Despite Meg’s care, enough of the potent medicine had seeped into her body that she found it impossible to be still. She paced the room with quick strides that set golden bells to singing. When that was not enough to ease her, she grabbed the stone bottle and rolled it between her palms as though it was a cool, soothing river pebble.
Simon watched Meg, then his brother, then Meg once more.
“What next?” Simon said.
“We wait.”
“Until…?”
“Until one or the other medicine wins,” Meg said simply.
Simon looked at the bottle in Meg’s hands. The careless way she held it told him that nothing of value remained. There was no more medicine to give.
“When will we know?”
“I can’t say,” Meg whispered. “Any man less strong would have died twice by now.”
“Twice?”
“Aye,” she said curtly. “Once from the poison. Once from the medicine to counter it. ’Tis a stimulant strong enough to make a swine jump over the keep’s highest wall.”
“Is that why you’re pacing like a squire before his first battle?”
Meg nodded her head.
“Are you at risk?” Simon demanded.
“I don’t know. If Dominic awakens and I’m not—” Meg’s words stopped abruptly. “Give him water and more water until he can take not one more drop. It will help to purge his flesh of any remaining poison.”
Simon released his brother and went quickly to Meg. “Is there nothing you can take for yourself?”
“No. I haven’t Dominic’s great strength. I would lose the tug-of-war between the two most potent medicines Glendruid knows.”
When she saw the concern in Simon, Meg smiled despite the too-rapid breaths that the medicine was forcing upon her. Her heart speeded wildly.
“Don’t worry. The stimulant—spends itself—quickly.”
Meg’s jerky words and breathing did nothing to reassure Simon.
“You should have told me to give the medicine to Dominic,” he said. “Or is the method a Glendruid secret?”
She laughed oddly and paced even more quickly, setting bells to jangling wildly.
“Glendruid?” she said. “No. Dominic taught me.”
Simon looked startled.
“You see, my husband wants a son more than he wants anything on earth or in Heaven. He plans my seduction with the care he planned his most grueling battles.”
Bells cried urgently as Meg spun to pace the room again. Like her walk, her words were quick and nearly wild.
“But a son is not mine to give or withhold. When Dominic understands that, he will hate me as savagely as ever a man hated a woman.”
Bells jerked and screamed in tiny golden voices that made the hair on Simon’s neck rise.
“Glendruid,” Meg said raggedly. “Curse and hope in one. Every Glendruid girl has borne the curse. None has borne the hope.”
Before Simon could answer, Meg began to breathe like a charger after a long race to battle. Her steps became shorter and shorter until she was all but running in place while bells trembled and cried with a ghastly music. Gasping, shaking, Meg tried to stay upright while the stimulant raged through her body like lightning.
Simon caught Meg and held her when she would have fallen. She gasped convulsively yet seemed to get no air. As he watched her struggles, he realized how badly he had misunderstood his brother’s wife.
“God forgive me,” Simon said, shaken. “I thought you wanted Dominic dead. Yet you risked yourself to give him a chance at life.”
Meg didn’t hear. There was a savage cacophony in her brain. She lifted her hands to tear at her hair, but Simon prevented her. She fought with incredible strength before she realized what she was doing. Clenching her teeth, she stopped fighting and let the stimulant rage through her body.
The seizure passed as quickly as it came. With a shuddering sigh, Meg slumped against Simon.
“Meg?” he asked, forgetting formality in his need to know that she was all right.
“The worst is spent,” she said.
A low voice called from the bed. Meg pushed away from Simon’s support and stumbled to her husband’s side.
“Dominic?” she said urgently.
His eyes opened, but he did not see her. Sounds poured from his mouth, but they were only that—sounds without meaning.
Meg gave an anguished cry.
“God forgive me. I have saved his body but his mind is gone!”
18
FOR A MOMENT SIMON DIDN’T understand why Meg was so upset. When he did, he bit back a laugh of relief and triumph and tried to soothe her.
