Wonderful (15 page)

From his expression she could see he did not believe her. He grunted something she could not hear, then disappeared again.

“My lord, please …” came Tobin’s frustrated voice. “If you would just hold still a moment longer.”

“God’s eyes man, be quick about it!”

There was another crash. Clio heard Tobin swear softly. Then there was the rattling sound of mail hitting the stone floor, and the squire muttered, “Thank you, God.”

“Where in the bloody hell is that water?” Merrick yelled so loud they could have heard him in London. He began to pace in front of her door. Back and forth he went, ranting and grumbling.

She stared at her betrothed with sudden fascination.

He was wearing only a loincloth.

Clio had seen a few naked men. She had seen to the bathing of her father on occasion and a visiting diplomat once. But neither of them, nor the skinny castle and village lads that bathed naked in the streams, had looked anything like Merrick de Beaucourt.

His arms and chest were thick and sturdy. His skin was darker than her own pale skin. The color of it made hers look pasty. Beneath the black whirls of hair on his body, muscles rippled like tight steps down his belly to the edge of the loincloth.

That one small scrap of thinly-tanned leather covered his male parts, which, as she stared at them with complete fascination, looked like huge knotted fists.

When he would turn his back to pace, she could see scars, both white and purple, across his back and his right arm and shoulder.

His buttocks looked incredibly tight, tighter than hers, she thought with no little disgust. But his thighs were heavy with strength and snaking muscle, and she understood immediately how he could so easily control his horse with only a slight leg motion.

She had stopped listening to his words, because they were only muttered curses and male talk. Looking at him was much more interesting.

But before long his pacing began to make her lightheaded. She shook her head slightly, but it did not help. The room spun a little, as if she had drunk too much wine. She took a deep breath, but it made her wound ache so much she had to close her eyes to block her tears of sudden pain.

Certainly it was not fair. She didn’t want to close her eyes when the view before her was so spicy.

But nothing seemed to help her light-headedness, so she lay down her cheek atop one hand and tried to keep her eyes open. They grew heavier and heavier, until she knew they were only open to small slits.

A moment later she closed them completely.

’Twas the last thing she remembered.

Chapter 17

They hovered about Lady’s Clio’s chamber like black harbinger ravens sitting in a hanging tree. Thwack and Thud, their wide and worried eyes locked on Lady Clio, who was lying so still on the bed. Tobin and Sir Isambard stood near the door along with three maidservants, two old and the young, plump teary-eyed village girl called Dulcie.

Brother Dismas stood by the bed praying in Latin and dabbing oil in the sign of the cross on her brow. He suddenly switched languages. “My Lord God! Save this poor daughter of Eve!” He flung holy water over Clio, the bed, Merrick, and everything else within five feet. “Use your divine wisdom and grace, dear Lord God. Let her stay here, where she is needed by … by …”

The monk scanned the room frowning. He glanced quickly and fearfully past Merrick, whose jaw was so tight his neck ached.

“… By these wretched souls, who need all of your divine help and …”

At that moment Old Gladdys came inside the room. She took one look at the monk, hunched her shoulders, and raised her bony hands high in the air like a witch about to cast a spell. She chanted some Druid song and danced around the room, her black clothing flapping about her like bat wings.

The monk’s mouth clamped shut faster than the king’s castle gate and he held the cross at the end of his prayer beads in front of him like a shield.

“Out!” Merrick shouted. Not even for Clio’s sake could he take any more. He pointed at the door. “Every last one of you! Out!
Now
!”

Seconds later all were scrambling to get out the bedchamber door at the same time. All but that fool Brother Dismas, who was tying a dried piece of holly threaded with garlic to his cross, and the Druid witch, who was hunched over, cackling and blinking at the monk as if she had something stuck in her eye.

“I said out!” Merrick pinned the monk with a menacing look meant to send him anywhere but there. Straight to hell for all Merrick cared.

“Me?” Pompous Brother Dismas looked stunned, but raised his cross higher. “But surely since I have God’s divine ear, I should stay. Get this heathen witch out!” He scowled at Old Gladdys and raised his cross a little higher. “Before she gives us all the evil eye. Lady Clio needs my prayers on her behalf.”

