The Miracle Thief (27 page)

“Perhaps you'd like to take with you some dust from our Saint Catherine?”

“No.” He had been gazing into the fire, but now he looked at the abbess directly. “No. Possession makes prisoners of us all; the benefit is in the coming, and the blessing comes through faith. Keep your relic. Saint Catherine's place is here.” He turned, and we followed him out the door and to the courtyard, where one of the abbey's horses waited.

He affixed his pack to the horse and then took hold of the reins.

The abbess touched my sleeve. “Do you not think your place is with him?”

Neither Godric nor I could pretend we had not heard her, but he was the one who answered. He shook his head. “The road is no place for her, and I must travel far before I reach my home.”

She turned her gaze upon me. “And what of you? Where will you go?”

“I do not know.” I had reached the abbey; my body had been healed. All my dreams had been fulfilled, and yet, still, I had nothing.

“Have you no family to return to? No lord to take you?”

“I have no one.”

Godric's gaze rested upon me. “You could stay here.” He glanced at the abbess. “I do not think she would mind.”

But
I
would. I did not wish to hurt the abbess's feelings, so it was to her I made my first reply. “There is so much of life I still need to learn, and much I wish to see.” I hoped she would understand. I turned toward Godric. “I don't want to stay here. I want to go with you.”

“I am a relic hunter who no longer wishes to hunt relics. I have nothing to offer you.”

“But I already have nothing, and I've discovered that is more than enough, just so long as there is you.”

Through days of rebuilding the church and nights of heavy sleep, his eyes had lost their redness, but still there was sorrow lurking in their depths. “There are Danes in Britain, just like here, and I could not protect the last woman God gave me.”

“I am not afraid of them.”

He came to me and put a hand to my face.

I leaned into it, placing my own atop it.

He stroked my jaw with his thumb. “But why would you want me?”

“Because I wish to love you.”

His brow bent, and he pressed his forehead to mine. “A stronger man would leave you to better prospects, but I find I am not so strong as I have feared.”

I looked up into his eyes. “Then perhaps you could love me too.”

He smiled. “I already do.”

The chaplain married us, and the abbess prayed for us, and then together we set out on the long road toward our home.

Gisele

ALONG THE ROAD TO CHELLES

I could not move. I could not feel my hands, and I could not move my feet. Even breathing seemed impossible. As I opened my eyes, I saw why. Andulf had surrendered to sleep the same as I, and at some point, he had toppled back on top of me. I nudged my shoulder into his back to no avail. Was he—? Had he died during the night?

He jerked in a spasm and then snorted as he jabbed me with an elbow. But at least my hands were freed.

I tried to trap his arms to keep from being pummeled by his wild scramblings, but they escaped me. “Stop!”

Immediately he ceased, and then he rolled onto his side. “I am sorry. I did not mean—” As he glanced down toward his thigh, I followed his gaze. The torn skin that ringed his wounds had flushed an angry red, but at least the night's rest had stopped the bleeding.

Bared to the brunt of the morning's cold wind, I gathered my mantle about me.

He tugged at the girdle I'd bound around his thigh and then picked at the knot for a moment before giving up entirely. “You shall have to loosen it.”

I did not work for long before I realized his blood had dried upon it, fixing the knot in its place. “I cannot do it.”

He edged up on his hip. “Take my knife.”

Pulling it gingerly from his belt, I slipped it beneath the girdle and sawed until it tore.

He probed the gashes with his fingers, sucking in his breath between his teeth. “You are going to have to look at it for me.”

“Look at it?”

He set his jaw, glancing over at me, and then resolutely fixed his gaze upon the horses. “If there's pus, then I need to know it. But first you may have to cleanse it.”

A scab had formed about the leaves and dirt that had filled the gashes. There was no help for it but to scrape it all out. Kneeling beside him, I used the tip of his knife to pry at the edge of a leaf. As I pulled it from the wound, ooze began to seep.

He jerked. “Son of a skiving whore!”

“There's no need for such words.”

He said nothing more, though a sweat had broken out upon his brow.

I put the knife to the wound once more and continued with my work.

“Bleeding, bloody
Christ
!”

I set the knife down upon my thigh. “Are you quite done?”

He shied from me and bent himself nearly in half, as if trying to protect his wounds from me. “Good God. Why not let the pagan have you? You'll be a blight and a curse to him and all his house.”

I folded my arms across my chest.

He glanced up at me, loathing in his eyes. “You may finish.”

“There's half the floor of the forest in there, along with an acorn or two.”

“Then you'll have to get them out.”

