by Lynn Kurland
“We’ll say nothing,” she said, almost shouting to be heard over Richard’s continued yelling.
“Of course not,” John agreed.
“He’s having bad dreams.”
“Out of his head with fever,” John added.
Slowly the fight seemed to drain out of Richard. It took another hour, but finally he was only moaning softly. John pulled him from the tub and she dried him off as best she could.
Half an hour later she tucked the covers up under the chin of a much cooler Richard. She smoothed his hair back from his face and sat down on the side of the bed, drained. She looked up at John.
“Empty the tub and get more water ready.”
“Again?” he asked, aghast. “He cannot bear it!”
“He’ll have to.”
“I cannot bear it,” John said, his face haggard. “By the saints, I don’t think I can hear any of that again.”
“If we don’t keep him cool, the fever will ravage his brain. I think we can both agree we don’t want that.”
John looked at her. “You’re either a powerfully knowledgeable healer or a witch.”
“I’m neither.”
He sighed. “I’ll go see to the water.”
“And the men.”
“And the men,” he agreed. “They’ll believe what I tell them.”
“Good.”
She listened to John leave, then looked down at Richard. His skin was a pasty white. The thin scar that ran down his cheek stood out in stark relief against his skin. The day’s growth of beard that might have looked rugged and appealing another time now only made him look unkempt.
Being busy had kept her from thinking, but now she couldn’t help but indulge. She wasn’t good with healing. Would she lower his fever only to give him a healthy case of pneumonia? She knew that he’d risk brain damage if his fever went too high, but how could she tell how high it was going? Her palm against his forehead wasn’t exactly an accurate thermometer.
She sighed and leaned over to press her cheek against his. He was cooler. That couldn’t be bad. As long as he didn’t catch a chill, he’d be fine. He was strong, wasn’t he? He had most likely survived much worse than this and bounced back. Those scars on his chest had probably put him out of commission at the time. He’d survived them; he’d survive a scratch.
She rested her head next to his on the pillow and closed her eyes. Just a little rest, then she’d make sure Richard was okay. And once he was back on his feet, she was going to give the entire place a series of lectures on the importance of cleanliness.
It would give her something to do besides think on the things she’d heard Richard cry out.
Those were enough to break her heart as it was.
14
Richard tried to pull away as heavy hands grasped at him. His body ached—from his last beating likely. Damn his father to hell! The man could wield a whip like no other, leaving nothing but bruised flesh. No broken skin. No proof of what he’d done. Richard gritted his teeth, trying to summon the anger that had seen him through innumerable nights of torment.
The anger wouldn’t come. He was so weary. If he could just rest for a moment, then he would have the strength to flee. Just a moment of rest . . .
Strong hands were everywhere, holding him in a grip from which he could not escape. He struggled as he felt cold air hit him.
“Nay,” he croaked. “Father, nay!”
His sire wasn’t speaking to him. Richard fought back the black terror that threatened to choke him. It was always worse when Berwick was silent. It meant he was completely past reason.
The chill increased. Richard felt himself being lowered and he fought back.
“I’ll not go!” he cried out. “Not again!” He could see the shackles on the wall, feel them biting into his wrists. He could feel the aches in his toes from trying to stand tall enough to keep the weight of his slender body from resting completely on his hands. Trembles wracked him. He couldn’t bear it again. It hadn’t been his fault!
“It was Hugh,” Richard gasped out. “Father, I vow it was! He is mad! He killed the hound, not I. I stumbled upon him finishing the deed. Oh, why won’t you believe me?”
Hands pushed him down into the cold. Richard couldn’t bear it. He summoned all the stores of courage in his twelve-year-old soul and struck out. His fist connected once, twice, then connected with nothing.
Too many hands held him, forcing him relentlessly into the chill. He wept, pleading for mercy, protesting his innocence.
“Mercy, Papa,” he sobbed. “Sweet Mary, have mercy!”
The icy-hot fingers of the whip flicked over his naked chest, stinging pain that felt worse than a hundred pricks of a sharp blade. He was weightless, half a foot off the floor, at the mercy of a man who thought nothing of leaving his son for days at a time in a dark pit without the benefit of light, of clothing, of food.
Richard wept, but no tears fell. His hurt went past tears. His shame rocked him to the depths of his soul until it smothered everything there.
He would leave. The next time he was let up into the sunlight, he would take nothing but the clothes on his back and flee. He knew the land about Berwick-on-the-Sea well enough. He could elude his father and flee north. If Blackmour wouldn’t take him in, he’d go farther to Artane. Neither Blackmour nor Artane had any love for his sire. They would likely have no love for him either, but he was handy with a blade and would work to earn his keep. Even if he were treated as nothing but a slave, that would be better than what he was now.
Berwick’s heir.
Tomorrow, he would cease to be even that.
By his own bloody choice.
• • •
Richard woke. He felt as if he’d just been through a score of battles without pause. Saints, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so drained! He opened his eyes and stared up at the canopy above the bed. At least he was in bed. Had he been drinking? Nay, he remembered vividly that night. This was a weariness of an entirely different kind.
