The Protector

by Becca St. John

  “She has taken Maida as personal servant. Did you not see that?”

  “Ah,” Gelda clapped her hands together, “‘Tis fortune’s hand. Maida’s fear is a blackened cavern. ‘Twill take little to fill it. She will do much to rid herself of a mistress such as our Lady.”

  “Your lady, mayhaps,” the other voice pronounced, “but mine, never! Never mine!”

  **********

  Veri sat, her back against the door.

  “It was you, up on that ledge, it was you.”

  How long had she dreaded this day, when the truth would be told.

  “I knew there would be trouble.” She remembered.

  “How Veri, how did you know that there would be trouble?”

  She curled against the wood, her arms wrapped around her knees, as she prepared to answer questions left too long.

  “I witnessed a similar attack that same season. I knew, before you rode into the meadow, men were there, hidden in the undergrowth just under a ridge that lined the path.”

  “You saw them? And didn’t go for help?”

  “They settled there that morning. I watched, wondered why they were there. How could I guess they meant so much harm?”

  “What did you do the first time, Veri? Could you not help any of those men?”

  He was thinking of his brother. She understood that.

  “Aye, I tried.”

  “And?”

  How could she tell him? How could she voice what she found when Tansy sent her out to the meadow, in time to see the final blow that left four bodies broken, bleeding, within that ominous place?

  She had been too late. She knew it when she came upon them. Bodies changed in death. Except for one, the largest. She cradled his head in her lap, wiped the blood that ran from his mouth, his ear.

  “My brother . . .” he coughed, bringing more blood out into the open. There had been no water for his lips, so Veri used his own blood to wet his mouth. Drastic measures to ensure a man’s dying words be heard.

  She told Roland what she should have told him all those years before. “His last words were, ‘home, danger within,. . .’ It was your brother, I am sure of it.”

  She did not speak of his death, of how he lay within her arms, his eyes open, staring. How the wind blew at them both as though to grab his soul and carry it away.

  Veri preferred to forget that time.

  “Danger within?” Roland pulled her thoughts back, away from the horrors of the past. “So it was those he knew?”

  “Aye.” She sighed.

  “Veri,” he was wide-awake now, she could tell, and eager for answers. “When it was me, how did you frighten off the attackers? You were no more than a child.”

  “Cin chased them.” And when you awoke, groggy and disorientated by the potions I fed you, you asked, “Beware the witches. They haunt these woods, take children like you to slave.”

  He promised to protect her from them.

  She dared not tell him. She dared not say, “they are healers, not witches, and they raised me as one of their own.”

  All these years, he believed her to be the orphan of a woodsman and his wife. He never doubted her word. How could she break his trust now?

  Roland stepped into her thoughts to ask again, “You frightened them off, Veri? You were such a wee thing?”

  “What else do you remember?”

  He laughed, a dry, cynical sound. “Pain, lots of pain, and that horrible brew you kept pouring down my throat.”

  She chuckled and waited, certain he would ask questions about the caves.

  “Fortuitous you knew so much of healing.”

  Like diving into a cold pond, she blurted, “I studied with my sisters.”

  “Sisters? You’ve never spoken of sisters? What happened to them?” She could hear the surprise, even a touch of annoyance. He’d always thought of her as a lone orphan.

  “You know little of me, from before we met.”

  “There’s been little time.”

  She could imagine him, sitting there on the other side of the door, his head bent attentively, as he listened.

  “You were grievously injured.”

  She waited, knowing he did not want to know what stood, so obviously, before him. He had not come to the answers sooner because he had not wanted to.

  Rash and impatient with all the lies between them, she pushed him further. “In the beginning, do you not remember having woken within the caves? The caves inside the mount of St. Michael?”

  His silence rode on the tide of his resistance.

  Her hand trembled. She’d set the path, he only needed to open his thoughts.

  He cleared his throat.

  Silence.

  She tried once more, her voice uneven with fear. “That mount, those caves, were, at one time, well known . . . “

  “Halt!” He blared, stopping her.

  She shivered with apprehension, knowing some secrets were meant to be kept. But she was tired of living a lie, of pretending to be anything but what she was. Of hiding the best of herself in clandestine meetings with those who needed her.

  They had needed her. She had helped. Why should she be punished for those skills?

  Yet she feared his reaction, even as she knew he’d heard enough and still chose not to know. She was one of the healers, the women in the woods, considered by all to be evil witches when all they tried to do was heal others.

  They both sat, Veri breathing hard, sucking in air to stem the flood of emotions battering her heart. The urge to lift the latch, to open the door and face him, to see what worked through his imagination, beckoned, but she would not heed the call.

  “You must not tell anyone,” he urged, on a hushed whisper, “no one, of where you tended me. ‘Twould fair ill if any were to know. They think it a place for witches.”

  “They are not witches, Roland.”

  “No, they are merely crazy old hags.”

  “Roland!” He slandered those she loved, as tears strangled her words.

  Could he not see that it was her turn to tell a story. Her need. She could not live upon the pedestal that he imagined her upon. “They, we, are healers. The Women of the Woods.”

