by Jacobs Delle
Philippe stopped at the edge of the rocky streambed. It was nearly too dark to continue. It had been easy to determine her direction, which showed she headed for Scotland. When the hills grew rugged, there would be only a few ways she could go, and they all led to this point. He could easily cut her off by taking the road. She wouldn’t know that, of course, for likely she had never traveled the road before. Nor would she have known how much the beck meandered in its journey from mountains to sea. Now it was too dark to track her, but fortunately, she would also have to stop in the dark.
He tethered the horses where they could both graze and drink and went back to the beck. Hands on hips, he studied the steep cliff across the beck. He could barely see the top, which was obscured by tall trees and encroaching night.
He saw a movement, but as he blinked, he was no longer certain he saw it. And the longer he scrutinized the spot, the more the something became nothing and disappeared into the gloaming.
Damn the girl! Why in God’s Heaven had she come up with that lie? He’d always dismissed her interest in him as a young girl’s silliness, but never had he thought she would resort to such a trap. Yet if she had meant to trap him, why had she fled? Had the rage on his face sent her fleeing?
Heat rose in his face. Now he dared not let anything happen to her. Rufus would excuse nothing, not even her running into the wilderness and being devoured by wild beasts. Maybe she’d just drop dead of some dread disease that even Rufus could not blame on Philippe.
He sighed. He didn’t want her dead. He just wished she’d picked someone else to accuse so she could marry. But he was stuck with her now, and he had to make the best of it.
He grumbled unintelligible sounds that could not even be called words.
Philippe made a fireless camp and sat down on a boulder. Hungry though he was, he hardly appreciated the sausage and cheese for his supper. He rolled up in his cloak with his soft saddle as his pillow.
Taking the horses up that hill beyond the cliff would be hard.
No matter. He’d do it. He was charged with her life, and by God’s grace, never mind hers, he’d see that she stayed alive. He’d be damned if he’d die dishonored because of a plaguey, lying female.
But that wasn’t what worried him. He had to send her off to one of her estates in the south as soon as possible. Surely that would please her to no end.
Rufus had no idea how unsafe any woman would be as his wife. For if there was anything of which Philippe was certain, it was the power of Clodomir’s curse. Philippe was the kind of man who loved, and if he began to love her, it would be his own hands that killed her.
He supposed, if nothing else, he could persuade her to remain disagreeable.
Leonie forced the tight curl out of her fists. If she’d just known it would be so hard to see, she would have picked a spot to spend the night before dusk. But it was too late for that now, and there was no sense in frightening herself.
First she secured her bow and quiver and her damp shoes in the safe branches of a scrubby oak, then she cleared a level spot to eat and sleep. The bread and hard cheese she’d stolen from the kitchen could never have been tastier. It ought to last three days, and by then, she could take time to hunt.
Her leftovers she bundled and stowed high up in the branches where they would be safe from predators, and then she lay down, wrapped up in her two cloaks.
She closed her eyes. Exhaustion flooded in. She didn’t even care that her hose were still damp. Quickly a meandering reverie took over and led into sleep.
Something stirred. Leonie jumped awake.
Rustling leaves. Beneath the scrubby oaks on the hill. She stifled her shriek before it came out. Man? Beast? She could hear snuffling. A grunt.
A pig. No—a boar! She gasped.
The underbrush came alive. Leonie ducked behind the tree as the grunting creature charged. She grabbed a branch and swung up, hooked a leg over the branch, and scrambled upward, but fiery pain seared through her dangling ankle.
Screaming despite herself, she climbed higher while the wild boar below her pawed at the ground and butted the tree.
Her ankle throbbed with fierce pain, and her hose grew warm and wet with blood. Below, the enraged boar slammed against the tree, its grunts like growls. It must have scented the blood. She had to stop the bleeding and heal the ankle enough that she could walk on it in the morning.
