The Protector

by Becca St. John

  She turned to face him, words long held escaping out in a rush. “When I first learned what it was that made your father so grievously ill, I should have told you, Roland. I should have told you, and your father, what I suspected.”

  Roland’s hands rested on her shoulders, his thumbs drew circles, as he murmured, low and steady.

  “What has his earlier illness to do with that night? Father recovered. You have said so yourself. He was in fine form.” His voice, soft as mink, caressed her cares.

  Roland crossed to the base of a tree, “Come, let us be seated.”

  Cin had risen to his haunches. Veri thought to go to the bear, yet could not keep herself from reaching for Roland. His presence drew her, no matter her state of mind.

  They sat together, Roland settled beside her, fit her within the curve of his arms.

  There was peace in his hold but not calm. It willed her to burrow closer, until their flesh would blend and be one. She dared not.

  The others spread out, a rough curved line of men seated before them.

  “The poison,” she sighed wearily, “would not be poison to all. It was probably within the pitcher that fed every man’s glass. That is what I failed to tell you. It was the same root that Roland’s father had been fed for months before he fell ill the first time.”

  “What?” Roland pushed her away from him, to hold her arms as he faced her. “What is this you say?”

  “When you first took me to Oakland, the poison affecting your father was from a root, not easily found, that affects the heart. It is used to ease problems for some. For others, when taken steadily, it will weaken rather than strengthen. Used with other herbs, herbs that are normally mild in effect, the combination can have a variety of reactions.”

  “So you are saying his heart was made weak?”

  “Aye,” Veri nodded. “You knew of this, before you left. As your father regained his strength, I warned that his heart would not have the vigor of his youth. That his heart aged with the illness, was indeed, older than your father’s years.”

  “How can a heart be older than the body which houses it?” Albert challenged.

  “In years, it is not older. But in manner, in ability to function, it seems to have lost its youth.”

  “So no one else would have reacted to the root?” Roland asked, the answer dawning.

  “Not entirely. Some would feel a quickening of the heart, but it would have meant little. Your father, though, would have a strong reaction. His body could not tolerate more of that element.”

  Roland fell back on his elbows, his head bowed back. “We had no idea, Veri. If we had suspected that he was weakened in this way . . .”

  “I knew, I should have warned you, but I thought the problem amended. I truly wished to believe he was fed this food by accident.”

  “You were a child.” Roland admitted, “Precisely why we did not worry you with our accusations.”

  “I was not child enough to ignore the root offers nothing of flavor, does not preserve food, and was far too difficult to find to use so generously.”

  “We are dealing with someone who knows a good deal about herbs?” Sir Jeffery broke in.

  “That we are.” Sir Harold adjoined.

  “No,” Veri argued, “they know of poison. Many know of such uses without knowing more.”

  “Game keeper?” Jeffery wondered.

  “They poison pests.” Albert agreed.

  “Yes, but what motive?” Roland asked.

  “It matters not,” Jeffery concluded, “that is what Lady Veri is saying. Any one, innocently, could have given the information. It is the person who took the recipe, used it against Sir Hugh, who must be found.”

  “Keep your ear to the ground, Jeffery,” Roland ordered.

  “Aye, that will be of help,” Harold joined, “That will help to weed the ferrets out.”

  “And watch the gossips,” Roland continued, “We will keep my wife’s actions within strict confines so there should be no reason to spread tales. Watch to see if someone tries to twist Lady Veri's innocence into something it is not.”

  “My actions?” Veri sputtered. "You want to put me under stricter regulations than you have me now?”

  Veri knew, by Albert's scowl, that she had crossed the line of 'good wifely behavior' but she didn't give a willows whip for that!

  "Roland?" She waited for his response.

  “Veri, this is why you have been restricted from the gardens, riding out on your own, even having Cinnamon by your side.” Roland admitted.

  “So they will not gossip?” She cried in disbelief.

  “Absolutely,” Roland smiled as though she were still a child. But she was not a child, she was an adult with her own mind.

