Healer

by Linda Windsor

  There was no choice but to appeal to the stronger spirits at Keena’s hand.

  Rhianon opened her heavy-lidded eyes, making out Keena’s rocking, chanting figure. The crone prayed, first in her Cymri mother’s ancient tongue, then in her Saxon father’s. Each prayer summoned powers that Rhianon had not yet learned to command. But she’d felt them, thought she’d seen them … with her Spirit Eye. At the moment, all Rhianon saw was an old woman dipping her fingers into one of her magic powders, sprinkling it first on the fire, where it manifested a shade of blue that defied the best efforts of the dye women. Then on Caden’s naked body.

  If Caden knew, he would kill the nurse. He’d warned her and Rhianon against using their magic on him. But plied with wine and just enough henbane to induce a drunken sleep, he would never know dream from reality. It had been no challenge for Rhianon to coax him into a walk to distract him from the woes of Ronan’s return with a promise of a night of pure ecstasy, much less to get him to down the alleged aphrodisiac.

  By the goddess, it was hot. Her dress lay in a heap near the wall, and her linen shift clung to her like a second skin. Perspiration gleamed on Caden’s splendid form as well. Rhianon blinked as smoke thickened over her husband’s abdomen. From the power or powder?

  “Friend of the Dark, give him courage to fight for what he desires.” The eyes painted on Keena’s lids folded up beneath her wizened brow, revealing her real ones, black as polished coal in the firelight.

  “Yes!” Keena raised her arms, naught but leathered flesh over knotted joints of bone, toward the ceiling of the hut. “You are the desire of our desire, milord. Fill this mortal that he may be worthy of you … and of your priestess.”

  Caden began to jerk as though pierced by the fingers of black smoke surrounding him. Rhianon’s heart beat faster as her husband inhaled a gulp of air, swelling the muscled ridges of his chest even more.

  With a satisfied cackle, Keena struggled to her feet and motioned Rhianon to hers. “Milord awakens and awaits his priestess most eagerly.” She loosed the bodice of Rhianon’s shift and let it drop to the earthen floor. “Please him mightily, and he will do the same for you, child.”

  Brenna checked Tarlach for fever the following morning. He was cool. The chieftain slept like a babe, curled on his good side. Weak as one as well, but improving. Would that she could return to bed, for sleep had been scant with the needs of Tarlach taking precedence. Yet some of the villagers already waited to seek her advice for various maladies.

  “He should not have lived,” Brother Martin said, entering the room. He was dressed for travel—his plain gray cloak slung over his shoulder like a sack.

  It broke Brenna’s heart to see him leaving so soon. If ever she needed his mentoring, it was now. “God has a strange sense of justice that the daughter of the people Tarlach slew should be the one to save his life from his own kin.”

  “When you expect God to do one thing, He may surprise you by doing something else … usually something better than what you wished for to begin with.” Ealga’s words were sound, but nothing her nurse could have told her prepared Brenna for the speed at which her life had been turned about. Rescuing her enemy. Falling in love with him. Losing Faol. Captured as a fugitive and now hailed as a miracle-working healer. No time to grieve or celebrate, much less make sense of it all.

  How could her priestly mentor leave her now? The brethren in the glen could not possibly need him more than she.

  “A healer and a prophet.” Martin’s words pulled Brenna back to the bedside. “Ealga would be so proud of you.”

  “Prophet.” Brenna scowled. “You keep saying that, Brother. I wish you would not.”

  These people did not understand who or what she was. Already the maidservant Mab had asked Brenna to ask God if a young warrior would ask her hand in marriage. The very idea appalled Brenna. The future belonged to God, not her.

  “You say you trained me in the Word, that I might prophesy, but are you and Merlin certain this gift is God’s calling?” Brenna challenged him. She had visions or dreams like her mother, but her, a prophet? Surely she’d not walk in the sandals of Isaiah and godly men of his ilk. Her visions pertained to her life and hers only. Perhaps it was intuition. Or worse, what if it came from darkness rather than light?

  “Have your visions ever been wrong?”

