Healer

by Linda Windsor

  “Christ the King dwelt among his disciples, not above them,” she reminded him when he expressed second thoughts regarding his right as lord of the keep. “Besides, I am ill at ease in such luxury, and it means much to Lady Rhianon. The smaller room will do us just fine.”

  Though it had no hearth like her cave to glow warmly in the night, it was not in the updraft of the main floor’s fires like its elegant but smokier counterpart. Its beams hung with Brenna’s fragrant herbs while her scant belongings—Ealga’s old cabinet from the cave and the bed box—served as ample furnishing. Bless them, Brother Martin and his companions had moved them for her the week before the Pascal celebration.

  With a yawn, Brenna reached for Ronan but found his side of the bed empty. Her eyes opened wider. What time was it? A thin line of light reached in from under the door, enough for Brenna to find her old shift and tunic and slip them on. Just as she was about to braid her hair, a miserable wail came through the wattle and daub wall separating the two anterooms.

  It wasn’t the first such complaint Brenna had heard from Tarlach’s room. His cries awakened her several times during the night. According to Rhianon, the chieftain reached fast for the gateway to the Other Side. Yet, healer that she was, Brenna had been forbidden to see him for fear of speeding him on his way all the more quickly. She knew that she could ease the man’s passage, but Ronan would not budge on his decision.

  “I’ll not have anyone saying you are responsible for my father’s death. Let Keena and Dara do their work.”

  Keena. Brenna shuddered as she made hurried work of her braid. It went against her nature to dislike someone, but there was something about Rhianon’s maidservant that drove dread through Brenna’s chest like a spear. Though she’d only been taught about pure evil, surely Keena’s presence was what it felt like.

  Brenna found Vychan, Glenarden’s steward, seated at the plank table in the hall. He was the picture of desolation. At the end, Caden slept on folded arms, snoring softly.

  “Your lord is worse?” she asked.

  “Aye, milady. I fear the end is near. He is spent from this stomach misery that has beset him. The women despair of keeping clean linens on the bed. The stench is unbearable.”

  “Who is with him?”

  “Your husband … and the women.”

  Brenna, frustrated, studied the closed door. “It isn’t right that I, a trained healer of Avalon, cannot go to his aid.”

  The door opened, and Dara emerged, looking weary.

  “Dara, have you given him elderberry?” Its juice was soothing to the stomach.

  “Aye, like I told you last night … thrice, it was.”

  “And the slippery elm?” It stopped loose stools.

  Dara shot her an annoyed look and held up three fingers.

  “Watch yourself, woman,” Vychan reprimanded. “You forget your place.”

  Brenna put her hand on Vychan’s. “She’s been up most of the night doing what you could not and what I was not allowed to do.”

  Dara’s scowl disintegrated. “I am sorry, milady. It’s just that I canna understand why nothin’ helps. His lordship is a strong man and suddenly—”

  “She appears?” Caden lifted his head suddenly and leveled a red-eyed accusation at Brenna.

  Her husband’s brother was hard for Brenna to read. There was no consistency to his personality. Emotion clouded his vision when she assured Caden that she understood why he’d killed Faol. That she forgave him. Yet, at other times, he seemed totally without tenderness. Either wooden … or afire with anger.

  “Milady, I dinna know you were up and about,” a maidservant exclaimed upon entering the hall and seeing Brenna. “I’ll fetch your tea and fresh-baked scones.”

  The girl was gone before Brenna could stop her. Brenna loved going out to the kitchen, a separate building next to the tower with far more cooking capability than the fire pit that had served the original builders of the keep. She and the cooks had talked for hours about herbs and seasonings.

  “Milady, forgive me.” Vychan stiffly rose to his feet. “It seems Dara is not the only one who has forgotten her station. I should have seen to your—”

  “You should rest, Vychan. You, too, Dara,” Brenna added as her new friend sought to sit by the fire pit in the center of the hall to ward off the early morning chill.

  Around her and the few still, sleeping figures of children, servants set up benches that had been stored against the wall during the night to make room for the keep’s inhabitants to bed down. Soon the little ones would be awakened, and the hall would be filled as morning chores were completed.

  “When it’s done, milady,” Dara replied. “When it’s done.”