“Nay, Meg. You saved all of him.”
“Are you mad? Can’t you hear that babble?”
“Yes. I never thought to savor the speech of my enemy, but God, it is sweet!”
Meg looked at Simon as though she feared he, too, had lost his wits.
“He is speaking Turkish,” Simon said.
And then he laughed until the walls rang.
Meg smiled rather uncertainly as she watched the blond warrior who at times reminded her almost painfully of her own husband.
“Turkish?” she asked when Simon stopped laughing. “Then his words have meaning?”
“Yes.”
“What is he saying?”
Simon listened, hesitated, and gave Meg a rueful look.
“Er, he’s talking about a certain sultan’s ancestors.”
“Ancestors?”
“Somewhat, yes. Donkeys, baboons, slime, and, er, excrement.”
“I fear the poison went to your head after all,” Meg said unhappily. “You make no more sense than your brother.”
A smile flashed across Simon’s face, increasing his resemblance to Dominic until Meg felt as though her breath would stop. Only at that moment did she admit to herself how much she feared she would never see her own husband’s smile again. She would willingly wear bells and be fed from his hand for the next year if it meant that Dominic would be sane and healthy again.
“The sultan was an unpleasant man,” Simon said.
“Much the same is said of all Turks.”
A torrent of words from the bed made both people turn to Dominic. The only word Meg recognized was Simon’s name. The distress in Dominic, however, needed no words to be understood. She sat on the bed and pressed Dominic’s hand between hers.
“Rest, Dominic,” Meg said clearly and calmly. “You are safe.”
“Simon. Simon! He is taken.”
Though spoken in a low voice, Dominic’s cry was as urgent as a shout. Simon took his brother’s left hand and squeezed as though to imprint his presence on Dominic’s flesh.
“I am here,” Simon said. “You ransomed me from that pit of Hell. I’m safe, brother, and so are you.”
Dominic cried out again, but with less urgency. Then he was still but for the restless movements of his body.
“What happened in Jerusalem?” Meg asked in a low voice.
“Twelve knights were captured. I was one of them. We were given as a gift to a sultan whose name none of us could pronounce, so we called him Beelzebub. Dominic ransomed us.”
“It must have cost dearly.”
“More than any of us know.”
Meg gave Simon a quick look, caught by something grim lying beneath his simple words.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The sultan didn’t care about twelve infidel knights. There was only one infidel whose mettle he wanted to test.”
“Dominic?” Meg whispered.
Simon nodded. “Aye. Dominic le Sabre.”
“What happened?”
“Dominic gave himself to the sultan in our place.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “Dear God.”
“God had little to do with the sultan. A more cruel man never drew breath. Some men like women. Some like boys. Some like giving pain. Beelzebub lived to break men stronger and more decent than he was. He had developed a
rather astonishing variety of tools for that purpose.”
A shudder went through Meg.
“The hand you hold bears the mark of the sultan,” Simon said. “If your marriage were normal, you would have seen still more scars on your husband’s body.”
Meg turned back toward Dominic. His hand was much larger than hers, stronger, hard with the uses of war; yet he had touched her with great gentleness.
Delicately, Meg’s fingertips traced scars long ago healed. When she came to Dominic’s fingers, her breath stopped. She had seen enough accidents with axes or stones to recognize the marks of a finger that had been smashed and had healed, but not completely. His smallest finger had only half the nail it should. His next nail held deep dents.
“It’s the same on this hand,” Simon said. “Pulling out Dominic’s nails was the least of what the sultan did.”
A low sound of pain came from Meg. She held her husband’s hand and stroked it as though simple touch could somehow take back the cruelties of the past.
“How did Dominic win free?” Meg asked after a moment.
“When word went out of what had happened, knights from all lords and lands gathered. When we were finished, not one stone of the sultan’s great castle was left standing.”
“And the sultan?”