  Not that Brenna could recall. “But I can’t tell when they will happen or ask and receive them on demand.” She’d also explained that to the maidservant. “My visions come as they please and as vague as they please.”

  “God does not give His chosen these visions or words on their demand, but in His time and manner. That is what separates the prophets of God from those who use their gifts for personal gain. A soothsayer always has an answer and, ofttimes, it’s wrong.”

  Martin chuckled, then grew grim as death itself. “That is why now especially, you must trust God’s voice and stay close with Him. There is an evil in this place that will draw you away from Him, if you let it.”

  Brenna’s flesh pimpled, swept cold by the memory of holding Tarlach, of pulling him away from unseen forces. Martin and Ealga had both counseled her on treating the spirit as well as the body, but never had she imagined the likes of that moment.

  “I thought I saw demons trying to take him away,” she confided, still in disbelief. “Or rather, felt them. I … I can’t explain it any more than I can my visions.”

  And she’d actually seen the babe in her womb. Faith, she’d been so busy with Tarlach, she hadn’t had the chance to think about either till now. It made her knees weak and her stomach tightened with dread. Nay, panic.

  “You’ve taken your visions for granted till now, haven’t you, child?” Martin placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “You and Ealga led me to think they were to be expected.”

  “For the daughter of Joanna of Gowrys.”

  “And I didn’t believe in them until recently.” Ronan strode into the room, looking the O’Byrne chief in the black, red, and silver of his clan.

  Yet it was his nearness, not his finery, that renewed her. Love. Hadn’t St. Paul declared it the greatest of all good things?

  Her husband sat on a bench near the bed and drew Brenna into his lap with no heed that a priest watched them. “Tell me, Priest, just who is this enigmatic creature I’ve married?”

  “Ronan,” she chided, squirming with embarrassment.

  He held her fast. “Still, mo chroi. Brother Martin knows we are properly wed.”

  My heart.

  How could Brenna resist such an invitation? In the beam of Martin’s smile, she curled against her husband’s chest. After the late evening of celebrating the return of Glenarden’s warriors from the Orkneys, it felt good. But her mind could not rest.

  “So tell me, please,” she implored, “of these demonic visions I saw over Tarlach.” What she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, had haunted her since.

  “Even my lay observation could see something otherworldly was amiss,” Ronan agreed. “Something so sinister that I could not move to help her.”

  Brenna’s pulse tripped. What exactly did Ronan think of her now? A healer was one thing. This was something else—and altogether frightening, even for her.

  “Brenna is a healer, both of the physical and spiritual body. She is trained after the ministry of Jesus and His disciples in Scripture and medicine … although she does not have as much learning as Merlin Emrys wanted due to having to hide her for so many years.” Martin recovered from the resignation in his voice with the brightness of his faith. “But God gives us all we need, even if it’s not all we would have.”

  The comment piqued Brenna’s curiosity. “What else did Merlin want me to learn?”

  “Astrology,” the priest replied.

  Ronan stiffened. “Astrology? I thought the church frowned on that.”

  “The Scripture admonishes against worship,” Martin emphasized, “of the stars and heavens. Such worship was punishable b
y death.

  “But David wrote in Psalm 19, that”—the priest quoted—“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.”

  “God speaks to us through the heavens and stars, Ronan.” A sweet memory came to Brenna’s mind of Ealga and her staring at a starlit night in utter wonder. “He gives us signs of weather to come—”

  “And of the Messiah’s birth and death,” Martin added. “Every astrological scholar of Jesus’ time could read the heavens like a missive from their king. These magi knew what the Star of Bethlehem meant. And they knew as well that Heaven itself mourned Christ’s death with darkness and earthquakes at midday, not just in Jerusalem, but in every country under the sky and on His earth. These things were recorded by historians of many nations as well as in the Scripture.”

  “That is why the Druids knew who Jesus was, of His birth and death,” she stipulated, “before His disciples brought the news of His sacrifice and resurrection to Albion’s shores.” Brenna thought a moment, how best to illustrate. “The heavens were like God’s scroll to all the world ordaining Jesus as King of Kings, Messiah, Son of God. It was surer than Merlin Emrys’ recital of Arthur’s genealogy at his coronation.”

