by Jill Hughey
Without a backward glance, David guided Woden off the road. He slid sloppily from the saddle, then staggered into the trees. Rochelle leaped from her own horse to dig frantically in the jumbled mess of the cart. “My healing kit, Mother, my healing kit,” she said urgently, never taking her eyes off David’s receding back. Marian thrust a parcel into her hand. Rochelle grabbed a skin of water and hurried off, Magnus trotting at her heels.
She could barely spy David as she struggled through branches that clung to her cloak. She slid on damp fallen leaves and tripped several times on roots as she tried to keep him in sight. When she lost him completely, she had no choice but to continue in the direction she’d last seen him.
She came upon him in a small glade, only noticing him because she nearly tripped over the helm he’d cast to the ground. He lay on his back under an evergreen tree where the ground was soft and shaded, his head near the trunk, legs bent and hands pressed to his temples. Without opening his eyes, he said in a gravelly voice, “Go away, Theo.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” she replied. “You obviously need help.”
He groaned, his feet working at the soil in further expression of his agony. The balls of his palms ground at his temples as though he wished he could push right through his skull.
She put her things aside and knelt next to him. “Is it your head?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” he gritted out.
“I have a remedy we can try,” she said encouragingly. Not waiting for a reply, she set to her task. First, she wet a clean cloth with water and sprinkled some dried lavender into its folds. With whispered words of reassurance, she laid this across his eyes. Next, she built a small fire to heat a metal cup of water. She added a small cloth bag with a blend of herbs to the hot water, letting it steep. David had already settled a little. “Would you feel better with your head propped up a bit?” she whispered.
“Probably.”
She pulled off her cloak to fold it into a thin pillow. “Let me lift your head,” she said as she tucked the makeshift pillow under it. He grimaced at the motion. She turned back to the cup, dunking the bag a few times while blowing on the water to cool it. Casting the herbs aside, she carried it to him, settling herself by his head. She lifted the lavender cloth away from his eyes. “Can you drink this? It is warm, but not too hot. It will taste a little strange, mostly of cloves.”
He dutifully drank, then resituated his head on the cloak, moving to rub his head again. She gently pushed his hands down and began rubbing his temples with her fingertips. “I am going to move my fingers around. Just tell me if I make it worse.”
“Not possible,” he moaned.
Keeping her fingers at his temples, she began stroking across his eyebrows with her thumbs. She moved the pressure slowly up his forehead. When her thumb encountered a slight depression near his hairline, she stopped, pushing his hair back with curiosity. David made a soft sound of protest. A scar, still pink and shiny, ran from high on his forehead back into his hair. She could follow the indentation the length of her finger before it ended. It must be the head wound Doeg had mentioned.
Curious as she was, it wouldn’t do to quiz him when he was in such pain and had obviously hoped to keep the injury a secret. She resumed stroking his forehead, moving her fingers back across his skull. She thought he was going to sleep when he abruptly rolled to his side to empty the liquid in his stomach on the hem of her tunic. With a moan of misery, he rolled to his back again.
“Not to worry,” she whispered, wiping his mouth and face with the damp cloth. “My fault, I should have known you would not be able to keep it in. We will try it again in a minute.” She pushed his hair back again, frowning at the scar for a moment. She rose, quickly pulled the soiled tunic over her head to rinse the hem, then draped it over a bush. Her undergarment was thick, heavy linen, revealing nothing more than a tunic, besides which she didn’t think David had any interest in what she was or wasn’t wearing at present.
She returned to her healing kit to set another dose of headache remedy steeping before infusing some spearmint and chamomile into hot water. She stirred some honey into the tea. Magnus rose from David’s side and yipped softly. Movement at the edge of the glade drew her attention. Marian lurked there, her eyebrows sailing skyward at the state of her daughter’s clothing. Rochelle rushed over, whispering, “He has a terrible headache, Mother, but he hopes to keep it a secret. Tell everyone I am ill, or, oh, it does not matter what. He just needs some time.”
Marian nodded before fading back into the woods. Sometimes having a slightly disconnected mother was advantageous.
Rochelle returned to David with the mint tea. “Take this to settle your stomach.”
He tried to push it away. “No, sick again.”
“This will help. Trust me.”
He sipped it down slowly. Rochelle resumed rubbing his head, concentrating on his brow. He had thick, brown eyebrows and slight creases at the corner of his eyes, more from weather than smiling, she guessed. After nearly a quarter hour, she urged the headache curative on him.
Her neck and back were aching from bending over him, so she moved where she could lean on the tree. She eased his head into her lap to continue her ministrations to his forehead and temples. Her eyes and fingers kept returning to that scar. To the eye, it was thin and straight, as if a blade had simply sliced the skin. But when you felt it, it was dented too. She shuddered, picturing a spata like his crashing down with enough force to make a depression like that. What kind of life did this man lead?