  At that moment, Lady Rhianon emerged from the stone stairwell looking fresh as a wild rose. Keena followed like a frostbitten counterpart.

  “Good day, Rhianon,” Brenna called out. “And to you, Keena.”

  Rhianon gave Brenna a semblance of a smile. “I hear the old man still hangs on to life,” she replied, plopping down on the bench next to her husband and rubbing his back. “Would that God would put him out of his misery.”

  Keena never answered Brenna at all but headed out of the keep.

  “Perhaps God is not through with Tarlach,” Brenna suggested. From what little she’d seen and heard, Tarlach’s was a tortured soul. Tortured souls fought death and the demons that were said to wait for the unsaved dying’s last breath.

  Rhianon gave her a sharp look. “Then you have a most cruel god, Lady Brenna. Vychan,” she said to the steward, “I’ll have my tea and breads now.”

  The steward bowed stiffly. “I’ll see to it.”

  “My God loves us even when we are not so lovable, Rhianon,” Brenna replied sweetly.

  She’d heard that Rhianon sought the approval of many gods, including the One God. At some point, perhaps Brenna might help her to see that her gods were no more than the One God’s creations. That His was the life breathed into them. In time.

  For now, Tarlach was Brenna’s mixed bag of concern. Part of her feared the old man, while the healer longed to ease his misery.

  “I believe God wants Tarlach to have His peace, that he might not fear death.” Just as He wanted her to have the peace to help him, if they would but allow it.

  Caden snorted, coming to life again. “Why should Father have peace when he’s afforded none to anyone else in all his years?”

  Brenna could almost taste the man’s bitterness … and the deep wounds that spawned it. ’Twas enough to make her ill. Never had she been exposed to such hostility and anguish in one place, not even at the hospital on the Sacred Isle. “Yet God loves him, even with his faults.”

  Caden and Rhianon exchanged rolled gazes of skepticism.

  Just as I am trying to do with you, Brenna finished in silence. Father God, help me. I am only one healer. I cannot do this alone. Show me what to say, what to—

  The door to Tarlach’s room opened abruptly, and Ronan stepped out. He was pale. He sought Brenna with eyes circled with weariness and dull with resignation.

  “Is he gone?” Caden asked, his bear of a voice no more than a whisper.

  Ronan shook his head, without taking his eyes away from Brenna. “He wants to see your mother. He’s begging”—Ronan’s voice caught—“like a whimpering child to see her.”

  “He must think you are Joanna,” Rhianon suggested. “It would make sense, his seeing you after all these years.”

  “She is her mother’s image,” Ronan agreed.

  Nodding, Brenna rose from the table. This was her path—who she was meant to be. God’s reassurance spread through her, warm as the cup of tea that the girl brought in from the kitchen along with a plate of scones.

  “Give those to Lady Rhianon, please …” Brenna gave the girl a plaintive look, for she’d forgotten the servant’s name. There were so many to learn.

  “Mab, milady,” the girl replied.

  “Thank you, Mab.”

  Ronan stopp
ed Brenna short of the door. “Are you sure you want to go in there?”

  Would that the same reassurance flowed through her husband.

  “’Tis what I’ve asked to do for the last few days, Beloved. What God has called me to do. Your father needs me … or at least my mother.” And Brenna could see for herself the poor man’s state.

  “Then let me go in first and be sure he’s fit to be seen,” Dara announced from the hearth and charged for the bedchamber.

  “Aye,” Ronan said, “and the rest of you come as well. I’ll not have you claiming she did a thing to him but try to comfort a dying man.”

  Rhianon wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather not. I’ve no stomach for—”

  “You can stand at the door, milady … for your husband’s sake,” Ronan added, “if for none other.”

  It was a sickroom and smelled as such. Brenna forced herself to breathe through her mouth as Ealga had taught her and approached the bed to help Dara. Tarlach lay on his side, curled away from the door on a scant mattress of straw. Eyes clenched so that his thick brows nearly touched his cheeks, he grasped his abdomen as though impaled there.

  This whimpering, shriveled soul was the fierce savage who’d slaughtered her father and driven Joanna of Gowrys to take her own life?

