High Warrior

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Suddenly, Eiselle remembered the talisman that was still around her neck and she quickly pulled it off. Leaning over Bric’s supine form, she put her hand on his chest, up near his neck, pressing the talisman against his clammy flesh.

  “It’s your talisman,” she murmured. “You said you would return for it, and I have kept it safe. Remember that it has kept generations of warriors safe and now… now its magic will help you heal, Bric. I know it will.”

  He didn’t respond to her. In truth, she hadn’t expected him to. As she watched him breathe, heavily and laboriously, it was increasingly clear just how ill he was. When she put her hand on his forehead, she could feel the fever in him. It hurt to see him like this, but rather than break down about it, she was determined to play an active role in his healing. She wanted to know how the old surgeon planned to help him, and she turned to the man, who was over near the hearth.

  “Now that you have cleaned the wound, what do you intend to do for him?” she asked. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  The surgeon had an iron pot over the hearth, nestled down in the coals as he brewed something that smelled as rotten as the men out in the great hall.

  “There is nothing to do now but wait,” he said. “But if he awakens, I have a potion for him to drink. The knights from Richard’s crusade brought it back from The Holy Land. Some call it Rotten Tea, but it heals miraculously where other medicaments will not.”

  Eiselle wasn’t so sure she liked the thought of the man giving Bric a mysterious potion from lands across the sea. Dubious, glanced up at Dashiell.

  “Have you heard of this before?” she asked.

  Dashiell nodded. “I have,” he said. “Bread is put in warm water until a growth appears. When it turns bright blue, it is steeped with water to become a tea. It is something the men learned from the alchemists in The Holy Land, and I have heard that it is a great cure. It has been known to perform miracles.”

  Over next to the hearth, Manducor spoke up. “I have heard of this also,” he said. “Its use is spreading because it attacks poison that men can die from.”

  Two men had confirmed the use of the foul-smelling brew, so Eiselle wasn’t dubious any longer. In fact, she was encouraged. “And this will cure his fever?” she asked Weetley, just to make sure.

  The old man nodded. “If we can get him to drink it. But he must ingest it for it to have any effect.”

  Eiselle turned her focus back to Bric, who had stopped twitching and now simply lay still and quiet. Even his breathing had quieted down. She wasn’t so sure that was a good thing, but she didn’t say so. These men around her knew so much more than she did about wounds and injuries, and she didn’t want to sound foolish by asking questions about every little thing.

  It was time for her to show a little patience and trust.

  Taking the hand that held the talisman, she moved to hold Bric’s hand, sandwiching the talisman between her hand and his. She looked down at his hand; it was big and bloodied, the knuckles raw. It reminded her of the battle that may or may not have cost him his life. Surely, he must have been so magnificent in it. She began to caress his hand, thinking of the warrior that all men feared, a warrior now hovering on Death’s door.

  “Will you tell me about the battle?” she asked, to no one in particular. “Tell me how great he was so I know that this wound was not in vain. Tell me that he made a difference before his time was cut short.”

  Dashiell could hear both sorrow and pride in her voice, a question asked by a woman who was trying to know her husband in a way that other men did. It was possible that she would never get to know him better than she already did, so he found it a rather sad query.

  Begging to know a man she might very well lose.

  “You have married a great warrior, Selly,” he said softly. “You have never seen anything like Bric MacRohan in battle; he fights with a confidence and skill that can only be heaven-sent. It is like watching Michael the Archangel, fighting against men who have no chance against him. I did not spend much time in battle with him, but Pearce and Mylo did. They can tell you more than I.”

  Hearing their names, Pearce and Mylo perked up. Mylo looked at Pearce because he was the one who had spent more time with Bric. It was also Pearce who had been with Bric when he’d been struck down, and there was a huge amount of guilt as a result.

  The man had been wrestling with his guilt since it had happened, and it was something that grew worse by the hour. Bric himself had assured him that it had not been his fault, nor was he blameworthy, but Pearce still felt as if he could have done something… should have done something… to prevent Bric’s injury.

