Daughter of Fire (4 page)

“Perhaps,” FitzWarren went on to suggest, “the old woman overpowered you and made you fear for your lives.”

He stood over Meg, crumpled into the dirt at his feet, and commanded her, “Look at me, old woman.” The ease with which he slipped into the Saxon language startled Vivian.

Meg squared her thin shoulders. “You do not frighten me, warrior,” she hissed, refusing to obey as she stared stubbornly down at the dirt floor.

Vivian heard the hatred that burned at her voice and knew that FitzWarren had heard it as well, for hatred was an emotion that crossed all barriers of language. Then, her breath caught in her throat at the ancient curses Meg muttered.

Be silent, you dear old fool!
she thought frantically, as she glanced at the knight. Meg would pay dearly if he even so much as guessed at the insults and curses she hurled at him, and she  doubted the old woman’s fragile bones would endure further abuse.

Vivian ceased breathing altogether as he stripped off thick leather gloves and crouched low before the old woman with a graceful ease in spite of the heavy layers of battle armor he wore. At that moment she was certain he understood the vile things Meg had said. Then he stunned them both as he seized a handful of flowing white hair and gently angled Meg’s head up so that she was forced to look at him.

She screeched several more vile profanities as she clawed and scratched at his hand  clamped over her hair. Undaunted, he angled her head back, her wrinkled face marred by bruises that Vachel had inflicted. Meg threw her hands up as if to protect herself from another blow, making grotesque gestures. Only Vivian understood the ancient signs the woman made with her hands, calling on every evil creature she could summon from the bowels of Darkness, every possible disease she knew of, and a few even Vivian wasn’t familiar with.

She was stunned when Rorke FitzWarren didn’t strike the old woman. Instead, he clamped his other hand over her thin wrists and drew them away from her face.

“Do not think to hex me or conjure up some spell, old woman!” he warned her. “For I do not believe in such things.”

“You will believe!” Meg hissed at him. “When your eyes fall out of your head and your manhood shrivels no bigger than a worm!”

He ignored her threats as he turned to Mally. He slipped fingers beneath the girl’s trembling chin and angled her face up so that she too was forced to look at him. She whimpered, tears streaming down her bruised face, her gaze carefully averted.

“I will not harm you,” he said with such surprising gentleness that Mally looked at him from beneath her pale lashes with guarded wariness.

“Though God knows you have enough reason to fear me,” he added, speaking once more in French, unaware that any but his own men understood. “And even more reason to doubt what I say.”

Vivian was stunned by his unexpected kindness toward the girl, and watched him with new curiosity. Then he told Mally in English, “Look at me.”

Eventually, she looked up, eyes wide with fear amidst the bruises marring features that might have been pretty if not for the swelling that cruelly distorted her appearance. She looked more like a pathetic kitten that had been trampled underfoot and barely escaped with its life.

“Let her go,” FitzWarren ordered the soldier who still held her prisoner. Terrified and bewildered, Mally slipped into the shadows at the wall when he released her.

FitzWarren’s voice was like winter’s death, and unforgiving as he told Vachel, “If it were left to you, you would kill all Saxons,
including
the healer!”

Vivian’s startled gaze fastened on Vachel. Until that moment she assumed he sought a healer for a healer’s purpose—to tend to someone who’d been injured. What could this other knight possibly mean by his accusation? Why would Vachel want her dead?

As if he heard her silent thoughts, Rorke FitzWarren slowly turned to her. When he stood before her, those gray eyes assessed her with a far different expression. His gaze lingered at the cut fabric of her gown and the bloodied mark on pale flesh beneath.

“My apologies, demoiselle. The king would be offended to learn you have been so sorely abused.”

Her auburn brow lifted slightly as she answered him in French, her words dripping with all the loathing, hatred, and contempt she felt at that moment for all Normans.

“You no doubt speak of King Harold,” she answered defiantly. “And you are right, milord. He would never tolerate such abuses of his loyal subjects, nor would he tolerate foreign tyrants on English soil!”

He looked at her with new curiosity in discovering she spoke the French language as well as he.

“I speak of William of Normandy,” Rorke informed her. “Your
new
king.”