  “Husharoo,” she sang, gently reaching out to stroke the hair away from his face. “Is the pain in your head or your belly, precious one?”

  Tarlach lurched, trying to throw himself on his back. “Where are you, lassie?”

  “Here. Let me help you turn.” Brenna worked her arm beneath Tarlach’s afflicted shoulder and lifted him. Beside her Ronan moved in to help, but Brenna shook her head. She’d moved Ronan more than once like this. It took a moment for Tarlach’s bent form to straighten. “You mustn’t lie in the same position for so long.”

  “That’s what you always say,” Tarlach grunted.

  Brenna’s heart smiled. So her mother had given him the same advice.

  Tarlach jerked his hand at Ronan. “Fetch a light, laddie. Can’t see a cursed thing in here.”

  The light drove home just how sick Tarlach was. His complexion was cold and wet, with death’s pallor and sweat. Drool dripped from the slack side of his mouth and down his oxbow mustache.

  “I … it is you.” His breath heaved out the words, sour with sickness … and something else that set Brenna’s senses on alert. “I have prayed for this day and here”—he seized another lungful of air—“you are.” His eyelids fluttered and head trembled as he tried to lift it from the pillows. “Jo … anna.”

  Garlic. Ever so faint, but unmistakably garlic.

  “How long has he been sick to his stomach and loose at the bowels?” Brenna picked a cup up from the bedside table and sniffed it. It smelled of cold tea laced with herbs to heal the misery of the abdomen.

  “Only since you arrived, milady,” Dara informed her. “Just a bit at first, but it’s gotten worse, little by little.”

  The contents had been nothing she wouldn’t have prepared herself, garlic included. Yet, when she touched a damp remnant lying in the bottom and put it to her tongue, her jaws tingled with warning.

  “I must speak with you, Joanna. I must,” Tarlach moaned, his face plowed deep with anguish. He motioned her closer.

  Brenna put the cup down, leaning in. Garlic in food often hid more sinister tastes … like sandarach. But surely that was absurd. Use of the arsenic stone required sophisticated knowledge. “I’m here, milord.”

  Tarlach tried to touch her face, but his good arm trembled with weakness and fell to the bed. Brenna lifted it to her cheek.

  “Joanna.” The name was breathed in worship. “Soft as a ripe peach. I canna believe my eyes, but you feel real to me.”

  “I am real, milord.” She folded his gnarled hand in her own, taking note of his discolored nails. How could this be?

  “I am dying, Joanna, but I must beg your forgiveness. I canna leave this world without it.” Tarlach tried to squeeze her hand. A faint attempt.

  “The old man’s as good as gone,” Caden grumbled somewhere behind her. “At least his mind has.”

  “Then permit what’s left of it to gather what peace he can,” Ronan warned. “God knows he’s suffered with his guilt too long. We all have.”

  “Say you forgive me.” A sob strangled in Tarlach’s throat. “Llas was my friend. You were my heart.” Tarlach’s wide shoulders heaved with the emotion bursting free, emotion that had been locked inside for twenty years.

  Brenna held his head between her palms to ease the pressure pounding there. Tarlach wasn’t fevered, but oh the torment he felt, present and past. The reassuring light within that she carried into the room staggered at the sinister onslaught of rage. The swing of a blade. Blood. Horror.

  “Father God!” she gasped, reeling at the vision of a man’s head cleaved from his shoulders, his own blade still in midslash, as though his body carried on its last command. And steps, narrow and ascending … she climbed them, the head held in front of her gaze. Tarlach’s gaze. A feeling of raw vengeance assailed her, poisoning whatever it touched. But just as her heart would burst from the beating, a pair of hands clamped on her shoulders, drawing her out of the living nightmare and once more into the light.

  “Brenna,” Ronan whispered.

  And the hatred disappeared, destroyed by a surge of something stronger yet. Love. The press of her husband’s body against her back reminded her of all that was warm and wonderful in the present. And of all that would be. It was for that she reached with her flagging soul.

  Forgiveness. It was the only balm that would work. Even as the answer came to her, Brenna sensed that the dark spirits, clinging with menacing claws to this broken man-child, were digging in even deeper.

