The Hermetica of Elysium (Elysium Texts Series) (25 page)

“For pity’s sake, you should have just told them where it is!”

“I don’t know where it is. No one knows where Valentine is. By God’s Wounds, I would have told them,” he answered between clenched teeth. “You’ll need leeches.”

“There are no leeches here,” William answered from the fireplace. “Not in the mountains.”

“Too late for leeches. This was done days ago.” Nadira indicated the colorful bruising along his ribs gently with her finger, “and we would need a leech the size of my arm.”

“No leeches, then. Perhaps some ale if you have it.”

“We have wine and beer.” She reached for a flagon that William silently set at her elbow. Montrose rose tremblingly on one arm to receive it. “Let me help you.” Nadira positioned herself behind him and helped him sit up enough to drink the beer. “Drink. I will hold you up.” She watched him empty the flagon. William hurried out, presumably to get more.

“How long were you in the byre?” she asked.

“I do not know. Some days. I did not count. I was longer in a cart, and before that in some hovel.” He blinked. His eyes traveled around the room. “This is the tower of Andorra?”

“Yes. Have you been here before?” Nadira laid him back down on his back.

“Many times. But never in the byre or the laundry,” he said wryly.

William returned and knelt beside her, “Here is some bread and wine from upstairs. The buttery is locked now. Do you want me to fetch the cook?”

“No. I do not want him to eat too much tonight, he would be sick. This will be enough,” she lifted the half loaf and weighed it in her hand. “Help me get these rags off him,” she said. William took the scissors from his belt and carefully clipped the tattered woolens from Montrose’s body. He paused every now and then to pull the strips of fabric away.

“Just throw them in the fire,” Nadira said. “I can’t see saving them for anything. They are nearly rotted as it is.” She poured hot water from the cauldron into the wine tub, ferrying the water in a bucket until the tub was half full. Montrose would fit inside if he tucked his knees up. She bent to help William with the last of the rags. While William carried the cloth to the fire, Nadira pulled at Montrose’s boot.

“Careful,” he murmured.

Nadira paused, looking at him as he lay nearly naked on a pile of bedding and kitchen cloths. “What?” she asked, puzzled.

“Careful pulling that one off.”

Nadira pulled gently as instructed, loosening the leather with her fingers as necessary to ease the boot from his leg. Something soft and black fell out as the leather cleared his heel. It was her own braid of hair, twisted and matted. “You still have it,” she marveled.

Montrose took it from her and laid it next to him. “Aye. It binds you to me,” he said in English.

Nadira tilted her head. “Aye. It does.”

William put Montrose in the wine barrel and the two of them finished filling the tub with warm water. With warm wet cloths she wiped his chest and arms, wringing the filth into a bucket. At first Montrose grimaced as she washed him, but after a few minutes made no response, though he covered himself when she dipped her scrubbing cloth deep into the water between his legs. She smiled as she reached for his feet one at a time and propped them on the edge of the barrel.

“I have washed a naked man before, my lord,” she said with humor as she scrubbed his thigh. “I was called upon to help in the sickroom from the time I was twelve years old.”

His face flushed from the heat of the water, “Of course,” he said.

She was totally soaked by the time she was finished. They lifted him from the cooling water and wrapped him in clean linens and lay him back down on the soft pallet. When they were both dry, she held an oil lamp close to his skin, checking him from head to foot over every inch of his body. William watched with curiosity.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked softly, not to disturb her concentration.

“Do what?” She answered absently, poking with her finger around Montrose’s feet. She moved back along his ribs where the scar marked him up and down like a pillow seam. She pushed the lamp up close and felt it with the tips of her fingers.

“Know what to do...” William trailed off, at a loss.

“Is that something one has to learn?” She asked him as the flickering light rippled over the muscles of Montrose’s chest. There were no more open wounds here, but there were terrible bruises, which spoke of a brutal beating sometime in the past week. His right thumb was at an odd angle. Nadira turned it over in her hand and held it closer to the light. She had not noticed it in the byre as it had been hanging in the manacle. Montrose’s arm jerked when she touched it.

“Don’t,” he said.

“What happened to it?” she whispered.

“Thumb screw.” He set his mouth in a tight line. The word itself conjured the image of the horrors of his torture. She lay the hand down beside him. Nadira reached for the tunic William had retrieved for her. “Help me get this on him. He is shivering.” They struggled to pull the heavy wool over Montrose’s head and get his arms through the sleeves. She lifted and positioned Montrose’s elbow so the damaged thumb lay gently on his lap. The three of them stared at it silently in the lamplight for some time.

“What can you do for it?” William broke the silence. Nadira’s confidence wavered. The end of the digit was crushed, the swelling and dark color were so disfiguring that only the fragments of shattered nail remained as a landmark to identify that this was once a man’s thumb.

“I can brace it with some thin bits of wood then wrap it with comfrey and boneset.” Nadira decided tentatively. Immediately William went to the pile of kindling and pulled out his penknife, searching for the perfect splints. Nadira looked up at Montrose helplessly. “It’s all I can do.” She poured the hot water over the herbs in the bowl. His hair and beard were clean now, but still needed to be trimmed, but that could wait.

William watched the whole procedure with great interest, constantly asking questions at every step. She tied off the linen strips, gently running her fingers over the now-mittened hand to smooth the material down. Not too tight lest there be more swelling in the night.

“I think I could do that now, if I had to.” William said, impressed. “You are full of wonderful surprises, Nadira. Do we feed him now?” He nodded toward the bread and wine beside him.

Montrose answered for her by reaching for the bowl with his left hand. William poured some wine. Montrose consumed both bread and wine like a famished animal. Afterwards, he dropped to sleep so suddenly Nadira bent over his face to determine if he was still breathing. A great snore removed any doubt. William helped her cover him with the blanket.

