Maze of Moonlight (14 page)

Afraid? Of Vanessa? But Christopher recalled the light in her eyes. Yes, and people were afraid of the baron of Aurverelle, too. Probably for much the same reason. “Why?”

“Has she
looked
at you?”

Christopher smiled. “Like I'm looking at you right now.”

Martin shuddered. “It's nothing like it. You'll see.”

“Believe me, I want to see.”

Martin was silent.

“You know,” said Christopher, “you've been in this castle for three weeks now, and never once have you asked about Vanessa.”

Martin was silent.

“Don't you care?”

“I . . .” Martin's dark eyes flickered. “I have my own problems.”

Christopher grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulled him half up. “You don't give a
damn
about anyone else, do you? You're just like me.” And then he shoved the lad back onto the bed and left the room.

Vanessa continued to worsen. By the next morning, she was hovering liminally between life and death, her breathing almost nonexistent, her heartbeat irregular, weak, fluttering. Christopher wanted to stay by her bed, but—the business of a baron once again intruding on him—Martin's parents arrived at noon. They had come up from Saint Blaise to take their son home.

Matthew Osmore was a stout man with a thick shock of dark hair that spilled luxuriantly over the silks and velvets he wore. To Christopher's annoyance, Matthew persisted in addressing him as an equal—which, from a purely economic point of view, was probably the case—and he seemed to b e constantly surveying the castle as though he were calculating just how much it would cost to build one just like it.

“Awfully grateful to you, Christopher,” he said. “Martin's our only son—got lots of daughters, you know, but only one man in the old pecker . . .” He laughed loudly. “. . . and we were frantic, absolutely frantic, about him when we heard about that little tiff with the clergyman. I imagine Martin acquitted himself well?”

Martin, as far as Christopher knew, had lunged, taken a sword thrust to the abdomen, and fallen on the floor. “I believe he did quite well, sir.”

“Excellent. Excellent. We've got a real man to look forward to, then, don't we, Bonne?”

Matthew's wife was equally stout, but she wore her peasant origins proudly. Her clothes were relatively plain, with just enough ornament to show that she
could
have had much more had she wanted to . . . but she did not want to, you see.

She curtsied to Christopher, her round face touched with worry. “We're very grateful, my lord,” she said softly. “Very grateful.”

“What became of that churchman, anyway?” said Matthew. “I'd like to have a bit of a talk with him.”

“He's dead,” said Christopher. “I killed him.”

Matthew quickly changed the subject.

Martin, Christopher saw, was a commodity, one to be raised like a crop of wheat, weighed and fingered to find its worth, and sold to the highest bidder. Matthew had already picked out a fine wife for him—“Ah, Martin,” he said when he told him of it, “she's a good woman! She has potential . . . and money!”—and had most of the lad's life already mapped out.

Martin suffered through the reunion in silence and took his mother's anxious cooing over his wounds with comparative dignity. Christopher nodded his approval, and even graciously commented upon the lad's role in the battle—one that he made sure included ropes about the wrists and the blacking of eyes—for which Martin looked unutterably grateful.

And then the mayor and his family went off as they had come: with pomp, and silks, and attendants, and all the little perquisites of noble blood that the wealth of Saint Blaise could buy . . . save, of course, the blood itself.

Christopher watched them go. Not once had any of them so much as mentioned Vanessa.

He was, he knew, obsessing on her. She was a peasant from Furze Hamlet, a village girl who had been burdened with some unfortunate talent that more than likely would eventually take her to the stake along with all the rest who had been rejected and abandoned and consigned to the fiery embrace of the Inquisition. Yvonnet escaped because of his position, likewise Christopher himself, but Vanessa, Martin . . . it was only a matter of time.

But Vanessa had become a good deal more than a girl to him. She had become an emblem of himself. Fighting. Fighting against the Etiennes that populated the world. Fighting against the lies and the dearth of honor. Fighting, perhaps, even against the fate that was slowly catching up with her. She could have let Etienne have his way with her. She could, he was convinced, have let herself die by now. She had not.

He ascended the stairs, entered her room. She was failing, and he could now only watch helplessly. No skill, no amount of money, no medicine could preserve any longer a body that had simply been battered into wreckage. It would take a miracle to save her, and Christopher had seen enough even before Nicopolis to know that miracles did not happen.

