Healer

by Linda Windsor

  Ronan followed the graceful sway of Brenna’s hips as she fetched a bowl from the table near the hearth. That was it? Her only concern was for his pain? For his soul? This was harder to accept than a woman who shape-changed into a wolf.

  “I hope I never cursed you, lassie.”

  “Not once.” Brenna picked up a round of flat bread from the table and tore off a piece, which she tossed to the wolf. It caught it with a snap of sharp teeth and swallowed it in one hungry gulp. “Although you’ve sworn heartily at Faol, the very one who saved ye.”

  She broke up more of the loaf into the bowl and filled it with hot broth from a pot over the fire.

  Faol. Ronan translated the old tongue, not exactly surprised. “Wolf? So Faol is your other form?”

  “Aye, to be sure he is, and I in two forms at once. Have you ever seen such magic?” Brenna snickered outright, making Ronan feel the bigger fool.

  “Herth’s fire, woman, the fever may have addled my brain, but I seem to recall awakening to the lapping tongue of a cold and wet-nosed hairy creature resembling a wolf.”

  She laughed, goading him all the more. “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  As if floating down to the rug by the pallet, Brenna sank to her knees and put a cup of steaming broth next to her on the floor. Reaching behind him, she struggled dutifully to raise his head, so that he’d not choke.

  Annoyed at the pleasure his confusion had given her, Ronan tried to raise it on his own but found it too heavy. Alarmed at his weakness, he tried moving his fingers and toes. To his relief, they worked, but the effort forced perspiration out all over his body.

  “You mustn’t strain yourself, Rory, nor become hysterical.”

  “I’m not hysterical!” Ronan ground out in frustration as she gathered his face to her shoulder in order to build up his pillows. She smelled like the fresh blossoms of a summer garden, yet he knew it to be the dead of winter. At least, he thought he did.

  “How—” His beard-roughened cheek touched the flesh of a milk white shoulder, innocently bared during her ministration by her oversized shift. “How long have I been here?”

  “Weeks,” she grunted in an effort to ease him down without dropping him. “Even I’ve been hard pressed to keep full track of time. The fever has taken you on both sides of the veil between the here and after. At times I feared you’d not make your way back. I’ve left your side very little.”

  She took up the bowl. “Now open your mouth. Mayhaps I shan’t have to bathe you after each feeding, now that you’re awake enough to eat and regain your strength. You’ve been a dribbler.”

  Feeling foolish and helpless as a dribbling babe soured Ronan’s humor all the more. “My apolog—” His sarcastic reply was arrested as she blew on the contents of the spoon to cool it for him, her lips pursed in such a manner as to do the opposite to his blood. His wounds put him at death’s door, yet her simplest gesture injected him with an awareness he’d not known since the callow days of his manhood.

  “I’ve added bread to your meal, now that you’re awake, but we’ll start with it soaked in broth.”

  Holding a cloth under his chin, she leaned forward and slipped the spoon between his lips. It was tasty enough in a plain way, not highly seasoned with spices from the Orient like the fare from Glenarden’s kitchen.

  “’Tis sweetened with honey to cover the taste of the herbs I’ve used to keep the gangrene at bay and fortify the blood,” she informed him, following his wary glance at the dried herbs overhead.

  Ronan grunted in response. Her mother had been reputed to be a healer with an uncanny knowledge of nature magic—the healing powers of herbs and plants the hills afforded. Joanna of Gowrys learned nature’s secrets from the abbey at Glaston where they’d been taught since the first Christians arrived after the death of Christ. With those same secrets, she’d healed Tarlach’s wounds and, according to Aeda, saved his mother and Ronan during a difficult childbirth.

  “You said you’d tell me how I came to be here, if I told you my name,” he reminded her. “There are pieces missing that I do not recall.”

  The tale was as incredible as she. Hidden among the rocks above the crannog, Brenna had witnessed the cowardly attack from the unknown assailant. As she spoke, Ronan’s buried memories came to the fore with clarity. The white wolf she said she’d raised from a pup streaked once more across Ronan’s pain-blurred vision of his would-be murderer approaching, sword raised for a blow that did not come.