As if roused by her troubled thoughts, he rolled to his side, his cheek cushioned on her upper legs, his face nearly nestled against her belly. She held her hands up, frozen. He slipped one hand under her thigh like a bed pillow, except he curled his fingers around and up, slightly between her legs. Even through the thick fabric of her under tunic, it was incredibly intimate. His other hand rested loosely near her hip. All of this was much more sexual than when he was lying on his back, ill and helpless. As she stared at him, his face relaxed into the mask of slumber. He had never even opened his eyes.
She couldn’t very well wake him and make him move when he was just beginning to recover. She placed her hands carefully on the ground and leaned her head against the tree trunk, thinking about his ailment.
Several years ago, she had discovered a woman on her estate who suffered from debilitating headaches, sometimes for days. Together, over many months, they had determined various factors that triggered the onset, and also remedies that eased, if not cured, the symptoms. Rochelle methodically recalled every small thing they had learned together, and dozed off while deep in thought about how else she might help the man now sleeping with his face in her lap.
It felt like only a few minutes later that a slight motion woke her. David’s eyes were open, with a contentment she had not seen in them before. His free hand had moved to the curve of her hip, his thumb lightly tracing the short distance from her ribs to her waist, up and down, with just enough pressure that she could feel it through the fabric. His eyes watched that thumb with almost childlike wonderment, as though he’d discovered something new and marvelous in his world.
“Is your headache better?” Rochelle asked quietly.
“Not gone, but bearable,” he answered, never changing the motion of his thumb or the focus of those warm brown eyes. “No one has ever been able to help me before.”
“Have they tried?” she asked.
“Yes,” he sighed. “I have been to many healers. I have been bled. I have purged. I have eaten things I do not even want to think about, given up wine and ale. I have put strange things in my shoes and under my pillow at night. I thought I had tried everything.” His eyes shifted up to hers.
She smiled down at him softly in spite of herself.
“How did you know what to do?”
“I have a tenant with the same affliction, although she does not have this outward sign of the root cause.” Rochelle delicately traced the scar.
“There are days like this when I wish the bastard had finished the job.” He turned his eyes back to her torso, his hand moving slightly so the thumb found the curve under her breast. While obviously erotic, she didn’t feel his actions were an overt seduction. This easy intimacy was in some way comforting to him. It relaxed him.
“What happened? How did you get such a scar?”
“A Breton broadsword. He meant to cleave my skull in two, but I blocked him at the last second and managed to skewer him on my way down.”
“It is a wonder you survived!”
“I spent most of the day flat on my face, unconscious. I woke during the night thinking I was dead, hearing the moans and cries of other wounded men. I knew that sound. It is an earthly sound to me and yet I had to wonder if that is also what hell might be like. Unheard cries for mercy. The smells of death.”
She shuddered. “That must have been terrible.”
“I did not think about it long. The pain in my head was indescribable. I could not even imagine moving. I was weak, shaking, vomiting. It was so dark I thought I might be blind.”
“Were you afraid?”
He grimaced. “My only fear was that I would live when I would be better off dead. My pride could never tolerate being helpless.”
Her heart wrenched. “How long did you lay there?”
“Theo and Doeg found me the next day. Doeg thought I was dead, but Theo saw my breathing. I thought my head would separate from my shoulders when they rolled me over. Theo assured me my skull was not literally split. And it was not. It just felt that way. Never did get my spata back. Some thief must have pulled it out of that Breton while I was unconscious.”
His thumb continued to caress beneath her breast, and the heat of his palm felt like it might burn through her tunic. She found it quite distracting, and knew she should stop him, but feared it would somehow be ungenerous to do so. “How long ago did this happen?” she asked, gently tracing the line of his scar again.
“Summer before last. I was out of action until autumn, but was able to return to the army this year.”
“Did you have headaches before the injury?”
“Never. They are coming less and less as time passes.”
“That is a good sign. Can I tell you what I think?”
“You have never asked my permission before.”
“I think the sunlight could have triggered this one. And possibly lack of water. I found that Eva had more headaches in the summer when she was in the sun and let herself get thirsty.”
He seemed to consider what she said as he moved his hand again, his fingertips finding the suggestion of her pelvic bone through soft woman’s flesh. They rested that way for awhile, until discomfiture forced Rochelle to try to make conversation.
“What happened to Doeg’s arm? Is that also a battle injury?”
David’s brow furrowed. “It was damaged when he was young.”
“How?”
“We do not speak of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We do not talk about it.”
“You will not even tell me the cause?”
“I do not know the cause. My father and Doeg dislike any discussion of it.”
Rochelle thought this exceedingly strange, but the topic agitated him and she didn’t want to aggravate his headache. “And what about your mother?”
“My mother died when I was three or so. Complications from childbirth.”
“You never knew her?”
“I have no memories of her.”
A tender ache filled Rochelle’s heart. “So, your father raised you and Doeg?”
“No, Doeg stayed at home. I was sent away upon my mother’s death. A distant maternal relative raised me. They kept me fed, taught me more than most lads, and made sure I knew how to survive in a fight when the time came.”
“Do you visit them often?”
“They died at least ten years ago.”
“Where is your father’s estate?”
“West of Regensburg. If my mental map is right, it lies almost due east from Alda. It is called Atrum Calx.”
