by Speer, Flora
Hugo, poor devil, had never known the part of Danise that Michel knew – not the passion or the sweet, tender womanliness, nor, surely, the determined female protecting her right to think as she wanted to think. Hugo had known only the innocent young girl. Why, then, should Bradford Michael Bailey find Danise’s belief about Hugo threatening when she had told him over and over again that she loved him, and only him?
Because he was an arrogant idiot, who didn’t deserve her love. He vowed that he would find a way to make it up to her for all the rotten things he had said to her, because he knew after the last terrifying week that nothing in the eighth century or the twentieth, or in any other time, was worth the losing of her love. No, not even his damned pride was worth such a loss.
Traveling slowly because of the cart with the coffins, from Paderborn southwestward to Deutz Michel and the escort sent by Guntram plodded along through forests, across rivers and streams until, finally, they found themselves within sight of the Rhine.
When they arrived at Deutz itself, the sentries upon the walls challenged them but did not delay their entry. On hearing who they were, one of the sentries called down to his cohorts within and immediately the main gate swung open. Michel and his men rode into the courtyard, there to be welcomed by Savarec’s lieutenant in charge, Hubert, who had ordered the men-at-arms drawn up into two rows on either side of the entrance as a tribute to their fallen commander. Between these rows of men the cart with the coffins slowly rolled.
Danise came through the door of the main garrison building just as Michel finished speaking to Hubert. Seeing her sad-faced and solemn, looking from him to the two coffins in the baggage cart, Michel knew she would not have to be told that he had brought her father home to her.
She did not weep or wail. She stood quietly, drooping a little, hands loose at her sides, not moving until Michel approached her. Then, all the anger between them swept away by tragedy, she went into his arms without a word, so he could hold and comfort her. She stayed silent in his embrace until men came to take the coffins off the cart.
“Let me see my father,” she pleaded, “and Redmond, too. If I am to say a last farewell to them, I must see what has happened to them.”
“You can’t.” Michel held her more tightly, feeling the quivering of her smaller frame against his strength. He knew that a gentle kind of cruelty was necessary against her, to prevent a worse cruelty if she should see the wounds that had caused the deaths of father and of friend. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to see them immediately after they died, let alone now, when their bodies have been carted across Francia for more than a week in damp summer weather.”
He felt her revulsion then, felt her retching in his arms, and though he had made his point and no longer feared she would insist on viewing what she ought not to see – what he could never forget no matter how long he lived – still, her reaction to what he had said made the wounds in his own heart even deeper. He asked only a few brief questions of her as to how and where she wanted her father buried, before he handed her over to the weeping Clothilde.
“I am going to make the arrangements,” he said. “We will do as you want and bury Savarec first thing tomorrow, and have prayers said for Redmond at the same time. Redmond’s body is to be sent on to his own home for burial. Guntram suggested I notify the governor of Koln, who is a distant cousin of Redmond’s, and let him decide what to do about sending the coffin on from there. I will take care of everything, Danise. When I finish, I’ll join you and tell you anything you want to know. For now, go with Clothilde.”
* * *
“I have put food and wine in your room.” Clothilde met Michel at the chamber door. “Please coax Danise to eat. She has barely swallowed a crumb since the first news came of Savarec’s death.”
“I’ll do what I can. Thanks, Clothilde.” It was difficult to smile. Michel feared he had probably only twisted his face into an unpleasant grimace. Clothilde did not appear to notice.
“You look as if you have not eaten recently, either,” she said. She touched his wounded forearm. “I left clean bandages on the table next to the food. If you are wise, you will ask Danise to change the linen on that wound. Oh, and there’s hot water for washing, too.”
When Michel put his hand on the door latch, Clothilde stopped him.
“What word of Guntram?” she asked. “Is he well? Was he wounded, too? Why did he not return with you?”
“He took only a minor wound on one cheek,” Michel said. “He claims his beard will hide it when it heals.”
“Where is he now?”
“Somewhere in the eastern forests, trying to track down Autichar.”
“If anyone can find that traitor, Guntram can. I will pray for his safety. Thank you for telling me, Michel. Guntram is a valued friend. I feared he might have died with Savarec.”
“If he had, I’d have brought him home with the others.”
Clothilde nodded, looking at the bedroom door.
“Danise needs your love,” she said, and went quietly away.
He found Danise sitting on the side of the bed with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes lowered. In her undyed woolen gown, with her pale hair bound into a single braid hanging down her back, she appeared to be no more than a wraith who might vanish at any moment. She did not move when Michel entered the room. He did not know what to say to her, so he spared her only a glance before he began to remove his clothing.
“I can leave, if you would prefer to be alone,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.
“The one thing I do not want is for you to leave me,” he said. When she looked upward, he saw the frightened, wary emotion in her eyes and decided to defuse the situation as much as he could. “I will need help bathing, and I can’t put on a new bandage by myself. Will you help me?”
“Of course.” There was no change in her voice or her manner. Michel had the impression that she was not really with him, that her thoughts were far away.