  “You were but a child.” He exclaimed in denial. “No more than ten years when you found me.”

  “Aye, a child, to be sure, but one who staved off the grim reaper that set upon your soul.”

  “You had your home, the woodsmen’s hut.” He was now convincing himself, the questions no longer in his tone. “You could not have been one of them. You were far too young, and had a home other than the caves.”

  “Roland,” Veri gathered strength. “I found the shelter, to take you from the caves and the accusations of witchcraft. Besides,” she snapped, no longer hiding behind a false past, “youth has naught to do with anything. The healers start training when they are but babes.”

  “Nay!” Again, he forbade her confession, his own denial a lie upon his lips. She heard it, knew he saw the truth by the vehemence of his negation.

  “Have you never considered this?” She prompted, though it was not needed. He had thought of it and often. The possibility that she was one of the Women was there, in his voice. He had thought of it, yet would not believe. Refused all that faced him.

  “They were the witches, Veri.” Now he tried to convince her. “You are far from being one of them.”

  “Nay, husband,” she told him firmly, “they were not witches.”

  “They brought the hail.”

  Oh, she remembered that hail. How it scattered Father Ignacious and his band of men set on attacking the women. It fell in punishing torrents on fields ripe with grain, the first such hopeful harvest in years.

  “The sky brought the hail.”

  “The devil.” He argued.

  “God!” She cried.

  She could hear the ragged pant of his breath, as a sob escaped her lips.

  He had been protecting her from his own fears! From his own wretched, twisted
beliefs.

  “You are not a witch!” He exclaimed.

  “I am not a witch.” She agreed, “but now you see why only Father Kenneth will suit? He knows of my life, who I was. Who I am. He alone will understand my need to be either wife or healer, or both if that is what God wills. But to be none of these things, to be of no use to any, will kill me as surely as this room will kill me, should Kenneth not arrive.”

  “He will arrive.” Roland affirmed.

  “Aye,” Veri agreed, “he will arrive.”

  **********

  He didn’t need both ears to hear. Sir Albert looked behind him, his head angled so he could listen with his good ear. The other no more than a ragged bit of caked blood. Fortunately, they didn’t have dogs to catch the scent of his wounds. Hounds or not, they had already found his mount and further on, his armor. But they failed to find him, hidden in the undergrowth, watching.

  Who were they? He saw little more than their boots. He heard their voices, but the noise in his head was too loud to discern much.

  They now knew his vulnerability, too weak to carry his own armor. Did they know him well enough to realize his strength was in his stealth, or it had been when he had been younger?

  No longer young, though a favored retainer, certainly Lord Roland would not have sent him to scout for Father Kenneth if he knew he’d be followed.

  Albert grimaced against the pain. A careless distraction, dangerous.

  His opponents trailed him from the moment he’d left Oakland Castle five days before. He sensed it, even circled around to come up behind them.

  That was when they attacked.

  What was their motive? Why did they wish to thwart his attempt to find Father Kenneth? Had they followed and attacked the others sent on this mission? All good men trained and honed. Albert, the oldest of the lot, gone white with joints that gave him trouble, but he could be trusted. He’d served as an equal beside Lord Hugh and now as an advisor to his son. He had experience on his side. Despite that, his trackers had nearly succeeded in undoing him.

  No one expected trouble of this sort.

  The wizened knight leaned his weary body against a tree, a respite. The metallic scent of his blood wafted in the air. Could they smell it? If they could, he would soon be dead.

  Albert closed his eyes against the weariness, wishing to be free of the pain, to be free.

  He thought to let them have their way.

  He fought his share of battles. Many of his friends had already passed to the world beyond. Better to die in battle than to waste away, an old man good for nothing. His knees buckled. A bright red smear ran down the trunk of the great oak as he slowly lowered to the ground.

  They would find him there, he would allow it.

  Against the screen of his eyelid, he pictured Oakland, walking along side Lord Hugh, both of them young, arrogant, fearless. He pictured young Roland, a mere lad, dogging their footsteps.

  Someone wanted Roland dead, gone, just as they had wanted the father dead.

  Albert opened his eyes.

  The Lord of Oakland, the heirs, were systematically being murdered. Roland was the next to go. This was about more than one old knight and his pain. It was about more than a ruling lord and his son. It was about Oakland.

  Albert rolled over, braced himself on his one good arm.

  He spent his life protecting Oakland, and the family of that house.

  Still bent over, he gained the leverage of his knees.

  He had given his oath, to serve and protect.

  Like a plant, wilted and shriveled, regains its starch with the spring rain, Albert regained his vigor with the memory of who he was.

  Fists balled, arms to the sky, his face turned to the canopy of trees overhead, Sir Albert vowed, “they will not win!” As tears streaked crusty trails through the grime of his face.

  He would get word to Lord Roland. Warn him of his enemies.

  He would be the victor.

  Then he could die.

  CHAPTER 14 ~ VERI’S PEOPLE

  The Healers.

  Roland rode long and hard, his men fighting their steeds to keep pace. He rode into the woods, upon the mount, to the caves.

  The caves.