  “If you are very careful in your actions, people cannot make injurious claims of what they have not seen.”

  “Since when has gossip fed on reality?” Veri huffed. “They have accused me of many things, none of which have actually been done. You cannot amend gossip with restricted behavior.”

  “Then how do you wish to counter it?” Roland demanded, sitting up to confront her.

  At least he listened.

  “By being myself.” She answered quickly, “Behaving as I have always behaved. The truth always wins out. When nothing untoward happens, when people come to see that no harm comes their way, despite my presence, all will ease. Their fears will abate.”

  Harold shook his head.

  “You do not agree?” Veri accused.

  “I do not agree,” Harold admitted. "Tales told around the castle claim that any mixture you taught others to use had ill affect once you were gone. Those stories hold considerable power."

  "The herb room," Veri whispered. "Someone mixed up the herbs. They are labeled wrong."

  "You are sure of this?" Roland asked.

  "Yes, I was in the herb room when a soldier told me to leave. He said that if you had been here, seen the danger I worked with herbs, you would not allow me to be in there. I wondered what he meant, but I was still confused by what I found."

  Albert sighed deeply. “With no disrespect, Lady Veri, add that to the fact that your ways are as foreign to the people as any foreigner and you can understand their wariness. Your pet is example enough.”

  “So,” Godric countered, “she is a high born lady with a taste for the exotic. That is not so unusual.”

  Roland shook his head, lifted Veri to fit within the cradle of his thighs. “No, that is no good. We cannot pass her off as merely exotic. Too much has been said. Too much damage has been spread.” Despite her stiffness, he pulled her back against his chest.

  “She speaks the truth. When it is seen that no harm has come . . . .”

  “No!” Again, Roland shook his head, grunting as Veri’s elbow hit his gut.

  “Stop!” She turned to face him. “Give others a chance to speak. I do not like your conclusions, would like to hear of others.”

  “He is your husband, milady,” Albert interjected, “It is his word that we all must obey.”

  “If he expected me to obey, then he should not have married me.”

  “Lady Veri,” the elderly Albert tried again, with his most fatherly voice, “you are but a woman, you cannot know what is best for you. Have faith in your husband.”

  “Have faith in a husband that wants me to be someone I am not?” She snipped, “It is the other one he should have married. Whoever it is he is trying to make me be!”

  **********

  She looked at the castle looming before her and wished to be anywhere but Oakland.

  “Milady?”

  Startled, Veri turned to find a thin woman, with hair as lank and dull as her sallow complexion. The woman curtsied. Veri couldn’t move. After such consistent shunning, this feeble woman offered a priceless gift.

  “Good day,” Veri stepped closer, cautious and careful least she destroy the moment, the contact, the first she’d been offered since her arrival.

  The woman shuddere
d with terror, but she did not move.

  Veri waited, for the woman did not approach on a whim.

  “I’m Joan, ma’am, the baker’s wife.”

  “Ah.” Drawn by the scent of fresh rolls and cakes, Veri turned. “And what a wonderful scent . . . “ but Joan stopped her.

  “It’s the medicines you be sending me . . .”

  Veri whipped around. “Medicine? I’m not . . .” sending her medicines but again an interruption.

  “Milady.” Another local women. This one much stouter than Joan, with a child in her arms, another hidden behind the folds of her skirt. She’d run, heaved air from the effort.

  “Betty’s my name,” the woman dipped in a curtsy, disturbing the child at her shoulder.

  “Betty?” Veri wanted to talk to Joan, about medicine she expected or had received, but Joan had faded and there was the child in Betty’s arms. Eyes glazed with fever, a stream of green crust about its nose, convulsed with coughing.

  “Aye, ‘tis Betty,” she smoothed the child’s back, bounced him upon her hip, “wife to John the smithy.”

  “Over this way?” The smithy was before the bakers. If Veri went there, she could go on and see Joan afterward.

