The Memory of Her Kiss

by Rebecca Ruger

  Her melodious little voice was a great distraction from the pain.

  “Waiting all that time in the stocks, lass?”

  She gave a short laugh, which Gregor hoped wasn’t the last beautiful sound he heard before he perished.

  “No, that was only a very recent condition, but related all the same to those hopes of seeing any of our brave defenders.”

  They turned around the back corner of Jardine, and Gregor saw a low stone fence that seemed to stretch on forever. As a fortification, it was near useless, being only as high as his shoulder and as certain sections of it were crumbling or missing completely. The girl led him to one of these spots and coaxed him to lift his feet over the collapsed stones, a mighty feat when he could barely put one foot in front of the other on level ground.

  “You saved me, lass,” he said, aware how weak his own voice did sound.

  It was difficult to speak, requiring energy and breath he barely had.

  “I’m trying,” was all she said. She’d been watching the ground as they’d walked along, but he felt the shift under his arm as she lifted her head. “We are almost there.”

  Gregor looked up to see the outbuildings behind the abbey on his right and the abbey itself now on his left. It was not a newer keep, but had never been damaged by this war, he realized, noting the intact towers and walls. This close to the border, so many had suffered at the hands of the English. “Jardine,” he said, having forgotten that he’d made this determination earlier.

  “Yes,” she answered, slightly breathless, perhaps because of her labor now.

  “You are a nun,” he surmised. An angel, for what she was doing for him.

  “Well, not quite,” said the girl. “But if I put in a little more effort....”

  That response almost made him smile, but only on the inside as it would have expended too much energy to do so outwardly; she’d said the words as if echoing someone’s oft-repeated admonition to her.

  The nearer the squat stables were, the less likely Gregor thought his chances of actually making it there on his own power, or even with the aid of this slip of a lass.

  Perhaps she’d read his thoughts. Perhaps his more often faltering and sluggish steps alerted her to the possibility that he was about to collapse.

  “Keep going,” she urged. “We can make it.” And then, when he felt himself literally just unable to go on, she added, “Oh, please. I won’t be able to carry you, or even drag you.”

  But he just couldn’t. Gregor fell to his knees for the third time that day, this time taking the girl with him. “A cart, lass,” he said, using the last of his strength to remove his arm from around her so as not to bring her to the ground with him as he collapsed completely.

  Chapter 2

  She sat in the corner of the room and watched him just as dawn broke over the ridge and through the trees, outside the door of this cramped one room cottage. They were very near to the burgh of Haddington, but far enough away that she hoped they wouldn’t be discovered.

  Except, of course, by the owner of this small cottage. Anice waited anxiously for the return of Cairstine, the local healer, having no idea why the woman would not be home at this hour, unless she was out, at someone’s sickbed. She and Cairstine had met years ago, when the abbess had gotten imaginative with her punishments and had sent Anice out with one of the abbey’s regular day laborers, Athol. She’d spent several weeks with him, helping to repair or replace the thatch of several cottages in the area, one of the nunnery’s many boons to the surrounding communities. She’d been nervous around Cairstine initially, as she and Athol had come to attend her poorly thatched roof. Cairstine, with her biting manner and unfiltered comments, had indeed frightened her, but she’d quickly understood that these manners were only defenses, as so often healer meant ‘witch’ to many.

  She’d never expressed in any way to the abbess that she’d fully enjoyed those weeks with young Athol. She’d loved the work and meeting so many people, who didn’t favor her with disapproval or superiority.

  Scratching her head with both hands, Anice looked across again at the man, who’d roused only as needed, upon her insistence, when she’d retrieved the horse and cart and required him to stand again and climb within. That had been a distressing and agonizing endeavor to behold. But she’d encouraged him again to remove him from the cart and walk him into Cairstine’s cottage. He’d not really been wakeful, only stirred sufficiently to obey.

  She’d left him in the cottage only long enough to drive the horse and cart into Haddington. She’d tied the animal to a post in front of one of the many market stalls in the town and had raced back to the cottage, delayed only so long as it took to remove her wimple and discard the hated garment in the wood along the way, giving no real thought to the significance of that action.