He turned his head and saw Jessica lying next to him, facing him. Her left eye was horribly discolored. He sat up with a gasp.
“Merciful saints above, what befell you?” he gasped. He put his hands to his head to still the room’s sudden swirling.
“Lie back, buckaroo,” she said. “You’re not up to shouting yet.”
Richard let her lay him back, grateful for the aid but surely unwilling to admit the like. He opened his eyes and focused on the woman leaning over him. He reached up and hesitantly touched the side of her face.
“Who did this?” he rasped. “I’ll kill him.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“We’ll talk about it now—”
She covered his mouth with her hand. “No orders, my lord. It’s been very peaceful with you feverish the past few days.”
“Fever?”
“From the little ‘mishap’ in the lists,” she clarified. “You’ve been fighting it for three days now.”
He tried to sit up again, then gave up. He felt a rumbling deep in his belly and frowned.
“I’m hungry.”
“Good. I’ll go find you something.”
Richard nodded, then regretted the motion for it made the chamber spin again. He closed his eyes until he heard Jessica leave, then struggled to sit up. He leaned back against the headboard and rubbed his hand over his face, wincing at the tingling in his body. No small fever, by the feel of the aftereffects.
It was several minutes later that the door opened again. Richard looked up with as much eagerness as he could muster. Finally he would have a meal. When he saw his captain poke his head inside the chamber, he scowled.
“’Tis you,” Richard said, irritated.
“Is it safe?” John asked, hovering by the doorway.
“Safe?” Richard asked. “What mean you by that?”
John entered the chamber slowly. Richard blinked at the enormous discoloration on John’s face.
&nb
sp; “Saints, man, have you and Jessica been brawling?”
“Jessica? Richard, you fool, ’twas you who struck me! And twice, no less!”
“Me? Have you gone daft? Why would I do such a thing?”
John shrugged. “You were out of your head with fever. Jessica was the fortunate one. You only nicked her. I took the full brunt of your blows.”
“Jessica . . .”
“That’s enough, John,” Jessica said from the doorway.
Richard caught the tail end of the look she threw his captain, then looked at John’s face in time to see the dull flush spread up his cheeks.
“How fare you?” John asked, shifting uncomfortably.
Richard looked from Jessica to John and back to Jessica. He didn’t care at all for whatever had passed between them.
“What else had you planned to say?” he demanded of his captain.
John shifted again. “Nothing, my lord.”
“Damn you, John, speak! I am your lord, not that contrary woman there. If I tell you to speak, then you’ll speak or you’ll find yourself booted out my gates by my foot!”
Jessica came forward and set a wooden trencher on his lap. “You’re not in any shape to be doing any booting, Richard. Eat your broth.”
“I don’t want broth, I want an enormous piece of meat.”
Jessica held the trencher on his lap. “You’ll eat broth because that’s all your body can take right now—”
“I’ll eat what I bloody well feel like eating—”
“Which is broth,” she finished. She was almost nose to nose with him. “Don’t push me, Richard.”
Richard had the overwhelming urge to strangle her. Unfortunately, she was close enough that he caught an eyeful of what his fist had done to her delicate features. He was shamed enough to be grateful she hadn’t left him because of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “’Twas the fever.”
“That’s why I’m still here.”
He ignored her, picked up the bowl, and drained it in one pull. It burned the bloody hell out of his throat, but he didn’t flinch. He thrust it at Jessica.
“More.”
“If you’ll let it cool this time.”
“Fetch it and give me none of your cheek.”
Jessica sighed and left the chamber. Richard caught John’s frown and glared up at his captain.
“Why do you look at me so?” he snapped.
“She’s been tending you for three days and two nights and you cannot even thank her.”
“’Twas her duty and place to do so.”
“Don’t use her so ill, Richard—”.
“Out!” Richard bellowed, pointing to the door. “Begone, you woman. Don’t return until you remember what you are!”
Richard waited impatiently for Jessica to return, then sent her to fetch him yet another bowl of broth. After three draughts, he felt strong enough to rise. He barked at her to leave him be when she moved to help him. He wasn’t a bloody woman who needed aid. No one had ever taken care of him in all his thirty years and he wasn’t going to see that changed now.
He did take a moment or two to wonder how it was that Jessica had managed to spare his life. Had she used knowledge from the future to heal him?
Or was she a witch?
The thought of that was so ridiculous, he didn’t entertain it past the first thinking of it. Then he could hardly believe he was ready to believe anything else. There he was, a fairly learned, well-traveled man of thirty winters, readier to believe a woman was from a time more than seven hundred years in his future than that she was a witch.
Apparently, the fever had been hard upon him indeed to addle his wits so thoroughly.
His thoughts were foolish and they gave him no ease. Indeed, his mood only fouled the more as the day wore on. He couldn’t lay his finger on what had soured him so, but something certainly had. His body ached as if he’d been beaten and his head pounded with each breath he took.
• • •
Dusk fell after an interminable day of trying to rest and give his form a chance to heal. After another supper of things not substantial enough for a grown man to survive upon, Richard sat with his feet stretched out toward the fire and stared into the flames. Jessica sat across from him, but he did his best to ignore her. She’d already drenched him with a torrent of words on the importance of washing his hands, cleansing various and sundry types of wounds, and avoiding at all costs leeches and their ilk.
