My Something Wonderful

by Jill Barnett

  Perhaps she was his recompense. His own actions and lies would lead to his punishment--her.

  A sense of inevitable probability came over him—what he was going to have to do with her. Whatever distant and long-lost piece of a good heart that resurfaced ever so briefly could not change that. He felt a small ache in his chest where he supposed some slim ability to hope had just slipped away completely. The feeling was there only to haunt him bitterly. His destiny was done. There was nothing left of him to be saved.

  * * *

  Glenna set down her comb and leaned over the plot of herb gardens outside the infirmary, pointing to a thick green plant with white buds overtaking a nearby sage plant Brother Leviticus told her was good for melancholy. “And what is this one called?”

  “That is ramsons. For intestinal worms,” he said.

  She made a face.

  He smiled slightly. “But so is white willow bark, which I used in the tea we fed you.”

  “I have no worms, brother,” she said indignantly.

  “Nay, but it helps with high fevers and mixed with rue and mint will aid with sore ears and throat, mixed with yarrow and elderberry it will increase sweats.” The brother was a cheery sort, with a face like an apple and the brown eyes of a doe. He was a small man, with breadth, and was the abbey herbalist, an expert in teas and medicinals, and apprenticed to Pater Magoon, the infirmarian. He moved across the herb bed, pulling small weeds with a weed fork and pick. He paused toward another thick green plant with small flowers, plucked off a leaf, removed his leather work glove and handed the herb leaf to her. “Chew it.”

  She put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtly. The flavor was strong, almost pungent, and familiar. “It taste like meat…like Easter,” she said surprised.

  “That’s because the seeds are used to season spring lamb. This is star anise and if you chew its leaves it will help digestion…and tea from it increases mother’s milk” He paused. “Do you and your lord have children?”

  “Good Lord…never!” she said laughing and without thinking.

  He frowned at her strangely and touched the heavy cross hanging from his neck.

  She tried not to wince, her mind spinning quickly. “I’m sorry. I should not have spoken so.” She looked down, then back at him, feigning a meekness foreign to her. “We have been on the road for a long time. I would not do well away from him. My lord husband enjoys the tourneys,” she said vaguely, having no idea if a baron would be at a tourney. She made up her stories as she went. “I could not travel with him so readily were I with child. Surely someday….” She stood to distract him and moved toward the nearest bed, sitting on the boards and wattle that framed it. “What is this woody one with the strong fragrance?”

  He dusted his robes off, then joined her. “That is thyme and it is used in salves and poultices. Wild thyme has recently been used by the local midwife to help expel the placenta, and along with yarrow can stop childbed bleeding.”

  “I like the smell,” she said smiling.”

  “Many have strong fragrance. They are part of the cures. Camphor for ringworm and delirium. Rosemary is used in cooking but is made into salves which work well for wounds and sores, rashes and gouty limbs. If you breathe in the smoke it will cool hot lungs. Quince is for belly pain. Skullcap and valerian for tumors and rabies.”

  “You have thistle growing in the corner. What does it cure?”

  He looked uncomfortable and leaned very close. Looking all around him, he whispered, ”Hexes.” He then he moved back and quickly made the sign of the cross.

  “Ah…” She nodded, biting back a smile. “Magic herbs.”

  “There is no magic in God’s house, my lady,” he said seriously. “God gives us these plants to help us. But there is the Devil’s work all about. Many must be used carefully or they will poison, such as wolfbane, and if you brew a tea too strong of bloodbane,” he knelt down next to her, “and too much of this bright red plant, which induces sleep, and the patient might never awaken.”

  “Oh is that so? Tell me…how much should one use?” she asked casually.

  He held up two fingers. “One can never use more than two leaves.”

  Finally, she thought, studying the red plant. Her means of escape.

  13

  The bells chimed for the next prayer hour, and Brother Leviticus pulled off his dirty gloves, tucked his weeding tools under his arm, and bid Glenna farewell as he bustled towards one of the doors. Alone, she waited, looking around the garden, past the beds and furrows of cabbages and turnips, beans and leeks, off to the distant orchard where before bells, two oblates atop a slim ladder had been picking peaches while supervised by a tall thin monk.

