Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (11 page)

Garth didn’t look like he was going to help her out of the hole she was digging for herself any time soon. She tossed the ruined parsley back into the wheelbarrow and planted her hands on her hips. “God’s wounds! Just how many ladies have you met with hair the color of a marigold?” she snapped.

“My lady!”

Across the courtyard scurried the new girl, Mary. Cynthia mouthed a soundless curse at the maidservant’s poor timing.

“And even if you
don’t
remember me—“ she muttered.

“Lady Cynthia!” the maid cried.

“”You could at least be chivalrous about it and—“

“My lady! Come quickly!”

“And…well…at least
pretend
you remember,” she finished, adjusting her belt and whisking out the folds of her skirts.

“My lady,” Mary gasped out, skidding to a stop before her.

“What!” she barked.

The maid jumped in surprise, her brown eyes wide. “Elspeth says to come quick.” The lass glanced briefly at Garth, clearly awed by being in the presence of a priest.

“What’s happened?”

“A gentleman arrived from Tewksbury, my lady. He says he’s eaten yew berries, and he’s ailing something fierce.”

“Yew berries?” She doubted it. No one with a tongue in his head could stomach enough of the nasty fruit to grow ill from it. Still, she couldn’t very well ignore the plea of a man who might well die at her gates. Muttering a mild oath, heedless of her bare feet and the muddy skirts flapping about her knees, she stalked off toward the keep. Saving Garth’s soul would have to wait for another time.

At supper, Garth cursed the vow of silence that kept him from grumbling into his pottage over the foppish lout with his long golden curls and scarlet surcoat who was leaning precariously close to Lady Cynthia. If that man had truly dined on yew berries, he’d eat his cassock. The oaf sat at the high table, giggling and flapping his hands about like a startled chicken, jabbering on and on about Lady Cynthia’s miracle cures. And while Garth imagined the dolt might indeed be witless enough to eat such unappetizing fare, he suspected the man was more cunning than stupid.

Sir Shamster, or whatever his name was, knew how to attract the attentions of an unwary woman. As Garth’s own brothers had told him many a time, the swiftest way to win a lady’s heart was to affect a need for her. This rascal had shown that need by feigning illness.

By the looks of things at the high table, his plan had succeeded. Not only had he garnered himself a spot next to Lady Cynthia, but he had Elspeth tittering over his every word as if it were the most entertaining drivel she’d ever head.

Garth stabbed his bread into his stew. Doubtless this was just the sort of cur Elspeth had in mind for the next Lord of Wendeville. He ground the sopping morsel between his teeth and cast a dark look toward the boor leering over Lady Cynthia.

Then he plunged the remainder of his loaf into the trencher, his appetite vanished. He wiped his fingers on his napkin and dropped it to the table with a sigh. He supposed his opinion meant nothing. After all, it was of no consequence to him if Cynthia took up with an unprincipled knave.

Still he suffered through the evening, questioning what kind of God could loose such a wily fox upon what was surely Wendeville’s most innocent dove.

Thankfully, Sir Shamster disappeared the next morn before sunrise, apparently without a word to Lady Cynthia. Garth wondered if the villain’s swift flight could be traced to the mysterious depositing of mice in his bed, and he prayed for the soul of such mischief’s perpetrator long and hard.

Rain prevented any work out of doors, and for that, Garth was thankful. It was difficult enough being closeted with Lady Cynthia in the candlelit keep, admiring her as she tended to skinned knees and burned custard and bruised feelings with equal compassion. But watching her labor in the dazzling light of day, her loose hair gleaming like copper, her bare limbs drinking the sunshine and reflecting it back, her eyes laughing with joy, would have been sheer torture.

Meanwhile, Elspeth, true to her word, managed to unearth yet another marriageable noble despite the foul weather. By noon, a pathetic twig of a youth sat shivering by the fire, his lips blue, his knees knocking. If he was all of eighteen years, Garth would have been surprised. His voice still cracked when he spoke, judging from what few words he could squeak past his rattling teeth, and Garth could count the sparse whiskers on his chin.

Lady Cynthia was kind to the lad as well, bringing him a warm posset and blankets, and Garth endured an uncharacteristic twinge of envy. At the drafty monastery, one’s faith was considered enough to warm one’s bones. He could recall sleepless nights, shuddering beneath his thin wool coverlet while icicles formed on the sill, certain that his lack of holy fervor was to blame for his suffering.