He’d done his damnedest to ignore her, hoping she would see that he had no desire for speech.
Once she fell silent, Richard almost wished she had continued to babble. Bits and pieces of his dreams began to return to him. He supposed they had come courtesy of the shackles he’d seen the day he’d slipped into his cups. Those were things he certainly didn’t think about willingly. It was a wonder he could even rest comfortably on the same land his father had owned.
Nay, this was no longer his sire’s. He’d torn the keep down with his bare hands. Nothing remained of his past. The wood had been burned in a bonfire that had scorched the hair from his hands and face, but he’d not complained. The present Burwyck-on-the-Sea didn’t resemble in the least the pitiful, crudely fashioned Berwick that Geoffrey de Galtres had constructed. Richard bore only the de Galtres name, but he liked to think it had passed over his father’s generation entirely and come down to him straight from his grandsire. Even the name of his keep was something he’d changed. Burwyck-on-the-Sea. The name pleased him.
But it didn’t take away the niggling doubt in the back of his mind. He couldn’t rid himself of the dregs that remained in his mind. He could feel the chill air of the dungeon and the stairs that led down to it. He remembered the stench of refuse and the fear that had choked him. He remembered being powerless, completely at the mercy of another soul, something he vowed he would never be again.
His fingers pained him. He relaxed them when he realized the chair was digging into his hands. He woke fully from his misery and remembered he wasn’t alone. Slowly, he looked up at Jessica.
She was watching him closely. Too closely. Knowingly, almost. Richard felt his heart begin to race. Had he said aught . . . when the fever was upon him? Her eyes were full of something . . . understanding? Compassion? It had been so long since he’d seen the like, he wasn’t sure he could recognize it.
Nay, it was pity. Richard rose, furious. How dare she pity him? How dare she! There was no reason for it. No one had ever pitied him. He’d be damned if he’d be pitied by a woman!
He kept up his anger until he’d stormed from the chamber and slammed the door behind him. He made it to the battlements before panic robbed him of air. Merciful saints above, what had he revealed in his delirium?
Nay, he couldn’t have said aught. That pain was buried so deeply inside him it would never come out, not even when he was drunk. A fever wouldn’t have the power to wrest it from him.
He sucked in the bitterly cold sea air until a measure of calmness had returned to him. He was safe. No one knew. He’d made sure his father’s servants had been shipped off to Normandy with enough gold to ensure their silence. No one at Burwyck-on-the-Sea knew of his past. Not even John was certain of the facts.
Richard let out a deep breath and looked heavenward, forcing the tension to leave him. Aye, there was no cause for alarm. Jessica likely looked thusly at every man she nursed through a fever. He could believe that readily enough. The woman seemed to have no trouble believing herself to be quite adept at many things. Of course, she wasn’t. She was a woman, after all.
A woman who had overstepped her bounds. He wouldn’t blame her for it. He’d been out of his head with fever; he couldn’t have expected her to keep herself in check.
But now he was firmly back on his feet and Jessica would relearn her place soon enough. Perhaps he would keep her long enough to train her, then send her back to the future—if that was where she truly had come from. The lads there would likely be grateful for his efforts.
• • •
Jessica moved off her chair and sat down on the fur rug in front of the fire. There weren’t many comforts in medieval England but she was enjoying one presently. Even less-than-at-his-best Richard could build a fire like no other. She held her hands to the blaze and watched the flames lick at the logs. It was an easy thing to let her mind drift.
She doubted she would ever forget the terror in Richard’s voice when they’d tried to put him in the tub the second time. The first time he’d begged his father for mercy, John had thrown all the men, including Warren, out of the room and told them to go below. That was one of the reasons she’d gotten the lovely shiner. John hadn’t come away much better.
The pain in her head had been nothing compared with the pain in her heart. Though she couldn’t be sure of all the particulars, just hearing Richard beg his father for mercy was enough to tell her that he had suffered some kind of serious abuse. She’d never in her life heard that kind of terror in anyone’s voice.
John wouldn’t divulge details. Either he had none to give or he knew how to keep a secret. She suspected it was the former. He had looked as shocked as she felt.
She certainly couldn’t guess anything from just looking at Richard. He had plenty of scars, but they looked like battle wounds, not scars from beatings. There was just no telling where he’d gotten them.
And there was no sense in asking him. Whatever had happened in his past was enough to really send him over the edge. For all she knew, just trying to pry would send him running off.
Like a few minutes ago. She’d watched him turn inward, saw the flare of pain on his face, and wished desperately she had known what it was about. He had said Hugh had killed the dog. Was it that his father had blamed him for everything? Warren certainly didn’t seem to have any bad memories. He’d been so upset when he’d seen that Richard had torn down the hall.
She shook her head. Burwyck-on-the-Sea obviously held bad memories for Richard alone. John had unbent enough to tell her that Richard had only come back three years ago, after both his parents were dead, and then torn the buildings inside the walls down, board by board. That kind of hatred was not something developed by a simple family spat. It went far deeper than that.