Knights of de Ware 03 - My Hero

by Glynnis Campbell

  She supposed she should be rejoicing. She’d won, after all. She’d singlehandedly vanquished almost certain despair, looked death in the eye and beat it back from the door.

  But at what price?

  “How are the villagers faring?” she asked.

  “Not a one lost.” Elspeth beamed, continuing to scrub at Cynthia’s back. “A few are still weak as lambs, but they’ll be up and about in no time.”

  Cynthia closed her eyes and breathed a prayer of thanks for that.

  El sluiced a bucket of warm, clean water over Cynthia’s head to rinse out the soap. Then she bundled her hair in a linen towel and gave it a twist at the top.

  “My lady,” she said, helping Cynthia from the bath and wrapping another towel around her, “may I speak my mind?”

  Cynthia arched a brow at her. Since when did Elspeth ever ask to speak her mind?

  She led Cynthia to a padded bench and sat beside her. “Wendeville is a rich estate with grand holdings. You can’t leave it like a helpless dove for all the greedy falcons circling about. You must get an heir eventually. You know that, lass. And you must choose a good father for that heir.”

  Cynthia said nothing. For once, she listened.

  “I know Lord John hasn’t been long in the grave.” She paused to cross herself. “But I know he’d want this as well. He wouldn’t want to see his castle fall to ruin for want of an heir.”

  Cynthia swallowed and looked out the narrow window, where the last soft, hazy sunlight of the day kissed the rolling hills a fond goodnight.

  Elspeth was right. The promise John had extracted from her, to wed again for love, had been more than a gesture of magnanimity. John had wanted his legacy to continue, even if he didn’t survive to see it.

  Once before, Cynthia had sacrificed her own selfish desires to please her father, her sisters, her king. She supposed such was the lot of a noblewoman. She was merely a pawn to be surrendered for the sake of those with greater need.

  Perhaps she should find a lord for Wendeville. The least she could do for the castle folk was marry a kind and decent and fair overlord to ensure their future.

  Her throat tightened at the thought, but she refused to let Elspeth see her cry. Weeping over such things was childish. Besides, her tears would only bewilder Elspeth. El would never understand, when she’d gone to such great pains to introduce Cynthia to every marriageable man in England, that the only man Cynthia was interested in, the only one who touched her heart and consumed her soul, was the one she could never have.

  Garth would be damned if he’d take a week to heal from the murrain. He was, after all, of hale de Ware stock. After three days of the prior’s coddling him like stained glass, he was ready to tear down the walls of his hospitable prison, stone by stone.

  But healing from his wounded heart…

  He’d heard nothing from Cynthia since she’d fled his cell, as if when she was through with his sickness, she was through with him as well. And yet she’d done no more than follow what he’d preached to her all along. She’d repeated his wisdom plainly. The monastery was his home. Wendeville was hers. He belonged in this world. She belonged in another.

  But the truth was, as he suffered through her absence, he began to believe that less and less.

  Fine particles of dust sifted down through the sunbeam in the scriptorium, illuminating the half-finished parchment. Garth dipped his quill again into the ebony ink, then paused, his fingers tightening as he stared at the word he’d scribed across the page of Scripture.

  Cynthia.

  He sighed, vexed at his distraction. No matter how neat the penmanship, Cynthia did not belong in the middle of the Psalms. He tossed the quill down in frustration. It made a stain on the page like a squashed spider.

  “Something amiss?”

  Garth scrabbled hastily at the parchment, crumpling it in his fist before Prior Thomas could see the mistake. How long had the stealthy old man been standing there?

  “I…I need a new quill,” he invented. “This one is split.”

  The prior picked up the quill, examining its point. “Hmm.” He eyed the parchment, wrinkled beneath Garth’s hand. Then he circled the scriptorium desk and set the quill down upon the edge.

  “Brother Garth.” He steepled his stumpy fingers against his pursed lips. “Your body has healed well and quickly, with God’s blessing.”

  “Aye.” Garth’s smile felt forced.

  “But…” He clapped his solid hand atop Garth’s. “A healthy body does not make a man whole.” Garth tightened his grip on the parchment. “Your mind is yet troubled, isn’t it?”

