by Iris Anthony
I peered around the horse’s neck to get a look at him. His position had not changed. Neither had the boar’s.
Taking a tighter grip on the reins and putting a hand to the saddle, I told myself he did not matter. He’d wanted to return me to the count and had refused to listen to my entreaties.
I put a foot to the stirrup.
But if he had perished, then it was on my account.
I stepped down.
Although I had not asked for him to save me, had I?
I put my foot back and pulled myself up, sucking in my breath as my bad ankle took my weight.
I cast another look at Andulf as I grasped my saddle. With any luck he might remain senseless for an hour or two, if he were not dead, that is.
I struck the saddle with my fist. If he had indeed died, then it was in the act of saving me from certain death.
Although he had not saved me for my benefit, but rather for my father’s.
But it could not hurt to find out if he were truly dead.
Abandoning the horse, I limped back to kneel beside him, putting a hand to his jaw to turn his head toward me.
His breath fanned my face.
He was alive then. Elation took wing inside me. If he was alive, then I could leave without guilt. But, could I leave without shame?
By God and all His saints!
Cursing myself for a fool, I decided to stay until he awoke and I could make certain he could care for himself. At that point, I could still slip away and make for the abbey. That decided, I took him by the hand and dragged him away from the boar.
Or tried to.
His hand slipped from my grasp before I could shift him. My faith, but he was heavy! I took up his hand again and heaved, putting my back into it to spare my poor ankle. But I fell to the ground when a scattering of acorns caused my heels to slide out from under me.
If I could not move the knight, then perhaps I could move the boar. I knelt and put my hands to him. He did not move.
Was I to be afflicted by both man and beast?
Resigned to having to look at the both of them, I ignored the tangle of guts that spilled from the boar’s belly and looked instead at Andulf’s wound.
Wounds.
Three long, deep, dirt- and leaf-filled gashes from the boar’s tusks.
It could not be good that there were more than one or that his blood had made a trail down his thigh to the bottom of his knee, where it was pooling at his gartered hose.
Unfastening the girdle from my waist, I moved to fix it about the wounds, pushing and pulling to guide it beneath his hulking thigh and then knotting it tight. It seemed to stay the bleeding, although the wounds still gaped. I pulled the bloodied, torn fabric of his hose from them and then tried to push the skin closed.
It wouldn’t stay.
Finally, I gave up and sat on the ground beside him, waiting for him to wake.
As the air grew colder and the shadows grew longer, I unfastened my mantle and placed it over him, deciding he needed the warmth more than I.
Eventually, he woke with a sputter and a start, full face toward the boar. Giving a great cry, he lurched from the beast, and then he started again, clasping a hand to his thigh. He looked down at the girdle I had wrapped around it and then looked over at me. “You’re still here.”
“I could not leave you. Not after you had saved me. I would not have wished you to perish on my account.”
He grunted.
“Does it pain you?”
“Everything pains me.” His gaze moved beyond me to the horses.
“I tried to move the boar, and I tried to move you, but I could not do it.” That’s what he got for collapsing after he’d saved me. “You fainted and then…” He looked quite angry and not very grateful for my help. But then, if I had not tried to escape him, he might not have been wounded at all. “I just…want to say…thank you for saving me.”
Out in the forest around us, creatures were about. I heard the hoot of owls, and underneath them the brush of leaves out of synch with the wind, and then, the distinct sound of a footfall on the leaf-littered ground.
The horses blew out a long breath and shook their heads, as if to rally their senses as they pulled at the reins that bound them to a tree.
Andulf put an elbow to the ground, rolling onto his side, and sent a piercing look into the wood. “Whatever is out there must smell the boar. It wants the meat.” He fell onto his back, covering his wounded thigh with a cupped hand. “We must do what you ought to have already done: get away from here.”
“I tried! But you’re too tall and much too heavy, and you wouldn’t move!”
“Bring the horses.”
I hobbled toward the horses and made quick work of untying them as I eyed the twilight-shrouded wood in front of us.
Out in the brush, a twig snapped.
Andulf pushed to sitting and reached up toward the reins. “If I could just—” He leaned forward and tried to leverage himself up.
I bent to help him.
With a groan, he rolled onto his knees. “Get on the horse.”
“I can’t. My ankle.” When I had ridden before, he had helped me to mount, but now he was on the wrong side of the horse.
“Draw the horse around, and I will help you.”
I tried to turn the horse back in the other direction, head toward the wood, but it shied. I tried once more, but the horse nearly jerked the reins from my hands.
Andulf was scarcely able to sit; he could not be expected to walk around the horse to help me, though he looked as if he were contemplating that very thing. “You’ll have to mount on your own. If the creature comes, the horse can save you.”
“And what of you?”
“I have my sword.”
“Little good it will do you! I am not leaving you to die after sitting here the long of the forenoon waiting to see if you’d live.”
“And I will not have you perish after I’ve given my blood trying to save you!”
