Hemlock and Honey

by Elizabeth Preston

  But the shadow was too strong. She thrashed from side to side, kicking and biting to stay alive. She used her hands to gouge, going for eyes or any part she could reach. Her lungs, searing now and close to bursting, would not hold out for much longer. The smell on the cloth was strong. It was a smell she did not recognise. Her vision was fading now, and she could feel her legs losing strength. With one last almighty effort, she sucked in hard, and then she scratched and struck out at the shadow. She thrashed back and forth, desperate to get free from the shadow’s grip. The smell was bitter and so powerful she was barely able to stand.

  Quickly, everything became a blur. But no, she mustn’t give up. She needed to push past the giddiness and battle the hand that held the cloth. Yet the hand was so large and unyielding, like forged iron.

  The dizziness was bad now, and her head felt thicker than a winter blizzard. She was still clawing at the shadow. She was not prepared to give up—not till the end. But, she was losing her way. Then thankfully, the smell faded, and she sailed up into the sky, leaving her body behind. She gazed down upon herself and saw her form slumped into the grass.

  It was no matter now because she was adrift on a white foamy boat in the sky. Everything now, the huge man/shadow, the cloth, the smell, was all a long way off and still on the ground below. She drifted above it all, watching her own body lie there with eyes closed. Finally, she slipped into a billowing white sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Sybilla dragged her lids open and winced under the double assault of light and pain. She slammed them shut again. There was a pounding going on inside her head—a ruckus louder that a barrel of cats.

  What was wrong with her? The pain was like nothing she’d felt before. Mayhap the devil himself had slithered in between her ears. It was so hard to think or focus on anything other than her throbbing aches.

  Forcing her eyes open again, she breathed through each jab and squinted to control the light. After a while, the pain eased a little, but the dizziness, the strange disorientation she felt . . . That was something else.

  Her gaze darted about the room, from one side to the other, desperately seeking something familiar. Anything at all would do. If the room did not stop spinning and become recognisable soon, she’d bring up her noonday meal.

  In an attempt to calm her head, she abruptly stopped her search and studied her pallet instead. Even that was wrong. How was it that she could not recognise her own bedding? Had she fallen from her horse, bumped her head, and was now ailing from the forgetting sickness people whispered about? Folk with that sickness oft forget everything, including their names. How terrifying.

  Frantic to recognise something, she flickered her gaze back and forth again. Anything? No, there was nothing she recognised or remembered in any way. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. It wasn’t all bad. At least she could remember her name. Sybilla. That had to count for something. It was a start.

  Desperate to right her crazy new world, she decided to keep her eyes closed for a moment longer. Didn’t they use blindfolds to quiet skittish horses? Mayhap the dark would work for her, too.

  Hopefully, if she sat deathly still in the darkness with her eyes locked tight, her head would clear, and all her old memories would come flooding back. She waited with her eyes pinched, praying that when she opened them again, she would remember exactly where she was.

  Sitting still, much too afeared to peek, she concentrated on the smells in the room. Problem was, they were all wrong, too. Since when did Eoin’s castle smell enticing, like freshly roasted rabbit broth? She’d been living in Scrabbly for nigh on four moon cycles, and with each awakening, the stink was the same stale mutton every day. Sometimes, if the wind and rain were blustery enough, and blowing in the right direction, she’d smell the walnut dye from the tapestry above her bed. And, because she’d been born with such a well-developed nose, the stink of the castle privy permeated everything and everywhere she wandered.

  But not now.

  No, she’d ne’er smelt anything like hot food inside her bedchamber before. She knew someone once who suffered a bump to the head, and that poor sot remembered naught from one May Day to the next. Now it seemed as if she, too, was in that same forgetful boat.

  No doubt she was safe and sound inside Scrabbly Castle right now. Mayhap the kindly Jean had sneaked a bowl of pottage into her chamber while she slept, and the broth accounted for the pleasant smell.

  Nay, that couldn’t be it. Eoin was ardent about that sort of pampering. He forbid all manner of caring deeds, even for the ailing. Wasn’t he always saying, “No wench, whether she be low or high born, warrants special treatment from me?”

  Yet the aroma of rabbit broth filled her nostrils as surely as if a brimming bowl of the stuff was nestled on the stool beside her bed. And the air rushed about, lifting her hair as if there was a doorway to the outside cut into the thick castle wall.

  The breeze was unfamiliar, but it was welcome. Definitely no stale air here. Sucking in deeply with eyes still pinched tight and still afeared to face her strange surrounds, she smelt heather, bushy broom, and fresh rain-soaked fields. As hard as she tried, she could not detect even a hint of a midden.

  She needed to be brave now and face her reality. It was time to open her eyes and cope with whatever she saw. But, even with her eyes closed, she felt nauseated, frail, and in pain.

  Someone was pacing about. Her eyes flew open, and she immediately squinted at the light. Someone was there. She heard footfalls. She was sure of it. There, she could just make out an outline, a fuzzy outline lopping around her pallet. She listened to his boots drag against hard dry ground. The sound was heavy and deep, as if the wearer of those boots was as big as a bear and made of stone. That was not the noise Jean’s slipper-feet made as they darted across the rushes on her chamber floor.