  “Troubled?”

  To his alarm, Prior Thomas gently pried the ball of parchment from him. Then he continued speaking, gesturing with the damned thing. “Aye. Troubled. Tormented. Restless.”

  Garth cleared his throat. “A priest’s mind is…is ever restless while there is…sin in the world.”

  Silence reigned for a moment. Then the prior chuckled, tossing the unopened parchment back onto the desk. “Sin? Or Cynthia?”

  Mortified, Garth clenched his fists, prepared to protest.

  “Now lad, it’s no use trying to deceive this old fox,” Prior Thomas assured him with a wink.

  Garth challenged the prior’s gaze. But Thomas’s eyes were full of empathy, not scorn. The man was genuinely trying to help. Garth forced his hackles down.

  “It’s hopeless, Father,” he said softly, resting his forehead on his palms. “I can’t banish her from my mind. I pray. I fast. I immerse myself in this.” He picked up the wad of parchment, stared at it. “And still she haunts me.”

  The prior nodded. “Like the other one?”

  He frowned. “The other one?” Mariana. He meant Mariana—sultry, scheming Mariana who roused him with the wiles of a harlot. “Nay, nothing like her. Mariana was cruel. Cynthia is…” There were no words to describe her, at least none he could repeat to the prior, nothing to explain the wholeness of spirit, the rightness he felt with her. “Cynthia is not.”

  The prior smiled dryly. “High praise indeed for the woman who saved your life.”

  Garth’s mind seized the alibi faster than a hound snatching a morsel of meat. “Aye. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s merely gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?” the prior chuckled. “Nay, I don’t think so. I administered a bit of medicine to you myself, but it was never my name you cried out in your fever.”

  Garth let out a long breath and rubbed at his temples, where a dull throbbing had begun. “Surely God has abandoned me. And yet I’ve done everything in my power to succumb to His will. Why does He not guide me in this?”

  The prior sighed and waddled slowly before the desk, musing. “Perhaps He does.” He tapped his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Brother Garth, let me speak plainly.” He laced his fingers together over his round belly. “The crops are planted. The monastery stores are ample. I have two novitiates drooling over your desk like pups, eager to practice their letters. And in light of the quantity of broken quills and wasted parchment I’ve seen of late, I must say I’m tempted to let them.”

  Garth straightened defensively. “I can pay for—“

  “Nay, nay, that’s not my point,” the prior said, waving away his offer. “Besides, your father has endowed us with enough silver for a mountain of parchment and a sea of ink. Nay, the marrow of it is that God seems to be guiding you most deliberately.” He paused expectantly.

  Garth scowled.

  “Your work with Lady Cynthia is obviously not finished,” Thomas explained, “in God’s eyes.”

  Garth pressed the wrinkles from his brow.

  “You’re not needed at the monastery, Garth,” the prior gently confided. “But Wendeville continues to lack a chaplain.”

  “Then find another.” Garth frowned again. “I can’t work beside her, feeling…what I feel.”

  The prior took his hand in a surprisingly firm grip until Garth raised his eyes. “You can’t stay here, my son, feeling what y
ou feel.”

  Garth bit the inside of his cheek. He wondered how it was possible to feel hope and dread at the same time. His heart raced at the prospect of seeing Cynthia again, but apprehension paralyzed his limbs. He vacillated in indecision.

  “Garth, I’ve given Brother Andrew your cell.”

  “What?” He blinked.

  “I promised him that when you were fully healed—“

  “You’re banishing me from the monastery?” Garth asked, incredulous.

  “Nay, not banishing.” The prior scowled, patting his hand. “Pushing you…from the nest.”

  Garth was outraged. Prior Thomas was tossing him out like a bothersome drunk from an alehouse. And yet…in his heart, he realized that the old man was right. Garth was clearly useless at the monastery. He couldn’t even scribe two consecutive verses properly, not while he was haunted by a pair of sapphire eyes.

  Still, he couldn’t imagine how things would be any better at Wendeville.

  “Don’t brood, Garth. God will guide you,” the prior said, clapping him on the shoulder, “in the manner He has all along.”

  Garth smiled glumly. That was what he most feared.