  “Oh, aye, just there.” Betty walked with her, passing the little one off to another child who seemed to materialize from behind her. “Right proud we would be to have you look at our work,” she addressed Veri, as she wiped her hands upon her apron. “My Johnnie does a fine job, he does.” Betty lifted her chin as she looked about them.

  Though they didn’t come too close, a crowd had gathered to watch the exchange. Joan stood outside the bakery, her apron clasped in her fist, held at her mouth. Fearful, but even so, she started to return.

  However, this was a start. A fine start.

  “Show me the way,” Veri nodded, and followed as Betty turned to walk back toward the smithy.

  “What goes here?” Harold stepped in front of them. “Leave Lady Veri be.” He commanded.

  “No!” Veri ordained, chin high. Her eyes gleamed with confrontation. “It is my pleasure that they receive me well, Sir Harold. They are no bother.”

  “I will escort you to the castle, milady.”

  Veri wondered just how far she could push him.

  “I wish to see the smithy’s,” she explained.

  “I will escort you.”

  Veri laughed, lightly. “I think not, sir. You frighten the people. They think you look for misbehavior. As you can see, they do not feel the same with me.” When Harold could not reply, she continued, “I am quite safe with the women folk. They will guide me.”

  “You will go no further?”

  Veri shook her head.

  He scowled but she had given him no option. With a grunt, Harold walked away to stand at the rear of the crowd, his arms crossed at his chest.

  “Yes,” Veri beamed. He wasn’t as far away as she would like, but it was a start. She brushed her hands. “Now, lead me to the smithy’s, if you please.”

  It was easy to tell when they’d arrived at the blacksmiths. Heat, from the great fire, reached out to the narrow street where they stood. A steady beat rang through the air as hammer struck anvil, once, twice then onto the metal to be shaped or thinned and back to the anvil. The whoosh of bellows blew in balance, a rhythm of softness against the hard clang.

  “It is hot!” Veri exclaimed, staying outdoors, looking in through the portal. She welcomed the heat upon her face. It was true, real, a part of life in the village.

  “’Tis hot as hell,” an old woman warned, her knobby hands upon a cane. Betty shot a disgruntled look at the old woman, as all pressed in closer to hear the hiss of words.

  “I think not,” Veri studied the woman and measured her threat. “The Bible clearly states that the fires of hell will cause great suffering and gnashing of teeth. I hear no sounds of agony. Just the noise of a man and his son hard at work. It is good for Oakland to have such people.”

  “And what of you, Lady Veri? Idle hands, do ye not have?”

  Veri laughed against the woman’s angry intent. “Hands torn from the sewing needle, now bruised from the reins of my mount.”

  The old woman cackled. “Idle hands,” she condemned, a gnarled finger raised, aimed at Veri. “Devil’s toy. One day you will hear those cries of agony.” Her voice grew with the accusations. “Shouts from hell! And they shall be your own!” She spit upon the ground, pivoted and waddled off, sprightlier than one would suspect for a caned woman of her age.

  Harold pushed through the crowd. Soldiers closed in on the woman. When they had their hands upon her she turned her head and cackled, “You’re naught but a witch and you will burn!” Her litany rode the air, as hefty soldiers dragged her toward the bowels of the castle.

  None spoke. Harold moved in close.

  “She does not know what she ways,” Betty finally offered, though her frown betrayed her level of calm.

  What had Jeffery said back in the woods? Any who speak of Lady Veri kindly, are said to be under her spell. Veri did not want Betty’s kindness to be seen as witchery. Or Joan’s trust in Veri’s healing to be a threat to the woman.

  Once again, she peered into the smithy’s. “Yes,” she proclaimed, “It is a fine place, a fine place indeed.”

  She didn’t ask to be shown the different tools, the skills involved in making such intricate things as chain mail. She didn’t condemn them with a lengthy visit, but suggested an herb to be steamed for the child’s cough as she said her goodbyes.

  If Harold followed at all, he kept his distance .