  He felt like a failure and, now, he had to face Bric’s wife with what he’d done.

  He felt sick.

  “Lady MacRohan,” Pearce said, scratching his forehead in an exhausted gesture, “I have been fighting with Bric for several years. I have never known a man who fights better from one battle to the next. And by that, I mean that his skill and his talents seem to grow sharper and bolder. Our army was to hold the line against the French, who wanted very badly to lay siege to Holdingham Castle. The battle started with the archers, but when the French ran low on ammunition, the hand-to-hand combat started. Bric rushed through the French lines, cutting off heads and arms and… forgive me, my lady. That was probably more than you wanted to hear.”

  Eiselle looked up at him, seeing that he looked rather mortified, as if he’d told her something that was too much for her delicate ears. But Eiselle smiled at him, letting him know that she wasn’t offended.

  “It is of no matter,” she assured him. “I asked you to tell me what you know of him, through your eyes. What you see is a great warrior. What I see is the kind and lovely man that I married. I find it remarkable that we are speaking of the same man.”

  Pearce grinned at her, lopsided, looking at Mylo, who also snorted. “We do not think of him as kind and lovely,” Pearce said. “Neither do the French.”

  Eiselle laughed softly, an unexpected moment of humor in the midst of a dreadful situation. After that, she looked at Bric rather adoringly.

  “That is what I see in him,” she said quietly, gazing upon his pale face. “Mayhap I am the only one.”

  Dashiell put a hand on her shoulder. “You should be the only one to see that,” he said. Then, he patted her shoulder and dropped his hand. “Are you comfortable enough that we may leave and find something to eat? We shan’t be gone long. Just long enough to find something to eat and check on the wounded.”

  Eiselle nodded. “I will not leave him,” she said. “Take what time you need. I will be here.”

  Dashiell looked at Pearce and Mylo as he jerked his head in the direction of the chamber door, inviting the men to leave. He suspected Eiselle wanted some time alone with Bric. As the knights filed out, Manducor went to the opposite side of the bed again, passing a critical eye over Bric as the man lay there and sweated.

  “He seems quiet now,” he said. “We must be ready to administer the tea the moment he awakens.”

  Eiselle continued to hold his hand, her focus on his face. But after a moment, it trailed down his torso to the stained bandages. It reminded her of the grisly operation performed on him, one that saw a surgeon digging through his innards. The mere thought made her shudder.

  “Were you present when the surgeon cleaned his wound?” she asked quietly.

  Manducor nodded. “I was.”

  “He did not awaken, did he? He did not feel… pain?”

  “He did not awaken and he did not feel any pain.”

  Eiselle breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she muttered. Then, she looked up at Manducor as he leaned over Bric and peeled back an eyelid, looking into his right eye. “Is He speaking to you now? God, I mean. You said that He told you not to return to your church because you were needed here. Is God speaking to you about Bric?”

  Manducor heard such hope and fear in her voice. The poor lass was desperate for help for
her husband, for encouragement that he would recover. The truth was that he couldn’t give her such encouragement, not after he saw all of the poison the surgeon cleaned out of MacRohan’s chest. Truthfully, it would take a miracle to heal the man, but Manducor wasn’t going to tell her that. Right now, she had faith that he would recover.

  Manducor wasn’t going to destroy that faith.

  “He is not speaking to me about MacRohan,” he told her. “That does not mean He won’t. But I think you should talk to your husband and tell him to get well. He will want to please you, my lady.”

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “It is worth a try.”

  Eiselle looked at Bric’s unconscious face, taking the priest’s words to heart. “Bric?” she said softly. “Can you hear me? I hope you can. The surgeon wishes to give you something to help your fever, but you must awaken so that you may drink it. You must wake up, Bric. You must get better. I… I cannot lose you. Not when I just found you.”