  Tarlach gasped, arching against the bed, as though the demons had seized his last breath.

  “No!” Brenna grabbed him by the shoulders, drawing him to her, shouting into his ear. “In the name of Jesus, you are forgiven, Tarlach. Nothing can separate you from God’s love or mine. Call His name,” she pleaded. “Call Jesus!”

  “In the name of the Father …” Dara prayed close by.

  Tarlach’s face screwed up with a terror worse than Brenna had seen while holding him. He saw them. The demons. She clung to him tightly.

  “Pray!” she commanded to any who had the ears to hear. “I won’t let you go. Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ beside me, Christ within me.”

  “Christ before me,” Ronan chimed in as she repeated the prayer.

  “Call on Jesus, Tarlach,” Brenna said, clutching his fevered body tightly to her. “Call Him!” She was losing the battle. Tarlach wasn’t responding. “Jesus, help us.”

  Suddenly Tarlach stopped trying to pull away and lurched against Brenna, reaching past her at the air. “Jesus.” It was no more than a garbled sob, but the Name above all names loosed the fierce lines drawing Tarlach’s brow … and the hold of permanent darkness. He fell slack in her arms, suddenly too heavy to hold, now that he was fully back in This World. This time when Ronan helped her ease him back on the bed, Brenna allowed it.

  “You will not die today,” she heard herself say. Shock constricted Brenna’s chest. Why, Lord? I cannot make such declarations.

  “What?” The exclamation bounced from one to another behind her.

  You’ve never fought darkness like this before.

  Her Shepherd strengthened her so that all heard her pronouncement. Or was it His? “You are poisoned, sir. But it is not too late.”

  Ronan pulled Brenna about to face him. “Are you certain?”

  She was. Her jaws did not lie. Nor did her Shepherd. “I do not know with what exactly, but I have my suspicions. Right now I need to fetch my medicine bag.”

  “I’ll get it,” Vychan offered.

  “It’s hanging over our bed.” An embarrassed flush warmed Brenna’s face. It was still strange to use the word our, as in forever bound as one. Behind her, Ronan gave her a hug, driving to he
art all the more this bond they shared.

  “That is outrageous,” Rhianon protested from the door. “Who would want to poison Tarlach?”

  “Half of Glenarden on any given day,” Caden remarked cryptically. “You know what a beast he can be.”

  Beast. Had they prayed the beast out of the old man? Perhaps the spiritual one, but the poison remained.

  “What have you done, you old crone?” Rhianon accused Dara.

  “As God is my witness, I’ve given him naught but the best of care. Your own nurse saw to him as well, milady,” the midwife answered.

  “Perhaps it’s accidental,” Brenna suggested. Not that she believed it. What she wouldn’t give to go through the bag Keena kept slung about her bony hips. Although Keena’s motive—

  Brenna reined in her galloping thoughts. There wasn’t much time. If she could induce him to drink a concoction of charcoal and black cohosh …

  “No one here would dare poison me,” Tarlach objected from the bed, his voice weak but thankfully coherent. Strangling on a bit of drool, he went into a fit of coughing. “Besides, what has an old man left to live for?”

  Her heart cringed for him. Brenna leaned over, speaking into his ear. “A grandson, Tarlach. Our grandson. Your heir.”

  Tarlach grew still. “Here?”

  “Nay, but he is coming nine months hence.”

  The old man lowered his voice. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”

  “Aye, I’ve seen him.”

  “I can’t listen to this nonsense,” Rhianon exclaimed. “How can she be so blessed certain and they’ve only been married—” She stopped to calculate. “Well, not long enough.”

  Brenna heard her stomp away from the door. Ignoring the distraction, she continued. “His hair is the color of roasted chestnut, and his eyes are as blue as a starlit sky.”

  “And?” Tarlach prompted. Excitement built in his weary gray eyes.

  “What else could there be to say, Father?” Ronan asked.

  Her husband thought she was humoring Tarlach, but even as Brenna started to talk of the child, he appeared to her, lying in her lap, naked as he came into the world. “A beautiful baby boy …” Amazement tripped her. Before, she’d seen as through a fog, but this was so clear. “With … with a birthmark on his hip, shaped like a pledging hand.”