  “Faol took a strange liking to you, for reasons I cannot fathom. He has watched you as much as I, between his jaunts beyond the cave.”

  “Friendly fellow, eh?” Ronan couldn’t help the edge in his voice, for he allowed not even his favorite hounds to lick him on the face.

  “The fact is, he isn’t usually. At least not to strangers.” Brenna paused in thought, spoon in the bowl. “And I did have to push him away to keep him from licking your wounds.”

  Aha! His memory had not played him false. “Are you certain he wasn’t after the blood?”

  Brenna bristled at his skepticism. “He saved your life, sir. He drove the horse thief away and then laid beside you in the blizzard to keep you warm with his body until I could reach you.”

  His horse! Ronan closed his eyes a moment in frustration. So that’s what the man was after. At first, Ronan thought his assailant might be a Gowrys, but his clothing was indistinct and of better quality than the highland clan could afford.

  “At risk of his own life, I might add, for when the O’Byrnes regathered at the lake, they’d have surely tried to kill him, had they come upon you in the thicket. But look as they might, the snow made you impossible to see.”

  So the clan had looked for him. Ronan took a spoonful of the broth-soaked bread. And his attacker was naught but a common thief. Had he been of the rival clan, he’d surely not have attempted his final blow without hurling the name Gowrys in Ronan’s face.

  As sure as his shoulder ached, Ronan would hunt the thief down when he was recovered. A horse like Ballach was easily traced.

  “So how’d you manage to get me here?” he asked when the bowl was nearly emptied. He hadn’t realized that he was even hungry.

  “Barely, and there’s the truth. I had to drag you upon your cloak.”

  “Such slender and graceful limbs must be stronger than I’d have wagered.”

  “Strong enough, no more,” she replied without pretension. She rose, taking the empty bowl with her. It was a smooth, flowing motion, utterly effortless. “This is the first entire bowl you’ve taken.” She rewarded him with a smile that infected his own lips, as though her pleasure was his as well. “You’ll be moving about on your own strength soon, if you continue to take nourishment like this.”

  Ronan wondered if that were really possible. He’d done nothing but open his mouth and swallow, yet his body was clammy with the effort. He tried to watch Brenna as she made quick work of cleaning up the table where she’d evidently eaten earlier, before he awoke. But moments after she poured some steaming water into a basin, Ronan drifted off into sleep.

  Later, when he opened his eyes again, the fire was renewed with extra logs for the night, and the primitive lamp on the table had been blown out. A stirring next to him drew Ronan’s attention to where Brenna approached his pallet. On meeting his gaze, she hesitated for an awkward moment before lying on it. Heavy as his eyelids were, Ronan could not close them now, not with this living, breathing woman curling up beside him, her back to him beneath the covers. The rough linen of her shift was all that separated his naked flesh from her own. That, and the small distance between them.

  So she had slept with him, innocently of course. That had not been a dream. And she had held his head to her shoulder, all the while singing away his fiendish dreams, without any thought but to soothe his troubled mind. It was her heartbeat that had calmed his—not that of an imaginary angel, but of a real one. Except that then he’d been in a netherworld, where reality and imagination blended without distin
ction and sleep dominated all.

  Now he was very much alert, very much aware that the most gentle, enigmatic woman he’d ever met shared his bed. Even now the warmth of her body beckoned him closer. Ronan turned abruptly, his back to temptation. Herth’s fire, he’d not sleep this night.

  “Good night, Rory. Sleep well.” Her weary sigh stroked his senses. Absurdly, he wondered how his real name would sound on such inviting lips. For the first time in his life, Ronan glimpsed an inkling of the mad obsession his father suffered. The recognition struck panic in his chest.

  Was he bewitched? Reason reared to counter the notion, but oddly enough, both it and his alarm were smothered by the slumber he vowed would never come.

  Ronan awoke with a start, slapping instinctively at the furred creature licking his face. As punishment for his hasty movement, his wounds screamed foul until he saw the pain flashing like lightning across his eyelids. Swearing himself into complete wakefulness, he tried to ease the burning throb with his good arm but froze instantly at the sight of snarling canine teeth bared at him.