  Gritting her teeth, she stared hard into the brightest light. The pain was worse than she thought it would be—much worse with her eyes stretched wide. It was so hard to allow the sun in. The brightness poked at her eyeballs, dribbling tears onto her cheeks.

  She breathed through each jolt until the pain abated a little, and her vision started to clear. Shocked, still not making sense of what she saw, she bolted upright with her back pressed hard against a rough stone wall.

  Arrrgg! Her head near-on exploded, and her shoulder hurt too. Nay, not just her shoulder, that whole side of her body hurt. None of this could really be happening, could it? Where was she? Why couldn’t she remember? Why did she hurt so?

  Then the great monster of a man came back into her view. He was a stranger alright, a big, barbarous one at that. Please let me be trapped in a night terror.

  He was hovering by the light. She could barely hear his footsteps anymore because the pounding inside her head had taken over. She truly wanted to be sick.

  “Get out,” she shouted, or at least tried to shout through the ringing sound in her ears.

  “What are you doing in my chamber?” she asked. “Get out!”

  She was far from sure that this was her chamber, but no matter, he needed to be gone.

  It was so very hard to be loud and menacing with a head that banged and tossed about like an acorn in an empty barrel.

  “Get out,” she repeated, “or I’ll, I’ll report this breach to Eoin.”

  “Nah, lass.”

  The sound of the man’s speech sharpened her anxiety, making her shiver.

  His voice was like a demon’s—deep and gravelly. It echoed, too, like a cave in a thunderstorm. She didn’t want to notice his size and tried very hard not to.

  “I’m nay in your bed chamber, lass,” he said, coming closer, moving almost into focus. “Truth is, you’re in mine.”

  “Go, or I will . . .” Shrill now, she could hear her own panic.

  He raised his heavy Satan-like brows. “Or what
? You’ll do what?”

  Was he mocking her, making fun of her confusion and fear? At least he stayed where he was, not actually touching her, not yet. But he was within grabbing distance of her arm.

  “Move away, move right away, can’t you hear me?”

  He stayed put and didn’t budge at all. He stared though, his huge frightful face tilted sideways as if he was the one feeling all mixed-up.

  “Move away, please.” She had to look down then, needed to avert her gaze from him because what she was about to say was personal and far too intimate a fact to share with a stranger.

  “I am a maiden still.” Then she suddenly noticed what she wore. Why was she sitting in a stranger’s bed in naught more than her shift? She lifted the linens up to her neck. But what sort of protection would a sheet offer if he decided to lunge for her?

  She would not give in lightly. She wouldn’t succumb to his barbarous intentions without one almighty struggle, despite her injuries. It was a hollow threat. She was frail and injured, and he was a man the size of a mountain.

  How her head pounded. She clutched the sides of her skull as if the action of holding her head together would stop it from exploding. She tried to think and to remember if she’d attached a small blade to her leg when she dressed that morn. It may well be still in its sheath under her linen shift.

  Her fingers inched along her upper thigh. Praise the Almighty, there be the blade. But how would she fare using it against a rogue his size? What good would one tiny blade be against his hard, warmongering hide? The man had his own armour of muscle, sinew, and ropey skin.

  Considering the way he looked and grunted, one could almost mistake him for a wild beast. His hide was as thick as a hog’s, and it was likely hard to pierce. Mayhap she could gash his wrists or pierce his eye balls instead. Her gaze wandered back to his cannon-ball arms.

  He reached for a stool and dragged it towards her bed, the scratch of the legs against the hard, dry floor grating her tender nerves. He lowered his mighty body, and she watched with fear and yet, she watched with interest too. Could such a flimsy stool hold such a weight?

  “I’ll nay harm you, lass, at least not if you do my bidding. You must do as I say though, do you understand me? There is no room for mutiny in my plan.”

  His bidding? His plan? Sybilla might have only lived ten and eight summers, but that was long enough to know what men like him wanted. She would nay do his bidding, not without one godly fight first. By all that was holy, he would get mutiny, and then some. He was most likely a savage, a brute, a robber-rogue, and she would not willingly become his whore. Wild men like him lived rough and had rougher appetites.

  Her heart hammered anew. So, this was how rouges like him got their women. She must be brave. This was no time to be feeble. She would be the ferocious wolf her father oft claimed her to be.

  The man leaned in and studied her face. “You are in pain. I see the hurt in your eyes. Your brow is damp with sweat.”

  She met his large black eyes without blinking. She would not look away. Let him see that she would not be taken easily. She would ruin his fun.

  “I bandaged your shoulder. I’ve done it right, I think. The wound should heal, in time. Let’s hope so anyway.”

  She took her eyes off him for a split second, just long enough to peek at her shoulder. He’d used strips of linen to bind her from front to back, right across her shoulder and upper arm.

  She tried to straighten her fingers, but she stopped, sucking in air, waiting for the room to stop spinning. Her shoulder ached, and her hand was numb. She ran her right fingertips along her injured arm, all the way up until she reached her shoulder. There was a wad of bandaging on the back of her shoulder blade too. Then, lowering her gaze to the bed she lay on, she saw blood.