  She sought the refuge of her room. The entrance in shadow, dark, but for two shafts of light that beamed in from narrow windows on either side of the portal. Veri looked to that light, to the dust motes that danced in their beams, and wondered if any such light would come into her life.

  A child.

  The thought came upon her so quickly she barely had time to catch it before it skittered off again.

  A child.

  Why had she failed to think of such a thing sooner? The pain, the humiliation, of the consummation prejudiced her thoughts. It also failed its objective. Her menses had come and gone, but surely she could face the trial of mating again.

  A child would be worth it.

  Veri’s breath stopped.

  If they mated again, Roland would caress her, hold her. There would be warmth as there was in the woods.

  Anticipation rippled across her skin, explosion upon explosion of sensation. She wrapped her arms around herself, as though to staunch the sense of imagined touch.

  This dark entrance hall, in the aftermath of a tumultuous day, was no place for such dreams. She moved forward, her hand at her midsection against butterflies that flitted anxiously within her. She fought to dampen the burgeoning joy lest something happen to spoil it.

  “So!” Doreena hissed, and just so the joy slithered from Veri.

  There, in the darkest corner of the entrance, beneath the great stone stairway, shadows shifted. Veri could just see the shape of Dori, one arm raised so she could balance herself against the underside of the stairs. Only partially successful, the muted shades of her silhouette shifted, as she swayed unsteadily upon silk- slippered feet.

  Spider or fly within its web, Veri didn’t know for certain. Dori was caught, within an unproven sorrow and Veri the victim of the lie that created the sorrow. A tangled web for certain.

  “I hear you have learned the pain of betrayal!” Dori words slurred as they slid out. “And you, not even truly married a week!”

  Spider. But Veri did not understand the trap being set.

  “What do you mean?” She asked, curious and wary in one.

  “What is it I mean?” Dori scoffed, “did you not find your husband coming from that whore's bed? Was she not hanging on his shirttails? And you ask what I mean? Surely you are not so naïve!” With one step, Dori released her hold on the stairway only to stumble, until Veri reached out to stop the fall.

&nb
sp; “Let me go!” Dori pulled away, to tumble backward until the under stair gave her purchase. “Though I should pity you, I do not! You deserve his deceit!”

  “I do not know what you mean,” Veri admitted. Just how naive had she been? Naïve to have returned, to believe she could help Roland?

  “Your husband is no more faithful to you than mine was to me.”

  “Derek was never my lover.” Veri promised.

  “Aye,” Dori shrieked, “He was! Hannah saw the two of you! She told me!”

  "It was not me, Dori.” Veri pleaded, tired of fighting illusions. She wanted the truth to come out, she willed herself to battle to have it seen, but her life had grown too weary. She could not face much more this day. “I promise you, Derek was never my lover. I’d had no lovers. If Hannah would just tell me what she saw, then I could explain!” Veri pledged.

  Dori spit at her, like the old woman, but this one hit it is mark.

  “You would lie!” She keened a wail that ricocheted from stone wall to stone wall, an eerie sound that drew others.

  “What is going on here?” Margaret came from the great hall.

  Veri backed away from Doreena, wiped spittle and tears of frustration from her face.

  “I did not sleep with her husband, Margaret. You must believe me. Someone must believe me!”

  Margaret's watchful eyes shifted from the scene before her to the top of the stairs.

  Roland.

  Veri whipped around.

  “I believe you.” His voice carried clear and strong from where he stood, at the uppermost stair. “It has been proven, Dori. Believe it.”

  “She is a witch,” Dori accused, “she has you under a spell.”

  “And why doesn’t she have you under her spell, Dori?” Margaret asked quietly.

  Doreena whimpered, her eyes glittering with unshed tears.

  “Don’t, Margaret, don’t be taken in by her.” She whimpered, as she sank to the ground, a heap of misery. “She is ugly and hideous and she will do us all in.”

  “Stop it, Dori!” Margaret’s matter of fact charge startled her younger sister as effectively as a slap in the face. “Veri is neither ugly nor hideous and seems docile enough. So behave yourself.”