Dark Stone. The name filled Rochelle with unpleasant foreboding. “Do you visit with him and Doeg in the winters?”
“I was last there two years ago or more. His house is more active during the winter than I like.”
The ache in her heart pierced her more. Did he have no real home or family? Was there no one waiting at the end of each summer to find out if he was alive or dead?
“What was your father like?” he asked unexpectedly.
Rochelle couldn’t stop a tender smile. “He was kind. Studious. He never stopped a Breton broadsword with his head, but he served Charlemagne in his own scholarly way. That is how he earned Alda.”
David smiled at her jest. “How did he come to marry a slave girl?”
Rochelle gasped. “You know about that?”
“I do. And I do not care, just in case you were planning to add that to your arsenal of reasons why you cannot marry.”
“It is not an arsenal….” She stopped herself. She hated to spoil this moment by reviving their argument, even if she should be collecting her excuses for spinsterhood like arrows in a quiver.
They were silent. He began to move his thumb again, gently rubbing along her hip. The expression in his eyes had changed, from childish peace to simmering unrest. She became more aware of the fingers of his other hand, unmoving yet still intimately placed under her thigh.
With ever so much force of will, she held her thighs still. She found it impossible to not caress him in some fashion. She moved her hand to his head, gently sifting her fingers through his wavy hair. She longed to learn the cords of his neck or the curve of his shoulder. That would be too bold a move by far. It would surpass tending to his illness, to that dangerous realm she was trying to avoid. Her avoidance, however, did not extend to the point of denying his tender caress of her hip that sent darts of pleasure down her body.
“How did they marry?” he asked.
Rochelle sighed. “I do not really know. There are large parts of my mother’s life she does not like to talk about.”
“Ah, so there are things of which your family does not speak, as well.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“I do not know. I think my mother experienced bad things – maybe horrible things – when she was brought here as a slave. She was taken from her home and has no idea how to get back. She misses it. But she tries to keep all of that behind her now.” While Rochelle did not want to admit to any similarities, it did bear thinking about. “Do you think Doeg’s injury was traumatic beyond the loss of the use of his arm?”
“No. But he is conscious every day of its lack. Talking about it only reminds him more.”
“He concentrates on it too much,” Rochelle retorted before thinking.
“You do not even know him.”
“Nor do I wish to,” she answered sharply.
“Because he is my brother,” David said flatly.
He misunderstood her, which seemed a poor end to the open, honest conversation they’d shared. Her dislike of Doeg had nothing to do with David. Letting the mistake stand spoiled something…companionable…that had materialized between them. She should be happy for the error.
Magnus yipped again. “That will be Theo,” David sighed.
“Or my mother,” Rochelle whispered back.
“Fire and smoke,” he cursed, sliding his hand reluctantly from her hip to the ground as he feigned sleep.
A bright blue feather bobbed toward them, obviously attached to someone’s cap. “No, it is Theo. I can see him now.” Their friend walked carefully forward, trying to make no noise.
When he saw Rochelle watching he asked in a whisper, “How does he fare?”
“I am awake,” David said without moving. “I am much improved.”
“Praise God!” Theo said fervently. “No one else has been able to help you at
all.”
“So I have told Rochelle.”
“It is a miracle,” Theo rejoiced.
She demurred, “ I - I only mixed some feverfew and a bit of —”
David cut her off. “Do not sell your skills short,” he said. She looked down at his face. He watched her, his expression soft, grateful, and somehow needful.
“I am, ah, just glad I could offer some relief.”
“You did,” he said before raising his voice for Theo’s benefit. “I suppose our fellow travelers are anxious to continue.”
“As much as they hate to disrupt what has obviously been a lengthy and heated argument between the two of you, they are wondering if you could continue it on horseback.”
“Argument?” David asked.
“It was the best thing Marian could think of. She knew if she told them Rochelle was ill, they would wonder why her own mother was not tending to her. She said you were having a tremendous quarrel. My own men were about ready to come fell you for speaking harshly to such a fine and gentle woman as our Lady Rochelle.”
“I think I have the picture, Theo. If you will give us a few moments we will join you.”
“Very well.”
“Perhaps when you return to the group you could explain that I was on one knee, begging her forgiveness.”
“Not sure I can pull off that lie,” Theo called over his shoulder.
Rochelle watched him leave, then asked anxiously, “Are you sure you are ready to move? I can feign something. A stomach ailment, my monthly, something so that you do not have to ride until tomorrow.”
“You would do that?” David asked incredulously.
“Of course. I know your pride does not allow you to admit to your affliction – which is rather silly when it stems from having a blade embedded in your skull – but everyone expects a woman to be weak.”
“I was not under the impression you hide behind other’s expectations of you.”
“I do not,” Rochelle replied with an impish smile. “But I will allow you to, if it spares you the suffering.”
David began to rise, taking longer than necessary to withdraw his hand from beneath her leg. She involuntarily sucked in a breath at the pressure of his fingers sliding along her thigh. Her heart skipped in her chest. God in heaven, what was happening to her?
