Falk nodded unwillingly.
“Then I pray you take care,” he said.
It was Gyrfalon’s sharp eyes and warrior senses that realised that a figure lurked at Falk’s tent when he arrived there with Annis in his arms; Falk having sent his guard on patrol for the purpose.
The warlord passed his wife swiftly to Caleb and pounced in almost one and the same movement as the figure froze in immobility in the shadows. Vice-like hands immobilised the intruder’s arms and squeezed hard to make the figure cry out and drop the blade it carried.
Gyrfalon held the figure by its upper arms and marched it into Falk’s tent.
“Knife’s round the back, brother,” he said laconically. “I think this is your assassin; and I thought you might like him alive. Not necessarily undamaged; but alive. I believe I broke a bone or two in his hand.”
Annis was sobbing again and Gyrfalon thrust the assassin face down on the floor to leave him to Falk as he relieved Caleb of the slight figure of Annis to comfort her.
Falk grabbed the intruder and searched him ruthlessly, Gyrfalon signing to Caleb to lend aid holding the fellow; and soon the assassin was trussed up securely. Falk retrieved the knife from without.
“Something dark and sticky on the blade,” he said grimly.
“Just mud where it was dropped,” cried the assassin. “I was just passing and this big ape of yours jumped me! Why couldn’t he mind his own business?”
Falk wavered.
Gyrfalon took the knife from his brother and smiled gently at the intruder.
“Then that being so, you won’t mind the faintest of scratches on your body with this self same knife, will you?” he said, ripping open the fellow’s tunic.
“Oh please, no!” screeched the assassin.
“Why not? If it is but mud, ‘twill do you no harm,” said Gyrfalon. “If it be poison on the other hand … Hsssh, Annis, do not interrupt, I am busy menacing this fellow … if it is poison then you should worry. For you would only have one brief chance to wound Falk; he cannot be killed in normal combat they say, for there is only one in the land that is a match to him …. One wound. One chance. It must be virulent.”
“I pray you! It is death in seconds!” babbled the man “And a second dose to kill the Warlord Gyrfalon, who is that man of whom you speak that is Lord Falk’s match … be merciful, my lord, I am but a hireling!”
“Well, it is not for me to say,” said Gyrfalon “You are my brother’s prisoner; though an he wish, since you have my death too in your orders, he may hand you over to me when he has finished with you; if he not hang you outright. Falk?”
Falk frowned.
The prisoner, catching on that only one man could call Falk ‘brother’ and suggested having him handed over, passed out.
“Funny. I seem to have that effect on some people” murmured Gyrfalon. “Do you want me to take him away and hold him? I will hand him back to you – no further damaged but possible well frightened – when you return.”
Falk nodded.
“If you will, brother; I would question him further. I trust your word not to torture him.”
Gyrfalon chuckled.
“I do not promise not to threaten to. I’m not in a good mood right now; I could use some light amusement to take my mind off Annis’ illness.”
Falk looked at him; then shrugged.
“I suppose it be inevitable,” he said. “Come, Lady Annis; we must away.”
Annis clung to Gyrfalon and tried not to let him hand her up to Falk when he had mounted; but her husband was inexorable.
“I do not order you much, Annis,” he said, “but this is an order. Go with Falk; and get well.”
She let go of him, sobbing; and Gyrfalon dropped a quick light kiss on her brow; and watched Falk out of sight as he rode with his precious bundle.
Annis never had any recollection of that wild ride through the night, close under Falk’s cloak, protected from the chill, miserable rain; nor did she remember arriving at the Abbey where Falk peremptorily informed the sisters that as their patient was with child he feared their choice of herbs might be curtailed. She was aware but vaguely of cool sheets and cool hands and fought the bitter draught she was given; and was reassured by a matter-of-fact voice and practical tone that told her it held no tansy; and Annis swallowed obediently.
Falk spoke to the Abbess.
“It is fantastic to contemplate,” he said, “but that girl might just be the saving of the soul of Gyrfalon – and through it a reduction in the danger to ordinary folks unlucky enough to cross his path” and he explained the situation quickly.