A snuffling squeal came from the wood.
“We need fire.”
We needed many things, the first of which was to get us far from here!
“In my bag on my horse, I have a fire-steel and flint”—he left off for a moment as he took in a long breath through his teeth—“and touchwood.”
Standing on the tips of my toes, I tried to retrieve them, but the falling gloom made for difficult work.
“At the bottom.”
I seized upon them, pulling them from the bag, and then I handed them to him.
He reached for them, wincing, and then gave up, dropping his hand. “You will have to do it.”
Though my hands shook, I managed to lay the strip of touchwood atop the flint and then to strike the rock with the fire-steel. Once. Twice. At the third try, a spark finally arched to the touchwood, but it died as it struck. It took a fourth and a fifth time before the touchwood began to smolder. But a hair-raising growl came from the wood before us as a snuffle came from behind.
There were more creatures out there in the wood than just one.
Keeping the touchwood to hand, I scrabbled about the ground for something: a stick, some fallen leaves. Scraping the ground with the bottom of my hand, I assembled a small pile and put the wood to it.
It did not take.
“Blow on it.”
“Blow on…?”
“The smoke. Blow on the smoke!”
Thinking him mad, but not knowing what else to do, I blew upon it. As if by magic, the smoke birthed a flame that devoured the tinder.
“A limb! Find a limb and hold it to the flame.”
Leaving my smoldering fire, I searched around us for a fallen branch or a large twig, something we could burn. As I came by a short, stubby branch, the fire guttered for a moment.
I felt my breath catch.
But then the flame flared.
A shadow darker than the surrounding forest emerged from the trees before us.
Holding my branch to the fire, I prayed the flame would take. As the shadow moved closer, the branch burst into flame. Rising, I stepped in front of Andulf and then brandished the flaming branch in front of us. Sweeping it to the right and to the left and then back again.
Andulf had shifted and was crouching now. “You cannot do that forever.”
“I will do it as long as I have to.”
A rippling shriek echoed through the forest.
The horses blew out a deep breath and took a step closer to us.
“If you can help me to standing, we should leave.”
Holding the branch out before me, I knelt at his side. Fixing his arm across my shoulders and grasping his hand, I heaved to standing. He hung from my shoulder for a moment and then rallied, gaining his feet. Releasing his hand, I took up the horse’s reins. “Can you advance?”
“I will try.”
The fire had shortened my vision to its flickering flames, but the horses were growing more anxious by the moment, and that shuffling snuffle was getting closer.
I started out, away from the approaching beast.
With every step, Andulf shuddered.
“We must stop. You are not—”
“Keep on. I’ve more planned for myself than to finish as some beast’s midnight feast.”
I took more of his weight as he seemed to slump.
When he next spoke it was into my ear. “Walk on.”
“To where?”
He raised his head, took a look about, and then nodded toward a large tree that beckoned through the moon’s light. “There.”
It took many steps and much effort. We nearly fell, the both of us, when I stepped into a hole, which wrenched my already throbbing ankle, but we made it to the tree, where his arm slipped from my shoulders and he slumped into me with a loud sigh.
Gripping the flaming branch with one hand, I threw the other about his waist, trying to keep him standing. “You cannot die!”
He sagged against me, and I fell to the ground. As I clasped my arms about his chest, the branch tumbled to the ground as well. “Do not die. Please. Do you not die!” I buried my head in that thick neck of his and held on.
In the distance, back from where we’d come, I could hear the tearing of flesh and the grunting of beasts.
He put an arm up over mine, clasping me to himself. We stayed there for some time as he took in a series of long, deep breaths. Then he set me aside. “Sit there.” He indicated the tree trunk behind him with a violent jerk of his chin. “With the tree behind you, and me before you, at least you will be able to sleep unmolested.”
“I will not sleep. I cannot! That beast may follow us if he smells the scent of you.”
“He’ll be plenty satisfied with the boar.”
“What if—what if—” I could not bring myself to speak the words I feared and so settled for a different thought entirely. “What if you fall asleep?”
A hiss escaped from between his teeth. “I could not sleep right now for all the gold in the archbishop’s treasury.”
“But I do not know if—”
“You are the most stubborn girl I have ever had the displeasure to try and save. Get behind me!”
Picking up the skirts of my tunic, I stepped into the space between him and the trunk.
“Sleep.”
I would not do it, but it would do no harm to let him think I might. That way, should anything come for us in the night, then I would know it, and he would not have to fight it off alone. Not having any cushions or a counterpane, I settled myself as comfortably as I could into the curve of the tree’s roots and then drew my mantle around me.
The knight pushed himself back toward me, gasping as he did it, and pressed me against the tree. Then he threw his mantle out over his shoulder, letting it pool onto my feet. And there, God help me, in spite of my best intentions, I must have fallen asleep.