“He was dead when we found him.”
Again, it was Simon’s voice rather than his words that told Meg the most. And his smile was like a preview of Hell.
“How?” she asked starkly.
“It was difficult to tell. You see, Beelzebub amused himself with his harem when there were no fresh infidels to torture.”
Meg waited, afraid to breathe.
“While the sultan’s guards were otherwise occupied, Dominic grabbed the sultan, threw him into the women’s quarters, and locked the door.”
Simon saw the shock on Meg’s face and smiled again.
“My brother,” Simon said softly, “always understands a man’s weak points. There was nothing he could do to the sultan that would have been half so cruel or inventive as the punishment meted out by concubines who had waited a lifetime for the opportunity.”
Dominic moved restlessly, groaned, and grabbed his shoulder. He cursed in English and Turkish, raging at a knight called Robert the Cuckold.
“What is it?” Meg asked, looking at Simon.
“Robert married a Norman wench raised in Sicily. She had a taste for men. Many of them. Robert thought Dominic was one of them, and led us into ambush.”
“Dominic was wounded?”
Simon nodded. “He killed Robert and offered Marie his protection. It was the only way to keep peace among his knights.”
Meg’s mouth flattened as she realized how the leman had come to be among Dominic’s retainers.
“How clever of Dominic to sacrifice himself for the honor of his knights,” she said sardonically.
“Dominic could hardly sell Marie as a slave to a sultan, could he?”
“Why not?” Meg muttered. “From what I’ve seen, the wench was born for the harem.”
“You should be grateful to her.”
The sidelong look Meg gave Simon made him struggle not to smile.
“Without Marie—and the eager Eadith, of course—Dominic’s knights would be causing havoc among the keep’s unwilling maids. Normans are not well liked here.”
“Give us time,” Meg said dryly. “That’s a fine, strapping lot of knights Dominic has, stout of arm and thick of head. I’m sure the maids will weaken soon.”
“Do you think so?” Simon asked wistfully.
“Why not? In the dark, ’tis impossible to tell Norman from Scots or Saxon.”
Simon laughed outright. “You will run Dominic a merry race, Meg. It will do him good. He is too cold since Jerusalem.”
Smiling slightly, Meg turned aside and poured water into the metal bowl. When the cool metal rim touched Dominic’s lips, he turned away with an impatient jerk of his head.
“My brother may be delirious,” Simon said in a dry tone, “but he isn’t stupid. He would rather take liquid from warm lips than cold metal.”
Color stained Meg’s cheeks as she took a mouthful of water, bent over Dominic, and offered him drink from her lips. It took no coaxing to gain his attention. As soon as her mouth brushed his, he turned hungrily toward her. Not until two bowls had been drunk did he get restless and begin his verbal rambling again.
This time the words were in English. Meg found herself wishing they were not.
“…endless bloody slaughter. James, dead. John the Small, dead. Ivar the Heathen, dead. Stewart the Red…”
Dominic’s voice was that of a monk chanting an alien mass. While name after name fell from her husband’s lips, Meg leaned over and stroked his head as though to soothe a fevered child.
But it wasn’t fever that drove Dominic, nor was he a child. He was a man who had known the gore of swords slashing and hacking, the havoc of lance and charger churning through men afoot, the slow wasting of siege and disease until children starved and women fought with cats over rats as thin as shadows.
Dominic recited the roll call of the starving, maimed, and dead repeatedly until Meg thought she would scream if she heard one more name.
“There must be peace!”
Meg thought it was her own cry until the echo came back and she knew it was her husband’s voice.
“Do you hear me, Simon? There must be peace!”
“Aye,” Simon said clearly. “You will bring peace to your land, Dominic. I know it as surely as I know the sun will rise on the morrow.”
When Dominic cried out again, Simon answered in the same way, trying to reach past the delirium of poison so that his brother could rest.
