Healer

by Linda Windsor

  Besides, Rory had more than once apologized for his father’s part in her family’s massacre. It was only after she’d convinced him that she held no malice toward him, or even old Tarlach, that he’d truly begun to get better.

  “You have your mother’s gift then,” Martin said. “And God’s ear, of course.”

  But dare she go on? Martin’s expression was as telling as the pile of stones at the far end of his garden.

  “Soldiers of fortune are most often lacking in character, my child. Did you stop to think of your safety in taking this stranger in?”

  “Of course,” she replied, as though that were a given. “I have used a concoction daily of barrenwort to tame his beastly nature, just as Ealga taught.”

  The priest’s gaze narrowed. “Still, you should have come to me rather than rely on herbal manipulation.”

  “The pass was closed,” she reminded him. “And it’s not manipulation. Manipulation is witchcraft. I protected myself.”

  “Then how do you know if Rory is a man of integrity or merely incapacitated by your means of protection?”

  Her mentor had a way of getting to the core of things as well. Had she done Rory an injustice … now that she knew him to be a man of honor?

  “Rory has become as uncomfortable as I regarding my ministrations, now that he’s grown stronger,” she explained. “In truth, he keeps more and more to himself. Surely that’s a good sign of character.”

  “Hmm.”

  Brenna scowled at the indistinct reply. “Regardless, I know he’s noble enough to make a good—”

  “Good what?” Alarm sharpened the priest’s question, breaking the implacable facade of confessor.

  “Husband.” There. She’d said it. “And father to my son, if he’s of a mind. I have a plan.”

  The priest’s brow shot up. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am.”

  Her reasoning poured forth like a mountain spring. There was no stopping it. Ealga had told her that Faol would bring her someone, and who was to say it wasn’t the stranger? God knew that Brenna was lonely and that Faol could not live forever. Rory was a good man, although given to a life of wandering like his father before him.

  Yes, she knew she’d have to let him go as she had all the living things she’d rescued. But if she could convince him to marry her and get her with child, then she’d be guaranteed the companionship she so desperately wanted. Nay, needed. Rory could stay or leave as he wished. Her demands were small, and she was certainly capable of caring for a child, even if she had to move to the lowlands in the west. As a healer, she could well support her son.

  “The child will be a boy, Brother. I saw him. A beautiful baby boy with the same mark on his left hip as his father, shaped like a pledging hand. And that is why I came to you,” she finished, nearly breathless.

  Lost at her mention of husband, her mentor had yet to recover his priestly indifference. As she’d rambled on, Brenna had watched incredulity and alarm vie for dominance on the face of a man she knew to love her like a daughter. But now he met her with silence and closed eyes.

  What if he refused her?

  “How did you see the child?” the priest asked after what seemed an unendurable passage of time.

  “In a dream. Eagla said my mother had prophetic dreams.”

  “She was gifted,” Martin admitted with reluctance. “But how do you know it is not your emotions that put such ideas into your head rather than God?”

  “Because I feel no waver of my spirit,” she answered. “I know in my heart that this is right and good.”

  “Feelings and heart are temporal, my child, and often fickle. How does it measure with the eternal Word?”

  The Word. “I believe this is the answer to my prayers for an end to my loneliness. But I will think on it more,” she answered slowly.

  “And pray.”

  “And pray,” she agreed. There was no Scripture in her possession save the Beatitudes, artfully painted on a piece of slate … a gift prepared by Brother Martin himself for her sixteenth birthday. What Scripture she had to call upon was from memory, but the Gospels had been well seated there since early childhood, along with several Old Testament works. Ealga and Martin had seen to that.

  “Are you equally yoked before God?”

  Brenna hesitated. “I … I don’t know for certain.”

  Her friend squeezed her hand. “Promise me you will pray on all we’ve spoken of and act on nothing until I’ve had the chance to speak with this man for myself.”

  Martin rose from the bench, Brenna with him.

