by Julia Latham
Adam looked down at the gash in his tunic. “I barely felt it,” he said. “I will help Robert and Michael hide the bodies, and then—”
“Nay, you will not,” Robert said sternly. “We’re near the fens, and surely it will be easy to weigh down two bodies and have them sink. You let Florrie see to your wound. We’ll return quickly, and then we can depart.”
Annoyed, Adam watched Robert and Michael put the bodies across a horse, then ride away, disappearing into a path between trees.
Florrie was already picking at his tunic where it stuck to him. “You need to remove this.”
“Not right in the open. We’ll ride to the trees.”
Only when they were sheltered from prying eyes, did Adam reluctantly remove his tunic.
“I do not have many garments,” he said in disgust, as he saw the tattered, bloodstained slit.
“I will mend them,” she said distractedly. “Now remove the shirt.”
He was tempted to tease her about such an order, but her expression was so full of concern and determination—and guilt.
He took her arm, made her look at him. “Florrie? What causes you such pain?”
Her eyes welled up. “Is it my fault they found us, Adam? I insisted on going to the inn.”
“Nay, do not fear, my lady,” he murmured. “We already suspected we were followed. The inn might have given us one more day free of attack. I fault myself, for not realizing they would so boldly attack by day. I could have cost those good people their lives.”
“You did not know!” she protested.
He caught her face in his hands. “Neither of us could know. Do you understand?”
They stared at each other for a moment, and at last she nodded. “Very well, then. Remove your shirt.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line to keep from teasing her. When the shirt was gone, she made him hold his arm up so she could better see the wound. It spanned across his ribs, front to back.
“The blade skittered across bone,” she said, shaking her head. “One inch higher or lower…Tell me, do you have herbs with you, perhaps yarrow?”
He shook his head.
“We could find the nearest monastery and purchase some,” she said with hope.
“Nay, we are not alerting anyone else to our presence. We will wash the wound and bind it. I’ll tear up the remains of the shirt for bandages.”
After he’d made strips of cloth for her, he laid back on the blanket she’d spread for him. She soaked several in wine and began to dab at his flesh. Her fingers were cool and gentle, and she worked over him with a faint furrow in her brow. She was born to nurture others, but it made him almost uncomfortable, as if he were a child.
Or was it that he could see her caring for a child? The child she’d never have?
Robert and Michael returned during her ministrations, and Robert gave him a smirk. At least his brother resisted teasing him right in front of Florrie.
“The blood yet flows,” she finally said, looking up at him with concern. “Binding it might not—”
“Then burn it,” he said.
Florrie inhaled sharply, her mind suddenly full of images of Adam’s charred flesh. How could he bear the pain? Then she remembered the other wounds upon his body—the wounds upon his soul. He’d borne terrible pain his entire life, more than she could imagine.
And yet he was going to add more pain to his soul by trying to kill her father. She was trying so hard to lighten his life, to make him happy. Yet always his ultimate goal never left his thoughts.
Without speaking, Michael built a fire.
A grim Robert set out their meal of dried apples and cheese. “I’ll see if I can snare a rabbit,” he said. “Food will help heal you.”
Adam only nodded, expressionless, as he stared at the fire. Florrie followed his gaze and saw Michael put a dagger into the flames.
She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She had performed this very technique herself; what made this different? Perhaps because Adam wouldn’t have been wounded at all if he hadn’t been trying to save her life—again.
Michael came forward, and under the gloom of the trees, the dagger seemed to glow in his hand. Florrie stayed at Adam’s side, and when she tried to take his hand, he gave her a strange look.
“I—I want to be of help,” she said, feeling that it was a lame excuse. But she had to do something.
“I might grip you too hard,” he said, refusing her touch. Then he looked at Michael. “Do it quickly.”
With precision born of practice, Michael laid one side of the dagger along half the wound, and Adam stiffened, throwing back his head. He made no sound. Florrie only heard her own tortured gasps. Michael laid the other side of the dagger on the rest of the wound, and it was done.
The flesh was charred, and the bleeding had stopped. Adam breathed deeply through his nose, eyes closed. His rib cage expanded and contracted powerfully. Florrie wanted to gape at him, to twist her fingers, to beg him to say that he was well. Instead she used the wine-soaked linen once more on the wound, and flinched when he flinched.
“I wish we had a salve to protect it,” she said, shaking her head. After covering the injury with linen, she wound several strips around his waist to hold it in place. “You need to rest now.”
To her shock, he sat up, then got to his feet. He didn’t even stagger, although his jaw was obviously clenched.
“Nay, we must go,” he said through his teeth. “Will you bring me another shirt, Florrie?”
“But…Robert is bringing you a rabbit. We need to cook it, and you need to eat it.”
Michael put up a hand. “We can spare an hour. We are hidden in the trees. If the villains return, they’ll assume we fled.”
Adam obviously wanted to disagree, but Michael was already ignoring him, beginning to build a wooden spit for the rabbit. While Florrie helped him into another shirt, Robert returned with the promised meal. During the time it baked, little was said, and Florrie found herself glancing repeatedly at Adam.