  By day’s end, Garth stood before the doors of the great hall of Wendeville, holding his breath. At worst, he expected a chilly reception from the castle denizens. After all, he had, in effect, deserted them—in the middle of Lent, in the midst of sickness. At best, he hoped for forgiveness in the form of a subdued but polite welcome. He never anticipated the desperation in Roger’s eyes as the steward swung the door wide.

  The man looked absolutely stricken. Dark shadows bruised the flesh beneath his eyes, and the grim turn of his mouth had aged him a decade beyond his years.

  Garth dropped his satchel to the stones. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Roger wrung his hands together as his weary eyes filled with tears. An eerie prickling coursed up Garth’s spine.

  “Roger, tell me.”

  Roger fretted at the sleeve of his surcoat. “I fear I have bad tidings.”

  Garth’s pulse beat unnaturally loud in his ears. Was it Elspeth? Had something happened to Elspeth?

  But Elspeth came scurrying up behind Roger, bleary-eyed and as worn as pauper’s linen, but alive.

  “It’s Lady Cynthia,” she blurted, half-sobbing into her apron.

  A sharp pain cut across Garth’s chest as his heart kicked a sudden macabre jig against his ribs.

  Then, before he knew what he was doing, he’d clenched his fists in the steward’s surcoat and was hauling the poor man within inches of his scowling face.

  “Nay!” he growled.

  Roger’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed twice, like a hooked trout’s.

  “Stop it! Stop!” Elspeth cried.

  Blinking in confusion, Garth instantly released Roger, at once sorry for his violent de Ware blood. “What…” he began, choking on the words. “What’s happened?”

  Mercifully, Roger wasted no time restoring his composure. His garments still askew, he said, “She has the sickness. She may be…dying.”

  Garth’s heart went cold. His jaw trembled, but not with sorrow. With rage—rage that God would dare let the dread sickness darken Cynthia’s threshold. Cynthia—who comforted the dying and brought new babes into the world, who selflessly battled the devil’s worst diseases, championing those with no strength to fight, whose life lay yet unbloomed before her. Rage burned inside him until his skin crackled with it.

  “Take me to her,” he ground out. “Now.”

  It was Cynthia who needed a champion now. She’d fought for everyone else. Lord, she’d fought for him, saved his life. He owed her as much. Bloody hell—God owed her as much.

  With dread for a companion, he raced up the steps to her chamber, armed with nothing but his wits, his will, and a love that, he hoped to God, could conquer anything.

  The Abbot listened with feigned patience as Mary tearfully blurted out her confession. Garth de Ware had returned to Wendeville. He’d been there two days already, threatening mayhem and wreaking havoc, according to Mary. Her whimpers disturbed the flame of the single candle he held, making shadows dance up the soot-darkened walls of the cottage like bats taking flight at twilight.

  “Brother Garth went mad as a bull, Father! I had no choice but to fetch the herbs for him! I swear it! And when I refused to bring him the eggs, it being Lent and all, he…” She broke off with a sob, running grimy fingers under her nose. They came away slick. The Abbot curled his lip in distaste. “He told me I’d swing from the gallows if Lady Cynthia died.”

  Died? Here was a surprise. “She’s that ill?”

  “Aye, Father. She’s tossed with the fever for five days now. And Brother Garth, he’s never left her side. Won’t let anyone go near her either, except her maid and me. And now she lies still as death.” Mary’s brow fretted itself into an ugly contortion of suffering, and fresh tears coursed down her face. “Oh, Father! God will forgive me, won’t He? I had to fetch the herbs!” She grabbed two fistfuls of his cassock. He grimaced, remembering the condition of her hands. “I had to!”

  “I will intercede on your behalf,” he said, more to shut her up than to give her solace.

  It worked. She was reduced to raining tears and kisses upon the hem of his cassock.

  He rapped his knuckle pensively against his teeth. Was Lady Cynthia dying? Even more significantly, was her death being hastened? Maybe he hadn’t given de Ware enough credit. Maybe the sly chaplain wasn’t without selfish motives after all. Mary had seen their sordid encounter in the garden. Could it be that the crafty monk had insinuated himself into Cynthia’s good graces with the intent of eliminating her?

