Wonderful (37 page)

It was dawn when they found him asleep in the dirt.

“Merrick! Get up.”

Merrick groaned and turned over, his arm flung over his eyes. He cursed viciously.

“Damn you!” Roger said. “Look at me!”

“Can you not leave me be, Roger?”

“To wallow in your self-pity? I think not. Get up. Your wife needs you.”

“My wife is dead.”

“Your wife is locked in the tower.”

He raised his arm and squinted at Roger. “How do you know?”

“I know because that ugly old witch told me. She just escaped and came to us. She claims she has seen Clio, alive, and nursed her herself.”

“She escaped and did not bring my wife?”

“She could not get her out alone, not without causing suspicion. They have guards around her.”

Merrick rolled over and buried his head in his arms. He took deep shuddering breaths.

She’s alive. Thank you, God. Thank you. She’s alive.

“Merrick?”

He felt Roger touch his shoulder and turned his wet face toward his friend.

“Aye?” His voice was muffled and scratchy with emotion.

“Come, friend. All will be well. She is alive.”

Merrick nodded, swallowing hard and trying to catch his quivering breath.

Roger sank down on one knee and placed his arm around Merrick’s shoulder. He gave him a look of reassurance. “We have found a way inside.”

Merrick moved through the tunnel slowly and quietly. His muscles were taut as bow strings. At certain moments he had to force himself to remember to breathe. He knew it would only take one wrong step, one small noise and they could give themselves away.

Mining underneath the castle was dangerous, especially now that the moat was so massive. Collapse was almost certain, even in this weak spot where the eastern wall had not been completely finished.

One small spot. A place that the old Druid had found and used to sneak out.

When he saw her and heard that Clio was alive, truly alive, he had wanted to kiss the hag.

Now, as he moved through the narrow maze of tunnels, some not reinforced with wood, he held the torch in front of him and hunkered down in the narrow sections that were barely wide enough to crawl through on hands and knees.

Overhead he could hear the shouts of the battle going on above him. They were the shouts of his men, mounting a false attack meant to throw the Welsh off so he and Roger could use the tunnel to get inside.

They did not speak, neither one of them wanting to make any noise that would give them away or perhaps even make the tunnel collapse. The timber they used to reinforce some sections was slim and old and not the best, but it was all they had to use with so little time left to them.

They needed to strike swiftly.

For years he and Roger had fought side by side and knew each others’ motions and thoughts so well. That experience served them well this time. They did not need to speak, but followed their plan and moved to the end of the tunnel.

This was the moment with the most risk, when Merrick slowly used a small pick to cut away the last of the dirt. It was dry and dusty from the heat of the day and fell into his face and eyes in a fine dust.

The cloud choked him and made him want to cough, but he could not, for there were Welsh guards just a few strides away, talking quietly as they patrolled the inner yard.

He turned to Roger and raised a finger to his lips, pointed in the direction of the guards. He drew his dagger and put it in his teeth, then pushed himself up through the hole, scrambling over the edge and belly-crawling along the rim of the east wall and past the two guards.

When they were out of hearing distance, he turned to Roger. “Free the men in the chapel. I’ll get Clio. I will signal you once she is safe. Then try to get the gates open from the inside.”

Roger nodded and they separated.

He made his way up the side stairs, dodging guards and hiding in dark corners. He moved to the area of the new section of the keep, then to the small room meant for housing weaponry.

He got rid of the two guards swiftly, then used the keys to unlock the door.

When he opened it, he stood there, looking at his wife. She sat on the bed braiding her hair and looked up, her face as shocked and frozen as he was.

’Twould have been easier to cut off his sword arm than to pull his eyes away from her.

“Merrick!” Her voice was but a whisper and she struggled to get down from the small bed.

He did not know who ran first, but she was in his arms, finally in his arms. He spun with her and ran, his dagger ready, with her clinging to his neck as he moved down the stairs faster than he had ever run in his whole life.

They sped across the bailey and he pulled her with him to the tunnel. “Jump down,” he whispered, then followed her inside.

He grabbed a torch that was farther inside the tunnel. Moved back and waved it to signal Roger and his men. Then he came back to Clio. “Can you run? Walk? What?”

She looked into his eyes and nodded. She was crying silent tears. Neither spoke of the child.

He grabbed her and they moved through the tunnel, crawling in some places. He dragged her with him in others.

She cried out once and the ceiling spilled dirt and rocks. Water from the moat began to drip on them.

He pulled her tightly to him, still on his knees from crawling through a short space. “’Tis not much farther.”

He pushed her in front of him as they moved. He could see the other end. “Look. There.” He pointed and she turned toward the end.

She looked back. “We made it!” Then her eyes flashed upward. She gasped.

He felt the dirt above him rumble.

The ceiling begin to fall.

“Run, Clio! Run!”

“Merrick!” she screamed.

He reached through the mud tumbling down on him. He could feel her body. She was turning toward him.

“No!” he shouted just before water and mud filled his mouth.

He shoved her as hard as he could toward the tunnel’s end. Then a blast of moat water hit him so hard all he saw was blackness.

Chapter 41

Clio sat in a hard wooden chair at Merrick’s bedside, her head resting in the crook of her arms and her hands still threaded together in prayer.

She did not know how much time had passed.

Hours? Days? She seemed to remember the sunlight of the day and the coolness of the night, but that was all. She had just sat there, waiting and praying, as time lost any meaning for her.

