Healer (20 page)

“Smells are important. We are getting acquainted … aren’t we, Cú?” Though she continued to whisper, attention was turning their way down the line. “You’ve a horrid case of mange on your flank. I’ve just the thing to make it stop itching and heal. If you’re willing, that is.” The same singsong voice she used on Faol lifted the wolfhound’s ears.

“Caw, I never,” Daniel said in wonder when Cú tentatively licked Brenna’s hand.

Or was it the way she held the dog’s gaze with heartfelt concern that transcended words?

To Ronan’s dismay, Brenna knelt so that the hound could have killed her with a simple snap of its powerful jaws. Instead it hunkered down and allowed her to stroke its wire-bristled fur. “How long has his fur been thinned so?” she asked Daniel.

“Was that way when I came here, milady.”

Brenna glanced up at Ronan. “We must get my things from home.”

“We will,
cariad.”

“I’ve a dog suffering the same malady,” a man standing nearby spoke up. “Bites hisself bloody, he does. Hurts me to see it.”

“Hush,” the woman next to him hissed. “’Tis witch’s magic.”

“’Tis God’s gift of nature’s bounty, milady,” Brenna said gently. “Given for the good of His children.”

“The same as the drawing salve you get from me for your boils, Ina.”

Ronan turned to see Brother Martin standing next to them, flanked by Rhianon and her guests. Upon seeing Brenna’s approach, the priest left his companions in charge of the Eucharist to come to her aid.

“Or the medicinal teas for your plaguing coughs or distressed bowels. This lady has prepared them for you for years, and I have seen that they reached those in need.”

A murmur of surprise wafted through the crowd.

“The church believes Lady Brenna is a gifted healer like her mother before.”

“Her mother was a witch,” Ina said.

“Only in my father’s fevered mind,” Ronan replied. “Ask
your
father, Ina, or any of the men who were present at the Witch’s End, if they sleep well at night after the wrong committed upon Tarlach’s orders.”

“I have heard their confessions,” Martin said. “But for God’s grace, they would carry the burden of their guilt to their graves.” He canvassed the crowd with a piercing gray gaze. “You men know who you are.”

The edge of hysteria surrounding them began to dull. Yet Ronan knew it could sharpen with a turn of phrase.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this!” Rhianon stared at Ronan and Brother Martin as if they’d grown horns and tails. “Are you accusing your father of senseless murder before his own people? Oh, would that my husband was here to defend him, instead of abed with the same terrible head pain as his father!”

The lady didn’t finish her accusation, but her nurse did. “Aye, the same curse as her mother put on Tarlach.”

Whispers and gasps rippled through the gathering throng who had abandoned the young priests and the communal wine and bread.

“Nonsense,” Ronan countered. “Caden suffers from too much of the heath fruit last night. As for Tarlach—”

“Superstitious nonsense.” Like a great oak seizing Heaven’s replenishment, Martin raised his clenched fists. “With God on our side we have nothing to fear. Sin and sin alone caused Tarlach’s disability, and bitterness has fed his madness. God strike me down now if I am wrong!”

Whether the crowd believed him or whether they awaited God’s verdict, the murmurs quieted.

“Martin is right,” Ronan said. “I was there. Father’s rage came from a spurned heart, not a just cause. But I believe that God has given Glenarden a second chance to redeem itself … through my wife.”

“What about the prophecy?” someone called out.

“Father only quoted part of it—the part where Glenarden will be divided,” Ronan told the onlookers. “But the most important part that you need to know is this:
And bring a peace beyond the ken of your wicked soul
.”

“May I speak?” Brenna rose, a bit unsteady, and brushed off her gown. She was pale, drained from the exertion of coming out to the orchard. Yet again Ronan was struck by her determination and courage.

“By all means, my love.”

“The same prophecy that has kept you at war with my kinsmen has kept me imprisoned for twenty years, hidden away from the people God intended me to heal. I prayed for an answer to my dilemma, and He sent me Ronan, whom I love with all my heart.” Brenna linked her arm in his. “By God’s union of marriage, his people are now my people. If you be divided,” she charged, “then you are divided between continued war and the chance for peace and prosperity for all.”

“That is easy for you to say, now that you have married into authority,” Rhianon challenged. “But do you have your people on your heart—or ours?”

