“He will be forgiven all his sins,” Garth told her, waiting for her to calm. “Now, who told you to feed him eggs?”
“Lady Cynthia, of course. She’s taken care of him all along. She’s a great healer and a good lady, but it’s a grave sickness, and she could do nothing to save my…”
The woman fell to sobbing again, and Garth absently patted her hand.
Bloody hell—was Lady Cynthia instructing the villagers to disobey the dictates of Lent? Could she have unwittingly brought God’s wrath down upon the villagers?
He extricated himself from the weeping woman’s clutches. He had to absolve the dead man’s soul now before she dissolved into hysterics. Setting her aside, he hastily recited the last rites.
Then, his cassock flapping with authority, he set out to determine just what was at the heart of Lady Cynthia’s blasphemy.
He found her in a nearby hovel. The west-facing shutters had been thrown wide, but the sinking sun could only afford so much light. Still, when he charged in, he could make out the figure of Cynthia crouching at the foot of a straw bed, her sleeves stained and her discarded wimple crumpled in the corner.
“What healing do you practice, lady,” he demanded without preface, “that you take the church’s commandments into your own hands?”
The other three women in the room quailed at his voice, but Cynthia didn’t spare him a glance. She only barked at him to close the door.
He resisted the urge to slam it, astounded by her impertinence.
“Now,” she hoarsely urged her patient.
“I…cannot…” the woman whimpered from the bed. “Let me…die.”
“Nay, Milla! You’ve got to use every bit of your strength,” Cynthia told her. “Your babe may yet live. We must save it if we can.”
Garth felt the blood drain from his face. He’d burst into the cottage, burning with righteous indignation. He’d never noticed the drama unfolding in the long shadows. A wan peasant woman shivered on the bed, her head lolling across a filthy pillow. Lady Cynthia worked feverishly between the woman’s legs, her own face dripping with sweat, her eyes fierce, her hair hanging in damp strings about her shoulders.
Garth averted his eyes and took a mortified step back.
“Push!” Cynthia commanded. “I can see the babe’s head.”
The woman on the bed let out a high, thin whine.
“What are you doing?” Garth demanded, a sheen of sweat rising on his lip at the tortured whimper. “Can you not see how she suffers?”
One of the peasant women spoke meekly. “That’s always the way of childbirth, Father.”
“That’s it. That’s it,” Cynthia chanted to the laboring woman.
The woman screamed as if she’d been knifed in the abdomen. Garth clenched his hands at the horrible sound, which roused his maiden-rescuing de Ware instincts. Indeed, he would have bolted forward to save her had not the attending peasant women looked upon him with pure horror at his very presence here.
“Again,” Cynthia urged.
“For the love of God, lady, let her be!” he demanded. He knew he was about as welcome as a wolf in a lady’s solar here, but it was too late to leave. He had to do something, anything, to end the suffering. “You’re killing her!”
“Aye, the mother is dying,” Cynthia hissed at him over her shoulder. “But the babe will survive.”
“You can’t know that,” he murmured back. “It’s in God’s hands.”
“I do know that,” she insisted, leaning forward to wrap her fingers about the baby’s tiny head. “Good, Milla. Push once more.”
“You’d challenge the will of God?” he whispered incredulously.
She never gave him answer, for at that moment, to his utter amazement, the child emerged, slithering out into Cynthia’s hands, its reddening face screwed up with fury, its tiny fists trembling in futile rage. It let out a terrific bawl.
The women seemed neither surprised nor troubled. They immediately fell into a pattern of attending to the babe’s needs, a task as familiar to their hands as that of reaping winter wheat.
But Garth could only blink in wonder at the infant. Cynthia had snatched a morsel of life from the very jaws of death. Even now, the poor mother rattled out her final breath.
Cynthia bent to close the woman’s now sightless eyes with blood-spattered hands. She drew a thin sheet over the woman’s face, crossed herself, and rose from the bedside.
He’d witnessed a miracle. Cynthia had pulled a new life, kicking and squalling, against all odds, into the world. And whether it came from God or some strange force of nature, Cynthia had been the instrument of that miracle.
