The Kindling (2 page)

Patience, he will soon move to the next realm of sleep and relax his hold.

But it was not soon enough for her straining muscles, and she sought relief by pressing her free hand to the mattress and lowering to her knees in the dry rushes alongside the bed. Minutes passed and more, and throughout he kept hold of her.

When sleep tempted her to rest her head upon the mattress, she pushed her drooping chin high and studied his face. He looked almost peaceful, more approachable than ever she had seen him. And she wanted—

Nay, that would be more foolish. She knew her purpose here and that, even if she were not perceived as far beneath his rank, still he would want nothing to do with her when—if ever—he knew all of her, especially considering how much he had lost and suffered in his quest to end the terror that had stalked these lands.

Testing the weight of his much larger hand and finding it had slackened, she slowly drew her arm back. When her fingers slid free, he did not stir, nor when her knees creaked with their unfolding.

“God speed your rest,” she whispered and crossed the chamber to where the door stood open as she had left it.

She slipped into the passageway and eased the door closed. The worst was over. Now to claim what would likely be fewer than two hours of sleep before the castle began stirring toward a new day.

Hooking her fingers in her skirts, she hitched them clear of her slippers and took a step forward—only to take it back when a shadow parted from a pool of darkness upon which the light of the expiring torches did not waste their efforts.

She would have cried out if not that she knew who it was even before he stepped into the dim light. How could one not know such a man who was rivaled in size only by her liege? And, of course, there was his silver hair that one did not commonly see on a man of little more than thirty years of age.

Guessing that from behind whichever door he slept he had heard the creak of the hinges or his brother’s protestations, she straightened to her full height, every hair of which was needed to come as close to appearing as adult as he.

When he halted before her, her search for words to explain her presence yielded only the truth. “Lord Wulfrith, I apologize if I did wrong, but I could not sleep for thinking on seeing your brother again as he would not want me—or anyone—to see him. Pray, believe me, I but meant to prepare myself.”

“And did you?” he quietly asked.

He did not sound angry. “As best I could without rousing him from sleep.”

“A troubled sleep.”

Did he know it was troubled only by the anguished words the open doorway had spilled into the passageway? Or had he peered within and seen her standing over his brother? Worse, on her knees with her hand pressed to his chest?

As much as she longed to explain away what he might have seen, she determined it was best to simply answer his question. “Aye, most troubled, my lord, though Sir Abel does appear to have settled now and, God willing, will pass the remainder of the night in peace.”

Baron Wulfrith inclined his head, and though it was too dim to read whatever his eyes might tell, she sensed something in his gaze that would likely fluster her in the light of day.

“God willing,” he agreed, then said, “Come. The day will be long, and you shall require whatever rest remains to be had.” He turned away.

When her feet did not follow, he looked around. “You need not fear me, Helene of Tippet.”

Strangely, she knew that, and yet the years had taught her to be cautious even where she might not sense danger. However, it was only recently that she had concealed upon her person a dagger more lethal than the one upon her belt that she used for cutting herbs and the occasional piece of meat.

“Come,” he said again.

When he had seen her back to the hall and settled upon her pallet between two softly snoring women servants, he slipped away so silently that she wondered how a man of such size could make it seem as if he had never been.

Would he sleep now that he was assured she meant his brother no harm? Of course, had he truly believed ill of her? It was
he
who had sought her in her village, coming as near to pleading as a man as powerful as he might come. Too, it was not as if he knew her secret. Or did he?

Of late, when she visited Broehne Castle, often she caught her liege’s stare and saw questions upon his brow. Thus, she would be a fool not to realize he was suspicious of her past, which the death of his father had caused to bleed into her present. Might Baron Lavonne have shared those suspicions with his brother-in-law?

She did not think so, for if Baron Wulfrith had been told, he would not have brought her here to try to undo what had been done to his brother. Indeed, he would think her a weed best torn from the earth before its roots went deep and fouled the good soil. And her John, who had fixed himself to Sir Abel’s side during her long absence, would be hated as well.

That
she could not bear. It had not been easy, but she had made a good life for her son and herself here on the barony of Abingdale, and to be forced to leave and begin anew…

Baron Wulfrith was wrong. She would do well to fear him. And, perhaps more, Sir Abel.

Even more, you would do well to pray
, the nearly beloved Sister Clare whispered across her thoughts.

Helene smiled in remembrance of the strict nun who had been so tall and thin that there had been very little difference between her forward-facing figure and her profile. Despite words that could be sharp and her determination that no girl at the convent should grow so fond of her as to look upon her as a replacement for her mother, Sister Clare had been as beloved as one could become who did not wish to be so loved. And now she was gone, news of her passing having been delivered a fortnight past.

Helene swallowed against the painful tightness in her throat. It was years since the nun’s words had come so clearly and often—words of admonishment, encouragement, counsel.

Pray, wee Helene,
she urged now.
Life is too hard to not avail one’s self of the greatest love.

Pulling her hands from between her knees where she had pressed them for warmth, Helene put her palms together. First she prayed for John whom she had not wanted to leave behind though he had been enthusiastic about the offer made by Baron Lavonne and his wife for him to remain at Broehne Castle. Then she prayed for those of the household whom her son would surely test. Next, she asked that Abel Wulfrith respond well to her ministrations. And as sleep pulled her under, she prayed that when she left Castle Soaring she would be no worse in heart and soul than when she had come to it.

“I am dreaming,” she whispered, but the words had no effect on the scene before her.

Just as forcefully, she felt hands upon her. Just as fearfully, she sought the gaze of her son who huddled where she had secreted him before the door had burst inward. Just as desperately, she shook her head to remind him that he must not move or let the smallest sound escape. Just as cruelly, she was dragged outside, kicking and clawing and near choking on the cloth shoved into her mouth. Just as shockingly, she found herself face to face with Sir Robert, Baron Lavonne’s misbegotten brother. Just as carelessly, she was tossed over the fore of his saddle and carried away from the little boy who might forever be marked by the night’s violence.

