Tallie's Knight (29 page)

Tallie wrenched
herself free with a cry.

“No! He is sick! He
will die if you take him,” she said desperately. “Then how would you get your
precious ransom?”

The bandit shrugged
indifferently.

“It is a risk we will
take.”

“It is not your risk!
I will not allow it!”

The bandit grinned.

“How will you prevent
us, little English milady?”

Tallie fumed
impotently. She could not stop them; she knew it. But Magnus was swaying and
shivering in the cold, and unless she did something, he would die. And that she
could not bear. She had to do something!

“Take me instead,”
she said.

“Damn it woman, hold
your—” Magnus’s angry bellow was cut short as a rag was stuffed in his mouth.
Another man came to assist the two who were already holding him.

“Take you?” said the
leader, surprised. His green eyes narrowed. “What game are you playing now?” He
glanced at Maguire, who said nothing.

“No game,” said
Tallie. “You clearly will not leave without a hostage. My husband is too ill to
go with you, but I am not. It is a perfectly sensible arrangement.”

A muffled roar came
from Magnus. His eyes glared at her over the gag, charcoal pools of rage and
frantic worry in an unnaturally pale face.

“Take a woman
hostage?” The bandit regarded her suspiciously, smoothing a finger over his
thick, dark moustache. “Is this one of your immoral English games, milady? You
think it will be romantic to dally with a handsome bandit in the mountains, eh?”

Tallie was outraged.

“No, of course not!”
she spluttered indignantly. “How dare you suggest such a wicked thing? I wouldn’t
walk two steps with you if I had any choice in the matter, but I will not let
you take my husband when he is ill!”

“But if he was well…?”

“Hah!” Tallie
snorted. “If he was well you would never have taken us prisoner in the first place!”
She cast a look of magnificent scorn at Maguire, and the silent gaggle of
guards he had hired to protect them. “My husband would never have surrendered
without a proper fight!”

To her astonishment
the bandit leader winked at Maguire.

“All right, then,”
the bandit said, “we take you with us and leave your loving husband to arrange
the ransom.”

Magnus surged
furiously, but was held down by his captors.

Tallie swallowed, her
mouth suddenly dry. She had not truly thought the bandits would agree to take
her, and she was suddenly terrified.

But she had offered
herself, and there was really no choice after all, she told herself. And the
sooner they left, the sooner the others could get Magnus to a physician. She
squared her shoulders and stepped forward to speak with her husband, whose eyes
glowered over his gag, angry, desperate and fevered.

“It’s all right,
Magnus. I am happy to do this.”

She swallowed again. There
seemed to be a large dry lump in her throat.

“Please try not be
angry with me. I could see no other way… And if… if I…”

She swallowed again.

“If I should not see
you again—”

Magnus shook his
head, furiously chafing at his bindings.

“Please, my love, I…
I do not want what may be our last moments… Oh, please, do not be angry with
me.” Tears filled her eyes as she laid her hand on his cheek. He stilled, his
eyes boring into hers in a silent, frustrated message. She tried to tug his gag
away, but it would not budge, and the bandit beside him growled an incoherent warning,
so with trembling lips she reached up and kissed him fervently on an ice-cold
cheek.

“I love you, Magnus,”
she whispered, and clung tightly to his body, as if she would never let him go.

“Enough,” said the
bandit, and with another kiss Tallie released Magnus, tears spilling down her
cheek.

The bandit regarded
Magnus for a brief, solemn moment.

“She will not be
harmed,” he said at last. “We are bandits, si, but we do not harm women.” He
took Tallie by the arm and led her away.

“Mais, non, non. You
cannot take milady into the mountains,” cried Monique, suddenly aware of what
was happening.

The bandit ignored
her and kept walking.

“Elle est enceinte!”
shrieked Monique in desperation.

The bandit froze. He
glanced at Tallie’s face, down at her stomach, then at her face again. She was
gazing at her husband, her eyes filled with a mixture of joy, anxiety and
entreaty. The bandit did not need to ask; her stomach might be flat, but
confirmation of her maid’s story was there in her eyes, for all the world to
see.