  Surprisingly, Eiselle didn’t weep with her words, but no words were ever more heartfelt. Even Manducor could feel the sincerity, the utter hope that Bric could hear her in his haze of unconsciousness.

  “He will hear you, my lady,” he muttered. “Keep speaking to him. He will hear you.”

  Eiselle did. As Manducor went back over to the hearth where Weetley was stirring the tea that smelled like a horse’s arse, they could hear Eiselle speaking sweetly to Bric, soft words from a wife to a husband, deeply personal words that Manducor tried to ignore. It wasn’t right that he should hear such things, but the deep affection that the newly married couple had for each other was something that was already strong and true. Manducor had been blessed with such feelings for his wife, so he recognized those sentiments when he saw them.

  They were as rare as rubies and twice as precious, but he knew that all he could do for the knight and his lady was pray, so pray he did.

  For once, he hoped that God would hear him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Two days later

  The fever was gone but he still wouldn’t awaken.

  Eiselle hadn’t left Bric’s side since the night he’d been brought in to Narborough with his terrible injury. She’d bathed the man, changed his bandages, and sat by his side every single minute of the day and night. She wouldn’t even go to bed, not even when Keeva begged her, instead choosing to sleep with her head on the mattress beside Bric as she sat in a chair next to the bed. It was uncomfortable, and she awoke with a stiff neck and back, but she ignored her discomfort. All that mattered was taking care of Bric, and she wanted to be there should he need her.

  Manducor had been there most of the time, too, because he had more experience in such things. He would check Bric’s pulse and his breathing, freeing Weetley up to tend to the men in the hall. Out of the eighteen hundred men who had gone to Holdingham, seventy-eight had died and they had over three hundred wounded, so Weetley had his hands full with the wounded in the hall and also in the troop house, where they had taken some of the lesser wounded men.

  But almost three days after their return, some men were taking a turn for the worse while others were showing signs of healing. They were starting to lose some men to infection, and the dead began to pile up. St. Peter and St. Paul’s church was just to the east of Narborough Castle and Daveigh had already spoken to the priests about burying the dead in a mass grave to the east of the church. The priests had agreed, and soldiers had been sent to dig the mass grave. Daveigh wasn’t willing to let the stench of the dead to start offending the women at Narborough, so the decision was made to start moving the dead over to the churchyard the following day.

  But Eiselle was oblivious to that, and to everything else going on. Dashiell had remained for a couple of days after Bric’s injury, for as long as he could, but he had an army waiting for him, an army with wounded that had remained at Holdingham because moving them back to the seat of Savernake would take several days. Dashiell had wounded men he needed to see and plans to make to return to Ramsbury Castle, so after two days of waiting around to see if Bric would live or die, Dashiell was forced to leave.

  Eiselle had promised to send him word of Bric’s condition, and she’d been driven to tears by Dashiell’s painful farewell to his old friend. She’d never seen such camaraderie between men, but in observing Dashiell and Pearce and Mylo, and even Daveigh, she had been given a glimpse of just how much these men meant to one another. It was a loyalty that went beyond politics – it was a loyalty that was in their blood. She’d bid Dashiell a sad farewell as the man returned to his own army.

  Now, three days after Bric’s return to Narborough, Eiselle was starting to feel the stress of waiting for a man who refused to awaken. As Manducor had instructed her, she’d spoken to the man constantly, keeping up a steady stream of chatter, praying that he would hear her and open his eyes. But on the third day of Bric’s unconsciousness, she took to singing to him, singing every song she could think of, including the one she’d sung to him on their wedding night.

  “I have loved, all my life, only thee;

  The stars know thy name, the sky weeps at your beauty.

  I pray thou will return to my arms,

  but if not,

  I pray to see thy face every night in my dreams.”

  It was such a bittersweet song, with new meaning these days. Eiselle was too afraid to ask Weetley if Bric was deteriorating, so she simply kept up her singing, her chatter, bathing Bric’s face, arms, and chest with cool water, and making sure the hearth was stoked so the room remained warm. She didn’t want him to catch a chill.