Clothilde had left a wooden tub along with a pitcher and two buckets full of hot water. After soaping himself using part of the hot water, Michel climbed into the tub and crouched down so Danise could rinse him with the remaining hot water. Draped in a linen towel he then sat on the bed and let her unwind the old bandage.
“It doesn’t look too bad, does it?” Michel regarded his wound as if his forearm and the red slash on it belonged to someone else. “I thought it would become infected, but it hasn’t.”
“Wounds that bleed heavily often clean themselves.” Using cool water mixed with wine Danise washed the wound before wrapping it in a strip of clean linen.
“I’m hungry,” he said when she was finished. “Let’s eat.”
“I’ll wait until later, but I will be pleased to serve you.”
“No, you won’t.” He caught her lightly by the wrist. “Clothilde tells me you haven’t been eating. I am going to feed you.”
“Please don’t.”
This was not the Danise he knew. This quiet, withdrawn creature bore little resemblance to her former vital, sparkling self. Now that he looked at her more closely Michel could see that Clothilde was right. Danise looked as if she had not eaten a decent meal since the day when he and her father had ridden away from Deutz. She had attempted to do something similar after escaping from Autichar. When she was afraid or worried, or grieving as she was doing now, Danise stopped eating. Michel scooped her off her feet and into his arms, the linen towel dropping away from his waist when he moved.
“You see? My wound is as good as healed already.”
She did not respond to his light tone. In fact, when he laid her down on their bed she flinched away from him. It dawned on him that she might imagine he was going to force himself on her. She probably thought immediate sex was what a man would want when he had been away from his wife for several weeks. To show her he had other things on his mind he left her on the bed while he searched through his clothing chest for a fresh linen undershirt and a lightweight woolen tunic. Once he was decent
ly clad he took up the tray of food and carried it to the bed.
“Move over,” he said. “Scrunch up against the wall so I have some room to put this thing down. Now, what has Clothilde left for us under this linen cloth?”
“Cold chicken,” Danise said without enthusiasm. “Bread and some of the cheese you like. Plums.”
“Cut a slice of cheese for me, will you? And a slice for yourself. I’ll pour the wine.”
He sat on the outer side of the bed, positioning himself and the tray so that if she wanted to get away from him she would have to spill both food and wine. He ate the cheese she gave him, but when she offered a second slice he shook his head.
“Not until you’ve eaten a piece,” he said. “I’m half starving, but I won’t eat until you
do. That chicken looks delicious. My mouth is watering.” Sipping at his wine he watched her reaction. She stared at the food on the tray, then looked up at him.
“Truly, I am not hungry,” she said.
“Truly, you are going to eat,” he countered. “For myself, I am aching to sink my teeth into that chicken, but I can’t until you have a piece first.”
“Don’t talk to me in that way.” Her voice remained oddly lifeless and unlike his Danise, but there was a momentary flash of spirit in her eyes. “I am not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one. Eat, Danise.”
Slowly she stretched out her hand to pick up the knife and carve a slice off the breast of the chicken. She nibbled at the edge of the meat she held.
“Eat all of it. Chew it and swallow it down. Then drink some wine.” He kept his eyes on her until she did as he ordered. “That’s better. I’ve seen too many people die recently. I don’t want to add you to the tally.”
“Would it really matter to you?” Her voice was still low, but it had a bit more life to it. Her eyes were on the tray of food rather than on his face.
“It would kill me. Here, have some cheese.”
“You haven’t said -”
“I haven’t said a lot of things,” he interrupted, pushing the slice of cheese between her open lips. He refilled her wine cup and handed it to her. “We’ll eat and drink first, then we’ll talk.” Slowly, bit by piece by sip, he convinced her to eat what he considered to be a small meal. It was not as much food and drink as he would have liked her to consume, but it was a start. When they were both finished, he set the tray aside and sat back against the headrails of the bed, resting his head on the wall behind it, stretching out his legs. Danise curled up in the corner next to him.
“Tell me about my father’s death,” she said. “And about Redmond’s, too.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I need to know, and the telling may help you.” There was a little color in her pale face now, and she didn’t look quite so much like a lost and lonely ghost.
“Perhaps you’re right.” He decided he would give her just the outline of events, but when he began to talk it all spilled out, every gory detail. She listened, wincing now and then until he had told her all about the days of searching through the forest until they found the village where the leaders of the Saxon bands that had been causing so much trouble were gathered, and how they had surprised and done battle with the Saxons. She did not weep, not even when he described Redmond’s brave death and her father’s end.
“Thank you,” she said when he was finished.
“There is more I want to tell you, but it’s not about tracking Saxons or fighting them, it’s about me. Danise, I know I have treated you badly. Can you forgive me? Can we try to get back some of the feeling we’ve lost? You have no idea how much your love means to me.”
She presented him with the same wary, troubled gaze with which she had regarded him on his entry into their bedchamber.
“If you wish to couple now,” she said after a few tense minutes, “of course I am amenable. It is my duty, after all.”
