Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero (25 page)

But he couldn’t subject her to such disgrace. He cared too much for her. Besides, any affair between them was doomed to fail. Even if he became one of the clergy who allowed themselves the company of women, he knew he was unfit as a man. Sooner or later, she’d discover that.

He blamed himself. This whole awkward situation was his fault, all of it. He was a priest. It was up to him to control his passions. And tonight, he’d failed miserably.

Outside, the moon began its descent. The fog thickened, blurring the line between the treetops and the sky.

He stuffed his few possessions—quills, ink, parchment, books, candles—into his satchel, and looked one last time around the chamber that would be his no more.

With a heavy heart, he stepped into the night. She’d forget him within a week, he was sure. As for Garth, he’d fall back into the comfortable routine of the monastery—praying, copying, teaching. Eventually, Lady Cynthia and Wendeville Castle would recede like a pleasant, brief dream. He told himself the lie and tried to believe it.

The Abbot shivered impatiently in the crofter’s cottage. The hovel provided little comfort against the chill of the night. He was eager to return to his hearth at Charing. But his spy had assured him she brought important news.

“He…replanted the herbs?” he asked, blinking.

The young girl’s teeth chattered, but she managed a nod in the small pool of light cast by the single candle he held.

“The chaplain?” he repeated, unable to fathom it.

He’d selected Garth de Ware for Wendeville because of the man’s humility and his lack of ambition. Garth could hardly pose a threat to his plans. After all, the fool had thrown away his own chance at wealth and power for the seclusion of an impoverished monastery.

“You’re certain?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Aye, Father,” she said, bobbing her head like a nervous chicken. “And there’s…something else.”

The lass was reluctant to speak. She fidgeted with the edges of her cloak and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Biting back peevishness, he reached out with false tolerance and gently cupped her chin, lifting it. Her skin was frigid to the touch. “Don’t be afraid, child. It’s God’s work you do.”

Her chin quaked, and she spoke barely above a whisper. “The chaplain…he…I saw him…with Lady Cynthia.”

His fingers tightened on her jaw. Nay. It couldn’t be. “Aye?” he goaded her. “Aye?”

“They were…kissing,” she breathed. Moisture filled her eyes, whether of shame or lust, he wasn’t certain. “He…he opened her cloak, and he…touched her…” Her hands fluttered awkwardly before her.

The Abbot struggled to keep the impatient edge from his voice. “He touched her bosom?”

She ducked her head.

“Go on,” he said.

“He…he kissed her…there.”

“And?”

She shook her head. “Elspeth came. He ran away.” She looked up hopefully, her soul unburdened at last. He could see by the glistening in her eyes that she wanted her reward now. But it would have to wait for another time. Her cold flesh and chattering teeth held no appeal for him tonight. Besides, he had much to think about.

He chewed at his lip. It seemed he’d misjudged the humble friar. It was too early to tell exactly how. But there were two possibilities. Either the man’s flesh was pitifully weak or Garth de Ware was perpetrating a play for power even more complex than his own.

The Abbot chuckled in self-mockery. It appeared Garth de Ware would either be the ruin of him or the designer of the most opportune twist of fate he’d ever fallen heir to.

Someone was shaking the bed. Garth couldn’t wake up enough to make them stop. He heard voices, but the low, somber murmurs were indistinguishable, as if a thick blanket enveloped him, separating him from the rest of the world. And yet he was cold, colder than he’d ever been. Cold to the marrow of his bones.

He drifted like a snowflake at the will of the winter wind, now floating toward the surface of awareness, now delving toward the frozen wasteland of oblivion. How long he wafted over the endless, icy landscapes, he didn’t know. Time had no meaning.

Once, his eyes fluttered open for just an instant, and he was aware of a vaguely familiar, comforting, parchment-colored expanse flickering above his head. And once, cool fingers rested upon his forehead, soothing him even as they chilled his shivering flesh. But before he could grasp and hold the recognizable images, he was plunged back into alien vistas of fathomless snow.

A moment, or hours, or days later, the sharp nick of a blade in his arm spurred him from his uneasy slumber. His eyes opened to narrow slits. On the inner side of his elbow, blood welled from a small cut and dripped slowly into a pewter bowl. He drew a shallow, shuddering breath. He had to stop the blood, stanch it with something, bind the wound. But he was too weak to move. Currents of panic rose around him, and the waters of unconsciousness closed over his head again.

