The Lion's Daughter (20 page)

He
even submitted his tormented body to physical labor. To their very
great astonishment
—
and
embarrassment
—
the
English baron helped Hasan's sons repair their mill, which had been
severely damaged in the recent storms. In the process, another storm
burst without warning upon them, and Varian was drenched through
before they found shelter. The morning on which they were to leave
Poshnja, he woke with a burning throat and a beastly headache.

Esme
took one critical look at his ashen face and announced they could not
depart until he was better.

Varian
turned away from her, threw his traveling bag over his shoulder, tore
his cloak from the hook, and marched from the house.

“You
are not fit to travel,” she cried, hurrying after him. “It
begins to rain again, and you will take a very bad chill, and
—”

“Fm
not spending another
minute
in
this place,” he declared.

Setting
her mouth, Esme stomped off toward her horse, leaving Petro to
communicate to Hasan the baron's thanks and farewells.

When
they stopped for their midday meal, Varian's throat was swollen
enough to make eating a torture. He drank
raki
instead, which made him sick to his
stomach. By the time he climbed back onto his mount, his entire body
was shaking.

Berat
lay only five more miles ahead, five treacherously steep, downhill
miles in a downpour. Grimly, Varian rode on, shivering one moment,
burning up the next.

The
hours passed like decades. He scarcely saw Berat. It was all haze. He
heard voices, was aware the group had stopped, and halted his horse.
He looked down, and the ground yawned miles below him, then swayed,
treacherously.

An
earthquake, he thought. Of course. Why not?

Someone
cried his name. Esme's voice. Varian turned his head, searching for
her, and the world tipped side-ways, then sank away and left him
falling into the heavens.

VARIAN
OPENED HIS eyes to a thick gray fog. He blinked but couldn't focus.
It must be a dream: a white mountain side, a rushing stream, and
evergreens. No. The somber green was her eyes. They shouldn't be so
dark as this, not so afraid. Esme was never afraid.

“I'm
sorry,” he said. Croaked. Was that horrible sound
hint!

“Aye,
now
you
are sorry.” She laid her cool hand upon his brow. “Only
because you are hot with fever and miserable. If you were not so
sick, I would beat you.”

He
smiled. It hurt. His lips were parched.

He
felt himself sinking again. Esme brought her arm round his back and
raised him, while she nudged cushions underneath to prop up his head.
The room shifted dizzily, then slowly slid back into focus.

A
moment later, the most ghastly aroma rose to his nostrils. Varian
glanced down. A spoon. He groaned and turned

his
head into the pillow, then winced as a great claw squeezed his skull.

“It
is not poison,” she said. “A broth, of garlic and
chicken. Swallow it, or I shall call Petro and Mati to hold you down
while I
make
you
swallow it.”

“Yes,
Esme,” he said meekly, as he turned back to accept the reeking
spoonful. Yet he hated having her feed him, hated feeling helpless,
like a child. Too often she made him feel like a child. Except when
he held her in his arms. He couldn't even lift them now.

“I'm
not a child,” he said.

“When
I am ill, I am a little baby,” she said, administering another
dose. “Cross and impatient. Once, I threw a bowl of soup at my
father's head, then wept with vexation when he laughed.”

“I
can't imagine you ever being ill.”

“It
was when they took the bullet from my leg, and I was made to lie abed
for weeks. Two years ago.”

Varian
closed his eyes briefly. He'd felt the scar upon her thigh that
night
...
when
his hands had explored nearly every part of her. He'd wanted to kiss
it. He wished he'd been there two years ago to look after her. He
wished she'd thrown the bowl at him. He couldn't tell her. He
couldn't explain, even to himself.

“But
you will try to be more cheerful,” she went on, “for I
have good news. My cousin Percival is here, and he is well and eager
to speak with you. Later, though. I told him you must rest.”

“Percival?
Here?”

“Yes.
Bajo found him, as I told you he would, and brought him here, to this
very house, where Mustafa has taken very good care of him. But you
must hurry and grow strong, for the boy has no one to talk to except
me, and he makes my head ache.”

“I
must hurry and get strong,” Varian said, “so that I can
give him a birching.”

“Be
quiet. Eat. I will tell you a story.”

He
accepted another spoonful, then another, while she told him of her
life. Her voice low and musical, she spoke of the

years
she'd lived in the north, near Shkodra. Another pasha ruled that
area, and it was thought safer than Ali's territories, which at the
time were in bloody turmoil. There, in the harsh mountains, Esme
said, the stern Canon of Lek prevailed, laws handed down over
generations, from the time of the hero Skanderbeg in the fifteenth
century. Blood feuds raged all over Albania, and violent revenge was
a common response to injury. In the north, however, the rules were
intricately defined and strictly carried out. It was a hard place for
women, she told him, but the land was beautiful.

For
five years she'd lived in the region of Shkodra, the longest her
father had lingered anywhere. Not that he truly lingered. He left her
with friends while he traveled the length and breadth of Ali's
domains, doing what he could to help bring order and persuade the
fiercely independent tribes to unite. Before Shkodra, she'd spent two
years in and around Berat. Before that, three in Gjirokastra, where
her mother had died
—
though
they continued to visit often afterward, because Esme's grandparents
lived there.
Korçe,
Tepelena,
Janina. But these she
said she didn't remember well. Janina not at all, for she'd been an
infant. Jason had met her mother, a young widow, there. One of Ali's
spoils of war, she was given in reward to Jason for services
rendered. She was the only woman Jason accepted from Ali. Her name
was Liri.