“William is not my king,” Vivian vehemently denied. “The road from battlefield to throne is long and often filled with danger, milord.  England will never bow before a Norman overlord.”

“Aye, the road ’tis long and dangerous,” he acknowledged gravely. “But I assure you, William of Normandy
will
be king of England.”

Something glittered at the dirt floor and caught Rorke’s eye. He bent down with that same economy of movement, retrieved the gleaming object. Vivian’s breath caught in her throat as his fingers closed over her knife.

He stood then, slowly turning the blade over between long fingers that had wielded a broadsword and drawn Vachel’s blood with such powerful ease, and then gently calmed a terrified young girl. Again, Vivian wondered at the contradictions of this Norman knight.

He drew the flat of the blade down between thumb and forefinger. Vivian frowned as he touched his tongue to the tip of his finger then looked at her.

“Oil of rosemary.”

He watched for her reaction. When there was none, he commented, “I have been told it is most effective against gout.” His gray gaze glanced at Poladouras with his gout-swollen legs. “Often found among a healer’s medicines.”

Vivian’s stunned gaze met his. She had not expected a ruthless barbarian to have knowledge of healing ways and her breath quickened apace with her heart as the vision of the phoenix once more shimmered before her—a dangerous creature born in fire and blood.

Rorke brought his hand up and immediately saw the wariness that shifted behind those brilliant blue eyes, the sudden tensing of every muscle in the slender body as if she braced for a blow. Instead, he reached out and brushed back the flame-colored hair that sculpted her face, and draped her shoulders like a mantle of molten fire.

Her skin was like warm silk as fire danced in her eyes. Her startled breath against his hand was like a warm caress that made him instinctively feel the need to pull away lest he be burned, at the same time his hand opened to feel more of her. Then his gaze lowered to the gaping fabric at her breast stained with blood.

The contact was brief, his callused fingers grazing over Vivian’s cheek, somehow touching her in some hidden place, like a vision in the heart of a blue crystal. Her hands trembled with hated as she pulled the remnants of her torn bodice together.

“I am the healer you seek.”

Those gray eyes fastened on her, measuring her with an intensity that she found impossible to sense anything about, as if his thoughts and emotions were closed to her when it had always been so easy for her to know another’s thoughts.

He turned the blade around and handed it to her, those eyes never leaving hers and she was filled with a new uneasiness, unable to fathom his intentions in returning the knife to her.

“Do not think to use it against me,” he warned. “You have no cause to fear me. I need you alive. Far too much time has already been wasted.  I pray we are not too late.”

His gaze angled past her to Vachel, who had not dared to move with FitzWarren’s men surrounding him.

“Make ready to leave at once,” FitzWarren told her. “Gather your healing herbs and powders, for time is of the essence if the Duke of Normandy is to live.”

Vivian was stunned. Never had she considered their journey was of such import. Then anger replaced her first surprise.

“If you think I will use my skills to heal the Norman butcher who has caused so much Saxon pain and suffering, you are a fool!”

Rorke FitzWarren slowly turned around, the sputtering light from the brazier playing across hard angled features, catching at the threads of the fierce creature woven at the front of his tunic, and for a moment it seemed that man and creature were one just as she had seen in the heart of the crystal. His expression was fierce, his eyes as cold as winter’s death. By stark contrast, his words were low and carefully measured.

“You will use all your skills, demoiselle,” he assured her, and then vowed, “or all of Amesbury will pay the price.” He glanced about the chapel, his gaze sweeping over Poladouras and Meg, then returning to hers.

“The choice is yours.”

That brilliant blue gaze burned with all the hatred he knew she must feel at that moment. She was trapped without any choice, for the lives of the monk and the old woman as well as those of the villagers hung in the balance.

The truth of it was visible in the expression that shimmered in eyes like the heart of a flame as she glanced first at the monk then the old woman, her decision already made. But that fiery spirit would never allow her to acknowledge his power over her. Instead, she whirled around and slowly walked to the stone steps that led to the tower he had seen as he and his men approached the abbey. At a nod, he sent the robbed warrior to follow her and make certain she did as he commanded.

