The Protector

by Becca St. John

Startled, Roland stared at his knight. “We can only hope you are right,” he responded, “on both accounts.”

  CHAPTER 21 ~ HERITAGE

  Ignacious watched from the hallway, as Lady Hannah moved about her herb room. She laid a stack of papers on the work bench, lit a brazier for warmth, then moved about, checking jars, clucking and fretting all the while.

  “‘Tis not right. ‘Tis all wrong. Someone has been in my stores . . .” she continued to murmur, as she moved jars and potions about, sniffing at them, peering at her scratched labels. “ “‘Tis all wrong!” She stormed, with a marked frustration distinctly out of character.

  “Hannah,” Ignacious gentled, but couldn’t help recoiling when she spun around, hair disheveled, eyes wild and bright.

  “You have come? You have come looking for me?” The gleam softened, misted. Her smile wistful and sweet.

  It surprised him, that smile. He had not seen it in so long. His fault, his blame. The realization stung, deeply, for he knew it was not God’s will a girl be robbed of joy. Man’s will and man’s inflated sense of self.

  Facing death, he learned this. Too late. Far too late.

  “I have always been here for you,” he told her, but they both knew it was not as she meant.

  Yes, he had been there for her, as a priest, as a strict and forbidding man of God. That was all they shared, all they could share, though it could not be enough. Was never enough, for her.

  Ignacious made his way down the room, along the work table, until he reached the stack of papers.

  “They are for burning.” Hannah snatched them away.

  He looked to the bare table, where the papers had been. “May I see them?” he asked quietly, definitely.

  She shook her head.He refused to look at her. She added, “they are wicked.”

  He tilted his head, studied her, brow pinched. “Plants are God’s creation.”

  “The witch’s. Those are her evil scratchings.”

  Ignacious held out his hand, “Let me see them.” His old arrogance surfaced.

  Uneasy, Hannah shifted closer to the brazier.

  “Lady Hannah.” Stern.

  By habit or respect, he didn’t know, but she handed him the papers.

  Pictures of plants, in minute detail, from outer view to cutaways and enlarged sections for better understanding. Thoughtful and instructive. Beautiful and powerful.

  “The witch’s!” Hannah sneered. “As though another can learn from a picture. As though I am not needed. Fools and foolish drawings.”

  “Lady Veri did these?” The papers shook in his hold, tears gleamed in his eyes.

  Oblivious to his emotion, Hannah stormed about the room. “She claims the convent asked her to do this, but she is playing with science. She is of the devil.”

  “Stop!” He shouted, reeling over his own worm- eaten soul. The result of sin, his sin, her sin, uncovered. Pain beyond the physical, a hollow, black, neverending pit of it and this only a meager glimpse of the hell he would live for eternity.

  Roland loomed within the doorway, a swarm of men behind him. “We need to question Lady Hannah.”

  All his energy leaching, Ignacious requested one thing, “Time, please, let me have a moment with her.”

  “No!” Hannah cried, scuttling backward, “you do not understand! I have not tended Albert. ‘Tis her, your wife,” she hissed the words. “‘Twas she who would have poisoned him, don’t you see?” With sharp jerks her hands gestured at the room. “She has been into my room, she has taken my herbs, my plants and she has poisoned Albert. ‘Twas not to have been so!” As she ranted, as she pleaded to explain, the men at arms encircled her.

  Distressed, confused, Hannah mewled, pushed out at the air, as though she could force the men away from her.

  Ignacious cringed against the wildness, instructing “Don’t Hannah.” He tried to calm her, “don’t lay this upon the girl’s feet.”

  “But she is the one guilty!” Hannah yelled, “she is . . .”

  “Hannah,” Roland eased his men’s approach. “No one has been poisoned, least of all Albert.” A shiver coursed through Hannah. “What made you think he had? Did you expect him to drink from the bowl Gelda tried to press on him? Is that what drew your thoughts?”

  She swung her head, side to side, grey hair tumbling from the braided buns on either side of her head. Ignacious strained toward Hannah.

  “What is this to do with you, priest?” Roland snapped.

  Ignacious’ gaze flew to Roland, a deflated lost soul.

  “Hannah,” he urged her to look at him. She did so with wide, desperate eyes.

  “She is our daughter.” Soft words, an intimate whisper, too gentle. She recoiled, bent back. He pleaded with her. “It’s in her face, in her ways. Do you remember telling me of your father? His thick straight hair and deep brown eyes? And the soft roundness of her chin, like my mother.”

  “She is of the devil.”

  Ignacious wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “Hannah, she looks as you described your father. She has my determination . . .”

  Roland gestured for his men to let Ignacious go. He crossed to Hannah, pulled her around to face him.

  “She died,” Hannah told him. “Our baby died.” She looked about, for help. “That’s what they do to bastards, they kill them. Tell him, Ignacious, tell him.”

  “Nay,” Ignacious shook his head, “she did not die, she went with the birthing women, The Healers, The Women in the Woods. That is why I tried to destroy them. They had our daughter and they were raising her to be a heathen.”

  “A heathen!” Hannah wailed. She buried her face in Ignacious’ cassock, her sobs a relentless hiccup.

  Roland pulled her away from the priest, but Ignacious clung to her. “She is our daughter and she is beautiful in heart, Hannah, as you were meant to be.”

  Drawn far away, to another time and place, Hannah moaned. “She cannot be my daughter. She cannot.”

  “Pray for her, Hannah. Pray for her forgiveness,” Ignacious told her, “and mayhap she will pray for our souls.”

  “They said she was gone. She died. My own. My flesh, my family. Nothing of the Montgomery’s.” Like a child, Hannah looked up at Ignacious, “They wanted naught of me, but a woman to run their household, raise the children.”