“Father?”

Garth felt a tug on his cassock and peered down. A small freckle-faced boy frowned up at him.

“My mother says you can’t talk to me, but that’s all right, ‘cause you can still talk to God, and my mother says you can talk to God for me, ‘cause my father’s in his cups and says he doesn’t have time to tinker with a damn toy, and my mother is a lass and doesn’t know the first thing about toys, and so could you please speak to God about fixing my dragon?”

Garth’s mouth twitched, and he fought to keep a smile from his face at the boy’s long-winded discourse. The little lad cradled a broken wooden toy in his arms. Its paint was faded, its edges worn smooth. Garth furrowed his brow and held his hands out for the thing. The boy solemnly handed it over.

Except for the fierce teeth painted on the face and the notches along the back, it was difficult to tell what manner of beast it was. The tip of the tail had cracked off, the tugging string was frayed, and the two wheels that propelled the toy had popped off when the axle apparently went missing. It would take far more than prayer to piece the thing back together.

But there was little else to do, and the labor would take his mind off of the spoiled suitor by the fire, who yawned contentedly while Cynthia tucked yet another fur about him.

The materials were easy enough to gather. He found seasoned pine in the woodpile, a piece of rope in the stable, and, on a whim, fetched his quill and ink from his quarters.

By the time he returned to the great hall with the little lad in tow, Cynthia’s charge had grown as drowsy as a cat with a bucket of cream, and he wondered in disgust if the youth perhaps expected her to rock him to sleep.

With a self-disparaging sigh, he chose a spot on the farthest side of the fire to work and sat cross-legged in the rushes. The little boy crouched beside him on the floor, watching in sober silence.

He replaced the string first, separating strands of the rope and twisting them into twine to knot about the beast’s neck. Next he took out his dagger and carved a stick of pine into cotters and a dowel for the axle. He replaced the wheels and drilled small holes in the axle with the point of his knife for the cotters to keep the wheels in place.

As he worked, the boy crept closer and closer until he leaned upon Garth’s thigh. Garth smiled. After four years in a monastery, he’d forgotten how delightful children were, so trusting, so expressive, so unpretentious.

The lines defining the dragon’s features were badly dulled, but Garth could make them out well enough to trace over them with this quill, and this operation the boy watched with hushed reverence. Inspired by the lad’s awe, Garth even added his own touches, a few scales here, a delineated flank there, claws upon the wheels, and the boy seemed highly pleased by these additions.

Sadly, there was nothing he could do about the cracked tail. He turned it in his hand and looked at the boy, remembering his own childhood, his own toys. The de Ware boys had each possessed their own wheeled knight on horseback, and they’d engaged in the fiercest warfare. But it seemed to Garth that his brothers rather enjoyed nicking bits and pieces off of one another’s knights, as if reveling in their wounds and glorying in their battle scars—something, he thought in amusement, they’d never outgrown.

Sudden inspiration took hold. This dragon would boast the most gruesome wound ever. Holding the maimed beast and its severed tail on his lap, he picked up his dagger and carefully pressed the edge of the blade against his thumb. He made the smallest cut, no more than a thorn prick, but a feminine gasp of horror startled him.

“What the devil..?” Cynthia demanded.

A drop of blood dripped onto his cassock before he could smear the rest along the edges of the dragon’s broken tail.

The rest of Cynthia’s question was obliterated by a shriek of wind that rushed in the opening door, fluttering the fire, and bringing with it an ominous crack of thunder and one rain-drenched, irate noblewoman.

The lad Cynthia had been tending leaped up as if his hair was afire, and the woman barreled forward with neither introduction nor fear.

“There you are, you good-for-nothing halfwit!”

Even Cynthia backed away from the woman’s caustic onslaught.

“Where can he have gone, I’m wondering.” The woman shook herself like a wet dog as she charged forward, spattering the rushes with raindrops. “Where’s my darling son while his bride’s a-waiting on the chapel steps, all teary and shivering?” She beat hard at her sodden skirts, making mist. “While his father’s tripping over his words to find something to say to her poor parents?” She seized the boy by the arm, and he yelped like a beat hound. “While the priest is going on and on to pass the time, sermonizing on Commandments even Moses never heard of!”