“That’s not what I meant. Danise, I love you with all my heart and soul, and making love with you is part of it. However, at this moment I am so damned tired I’m not sure I could manage it. What I want is just what I said, for you to forgive me. I also want to tell you something about myself that I never tell anyone. It’s not meant as an excuse for my despicable behavior toward you, but it may help you to understand why I acted the way I did. Now, I know you are worn-out, too. You’ve had a rough time of it in the last couple of months, and probably just about all you can take of emotional stress, so if you want me to shut up until later when you feel better, or if you want me to keep quiet altogether, just say so.” He deliberately sprinkled this speech with words she would have to translate into Frankish. She usually smiled when he did this and he knew she enjoyed exercising her intelligence to make sense of what he was saying. He wasn’t sure the gambit would work this time, until her expression lightened and he thought he detected a momentary flash of humor in the gray-green depths of her eyes.
“I will listen, Michel. Say what you want.”
“All right,” he said, wishing he could put his arms around her and draw her head down onto his chest, so he could make his promised explanation without having her eyes on his face with such burning intensity.
“You know I was divorced from my first wife,” he began.
“Yes, you told me. It was good of you to be so honest about a part of your previous life that can have no meaning here in Francia.”
“Well, that’s just it. My divorce still has meaning for me. That’s why I’ve never talked about it, not in either century.” He stopped, thinking how to say what had to be told. Deciding it was wisest just to state the facts, he continued. “She cheated on me. I walked in on her one day and found her in bed with someone else. Then, later, I learned she had been involved with several other men as well as the one I caught her with.”
“You divorced her because she committed adultery? Michel, I am sorry.”
“In the twentieth century, you don’t go into court and shout ‘adultery,’” Michel said. “We call it ‘irreconcilable differences.’ “
“Whatever you called it, it was still a dreadful wrong against you.” She put out her hand to touch his with ready sympathy. Michel caught her fingers, to hold on to them while he made the rest of his explanation. Somehow, the warmth of her hand in his made the telling easier.
“What mattered to me was not just the physical act that she had committed with other men, though that was bad enough,” he said. “It was the breaking of the bond of trust between husband and wife that destroyed everything I had ever felt for her. After the divorce, I swore I’d never trust another woman. But when I first came here to Francia, I didn’t know who I was or anything about my past, so I neglected to put up all those defensive barriers I had been using to keep myself from being hurt again. By the time I regained my memory, I was so deep in love with you that my sordid marriage was irrelevant.”
“You knew you loved me even then? So quickly?” He could not tell what she was feeling, he could only look into her soft eyes and marvel that they were together in the same room and that she was still listening to him.
“There’s something else I have to confess,” he said. “From the very beginning you were special to me. It was as though we belonged together, but I couldn’t figure out why.”
“Ah.” A faint smile trembled at the corners of her mouth.
“Don’t get all excited,” he continued. “I know what you’re thinking, but I have been taught to disregard the supernatural in favor of a scientific explanation. I put my peculiar feelings down to a confused state of mind.”
“What nonsense,” she said. “What foolishness, not to accept that there is more to life than what you can see or hear or hold in your hands.”
“Can you understand now why I reacted so badly when you told me that you thought I was at least a partial reincarnation of Hugo? I felt as if I had been betrayed by a woman for a second time, as though it was Hugo you were loving and wanting instead of me. I guess you could say I saw it
as a kind of cosmic adultery. And then you refused to back down in what you believed, and I just got more and more angry and more and more hurt because I thought you didn’t love me anymore – or that you had never loved me at all. That last night when we were together, all I could think about was how to make you forget Hugo, how to make you love me and not him. I was trying to force you to love me. I did that to you, knowing full well that love can’t be forced. It must be freely given.”
“What I understand from this explanation,” she said, “is that while Hugo’s ghost has been in my mind and heart, your adulterous wife has been in yours.”
“Can ghosts be exorcised?” he asked.
“Devils are exorcised,” she told him with great seriousness. “Ghosts must be laid to rest, gently and with love, by fulfilling what they have left undone in this world. Hugo has been laid to rest because I love you, and in you, whatever remains of him. I do not understand this, I only accept it. As Alcuin would say, it is beyond human comprehension.”
“I can’t think of a single thing my ex-wife left undone in this world,” he said. “But I think I know what you mean. She’s in my past, and that relationship is over and finished because I love you now. She doesn’t haunt me anymore, not after the last few weeks.”
“I love you,” Danise said. “I will never betray you.”
“I know. I think I’ve always known it, in my heart. It’s my brain and my overactive ego that foul things up from time to time.”
“From time to time,” she repeated, smiling more openly.
“Come here.” He slid down in the bed until his head was resting on the pillow. He pulled her down beside him where he had wanted her all along, with her head on his shoulder and his arms around her. “It doesn’t matter what you believe about this mystery, Danise. You can think I’m Hugo, or Attila the Hun, or Santa Claus, just as long as you love me. Believe what you want. Who am I to say what’s truth and what’s falsehood or even just imagination? All that really matters is that we love each other, in this or any life. Danise? Danise?” When he lifted his head so he could see her face, he realized that she was fast asleep and probably had not heard his last, impassioned words. He brushed his lips across her forehead before settling back against the pillow. Within moments his own eyes closed and he, too, fell asleep.