For a long moment, her eyes locked with his. They were dark with pain, weary with fatigue, deep with mystery. And as beautiful as truth. Cynthia did have a gift, he realized. She was courageous, determined, compassionate…
And she was fainting. As he gazed on, her eyelids fluttered, and she pitched forward. His heart vaulted into his throat, and he dove forward in time to catch her, hefting her up into his arms.
Shouldering his way past the peasant women, he carried Cynthia into the fresh air. As he emerged, the two men of Cynthia’s guard greeted him with sharp glares. One of them drew his sword.
“What have you done?” the man barked.
“Is she dead?” the other hissed.
“Nay!” Garth denied adamantly. “Nay. She lives.”
Lord, he prayed it was so. He could see a faint pulse thrumming in her throat, and the breath still whistled softly between her rosy lips. But her healing efforts must have drained her life force. Her neck arched limply over his arm, and her limbs were as heavy and slack as an empty coat of chain mail.
His heart pounded. He had to save her.
As the guards hovered at a safe distance, he knelt in the spring weeds and laid her gently on the ground. How natural she looked there, her coppery hair spilled across the dark green clover, the fingers of one hand threaded through the stems, as if she belonged to the earth. But he’d be damned if he’d let her return to it. Not yet.
He lifted her head to rest upon his knee and fanned her with the hem of his cassock.
“Come on, Cynthia,” he urged. “Wake up.”
Her lips were pale, and her breath barely stirred the tendrils of hair framing her face.
He closed his eyes and bent his head in murmured prayer, reciting every entreaty he knew to convince God to spare her.
Still she lay silent.
Finally, abandoning prayer, he clasped her hand and brought it to his chest.
“Cynthia,” he whispered, letting memories of her flow freely. “Remember the roses? How you stole cuttings from them? Remember the jasmine? And the bees?” Something warm bloomed inside him as he spoke the words, long-forgotten sensations, hopes and dreams, like a dormant bulb awakening after a long winter. “I don’t think you’d ever been stung by a bee before,” he began to recall. “But you were so brave, laying your neck bare to my blade so I could…”
She stirred then, moaning softly, wrinkling her forehead. “So…many. So many…”
Giddy with relief, he squeezed her hand. “Aye. But I took care of them, didn’t I?”
Her eyes opened to stare up at him. It was as if she tried to penetrate his very thoughts. “You…took care of them?”
“Aye,” he replied, though he suspected it wasn’t bees she spoke of in her confusion.
“Tim,” she mumbled, making a feeble attempt to sit up. “I have to take care of little Tim. He needs me.”
“You’re as weak as a kitten. I’ll see to him.”
“Nay!” She clutched at the front of his cassock, dragging herself up.
Garth knew when he was fighting a losing battle. “At least let me go with you then. Stay with your guard while I bless Milla’s body. Then we’ll both take care of Tim.”
Happily, the guards seemed to agree with that suggestion. Garth delivered last rites to the poor mother and blessed the new babe, who gurgled quietly now
in the arms of one of the peasant women. Then he quickly joined Cynthia.
Little Tim seemed as insubstantial as shadow. The small boy’s translucent flesh hung on him like linen over bones, and his eyes loomed huge in his pale face. They grew even wider when Garth neared his bed.
“Have you come,” the lad gulped, “to punish me?”
Garth was too disconcerted by the remark to answer.
“Nay, Tim,” Cynthia assured the boy, pushing past Garth to the bed. “He’s here to bless you.”
“Am I going to die?” he asked Garth.
Garth’s chest felt as if he’d been kicked. What kind of question was that for a young boy to ask?
“Nay, of course not,” Cynthia scolded. She began rubbing her hands together vigorously. “You feel better already after the mint water, don’t you?”
“Aye. My belly’s quiet.” His eyes lost their flatness for an instant. “It was good. Better than that egg…” He broke off and glanced anxiously at Garth.
“Aye, mint is tasty.”
Cynthia leaned forward and placed her hands upon the boy’s head, blocking Tim’s view. But not his loudly whispered comments.