Mother Superior frowned.
“This Peter Haldane that is the girl’s father – we know of him. He is no true Christian. Let me find you something to read.”
She rummaged in a chest and handed Falk a parchment written in a firm young hand; a hand that he recognised in greater maturity as the one that had written the list of herbs. There was less certainty to the formation of this younger letter; but it was equally forceful. It ran.
“Please to give this man the remainder of the monies I have promised him. You will find the sum in Sister Agatha’s marsupium where I have placed it. You will find that she have reached an age of confusion and will be happier among her own sisters. Signed this day, the last of May, Annis Haldane.” The date was some eight years previously; Annis would have been just eight years old.
Falk frowned puzzlement and the Mother Superior explained.
“Sister Agatha was tutor to the child, Annis Haldane. At some point she began to slip into senility. The man who brought us back to us here, an itinerant story teller, told me privily that Peter Haldane had noticed the old woman’s confusion and had declared that he would not feed an idiot – and ordered her out of the castle that she return to the Abbey. Alone, mark you, regardless of her age and infirmity. The child Annis arranged at least that she have an escort who also had an ass that he was willing to let Sister Agatha ride.”
Falk exclaimed over this.
“Did he not expect to be found out and censured?”
Mother Superior snorted.
“None knew of her confused state. Perchance he thought some other traveller would take pity on her; or perchance – and unchristian as it is of me, I believe this more – he did not even care if she went to her death. But he is a wicked man. In her lucid moments Agatha rambles about her time with the child sometimes, and his cruelty to her, and to the girl’s mother; and since hearing of the death of Lady Emblem I have had good reason to suppose the man may have caused her death.”
“I have heard that too – and from Annis herself who witnessed him throwing her mother down the stairs,” said Falk. “It is not difficult to see that with such a father and with the repellent beast he wished her to marry, even Gyrfalon must have seemed an improvement. He has never, for all his faults, played the hypocrite. But it seems that there is real love there.”
She sniffed.
“Well, we shall see,” she said dryly “But I remember you cautioning us not to be too trusting; and I hope this is not merely a desire to believe the best since he is your brother.”
Falk gave a rueful laugh.
“Between Annis ticking me off for being prejudiced against her husband and you telling me I trust him too much I am not sure what to think,” he said. “But I have never seen my brother so … so ready to ask for aid. For he is normally self sufficient; and ever was even when we were close. I think I believe him, and I know I hope.”
Chapter 15
Gyrfalon cleaned all the poison off the assassin’s blade and replaced it with artistically painted grease and dirt to look similar. He had promised Falk that no harm should come to their prisoner after all.
He proceeded to truss the fellow up with an ingenious system of pulleys so that if the man moved too much the knife would descend and pierce his bared chest.
It was one way of keeping him still with relatively little need to watch him.
Gy
rfalon then proceeded to explain that he was in a bad mood and that he was contemplating all the ways that might constitute not harming him very much before Falk had him back. He suggested partial flaying, emasculation, and cutting off toes one at a time to start with and left the swooning prisoner contemplating such barbarities.
“You should menace him with Lukat,” growled Elissa who had suffered the boy’s demands that she reassure him that Lady Annis would be all right “That child is torture unmitigated.”
Gyrfalon laughed and ruffled Lukat’s hair.
“We’ll make a warlord of him yet, then,” he said.
Falk returned the next day and Gyrfalon relieved himself of his prisoner via the sally-port.
The assassin was ready to speak if only Lord Falk promised he not be given back to Lord Gyrfalon who was a veritable monster as everyone said, and please would they only hang him and not make him swallow germinating seeds so an appletree grew right out of his belly like that monstrous child suggested.
Lukat had put in a few of his own suggestions to keep the assassin unhappy once he found out that he had intended killing Gyrfalon too.
Falk did not bother to point out that the stomach acids were likely to kill any germinating seeds and wondered where Lukat got his ideas from; then recalled that a child with an infirmity might well have contemplated ways of punishing bullies that had a greater level of imagination for being relatively immobile, with time to sit and think.