Awaken, Helene. Open your eyes and see ’tis no more.

With a gasp, she sat up, forced her lids to rise, and found before her a different day, a different place, and far different circumstances.

“Thank you, Lord,” she breathed. Feeling small but safe in the midst of the many beginning to rouse in the great hall, she embraced her knees, pressed her forehead to them, and gently rocked herself.

Chapter Two

Embrace death.

It was as Abel Wulfrith had aspired to do, but they had refused to let him go, plying him with medicinals and drink and words they believed would raise him from a body so broken it would never again serve as it had once done.

He clenched one hand into a fist and raised the other that no longer did his bidding. And never again would, according to the physician. As he stared at the flushed, newly formed scar that divided the upper half of his palm from the lower, he again heard the words he longed to put a blade through, most loudly those spoken by his brother, the least welcome of all who had denied him the respite of abandoning this life.

Garr Wulfrith’s words had not reeked of pleading or encouragement or prayer like those of others who had come around his bed, sat hours beside him, gripped his hand, and touched his brow. Rather, the head of the Wulfrith family had been resolute and demanding and might even be said to be cruel if Abel did not know him as he did.

Unfortunately, it did little good to be so well acquainted with him, for some instinct—some unanswered part of Abel—had listened. But for what? That a once-esteemed warrior might face the thousands upon thousands of days before him as a pitiful excuse for a man?

“Embrace death,” he muttered the creed he had often extolled, though never in regard to his own life or the lives of the young men he trained into knights. Always it had been directed outward—a reminder that if one did not seek an opponent’s death in battle, if one wavered and cast mercy where it was not due, such a fool would yield up his own life.

But on days like this, like every day since Garr had dragged Abel from the bed that should have been the last place he drew breath, resentment welled that he had not turned his creed inward. That he
did
want the next breath and the next and the one after that, even if they added up to endless days and nights, even if every step in and through and out of them was not without hitch or burn.

Thinking it would not take much more force to break the teeth he ground so hard his jaws ached, he stared at the dawn-drenched wood beyond the window and pushed his one functioning hand down his tunic-covered thigh. Its journey was soon arrested, not only by the transition from smooth muscle to thickly ridged scar, but the pain his probing fingers sent deep to the bone.

“God Almighty,” he groaned and dropped his chin to his chest and squeezed his eyes closed. It required several deep breaths before he was finally able to continue his exploration of the length and width and weakness of his pieced together flesh that ran mid-thigh to just below the knee.

“Look at it,” he growled. “Know it well, for ‘tis your lifelong companion.” And this one, unlike Rosamund, the wife he had buried, would never set him free.

He released his breath in a rush, but it did not blow away memories that played against the backs of his lids as they had done often since his life had nearly been sundered beyond the walls of Castle Soaring.

Opening his eyes, he dragged up the hem of his tunic and, still loath to gaze upon his leg, sought the old scar that curved up from his hip to his lower rib, and which had proved nearly as dire as those that now ridged his body as if his flesh were a newly furrowed field.

When it required no shift of the eyes to move from the pale scar that had formed years ago to fix on the more recent injury dealt not by the wife who had wielded a meat dagger against him but a brigand with a sword, he thought he might laugh. And were he a bit angrier, a bit more bitter, quite a bit full of wine, he would have.

Unbeknownst to him until this day when finally he had determined he would witness the work of the three brigands who had taken him to ground, the line of stitched flesh cut through the lowermost portion of the old scar, forming the crossbar of what appeared to be an upended crucifix.

Did not the priests tell of one of Jesus’ disciples who, facing crucifixion, asked that he be suspended upside down, believing he was unworthy to die as his Lord had done?

Abel grunted. In his own case, it was the crucifix that was set wrong side up. And he lived, though how it was possible, even with the strongest of wills to give death one’s back, he did not know. Michael D’Arci, his brother-in-law and keeper of Castle Soaring, was said to be a fine physician, but surely his patient had lost too much blood and the blades had cut too near vital organs for him to be on this side of life, let alone able to rise from bed without aid as he had done this day.

For which you have much to be grateful,
he heard his mother’s voice, she whose prayers at his bedside had not consoled but, rather, made him wish her away.

He lowered his tunic and once more reached to his thigh, only to arrest his hand and turn his gaze out the window to the wood where sunlight now streamed through branches and glided over tree tops. It had happened out there, though then the moon had been full up, its light running the blade he had swung time and again.

Remembering the black and gray night that had known only the color of blood, he curled his fingers around an imagined hilt. Or tried to, for his sword hand trembled as the fingers strained to meet the thumb.

Lifting his hand before his face, he strained harder despite the tearing pain that warned he would likely cause further damage, but the fingers would draw no nearer. Though that night he had cut down men far less versed in sword skill and delivered them over death’s threshold, that battle—that life—was in his past.
This
was his present.

“Curse all!” he spat.

“I would myself be tempted.”

Abel stilled and, in the silence, heard panting—his own, coming so hard and loud that it had masked the sound of the door opening and the tread of the man whose boots ground the dry rushes that would have been freshened on the day past had Abel allowed it.

Recalling the frightened maids who had fled in response to the shouts of the one who, heretofore, had ignored their comings and goings, he felt a pang of remorse. And wondered why he should feel anything other than anger.

“As you can see,” he said, keeping his back to his brother, “‘tis not a good time for me to grant you an audience.”

“Then it is good I do not wish an audience.”

What, then? For what did he—?

“Worry not,” Garr said. “I vow I will not allow my brother to bite you.”