“I have the welfare of the O’Byrnes
and
the Gowrys on my heart, milady,” Brenna replied. “As proof, it is my hope that
you
, Lady Rhianon, will do me the honor to continue to run the household as you have done so well. For I am a healer and unschooled in such affairs. I wish only to serve God’s people in that capacity.”

The thin line of Rhianon’s lips slackened with shock. Beside her, her mother, Enda, squeezed her hand. As for Idwal, Ronan couldn’t be sure. Had Brenna won Rhianon’s father over or not?

But behind her, Keena mumbled, “The proof will be in the pie.”

Brenna stepped up to the crone and hugged her as Brenna embraced all of life—with boundless love.

“Then let us make—” She stepped back, a flicker of discomfiture grazing her impressive show of confidence and grace. Her glance darted to Brother Martin, then back to Keena’s impassive face. “Then let us make delicious pie, dear friend. Together as sisters of God.”

Brother Martin raised his voice with ecumenical authority. “God be praised that on this day, we celebrate not only the Resurrection of the Christ, but the rebirth of peace and friendship between Glenarden and Gowrys. Allies for Arthur and Albion, brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.”

Amens
scattered through the throng, but Ronan would have wished for more.

Chapter Eighteen

Brenna rolled over, half asleep, and stared in the dim light at the thick-beamed ceiling of the anteroom bedchamber next to that of Tarlach O’Byrne. Upon hearing how Rhianon and Caden had been ousted from the master bedroom on the second floor, Brenna pleaded with Ronan to move to the makeshift chapel at the rear of the hall.

“Christ the King dwelt
among
his disciples, not above them,” she reminded him when he expressed second thoughts regarding his right as lord of the keep. “Besides, I am ill at ease in such luxury, and it means much to Lady Rhianon. The smaller room will do us just fine.”

Though it had no hearth like her cave to glow warmly in the night, it was not in the updraft of the main floor’s fires like its elegant but smokier counterpart. Its beams hung with Brenna’s fragrant herbs while her scant belongings—Ealga’s old cabinet from the cave and the bed box—served as ample furnishing. Bless them, Brother Martin and his companions had moved them for her the week before the Pascal celebration.

With a yawn, Brenna reached for Ronan but found his side of the bed empty. Her eyes opened wider. What time was it? A thin line of light reached in from under the door, enough for Brenna to find her old shift and tunic and slip them on. Just as she was about to braid her hair, a miserable wail came through the wattle and daub wall separating the two anterooms.

It wasn’t the first such complaint Brenna had heard from Tarlach’s room. His cries awakened her several times during the night. According to Rhianon, the chieftain reached fast for the gateway to the Other Side. Yet, healer that she was, Brenna had been forbidden to see him for fear of speeding him on his way all the more quickly. She knew that she could ease the man’s passage, but Ronan would not budge on his decision.

“I’ll not have anyone saying you are responsible for my father’s death. Let Keena and Dara do their work.”

Keena.
Brenna shuddered as she made hurried work of her braid. It went against her nature to dislike someone, but there was something about Rhianon’s maidservant that drove dread through Brenna’s chest like a spear. Though she’d only been taught about pure evil, surely Keena’s presence was what it felt like.

Brenna found Vychan, Glenarden’s steward, seated at the plank table in the hall. He was the picture of desolation. At the end, Caden slept on folded arms, snoring softly.

“Your lord is worse?” she asked.

“Aye, milady. I fear the end is near. He is spent from this stomach misery that has beset him. The women despair of keeping clean linens on the bed. The stench is unbearable.”

“Who is with him?”

“Your husband … and the women.”

Brenna, frustrated, studied the closed door. “It isn’t right that I, a trained healer of Avalon, cannot go to his aid.”

The door opened, and Dara emerged, looking weary.

“Dara, have you given him elderberry?” Its juice was soothing to the stomach.

“Aye, like I told you last night … thrice, it was.”

“And the slippery elm?” It stopped loose stools.

Dara shot her an annoyed look and held up three fingers.

“Watch yourself, woman,” Vychan reprimanded. “You forget your place.”

Brenna put her hand on Vychan’s. “She’s been up most of the night doing what you could not and what I was not allowed to do.”

Dara’s scowl disintegrated. “I am sorry, milady. It’s just that I canna understand why nothin’ helps. His lordship is a strong man and suddenly—”

“She
appears?” Caden lifted his head suddenly and leveled a red-eyed accusation at Brenna.