He swore long and
violently, released Tallie’s arm in disgust and stamped across to Maguire. An
argument ensued, in a language Tallie had heard somewhere before. She stared at
the arguing men and the truth suddenly dawned. It was Gaelic. A maidservant at
Miss Fisher’s had been Irish, and had taught Tallie a few words.

“You betrayed us,
Maguire,” she cried.

Maguire started,
looked across the small rocky clearing at her and shrugged in a manner which
uncannily echoed the bandit’s.

Tallie noted the way
the two men were standing and her eyes widened in sudden suspicion.

“He… he’s your
brother,” she accused. “He has the same long, thin face and the same nose… and
your eyes are green, too, only not so…” Her voice tailed off.

The bandit turned and
grinned, his gold tooth glinting in the light.

“Correct, milady,” he
said in perfect lilting English. “The Maguire brothers at your service. I am
Antonio.” He bowed. “And my little brother, Luigi.”

Tallie ignored him.
She turned to the erstwhile majordomo.

“Why, Maguire? Why
did you do it?”

Maguire sneered and
shrugged.

“The wars are over
and a man must earn his living somehow. And we have no love for English lords.
It was an English lord who hanged our father and grandfather, an English lord
who drove us from our homeland—”

His bandit brother
interrupted, “And English lords who have provided us with a steady income since
we took to living in the mountains like our mother’s people.” He glanced from
Tallie back to Magnus. “But it seems we will get only the pickings of the
baggage this time, for it is one thing to hold a man to ransom, but if an
English lord died on us we would have the authorities hounding our every
footstep. And I do not kidnap pregnant women.”

He turned and shouted
orders, and the clearing suddenly became a hive of activity as the bandits
packed up every portable item that could possibly be of any value.

“Adieu, milord,” said
Maguire the bandit. “I envy you your wife —she is your real treasure. Au
revoir, bella donna.” He took Tallie’s hand and kissed it lingeringly, quite as
if he was a gentleman born and not a ragged mountain robber. In moments the
banditti were gone, Maguire the younger and his false guards with them. The
others watched them go until no echo of their leaving remained in the cold
mountain air.

Tallie rushed to
relieve Magnus of his dirty gag and bindings. He spat the gag out, gasping for
breath, and tried to say something, but his knees buckled beneath him and he
sank to the ground, clutching at Tallie as he did so.

“Oh, help me, please,”
she cried to the porters. “Let us be gone from this dreadful place immediately.
I must get my husband to a physician at once. Quickly, we must go!” She turned
to beckon to one of the men but found her wrist caught in a hard, feverish grip.

“Don’t… leave… me,”
Magnus grated hoarsely, fixing her with a wild, agonised stare. “Not… leave…
Not—”

He collapsed,
insensible.

*
       
*
       
*

“Signora, the fever
has broken.” The dapper silver-haired physician bent over Tallie, speaking in a
gentle voice.

Tallie stared up at
him dazed, blank incomprehension in her face.

“It means your
husband is over the worst,” the physician explained. “He will be well soon. A
week, perhaps, before he can get up. He needs to rest.” He looked at her and
his face softened. “And so do you, signora. You are exhausted.”

Tallie blinked at him
as his words slowly sank into her tired brain.

Magnus was going to
get better. He would live. Tears flooded her eyes as she turned back to the
still figure on the bed beside her. Magnus was breathing more easily now, and
his skin was drenched with sweat.

Beautiful, healing
sweat. A sob escaped her.

“Come now,” said the
doctor. “Carlotta and the good John Black will stay here with your husband and your
maid will put you to bed. You must sleep. You have slept little the last three
days, si.”

Tallie nodded. Was it
really only three days since they had arrived in the town of Susa? It seemed so
much longer… A nightmare journey down from the mountains with Magnus strapped
onto a mule, unconscious, his head swaying and bouncing with every bump so that
she was terrified he would break his neck. But he hadn’t. And then the
fruitless, interminable search for a place which would house a stranger with no
money and a fever.

Thank God for
Carlotta, who was some sort of relative by marriage to one of the porters. She
had glanced indifferently at Magnus bundled on his mule and begun to argue with
the porter in a thick dialect Tallie hadn’t been able to follow. Tallie had
been terrified that Carlotta, like all the others, would shut the door in their
faces. She’d pushed past the porter and, summoning up her best schoolgirl
Italian, had begged Carlotta to help her husband. Carlotta, a large, flamboyant-looking
woman with improbably brilliant rust-coloured hair, had taken one look at
Tallie’s youthful, tear-stained face and flung the door wide.