  Her blood. It must be hers. But there was so much of it. If she’d spilt this much, how did she have enough left inside to be breathing still?

  Her eyes flicked back to his face. She cleared her throat, and with fury chilling her words, said, “What have you done to me?”

  He made a tutting noise with his tongue.

  “It’s gone then, has it? Ye have no memory of the mishap?” He shrugged his almighty shoulders, as if her memory was neither here nor there. “Tis best that way, I s’pose.”

  She began to tremble. “Mishap?” What did he mean by mishap? Had he drugged and attacked her? She called herself a maiden, but possibly she was not, not any more. How convenient for him that her mind refused to work.

  “I remember stopping to water my horse and after that, I remember nothing, not till I woke up here.”

  He rubbed his leathery hands over his chin, then again through his wild hair. “Tis a shame you’re so poorly. Tis a mystery to me how this capture went so awry.”

  “They normally go more smoothly for you, do they?”

  He shrugged again.

  She’d take that gesture to mean yes.

  Sybilla’s gaze kept travelling back to his arms, so muscular and oversized. He had a scar that ran all the way from his upper arm, down to his wrist. Whoever had given him that had not been playing about. He had a second life-threatening mark too, one that stretched around his neck in a semi-circle. By rights, that cut should have bled him out like a pig.

  This man was nothing like Eoin. Nothing about him reminded her of her betrothed. Her soon to be husband had fair hair and pasty, almost see-through skin. Eoin was someone who’d be well advised to stay away from the sun, or even daylight. Eoin did not have a barbarian’s body either. Eoin’s eyes were watery, whereas this man’s fiery eyes were almost too intense to look at.

  He stared back at her, for longer than was polite or even acceptable. He seemed unbothered by the fact that she was in his bed, in her under-things, and that she was a maiden still. Hopefully.

  Sybilla pulled the bed linens even higher, right up to her mouth. If he had a shred of decency, he’d stop staring at her that way. The hunger that hovered about his face was most disconcerting. No one stared directly at a maiden lying unclothed in her bed. Actually, she had a fair idea that this was his pallet. His bed, but that only made things worse.

  Clearly, by all appearances, taking into consideration his scars, his fearful chest, his wild unkempt hair, her injuries and the rogue’s cave he lived in, he was some sort of desperado. Savage to the core. There could be no other explanation.

  So, all things considered, why was she expecting him to act in a civilised manner? No wonder he did not turn away whilst she sat before him almost naked.

  Best set the rules right now, or at least try to. Show him how things were going to be between them, from this moment onward. He’d said he wouldn’t hurt her, and she prayed he was a man of his word. But then, hadn’t he hurt her already? And what did ‘provided that you do everything I say’ involve?

  If she trusted him, or at least pretended to, then mayhap that trust would be enough to keep her safe for a while. Didn’t Mother always say, “The way to get a lot is to expect even more?” If she expected him to act like an honourable man, then mayhap he’d fall into the trap and act honourably. It was worth a shot.

  She would play along and pretend he was trustworthy, despite the glaring evidence that he’d harmed her already. In all likelihood, she was his prisoner and in the direst situation of her life. She would pretend to believe whatever he said. She would play along with all his falsehoods and thus keep him appeased for as long as it took her to escape.

  He busied himself with the fire, and while he did, she scrutinised him more closely. She must learn all she could about her captor because her safety may well depend on the knowledge.

  “Ahem,” she said, announcing that she was ready to speak again.

  He turned.

  “I’d like to know how I got here.” She couldn’t meet his eye, fearing he’d
tell her the truth, and she so wanted to hear a safe, sanitised version of events.

  “I carried you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were unable to walk.”

  She wiped the sweat from her palms and tried again. “I’m asking you about my accident. What happened to me?”

  “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.”

  What! Of course, she minded. What sort of an answer was that?

  “Are you suggesting that you’d rather not admit to what you did?” she asked.

  Silence.

  “Mayhap you don’t know what happened to me?” She was giving him an option here—a way out, a falsehood that she would dearly love to believe in.

  “Aye, I know right enough what happened to you.”

  She sighed, thoroughly exasperated. That simple action sent bolts of pain from her shoulder to her head. Could she still hope against hope that he was innocent, and he wasn’t the one who caused her injuries? That he was her rescuer?

  She tried again, still not meeting his eye. “So, you are saying you happened upon me lying in the grass? You were out strolling, too, and you fell upon me? Is that your story?”

  It sounded plausible enough. Actually no, it was downright ridiculous. But it was a version she’d dearly love to believe in.

  Most likely she’d been captured for ransom. This land was full of men who stole people for coin or jewellery or the like. Whoresons, Eoin called them.

  “So, where were we?” she asked, speaking to her captor’s back. “You went out for a stroll by the loch and found me all bloodied and mangled and blacked out in the grass? Is that what happened?”

  He turned and raised one eyebrow. “Aye, sort o’.”

  She took a few more calming breaths and momentarily shut her eyes. Anything longer would have been downright dangerous.