When he awoke, his arm was bandaged with linen. The limb looked pale and foreign. He couldn’t move it. A rhythmic rasping rattled his ears, his own labored breathing. Every inch of his body ached. Still frozen with cold, he was too feeble even to shiver.

He catalogued his surroundings with his eyes alone, his eyeballs clicking as they jerked dryly about the room. It was his cell at the monastery. The plaster overhead glinted in the candlelight. His cloak dangled from the peg on the wall. Sweet smoke drifted from a spiced candle burning at the foot of the bed. A heavy tapestry from the prior’s office hung at the window, blocking out the light. If indeed there was light. He had no idea what the hour was. All he could remember was stumbling onto the steps of the monastery sometime in the dark hours before dawn, drenched with drizzle, shaking with cold, and weak as a fledgling bird.

He tried to recall more. Why had he been traveling in the middle of the night? Where had he gone? Why did he feel as if someone had beaten him with a mace? But his head began to throb with the effort of thought. Closing his eyes, he returned to the peace of oblivion.

The dreams began sometime soon after. Pleasant dreams and troubling ones.

Fragments of fond remembrances. Romping across a summer meadow with his brothers. Studying Latin in the checkered shade of the willow. Sitting by the fire, listening to the old knights of his father’s castle recount heroic deeds.

Then came memories he wished he could bury forever. Mariana’s bed. His own pathetic staff lolling upon his stomach, unable to rise. Tears of rage and humiliation burning behind his eyes as Mariana voiced her scorn. The shattering sound of her laughter as she sent him from her sight.

And then finally, new dreams washed over the old, like paint on plaster, obscuring the deep-seated cracks and imperfections. Jasmine scented these dreams, and the hum of bees ran through them. Dreams of luminous blue eyes and fragrant herbs, of copper-bright curls and the honeyed taste of summer. Dreams of the most beautiful woman in the world, walking toward him, her arms outstretched. Cynthia…

But then a terrible shadow cut across the dream. A black chasm opened up between the two of them, spreading like the devil’s smile, growing wider, separating them. Cynthia reached for him, her eyes wide with desperation. She screamed his name. He stretched his arm forward, but the farther he reached, the more distant she became.

“Nay!” he cried out. His chest burned with longing. “Nay!”

“Hold him still, Andrew,” a nearby voice murmured.

“I’m trying, Father.”

“Nay!” Garth yelled hoarsely.

“Stephen, help him. I’ve got to get this down him.”

“Cynthia!” he wailed. “Cynthia!”

“Cynthia, Father? Who—?”

“Later, Stephen. Hold him steady now.”

Cynthia shrank away from his sight until she was a tiny bright spot across the dark abyss, no bigger than a bee’s stinger, lost between his fingers. His lungs ached with grief.

Someone clutched at his shoulders, restraining him. A noxious odor assaulted his nose. He jerked away.

“Stephen!”

“I’m trying, Father. But he seems to…”

A hand anchored his jaw, pulling his teeth apart. Something cold and vile gurgled into his mouth. Poison! His throat spasmed, and he gagged the liquid back out. Wildly, he flailed his good arm about, hoping to knock his assailants back. He contacted flesh. Then something shattered on the stones with a brittle crash.

“Garth! Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

He lifted his lids the merest fraction of an inch, just enough to make out the worried face of the prior hovering over him.

“You must swallow this concoction, Brother Garth.” He turned to the novitiate beside him. “Bring me another vial, Andrew. Quickly.”

Garth looked at the ugly green splashes staining the prior’s cassock where the first vial of God-knew-what had spilled. He looked at the fat bandage binding his arm where he’d been bled. God’s wounds—he might die from whatever it was he had, but he wouldn’t do it with a belly full of poison and a body full of holes.

With the dregs of his strength, he snagged the front of the prior’s cassock and with inborn de Ware command, yanked him down till they were nose to nose.

“Get me Cynthia Wendeville,” he demanded, the words scraping painfully across his raw throat like quicklime. “Now.”