Leonie gritted her teeth, forcing calm on herself, for the healing needed all her concentrated energy to work. She nestled herself into a safe position against the tree trunk, worked her hose down her leg to bare her skin, and cupped her palm over the wound. Her eyes closed, she focused every part of her being to the healing.
She could feel—
Nothing. Only the jabbing pain. The blood seeped onto her hand.
Haps a little less. Leonie squeezed her eyes closed again, furrowing her brow. Her palm pressed hard, forcing all her energy into the wound. She felt the familiar weakening. The pain seemed to lessen. Then it came back. Harder, she focused, forcing in the energy.
She frowned. It was not working.
It was not possible. Her healing energy never failed. Since she was a very young child, she had been able to close wounds. It had to work. But she could barely draw breath, and grew so weak she feared she might fall from the tree.
She tried her fingers on the gash again.
It still bled. What was wrong?
The only thing to do was bind the gash with her stocking.
The boar still roamed below. Every time she moved, it came back to the tree, grunting its ferocious threats. She could barely make out the boar’s head and the pale eyes glaring malevolently up at her. She would never get out of this tree unless she killed it.
The boar discovered her bow, dangling from the short, broken branch where she had left it. The beast lunged as if it meant to knock it down to trample it or chew it to shreds. If it reached just a handspan higher, it would succeed. She had to get to it first.
Balancing on the injured foot despite the pain, she shifted down one limb, aware that the boar had noticed her movement. She reached as far as she could, but the oak’s thick trunk was in the way. One more limb down and she would be within reach, but that limb slanted downward and her weight would bring it even closer to the ground, closer to the boar’s savage tusks.
She’d have no chance at all if the boar got its brutal teeth on her bow.
Taking a breath to calm her racing pulse, she tucked the skirt of her kirtle into her waist cord, and she eased out onto the thick, low-hanging branch toward the bow. The boar lunged and grunted. She supposed it might be comical to watch an enormous, heavy animal trying to rear up on its hind legs, but from her viewpoint it was not particularly funny. When she realized she could feel its hot breath touching her leg, she almost screamed, jerking her leg back to the top of the branch, which was beginning to sag from her weight.
The bow was easy enough to grab. She inched along until the quiver’s leather strap finally touched her fingers.
With a furious screech, the boar leaped. Leonie yelped and shied backward, all but losing her hold as she grabbed a smaller branch for balance. The boar was smarter than she thought. It meant to frighten her into just such a mistake.
Well, she wasn’t going to cooperate. If it hadn’t reached her so far, then it probably couldn’t. She slipped both bow and quiver over her shoulder and backed up the sloping branch. Backing up was harder. Her foot slipped. Terror helped her get it back up before the boar caught it.
At last she reached the crotch of the branch and pulled herself to standing by holding on to small branches. But the moment she got the bow strung, the boar, apparently bored, wandered away from the tree into darkness.
No matter. As soon as it came within sight again, she could shoot it. In fact, she probably could kill it, just listening to its noises as it rooted around nearby, but she didn’t want to waste arrows. And the last thing she wanted was to be stuck in a tree with a wounded boar
somewhere in the area.
It hadn’t forgotten her. It soon returned and sniffed out her shoes where they dangled, too far away for Leonie to reach. She’d never get far without shoes. No more time to waste.
She aimed her arrow at the eyes and shot, guiding it with her silent song.
The arrow thudded. The boar kept on rooting and grunting. Not even a squeal. She’d missed!
She shook so hard she almost dropped her bow. She never missed. With her ability to guide an arrow to its target, it was impossible!
But she had.
One piece at a time, Leonie forced her racing heart and shaking hands to calm. She could kill it with ordinary skills. All she had to do was wait for it to come close enough again, where even a child could not miss the shot. She just had to recapture its interest. What it wanted was her leg, and she was not of a mood to give that up.
Or her blood. The scent of her blood seemed to enrage it. There was plenty of that on her stocking.