That afternoon, he thanked Guillaume and Pytor and Jerome and Raffalda and the physicians who had tried to help, sent them away, and settled in at her bedside.

He could not even hold her hand. Too many bandages. What little of her face showed through the layers of white cloth was raw and bloody. He did not even know what she looked like, had never heard her speak his name.

No matter. It was over now, and as the hours crawled by toward sunset, he sat beside her, waiting for the end.

The sun was touching the summits of the Aleser Mountains when Pytor knocked. “Master.”

“What is it, Pytor?”

The Russian opened the door and stuck his head in. “Master, there are physicians at the gate. They say they have come to see Vanessa.”

Vanessa was hardly breathing. “They're too late,” said Christopher. “Give them supper and a place for the night, and send them on their way.”

Pytor looked uncomfortable. “Master, they say they have come from a great distance. They wish to see what they can do.”

Christopher had wanted no interruptions and no company during these last minutes with his beliefs, and the thought of disturbing Vanessa with more futile examinations and proddings revolted him. But he could not help but wonder and hope: maybe. And if maybe, then possibly. And could he deny Vanessa—or himself—that chance?”

Vanessa suddenly dragged in a deep breath, held it, let it out, paused. Christopher, teeth clenched, stared at her swathed face for some time. Abruptly, Vanessa dragged in another breath, held it . . .

A fighter. “Send them up.”

Pytor returned a short time later with a man and a woman. Their garments were unremarkable, and they entered quietly. But their faces and their eyes made Christopher stare and brought him to his feet to acknowledge them, for their faces were very fair—the man's as womanly as the maid's—and their eyes seemed to reflect more light than what came form the hearth and the windows.

The man regarded him dispassionately, almost coldly. “My name is Terrill, my lord baron,” he said, bowing. “This is my assistant, Mirya.”

Mirya was tall and straight, her hair the color of red gold and her eyes as green as emerald. Christopher could not but stare at her. “You say you've come . . .”

“From far away,” she said. Her voice was a firm contralto, at once expressive and calm.

Christopher's brow furrowed. “You're physicians?”

Terrill named his credentials. They were impeccable. Montpellier. Prague. Bologna. Tolouse. Orleans. But as he spoke, he kept glancing uneasily at the bed in which Vanessa lay, and Mirya made as if to hover anxiously over her. Their faces had turned drawn at the sight of her, and their demeanor was fairly shouting:
Please, let us stop talking and start working.

Christopher could see that their interest was as sincere as his own. He did not ask why. He looked at Vanessa, looked at himself, his hope. “Please . . . can you . . .?”

Terrill nodded slowly. “Leave us alone with her.”

Christopher hesitated. Alone? What if . . .?

Terrill's eyes flashed. “You cannot help us by your presence.” His tone was as cold—and as earnest—as his eyes. “Please, my lord.”

But Christopher's doubts refused to be quashed. Others had tried. Others had failed. “Can you save her?”
Can you save me?

Mirya looked at him as though she had heard his silent question as clearly as his utterance. Her eyes were bright, almost luminous. “We can,” she said. “Please go now.”

Gritting his teeth with worry and hope both, Christopher turned and left, herding an astonished Pytor out ahead of him. Shaking, he shut the door, bent his head, heard Mirya say from within the room: “Help me remove these bandages, beloved.”

A minute later, Terrill spoke: “
Ai, Elthiai!
”

Mirya, then—sad, grieving: “They have not forgotten.”

“Nor have we.”

Silence then. Christopher went down the hall hand in hand with Pytor. He was still shaking.

But if they could save Vanessa . . .

An hour went by, two hours. The light was fading from the sky and the little bell in the chapel was ringing compline before Christopher, his worry finally conquering him, climbed the stairs to the upper hall and found that the door to Vanessa's room was standing open.

Terrill and Mirya were waiting for him, but he went immediately to the bed. Vanessa had been freshly bandaged, but her breathing sounded normal—soft, regular, even—and she appeared to be sleeping rather than comatose.

Terrill spoke. “She will live.” His eyes had followed Christopher to the bed, and the baron sensed that his every move was being evaluated for reasons he could not even begin to guess. “Leave her bandages on for six weeks. This is . . .” He looked at Mirya, hesitating. Then: “This is essential for her to heal properly.”

