“I liked him,” Wilecok added. “I hope he’s happy.”
“You don’t like Simon.” I stared at him in wonderment.
“Not much.” He spat again, off to the side. “Oh, Lady Eleanor loves him. Reminds him of her father, you see. He’s not a straight arrow like Henry or Guy, is he?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. Wilecok turned his horse and started trotting along the path to Oxford.
***
My throat was parched. Wilecok had not been lying about the pace, which had picked up considerably, and the horses were sweating as they clattered down the road, which had widened as it neared the town.
I was extremely anxious, my head in a whirl of thoughts. My anger at Wilecok had passed, but he clearly thought of me as Simon’s victim, and that was wrong. I would be able to talk to him about this again, surely, and I tried to put it out of my mind.
“It’s outside the walls,” Wilecok shouted to me, pulling ahead.
“What?” I asked.
“The priory, outside the city walls. They got the Countess of Oxford to build it for them more’n thirty years ago!”
He seemed gleeful that we were nearly there, whereas I plodded along, wishing I could pull back. I was so afraid that I was going to see my worst fear come true.
“Come along!” Wilecok ordered. He suddenly veered through some open gates down a grassy driveway, the grass trampled flat by many hooves. “Up here.”
A fine stone church appeared, next to a long, low building that clearly had a hall in it. Beside this was a squat, well-maintained residence with stone steps leading up to a wooden door.
“That’s the one,” Wilecok said cheerfully, sliding off his horse, patting her, and tying the reins to an iron ring. “You do the same.”
I dismounted, my legs trembling.
It was completely quiet. We looked at the door together. It had an ugly black mark on it, smeared with something like pitch.
“The city did that, to warn people,” Wilecok said. “The city folk probably thought everyone was gone. I bet them monks locked the door afore they left.”
But it was unlocked, we discovered as we got to the top of the steps.
I was breathing so hard that Wilecok had to stop and stare at me. “Catch your breath,” he said, stepping into the hall.
The house was completely silent.
“Now, where would they have put him. Upstairs, I bet,” Wilecok mused to himself.
We took the stairs together, me following close behind him. My heart was aching with fear. The house smelled normal, and I wondered where the dead had been buried. But that wasn’t my problem. It wasn’t a house full of corpses, but the very emptiness was somehow horrifying.
Wilecok pushed open a door at the top of the stairs. “Stay back, Will,” he said, glancing at me. “Best if I look first, all right?”
I stayed down on the landing, breathing hard. I felt sick. I had no sense that Stephen was close by, and that worried me.
Wilecok went into the room. Then he closed the door. That was odd. I leaned against the whitewashed wall, holding my hands over my eyes to rest them from the glare of the ride. Everything was clean. The house smelled, now that I thought of it, as if vinegar had recently been sprayed. On the rush mats at my feet someone had sprinkled dried lavender. They had cleaned the house before they left, as if filled with guilt about leaving him.
A great emptiness filled me. I had no doubt he was dead. There hadn’t ever really been any hope...
Wilecok opened the door and came down the stairs. His expression looked grim. He walked right up to me.
“Tell me!” I gasped. When he said nothing, I said again: “For God’s sake!”
He put his hand on my shoulder. His voice was soft. “He’s sleeping.”
I felt my jaw drop open.
“He’s sleeping, but he’s very ill. I had a hard time recognizing him, at first.”
He rubbed his eyes, sighing. “Do you want to go look?”
“Yes. Is he unconscious?” I asked, running up the stairs. Once my father had lost consciousness, it was all over. He’d died the next day.
“I don’t know. How do you tell?” Wilecok said doubtfully.
I opened the door. I stared at the man on the bed. He was lying in a dim room filled with shelves of glass vials full of herbs and powders. The bed he was on was more like a raised pallet. He was hunched over so that it was hard to see his face.
He was far along. The pox covered his skin the way it had covered my mother and my father. His face was a mass of pustules. But I recognized his bright hair.
I walked boldly over and touched his forehead. Wilecok was at the door, staring at us.
