The Highwayman (9 page)

“I know not if such things grow here,” Rory said, looking concerned and glancing at Burke.

“They do, I have seen them all on my walks,” Alex said. “I will show you where they may be found. There’s a full moon and plenty of light to see.”

“Take a basket and go with her,” Burke said, shifting his weight to the skins on the pallet, favoring his injured shoulder.

“Let me wash your wound first.” Alex picked up his cloak and draped it around his legs.

He shook his head. “Go and get what you need. I’ll be ready for you to remove the arrowhead when you return.”

He was reaching for the cauldron of water when they left.

* * * *

Alex gathered the plants as quickly as possible, but by the time they got back to the tent, Burke was failing noticeably. His complexion was gray, he was shivering, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

Rory glanced at Alex nervously. “What’s amiss? He looks worse.”

“It’s to be expected.”

Burke gazed at them as if from a distance, his tweed cloak tossed aside on the floor. He said nothing.

“Are you certain we should do this now?” Rory asked, still eyeing their patient. The cauldron of bloody water stood abandoned in the middle of the floor.

“It cannot wait. That piece of stone imbedded in the wound must come out,” Alex insisted, drawing the cloak over Burke again.

She set about making the poultice immediately, crushing the leaves to release the green sap and then mixing them with clay. It adhered badly, but she plastered it on, murmuring snatches of prayers under her breath and bathing Burke’s face intermittently.

“How long will it take for that mess of pottage to draw the stone?” Rory asked, hovering nearby.

“It should take several hours. I will watch it. In the meantime he’ll need something for the pain.” She got up and selected two dark blue blossoms from her basket and snapped off the pistils, mashing them in a cup with water to extract the yellow powder.

“What is that noxious potion?” Rory asked. “It smells ill.”

“It will kill the sting of the wound and help him to sleep,” Alex said.

“Too much of it will stop the heart.”

“So then you do know something of this art,” Alex said, glancing up at him.

“I know that plant well enough. A bit of it on the tip of a dart will numb the flesh.”

“Yes, it stops the course of feeling, which can only help him.” Alex lifted Burke’s head and held the cup to his lips.

He was almost insensible, and getting him to drink was a chore. About half of it went down his neck, but he swallowed enough to calm the fire of his wound in time.

“And now?” Rory asked.

“We keep him quiet and wait. When the tip of the stone appears, we take it out.”

“And if it does not appear? Is it not best to go in right away and search for it? That is what we always do.”

“That adds to the risk of inflammation. Isn’t that how your friend died, the one you brought to this tent?”

Rory’s silence was confirmation.

“I’m doing all that I can,” Alex said, looking him in the eye, noticing not for the first time his vague resemblance to his larger, more handsome cousin. “I give you my oath on it.”

“It puzzles me greatly that you should want to help him,” Rory said.

“He rescued me from Scanlon, he’s kept me safe during all my time here.”

“It was he who gave the order for you to be taken in the first place.”

“I understand now why he did that,” Alex said as she wiped Burke’s brow.

Rory stared at her. “That’s a powerful leap of understanding for an English lady.”

“He wants his brother back again. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.”

“Blood calls to blood?” Rory said sarcastically. “As yours calls to your uncle? He’s a bit tardy about his familial obligations, it seems to me.”

“My uncle and I are a different case.”

“Are you not relations? Are you merely his ward?”

“We are relations, but there is little bond of affection,” Alex said, careful not to reveal too much. Telling Burke the unhappy facts was one thing; telling Rory was quite another. “As I child I never knew him, and I was visited on him like an unwelcome guest when my parents died. He was an old bachelor unused to children. . . .” She stopped. “Suffice it to say that Burke feels more for any of his men here, brother or not, than my uncle feels for me. ”

“Then why should he redeem you?”

“He has always been most careful to maintain appearances. He would not want it said in his circles that he neglected his care of me. Lord Essex would most certainly not approve, and he is an intimate of the queen, who is watchful of the Howard branch of her family.” Would to God that it were true, Alex added to herself.

Burke stirred, and they both looked at him.
 

“He should be more peaceful soon,” Alex said.
 

They settled in for the vigil.

* * * *

The sun had just risen when Alex scraped off the poultice and saw the gray, ragged tip of the arrowhead protruding from Burke’s wound. She leaped up and threw her arms around Rory, forgetting his enmity for her, forgetting everything except her hope for Burke’s recovery.

Rory prised her arms loose from his torso and said gruffly, “Now?”

“Yes, yes! Pull back the flaps of the tent, I’ll need as much light as possible, and I want to give him another dose of the sleeping potion so he’ll not feel the probing of the wound much.”

“He’ll feel it.”

“The worse danger is in the poisoning that might come after,” Alex said, crossing herself to ward off the bad luck.

Rory made a corresponding sign with his hand. Whether it was a supplication to one of his old gods or a confirmation of Alex’s offering to her own, she had no idea.

Alex knelt next to Burke and washed his wound as well as she could, hesitating as his eyelids fluttered but did not open. Rory heated a pair of tongs in one of the campfires until it glowed white, and Alex used the instrument to remove the arrowhead. Its exit was followed by a rush of blood and pus, which Alex wiped away, and even in his drugged state Burke bucked when she pressed the dressing against the tender edges of the reopened flesh.

She signaled to Rory to hold his cousin down while she worked.

“Which herbs are in that mixture?” Rory asked, watching her.

“A blend of those you gathered with me last night.”

Rory shook his head. “It seems like witchery to me.”