  Some of those devil’s herbs the chaplain had bade Mary fetch were poison. Was it possible that as soon as de Ware secured his inheritance of Wendeville, he intended to quietly finish Cynthia off with some deadly elixir?

  The Abbot sighed unhappily. It niggled at him that he’d so misjudged the monk. Usually he could spot men of his own ilk, men of power and ambition, as readily as ink spilled on vellum. He’d missed this one.

  De Ware might well succeed in eliminating the last remaining heir to Wendeville to claim the land for himself, usurping what rightfully belonged to the Abbot.

  On the other hand, it might be of benefit to have Cynthia’s blood on de Ware’s hands rather than his own. The fool might actually relieve the Abbot of the burden of seeing to her disposal.

  Of course, in the end, Garth would lose. The Abbot had played the game much longer. He had the tools to destroy Garth de Ware, to strip the cassock off his back and see him executed as a heretic.

  He had the list of devil’s herbs.

  He had proof that the strictures of Lent had been disobeyed.

  And he had a witness, who even now groveled at his feet, to the chaplain’s midnight indiscretion with Lady Cynthia.

  One way or another, both Cynthia Wendeville and Garth de Ware would pay for their sins.

  Righteousness welled in him like a font, turning the dismal hovel suddenly bright with promise. Even his usually critical gaze, as he stared down at the wretch worshipping his garments, grew more charitable. Mary seemed less pathetic now. Her fat tears glistened like polished jewels on her pale cheek, and her hair wound sinuously over her quaking shoulders. Indeed, she seemed almost holy. Her hands clasped the edge of his cassock to her bosom as if it were the Christ’s. Murmurs of prayer fell from her reddened, sob-swollen lips.

  The poor child was suffering. She needed him. Needed his forgiveness. His blessing. His offering.

  He hardened at once.

  Garth ran a shaky hand through his grimy hair. His eyes felt as gritty and raw as salted mussels. He was sure he stank of sweat and worry. His belly whimpered with hunger, but he couldn’t eat. Spots of color fluttered before him like moths, reminding him of the sleep he’d neglected too long. He scrubbed at his eyes, temporarily vanquishing the flitting lights. But he knew they’d be back, just li
ke the gloom that visited him between bouts of hope.

  For three days and nights, he’d stayed with her, watching her, fighting for her as she hovered on the brink of death. In all that time, he’d never voiced a single prayer, not because he lacked faith, but because he knew he would have just as willingly called upon the devil as God to save Cynthia if he thought it would work.

  Already he’d violated Lent. Already he’d used herbs known to be the devil’s. And a hundred times he’d touched her intimately—bathing her fevered skin, changing her damp garments, brushing her hair back from her pale cheek. Nay, God wouldn’t listen to his sinner’s pleas now.

  And yet he was desperate.

  He reached out for Cynthia’s wrist. Beneath his fingers, her pulse was weak and slow, and her skin was clammy. He held his palm before her lips. Her breath made only the faintest stirring there. He swallowed hard, fighting off the despair that threatened to smother him.

  He should be dying, not Cynthia.

  Who was he? An empty vessel adrift on a nameless sea. Half a man who was good for neither church nor marriage. But Cynthia—Cynthia was full of life and love and purpose. She brought the omnipotence of God to men’s hearts more powerfully than any of his own hollow sermons ever would.

  It was a travesty. She’d drained herself to save him, and now she lay dying.

  His mouth twisted bitterly. On the table beside Cynthia’s bed, shriveled leaves and shredded bark lay in neat piles on a wooden platter. They were the weapons he’d meticulously prepared, mimicking as best he could Cynthia’s own, to fight off the demon attacking her. He’d believed they could save her, as they had the villagers. But now they seemed mere impotent weeds and chaff. Without Cynthia’s touch, without her healing gift to empower them, the herbs were useless.

  Frustration fed the fury growing inside him, mocking him, tormenting him until it exploded in a storm of pain. Snarling a curse, he swept his arm violently across the tabletop, knocking aside the tray and scattering the herbs into the rushes. Futile tears of rage stood in his eyes, blurring his vision, and the need to bellow out the injustice of it all wrenched at his chest.