Daughter of Fire (28 page)

“They must be searched,” the bishop demanded.

“By all means.” William nodded to Rorke FitzWarren. “Make it so.” And when the search failed to produce anything more than Poladouras’ cask of ale, William again nodded.

“A formidable weapon indeed,” he told the bishop with a sarcastic tone. Then, leaning forward he asked Poladouras, “Is it a decent brew?”

“Aye.” Poladouras nodded. “The finest made by old Anselm from the village at Croydon.”

“Then stay, monk,” William commanded, despite his brother’s further protests. “We shall share the cask, for I have been told you are learned in many things. I would ask your counsel on certain matters. So you see there is more than one reason for you to remain in London as my guests.”

 Vivian watched their exchange with a new awareness, and realized William’s shrewd purpose. For in binding the monk to his court, so too he bound her.

“What of the old woman” the bishop asked. “It is said among my men that she has the way of a witch about her.”

William roared with laughter, causing Meg to look at him askance—all the more disconcerting with that pale, colorless, blind gaze, as she followed the sound of his voice

“What say you, old woman?” William demanded. “Are you an enchantress?”

Meg smiled, the transformation in her features hinting at the beauty she had once possessed. “
Hold your tongue
,” Vivian warned. “
Or you may find it on the floor
.”  She held her breath, for Meg had no fear of William of Normandy or any man. She was known to speak her mind and there was no telling what she might say.

“You flatter an old woman,” she replied with a sly smile. “It has been many years since I was called
enchanting
.”

“Somehow I do not believe that,” William said with far more wisdom, that any who did not know him might have given him credit. As Vivian had learned, he was a shrewd judge of character.

“She also has the knowledge of healing,” Rorke told him, drawing a curious stare from Meg, who quickly remembered his voice and picked it out among the others.

“Her skills would be valuable to us.”

“Aye,” William nodded. “Then the matter is settled. You will remain as my guests.  It will be good to converse with someone who does not come abegging. The matter is settled and I will hear no more of it. If either the monk or old woman show themselves to be traitors, then they shall be dealt with. But in truth, I deal with noble Saxon barons and earls who would far more willingly slit my throat had they the chance.”

He rose then, for there were matters he must attend to at court. “Return this eventide and join me for supper,” he told Poladouras. “I understand you are a man of intellect and I confess that so far I have found it much lacking among the Saxon barons.” Then he turned to Meg.

“The girl Mally may find a place for you with her near the kitchen.”

“I would stay with my mistress,” Meg protested.

“For that you must ask permission of my knight,” William informed her, “for she occupies the chamber adjacent so that she may see to my wounds, and the chamber is his.”

Meg turned toward Vivian, who sensed the burning question in the old woman’s thoughts.

Rorke’s response was adamant. “Near the kitchens will suffice. She will be comfortable there and the girl can see to her needs.”

Vivian accompanied Meg to the kitchens, where she made the acquaintance of the cook and was shown the small chamber off the pantry that Mally occupied.

“I hear whisperings,” Meg said, laying a hand gently on Vivian’s arm, when Mally had gone to find something with which to make the old woman’s bed. “The walls say that you are mistress to FitzWarren.” Her face was lined with worry.

“The walls are wrong,” Vivian told adamantly. “They whisper about what they see but know nothing of. I was given the chamber adjacent so that I might attend William without others knowing the seriousness of his injuries.”

“And what of your visions at Amesbury?” Meg asked, laying a hand at her arm.

“I know no more of it now than I did then. Please, ask me no more. You are here now. Perhaps together we may find the meaning of it.”

Meg laid a hand against her cheek. “I will protect you as best I can. As I always have since you were born. That is why I came to London. I was with you the first moment you drew breath. I was the first to hold you when you slipped from your mother’s womb. And I have been entrusted with you since. I will not abandon you now, my child, whatever path your destiny takes you. Only I pray, beware, for I sense danger in this place. But beware the Bishop the most for he has a dark heart, and he is cunning as well.”