  As the third day began to move into night and the great torches in the hall were lit, Eiselle sat next to Bric’s bedside, watching her husband waste away before her very eyes. She’d done so well over the past three days, with no hysterics or tears, but time was wearing on her now. As she looked at the man, feeling the pangs of grief pull at her, she stroked his sticky blond hair and sang softly to him.

  O lovely one… my lovely one…

  The years will come… the years will go…

  But still you’ll be… my own true love…

  Until the day… we’ll meet again…

  Her throat was tight with emotion as she finished the song, unable to go any further. She simply wasn’t as strong as she thought she was because the anguish she’d been fighting off for three days was now clawing at her, gutting her, begging her to release her emotions as the future she’d hope to have with a man she adored was slipping away. As the fire in the hearth snapped, sending sparks into the room, Eiselle finally lay her exhausted head down on the mattress next to Bric, feeling overwhelmed and despondent.

  Is this how it will end, God? She thought, putting her hand on Bric’s chest in a protective gesture. Will I become a widow, with dreams of a life that never was, without a man I know I could have grown to love?

  The tears came as she closed her eyes, with the intention of resting only for a moment.

  “Please, Bric,” she whispered, her cheek against his big bicep. “Please do not leave me. Please do not let this be over before it begins.”

  There was no response to a question full of agony. Before Eiselle realized it, she was asleep.

  He’d been dreaming of angels.

  They were singing to him, in a voice so pure and lovely that he wanted to listen to them forever. He’d been dreaming of someplace hot and bright, with a blinding white light, and heat that made him sweat. He’d been a little too young to go on King Richard’s crusade to The Holy Land, but he’d heard from others that the heat had been intense. Pale, white knights had returned with skin the color of tanned leather. He’d always imagined what that kind of heat felt like, and now he knew.

  He’d been kissed by it.

  Gradually, the white light faded and the singing stopped, and then he felt cold and alone. He’d never felt more alone in his life. Where was the singing angel, the one who had kept him company and had given him comfort? Oddly enoug
h, he never saw the angel who had done the singing. He could only hear her, but she sounded familiar. He just couldn’t place her. He thought he could remain in that warm, blissful land, but it dissipated, like mist, and then he heard the crackling of a hearth.

  His ears began to buzz and when he breathed, he was aware of pain in his torso. He took a breath and he felt as if he were being stabbed on his left side. Bric struggled to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt as if they weighed more than the big stones that comprised Narborough. He could barely get them open, and even then, they were only open a slit. He could see that he was in his chamber off the entry in Narborough’s keep and he turned his head slightly, seeing that there was a small arm across the right side of his body, with the hand resting on his chest. Turning his head just a little more and looking down, he could see that Eiselle’s face was pressed up against his right bicep, and it was her arm that was draped over him.

  “My lord?”

  Someone was speaking to him and his eyes, red and swollen, moved off to his left to see the priest standing there. It was the drunken, slovenly man who had performed his marriage mass, only he didn’t look drunk or slovenly now. He looked quite lucid and, in truth, quite concerned as he gazed down at him.

  Bric tried to speak, but his throat was raw and parched. He could only whisper.

  “How… long?” he murmured.

  Manducor moved closer so the man wouldn’t have to strain himself. “How long have you been unconscious?” he asked. When Bric nodded, barely, Manducor answered. “At least three days, my lord. How do you feel?”

  Bric wasn’t even sure he could answer that, so he tried to shake his head, but that didn’t work out particularly well, either. He could barely move. Manducor sensed that, so he didn’t press the man; he simply told him the situation, as he suspected a straightforward man like MacRohan would want.

  “You were wounded by an arrow five days ago,” he said. “You were brought back to Narborough where the surgeon, Weetley, has cleaned the wound and stitched it. You have been very sick, my lord, and now that you are awake, it is important that you drink a potion the surgeon has brewed for you. I know you are weak, but your lady wife and I will help you.”