Vanessa appeared to be much better. But, more than that, Christopher sensed that she
was
better. There was a feeling of health about the girl that glowed like a bowl of sunlight. “She's . . . she's well.”

Terrill bowed slightly. Mirya curtsied.

Christopher sagged into a chair, passed a hand over his face. “She's well.” He felt tears starting out. “My God,” he said. “I . . .”

Mirya came forward, knelt before him, touched him lightly on the shoulder. He saw grief in her eyes. “Be at peace, my lord baron. I understand.” And Christopher did not doubt that she did. “Vanessa is . . . precious to us, too.”

Christopher looked up. “To you?”

Mirya smiled softly. “But she is safe now, and therefore we must go. Thank you for letting us see her.”

“Ah . . .” Christopher stood up. “But . . . your fee . . .”

“We have been well paid already, my lord,” said Mirya. “Indeed . . .” She looked at Terrill, her eyes again sad, then turned back to Christopher. “I believe it is to you that we owe a debt.”

Terrill turned away.

Pytor, who had been waiting dutifully by the door, escorted the strange visitors down the hall. Faintly, Christopher heard him offering them supper and beds, heard also their polite refusals. They had to go. They had other tasks, other healings. . . .

Wishing that he could have convinced them to stay, trembling with relief, Christopher shut the door and knelt by the bed. Vanessa was sleeping soundly, and Terrill and Mirya must have cleaned up some of the oozing blood that had covered her, for the flesh that showed between the bandages was pink, healthy, unstained.

Voices outside. Pytor was escorting the visitors to the gate, thanking them for their help over and over in his genial Russian way. Christopher bent over Vanessa, touched, with a trembling hand, her bandaged face. His hope. His hope: rescued. She was alive. He was no doctor, but he could see that. She would be well, and regardless of her strangeness, regardless of what she saw or the fear that followed her, she had given him a sign of his own possible redemption. Vanessa had lived. She might continue to live. And so, therefore, might Christopher.

Gingerly, as though parting the curtains of a temple, he lifted an edge of the bandages on her face. Healthy flesh. Not a cut, not a scrape, not even a bruise. Baffled, he went so far as to push back the dressings that covered her jaw. No blood, not a sign of a wound.

He hesitated for some time, debating, recalling Orpheus as he had once contemplated Odysseus. Then, though he was now shaking badly, he uncovered Vanessa's head.

He looked into the face of a lovely young woman. Unmarred. Healthy. Whole. And he did not doubt that the rest of her body would exhibit the same profound and complete transformation from shattered to sound.

Pytor knocked suddenly at the door, and the baron nearly cried out. “Master, they have departed.”

Christopher found himself staring at the silver pendant that lay on top of the bandages about Vanessa's chest. Moon and star. It glittered at him. Another sign? Of what?

“Master?”

Quickly, Christopher replaced the bandages and tucked the pendant beneath the coverlet, feeling torn between mammoth fright and infinite thankfulness. He did not know what to think, but he settled for acceptance. Vanessa had lived. Maybe . . . maybe Christopher . . .

Pytor opened the door. “Master?”

“She's fine, Pytor,” said the baron. “Terrill and Mirya did it. Absolutely amazing. We'll leave the dressings alone, as the good . . .” He looked at the door, wondering frightened, but clinging to acceptance. “. . . doctors ordered, but please tell David to prepare something nice for Vanessa. I think she'll be hungry when she wakes up.”

The next morning, Vanessa opened her eyes for the second time in Castle Aurverelle. This time, Christopher was ready.

Ready for the light. Ready for the conviction that what Vanessa saw with her brown, luminous eyes was much, much more than any one human being ought to be allowed to see, or could, in fact, stand to see. Just as it was with himself.

But this morning, mixed with that light and knowledge, the baron saw fear. Not the paltry kind that came from strange surroundings and a concern for physical safety, but a fear that could only stem from an utter demolition of belief; and though he smiled to reassure her, inwardly he saw the parallel again. Vanessa's surety had obviously perished beneath Etienne's lechery and a brass candlestick; his own beliefs had died on the sands of Nicopolis.