He was burning up. I stepped over to a basin of water and dipped a cloth in it. The room had been well supplied once. It still seemed peaceful. I glanced up at Wilecok’s troubled face.
“Leave us for a bit. Go rest, or drink, or whatever you need to do.”
“Come to the refectory when you’re ready to eat,” Wilecok said. “I’ll be there. You can tell me...”
He didn’t finish the sentence and left quickly.
“It’s just you and me now, Stephen,” I said to him. I sat down by a chair at his bedside, holding the damp cloth over his brow. “I’m here.”
It was a while before he turned in the bed. His face seemed more relaxed. Although he could not open his eyes, I heard him say hoarsely, “Will?”
“It’s me. You’re safe now. I’ve come to make you better.”
He whispered something. It sounded like “not a doctor.”
“I know, but I’ve been through this before, remember? You’re going to be well soon.”
“They left me.”
“I know they left, we saw them on the road to Kenilworth. We were lucky, weren’t we?”
I talked to him as if he was a young child. It felt good to do that, somehow; it gave me a tiny feeling of control of the situation.
“I don’t know if I’m going to make it.”
It was hard not to be able to touch him reassuringly, but any touch would just bring him pain. “When was the last time you ate? I’m going to have Wilecok bring you some broth.”
“Not... hungry,” he whispered. “But stay.”
I stayed with him as the faint light dimmed in the room. He didn’t say anything further. I put a fresh compress on his brow and then stepped across the room to a low cot. I collapsed on it and closed my eyes. Just for a moment, I thought, listening to his steady breathing.
I woke when Wilecok shook my shoulder. Sitting up, I asked in alarm, “Is he all right?”
“Still breathing,” Wilecok said. I could detect a tone of amusement in his voice. “Brought you a tankard of ale and a loaf of bread.”
I sat on the cot, Wilecok hunched beside me, and we watched Stephen rest.
“What do you think of his chances?” Wilecok muttered.
“He can probably hear us. I’m not going to answer that,” I said in a stern tone.
Stephen moaned slightly.
“The moaning is a good sign,” I said, tearing the bread with my teeth. “I’ll sleep here tonight, Wilecok. I don’t want to leave him. He’s too feverish to eat, or drink anything but water.”
“There’s a spot near the hearth in the dining hall next door that suits me,” Wilecok said. “This house gives me the creeps.”
“Goodnight, then,” I said to him. He took his time getting up from the cot, yawning.
A clock in the nearby city struck the hour. “Must be nine,” I said pensively.
“Aye, nine o’clock. We made it, didn’t we?”
I looked up at him. “Thank you!”
“Ah, that’s all right.” He seemed embarrassed by my fervent tone. “Glad I could be a friend. Think on what I said, won’t you...”
I shrugged. “A lot will depend on what Stephen wants to do.”
He smiled sadly, looking between me and Stephen’s prone figure. Then he left the room, and I went b
ack to wolfing down the bread he’d brought.
Chapter 16
Light dawned in the room and the distant city bells rang out on the hour. I roused myself, dressed, and went over to check him. He seemed a little better. He could almost open his gummed-up eyes. I checked the pustules to see how flat they were. Flat was bad, I knew that. They were fairly round, but getting to the stage where they were leaking yellow fluid. If they reached the stage where they were dry scabs, he would be out of danger.
“Stephen, how long has it been that you’ve been lying here?” I asked. “About a week?”
He nodded feebly. That meant he had another week of suffering, I thought, before he would be on the mend.
I gave him the compress again. He seemed more peaceful, but perhaps I was imagining it.
“I’m keeping the shutters closed for your comfort,” I told him.
“Pity... pity I can’t really see you.”
His dry lips quirked in a smile.
“I’m going to be here a long time. We’ll see each other soon enough.”
“Did you get my letter?” he asked presently.
“Yes.” It seemed centuries ago, but I didn’t tell him that. “I loved your letter. And I was in a great battle a few days ago.”
“We heard news of the battle starting at Lewes, but not how it ended,” he whispered. “Are you... are you a knight now?”