Bracing herself, Leonie untied the bandage she had made of the blood-soaked stocking. She squealed like an injured piglet while she waved the stocking almost within the boar’s reach. The boar turned and charged, banging head and hooves against the tree as if it could butt the entire oak to the ground.
She got a perfect view of its eyes and released her shot.
The boar’s scream split the sky. It wallowed on the ground, rolling its mighty head, and screamed once more. Then lay still.
Was it dead?
Haps she’d wait awhile before testing it.
She leaned back against the oak’s trunk, propped in the safety of its branches, to await the soon-coming dawn, still unwilling to let her legs dangle freely, too disturbed to sleep.
“If ’tis meant for ye to find the Summer Land, ye start walking and keep on going.”
Now she knew why, despite walking all day into the wilderness, the way to the Summer Land had not come to her. She could not see in the dark, as the Faeriekind could, as she had been able to do all her life. She could not heal her own wounds, as she had always done. Her arrows would not go where she willed them. The awful truth descended on her with the crushing gloom of the dark night.
All about her that was Faerie—was lost.
CHAPTER NINE
“GOOD MORNING, PRECIOUS bride.”
Philippe!
Leonie jerked awake and grabbed a branch in time to keep from falling from her precarious perch. She glanced wildly about. He was alone, but she had no chance of getting past him. She was in a tree almost at the edge of a cliff, her injured leg burning with pain. And he held her shoes and bloody hose in one hand.
“You may come down now. The boar is slain.”
“Only one of them,” she grumbled. “I believe I prefer the fat one with the tusks.”
His dark eyes blazed with an anger that belied his pleasant tone. He held up his hand to her. “Shall I assist you, my treasure?”
She had no choice but to depart the tree, but she didn’t have to accept his help. “I can do it myself.”
She laddered down through the branches, wincing at the pain shooting up her leg with each step. As she jumped to the ground, red waves of pain swamped her mind.
He glowered, focusing on her foot. “Let me see it.”
Leonie backed up, but the oak tree was behind her, and the cliff altogether too close beyond that.
He dangled her shoes just out of her reach. “Sit down. Let me see it.”
She probably wouldn’t make it three steps if she tried to run. With a sigh, she sat, leaning her back against the oak.
Philippe knelt beside her and lifted her foot to examine it, turning it slightly. She winced. For the first time she saw how much damage had been done by the boar’s tusk. A wide, bloody gash ran diagonally along her ankle. She knew he meant to be gentle with his touch, but his finger trailing alongside the gash set it afire with pain.
“Do you have any water?”
She nodded toward her bundle that sat in the fork of the lowest branch, and he retrieved the waterskin. As he wiped the dampened stocking over the wound, she sucked in a breath to keep from crying out.
“Not too deep,” he said. “The muscle isn’t torn. But it could turn putrid. I’ll have to carry you down the hill.”
“I can walk.”
“No, you can’t. I don’t suppose you have a needle?”
She nodded again. A needle was an essential of life for her.
“Linen thread?”
“Only wool.”
“Wool won’t do.” He unsheathed his knife and raised her kirtle to reveal the linen chemise beneath it. He cut a narrow swath, pulled several long threads from the weave, then rolled the fibers together. Leonie didn’t have to be told to thread the needle with the newly made thread.
The first jab into her tender skin at the center of the gap made her jump, but she gritted her teeth so she wouldn’t do it again.
“I suppose you’ve never been stitched before.”
“Nay, but I can see you’re going to do it crooked.” She pushed him away and repositioned the torn flesh so it would line up better.
He frowned, but then he nodded and put the needle at the exact place she indicated. Slowly he pulled the wound together, knotted the stitch, and used his knife to cut it. Halfway up from there, he began another stitch, which she again corrected. He didn’t really seem to have any notion of how much he stretched the skin on one side but let it sag on the other.
“If you sewed a seam like that, it would have an ugly pucker in it,” she said.
“And of course a lady would not want puckered flesh on her leg. Well, then, precious bride, would you care to point out the next stitch?”