“Now you can tell me what’s been going on,” Nadira pulled William down to sit beside her. “Who is this Father Septimus and why is he here?”

William glanced up at the door, and then settled in conspiratorially. “It’s like this,” William glanced up at the door again. “These men came three days ago with a hay cart and baggage. This man,” he gestured to Montrose’s snoring form, “was in the cart. Conti put the priests in his chambers and has been bedding in mine. Father Septimus is an inquisitor from Seville. Father Matteo is from Toledo. They came to see the copy of the book I made. You remember,” he prompted, “the one you’ve been reading for us.” Nadira nodded, so he continued, “Father Septimus was very excited. He wanted to know where the book came from and if there were more copies. Monsieur told them what you had said about Brother Henry so they wanted to question you.”

Nadira went cold. She tucked both hands inside her dress.

“But monsieur forbade it.” William finished. Nadira rubbed her icy thumbs together under her smock.

“Bless monsieur,” she said in a shaky voice.

William put a comforting arm around her. “Monsieur will not allow you to come to harm. I watched him in that meeting, Nadira. When Septimus demanded to have you brought to him, he sent Miguel to put you in your room and guard you. Monsieur and Septimus nearly came to blows over this matter. There was much shouting and shaking of fists. Do not fear.”

Nadira would have liked to believe him, but she could not calm her trembling.

“Now it is my turn.” His eyes lit up. “You must tell me about this man and how is it that you two are so…friendly.” William squeezed her shoulders.

“Just as monsieur is keeping me to read for him, Lord Montrose retained me to read for him this past summer. You see?”

William nodded. “He’s been kind to you, then,” William twisted to see her face. “Tell me. If I am to release you to him it must be with confidence he will care for you and never hurt you.”

Nadira looked at him with surprise. “Release me? You misunderstand. I am indentured. Lord Montrose is my master.”

“I meant released from my heart,” William answered shyly. He averted his eyes so Nadira had to look beneath the golden lashes to see them in the lamplight. “Can it be that you do not see that he loves you?” William flicked his hand at Montrose lying on the floor beside them.

“William…” She made to protest.

“No, Nadira. You see him as a servant sees a master. I see him as a man. He looks at you as though it kills him not to take you up in his arms and consume you with kisses. I recognize that look.”

“You imagine…”

“You are blind.”

“I swear, William…”

He held up a hand to stop her. “And your tears. You would weep thus for any man? For any master? It cannot be so. Why do you deny it?”

Nadira opened her mouth to answer, but nothing of any sense came to mind.

“Did you not notice how his eyes did not stray from your face the entire time you were working on his wounds?” William cocked his head. “I wish you could see your face now, Nadira. You are red as a beet. You truly didn’t know, did you? His eyes were not the eyes of a master watching his servant, even a master watching a pretty servant. I saw no lust in his face and I was waiting for it. Even as the splash of water soaked your gown and brought your breasts out like a sculpture of Venus and placed them nearly in his eyes as you bent over his head, I never saw him take his eyes from your face.”

“You were looking at my breasts…”

I admit it,” he laughed, then turned serious, “but I would never renounce my sacred vows, as much as I have bent them and twisted them, never have they been broken. I do my share of penance as it is.” His sad smile was a faded copy of the habitual grin he usually wore. He squeezed her again. “I had hoped to keep you here for years and years.”

His eyes became distant. “It is sad to be so alone. There is no one, save monsieur, who can talk to me about what I read in the manuscripts. None to share my little triumphs. None to argue points of scripture or philosophy. Monsieur is here only over the winter. Summers I sit alone copying, copying…” He turned his eyes on her again. “This summer I was copying Plato. There is a line,” He quoted, “’Few persons ever really think that from the evil of other men something of evil is transferred to themselves. And, the feeling of sorrow that we feel for others becomes our own sorrow.’

“I think it means that we feel the pain of others differently than we feel pain ourselves, and not necessarily less. Perhaps we feel it even more. In addition, that we can be contaminated by evil not only by experiencing it ourselves, but by observing it in others.” William sighed. “I wanted to talk to someone about this, so I went to the stable. Jack told me to get out of the way; he was mucking the stalls. I went to the kitchen. Cook told me to shut up; I was interfering with the timing of his baked meats. I went to the battlements. The guards listened politely, but when I asked them what they thought about it, they laughed at me.” William covered his eyes with both hands. “I tested you that day in the library. I asked you about Plato, and even though you had never even read his words, you had something to say about them. You thought about what I said, you understood Plato’s meaning. I knew then I wanted to keep you here forever with me. God is punishing me for the sin of pride, Nadira.” He sounded so forlorn Nadira could hardly bear it. “And now I see that this man has your heart, and you have his. He will take you away from me.”

“Do you think he will be freed?” Nadira glanced at Montrose, snoring softly beside her.

“He must, Nadira. Already what Father Septimus has done is troubling. He won’t be able to keep Lord Montrose in chains without bringing suit against him, and there is no evidence but that copied manuscript found in his baggage, and it is proven Lord Montrose is quite illiterate. Father Matteo told me that Father Septimus has previously been chastised by his own bishop for,” William searched for the right words, “being overly enthusiastic about his work. Lord Montrose’s worse offense might be dealing in stolen manuscripts.”

“He didn’t steal it,” Nadira blurted defensively.

“Don’t tell me you know where it came from?” he cried.

“Yes,” she whispered, covering her mouth.

“God. Don’t tell them, Nadira. Don’t breathe a word of it.” William took her hand in his. “I mean it.” His eyes burned her.

She could not speak, just shook her head. She would never tell.

“They would go to that place and make trouble for the scholars there. You understand?” She nodded again, imagining more deaths like Richard’s, more torture. She glanced down at Montrose again.