“Not witchery, but medicine. The priests in the monasteries recorded their homely cures before the dissolution, and their books came into the hands of the queen’s physicians. The remedies I’m using are well known in court circles.”

“An English cure for his tough Irish hide. There’s some humor in that, isn’t there?”

“I’ll laugh when he’s well. Until then I intend to pray.” She sat back on her heels and stroked Burke’s forehead.

“What do you think?” Rory asked.

“He’s hot,” she said, frowning. “Go and get some cold water from that brook where you took me to bathe. The coldest water, where it runs on the rocks.”

Rory obeyed without question, taking up the cauldron from the floor and dumping its contents outside the tent. Alex fixed her gaze on her patient.

True to her word, she began to pray.

* * * *

Despite Alex’s best efforts, Burke’s temperature began to climb, and he was delirious for two full days. During that time she hardly slept, constantly bathing his face and changing his dressing when needed. When he thrashed and tossed she tried to hold him, but even in his illness he was fearfully strong, and sometimes she called Rory to help her. Rory kept the rest of the men away. Alex couldn’t imagine what he was telling them, but she didn’t care. She needed time and quiet, and he made sure that she got both.

Burke seemed to exist in a state of suspension, no worse but no better, until his fever finally broke on the morning of the third day. Alex came alert suddenly from her dozing and noticed that his entire body had broken out in a cool sweat and he was no longer restless. She was watching his face when he opened his eyes and looked at her. She could tell by his expression that he knew who she was.

“Are you feeling better?” she whispered.

He raised his hand slowly and touched her cheek. Alex covered it with her own much smaller one. She didn’t realize that she was crying until her tears fell on his fingers and ran into her mouth.

His parched lips moved.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said.

“Alex,” he croaked.

“Yes, I’m Alex. Do you want a drink?”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

Alex got him the water and helped him to drink, holding his head and tipping the cup to his lips. “Not too much now,” she said when he tried to gulp it. “You can have more later.”

He sighed as she eased him back onto the pallet. “How ... long?” he gasped.

“Just a few days. Everything is fine. Rory’s been in charge, and he’s kept the men in hand.”

“You?”

“I’ve been right here, with you.”

He closed his eyes again.

“Go back to sleep, you need to rest.”

He didn’t stir, and she thought that he had obeyed until she moved to get up and he caught her hand. She paused, and he pressed it tightly.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and then fell asleep.

Alex released his hand and pushed through the flap of the tent into the early morning sunshine. She blinked and wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her hand.

Rory turned from the cookpot where he was preparing breakfast and met her gaze.

“He’s not...” he said, alarmed by her wet eyes.

“No, no, he’s better. He came out of it and spoke to me.”

Rory rushed past her to see for himself. When he rejoined her, he was grinning. “He is better. Even I can see it.”

Alex smiled and nodded.

“All thanks to you,” Rory added. “You saved him.”

“Oh, Rory, he saved himself. You know how strong-willed he is, and very hale. He just needed time—”

“You saved him,” Rory repeated, interrupting her. “And from now on, you’ll have no more trouble from me or mine. I’ll stand with you against any who would harm you.”

For some reason, this moved her as much as Burke’s recovery had. Sullen, childish Rory, loyal only to Burke and their mutual cause, was pledging his fealty to her like a knight kneeling before the queen. She began to get teary again.

“Come along inside,” Rory said, clamping his hand on her shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched her voluntarily. “Maybe in a while we can feed him some broth from the pot.”

* * * *

As soon as Burke began to feel better, he behaved like a child and wanted to be on his feet at once. This attitude persisted in spite of the fact that he almost fell the first time he tried to stand; Rory caught him and set him back down on his pallet. Burke thereafter grumbled that he was being treated “like a puking babe,” which was accurate since the first thing he ate came back up again. Alex was reduced to standing guard to make sure he stayed horizontal and inventing amusements to distract him from his desire to get up and take charge again.

Although she saw as little of the men in the camp as she had before, she could tell that their opinion of her had changed from controlled hatred to grudging respect. Rory must have told them of her role in Burke’s recovery, and the aura of veiled threat she had sensed before was entirely gone.

The atmosphere in the camp was not the only thing that had changed; Alex herself was different somehow. The man upon whom she’d depended for her very survival had almost died, and she’d saved him. When Burke finally came to after days of fever and looked at her and touched her face, she knew then that she loved him, and was certain that he felt the same.

Her conclusion was unshakable, even though she’d had little experience of any kind of love. Her uncle had always spoken of “romance” in sneering terms, as if it were an affliction of the weak, but Alex didn’t feel weak; she felt strong. Nothing and no one could keep her from Burke. Suddenly all the stories and songs made sense, the books she’d read since childhood and the lays of the minstrels sung at banquets and on feast days. Love had once seemed a distant dream, wonderful if ephemeral, but the reality was even more powerful. She would do anything to preserve it.

Alex didn’t even question that her love was reciprocated. She could read Burke’s every expression and gesture, and she knew he had been fighting his feelings for her for some time. He’d give in to them, she would see to that. It wouldn’t be long before he recognized and admitted their mutual desire.

It had to be love, what else could make her feel this way? It was difficult now to remember how she’d felt in the beginning, other than mortally afraid of Burke and desperate to get away from him. Now, the thought of their being parted filled her with panic. She wanted to stay with him, even if it meant living in camps like this one, going deep into the Irish countryside, never seeing England again. All her previous experience of life was muted—her time in her parents’ house and later with her uncle—as if it had never been.