  From behind him, the maid Brenna’s sharp admonishment backed the animal away. “Faol, shame on you!” With a rustle of covers, she crawled off the end of the pallet, shift askew, and rose to her feet. “What fickleness is this, that ye’d save the man one day and eat him the next?”

  She grabbed the fierce-eyed creature by the ears and shook its head roughly. “Shame on you, pup!” Then her voice lightened to that of a mother’s teasing her child. “Been off on a gallivant, have you?” she asked, picking pine needles from his fur.

  As if to apologize, the wolf reared up on its hind legs and placed its paws on the girl’s shoulders. Ronan wrinkled his nose as it licked her about the face and neck, tail wagging happily. Had Brenna ever been kissed? By a man, that is.

  “Dancin’ will not earn you forgiveness, you ragged ball o’fur!” Brenna laughed, buckling to her knees under the large animal’s weight. “’Tis a thrashing you deserve for growling at poor Rory so.”

  Not very likely, he observed as maid and wolf rolled on the rug before the hearth with giggles and growls. Until Brenna found Faol’s weakness and started rubbing his belly. With a pitiful wail of surrender, the canine fell over on his back, one hind leg jerking in ticklish ecstasy.

  “Look at this harmless little pup, Rory.”

  “If any creature’s to put a tongue to my face, better a woman, not a blasted wolf!” Ronan snorted in indignation.

  Chuckling, Brenna climbed to her feet and tossed more wood on the fire. “Ye provoked him, didn’t ye?”

  “What was I to do, waking nose-to-nose with a wild wolf?” Ronan declared. “Aye, I struck him away and, s’help me, am suffering the worse for it without your reproach.”

  Instead of showing offense, the girl studied him with curiosity. “You are a peculiar sort, Rory of the Road.”

  “And you’re not, Brenna of the Hallowed Hills, who lives in a cave with a …” Ronan’s voice trailed off as Faol lifted his head from the rug to stare at him. “Wolf.”

  “He senses your hostility even now.”

  Ronan lay back against his pillow and dislodged his good arm. It was as numb from his having slept upon it as his other was anguished. What else was to befall him? He flexed his fingers, glad to see they responded.

  “Are you always so ill-tempered, Rory?”

  “Only since I was ambushed by a murderous horse thief and awakened near dead in a cave tended by a madwoman and her pet wolf.”

  Instantly Ronan regretted his outburst, not because the wolf had risen and placed itself between him and the girl, but because of Brenna’s stricken expression.

  Her eyes narrowed. “’Tis my madness that’s kept you alive, sir! Few men survive so many days of fever.”

  “I meant no discourtesy, Lady Brenna.”

  Her wounded look faded. “Well … at least I’m a mad lady now.” She rolled the word off her tongue. “Lady Brenna. It has a pleasant ring to it.”

  Frustration riddled Ronan’s voice. “My limbs outweigh my strength, I fear, and it’s that which settles poorly with me, not you … or the wolf.”

  With every ounce of will Ronan possessed, he reached his hand out, palm upward toward the animal. Not only did he not trust it, but the effort was supreme in its toll upon his body. Unable to keep the limb suspended, he let it lay on the rug by the pallet until the wolf warily moved closer and sniffed at his fingers. “Apologies to you as well, Faol.”

  “It appears they are accepted, sir … by us both,” Brenna added, when the animal began to tentatively lick at his hand.

  The last Ronan remembered, Faol settled down an arm’s length from the pallet and placed his furry chin on Ronan’s outstretched palm. Had the wolf decided to devour him, starting there at his fingers, Ronan still could not have resisted the fatigue claiming him.

  Chapter Eight

  Under the impatient gaze of Faol, Brenna stripped the skin from a rabbit she’d trapped. The fur, along with others she’d dried during the Long Dark, would help replenish her supplies at the May Fair two months hence.

  “Don’t worry. The scraps are yours,” she told her companion. And the fresh meat and barley would be a welcome change to Rory’s diet. By the way he’d begun to screw up his face at the herbal broths that had brought him through the worst of his infirmity, one might think she was trying to poison him, rather than save him.