“My lady, I like this priest better than the Abbot. Is that a sin?”
“Nay, Tim,” she replied. Garth could hear the amusement in her voice.
“I know you said God would forgive me for the eggs,” he whispered, “but I don’t think the Abbot will.”
“But they’ve given you strength,” Cynthia assured him.
“I don’t think the Abbot will forgive me,” he insisted.
At the boy’s innocent words, a slow fire began to burn inside Garth. Aye, the lad had drunk egg broth at Lent. Broken shells were yet strewn by the empty cup beside his bed. But if what Cynthia said was true—if the broth had served to strengthen the poor waif—was it a sin?
“Tim, the Abbot…” Cynthia began awkwardly, shaking her hands as if she shook off water.
“Will forgive you,” Garth finished with conviction, moving beside her to touch the boy’s forehead. “As God does. You see, God loves good little lads like you, and he needs them here on earth to share his message.” The shimmer of hope in the boy’s glassy eyes almost stopped the words in his throat. “God wants you to get well.”
Tim solemnly searched his face. “Then I will,” he said.
Behind him, the door creaked open. “Lady Cynthia.”
“Elias,” she said.
The boy was breathless, and his face was rosy, as if he’d been running for miles.
“The Abbot…couldn’t come, my lady.”
Cynthia winced almost imperceptibly, then gave him a calm nod. “All right, Elias.” She pulled forth a vial from her satchel. “Nan, give him this. He should be better tomorrow,” she murmured to the boy’s mother.
Then she began rummaging in her satchel with the pent-up fury of a storm about to break. “Couldn’t come?” she muttered to herself. “Or wouldn’t?”
Garth frowned at Elias. “Did the Abbot say why he couldn’t come?”
“Aye, my lord, er…Father. He said he was indis-, indis-“
“Indisposed!” Cynthia snapped.
“Is the Abbot ill?” Garth asked the boy.
“Not yet,” Cynthia replied, pulling the strings on her satchel tight. “And it’s plain he’d like to keep it that way.” With a taut smile, she said farewell to the household, promising to visit on the morrow.
Outside the hovel, preparing to leave, she gave vent to her true feelings toward the Abbot.
“Indisposed!” she said, grabbing the reins of her palfrey. “He has no time to see to the souls of the dead?” She flung her satchel over the horse’s crupper. The bottles within clattered together, almost hard enough to break. “Do you know the real reason he doesn’t come?” she asked venomously as Garth steadied the stirrup for her. “He wishes to avoid the murrain in the village. The selfish bastard doesn’t want to risk contracting the disease.”
Halfway up to the saddle, her limbs gave out, and she slid back down against him with a small murmur of apology.
Garth frowned. The poor lass was as weak as a newborn foal. Even if she managed to mount, she’d never stay astride.
He eyed her horse. He hadn’t mounted a beast in four years, but he’d ridden every day as a boy. It wasn’t something one forgot. Sweeping his cassock behind him, he hauled himself up and threw his leg over the saddle. The familiar feel of leather beneath his thighs brought on a rush of pleasant boyhood memories.
He pulled Cynthia up before him, gathered the reins, and nudged the horse forward. Before long, she was drifting to sleep upon his chest. A warm, fierce wave of protectiveness enveloped him as she nestled closer, mingled with more carnal feelings that troubled his mind and body, feelings a man of the cloth should never have.
The trio of horses rode through the strange, quiet country between dusk and twilight, in shifting shadows of purple and gold. Overhead, the stars blinked on, one by one, like shy children coming out to play. The air grew chill. Garth wrapped the folds of his cassock more tightly around Cynthia, who, to his chagrin, snuggled against him as if she belonged there. The road was silent except for the squeak of leather tack and the soft rattle of the knights’ chain mail.
But a battle raged within Garth, a battle fraught with passion and self-doubt and peril. Four years of faith had been shaken today, jarred by the woman slumbering obliviously in his arms.
It was dangerous, the way Cynthia spoke out against the Abbot, countermanding the orders of the church, mandating which souls would live and which would die. Heretics had been burned for less.