  “I was hoping you might come meet him today or tomorrow,” she said. “I do value your opinion, and he seems most depressed—as though sinking into a hole of despair. Nothing I can say seems to improve his humor.”

  A hint of humor tugged at one side of Brother Martin’s mouth. “Brenna, there is no guile in you. Your thoughts are written on your face.”

  Brenna resisted crossing herself, for she hoped her dearest friend could not read all that had crossed her mind in dream and thought.

  “But I will not marry the two of you until I have spoken with him and prayed long over it.”

  “Then you’ll come today?” That would be beyond her hope, though she’d have the wedding later, when the time for conception was best.

  To her astonishment, the priest shook his head. “Sadly, I cannot. Not until after the Equinox feast at Glenarden. My presence at the keep there is requested. I cannot even keep my seclusion this little bit longer.”

  “Has Tarlach found the Lord then?” Hope sprang into Brenna’s heart. If the old chief had come to terms with the feud of the past and present, then there might be hope for a life beyond the limits she had accepted for herself and her future son. Perhaps with her own kin.

  “Nay, child, I fear not. His health and mind fail by the day.”

  Her hope spiraled down like a wounded bird.

  “I am summoned there weekly at the request of Merlin Emrys to educate a young hostage assigned to Glenarden by Arthur’s court,” Martin explained. “A Gowrys prince.”

  “What?” Brenna gasped in disbelief. The two clans had raided each other in season since her family’s slaughter, but this was indeed something new.

  “And the Glenarden’s youngest son is hostage with the Gowrys. It is Merlin’s and Arthur’s way of keeping each side in check after—” Brother Martin stopped, as though his words had struck a dam.

  Or was there something he didn’t want to say? Before Brenna could determine the nature of the pause, the priest continued. “Arthur has lost too many warriors fighting amongst themselves when such men are needed for the summer’s campaign.”

  “Then that is indeed a hopeful thing. If only the Dux or his father before him had intervened sooner.” Although, given all she’d heard of Tarlach’s madness, he’d still have hunted her because of her mother’s prophecy. “But I’ll deem the news as a good sign. Perhaps peace will come to our hills after all.” And it would not depend upon her.

  “In God’s time.” Martin made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Until then, He has given me much to do and very little time in which to accomplish it.”

  “But you will come soon, won’t you?” Brenna asked as she walked with him back to the half-furrowed patch of winter-hardened ground.

  “Two weeks,” he promised. “In the interim, let us both pray for God’s will to be revealed to us … and wait upon the Lord.”

  Brenna prayed the entire journey up into the hills that concealed her cave. But each time she waited in silence for an answer, nothing came beyond the dream. The dream of her lying clad in naught but nature’s splendor in her husband’s arms. The joy of holding their newborn son. Which meant that Rory might not take his leave of her after all. That they might have a real family.

  God, could it be possible?

  Familiar words came to her. With God, all things are possible.

  Spurred on by the revelation, Brenna st
opped waiting for the ever-curious Faol to check out this sound or that scent. Keeping in the cover of the pine that dotted the higher hills as she climbed slowed her enough. There was much she had to discuss with Rory, though in her heart she already knew their destinies were bound.

  The first blue of dusk colored the hillside by the time Brenna reached her cave. Left to his own devices, Faol had wandered off to the west, so she entered the outer chamber alone.

  “Rory, I’m back.” She paused in case he needed a moment’s more privacy. Upon hearing no answer, Brenna entered, expecting to see her patient sleeping on the pallet. But the bed was empty. A glance at the table showed the bannocks she’d made for his breakfast and nun-day meal were gone as well.

  Had Rory left her? Brenna fought her alarm. Nay. He was not strong enough. Or had she underestimated him?