“And what do you think I've been doing?”

“It hurts.”

“You saved my life. Now, I'll thank you to let me reciprocate.”

He grunted.

“I've nothing to wash it with but wine from your costrel.”

“Then use it.” He folded his mouth around a frown.

I rose and took the costrel from his courser. The hem of my tunic was black with dirt, so I poured out a measure of wine on the edge of my sleeve and used it to dab at the wound.

“Son of a scummy, bosky, traitorous—!” He bit off his protest as I ripped a leaf from one of the scabs. The look he sent me through narrowed eyes was pure malevolence.

I poured more wine onto my sleeve and tried again to cleanse the wound, but the forest litter clung fast. Sighing with frustration, I poured some directly onto his thigh.

He writhed like a fish thrown from water, and wrenched himself away from me. “By the wounds of Christ!”

I peeled another leaf away from the bloody mess. “One would think you a heathen for all the reverence you accord Our Lord.”

“I'm not.” His scowl was deep and sullen. When he spoke, it sounded as a growl. “Go on. Finish.”

Surely his was a dark and degenerate soul. As I scraped some more, he reached over and tore the sleeve from my hand, jerking me toward him in the process, and then he bent to scrub at the wound himself.

“Stop! You're going to—”

“Might as well get it over with.”

“But look!” He had provoked the wound to bleed again.

“If we don't move along soon, we'll have more than this to worry about.” Great beads of sweat broke out on his forehead before he finally released my sleeve. “Help me up.”

I put a hand to his thigh. “They're bleeding again. All of them.”

“Help me up, damn you.”

“Don't you damn
me
, you ungrateful, sorry brute! If you don't stop cursing me, then I won't help you at all.”

He'd gotten to his knees with a grimace and then shoved himself back onto his ankles. Now he stood glaring down at me. “You haven't helped me yet!”

“I was the one who stayed by you after you fainted and—”

“I did not faint.”

“And I was the one helped you away from the boar when you could hardly stand on your own two feet and—”

“I could have managed.”

“If it weren't for me, that boar might have made a mince of you!”

“And who was it that led me on a merry chase from Rouen in the first place? And then tried to run away again yesterday? I wouldn't be saddled with turned ankles and beset by wild boars if you had just done what you were supposed to!”

“I did not ask you to come after me. I could have managed on my own.”

“Managed! You might have managed getting your heart torn from your breast.” He scowled and then winced as he drew in a great breath.

“Since you do not seem to appreciate how you have placed yourself in mortal danger, and because you seem to be quite capable of surviving on your own, then I shall be leaving now.” I could not say why I had not left earlier. He clearly had his wits back, and he was not in danger of dying, except by
my
hand. I hobbled to my horse, trying to be as dignified about it as I could.

“Wait.” He put out his hand to stop me, but thought the better of it, letting it drop to his side instead. “Just…wait.”

“Why should I?”

“The count's men are still out there. You would not want them to find you.”

Then it did not matter whether I stayed with Andulf or whether the count's men happened upon me. The consequence would be the same: I would be returned to Rouen where I would have to marry the Danes' chieftain. There could be no other outcome. Not when that band of pagans had gone along with the canon to obtain the relic. “But if you left with them, then will they not be searching for you as well?”

He shrugged.

“I must surely leave and do so now.”

“Can you not understand? There is no escape. My fidelity to your father ensures I must return you. If, by chance, I had not found you at first, then I must have continued until I found you at last. I cannot return to court unless I have you. And if by great misfortune I return without you, then you must be dead, and I must have proof, or I must know where you have gone. And if I know where you have gone, then your father will come and find you, and even your new abbess will not be able to stand against him. You cannot take your vows predicated upon a lie.”

I did not care.

He lurched over, muttering profanities all the way, and snatched the reins from my hands. “If you leave, then you are most certainly going to be responsible for my death.”

“
Your
death!” He was as near to death at that moment as I. Though he was mean and querulous, he had none of that gray pallor I had come to associate with a mortal wound.

“I might be fine now, but come nightfall, I expect those beasts will return.”

“I shall leave you with a limb, ready to put to the flame.”

“And what will I do when it burns itself out?”

“The beasts did not come last night when the fire burned out.”

“Because they found other meat. But they are here. They lurk in the shadows beyond those bushes.”

They did? I eyed the bushes with newfound suspicion.

“And I am easy prey, for man or beast. I cannot move. They will wait as long as they have to.”

“A knight like you can take care of himself.” And if I were about the wood in the day's light, surely the beasts would not attack me…would they?