He’d seen her work, watched her summon up curious energy between her hands, calling upon some mysterious force to render healing, swooning with the power of whatever demon or angel she invoked.
And yet, she’d done it all with good conscience, in good faith. It was clear she worked only for the benefit of her people. Hell, she’d worked herself half to death today for them.
He reached up to brush the curls from her cheek, and a sharp dagger of guilt jabbed at him. It wasn’t only Cynthia’s command over healing forces that troubled him.
For several miles, he’d tried to convince himself that what he felt for Lady Cynthia was solely protectiveness, a fatherly care for her welfare, a priest’s concern for her soul.
But he knew he deluded himself. Even now, the evidence of his undeniable male craving pressed firm against her.
Thank God she was asleep. Even through his cassock, where she touched him, his skin burned like heavenly fire. Her fragrance wafted up to him, fresh as meadowsweet, pure as rain. Her head rested upon his chest, and her breath moistened the wool of his cassock and, where the robe had slipped loose from its tie, warmed the flesh over his heart.
It was a sin to feel such desire. And yet there was nothing he could do about it. Cynthia Wendeville tempted his thirsty eyes, his empty arms, his starved loins. And worst of all, she threatened his lonely soul.
CHAPTER 13
Sleep was the last thing on Garth’s mind after they returned and he lay on his bed, gazing out the window at the stars. Outside, the cricket’s songs slowed as the air grew chill. From the distant wood, a nightingale’s call rose.
Somewhere, in another part of the castle, Lady Cynthia slumbered. He could imagine the coppery sprawl of her hair across her pillow, the soft brush of her lashes upon her cheek, the deep rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed. The moonlight would bathe her in silver. And she’d sleep like a child—deeply, dreamlessly—after the arduous day she’d endured.
Meanwhile, he lay awake, haunted by doubt, enthralled by desire.
Cynthia Wendeville was an enigma. Walking among those with the dread disease like a saint among sinners, she toiled with her hands and her heart and every last ounce of her strength. She was an angel of mercy come to sully her hands on their ills, and she worked with no complaint, no expectation of reward, even when, by the end of the day, the villagers had drained he
r completely, like innocent but greedy babes suckling at her breast.
And yet, that strange ritual…
Was she God’s instrument? Or the devil’s?
His loins would have him believe the latter. Not in all his youth had lust struck him such a powerful blow.
He sat up, wrenching the feather bolster from beneath his head and hurling it toward the foot of the bed. He’d find no rest tonight. Plowing a hand through his hair, he trudged to the window. The moonlight illuminated the trees in ghostly shades of white and gray and spilled like milk over the stone still. From the wood shone a pair of glowing orbs, the slow blinking eyes of an owl on the hunt.
Then his eyes caught movement along the inner wall of the castle. He frowned, dropping back out of sight to watch.
A slight cloaked figure slipped through the shadows, a cloth sack over one shoulder, the face concealed by a hood. A young lad? Nay, a woman, probably en route to some tryst or another.
The thought irritated him, but not as much as it intrigued him. And the fact that it intrigued him made him even more irritable. While he was sorting out the convoluted knot of that logic, the figure stepped momentarily into a patch of light.
Every muscle in Garth’s body tensed.
Clutched in the figure’s distinctly feminine hand, flashing in the moonlight, was something long and sharp and silver.
Climbing out through the window was the first impulsive thing he’d done in years. Stealing across the sward in bare feet was the second. Neither choice was prudent. He snagged his cassock on the stone sill, giving anyone who happened to be watching a clear view of his naked hindquarters as he slid to the ground. And his unshod feet slipped on the cold wet grass. But he dared not lose sight of the girl with the blade.
He shadowed her, ducking into the dark twice when she turned warily at some sound, until she stopped in the middle of the courtyard, before the herb garden. He glanced quickly about. No one else seemed to be in the vicinity—no victims awaiting her attack.
Only when she sank into a squat before a bush of nightshade did he discern that the sharp silver implement she carried was no instrument of murder. It was a spade.
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