  Chapter Ten

  Perspiration beaded Ronan’s face and caused his shirt to cling to his body. The steep descent, not to mention this eerie pit with its visible hot breath, was hardly the wonder Brenna had described. He felt as though he’d staggered into a dragon’s mouth and down its long throat. The muscles of his legs had cramped as though clenched between unseen teeth. He’d suffered such cramps before, sometimes awaking him from sound sleep, but these were the worst. And now that he’d reached the dragon’s belly, his limbs trembled like a newborn foal’s.

  By all the gods of this heathen place, for the animals and figures etched on the stone passage walls by ancient hands marked it as such, he’d never make it back up to Brenna’s chamber on his own. How this place could be described as invigorating was beyond him. It sapped his strength. Each breath he took smothered him, leaving him lightheaded.

  He had no idea how much time he’d passed focusing on the dome-like chamber that gradually took shape in the dim light of his lamp. Had he stumbled at the bottom instead of sinking against the wall, he might well have plunged into the murky water just a few lengths of an arm from where he sank to rest.

  As his eyesight adjusted more, Ronan made out a ledge hacked out by human hands. There sat several candles, burned down to differing heights. Inscribed over them on the wall was a cross, declaring the site no longer pagan, but blessed for the purposes of God. He struggled up on his knees and, using the flame of the oil lamp he’d brought with him, lit the lot of them before blowing out the lamp to conserve oil for the journey back. Exhausted, he closed his eyes and sank down near the ledge of the pool.

  Would that his assailant had killed him and spared him this slow death. His sword arm was heavier than his weapon. Walking downhill sapped him of strength. But the loss that tormented him the most was that of his manhood.

  This morning he’d awakened to find Brenna asleep in his arms. The sight of such innocence and beauty in sweet repose, the warmth of her curves pressed against him should have lit signal fires across the highlands. Yet nothing beyond the fire in his mind stirred. Nothing. He’d feigned sleep when she stirred and hastily wriggled out of his embrace as though burned by it.

  But how could she know she had so little to fear?

  Jaws clenched, Ronan slid forward, determined to be restored in this marvelous spring or drown trying. He tested the depth and found it shallow enough to sit in, at least as far as his extended foot could detect. The water was pleasantly warm. Though it appeared still, he could feel the slow-moving current flow from the yawning back of the cavern and out through what had to be a fissure in the opposite wall. Ronan’s shirt billowed as he eased in the rest of the way. He should have taken it off, but his thoughts weren’t the clearest.

  This would save Brenna from having to wash it. How he wearied of this helplessness and her having to wait on him—

  As if he’d conjured her in his mind, Ronan heard her voice in the distance. Her panic.

  “Here,” he shouted back. The reverberation in the small domed chamber nearly deafened him. But as it subsided, he thought he made out the sound of her making her way down the passage.

  “I told you”—her disembodied voice traveled ahead of her—“not to come down here. What … if you … had fallen?”

  Ronan smiled, picturing the indignation flashing in her gaze that he dared to disobey her. Not because she wanted to control him, but because she really cared. Of that, he had no doubt. Brenna had nothing to gain by saving his life and nursing him back to health. She said she did so because she was a healer, but it was more than that. Brenna of Gowrys embodied love. A love Ronan hadn’t believed existed.

  “I cannot believe you were so foolish as to come down here alone!” Her face flushed from the rush down the passage, Brenna halted at the sight of him sitting peacefully in the pool.

  “As you can see, I am just fine. Stronger than you thought,” he replied, with only a pang of guilt for not admitting she was right. Taking in her boyish attire piqued his curiosity. “You were gone a long time today. Where would you go that you need to present yourself as a laddie?”

  “It was a fine day for a long walk and … and I needed some time to myself. Time to think … and pray.”

  Ronan lifted one brow. “And what do you pray for, Brenna of the Hallowed Hills?”

  “Your healing.” She tugged off her woolen cap, sending perspiration-damp black hair tumbling in disarray about her shoulders. “’Tis hotter than a baker’s oven in here.” Without a hint of self-consciousness, she pulled her woolen tunic over her head and dropped it beside the cap.