  “You had a child.” Ignacious reminded her. “We had a child. Your father cast you out, Lord Hugh took pity, married you, gave you a home.”

  Wistfulness transformed to full bitter fury, “Aye, I refused to give him more children. He took you from me.”

  “Hannah,” Ignacious looked into her eyes, “it could be no other way. We were wrong. I was meant for the church and you to be a wife. I tried to tell you that. He tried to give you a life away from spinsterhood.”

  “His family. All for his family. My own torn from my belly and given to the Witches!”

  “To be what we could not be! Hannah,” Ignacious railed, “do you not see? She has become everything good that we wished to be but were not! She has been blessed with love and kindness and an ability to give life.”

  “I give life!” Hannah argued.

  “And you take life!” Ignacious reminded her.

  She could not deny it. She could do no more than stare at him, at the words he spoke that razed her with honesty.

  “She is our daughter,” Ignacious admitted to Roland, to the others standing there, “she was the only thing that could have kept us from what we’ve become. But we have found her too late.”

  “Is she the reason you destroyed my family?” Roland demanded. “You took my father, my brothers, for nothing we had a hand in.”

  “Your family!” Hannah hissed, “‘Tis your family, not mine, never mine.”

  “You were always a part of Oakland.”

  Hannah’s laughter was an eerie ugly thing. “Always a part of Oakland? There could never be another mistress in Oakland after your mother. She was loved. I was tolerated, little more than a servant. I had a bastard dau
ghter and your father lowered himself to ‘save’ me from my past mistakes. An obligation. I gave up my daughter for his family. ‘Twas time he gave up his family for my happiness.”

  “And then what would you have had?” Roland snapped.

  “Oakland,” Hannah told him, as though the answer was quite simple. Only it wasn’t that simple. Roland reeled at consequences she never thought through. Foolish, faulty logic.

  The King would never have granted her Oakland.

  Still, she continued, convinced in her own feeble mind. “I waited to hear of your death. You campaigned for so many years, none expected your return. I would have had Oakland, bequeathed it to the church in the name of Father Ignacious. And then the two of us could have been together again. A family, but for our child.”

  “No!” Ignacious wailed, “You did not do this for me! We, you and I, could never . . .”

  Hannah threw back her head, laughing broadly, “you could never? Even if I held the bequeathing over you? I still know of your faults, and you are much too ambitious not to, Ignacious, to forgo a place like Oakland."

  “I never knew, Roland, was never certain, until now, I was never certain.” He pushed Hannah away.

  “Aye, you were, and you knew why, I know you knew why . . .” Hannah lost herself, her whys and wherefores, as she focused on the door.

  “Roland.” Veri stood in the doorway, watchful, waiting.

  She ignored Ignacious, who trembled with her nearness. She didn’t acknowledge Hannah, who reached out her hands, would have plowed forward but for the guard who stood in her way.

  “Child!” Hannah cried. Veri looked at her quickly, then away again, seeking some comprehension from Roland.

  With a sharp, warning glance at Ignacious, Roland crossed to usher Veri outside.

  “Roland,” she continued, “I have come to tell you that Albert is more alert now. He wishes to speak to you.”

  “You were not to leave that room until I spoke to you.”

  “And should I order you to stay in a room, would you?” She argued. “And Albert wishes to see you.”

  He scowled, instructed his men to hold Hannah and Ignacious, as he escorted Veri back to Albert’s room. They passed through hallways to the hiss and scent of torches.

  “Roland,” Veri ventured, “what were Igancious and Hannah about, below stairs?”

  His grip tightened on her arm. “Veri, what are your feelings for those people?”

  She raised an eyebrow, studied him in the flickering shadows, but found no hint of why he asked.

  “I cannot say she makes me easy, anymore than her maid, Gelda does, but with time . . .”

  “And Ignacious?”

  “He frightens me.” No hesitation on that.

  “Aye, I can see that,” Roland pulled her close, held her. “You needn’t worry any longer, Veri. The will be sent away, far from here.”

  “But this is Lady Hannah’s home and Ignacious is her priest.”

  “No more.” He pulled back. “She is maddened, I believe. He and his church will care for her.”

  “She was the danger all along?”

  “Aye.”

  “Thank you, then, for finding a way other than bloodshed and dank, diseased cells.”

  “Just trust me with this, Veri.”

  Startled, she laughed. “Well, of course I would. Haven’t I trusted you with my life?”

  Roland kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, before his lips met hers. “Ah, my wife, will I be enough for you, or do you need a father, a mother.”

  Veri cuddled deeper into his hold but he had to know before he made his final decision. He urged her away. “Tell me, do you miss having parents? Do you wonder about those who sired you?”

  Gently, she traced the lines of his face, deep with intent. “Roland,” she began, no hesitation. “I have never known father or mother. Because of that, I have my own idea of who they were, what they were like. They are the two I described to you when I was a child. A hardworking log man, a woman who healed all those in their village.

  "When I need something more . . . true, or real . . .then I will always have the Women of the Woods. They were father and mother and sisters to me. I was never in want of attention, or focus or love.

  “In truth, it is you who should miss one or both, not I.”

  “Nay, not you,” Roland kissed her again, “and I do believe there will be enough children to keep you from fretting for anyone.”

  “Do you?” she quizzed, with a tilt of her chin, “and when should this be accomplished?”

  Roland chuckled, as a warm fire began to gleam in his eyes. “Oh, I think we could accomplish that once we’ve seen to Albert.”

  “Oh, yes!” Veri mourned, “Albert! Oh goodness, you have done it again, you have distracted me and a true Healer must not be . . .”

  But he silenced her once again, with a series of kisses and an absolutely, utterly distracting embrace.