I took his hand and touched it to the cold steel of my sheathed sword, which hung at my belt.
“I see. You never take it off,” he murmured.
“I put it on when I dress. It comforts me.”
“Hmm,” he mused. Then, “Is everyone alive?”
“At the castle?” I asked, puzzled. “Yes, everyone survived the battle. Couldn’t you see that?”
“I’ve been, well... losing my vision all this year. Seeing the future, I mean. I think it happened after I saw you and Simon in the upstairs room...”
His voice trailed off. A chill went through me.
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said, my voice even. “Don’t tire yourself.”
“I was glad not to see anything more.” His voice was numb. “Then this happened.” He sighed deeply. “But before that, Will, for several years, I was fairly happy.”
I stood by his bed. “Well, that’s good.” My voice wobbled. I felt close to tears. It was actually worse when he sounded like his old self. The contrast between his voice and the way he looked was alarming.
“Sorry you have to see me like this, Will.” He could tell what I was thinking. He always could.
“No matter!” I said brightly. “Does your mouth hurt? If so, that means there are sores in your mouth.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “But I’m not going to open it. To show you.”
“All right, but I’m quite safe.” I did not know why I was so sure of this, but I was.
“I feel a little better. But tell me... I’m going to be horribly disfigured, aren’t I?”
I looked down at him. “No,” I said after a moment. “You saw my mother, didn’t you? At Christmas that one time? She covered her marks with powder. She’s still a beautiful woman. And even if other people don’t see you the way they used to, I will.”
I could hear him chuckle faintly. “I never liked the way people looked at me, anyway. Being a pretty boy at the castle wasn’t easy. It was easier here in Oxford. It wasn’t like you’d think, I didn’t have much trouble keeping them away. You know.”
I nodded, touching his hip gently. “Am I hurting you?”
“No. Keep your hand there. It’s nice.” His body was larger than I remembered, of course, and I marveled at that. His hip bones had once been so narrow.
He told me softly about working with Brother Anselm, and how he had also learned bookbinding and beekeeping. I stayed silent, one hand resting on him.
It sounded like a peaceful life. It sounded like the life he was perhaps supposed to lead.
“If this hadn’t happened, and Brother Anselm hadn’t died, would you have wanted to stay here and not come away with me?”
He was silent a long time. I could hear Wilecok moving around in the hallway below, coming up the stairs.
“I didn’t want to take up holy orders,” he whispered. “Wanted to see you again.”
“Well, you got your wish.”
Wilecok knocked on the door, as if he was afraid to interrupt something. “Brought him some soup,” he called.
It was a murky brown soup, but it smelled decent. I sat by the bed and fed it to Stephen.
“Eventually he’ll be able to eat porridge,” I told Wilecok.
“I can make that. Learned to cook in the army.”
He was watching Stephen with something like awe. “Looks a bit better, dun he? See, Will, I told you.”
I frowned at him. “He can hear everything. Please, let’s talk downstairs.”
“You need to eat,” Stephen told me. “Go have a meal with him after this.”
I nodded. I liked watching him sip from my spoon. It was perverse, perhaps, and I glanced up at Wilecok, but he had a bland smile on his face.
“You’re a good nurse, Will,” he said. “Is the soup salty enough, Master Stephen?”
“It’s very nice,” Stephen said. “You put herbs in, didn’t you. Rosemary, maybe.”
“Aye. Look at you now. Thought you was dead yesterday for a moment. You’ll be up and about in no time.”
Stephen chuckled faintly. “Seeing as I can’t lift myself off the bed, I doubt that’s true. But thanks...”
I rested my hand on his hair. “Stephen, I’m going to go next door for a bit. Are you all right being alone here?”
“Yes, go on. I won’t go anywhere.”
Wilecok and I walked slowly down the stairs. I had been hit by a wave of exhaustion, and he seemed thoughtful about something.