But Merrick did not awaken. He lay there, not dead but not really alive. His face still bore the bruises of the tunnel collapse.

They claimed it had taken too long to dig him out. He should have been dead. She could remember someone saying he was as good as dead, for his mind was gone.

She refused to give up. And she threatened to claw the eyes out of anyone who said otherwise.

He had a cut on his jaw and dark bluish stains on his head, temple, jawline, and neck. His face was swollen. His lips were pale and chalky, almost as if they were frosted with ice. His hair was matted with dried blood and sweat.

But he had no fever. If he had, she would have at least felt that he was closer to this earth than to heaven.

She tore a piece of cloth from those stacked by the bed and dipped it into a small ewer of water on the bedside table. She wet his lips, then carefully wiped the blood and dirt from his face and neck, his body, his hands. Then his feet.

Her mind drifted back to that night when he had first slept with her, claiming he was her new keeper. She remembered comparing their toes.

She looked at them now. And her breath wouldn’t come.

It took her long moments to control her shaking hands. Then she slowly dipped the cloth in the water and gently cleaned his face and his neck again.

She wrung out the cloth, then turned back; leaning down, she touched her lips to his. Lightly.

He was breathing. She could taste his breath. Merrick’s breath. His chest rose and fell evenly, with breaths so shallow they were hardly there.

’Twas as if he were in so deep a sleep that he might never awaken. She sat there watching him breathe, almost afraid not to watch him. Because she was so terribly afraid that he would stop breathing if she dared to look away.

His life was slipping away. Slowly.

She reached out and took his hand in hers. She held it, stroked it, then threaded her fingers in between his. She clung to him that way for a long, long time, trying to keep him with her.

In her mind it made precious sense to her that as long as they were touching, as long as she held his hand, he was still with her, still alive.

“Merrick,” she whispered, needing to say his name aloud “I love you. I love you. Don’t leave me. Fight, my warrior. Please. Don’t give up on the most important battle you’ve ever had. For me. For us. My Merrick, please fight.”

She held his hand to her own heart, pressed his palm flat against her chest, hoping to give him strength. It was an idea born of desperation.

The longer she sat there the closer she came to believing what all the others had told her: she could not bring him back.

She squeezed his hand and watch his face, looking for a sign. No matter how hard she squeezed his hand. He did not move. No matter what she said to him. He did not respond.

She began to cry. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and made streaks; the sobs came from somewhere so deep inside of her.

These were the tears she couldn’t find earlier. When he was trapped. When they all dug like madmen to find him, to pull him from the mud and water of the moat.

The tears that wouldn’t come because she was so terribly scared for him that she didn’t dare cry. Until now.

I hear you, my love. I hear you crying. You sound so far away
—
a maiden locked away in a tower by cruel fate and I cannot find any way to reach you. For some reason I cannot move
.

A knight who cannot move. Why? I fight battles. But I cannot fight if I cannot move. My body will not answer my commands. I cannot feel it. I do not know where my hands are. I do not know where my legs are. I cannot speak. It is as if my head were not part of my body, as if my mind were all that is left of me.

But it is not. I am still here. My Clio. Do not cry. I am still here.

The servants talked about her as if she were the one who was mad. She didn’t care; all this because she wanted to wash his hair. The blood and the dirt. It was still there. Reminders of what he had suffered.

She refused to leave him that way. She set a ewer of warm water on the table and bent down to pick up a cloth she had dropped.

There was tapping at the door.

“Come,” she said, sitting back up and pushing her hair from her face.

Roger came inside.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

He gave her a smile, then moved to the bed. He stood looking at Merrick for a long time, his face not showing what he was thinking. “Someone said you wished to wash his hair.” He did not laugh at her.

“Aye.” She poured warm water into a wooden washbowl.

“I thought you could use some help.”

She looked up at him. “Thank you. I can. Will you lift his shoulders for me. Here, like that.”

While Roger held him, she poured water over his hair and rubbed it with soap until it shone as black as a raven’s back. When she was finished, she set the bowl aside and turned back.

Roger was toweling his hair. He saw her look and flushed, as if he was embarrassed. He handed her the cloth. “Here. You should probably do this.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He shrugged, still staring at Merrick. “’Twas naught.” He turned to leave.

“Roger?”

He looked back.

“My words, my gratitude, ’tis not just because of this.” She waved her hand over Merrick’s damp head. “Washing his hair. What I meant was to thank you for caring about him.”

Roger nodded and left without a word.

She closed her eyes; tired from fighting this, she lay her head on the bed.

So she did not see his eyes open until she awoke.

Chapter 42

After that they brought in the London physicians. Merrick was awake. Or looked as if he were. Sometimes he would open eyes.

He could move if you got him up. He could swallow liquids like soup and water and wine. He could relieve himself and did so often.

But he did not speak. There was no life in his eyes.

Clio stood by the bed and stared at the physicians.

They wanted to trepan him.

Trepanning. They casually explained to her that it was boring holes in his head to relieve his brain.

She could not believe what she was hearing. “Are you mad?”

“You are a woman, my lady, and as such you cannot understand what we know to be true.” The physician, sent by a well-meaning Edward, was a pompous idiot.

“And what is it that that I am incapable of understanding?”

The man laughed at her. “I would be wasting my words.”

“Explain anyway. That was what the king wanted. Am I correct?”

He flushed, not liking being reminded of who had sent him. He gave a sigh and she wanted to trepan him.