Long days Annis lay unconscious in the meantime, long past the resolving of the matter of the assassin; and the nuns treated her and prayed. Then one night that had become wilder and wilder brought a peremptory knock at the Abbey door.
A sister unbarred the door; any traveller on such a night would doubtless need succour.
Without was a black garbed figure, snow sprinkles and with a rough bandage about one arm.
“Gyrfalon!” the sister who answered the door took an involuntary step of terror away from the warlord.
“I took liberties with your stable and your oats for the comfort of mine horse. You have no quarrel with a dumb beast at least,” he said tersely. “I come for news of my wife. I will understand if you not let me in to see her. But tell me how she is.”
Little Sister Barbara looked up into the tortured eyes – two, whole eyes as Lord Falk had said! And then she stepped aside.
“Come in Lord Gyrfalon,” she said, her voice steadier “We do not turn away genuine travellers. And before we go any further,” she added firmly, “let me see that arm.”
Never was Sister Barbara so surprised in her life.
The warlord gave a wry chuckle.
“Girl, you sound just like Annis,” he said appreciatively. He did not add, though he thought it, that Annis would never have displayed her fear to an enemy at first; the only time he had seen Annis recoil was before Marfey, and that was revulsion more than fear he thought.
The nun showed, at least, no disposition to fear consequences; and that told some news at least about Annis. But still he kept his own agenda. He said,
“You may look at mine arm when I have seen my wife. It has kept this past three hours and will keep another quarter.”
His expression was grim and uncompromising; and Sister Barbara acquiesced. Gyrfalon could hear in his own head Annis’ firm tone telling him that if it had already waited three hours the sooner she saw it the better; but Annis was made of sterner stuff than the little sister who led him obediently to Annis’ chamber.
The girl looked even tinier than usual in the middle of a big infirmary bed. She no longer tossed but she muttered in the midst of strange dreams.
“She is approaching the crisis,” whispered Sister Barbara as Gyrfalon knelt beside the bed, cradling one tiny hand in his. “When it comes, the fever will break – one way or the other.”
He looked up sharply.
“You mean she still might die, even yet, even with herb lore and care?”
Anguish betrayed his voice, and he cleared his throat irritably. Scared, Sister Barbara nodded and swallowed several times.
“Can she hear me?” asked Gyrfalon.
Barbara nodded.
“She seems to hear well enough; Sister Pauline makes her mind, and tells her to take her medicine. I’m supposed to wake Pauline when she comes to the crisis so she can take over and do all she might.”
“Well if this Pauline can make her mind, she must be the first person ever to do so,” said Gyrfalon dryly, after nodding acknowledgement. He addressed Annis.
“Annis; hear me. Now you listen to me, you little virago, it’s going to get tough soon. But you’re no quitter, are you? You’ll fight, do you hear? You come back to me, my little vixen, or…..” he tailed off and added softly, more to himself than to Annis. “Or I do not know what I will do. What would be the good of following you if they will not let me into your Heaven?”
Soft-hearted Barbara’s heart was wrung; but stern Pauline’s voice on the threshold of the chamber said uncompromisingly,
“So he’s here, is he?”
Gyrfalon looked round.
“Should I be flattered to be identified so easily merely by a pronoun?” He asked sardonically. “Yes, I am here. I was intending to leave as soon as I had submitted,” he bowed ironically to Sister Barbara, “to the sister’s insistent ministrations. But if Annis is approaching a crisis….. well then I would ask to stay.”
“There is nothing you can do” Sister Pauline informed him crisply.
“Wrong, sister; I can call her” he said coldly “She is in the habit – when it do not inconvenience her – of mostly falling in with my wishes. It might help.”
Pauline snorted.
“Agatha always says what a nice little thing she be and how full of common sense. She must have taken leave of her senses to cleave to you.”
Gyrfalon’s eyes flashed and he compressed his lips.
“’Tis yet so her choice made freely,” he made himself speak quietly, “and as such, sister, none of your business.”