“Does he send you to guard me and make certain I do not escape?” she asked, certain this golden-skinned barbarian could not possibly understand the Saxon tongue. But he understood very well.

He smiled at her and politely introduced himself. “I am Tarek al Sharif,” he replied in faintly accented English, then again in French, sympathy in those unusual blue eyes. She realized that her earlier sense of him was correct. He was from the place called Persia in Byzantine Empire that Poladouras had told her of. How, she wondered, did such a man come to fight at the side of William of Normandy?

“Allow me to assist you, mistress,” he said, again in accented English. No weapon filled his hand. Instead, he reached out to gently guide her up the steps though she hardly needed his help. And in his touch she sensed compassion.

“So that nothing may be forgotten,” he explained as they reached the herbal.

Though he said nothing more, Vivian felt his silent contemplation as she quickly gathered everything that she would take with her, leaving a portion of each powder and herb in the clay pots and vials.

“The villagers will have need of these while I am gone,” she explained.

She was surprised when he did not object; nor did he order her to include them with the medicine she prepared to take with her, but instead nodded as he helped her carefully put the packets of precious powders and herbs into a large leather pouch.

~ ~ ~

Rorke FitzWarren and his men waited astride their horses in the yard outside the abbey, the breaths of their mounts pluming in the frosty morning air like the breath of ancient dragons. Vachel and his men waited apart from the other knights and soldiers. She felt his contemptuous gaze on her and again wondered if what Rorke FitzWarren had said was true. Had Vachel come to kill her? 

Farewells were hastily made as Poladouras gently laid his hand against her cheek. “God goes with you, my child. He will return you to our care.” He dared say no more as Rorke FitzWarren glanced impatiently at them. But old Meg had no such fear of the Norman warriors.

“You have the crystal?” she asked urgently.

“Aye,” Vivian assured her as her hand instinctively pressed against the crystal where it hung from her neck and lay nestled at her breasts. She felt the calming reassurance of the power of the flame that burned within.

“Be strong, my child,” Meg told her, speaking in the ancient Celt language they shared. “Remember, they cannot harm you,” she whispered. “And you must escape at the first opportunity.”

“Nay,” Vivian said vehemently with a glance to Rorke FitzWarren, remembering his promise to her.

“I will not risk the lives of others.” Then she hugged Meg, and stoked the wrinkled cheek with a gentle touch.

“Take care of Poladouras. Make certain he does not drink overmuch.”

She pulled a thick shawl over her hair and knotting it about her shoulders to cover the gaping bodice of her gown for there had been no time to don another. The pouch of medicines was tucked under her arm. She stepped out into the chill morning air, unable to see what lay in the future for the first time in her life.

As she crossed the abbey yard, she saw the full extent of damage Vachel’s soldiers had inflicted at Amesbury Abbey. One of Poladouras’ hounds lay trampled in the yard. Sheep from the field were scattered everywhere, a young lamb bleating plaintively for its mother that had been trampled under the hooves of the warhorses, the prostrate body of the shepherd, who must have run in from the field at the first sight of the soldiers.

“Conal!”

He lay on his side, the wound at his head bleeding heavily. She slipped an arm beneath his head and shifted him against her shoulder.

“Soldiers!” he whispered, the warning thick with pain as he struggled to sound the alarm, unaware they were all past any hope of escape.

“You must leave!”

“Aye, Conal,” she spoke softly.  She wiped the blood from the wound with the edge of her shawl. The knot of anger at the cruelty of the Norman barbarians tightened, leaving no doubt about the fate of the villagers if she refused to go with them.

The rain that had threatened earlier that morning began to fall. The outline of mounted soldiers, horses, and armed knights was a dark ominous shadow in the gathering gloom.

“There is no time for this. Leave him,” Rorke FitzWarren ordered, his large warhorse suddenly looming over her. The animal moved restlessly in the gathering downpour, and could have easily trampled her had it not been for that powerful hand clamped over the reins.

That brilliant blue gaze locked with his in stubborn refusal. “He is badly injured,” Vivian protested. “I must close the wound.” Then she added, her voice filled with all the contempt she felt for Rorke FitzWarren and all Normans, “Surely, milord, even you are capable of understanding this.”