  No silk-bedecked female had ever been so fetching as the one standing before him in plain linen shirt and breeches with deerskin boots laced to the knee. Ronan helped himself to a palm’s dip of water.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she announced, dropping to the ledge, cross-legged.

  Intense blue eyes delved into his, touching a part of him he kept hidden deep within, yet he resisted the urge to look away. “About?”

  “You, who else?” she said with a snap of annoyance. “I can see you healing by the day—”

  “You gave me no choice, milady. The sweetness of your voice drew me back from the Other Side as surely as I sit here.” And it kept him in This World. She’d given him something worth staying for. Although after this morning, he had his doubts.

  Her expression grew puzzled. “But life is a gift, Rory. Too precious to wish away. How could a man like yourself not want to live?”

  “My life has been no gift, Brenna. No man should see the things I’ve seen, or done … some of the things I’ve had to do. It’s the lot of … a soldier of fortune.”

  “I saw some of those things, Rory,” she reminded him. “You must let them go, or you will never be whole, never live the life God has planned for you.”

  “It’s not that simple.” What would she know of the complexities of life? She’d grown up protected from them.

  “But it is that simple … at least on God’s part. It’s us that makes it complicated.”

  And everyone and everything around us.

  “How long have you been down here?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “I only just made it into the water.”

  “Hmm.” She hefted up one leg and began unlacing her boots.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to strip mother naked and jump in with you.” She met his gaze head-on and took in his reaction straight-faced … for as long as she could. Dissolving into laughter, she focused on the laces of her boots again. “Fear not, I only mean to soak my feet. It was a long hike down to the glen and back.”

  Her feet. Heaven help him, the vision that leapt to his mind was not of her feet. If she was half as goddess-like as he imagined, his racing blood would set the pool to bubbling. If he were but half the man he’d once been …

  “Then milady had best not be making promises she has no intention of keeping.”

  “Perhaps milord should avoid pursuing thoughts he has no—” Self-conscious, she glanced away. “My apologies, Rory. I only meant sport.”

  She knew. She knew of his
impotence. Brenna of Gowrys might be a practiced healer, but guile eluded her. It was part of her charm and his curse.

  She hauled off first one boot, then the other. Off came the stockings, revealing slender white calves and ankles in keeping with his imagination. She stopped to toy with her toes, separating and wiping imaginary sand from them.

  By his worthless bones, this unwitting seduction was far more powerful than that of an accomplished temptress.

  Even so, not powerful enough. “Are you going to soak your feet or not?”

  Brenna started at the sharpness in Ronan’s voice. “Clearly the calmative effects of the pool still have much work to do.”

  She rolled her breeches above her knees and with a wriggle that Ronan’s stomach imitated, inched to the edge of the pool next to him. With a calculated look, she slapped her feet into the water, splashing him in the process.

  “Is milord of discontent happy now?”

  Ronan didn’t answer. Instead, he eased his head back against the floor of the cave and closed his eyes. This misery was far worse than the pain and fever.

  Brenna watched Rory as he slept, or feigned sleep to ignore her. He was getting restless, like any animal used to wandering free, and frustrated that he couldn’t do as he pleased just yet. When she saw his cloak and breeches where she’d put them, her initial panic at Rory’s disappearance had turned to confusion, for surely he’d not have left them behind. It was then she realized where he’d gone: to satisfy his curiosity about the warm spring she’d talked about….

  “The water does seem to do my legs well, even if it hasn’t improved my temperament,” he had said after they’d sat in the warm pool for a long while.

  An apology. Likely as much as he could muster. Brenna chuckled. “Mayhaps I should hold your head under then.”

  “No, I mean what I say.” He sounded surprised. “On the way down, my legs rebelled fiercely against me. The muscles nearly bound me over.”

  He should have waited for her. “And now?”

  “They no longer plague me. They feel”—he searched for a word—“restored …” He shook his head, as if that wasn’t it. “Stronger.”