  Skepticism still ruled her husband’s face.

  “Think, Ronan,” Brother Martin urged. “Man in his fallibility might have misrepresented who Jesus was, but only the Creator God Himself could declare His Son’s birthright, by writing with the stars upon the parchment of Heaven’s own sky. What greater witness can there be?”

  “Still, it smacks of heresy, Brother,” Ronan replied. “So close that I fear my wife would be accused of it. Just like her mother.”

  “Yet Scripture says that these are divinely given gifts,” Martin reminded him. “How the gift is used and to whom the glory is given for it determines its source. If of God, it is used for the good of others according to the Word, not for personal gain, and it glorifies the Father in the name of the Son and Holy Spirit.”

  “Like fire, Ronan, it can serve us or destroy us. Hence it is treated with the utmost respect and caution.”

  Yet, even as Brenna spoke, a coldness seized her, much like the one she’d felt while praying over Tarlach. And the one that had awakened her last night. Instinctively, she’d snuggled close to Ronan for his warmth, unable to explain it, given the moderate climate. And unable to go back to sleep, she’d lain awake for what seemed hours, troubled by that which she could not see or fathom.

  “But what if we don’t want the gift?” she asked Brother Martin.

  “That is up to God, my child. The church’s duty is to recognize and nurture it with the Word toward good fruit. Or to battle and condemn it and its source, if used for evil. Just remember: It is never the gift itself that is good or evil, for nothing from God is evil. It is the fruit of that gift that determines it one way or the other. Matthew says, Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

  Brenna wriggled out of Ronan’s embrace and stood, facing her mentor. “Then, if you believe as I do, that something evil lurks here at Glenarden, how can you in good conscience leave me to face it alone?”

  “I agree with Brenna,” Ronan said. “Clearly she hasn’t your experience in dealing with such things.”

  “I am a healer. I thought my visions were only for me. How can you leave me now, when I first find there is more to them than my own interest and that of my child?” Brenna pleaded.

  “Aye, there’s the bairn to protect, Martin,” Ronan reminded the priest. “Part of a greater plan, you say, yet you are abandoning the child and the mother.”

  “I am.”

  The serenity in her mentor’s demeanor bewildered Brenna. How could he have such peace in the midst of something like this, much less answer her with that benevolent smile?

  “God has a plan for each of us,” Martin reminded them. “Yours, Brenna, is for here and now. Yours, Ronan, is to believe in her and protect her the best way you know how. But mine,” he continued, “is elsewhere.”

  “Even when I’ve been summoned to Strighlagh?” Ronan shot back.

  Last night Egan O’Toole had given Ronan a message from Arthur, demanding he go to the fair at Strighlagh a fortnight hence, to meet with the Gowrys and straighten out the mess of hostages that Caden had created with his impulsive and unjust raid.

  “Mind you both have been summoned,” Martin said. “But neither of you will need me. God is with each of us. He is sufficient.”

  Brenna crossed her arms and turned away. The priest was right. The Word said it. She believed it. But she sure didn’t feel it.

  “You can trust God always, lassie, but you canna always trust your feelings.”

  Easily said, Ealga, Brenna silently argued with the nurse in her mind.

  Father God, I believe … but help my unbelief.

  A loud creak on the bed drew everyone’s attention to where Tarlach had rolled on his back. His eyes were open, staring at Brenna as if for the first time.

  His chest rose, pulling in breath and strength, then collapsed with a heavy sigh. “You are not,” he accused, “Joanna.”

  The despair in Tarlach’s words tugged Brenna to his side without thought to herself. She perched on the edge of the bed and took his hands into hers. “Nay, milord, I am not. I am Joanna’s daughter. And on my soul, I give you my word, you have nothing to fear from me. What is past is past and forgiven.” She leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. “We must look to the future now. To your recovery and to the grandson you shall have … with the mark of the Red Hand on his hip.”

  A flicker of recognition registered in Tarlach’s dull gaze.