With a grunt and a wince, he pulled his sword from his scabbard and offered it to me. “If you are going to leave, then you might as well finish the job: kill me now.”

I shrank from him. “
Kill
you!”

“Even if the beasts do not finish me, then I will come after you and I will find you and I will return you to your father. It is my death or your freedom.”

“Then why should I stay? Why should I not seek asylum at the abbey, as I planned?”

“And bring destruction and shame on the abbess at Chelles for sheltering you?”

“Who says I am going to Chelles?”

“Where else would you go? The abbeys here are controlled by Robert, and if you venture north of Chelles, you are in danger of encountering more Danes.”

He was right. Those reasons were exactly why I had chosen Chelles. “The church must always provide a refuge to a virgin being forced to marry without her consent.”

“Yes. But princesses are a different matter entirely.”

“Once I take my vows, then who but God can claim me?”

He broke his posture as he sagged against his horse. “Who would want to?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, You're as unlikely a princess as ever there has been.”

As he stood there, hand clamped around the reins, I made my choice. I would stay with him one night more. It was the least I owed him, given it was my actions that had wounded him.

***

We rode slowly that day. Andulf did not want the count's men to lay claim to the honor of escorting me back to Rouen, so we kept ourselves hidden from other travelers upon the road. Neither of us wanted to stop at an inn for the night. So once more, despite misgivings, we headed for the wood.

After handing me down from the horse, Andulf dismounted, though he groaned as his feet found the ground.

“You have pain.”

“Of course I have pain!” He fairly snapped at me. “I've been gored by a boar.”

“And riding all this day cannot have helped you.” I reached a hand around him in support, but he brushed it away. “You must let me see your wounds.” I did not exactly know what to look for, but his hands had grown damp and his forehead sweaty, even though the winds had been cold and cruel. I put a hand to his chest.

He looked down at it and then up into my eyes.

“Please.”

He dropped to the ground with a thump and flung his tunic to the side as if I were some goose to be concerned on his behalf.

Even before I had knelt beside him, I could see his thigh had swollen to almost twice its size. And an evil-looking pus had coated the wound. “I don't know if…”

He took a look for himself. And then, as he probed at the wounds with his fingers, a line of perspiration bloomed above his lip. “Start a fire.”

I found his fire-steel with trembling hands, and then gathered a pile of twigs and leaves.

He gestured for the flint and the touchwood, using them to birth a spark. “Get my sword as well.”

As I drew it from its sheath, I was startled by its great weight.

He fanned the sparks with the hem of his mantle and roused them to a snapping flame. “Lay it in the fire.”

“In…?”

He held out his hand. When I gave him the sword, he placed the length of it on the fire himself, and then left it there for some time as I fed the flames more leaves and twigs.

“Can you get my costrel?”

I gave it to him.

Taking up his mantle once more, he poured wine over it and then used it to scrub at his wounds. He did it so fiercely that drops of sweat broke from his brow to course down his neck. And in the process, he rubbed the scabs right off and set the gashes to bleeding once more.

“Don't—”

“I want you to take the sword from the fire.”

I lifted it, using both my hands.

“Now place it on my leg.” He bared the wounds to me. “If I try to do it, I will like as stab myself.” He nodded toward the gashes. “You must do it for me.”

I took a deep breath and knelt beside him. Lowering the sword… I could not do it.

“Go on.”

“I cannot.” I whispered the words, for courage had deserted me.

“You must.”

“It will hurt you.”

“I must hurt in order to heal.”

“I cannot do it.” As my hands faltered, he wrapped his own around them and, fighting my resistance, pressed the flat of his sword to his thigh. His skin sizzled as the stench of seared flesh rose from it, and still he left it there. I tried to move it away, but he only strengthened his grip on my hands and held the sword in place. He did not succumb to profanity this time, which I took to mean it hurt twice as much again as it had when I had scraped at his wounds earlier that morning.

By the time he released my hands, tears were coursing down my face. All of it was my fault: the boar, his wounds, his sword-scarred flesh. I let the sword tumble from my grasp and pushed myself away from him. “If you had just let me go, none of this would have happened!”

“I have sworn to protect you.”

“Then let me go, and you won't have to worry about me anymore.”

“I have been entrusted by the king with your care.”

“He could hardly fault you for not doing what he is not willing to do himself.”

“His Majesty the king cares more for you than any father I've ever seen.”

“If he did, then he would not have let the count and the archbishop pledge me to a pagan!”

“Has your life been so good that you should fear to lose it, my lady?”