Garth ducked his head in a desperate attempt to contain his mirth.

“’Oh,’ says your cousin, drunk as a fish, ‘he’s gone to find him a
real
wife instead of the child he’s betrothed to.’” With that, the woman seized her son by the ear and dragged him toward the door, unconcerned with the gaping spectators. “A
real
wife? Ha! You wouldn’t know what to do with a real wife.”

With that, she charged back out into the stormy afternoon, slamming the door behind her, leaving a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire.

Cynthia hardly knew what to say. Whatever had just happened, it didn’t bode well for the lad.

“Well.” She gathered the blankets the boy had shed in his haste, shaking the rushes from them, and the rest of the castle folk began blathering about what had just transpired.

Meanwhile, Garth sat with one hand clamped firmly about his jaw, studiously examining the toy he held on his lap. She looked closer at his profile. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that crinkle at the corner of his eye was not concentration but amusement.

She supposed it
was
amusing. The youth’s eyes had nearly popped out of their sockets when he’d seen his mother coming for him. And she’d looked as angry as a drenched hen. Where had Elspeth come by the boy anyway? She turned to ask that very thing, but her maidservant slipped quickly into the kitchen, her cheeks flaming.

“Look, my lady.” Little Dylan jumped up, the toy in his hands. “The Father fixed it. He put on scales and claws and a terrible frown, and look!” He held the toy up to her face, too close. She reared her head back and glimpsed the bright red edge staining the wood. Dylan whispered loudly in awe. “It’s blood, my lady,
real
blood.”

Cynthia pressed her hand to her bosom. Dear God, that couldn’t be…

She glanced at Garth. The residue of laughter still sparkled in his eyes. She lowered her gaze to his thumb, which he’d pressed against his finger to stop the bleeding. She gulped. Had he really cut himself just to please a child?

Dylan was beyond pleased. She never understood why little boys loved gore so dearly, but the dragon with the grisly wound and real priest’s blood would probably be Dylan’s proudest possession for years to come.

“You’ll need comfrey for that,” she told Garth.

He frowned and shrugged. She supposed being a de Ware, he’d suffered his share of scrapes and punctures. But he was a member of her household now, and she wouldn’t have anyone under her care develop infection. Tousling Dylan’s hair, she strode off to fetch her bag of medicines.

When she returned moments later, Dylan was gone, probably off terrorizing all the little girls in the keep. Garth was hunkered near the fire, staring into the flames. She paused in the shadows of the entryway to watch him.

His eyes reflected the fire’s flicker, and she could see calm contentment there. He’d enjoyed working on Dylan’s toy, she knew. She’d been watching him then, too, though she pretended to be preoccupied with their wayward guest. The Abbot had said Garth was a talented scribe, but the dragon’s snarling fangs and curving claws had been the result of far more than a steady hand. Garth possessed singular imagination and artistry. Dylan had been fascinated with the priest’s labors as well, leaning so close and with such fervent interest that Cynthia feared the intrepid lad might actually climb onto his lap.

Garth didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He looked perfectly at ease with the little boy’s grubby hand planted on his thigh and his freckled face pressed close. But then Cynthia supposed Garth was accustomed to children. He probably had nieces and nephews of his own. How sad it must have been for him to be away from them, locked in a monastery with nothing but grown men.

Garth stirred the fire with one of the leftover pieces of wood he’d brought, and the flames licked up, suffusing his face with a golden glow. How beautiful he was, she thought yet again, his chiseled features etched in warm relief by the firelight, his hair catching the color in shades of amber and bronze. As he crouched before the hearth, his wide back and shoulders strained against the coarse wool of his cassock, leaving no doubt that he was both a man and a de Ware. And yet there was something boyish about the way he sat poking at the fire. She could imagine a smaller version of him beside this grown Garth, a little boy with mussed hair and wide green eyes, and the thought made her smile.

So lost was she in her musing that she was astonished to find Garth staring at her. The pleasure was gone from his eyes, replaced by something cool and unapproachable. For one instant, she was tempted to creep back up the stairs to her chamber. But she wasn’t a timorous mouse to be daunted by a dark look, even if it saddened her to know it was the sight of her that had erased the warmth from his face.