“She needs all of you gone.” Merrick took a step toward the man.

The good brother quickly whipped the string of prayer beads back over his head, stuck his brass aspergillum under his armpit, and gathered his robes up in his fists. He stood there a moment, apparently waiting for Old Gladdys to stop chanting. He turned back to Merrick. “God says you must move her lady’s bed.”

“What?” Merrick scowled back at him. “Move her bed? Why?”

“Our Father just told me, my lord. You must move the bed to that wall.” He pointed across the room. “There.”

Merrick stared at the wall in a moment’s confusion.

“To save Lady Clio,” Dismas continued. “The Lord says her head must be pointed toward Golgotha.”

The man was crazed. Merrick just looked at him blankly.

“Calvary,” the good brother explained. “’Tis the hill where Christ was—”

“I bloody well know where Golgotha is, you idiot! I’ve been there! Now get out of this room before I crucify you!”

The monk swallowed hard and ran out the door. His footsteps pattered frantically down the stone stairs.

“You too, old woman. Leave.” Merrick stepped in front of Old Gladdys and stopped her from twirling in a hexagon-shaped path.

She looked up at Merrick, then scanned the room. The moment she saw they were alone, she straightened and returned Merrick’s look with a wise and completely lucid look of her own. She handed him a small earthenware pot she took from a sack sewn to the hip of her robe. “Put this unguent on her wound.”

Then she walked out, her back straight as an alder tree.

Merrick shook his head, then took the stopper from the pot. Inside was a lichen-green salve of strong-smelling herbs that looked and smelled as if it offered more promise than did moving the bed and aiming Clio’s head toward Jerusalem.

He closed and bolted the chamber doors with an order to a guard that no one was to enter. He turned back and just stood there, one shoulder leaning against the wooden door.

She had passed out. He could see she was weaker than she had claimed. Her skin was pale and grayish and the color had nothing to do with her clothing choice.

He had seen that look before on wounded men. She might have thought she was fine, but she was not. He wrung out a cloth in the basin of tepid water. Then he washed the wound again. It was deep and still bleeding.

He cut her gown from neck to waist and stared at her body, unable to look too long upon the wound because of its depth. When he pressed on the soft flesh beneath her collarbone, he could feel the tip of the arrow just beneath her fine blue-veined skin.

He had removed arrows before. From men, not women.

And not his woman. There were two ways to extract an arrow. One was to pull the shaft back out the way it had entered. But if the point was spiked with small prongs, it could rip the flesh away from the bone and make the victim bleed to death.

He used the second method and cut a cross in the front of her shoulder with a dagger. She moaned and twisted, and he had to hold her down. Fresh red blood the color of scarlet poppies poured out from the wound.

He watched her for signs of consciousness. There were none. Thankfully. As swiftly as he could, he used some narrow tongs to pull the arrow shaft through, pinning her with his other arm.

She tried to buck him off her and moaned even more pitifully. He had to take deep breaths of air that were hard to catch and hold. She cried quietly.

“I would take your pain from you if I only could,” he whispered. After a moment that seemed like an eternity, she quieted.

He looked at the arrow in his hand. The shaft was spiked.

But now fresh new blood swelled swiftly from the wound. He dropped a cloth into a beechwood bowl filled with warm water and vinegared wine. Then he dabbed at and firmly pressed the cloth against her shoulder.

It had to hurt. Still she did nothing but give a small wisp of a moan that sounded as if she were farther and farther away.

No matter what he did, the wound would not stop bleeding. His anger, his frustration, was so strong at that moment he wanted to hit something.

All but a few of the Welshmen who had done this to her had already paid harshly for their sin. In his mind’s eye he saw her running, saw them chasing her, and all over again he swelled with that rage.

He felt her look on him before he looked down and saw it. She was awake and stared up at him like a cipher, those bright eyes of hers empty and lifeless. She looked as though she were little more than human air.