  Upon returning, she’d scoured Cairstine’s plentiful supply of herbs and whatnot, wishing the healer had labeled hers as they’d done in the infirmary of the abbey.

  Apply a poultice of honey and yarrow and lady’s mantle. Stitch the wounds if need be. Bind the wound securely but no too tightly. Change the bandage several times a day. Feed him broth and ale only for the first few days.

  She recalled Cairstine’s instructions to some local several years ago, when a man had approached the ramshackle cottage seeking aid for his brother, who’d been accidentally skewered with a scythe on the family’s farm.

  She’d found the honey quite easily and the yarrow had been discerned rather quickly by its sweet anise-like scent. Finding the lady’s mantle had proven trickier still, until she’d discovered that it hadn’t been dried and mashed but instead sat as just a pile of bluish-green leaves upon a shelf strewn with so many other plants and leaves.

  She’d made a paste of these items using an empty wooden bowl and one of the many pestles found around the shelves and table. She’d advanced on the sleeping man but hadn’t any idea how to proceed. Instinct had taken over. She’d unlaced his leather breastplate and lay it open, then lifted his tunic and had removed the blood-crusted length of hose he’d wadded into the wound. Her nose had wrinkled, and her lips had turned at the sight of the hole in the man’s midsection. A sword wound, she’d guessed, surmising the opening to be as long as her smallest finger but hopefully none too deep. She’d collected water from the rain barrel Cairstine kept just outside the cottage and had sliced a large piece of her under-tunic, rinsing and cleansing the wound as best she could. She’d applied the honey mixture as a poultice but did not bind it, hoping Cairstine returned soon to appraise both the gravity of the injury and her attention to it.

  Anice approached the pallet on the floor now. She had touched and ministered to and had nearly wept over this man, and to a lesser degree, had risked herself, but had yet to really see him, other than as one of Scotland’s finest, defending her very freedom. He was of a remarkable size; when she’d helped him walk earlier while he still could, he’d stood head and shoulders above her. His arm at the time, wrapped around her neck had felt as if she were enveloped by the trunk of a tree, hardened and thick. Those arms rested now harmlessly at his sides. His hands, near fisted now even in ill slumber, appeared nearly the size of a destrier’s hoof. They were covered in scars and scratches. Eyes narrowing, she sat on her heels beside him and moved her eyes over him, from head to toe. His tunic was raised to nearly his chest, and his plaid held still, though the proper pleats had long since been turned to a sloppy wrapping. She’d had to remove his leather and metal belt, which holstered the sheath of his enormous sword, laying that wicked weapon aside. Her eyes considered all the skin she could see, parts of his flat stomach and arms and hands and the strong legs beneath his dirtied and bloodied breeches, devoid of their hose. She drew in an astonished breath at all the scars and marks his body showed. But one could not take note of the countless scars he carried without being impressed first by the sheer size of the man. That chest and those arms, the size of which were breathtaking, showed not an ounce of fat. The leanness was a
ccentuated by the bronzed color of his skin, the remaining vestiges of perspiration from his earlier endeavors, and the veins which appeared such as rivers on a map, winding and twisting along his body. Some marks were bare and flat, old; others, white and still raised, newer; and then today’s gash, angry red and swollen.

  Her eyes found his face again. She brushed a damp lock of dark hair off his forehead before she thought better of it. It was several inches longer than her own and seemed to curl as it wished, she noticed. His forehead, even in this sleep, was lined with worry; not age, she thought, guessing him not more than a dozen years her senior, likely less. The skin of his face was several shades darker than the rest of him, owing to much time spent out of doors, in the saddle no doubt. His skin appeared smooth, clean shaven, incongruous when compared to the large and rough overall appearance. She had a sense that his eyes were brown but hadn’t so much face to face conversation thus far to know for sure. His nose, like all the rest of him, seemed to have defended someone or something, being ever so slightly crooked as to suggest having previously been broken. Below, even his lips hadn’t escaped violence, showing a thin white line that stretched vertically up from the left side of his mouth, stopping just beside his nostrils. The lips themselves, were full and just now moved ever so slightly as he mumbled something incoherent.