  There was no one left. She stood then, brushed the blades of grass off her clothes. The grass grew between cracks in the stacked flat stones that formed a garden bench. Casually she looked around and moved slowly toward the bloodbane, then bent quickly and snatched a few leaves, slipping them into the woolen purse at her belt. She turned around and almost jumped out of her skin.

  A ginger-haired boy stood right there, hardly an arm’s length away, a wide, toothsome grin upon his face. “You are well, my lady.” He sounded pleased, assured in speaking to her, and vaguely familiar, and that intrigued her.

  That he wasn’t looking at her hands or purse told her he had not seen what she had done. “Aye,” she said cautiously.

  “You do not remember me.” His shoulders fell slightly.

  “You took my horse when we arrived. I doused you with rainwater. Forgive me.”

  He shook his head.

  “She frowned. You will not accept my apology?”

  “We have met before,” he said looking disheartened.

  Glenna studied him, then something struck. “Ruari?” She paused, then saw plainly the answer to her own question. “Not remember you? Ruari!”

  He grinned and she threw her arms around him and pulled him against her, laughing. She stepped back, hands on his shoulders, now broader. “Look at you.”

  “I expect looking at me is more easily done when I no longer look like a bruised pig.”

  Another image of him flashed through her mind and she felt a pang of pity and a mixture of emotions deep in the pit of her belly, even now, more than three years past. The beating she had witnessed was unforgettably horrible. He had been so young.

  With a wan smile, she studied his face and pale skin, bright with a milkmaid’s color on his cheeks, not features that were dark blue with bruises or overly-swollen past recognition. His nose had healed and without crusted blood, cuts, and swelling, was quite narrow and was larger as he had grown, with a crook like a falcon; it still bore the breaks from the punches and cudgel swings.

  Yet the boy’s sweetness had not changed and it was a joy not to see sheer fear in his eyes when he looked at her.

  “And you are now wed to a great lord,” he said brightly.

  She wanted to groan ‘No!’ but remained silent. Lying to the boy was cruel, but she could not tell him the truth and put him in the path of trouble. Lies were always trouble, even if you were fairly skilled at the telling of them. This boy who stood in front of her had already lived through too much. She reached out to touch his brow, smiling. “You have straw in your hair.” She picked it off his tousled hair.

  “I tend the stable and animals there,” he said with excited pride, standing straight and taller, no longer cowering in fear and awaiting the next blow. He was a far cry from beaten, half-dead seven year old lad she had happened upon in the woods. “And Pater Bancho teaches me to read.”

  “So you are now here.” She remembered his young mother, the pale woman only a few years older than Glenna, thin and sobbing, with deep dark shadows under her eyes and who cried for her child while the sheriff, Munro the Horrible, beat him so cruelly. Glenna asked quietly, “What happened to your mother?”

  “She is dead. Three years now. Her lungs were weak. She did not live long past that summer, though we were safe in the high
forest at that time, and she was grateful to you for that. By Michelmas she could not sleep. She coughed all night. Soon, she brought me here. Pater Magoon could not save her.”

  “I am sorry, Ruari.”

  “She is better where she is now,” he said with far more maturity and acceptance than one would expect from a lad his age. “Horrible Munro would have not stopped until he found us.” He shrugged. “He believes we are dead. I am safe here.”

  The abbey bells rang again.

  He looked over his shoulder and back at her sheepishly. “I cannot stay. I gave my word to the prior I would not again miss prayer and reflection.”

  “Then run along with you, Ruari of Beauly,” Glenna said kindly, waving her hand as he turned and ran from the gardens, zigzagging on the paths and leaping over small bushes and a bed of pease, only to plop into a small puddle of water from the stormy days before. He disappeared around a corner and left her to believe the boy’s bright spirit and curiosity would make that promise to the prior difficult to keep.

  She turned to pick up her comb, when she heard Fergus barking from inside the stables and spun around. Was Fergus alone in there? “Ruari?” She called out to ask him, but he was gone. She put her comb in the purse with the precious red-leafed herb, pulled the strings closed and headed for the stable.