He looked at her at last, and gave a tight smile. “Aye, my lady, it hurts, but I will survive.”
She rolled her eyes melodramatically, hoping to amuse him. But inside she couldn’t help her worry. She needed her healing herbs, and felt panicked that she’d had none for a poultice to draw out the bad humors.
“Should we…wait until the morn to leave?” she asked, looking up at the darkening sky, and the faint pink streaking out from the setting sun.
“We’ll go south for several hours tonight,” Adam said. “There are no clouds to block the full moon.”
When no one protested, Florrie stifled her own worry. The roads they’d been journeying on were terrible, and they did not improve. After only a few hours traveling by moonlight, Michael’s horse stepped in a marshy hole and broke its leg. They had to kill the poor animal, leaving them with only three horses. As they made camp, Florrie tried not to watch Adam with too much worry, praying he would not be unable to go on, like the horse. Once more they slept entwined, and he fell asleep immediately, which she was thankful for. He needed to heal.
She herself found it difficult to relax at first. The worry she was feeling was new to her; she was usually so good at taking things as they happened, not creating new fears in her own mind. But for so long she’d thought of Adam as invincible, a man trained to do fantastic feats.
But he was human, and a sword could bring him down. Once again, she reminded herself that they were using each other for specific purposes, that when this was over, they would separate. She couldn’t care too much, couldn’t need him this much.
When Florrie awoke in Adam’s arms, she felt the deep dread of something wrong. She lay still, trying to sort through her confusion; and then she realized that Adam felt too warm to her.
Instead of healing, his wound was becoming inflamed, and his body with it.
Sitting up, she rolled him onto his back and tried to pull his tunic up, but it was held in place by his hips.
Groggily, he opened his eyes. “Florrie, what is amiss?” Then he gave a crooked grin. “My charms have at last succeeded in captivating you.”
Robert came up on his elbow to blink and stare. Michael was gone, keeping his turn at the watch.
Florrie smiled at Adam as naturally as possible. “I need to see your wound.”
He grimaced. “Cannot a man rise to face the morn first?”
She shook her head and tugged on his tunic. Sighing, he lifted his hips, and she was able to slide up his tunic, as well as his shirt. As she suspected, the bandage appeared crusted with unhealthy pus.
Adam was looking at her face. “Not so good, I believe.”
Smiling, she put a hand on his forehead. “How do you feel?”
He shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. “Wounded. It will pass.”
“Not without medicine, it will not,” she said.
“Florrie, I already told you—”
“You are fevered now, are you not? That means the wound is inflamed. We must find a healer.”
“Nay.” He sat up, pulling down his garments. “’Twould be too dangerous, and not just for us. I have harmed enough innocents.”
“And saved them, too,” she said crossly. “Lie back down, so I can change the dressing.”
To her surprise, he reluctantly did so without further comment.
But when they were riding south, skirting near the reeds of the low, damp fens, mud sucking at the horses’ hooves, Florrie could feel that he was not holding her weight across his lap so easily. She convinced him to allow her to ride astride, with him behind her, and it was a mark of his illness that he did not fight too strenuously. They left the fens behind at last, and the countryside had more woodlands and meadows and farm fields. By midday he was slumped against her, heat shimmering between them, dampening her back. She called a halt at the edge of a stand of trees.
Adam lifted his head. “What is it? Is someone following us?”
She looked at Robert, whose usually cheerful face was now shadowed with concern.
“Adam—” Robert bit off his words.
“I am fine,” Adam said. He tried to dismount, and almost missed the stirrup, gripping the saddle hard to help him down.
Before Florrie could dismount, he took the horse’s reins and led them deeper into the woods. At least he was still in his right mind.
But perhaps not for long.
When Robert and then Michael joined them, Adam was already kneeling by a stream, drinking water from his cupped hands, then splashing his face.
She looked at the other two men. “He needs rest and medicine. This infection will only worsen.”
Robert hesitated, watching as Adam waved a hand dismissively.
“Feel his fever!” she cried at last.
Robert narrowed his eyes but did so, inhaling swiftly. “Adam, she is right, you are truly ill.”
Adam only laughed, leaning back against a tree stump to look up at her. “Florrie, what happened to all of your optimism? ’Tis what I admire most about you.”
“One can be an optimist without being a fool,” she said. “I am not a fool. You must listen to me, Adam, or your future plans will dissolve into ash.”
“’Tis too dangerous to involve anyone else,” he said, his voice sounding tired.
“So you’ve said,” she replied, “but I have been thinking. The castle of my sister Christina’s husband is north of London. Surely we cannot be too far. She might be persuaded to give us aid and comfort. And of the men following us, who would ever think you would take me, your captive, to the home of my own sister? This is the perfect place to hide and heal.”
“Nay, we will not risk it,” Adam said. He started to get up, then collapsed back on his butt, frowning.
Florrie stared at Robert, who at last sighed. “Do you think you can persuade your sister to help us?”
Before Florrie could speak, Adam angrily said, “Robert—”
“Nay, you are no longer in charge, big brother,” Robert said. “Until you’re well, I am in command, as you trained me to be.”