  “Beautifully scarred,” she whispered, before realizing the thought. Was he beautiful? Or, did she only consider him so because of his sacrifices, because of those scars, of which she had to admit she did not know the origins.

  He mumbled again, though did not stir. But this roused her concern once again. This man was a true and brave defender of Scotland, she determined, and hadn’t he just rescued her from a known but despised humiliation as well? She stood briskly, a bit embarrassed at her overlong perusal of his person, which really had nothing to do with his current injury. She looked out the lone window at the front of the cottage, her arms crossed over her chest, hoping Cairstine would return soon.

  She closed her eyes and prayed, something that had rarely come naturally to her, but that seemed her only recourse now.

  “Please let him live,” she began. “I beg You not to take him. Let me help to save him, as he has quite obviously saved so many, myself included now, and perhaps sacrificed so much in doing so.” She continued in that vein for many minutes, finding that the words came effortlessly to her now, as never before.

  When this was done, and Cairstine still hadn’t shown herself, Anice went to his side again, sitting on the hard timbered floor next to him. She was sorry for the ruin caused to Cairstine’s pallet, as the scratchy wool that covered the straw was damp with water and blood.

  She watched him again. Truly, he seemed not to breathe at all. Gingerly, she touched her hand to his chest and felt at once a warm steady rhythm under her fingers and through the linen tunic. This calmed her and she sighed with exhaustion. She gave her scalp a good scratching and because she was saturated with a weariness that seeped into her bones, she collapsed alongside him, tucking her head onto her arms.

  A THUMP ON THE HEAD roused her much later in the morning. She startled awake quickly, immediately recognizing her circumstance, that she’d fallen asleep at the man’s side and that he stirred, incoherent still, and had unintentionally hit her with a raised hand. In an effort to soothe and quiet him, she touched her own hand to his shoulder. The heat of his skin, a dreadful fever rising, alarmed her. “Shh,” she cooed and glanced around. Cairstine still hadn’t returned to her own cottage. His face was very flushed now. She moved her hand down over his cheek and actually gasped at the heat there. “Oh, no,” she moaned. She didn’t know much about tending the sick, but she did know that high fevers could be fatal. She reached again for his dagger, which she’d used earlier to cut strips from her long linen chemise and lifted her habit to hack off yet more.

  “Here now, what’s this?” asked a scratchy voice from the door.

  Her shoulders slumped with great relief upon recognizing Cairstine’s craggy voice. She turned and saw the healer’s face soften when she realized who it was that had stolen into her home.

  “Please help us, Cairstine,” she pleaded, dropping the folds of her habit so that it settled down, near to the floor.

  Cairstine nodded and closed the door, dropping a leathery satchel onto the nearest table. She approached the pallet and considered the man, her wrinkly hands upon her narrow hips.

  “He is wounded, but he saved me, and now he’s feverish.”

  “Aye,” said Cairstine.

  She felt the old woman’s kindly blue eyes upon her, taking in her naked head and worried gaze. Anxiously, she ran a hand over her shorn hair but met the healer’s stare.

  “Aye,” Cairstine said again and turned toward the table and shelves that held her wares.

  Anice breathed and relaxed now. All was well. Cairstine would help them.

  “Take his clothes off,” Cairstine directed.

  Her eyes widened, darting from the healer’s back, shown to her as she worked with mortar and pestle at the table, to the flushed and feverish man upon the pallet. Her own skin felt suddenly heated.

  “Just his tunic, lass,” Cairstine clarified.

  Half an hour later, she was giving thanks for Cairstine’s coming home. The man had been stripped completely of his tunic and breastplate and had been made to drink the broth laced with angelica and chamomile and coriander seeds. This had been no easy task, but between the two women, it had been accomplished to Cairstine’s satisfaction. His midsection had been neatly bandaged with linen strips provided by Cairstine, the wound having been again cleansed after Cairstine had given faint praise for the concoction she’d found upon it.