She ignored the sneer and directed the rest of the stitches. But by the time seven stitches held the wound together, she was dizzy from the pain.
“You’re pale,” he said. “Lie down for a moment.”
“Nay.”
“Drink some water. Then lie down.”
She could hardly swallow the swig. But she rested against the tree as he laid out the bits of food from her pouch, until she thought she could eat.
While she picked at the cheese and bread, he walked over to the boar and removed the arrow from its head. “No sense in letting good meat go to waste,” he said. He skinned the beast’s haunch and carved a thick slab of meat.
He sat back and watched her, his brown eyes almost hooded by golden-brown-lashed lids. He seemed as detached as a man sitting in a hall drinking his ale with his knights, discussing politics and skirmishes. But his anger fairly radiated from him.
“You’ve never been in the wild at night, I’ll wager,” he said. “Else you would have never done such a foolish thing.”
She paused to sneer, then broke off another piece of the dry bread. She would have been just fine if her Faerie skills had not betrayed her.
“Luck was with you, that you even escaped,” he said. “I thought you were doomed when I heard your scream.”
Leonie bit her lip to close off her retort.
“And fortunate it was a boar. You could not have escaped a pack of wolves.”
She turned her head away. What was the point of his conversation?
“You could not have made it to Scotland alive. Even if you did, Rufus would consider you a traitor for giving your English lands to his enemy.”
“What does it matter? He has already given away my inheritance. Rufus cares nothing for me, to wed me to a man who would murder me.”
“Still the lie, precious bride?” His nostrils flared, and the harsh, gravelly tone returned to his voice. “Surely you realize I know better. But it makes no difference. I don’t know why you’ve done this to me, but it is done, and you are as bound to this marriage as I am. I have promised Rufus to bring you back, safe and unharmed, and marry you, or my life and honor are forfeit. While I might throw away my life, my honor I will never sacrifice. You will return with me.”
“And once you have won my inheritance, i
t will no longer matter what happens to me.”
“I don’t want your inheritance, but I have no choice. By law, it will be yours until you die, but a man must administer it. And Rufus has bound me by oath to you forever.”
“Once married, it will not matter. Ah, I can hear it now. ‘So sorry, Your Majesty, but she fell off the tower in a windstorm and broke her neck.’ Then Rufus will sigh piteously. ‘A shame about wives, how often they fall from towers.’ You do not fool me, Peregrine. It’s murder that’s in your heart, and you’ll be done with me soon enough.”
His jaw tightened. “Let us make an agreement, then. I will cease thinking of murdering you if you will cease vexing me.”
“Everything I do vexes you. If I breathe, I vex you, you bloodthirsty varlet.”
“Alas. But your murder will have to wait. You’re of more use alive. You’re needed at Bosewood, you see. They’re a rebellious lot in the north, Scots in their hearts and blood, and only English by virtue of a border. After your father died, two castellans also died suspiciously.”
“A pike through the heart is too obvious to be suspicious.”
“The question is whether it came from a Scot or a village man or even a Norman. Only one other Norman has had any success in Northumbria, that villain Robert de Mowbray. Who knows what interest he might have in Bosewood?”
“So Rufus uses you to spy on de Mowbray.”
“I’ll be the king’s eyes in the North, aye. Rufus hopes I can do as well with Bosewood as de Mowbray has done with Northumbria, but it’s more likely I will also meet a suspicious death. You, on the other hand, are your mother’s child, and from what I hear, much like her, who the people loved. They will follow you, Leonie, but without you, they will descend into the chaos of war and face slaughter. They need you.”
She sneered. “And you need me to keep yourself alive.”
He sat back a distance, and the taut muscles of his jaw flexed, playing the morning light on the day’s growth of beard.
“I’m no coward, and do not ever question my courage. You and I have a common purpose, whether we wish it or not. If I die in my duty, so be it. The same, I am sorry to say, is true for you. If you find that so onerous, then when the land is stable again, you may go live on any of your other properties. You have some estates in the South, I am told.”