  With a glance toward the pallet where he slept, Brenna set about cutting up the beastie and combined it with water and barley in a pot. For seasoning, she added salt and crushed rosemary, which she took from one of the bags that she’d sewn together over the winter’s course. There was a pile of bags, each one fat with ground or powdered herbs that had dried overhead in the heat from the hearth. By May, she should have sufficient enough to take to the May Fair, where, dressed as a laddie, she’d exchange them to replenish her stores.

  Mayhaps she’d buy a bolt of cloth at the fair to make herself a new dress, which she needed far more than a cloak. The woolen gunna she now wore over her shift was worn through at the sleeves, the elbows, and the hem, in spite of her many attempts to mend them. What clothing she had was cut down from Mathair Ealga’s wardrobe. And when no longer fit for wear, she made the rags into bags for her herbs.

  There was but one exception—a dress so dear she’d never once worn it. In anticipation of Tarlach’s attack, her mother had packed the dress in a small chest along with some ribbons and a silver comb and had left the keepsakes for her baby daughter in the stone passage of their escape route. Sometimes Brenna shook out her mother’s wedding dress, aired it, and carefully replaced it in the chest to await her own wedding day.

  Not that she could foresee such an occasion.

  Your will, Lord.

  If only giving her loneliness to God would take it away. Instead it crept back again and again. She wiped her hands on a towel, sinking into thought. Thought that bade her turn and consider her patient.

  To her surprise, Rory was no longer asleep but sitting upright on the pallet watching her intently. Although surely he had no clue what fancy had crossed her mind….

  “Good morning, Brenna.” He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. “How long have you been afoot?”

  Rory had improved by the day since the fever left. He ate without her aid and saw to nature’s call on his own, though the effort wasted his energy quickly. But as he improved, an uneasy awareness of him as a man, rather than a patient, had begun to develop. Perhaps it was the way he watched her. Sometimes that russet-shaded gaze upon her reeled her senses as though she’d been caressed. And robbed her of wit.

  “Um … ”

  It really wasn’t that difficult a question.

  “Since before daybreak,” she finally managed. Feeling more the fool, she pointed to the pot over the fire. “I trapped a rabbit for supper.”

  Thanks be for the herb that still protected her from a man’s baser nature, for the way he warmed her with his eye
s and smiles had her brain spinning widdershins. Yet even with her mind circling counter to the sun, she never forgot to slip the herb into his porridge or tea.

  “Finally, fresh meat.”

  Sarcasm, after all her work?

  “I have not only the finest healer in the land, but a huntress as well,” he added hastily. Within the reddish brown thicket of his beard, a smile appeared.

  Brenna’s irritation deflated under its spell. “I should change your bandages and give you a bath, lest you become overripe to the nose,” she thought aloud.

  Instead of answering, Rory tossed back the covers, revealing the linen wrap he’d taken to wearing knotted about his waist for modesty’s sake. It confounded Brenna that the sight of him, the thought of ministering to him, made her blush even more than the first time she’d tended him. True, he’d taken over his more intimate hygiene, but when she rubbed in the liniments designed to keep his muscles from withering with disuse, the ridges of sinew beneath her fingers filled her mind with all manner of dangerous fancy.

  “You finish your breakfast while I get the water.”

  “No, not this time.”

  Brenna froze, the bucket dangling in her hand. “What?”

  With a determined expression, her patient took a deep breath and walked to the table. “I think I am capable of walking to that healing spring you’ve told me about,” he said upon reaching it. “You’ve done more than enough already, milady. I owe you much.”

  Milady. It sounded like a caress, the way he said it. Filled with gratitude and perhaps something more. It was a brave and charming front he presented, but as he sank onto the crude bench, his knees nearly buckled.

  Brenna rushed to ease his descent. “Just because you can rise and walk to the table doesn’t mean you can make the trek down to the pool,” she chided him. “When you’re stronger, I’ll help you there, but for now, we’ll make do with hand bathing and the oil rubs.”