He poured me a bowl of soup from a big pot he had hooked over the fire. I was amazed by what he’d been able to do, but said nothing. I dipped the bread he gave me into the soup and ate in silence. He sat across the table from me.
“Glass of wine?” he said.
I nodded. He poured some red wine into a goblet.
“It’s not bad. They love their wine, those monks.”
“They’re friars,” I murmured.
“Never really knew the difference. They’re all the same to me.”
I glanced at him. “How did you sleep?”
“Eh. All right. A cat came in to keep me company. Chases the rats away, she does. Otherwise, I was a bit cold and stiff. But all right.”
“I’m going to stay in Stephen’s room. He seems much better today, but I don’t think he’s out of the woods. My father also seemed better one day, and then something happened and he was gone two days later.” I swallowed a gulp of wine. “Ah...”
He watched me. “You’re taking on a lot. How will you feel if...” He winced. “Well, if his beauty’s gone. You know.”
I raised my eyebrows at the word. “You found him beautiful?”
He reddened slightly. “Come on, he was a dishy lad, wasn’t he?”
I blushed too. “Look, even if he’s disfigured, I’ll still be so grateful he’s alive.” I took another warming gulp. “What time is it? I shouldn’t be drinking wine before noon...”
A faraway bell tolled the hour. Somehow it was noon already.
“Listen, Wilecok,” I said. “I like having your help, but I don’t want you to feel you have to stay. It’s going to be another three weeks before he’ll be strong enough to leave, you know.”
“Simon wanted me to stay for the duration,” he said. “And I don’t mind. I truly don’t mind.”
“That was kind of Simon.” I winced slightly as I said his name. I was getting drunk off the wine, too fast. “I must stop.” I pushed the goblet away.
“You’re going to need me to ride into Oxford to get provisions,” he said reasonably. “I’ll cook, you take care of Stephen. We can drink together in the evenings. Pay
them bastards back for leaving him by drinking all their vino. Seems fair to me.”
“We can’t possibly get through it all.” I leaned back, sated and happy. “I’m relieved. I’m feeling some hope.”
“You still care for Stephen?” he asked suddenly.
I leaned my head back and looked at the ceiling. I wondered if it would have a mural on it, like churches in Italy were supposed to. It did not.
“That’s impertinent...” But I smiled, and he smiled too.
“You do, don’t you. A lot.”
“Yes.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black cat wander into the room, tail up. She approached Wilecok and he bent down to pet her.
I pulled the goblet towards me and took another gulp of the warming, tangy liquid. “I’m getting a taste for this.”
Wilecok just stroked the cat, who looked up at him through deep green eyes.
I love both of them, I thought. God help me.
The cat jumped into Wilecok’s lap, turning around before it settled down.
“That’s what was missing at Kenilworth...cats! There weren’t any.” I could hear the drunkenness in my voice.
“They’re nice creatures,” Wilecok murmured. “Always preferred them to dogs, myself. I believe Lady Eleanor has a dislike for cats.”
“And she rules the roost.” I took another sip.
“Aye,” he said. “She does. But everything that happens outside the castle, she can’t control that.”
We sat there for a little bit. The faraway bell tolled again. Another hour had passed.
“I’m going back up to him,” I said.
“I’ll make something nice for dinner,” he said. “Come back when you like. I let the horses loose in the field.”
“They don’t have a stables here? All right, I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
I got up slightly unsteadily.
“I’ll find out when market day is in Oxford. I’ll see if I can get strawberries for your invalid.”
He was being kind, too kind. I felt the need to unburden myself to him already, and I knew a month of this was going to be impossible.
But I needed him to stay. I needed his help.
***
One day blurred into the next. Wilecok and I drank and played cards in the evenings; then I would bid him goodnight and return to my cot in the sick room. Nobody bothered us. The friars were clearly planning to be gone for months, though we speculated that eventually one of them might appear at the door to find out what happened to Stephen. I couldn’t remember whether they’d realized that we were going to the priory or not. I didn’t think so, although my concern had been evident, and they’d probably wondered if I had.
A Knight's Tale: Kenilworth Page 16