Her eyes drifted closed, as if keeping them open were too much for her, but she placed her hand on his where it rested on his thigh.

He stared down at her hand while his thumb stroked one of her fingers. There was dried blood all over her arm, wrists, and hands from holding her wound while she was running.

He took the wet cloth and washed her as gently as he could. When he was done, he wrung out the cloth; the water in the bowl turned a deeper color, like the red-brown dirt of Cyprus, where they had buried too many men. He had seen so much blood in his lifetime that he had thought he was immune to the sight of it.

Apparently not.

Seeing her small hand covered with blood sickened him. Not since his first bloody battle had he felt the bile rise to his throat as it did now. He had forgotten he could feel this.

Still the wound bled on and on, and he knew he must do something drastic, before the wound could become putrid or before she slowly bled to death. He knew what to do, but it did not make the thought easier; it made it more difficult.

Don’t think. Don’t think. So you don’t have to feel.

He stared at the rough oaken table near the bed. His dagger with the handle in the shape of a cross lay next to a squat tallow candle with a bright flickering flame.

Slowly he picked up the dagger and lifted its blade to the fire, watching almost sightlessly as the metal got hotter and hotter. The wound still bled, and to him, it looked as if her life were draining away in a bright red stream.

He took a deep breath and started to move the dagger toward her shoulder. But his hand froze. He could not do this. He could not. He waited, prayed, closed his eyes. He put the blade to the flame again, waiting longer while the dagger blade turned hotter and hotter.

He took another long and deep breath, then swiftly pressed the knife to her shoulder.

Her eyes shot open and she screamed long and loud.

It sounded as if it went on forever. Then she fainted.

He sat there staring down at her, her scream still ringing through his mind, in his head, his ears. In his heart. He dropped the knife as if he had touched the hot blade; it clattered onto the stone floor. He took deep breaths, but it did not help.

He slipped to his knees on the floor as the anguish swelled inside of him. He gave a muffled, aching moan that sounded as if it came from someone else, some wild animal or wounded beast; then he buried his head in his arms and cried.

Chapter 18

Clio slept restlessly, feeling as if she were in between two worlds: The real world, which seemed like a dream because it was nothing but a nightmare of pain. And her dream world, a place where it was safe and sweet and real, where it was night and the stars shone above her in numbers too many for one person to count.

Some of those stars were far away, as if they were closer to heaven. But others, just a few, were so near, she thought she could reach out and touch them with her fingertips.

She had never seen stars like these, some shooting west and others shooting east, while a streaky cloud of them just stayed in the same spot and twinkled like the bright sapphires in Queen Eleanor’s crown.

In this odd dream, she was standing on the edge of a giant crevasse; it was so deep she could not see the bottom--just a huge black abyss that was frighteningly empty.

On the other side of that deep ravine stood Merrick, astride his huge warhorse, which was stamping and snorting and looking like it wanted to jump. Behind him, lined up like men armed and ready for battle, were row after row of standards with distinctive waving banners—
sable a cross argent a lion rampant gules
—black field, white cross, and rearing red lions.

Suddenly the lions became real, alive. They jumped down from the pennants into live packs that prowled in circles on the ground, then leapt across the wide crevasse as if they had wings.

They landed on the other side, near Clio, and the moment they touched the ground, their paws changed into bare human feet.

They roared continuously, then all turned toward her.

She saw the intent to destroy in their eyes, and she ran.

Their roars became human shouts.
Kill her! Get her! Stop her
!

She stole a quick look over her shoulder and saw the pack of red lions had changed into Welsh outlaws with longbows and leather jacks and looks more frightening than those of animal predators.

Er cof am Gwent
! came their Welsh cries.

They shot bloodred arrows at her as she tried to escape. She dodged them and ran on. When the arrows hit the nearby trees, they stuck, then melted in bloodstains as if the trees were wounded and bleeding.

In the distance she could hear Merrick’s voice. Far, far away, calling her name, again and again, but neither of them could cross the deep ravine. The further along its edge she ran, the more the wide black canyon between them seemed to widen.