  There were no witches within, no signs of Healers about. He’d expected none and yet wondered, wished. Any sign, any clue to what had been within these walls, before he’d ridden into that meadow and again, after he had left.

  A foggy recollection of shadows, the tumble of water he thought mere dreams. Even the foul, fishy smell of bear and acrid scent of fire.

  And her, Veri, the child, who brought sunshine and freshness to the sour stench. She’d been nothing but a silhouette at first, the fire behind her creating a halo of light. By touch, she was cool, a palm gently laid upon his forehead, her voice steady and calm. A child with magic in her healing fingers, brought back to the castle, to the world of cunning and deceit.

  Except that she had been the one who lied. Wiley enough to give him a false background, then save his and his father’s lives.

  Truth known, she would have burned at the stake. Ignacious would have ensured it. He’d been at Oakland, the one who gathered a force to attack the Women of the Woods and Veri.

  No wonder she’d cowered, clung to Roland’s tunic, when she first met Ignacious. He’d called her, “Devil’s spawn!” and advised regular sound beatings her only hope. She was, after all, an orphan, too wicked to have parents.

  What choice but to lie.

  He reached the caves, left his men in the first cave. He took a steep and narrow path, lighting torches that lined the walls.

  How had she gotten him into the caverns? What aid did she have?

  Suddenly, squeezing through a narrow fissure, he found himself in a huge cavern with a channel of water running through it, to drop off into the darkness. Charred wood from a fire littered the center of the floor. Nothing else but shadows, and the illusion of deep, dark chambers.

  A fine setting for witches.

  But they were not witches. And if Veri had been one of them, they were not even hags. Just women with a talent and dedication for healing. Spinsters, the lot of them. That, in itself, would make them suspect. Any woman to live alone, without aide from man, an unnatural being.

  Roland rubbed his chin. Stories of blatant seduction, spells cast to compel men to lie with them despite their green teeth, sagging skin and wiry grisly hair. Roland knew the difference between accusation and reality. Many told the tales, but none had been victim.

  Veri was no witch. She was a woman. Haunting and beautiful and beyond his touch, but she was a woman. And soon he would be beyond redemption.

  Ignacious.

  Finally, the terror in her brave little heart made sense. Ignacious - her one weak link. A way to remove her from her chamber. He would betray her. He had to.

  The light glinted, shot back at him. Roland crossed to the source of metal that caught and rejected the beam.

  Arrowheads?

  He looked to the wall above the shine of metal. Pictures painted of women, plants, and journeys. In one, a small child helped a large man toward a castle. Another figure lay upon a bed above the castle points. He recognized his crest upon the flag, upon the back of his tunic. The tale of Roland and Veri.

  Roland looked down at the debris upon the floor. Besides the arrow heads, there were points and shafts. Were they from his back, his leg? Bits of chain mail, from his chest? Scraps of an undertunic he knew was his, because of the embroidered initials. All left over from a siege?

  Were these portions of metal, fine points of arrows, what Veri pried loose from his body?

  Roland weighed the metal in his palm, bounced it, thinking. The pieces were heavy, from a knight’s weapons, not paltry robber quality. Fine metal to cast back the glint of fire. Silver. But who’s? Who set out to conquer a young, inexperienced knight? A young man newly named heir to Oakland.

  Two brothers had been murdered within that meadow. His father poisoned. And he
, himself, would have been dead if not for a soldiering bear and the healing hands of a guardian angel of a child.

  What a shock that he returned from the attack. But he’d left for the Holy Lands. Who would have expected him to survive that? He’d been young and idealistic. He’d been naïve. He’d survived. Near on miraculously.

  His hand clasped the arrow points. They wanted Veri dead. As foolish as he’d been when he’d left, he was not so now.

  With a roll of his head, he tried to ease the tension in his neck. Veri had been a young girl among women who believed they could live without men. In truth, they had done so for decades. They had been living in St. Evan’s woods since his grandfather’s father’s time. Perhaps longer.

  So how did they come by their numbers? Was Veri the product of a healer seducing some stranger? Was Veri taught that a man was only good for putting a child in her womb?

  She wanted the marriage annulled, to return to the convent, yet she invited him to give her a child. Roland tipped his head-up, eyes closed. His fists tightened with the need to tighten his hold on her. He wanted her with him, he wanted her near. How could he release her? With all the challenges of returning to Oakland, she was his one hold on balance.

  She had been safe at Our Lady’s. She could be safe there again. If she were to return to the convent, she would not have to lock herself in a chamber without wood for fire, or food for her belly.

  He stuffed the weapons’ debris into his tunic for evidence.

  If sending her back to the convent was what he needed to do to protect her, then that was what he would do.

  The room caught his focus once again, as he slowly turned in a circle, surveying the place where his wife had been raised. He held the torch high above him. There was little to it, other than what he had already seen. It would have been a simple home, similar in many ways to a convent.

  It was the antithesis of Oakland.

  He would lose her. He fell to his knees, head bowed. For the first time in ten years, Roland prayed. But the answers that came did not bring calm.

  After all the trials of the crusade, he failed to believe Oakland in danger. His denial failed Veri.