~ ~ ~

It was eventide, just before supper in the great hall when she returned to Rorke’s chamber and found him returned from the practice yard. A fire burned at the hearth, taking the chill from damp stone walls. Candles had been lit, casting pools of golden light across the floor.

He stood before a basin of steaming water, his tunic removed, wearing only breeches and leather boots. Pools of light fell across the muscles at his shoulders and chest. The gleam of old scars stood out in sharp relief against bronzed skin. She should have looked away but found she could not.

As a healer she knew and felt so much through touching. She wanted to touch him, to learn the contours of each muscle and bone, to feel that golden skin and all the ridges of scars that had defined his life, so that in some way she might know more of him. Her fingers burned with the longing of it and she curled them into tight fists, trying to deny the sensations that poured through her. But she could not, for her hands grew restless.

Droplets of water sprinkled his hair, glistening in the shaggy lengths of the rich dark mane, and at the hard planes and angles at his face. A flagon of wine also sat at the table and two goblets.

“Forgive me, milord,” she said on a startled note and turned to leave.

“Stay, Vivian,” he said, his voice gentle but nevertheless a command. He dried the water from his hair and face with a square of linen. He missed the sprinkling of droplets that glittered in the dark hair of his chest like a handful of precious crystals on dark velvet. Beneath the downy midnight darkness was the fine, pale satin patchwork of more scars both old and new.

She stared with fascination at the dark whorls of hair, his skin shades darker than her own, the male nipples at his chest tightened in the chill air, and she felt a tingling at her own breasts at the imagined contrast of her nakedness against his. Was every part of him dark, powerful, and hard, like the muscles of his arms and chest, she wondered?

“Is there a matter you wish to discuss?”

“It will wait, milord,” she replied suddenly uneasy, desperate to pull her gaze away from his half-naked body, but even more desperate to see more of him.

“I would have you tell me now, Vivian. What matter brought you here? Is William unwell?”

Her gaze came up. “Nay, he is in remarkably good health for a man near death but a few weeks past, but he pushes himself too hard.”

“If not William’s health, then what matter of import could make you seek me out when I am aware you make every effort to avoid me.” He smiled, further disarming her.

“Not true,” she protested, finding it necessary to take an extra breath at the devastating power of his smile that transformed the glowering phoenix into another far more formidable predator—of the senses.

He laid the linen down on the table. Making no attempt to retrieve his tunic, he poured wine into the two goblets.

“Then stay and prove it a lie,” he told her, with that cool self-assurance.

She began hesitantly. “I came to thank you for your kindness today, toward Meg and Poladouras. It was not necessary.”

“Ah, but it was most necessary.” He handed her one of the goblets, gray eyes watching her thoughtfully with an expression she had glimpsed before much as when he contemplated some matter of strategy.

“Had I ordered them beaten and thrown from the fortress, you would have been angry, perhaps even demanded to leave as well, though I would not have allowed it.”

She looked at him incredulously. She knew him to be cunning, but he was as shrewd as William. “So you sought to bind me to you by your generosity.” She saw the wisdom.

“William had bound you to him,” he told her, “as you once pointed out, it had made dealing with Saxon barons an easier task to see one of their own held in high regard.” He reached out, taking a strand of her hair between his fingers and gently stroking it.

“They are not Saxon barons and have nothing of value,” she reminded him between carefully drawn breaths as she watched her hair trapped possessively between those long, fingers, like jesses that bound her to his hand. She told herself that she had only to pull away.

She did not, but remained where she was. At the same time, both terrified and fascinated by feelings she’d never experienced before. Like the falcon that he’d compared her to, she imagined him carefully holding a powerful, majestic hunting bird. Imagined, too, the sweet warmth of his breath gently acquainting the creature with his essence, the caress of words spoken low that taught his sound, the stroke of his hand at the creature’s rounded breast as it earned his touch.

He gave her a knowing look. “Their value lies in your devotion to them.”