Within moments she’d
sent a boy running to fetch the dottore, called for wine and refreshments for
Tallie and the others, and loudly supervised the men carrying Magnus up to a
bedroom. She had stripped Magnus’s shivering body with firm, motherly hands and
had him sponged down and in her dead husband’s best linen nightshirt by the
time the physician had arrived.

He’d examined the
patient carefully. To Tallie’s relief he had announced that the patient was
unfit for cupping —she hated seeing people being bled. But then, to her horror,
he had produced from his bag a small box containing a half-dozen leeches, which
he had applied to Magnus’s skin with deft fingers. She’d watched, appalled, as
the leeches swelled and grew fatter, until at last, shiny and bloated, they’d
fallen off, leaving a trickle of blood behind them. Tallie had felt ill just
watching, but she hadn’t been able to leave.

The doctor had
carefully collected the gross leeches and replaced them in the box. He’d then
shaken out a mysterious-looking powder, mixed it with wine, added several drops
from a thick greenish bottle and administered the mixture through a funnel
forced between Magnus’s clenched teeth.

“Laudanum. He will
sleep now,” he had said to Tallie in careful French. He’d given Carlotta more
instructions in rapid Italian and left.

And that had only
been three days ago, Tallie thought incredulously. It was all a blur to her
now. Days and nights spent at Magnus’s bedside, watching him toss and turn and
mutter unintelligibly, sponging him down when he was hot, rugging him up when
he was cold. And all the time praying that he would live.

“Come, signora, it is
time you slept. Your husband is safe now,” the doctor said again.

Tallie nodded, and
winced as she gently prised her husband’s fingers apart. She stood up stiffly,
tried to flex her fingers and winced again.

The doctor made a low
exclamation and, frowning, bent to look closer.

Tallie hurriedly
thrust her hand in a fold of her skirts.

“Signora, you permit?”

Tallie shook her head
and moved to step back, but the doctor ignored her. He reached down, gently
brought her hand from its hiding place, and examined it. He swore softly in
Italian.

“Why did you not say
something?” he said in a low, angry voice.

Tallie shook her
head, embarrassed.

“It’s nothing —a bit
stiff, that’s all.”

Carlotta came up
behind him and peered curiously over his shoulder. She gasped. Tallie’s left
hand was black and blue with bruises, where her husband had gripped it in his
fever. Several fingers were swollen.

She could hardly move
them.

“Ice for the signora’s
hand, immediately,” the doctor snapped.

Carlotta ushered
Tallie from the room in a tender rush, scolding her gently in Italian,
interspersing her comments with shrill calls to the servant to hurry up with
the ice.

Tallie had no choice
but to be swept away in the motherly embrace. It was strange, but oddly
comforting to have someone fussing over her, even for such a trivial matter. No
one had ever done it before, not even when she had been ill at school. She
couldn’t recall her mother very well, but perhaps her mother had fussed over
her like this when she was a baby. Tallie laid her good hand on her belly,
feeling the faint swelling beneath it. One day she, too, would fuss over this child
the way that Carlotta was fussing over her. It was a wonderful thought. A tear
trickled down her cheeks. Oh, heavens, she was more tired than she realised.

Her hand was plunged
into a bowl of ice-water, and after the first excruciating pain there was a
blessed numbness. After a while the feeling started to come back. It throbbed,
but not as badly as before.

Carlotta smoothed on
some foul-smelling ointment and wrapped the hand lightly in a cloth, then
bustled her into a huge warm nightgown and tucked her into bed.

“Signora… Carlotta, I
must thank you—” Tallie began, but Carlotta shushed her and pressed her gently
back on the pillows, smoothing her hair with a gentle rhythmic touch. She
started humming —a lullaby, Tallie supposed— and a faint smile crossed her lips
as she recognised that she was indeed being mothered like a small child. It was
foolish, for she was a grown, married woman, and not a child at all… but it was
very comforting… She closed her eyes and slept.