Sister Barbara reflected that only a wicked warlord would dare to speak to the formidable Sister Pauline like that! She asked timidly,
“Should I see to Lord Gyrfalon’s arm now, Sister Pauline?”
Pauline glanced at the rough bandage.
“You may as well,” she said indifferently. “We are a house of healing after all. It would be embarrassing for even a sinner to bleed to death within our walls.”
“Tell me, sister,” asked Gyrfalon, curiously, “were you trained by Sister Agatha of whom I have heard Annis speak?”
“I was indeed,” said Pauline “What of it?”
“That explains a lot,” he said nodding. “Well, I have seen Annis,” he addressed Barbara as Pauline blinked puzzlement over his query about Agatha – his first minor victory over her – and gave a brief grim smile to the younger nun “And you wished to poke at mine arm.”
Barbara flushed.
“If it is wounded,” she said faintly.
“I know, comfrey, bugle, woundwort, calendula, St John’s wort and I forget the rest” he untied the kerchief that had served as a bandage. “And first you will have to dig out the arrowhead. I snapped it for convenience riding; it would not push right through, I tried. The wretched thing is lodged on the bone. It is a standard arrow, not barbed else I had bled more and might not be sitting up now to have conversation. Annis would have it out in a painful trice; but she is very good.”
Barbara quailed; and Pauline stepped forward, examining the wound.
“You know the salves, girl,” she snapped to the younger nun. “As he said; and a draught of willow bark to avoid fever from it. That it be a painkiller too I care less about. Also bring me a sharp knife and boiling water to cleanse it; Thyme oil to clean the wound; clean linen; and my needle and gut to sew it,” she looked hard at Gyrfalon “This will hurt” she said.
He laughed grimly.
“How very kind of you, sister, to keep most of the satisfaction you must be f
eeling out of your voice,” he mocked gently. “Pain I know about; I do not fear it. Delirium from fever because it becomes infected, that I do fear.”
“Hmmph,” Pauline snorted; and armed with a sterile knife began the gruesome job of cutting out the arrowhead. He grunted once as she pulled it free and dropped it in the bowl held by a rather pale Sister Barbara.
“Cheer up, child” he gasped at the young nun “’Twas not you that had the arrow in you!”
“Do not faint now, Barbara,” chided Pauline “It is almost over; this will sting.”
Gyrfalon jumped involuntarily and swore as Pauline flooded the wound with thyme oil.
“Why, Lord Gyrfalon, you said you feared infection more than you feared pain,” she said sweetly.
“Indeed I did,” he forced command of his voice, “and I thank you and commend your skill in surgery; I have not seen Annis perform the same more deftly,” he added. “Your bedside manner is less to be desired.”
She laughed dryly.
“You are a less exacting patient than I expected; and I commend you for scatological rather than blasphemous utterances. And now I must display my skill as a seamstress,” she told him. He nodded; and endured. After, she wrapped the wound again in the clean linen Barbara had brought.
“The stitches must come out in a few days else they will fester,” she told him. He nodded.
“If I am not able to come here I can do that for myself,” he said “Now I must check my horse ere sitting with Annis. Have you any idea how long it will be to the crisis?”
Pauline considered.
“There is a calm period that will build rapidly to a storm. Already her muttering increases; it will only be a few hours.”
He nodded.
“I will then take rest in your refectory for an hour after I have seen to Nightmare,” he said. “It were well for me to be fresh for her at the time she needs most to hear my voice,” and he strode out, leaving Pauline half seething at his peremptory manner. Yet if he sparred with Annis as she healed his ravaged face with the same – albeit black – humour as he had sparred with her, Pauline could see how the high spirited girl described by Agatha might have been attracted to him. There was that about him that appealed to an intelligent woman often bereft of worthy conversation. Yet his manner had altered since the times when no holy woman was safe from kidnap; and Pauline crossed herself and thanked God for Annis, praying fervently that if the girl died the warlord would not take his grief out on all of them.
Falconburg Divided (The Falconburg Series Book 1) Page 20