She watched with stilled breath, unable to respond, as he slowly wound the tendril of her hair possessively about his finger, drawing her closer to him with gentle demand.

“Is the old woman completely blind?” he asked, confusing her with the sudden change in direction of their conversation.

“She has been blind for as long as I can remember,” she explained. “But I have always felt that she sees far more than others.” The air quivered at her parted lips. Her breathing was rapid, panic-filled, and at the same time filled with some other response she didn’t understand.

“What do you see, Vivian?” His voice was low and warm.

“Milord?” the question startled her.

“Look at me.”

No falconer’s gloved hand, protected with heavy padding, chain mail, or metal spikes, pulled at leather jesses, but instead his bare hand took possession of her, a bond that could easily be broken if she chose it.

She looked up and, in doing so, sensed that something irretrievable had slipped from her grasp, and in its place, something new, undiscovered, and yet as inevitable as the sun passing across the sky into night.

She saw it in his eyes as gray as winter sky with the portent of a powerful gathering storm. Unlike winter’s icy chill, she discovered the hidden fires that lay beneath winter’s gray mantle in the myriad golden lights that glowed at his eyes.

“What do you see?” he repeated, the words lower still in his throat and sending pleasure across her skin.

A month, a week, or even the day before, she would have answered truthfully that she saw nothing. For it was as if her ability to see and sense things about him as she sensed them about others, had been blinded. From that first day at Amesbury he, above all others, remained closed to her in ways that she had never experienced before, and it had terrified her. Why, she had thought, could she not know his thoughts?

But now, as though some force inexplicably moved between them and connected her to him, she was seized by flashes of powerful emotions. They were not the visions of clear understanding that came so easily of others, but instead bursts of pure emotion like flashes of color in a void of darkness, and heat so intense that she felt it along every nerve ending.

She sensed rage, as old as memory and long denied, some enormous wounded pain carried deep in his soul, the darker gray shadows of other things that haunted him and were a part of his past, some startling new emotion that she’d never experienced before. Yet she felt it with such intensity that the only possible comparison was with fire that burned out of control and threatened to destroy everything in its path. Finally, there was a longing so deep that it was like a pain unto itself and made her cry out.

“Please,” she whispered, pulling away, breaking the tender connection of his hand in her hair, and at the same time, severing the sensual connection. She made a hasty retreat, stumbling over her words.

“It is late, milord” she said, covering the more truthful answer he sought. “I must prepare the tea for his lordship.”

“Why do you run from me, Vivian? What is it that you fear? Do you fear what I make you feel?”

She avoided his gaze. “I do not understand.”

“You understand very well, for you have felt it just as I have felt it.” He seized her hand in his. With his thumb he stroked her fingers apart then brought her hand to his chest and flattened it over the curve of hard muscle.

“Do not!” she implored him.

“What do you feel?”

“I feel nothing!”

“You feel what I feel. Heat, fire burning through me at your simplest touch. I know you feel it as well.”

“No!” Still, she denied it, but her struggle to free her trapped hand made her a liar.

“Please!” she implored. “I cannot bear it.”

She looked at him with an expression that warred between terror and longing, between a forbidden prophecy and the destiny of a vision found in a flame.

“I have already told you,” she repeated, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I do not feel what others feel. It is impossible.”

She jerked her hand from his, aware that it was only possible because he allowed it. Then the connection was broken, and a coldness swept her through as though something had blocked out all the light. The ache of loss for something she couldn’t even name was like a wound deep inside that opened up and seemed to swallow her heart.

She gasped at the intense emotions of longing, need, and then despair that she had never known before. Human, mortal emotions that she had always been protected against by the certainty of her destiny. She felt as if she were dying and was certain she would if she did not leave.

Vivian hastily searched for the leather pouch that contained what was left of her herbs and powders. It lay beside the hearth, ties dangling loosely. She frowned slightly, her thoughts, usually so clear, muddled by the unfamiliar emotions and sensations that poured through her. She quickly gathered it up, taking no time to roll or retie it.