  * * *

  “God’s eyes, you worthless hound! Stay in the water!” Lyall leaned over the wooden half-barrel filled with water, penning the dog under him as he swept the bottom of the trough for the ball of soap he’d dropped.

  Fergus stuck his wet, sloppy head through Lyall’s arm, looked around curiously, wagged his long tail which sent water flying into Lyall’s eyes, and then started vigorously licking his ear. “Cease!” He laughed and pulled his head away. “You surely are good for little, dog. Stop licking my ears.” He grabbed the animal by the wet scruff on his neck and faced him eye to eye, almost nose to nose. “You remind me of one of the tourney whores.”

  “Woof!”

  “Aye.” He ruffled the dog’s ears and head. “That you do, hound. Stop your licking.” Lyall paused, thinking back. “What was her name? Hold still. Look you. I found the soap. Ah, yes. Deloys. Sweet she was…flamed-haired and freckled all over. She was the widowed sister of a mercenary from Flanders and famed from the Caledonia hills to coasts of Normandy for her long, wet tongue.”

  “Woof! Woof!”

  “Aye, that she was,” Lyall scrubbed the animal, which squirmed and fought him when he was silent. The unruly beast stood still if he talked to it. “So you like the sound of my voice, do you?” He paused. “Then to make this task simpler, I shall tell all, in great detail, the wondrous tales of my lusty dealings with Deloys of Lille.” And he began talking and scrubbing, pulling off mud clots and soaping the dog’s hide clean, and in time, his talk brought back to mind all the wild, mad, and sordid tales of his tourney youth.

  “…Then she got up from her knees, tied the drawstrings on my braies and held out my sword and belt. She said, ‘Be gone with you now Lyall Longsword,” he told the dog, using her name for him with no little pride. “The melee begins soon,’ she said. ‘You need to use your sword to fill your purse rather than fill me and mine.’”

  Lyall shook his head slightly. “She was a saucy wench. Robert of Ayr once said Deloys could suck your feet out of your boots.”

  There was a sudden creak and a soft thump as the stable door thudded slightly against the wall. He dropped the soap, sat back and looked toward the stable doors.

  Glenna was standing there, afternoon sunlight behind her, framing her in a bright glow and casting her face in dark, unreadable shadows.

  He felt his neck flush hot. “How long have you been standing there?”

  She was silent for a heartbeat or two and then she stepped into the light. “I just arrived. Why?”

  He shook his head.

  She walked toward them and her dog barked again and looked ready to jump out. “Stay!” she warned and the hound obeyed, its tail switched the air and spat water back and forth.

  Lyall soaped him again. “His coat was tangled with mud.”

  “Aye,” she said, staring at him oddly. “And now it looks as if you are wearing the mud.”

  Lyall looked down and saw he was soaked with stains of brown water. Flecks of hard mud were all over his undertunic. The cloth clung to his chest and his thick mat of chest hair showed clearly beneath the thin linen and arrowed down towards the drawstrings on his braies. He picked at cloth, but it stuck to his skin.

  She shoved up the sleeves of her gown and knelt down on the other side of the trough. “Hand me the soap. There is still mud on him here.”

  “The soap is in the bottom. I’ll get it.” He reached down but was too late to stop her. Already she had her hands in the water.

  “Here it is.” She held up the soap and began to clean the dog, humming as she rubbed the soap over his thick fur. Lyall sat back, resting his arms on his raised knees, which were soaked, too.

  She began to sing.

  The dog stood perfectly still, and Lyall, too, dared not move, so overwhelmed was he, as if he were caught by the pure, deathly-sweet sound of a siren. What magic came from her lips was honeyed and high, as fluid as the notes of a flute, mournful as a pipe, and lilting as a lute. She sang the most hauntingly en passant words:

  Bird on a briar, bird, bird on a briar

  Kind is come of love, love to crave

  Blithful bird, have pity on me,

  Or prepare me, beloved, for my grave

  I am so blithe, so bright bird on a briar

  When I see that beauty in the hall,

  She is white of limb, lovely, true

  She is fair, the flower of them all.

