed to the garret together. Lucy chattered softly about Ned, but Miranda barely listened.

  Without the distraction of chores, she couldn’t ignore the wind’s keening. Prickles of dread ran down her neck and along her arms.

  The window at the end of the loft admitted a generous draft but only a narrow rectangle of moonlight. The other two maids, April and Sarah, already slept in the cold, darkened room. Miranda and Lucy undressed and dived into their beds.

  Miranda pulled the thin coverlet over her ears. The wind’s moan mocked her uneasiness.

  Perhaps today’s visions meant she knew—or could know—more than she thought. She closed her eyes, trying to remember what Mother had said.

  Purple fog that reeked of rotten eggs swirled around her. The red dragon’s roar mingled with the sound of a horse’s galloping feet and an animal’s squeal of pain.

  Heart pounding, Miranda jolted awake.

  In
the next bed, April grumbled and turned over. No one else stirred. Miranda clenched her icy hands on the coverlet.

  Mother had said foresight could come as visions or dreams, and she’d warned against ignoring such things. Dire events will come to pass if you do, she’d said.

  If only Mother had lived long enough to teach her more about understanding what she Saw.

  Still, thanks to the old tales Grandmother had told, Miranda did know dragons were symbols of power. The legends Grandmother loved said they were also beings of great wisdom.

  Yet the one in the vision stood for evil—she’d felt that unmistakably—but what sort? What did the white boar symbolize?

  Who was the knight the vision wanted her to summon? Armored knights were the stuff of legend, symbols of times long past.

  She couldn’t interpret the dream, but she knew summoning. It drew on the same illusion skills she used to create her disguising glamours. She could summon the knight or whatever he represented in the real world. If she dared.

  Discovery would mean death.

  She shivered. No. She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t.

  Others with Gifts, better trained, could deal in arcane visions. She couldn’t risk it.

  “Miranda? Miranda, I say!” Master Warren, the innkeeper, squeezed his thin frame between the common room’s crowded tables. “That fellow by the hearth says he’s tried right well to tell you he needs more stew, yet you seem not to hear him.”

  Miranda blinked. The bustle of the noon meal surrounded her. No vapory shadowland. No dragon or boar, but she’d been almost asleep on her feet.