  He rested now, only slightly more comfortable, Cairstine having advised it might take as long as twenty-four hours for the fever to work its way through him and out.

  “I’m off to see the Cardmaine boy,” Cairstine said. “He’ll no survive the day, I fear, but I’ll see what can be done.” She considered the huge soldier lying prone of the floor of her home. “And I’ll ask around about soldiers in the area, Scots or otherwise.” After a moment, she added, “His dying would no help you, I suppose.”

  Anice’s gaze shot to Cairstine, not so much dazed at the woman’s undiluted words but over the actual fact that she’d thought neither of these things, that he might still die, or of her own present untidy circumstance.

  She shrugged at Cairstine, who seemed to expect no response, and watched the woman take up her little drawstring bag again and leave the cottage, with only directions to feed him more of the laced broth should he wake again.

  And so she sat again, at his side, weary and worried still, and more so when, an hour later, he began to moan and writhe.

  His thrashing, at first listless, had turned near violent, and now made nonsense of Cairstine’s careful efforts to bandage his wound. Strong arms struck out wildly, the movements beginning to pull loose the stretched linen binding his wound. Anice went to him, flopping around a bit, trying to latch on to one waving hand. She succeeded after a few failed attempts but struggled to hold it. His strength, even in the throes of a weakening fever, was immense, though came as no surprise; her relatively pitiful strength was no match. She imagined the present power of him reflected the exact might of the fever ravaging his body and mind. She wouldn’t be able to maintain her small grip on his one hand, and it wasn’t settling him and his thrashing. Just then the entire upper half of his body lifted off the straw and wool of the bed, his eyes now open but unseeing. Simultaneously, the arm which she’d attached herself to swiped from right to left as if to dislodge her but managed only in flinging her across his chest as he flopped back down and moaned sorrowfully.

  A startled “oomph” escaped her as she tried to right herself. She scrambled, having lost hold of his hand, and put her palms flat on his chest, hoping to dislodge herself. Instantly, the feel of him transfixed her. She stared, marveling that her small hands could absorb so much hea
t, so much... of him. Experimentally, she moved one hand of fingers, letting the heat of his naked chest warm the tips. It was the first time she’d touched him without employment. She gasped and very slowly flattened her hands upon him, splaying her fingers wide, watching her skin move against his, as the precise slide of her fingers was rewarded with more of his flesh. Another gasp escaped as a current of heat coursed into her fingers, across her hand, and up her arm. She stilled as shame colored her. She made to move. As she pushed away, she realized that his movements, raging only a brief moment ago, were suddenly less frantic. And now she stilled completely, afraid to reawaken the beast who had just shaken her around like so much loose dirt off his boots.

  But he was still now. His eyes remained closed and so she stayed motionless, staring up at his now relaxed features. As she remained unmoving, a sound emerged from his chest, a deep purr that rumbled underneath her fingers. Sensing ease within him finally, if not contentment, she only then carefully pushed herself off his chest, and removed herself completely from his person. She sat back on her heels for several moments, regarding the wounded warrior with something akin to wonder before she noticed the state of their handiwork: the bandages were askew and bloodied, having been dislodged, and now showed the wound beneath his ribs. Chewing her lips, she wondered if she dared address this problem now and risk rousing the beast again. Or, should she wait, and hope he settled more deeply into sleep?

  She didn’t wait, but attended the bandage problem straightaway, but she could have saved herself the trouble. Less than an hour later, while she ministered constantly to him, he began to shake and shiver with such force she was sure he would rattle himself across the floor. His teeth chattered, much as hers did during the coldest winter nights at Jardine. “Now what?” She wondered. Cold water for the fever. What for the chill? Hot water? No, it would be too difficult to keep hot. For lack of any other ideas, she jumped up and scanned the room for something warm, finding only one raggedy and ratty fur hanging upon a peg near the small hearth. She returned and draped this over him. And he continued to shiver. Her shoulders slumped, she hadn’t a clue how to help him. Only her falling atop him had settled him earlier.