Adam blinked at him, but said nothing.
“And we will attempt Florrie’s plan,” Robert finished.
She suddenly felt nervous, responsible for what she’d proposed. She looked at Michael. “I know not where it is. Her husband is the earl of Standon, in Hertfordshire.”
“Ah,” Michael said, looking to the south. “With enough time to rest the horses, we could reach her by midafternoon on the morrow.”
“Do you see?” Florrie said with excitement. “This will be perfect.”
“’Twill be dangerous,” Robert said before Adam could speak. “The roads are far more crowded now that we’re near London. And how can you know that your sister will help us? You have not spoken with flattery of your family.”
“She is the sister nearest to me in age,” Florrie said. “Of all of my family, I trust her the most.”
Chapter 16
They traveled as much as possible through the outskirts of forests as they sojourned through Cambridgeshire. Florrie understood the danger; she could see how much more populous this county was. Michael had told her that Ermine Street was only a league away in the west, and the large town of Cambridge a league away in the east.
She glanced again at Adam, now riding against his brother’s back. He slept, but his face grimaced with his dreams. The dread in her stomach grew tighter.
Robert smiled at her. “He has been injured before, Florrie.”
“But not because of me,” she said darkly. “This whole journey is the fault of my family.”
“He made his own decisions. He knew the risks associated with kidnapping you. Do not forget, he put you in danger as well. And you’re an innocent in all of this.”
“And are you saying you blame him?” she said in a stunned voice.
“Nay, how can I?”
Robert glanced over his shoulder at his brother. There was a fondness there, a love that Florrie had never seen in her own family. A cold feeling of worry swept through her at the thought of begging her sister Christina for a dangerous boon on the morrow.
“He is my brother, Florrie,” Robert continued. “He is doing what he thinks best to restore our family’s name and position. Our parents were unjustly murdered, and he needs the truth to come out.”
“Would you do the same in his position, challenge my father to a combat to the death?”
Robert’s hesitation said it all. But at last he spoke. “I am not the eldest, with the weight of this on my shoulders. ’Tis a burden to him, but one he bears without regret. I do not always understand him, but I can admire his determination.”
She nodded and looked forward again, across more endless pasturelands where cattle roamed. She thought again of Robert calling her an “innocent.” How could she be innocent, when she knew why her father had committed such unspeakable crimes? She was so afraid to confess the truth, for she couldn’t know who would be hurt the worst.
She glanced again at Adam, her gaze lingering in warmth and fear. She had begun this journey in terror, then in anticipation of an adventure. Now it was full of danger and confusion. She would not be the same when it was over.
They rode through part of the night, then the next morning, but it was slower going with only three horses. Michael and Robert took turns bearing Adam’s weight, and Florrie saw to his comfort whenever they stopped. At first, he was alert often, grouchy with having to be coddled, but resigned to being her patient. But the closer they were to Christina’s home, and the more ill he became, weakness overtook him. By late morning, it had begun to rain, and the men had to take turns tying him onto their backs. Never in her life had Florrie felt so ill with concern, her fear making her glance at Adam at Robert’s back again and again.
The hood of her cloak hung wetly on her cheeks, but she’d stopped trying to push it out of the way. At last, she said, “Talk to me, Robert, or my thoughts will drive me mad.”
“I do that to
women,” he said, nodding in resignation.
She groaned.
He laughed. “Of what would you have me speak?”
Her eyes touched Adam again, yet she hesitated. How transparent was she to Robert, with all her focus on his brother? But why fight her inevitable curiosity?
“He told me how the three of you grew up,” she said slowly. “It must have been very difficult.”
“’Twas all I knew, and for a boy, it was exciting. And I had Adam.”
“He is only two years older than you!”
“Perhaps it was only our temperaments that made it seem like so much more.” Robert grinned. “He was the serious, studious, focused brother. Paul was much like him, especially when we were younger. But I…I did not feel the same goals in life that Adam did.”
“Yet you’re here with him.”
“Not at his request,” Robert said dryly. “But I do have my honor, and I could not let him do this alone.”
“You love him.”
“Men do not like to talk of such things, Florrie,” he teased. “But aye, how could one not love someone who puts your welfare before all else? Even when he was a young boy, he understood his role as the eldest. No adult had to tell us to go to bed at an appropriate hour, not when Adam was around. My favorite part of the day was training at the tiltyard, but Adam made sure I saw to my studies as well.”
“It sounds as if ’twould be easy to resent him.”
“Only on occasion. He never made one feel bullied or inferior. I knew he only wanted what was best for me.” His amusement faded. “Just as I knew the terrible things haunting him, the images that made him as driven as he was.
She said nothing, feeling sick.
Robert wasn’t looking at her. “He saw their lifeless bodies, and it never left him. I remember him screaming with nightmares, but in the end, he was the one who comforted me.”
She could not imagine having such a sibling to count on. She had never been close to her sisters, who treated her more as a servant than a friend.
“I…I hope that time and separation have helped bridge my relationship to Christina,” she said. “I always thought that once they lived away from home, my sisters would understand that we shared a bond that shouldn’t be dismissed.”