Dominic’s pain, so well shielded when he was in control of himself, made Meg ache with compassion and something more, the enduring Glendruid hope that was her birthright and curse.
No matter his motive, he touched me with great kindness. He was driven by a need as great as mine, yet he wooed rather than demanded.
He could have slain every Saxon in the keep, yet he stayed his hand.
Peace, not war.
Dear God, would that I had the power to grant Dominic’s greatest desire.
Yet Meg could not, and she knew it: the fabled Glendruid son would be born of love and love alone. She might feel a woman’s normal passion for a man, she might feel compassion for her husband’s past suffering, she might respect his intelligence, discipline, and ambition, she might grieve for all that could have been between them had she seen him less clearly and had he seen her more so; but she could not make herself love a man who could not love her in return.
It was too much to ask of any woman. It was simply beyond her ability…as love was beyond his ability.
Meg brought Dominic’s hand to her lips and held it there while the tears she couldn’t stem fell from her cheeks to his fingers. All of Dominic’s hopes were for naught, as were Glendruid’s. She was like every Glendruid woman before her.
Cursed.
“Dominic changed after being the sultan’s captive,” Simon said in a low voice. “He had always been a wise soldier, but he became both brilliant and utterly ruthless. He planned each battle with great care. Not simply to win, but to destroy as little as possible in the process. Yet what he did destroy…”
Simon’s voice faded, then strengthened. “What he did ruin was laid waste in such a way as never to be made whole again.”
Meg brushed her lips over Dominic’s palm.
“There is an unnerving coldness in him now,” Simon continued. “No matter how greatly provoked, he will show mercy to the wise because it is intelligent to do so. To fools he shows only the sharp edge of his sword, no matter how minor the offense.”
Silently Meg kissed Dominic’s palm again and wondered whether he would call her wise or foolish after she had broken her word to him to stay in her rooms.
“When Dominic walked away from the wasteland that had once been the sult
an’s domain,” Simon said, “my brother vowed that he would get land of his own at the farthest edge of the civilized world, away from the ambitions of kings and popes and sultans. He would husband that land so carefully there would be neither famine nor want. And then Dominic vowed to take a noble wife and breed strong sons who would also breed strong sons.”
“So that something of his accomplishments would live forever?” Meg asked.
Simon shook his head. “Dominic learned that peace is possible only for the strong. For the weak, peace is naught but a cruel dream, and he would have no more of cruel dreams.”
Land, a noble wife, sons…and peace. Above all, peace.
The litany of Dominic’s desire rang through Meg’s mind as she looked at the lines pain had drawn on her husband’s face. In silence she raged against the malice of circumstance and men, the irony of Dominic’s marriage to a Glendruid wife like a knife turning in her heart.
You have earned peace, land, a noble wife…. Of all women on earth why did God send you to me?
“Will he have sons of you?” Simon asked.
Meg’s only answer was the soundless flow of her tears. She held Dominic’s palm pressed to her cheek when he began talking again, returning to the sultan’s carefully wrought hell.
For a long time she listened to Dominic’s delirious nightmare and his equally delirious dream of peace. The pained cries that would never have escaped his lips if he were awake tore at her heart.
Watching Dominic and hearing the echoes of his old agony taught Meg that the Norman warrior who had condensed out of the mist beyond Blackthorne Keep wasn’t the cold, invincible force she had believed. He was a man who had been brutally used by life. She wept for him and for the fate that had mated him to a woman who couldn’t give him the dream he had earned at such great cost.
Finally Dominic fell silent. Slowly his breathing deepened and his body relaxed.
“Is he all right?” Simon asked.
“Yes. He is sleeping now, a true sleep.”
Simon watched the lines of strain fade from Meg’s face as surely as they had from Dominic’s when he slept. With a soft prayer of thanks, Simon stroked back the thick black hair from Dominic’s forehead. The gesture said much about the affection between the two brothers, a bond that went deeper than the accident of a shared father.
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