Varian
absently swallowed what must have been a cauldron of odiously pungent
broth while he listened. It was not just that the tale of her life
took his mind off his physical misery and the great claw tearing at
his head. He listened because this was Esme's life, what had made her
what she was, and he was greedy to know. She had secrets. He wanted
to learn them all.

At
last she put the relentless spoon away. Varian breathed a sigh of
relief.

“I
am sorry you didn't like it,” she said. “Yet I am glad
you were brave enough to take it anyway. Now your body is filled with
the strength to fight your illness.”

“My
body is filled with garlic,” he said. “I
reek
of it.”

“Yes,
it will sweat through your skin, taking the illness with it. Now you
have only to sleep.”

“I'm
not sleepy,” he said.

“I
tell you this long, boring story of my life and you are not

sleepy?”
She peered at him. “But you are,” she said. “You
blink and blink to keep your eyes open. Close them.” She
stroked the tight place between his eye-brows.

“I
want to look at you,” he said.

“There
is no need to watch me. I shall not go away and make new trouble for
you. Do not be anxious.”

But
Varian was. He knew the fever and headache muddled his mind, but he
was afraid to close his eyes, because he might wake and she'd be
gone. Then how would he find her again?

All
the same, there was no withstanding the gentle pulsing between his
brows, no resisting the waves of cool peace streaming through the
tight muscles of his face. The claw eased its grip and the world grew
soft and thick as velvet, cool and dark. He felt himself slipping,
but some part of his mind, sweeping down this sweet river, snagged on
a recollection. Time
...
years
...
count them. Five years in
Shkodra, two in
...
where? Another place. Other
places. How many years? He couldn't remember. His mind went dark and
he sank.

WITHIN
THREE DAYS, Lord Edenmont was recovering very well, yet Esme
continued to nurse him diligently. He was not overly demanding. He
took his medicine with a minimum of complaint and ate whatever she
gave him. Otherwise, he slept, mostly. That left her little to do,
yet she remained with him and kept her hands busy helping Mustafa's
mother, Eleni, by mending clothes, picking through beans, carding
wool. Esme did not want any more private conversations with her
cousin, and this was the only polite way to avoid them.

Often,
Percival kept her company, but while Lord Edenmont slept, the lad had
to sit quietly. He did this surprisingly well for a boy. Sometimes
he'd take out a half dozen rocks from his leather-pouch and study
them, occasionally making notes on the paper Mustafa had given him.
Most often, though, the boy would sit reading one of Mustafa's books.

Percival
tried not to be troublesome, but even in the brief intervals they'd
been alone together, he'd said enough to disturb Esme deeply. His
heart was set on taking her back to England with him. This was
painfully clear, though he said it was

what
his mama had wanted. When he spoke of his mother, Esme's heart ached
for him.

Percival
said little about his father, yet here as well she needed few words
and only a glimpse of his eyes to understand his father was not a
loving one. How could he be, to leave his only child in the care of
an irresponsible libertine?

That
left the boy only an unforgiving old witch of a grandmother who had
refused to write even one kind word to Jason, the son she'd not seen
in more than twenty years. The boy had no one. He was desperate
enough to make do with Esme, but it was Jason he truly needed, and
Jason was dead.

Esme
looked at Percival and saw her father's image. She looked at the boy
and saw loneliness. When the boy looked at her, she knew he thought
he'd found a sister.

He
was bright, even amusing, and gentle natured. She wished she could be
a sister to him. They'd do well together. There was a bond. She'd
felt it in the first five minutes they were together in Berat:
kinship, and something else. A sympathy.

But
Fate had decreed she must hurt him, and there was no way to prepare
him, no way to break it to him gently that she would never accompany
him to England. He must go on his own way alone, just as she must
carry her burden alone. Yet even as she grieved for Percival, Esme
told herself the grief was salutary. It reminded her of her duty.

For
awhile
—
too
long a while
—
she'd
let a shameful infatuation take precedence over duty. No more. From
now on, all her mind would be fixed upon revenge. Merely killing
Ismal would not be enough. He must suffer hideously, body and spirit,
before he died. His blood for Jason's, aye, but he must pay as well
for the injury to her cousin, who'd needed Jason even more than she
had.

Esme
allowed herself to think of nothing else as the days stretched into a
week. She evaded her cousin's efforts to get close to her and told
her conscience it was better this way. She watched Lord Edenmont grow
stronger, heard the teasing irony creep back into his voice, and
steeled her heart against him as well. She could not allow herself to
feel anything for either of them, or give anything of herself. She
had her own destiny to follow. They would soon be gone. It was better
this way.

Chapter
11

WALLED
IN BY MOUNTAINS, JANINA CLIMBED the eastern slope of the Hill of St.
George, to command a breathtaking view of the Lake of Janina. Between
hill and lake stretched a promontory that rose as it jutted out into
the waters. This narrow, rocky quadrangle formed the foundation of
the vast fortress that housed one of Ali Pasha's palaces as well as
the city's prison, official buildings, cemetery, mosques, and the
miserable dwellings of the Jewish population. A drawbridge connected
the citadel's lone gate to the small esplanade
—
a
site of executions
—
which
led to the
pazar,
the
marketplace.

Janina's
pazar
represented,
physically as well as economically, the town's lowest point, its
crooked, filthy, ill-paved streets crowded with shops. Beyond the
shops, the streets straggled on to the very edge of the lake, where
the poorest classes lived. In this quarter, Jason Brentmor, too, had
been living in quiet anonymity these last weeks.