Her husband’s brother was hard for Brenna to read. There was no consistency to his personality. Emotion clouded his vision when she assured Caden that she understood why he’d killed Faol. That she forgave him. Yet, at other times, he seemed totally without tenderness. Either wooden … or afire with anger.

“Milady, I dinna know you were up and about,” a maidservant exclaimed upon entering the hall and seeing Brenna. “I’ll fetch your tea and fresh-baked scones.”

The girl was gone before Brenna could stop her. Brenna loved going out to the kitchen, a separate building next to the tower with far more cooking capability than the fire pit that had served the original builders of the keep. She and the cooks had talked for hours about herbs and seasonings.

“Milady, forgive me.” Vychan stiffly rose to his feet. “It seems Dara is not the only one who has forgotten her station. I should have seen to your—”

“You should rest, Vychan. You, too, Dara,” Brenna added as her new friend sought to sit by the fire pit in the center of the hall to ward off the early morning chill.

Around her and the few still, sleeping figures of children, servants set up benches that had been stored against the wall during the night to make room for the keep’s inhabitants to bed down. Soon the little ones would be awakened, and the hall would be filled as morning chores were completed.

“When it’s done, milady,” Dara replied. “When it’s done.”

At that moment, Lady Rhianon emerged from the stone stairwell looking fresh as a wild rose. Keena followed like a frostbitten counterpart.

“Good day, Rhianon,” Brenna called out. “And to you, Keena.”

Rhianon gave Brenna a semblance of a smile. “I hear the old man still hangs on to life,” she replied, plopping down on the bench next to her husband and rubbing his back. “Would that God would put him out of his misery.”

Keena never answered Brenna at all but headed out of the keep.

“Perhaps God is not through with Tarlach,” Brenna suggested. From what little she’d seen and heard, Tarlach’s was a tortured soul. Tortured souls fought death and the demons that were said to wait for the unsaved dying’s last breath.

Rhianon gave her a sharp look. “Then you have a most cruel god, Lady Brenna. Vychan,” she said to the steward, “I’ll have my tea and breads now.”

The steward bowed stiffly. “I’ll see to it.”

“My God loves us even when we are not so lovable, Rhianon,” Brenna replied sweetly.

She’d heard that Rhianon sought the approval of many gods, including the One God. At some point, perhaps Brenna might help her to see that her gods were no more than the One God’s creations. That His was the life breathed into them. In time.

For now, Tarlach was Brenna’s mixed bag of concern. Part of her feared the old man, while the healer longed to ease his misery.

“I believe God wants Tarlach to have His peace, that he might not fear death.” Just as He wanted her to have the peace to help him, if they would but allow it.

Caden snorted, coming to life again. “Why should Father have peace when he’s afforded none to anyone else in all his years?”

Brenna could almost taste the man’s bitterness … and the deep wounds that spawned it. ’Twas enough to make her ill. Never had she been exposed to such hostility and anguish in one place, not even at the hospital on the Sacred Isle. “Yet God loves him, even with his faults.”

Caden and Rhianon exchanged rolled gazes of skepticism.

Just as I am trying to do with you,
Brenna finished in silence.
Father God, help me. I am only one healer. I cannot do this alone. Show me what to say, what to—

The door to Tarlach’s room opened abruptly, and Ronan stepped out. He was pale. He sought Brenna with eyes circled with weariness and dull with resignation.

“Is he gone?” Caden asked, his bear of a voice no more than a whisper.

Ronan shook his head, without taking his eyes away from Brenna. “He wants to see your mother. He’s begging”—Ronan’s voice caught—“like a whimpering child to see her.”

“He must think you are Joanna,” Rhianon suggested. “It would make sense, his seeing you after all these years.”

“She is her mother’s image,” Ronan agreed.

Nodding, Brenna rose from the table. This was her path—who she was meant to be. God’s reassurance spread through her, warm as the cup of tea that the girl brought in from the kitchen along with a plate of scones.

“Give those to Lady Rhianon, please …” Brenna gave the girl a plaintive look, for she’d forgotten the servant’s name. There were so many to learn.

“Mab, milady,” the girl replied.

“Thank you, Mab.”

Ronan stopped Brenna short of the door. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”

Would that the same reassurance flowed through her husband.

“’Tis what I’ve asked to do for the last few days, Beloved. What God has called me to do. Your father needs me … or at least my mother.” And Brenna could see for herself the poor man’s state.

“Then let me go in first and be sure he’s fit to be seen,” Dara announced from the hearth and charged for the bedchamber.