“All right,” the prior answered, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “All right, then.”

But already Garth was drifting back toward his private world of illusions.

Cynthia’s horse plodded along the gray road toward the village, as reluctant as she was to brave the morning cold. In the interminable gloom, the world seemed to have no beginning, no end, and her path through it, no purpose.

She wasn’t hurt, she told herself, wiping away a tear brought on certainly by the chill, nothing more. Only a fool would be hurt.

After all, Garth had made no promises to her. He hadn’t pledged his undying love. He hadn’t sworn to forsake all others for her. Hell, he hadn’t even promised to remain at Wendeville. Only a fool would take an impulsive midnight encounter as a sign of something deeper.

She wrapped the reins tightly around one fist. The leather bit into her palm.

Nay, it wasn’t hurt. It was only anger—anger at the way he’d left Roger and Elspeth without a word, anger at his abandonment of the good people of Wendeville, anger that he hadn’t even lingered long enough to tell her goodbye.

When she glimpsed his cell, clean and blank as the day he’d arrived, her heart sank. The note he left her was succinct.
Under the circumstances,
it said,
I think it would be better for both of us if I found you a more qualified chaplain.

He’d undoubtedly fled to the monastery. At the monastery he could seclude himself behind safe stone walls and contemplate the error of his ways for months to come. By day, he could bury his nose in some dusty religious tome, and by night, punish himself for feeling the passions of an ordinary man.

The pervasive fog swirled about her. It had both her eyes watering now. She dabbed at them with the tippet of her sleeve. It wouldn’t do to let the villagers see her upset. The sick depended upon her strength and spirit, and for that she must maintain a cheerful countenance, not the melancholy face that the gloomy day painted upon her.

As her palfrey trudged forward, its steps muffled on the damp road, the thatched cottages of the village emerged one by one through the cloudy veil, like ghosts materializing from another world. She shivered. On such a day, spirits might leave their lifeless bodies and become lost in the mist. On such a day, the villagers needed the comfort of a priest more than ever. She prayed no soul would have to make that journey today, for there was no one to guide them to heaven.

The corners of her mouth turned down bitterly one last time, and she sniffed against the cold. Then she nudged her horse toward the first house, beginning another long day.

It was difficult to tell how many hours she labored. The bulky cloak of fog blanched the sun’s beacon to a vague gray haze. The day dragged lethargically on, filled with hacking coughs and trembling sweats and poor souls bent in half with pain. Nearly every household had been ravaged in some way by the dread disease. It had spread its destructive fire with frightening speed, as swiftly as a brand touched to thatch. Thank God, it had at last almost burned out.

But if it left the village, if somehow it spread…

The thought was overwhelming. The terror of her dream returned to hound her. Not enough herbs to treat the sick. Not enough time to reach them all. Not enough strength. Already she felt her power wane, the flow of energy less each time she laid hands on another victim. What would she do if the demands upon her increased?

The darkening hue of the ashen sky served as the only indication that day’s end drew near. Like the fog, the sickness hung stubbornly over the village. Of the victims she’d treated, many had improved. But several had grown worse, and there was nothing more she could do.

Wearily pulling herself onto the saddle, her bag of medicines fearfully light, she had at least one thing to be thankful for. In answer to her prayers, no one had died.

Cynthia thought about a warm bath all the way home, one that would leach from her bones the mist seeping relentlessly into them, a nice, long, soothing bath scented with rosemary or angelica.

The moment she set foot in the great hall, she knew it was not to be. Elspeth rushed at her, flapping her arms like a distraught hen.

“Oh, my lady, something terrible has happened!”

“Now, Elspeth,” Roger scolded, striding forward to take Cynthia’s cloak. “Let Lady Cynthia at least warm herself by the fire.”

“What is it?” Cynthia asked, unable to contain her curiosity, as Roger guided her by the elbow toward the crackling tinder.

“It’s Father Garth, my lady!” Elspeth cried.

“Oh.” Cynthia let the air sigh out of her chest as she sank onto a chair before the hearth. “I know. He left last night. He’s likely gone back to the monastery. We’ll have to find another—“

“My lady—“

“A messenger came from the monastery,” Roger interrupted, knitting his gray brows. “Father Garth is…not well.”