  Might I love her, by her will I will have her

  Steadfast of love, lovely and true

  Of my sorrow, she may save me

  Joy and bliss would be, ever new for me.

  The words seduced him, so true they were to how he wanted to feel--that she was his salvation not his damnation. All too quickly the song ended and she sang the impossible words no more, but continued to hum a bewitchingly captivating melody, flowing from her mouth like the wine from Saintonge, then she paused once, glancing at him over her hound, at ease, still humming, and she gave him the softest of smiles.

  The moment was almost more than a mortal man could take.

  Around campfires on nights before and after tourneys, there were stories told from knights who travelled the vast and wide, dry deserts of the East, where the battles fought were as much with the hot sun and terrain as with the Infidels. Some had seen with their own eyes men on horseback sink helplessly to their deaths into bottomless holes of sand. At that moment Lyall knew he was lost, and he averted his gaze, afraid of sinking into a place of sand from which he could never escape.

  But even staring at the wet straw on the ground, he could not cut the bond between them, the warring in his head, his grand wanting of her--the mere possibility of her, of the brightness and the light, of the promise of redemption. A sudden impulse overcame him to pull her into his arms and lose himself inside of her, but some small bit of conscience stopped him. He dared not take her, not now, not ever, certainly not after she found out his protection was a lie. He sought to be stronger than his drives and wants. He sought the strength of conscience to leave her be.

  “Montrose?”

  He looked up, startled.

  “Wake up,” she said, and threw a handful of soapy mud at him, laughing

  Again the sound made his senses jump. Water dripped from the tip of his nose and dropped down to the ground. He watched it, struck dumb. A second later the hound leapt from the trough sending water sloshing everywhere.

  “Fergus!” she shouted.

  Across from him Glenna sat with her arms out, staring down at her sodden gown, water dripping from her face and glistening in her long dark hair. Meanwhile, the dog eagerly shook himself dry from head to tail several times, and began shaki
ng his legs out as he walked in circles, spreading the water to and fro and sprinkling both them. They sat there, both soaked, squinting a bit because they were still getting pattered by water. Each one looked at the other for enough time to see their situation, and they began to laugh freely and then lapsed into an awkward moment of silence, both still grinning.

  She lifted her chin. “I’m not as wet as you,” she said to him in that imperious way she had, which made him laugh harder.

  “Is that a challenge?” he asked.

  “Only if you care to make it one,” she said without fear.

  He stood then, lifted the half full trough and pinned her with a direct and determined look. She stood her own, until he was too close for her comfort and she laughed and scrambled backwards, holding out her hand. “Nay! Montrose, you do not dare!”

  That she would not be intimidated showed her will and strength and stubbornness, qualities he respected in men and in his sister, and he would do no less with Glenna. Still smiling, he turned on his heel toward the backside of the stables where there was the waste channel he had used earlier. After emptying the contents, he put the trough back by the hayforks, rakes, and groom’s tools.

  “Come here, you wretched beast.” Glenna was on her knees in the straw, with her comb in hand and half tugging the hound back into a sitting position. “Be still, you. Your fur is all tangled and all your wiggling about will break my comb.”

  He grabbed a milking stool and a wad of greasy fleece hanging nearby and joined her. “Here. Sit.” He set down the stool for her. “Wait before you comb him. Let me rub him down with this. The grease in the wool will make the combing easier.” He knelt down and vigorously rubbed the fleece over the hound’s fur and stepped back. “That should help.”

  She pulled the comb through easily and looked up at him, clearly surprised.

  “My father hired knights from the northern regions. When I was a lad, his sergeant-at- arms showed me how he lined his sheath with raw wool. The grease in the fleece helped to keep his sword protected and made it easier to hone. His woman rubbed a small piece of fleece in her hair to remove the tangles. My mother and sister still do the same.” He leaned back against one of the stalls, crossing his feet at the ankles and resting his shoulder against a rough-hewn post, lost in his thoughts of another time and place, another dog. He chose not to tell her how he had rubbed Atholl down many times after bathing him, but her hound had brought back the images, as had watching her comb her hair brought back another memory.