“Aye,” Ronan said, “and the rest of you come as well. I’ll not have you claiming she did a thing to him but try to comfort a dying man.”

Rhianon wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather not. I’ve no stomach for—”

“You can stand at the door, milady … for your husband’s sake,” Ronan added, “if for none other.”

It was a sickroom and smelled as such. Brenna forced herself to breathe through her mouth as Ealga had taught her and approached the bed to help Dara. Tarlach lay on his side, curled away from the door on a scant mattress of straw. Eyes clenched so that his thick brows nearly touched his cheeks, he grasped his abdomen as though impaled there.

This whimpering, shriveled soul was the fierce savage who’d slaughtered her father and driven Joanna of Gowrys to take her own life?

“Husharoo,” she sang, gently reaching out to stroke the hair away from his face. “Is the pain in your head or your belly, precious one?”

Tarlach lurched, trying to throw himself on his back. “Where are you, lassie?”

“Here. Let me help you turn.” Brenna worked her arm beneath Tarlach’s afflicted shoulder and lifted him. Beside her Ronan moved in to help, but Brenna shook her head. She’d moved Ronan more than once like this. It took a moment for Tarlach’s bent form to straighten. “You mustn’t lie in the same position for so long.”

“That’s what you always say,” Tarlach grunted.

Brenna’s heart smiled. So her mother had given him the same advice.

Tarlach jerked his hand at Ronan. “Fetch a light, laddie. Can’t see a cursed thing in here.”

The light drove home just how sick Tarlach was. His complexion was cold and wet, with death’s pallor and sweat. Drool dripped from the slack side of his mouth and down his oxbow mustache.

“I … it
is
you.” His breath heaved out the words, sour with sickness … and something else that set Brenna’s senses on alert. “I have prayed for this day and here”—he seized another lungful of air—“you are.” His eyelids fluttered and head trembled as he tried to lift it from the pillows. “Jo … anna.”

Garlic.
Ever so faint, but unmistakably garlic.

“How long has he been sick to his stomach and loose at the bowels?” Brenna picked a cup up from the bedside table and sniffed it. It smelled of cold tea laced with herbs to heal the misery of the abdomen.

“Only since you arrived, milady,” Dara informed her. “Just a bit at first, but it’s gotten worse, little by little.”

The contents had been nothing she wouldn’t have prepared herself, garlic included. Yet, when she touched a damp remnant lying in the bottom and put it to her tongue, her jaws tingled with warning.

“I must speak with you, Joanna. I must,” Tarlach moaned, his face plowed deep with anguish. He motioned her closer.

Brenna put the cup down, leaning in. Garlic in food often hid more sinister tastes … like sandarach. But surely that was absurd. Use of the arsenic stone required sophisticated knowledge. “I’m here, milord.”

Tarlach tried to touch her face, but his good arm trembled with weakness and fell to the bed. Brenna lifted it to her cheek.

“Joanna.” The name was breathed in worship. “Soft as a ripe peach. I canna believe my eyes
,
but you feel real to me.”

“I am real, milord.” She folded his gnarled hand in her own, taking note of his discolored nails. How could this be?

“I am dying, Joanna, but I must beg your forgiveness. I canna leave this world without it.” Tarlach tried to squeeze her hand. A faint attempt.

“The old man’s as good as gone,” Caden grumbled somewhere behind her. “At least his mind has.”

“Then permit what’s left of it to gather what peace he can,” Ronan warned. “God knows he’s suffered with his guilt too long. We all have.”

“Say
you forgive me.” A sob strangled in Tarlach’s throat. “Llas was my friend. You were my heart.” Tarlach’s wide shoulders heaved with the emotion bursting free, emotion that had been locked inside for twenty years.

Brenna held his head between her palms to ease the pressure pounding there. Tarlach wasn’t fevered, but oh the torment he felt, present and past. The reassuring light within that she carried into the room staggered at the sinister onslaught of rage. The swing of a blade. Blood. Horror.

“Father God!” she gasped, reeling at the vision of a man’s head cleaved from his shoulders, his own blade still in midslash, as though his body carried on its last command. And steps, narrow and ascending … she climbed them, the head held in front of her gaze. Tarlach’s gaze. A feeling of raw vengeance assailed her, poisoning whatever it touched. But just as her heart would burst from the beating, a pair of hands clamped on her shoulders, drawing her out of the living nightmare and once more into the light.