CHAPTER 27
Juliana
ROCHEMONT ABBEY
Increasingly, the abbess had been entertaining her guests at our meal—her relations as well as her lover—and the refectory had become a kind of provincial court filled with singers and mimes and tumblers and all manner of amusements, which we sisters tried in vain to ignore. Though in previous times Sister Isolda had always read scripture to us during the meal, her readings had been set aside for more worldly delights. The careless discipline of the abbess bred laxity throughout the novitiate, and now even my fellow sisters were speaking to one another in plain voice. When the guests began to flirt with the nuns, I wondered that some of the sisters might even try to put off their veils.
In spite of all those things, I could not bring myself to hate the abbess completely. I understood what it was to be thrust into a position that was not of your own making. But while I had forfeited my rights for my duties, she seemed to prize the former over the latter. I did not doubt she had a keen mind. I did, however, doubt her happiness. Even her lover did not seem to be able to assuage her moods. And mostly she retreated to her rooms when her presence was not required at the offices or at our meal.
I had once told a girl much like her not to despise the life she had been given.
Would that I could tell the abbess that very same thing. She could do much good here if she would but use the power and the influence she had been given. The thought lay so heavily upon my heart that I went to see her one morning after terce, before I returned to the hospice.
She was gazing out a window at the white-topped mountains that rose behind the abbey. Her veil and wimple had been removed, and her hair lifted in the breeze that sifted in through the opening. At my entrance, she turned. “There is snow already. I did not think it would come so soon.”
It always came this soon, but though it was always expected, it was never celebrated.
“I suppose we will be trapped here for the winter.”
“It is not a bad place to have to stay, Reverend Mother.”
She sent a speculative look at me as she sat in her armed chair, drawing a fur up over her shoulders. “Perhaps not for you, who are used to being enclosed in such a place.”
“You are not happy.”
“I do not think this place was constructed for happiness.”
“There is contentment to be found here, if one has the faith to look for it.”
The glance she gave me was wary. “I have faith.”
“Then why can you not use it for our benefit, Reverend Mother?”
Her smile, when it came, was sardonic. “Because I am already using it for my father’s benefit.”
“But the nuns have need of you. And so will the pilgrims, when they return in the spring.”
“Then they shall have to stand in line.”
“You could do much good here.”
“Could do? I am doing. I am doing much good for my father. It was he who installed me here. Should my first thought not be for him?”
“But what of God?”
“Why should He not approve of me?” She had lifted her chin as if daring me to answer.
“I do not think you have the…temperament of a nun.”
She slouched in her chair, putting her elbows to the armrests and steepling her fingers beneath her chin. “Ah. You speak of my lord, the Marquess of Belfort. I do wish you would keep your sentiments and your observations to yourself.”
“I, too, was once young.”
The corners of her mouth lifted. “But even so, I doubt any suitor you might have had could compare to mine. You, who have chosen to deny your body for your soul, cannot know how it feels to yearn for something, someone, whom others have said you cannot have.”
But I did. And so I ga
ve her the advice the old abbess had given me. “You must think on other things. You must sacrifice your own poor interest in his soul to One whose interests are higher and greater. You must rest in the thought that He can do more for my lord, the marquess, than you can.”
Her chin seemed to tremble. “If only it were that simple.”
I went and knelt before her. “It is. It may not be easy, but it is not very complicated. And dwelling upon your losses will only prolong your pain.” As I spoke the words, I realized at last I had come to believe them. And though the abbess soon dismissed me, I left her rooms with a gladdened heart. Perhaps my salvation was not quite so far off as I had once despaired.
That forenoon, as we sat in the refectory for our meal, the door suddenly swung open, and our chaplain appeared. He was flush of face and panting, cap clutched in his hand. “There are Danes—” He wheezed and then doubled over in a cough. “There are Danes out there! I saw them. I saw them with my own eyes!”
The abbess had paused in her eating at the chaplain’s appearance, and the novices had stopped their ceaseless chatter.
“You must come. There are Danes—” His voice seized once more.
An uproar ensued, and the abbess rose from her armed chair, hand at her throat. “Did you—what did you say?”
“Danes! There are Danes!”
A canon wearing robes that must once have been quite fine appeared beside the chaplain. He raised a hand. “There is nothing to fear. They have promised me they will not hurt you as long as you give them Saint Catherine’s relic.”
The abbess had bolted from her table as the men spoke, and now she ran forward, tunic flapping around her ankles. She grabbed the canon about the arm. Sinking to her knees, she released her grip on him. “Danes? Are you certain?”
“Of course I’m certain. I came with them. Rather, they have come with me.”
Her face creased with fear. “Save me. You must save me. I cannot die!”
The canon spread his arm wide as if in supplication. “No one will die. I promise you. Just give me the relic.”
She let loose a long, loud wail. “The Danes are going to kill us all!”
At the far end of my table, Sister Rotrude had not stopped laughing since the chaplain had first appeared. Toward the middle of the table, Sister Amicia was rocking back and forth, whispered words tumbling from her mouth, while the whole front half of the table was taken in furious conversation.