  “We must stand together as O’Byrnes, Father, for Brenna is my wife, one with me, and mother to your grandson,” Ronan said, closing in on the other side of the bed. “There is an enemy within us so vile that both you and I were nearly sent earthways, but for Brenna’s intervention. She has saved us both.”

  “I have seen this myself, sire,” Martin spoke up, earning a flicker of a glance.

  Brenna tried to read Tarlach, but he was unfathomable. Whatever emotion or thoughts existed behind his gray gaze remained his and his alone.

  He lifted his hand with a tired wave. “Tell me.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ronan reined in Ballach to keep the horse from leading Brenna’s smaller one into a trot. He’d chosen the gentlest of the stable for his wife to ride over Glenarden and introduce her to its heart—the people who tended the fields and livestock now out to pasture after the calving. Although given his choice, he’d have insisted on a cart, or that she ride with him on his stallion.

  “I am with child. I am not an invalid,” she’d insisted. “And I’ve longed to ride a pony since leaving the Sacred Isle.”

  How could he deny her? She had taken Glenarden as she’d taken his heart—with her bubbling love and genuine humility. Vychan and Dara hovered over her like mother hens, determined to teach her her proper place and duties as lady of the keep, but Brenna’s innate humility was impervious to such things. The household authority she deftly deferred to Rhianon.

  “My sister has been trained to oversee such a grand keep. An eagle doesn’t swim, nor a fish fly.”

  Then there was Daniel and Cú. Even though Dara accompanied Brenna into the village to visit the sick and distribute alms at the gate, the awkward youth and dog guarded her flank. They also served as witness to the effectiveness of her balms, for Cú’s mange improved by the day, now that he’d stopped biting it. And only yesterday Daniel and Brenna had carefully bound the broken leg of a rabbit that had run afoul of a trap.

  “Daniel has a special heart for God,” Brenna told Ronan when he’d teased her about being jealous of her time spent with the lad. “And a way with wild creatures. I shall call his attention to Merlin Emrys when next I see him.”

  For the first time since returnin
g to Glenarden, the tightness in Ronan’s neck and shoulder muscles relaxed beneath the fingers of the early morning sun.

  “So many times I’ve looked at these fields and pastures from the cover of the hills. Never did I see myself riding through them on my own pony. And her name is perfect, isn’t it, Airgid?”

  One might have thought he’d offered her the horse’s weight in silver, rather than one of the older stable steeds, broken by experience and time. “’Tis a high name for such a lowly beast,” he teased. “But I’ll find a more worthy mount for you at the fair.”

  “Hush, now.” She leaned forward to cover the pony’s ears. “She can hear you. He didn’t mean it, Airgid. I vow you shall be mine for as long as God allows it.” She ran her hands along the mare’s gray neck.

  Something told Ronan the wounded rabbit was not the last of the animals that would find a home in Glenarden’s sheds. He thought about Faol, amazed that he missed the beast. He’d never been much for pets, even as a child. His heart and soul had been bound in the past … until Brenna. Now seeing ordinary people, even animals, through his wife’s eyes was seeing beyond the physical to an extraordinary, most individual spirit. She had made his old world new.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said aloud. “Perhaps we’ll find a good pup at the fair.” Especially since a new horse didn’t seem to be in order.

  The same cloud that tamped his spirit grazed her sunny expression. “Maybe.”

  Would that he’d kept his mouth shut. He grappled to recover the sun. “Well, definitely fabric. I’ll have my bride bedecked with dresses in every color of the rainbow.”

  She thought a moment. “Perhaps a blue, like the one that was ruined. That would be lovely.” She glanced down at her boyish attire. “Though I can’t see wearing a dress for riding.” Second thought creased her brow. “Unless you think me unfit to be seen with.”

  Ronan groaned. What a muck he made word by word. “Milady, I’d find you most fetching in anything you choose to wear … or not wear,” he added with a rakish grin. Ronan shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, stirred by the look she gave him. With the sunlight dancing off her raven hair and her blue eyes brighter than Heaven’s own sky, no man with a heartbeat could resist the urge to spirit her away to a private place and—