by Sarah Hegger
Ivy smiled, kind but sad, and continued her sewing.
“When Father first sent him to me, I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking. The lad didn’t know the ass end of a horse from the mouth. He had no skill with weapons and had a deplorable habit of relieving other knights of their valued possessions.”
Ivy laughed and bit her thread. “He tried to teach me once, that quick-fingered knack of his.”
“I swear he could take the tankard out of your mouth before you had taken a swallow.” Those early days with him and Newt had been a running battle. Strange, in hindsight, they had kept him from dwelling on the atrocities taking place all around him in the name of the Lord. Over time he and Newt had become a sort of island, relying on each other in an increasingly insane world.
Once he decided to apply himself, Newt had mastered the sword well enough to spar with him. Newt must have fought fiercely to save Bahir.
“How is Tom?” Fond of Tom though he was, Henry asked after Ivy’s husband more to take his mind off the present.
“He is well.” She threaded her needle with red thread. “He fusses over me getting too tired, and I’m sure will march up here tomorrow to make sure I am eating and sleeping properly.”
No doubt, Tom cherished his wife. Which brought Alya to mind again. He had made such a dog’s ballocks of his marriage. Smug in his rescue of her, he had taken for granted she would adapt herself to his life. On his arrival home, he had spent his time nursing his wounds and searching for his sense of purpose. All the while leaving his beautiful, courageous wife to fend for herself.
His family had tried to tell him, but he had blocked his ears. Perhaps he had not changed as much as he believed he had. He still had the ability to render himself deaf to all but what he wanted to hear, and blind to that he did not want to see.
“Ivy?”
“Hmm?” She glanced up from her sewing.
“Have you ever been so angry with Tom you doubted you could forgive him?”
Ivy stared at him, until he wanted to fidget like a small boy. Then she nodded. “Aye.” She shook out Tom’s chemise and folded it. “When he first met me, all Tom could see of me was that I was a whore.”
Henry winced. He hated that word and doubly so when applied to Ivy. “But you had no choice. You were sold into it.”
“Indeed.” Ivy took out another of Tom’s chemises.
Did Tom wrestle wild boar in his clothes?
“But it did not change what I was. And Tom had difficulty seeing past that. For as long as he saw me as a whore, he would not allow himself to love me.” She threaded her needle again. “I think he used it as an excuse not to love me. Tom loved me from the first, and that frightened him, so he found a reason to keep me at a distance.”
Ouch! Her words found their mark and smarted. He circled around and around the word love with Alya. He described her as his hope, his light, his girl on the wall. Like a wild yearling, he refused to acknowledge her as his love.
Then when they had arrived at Anglesea and the opposition to his bride had built, he’d shied even further from a love that grew increasingly inconvenient.
“You look as if you are sucking lemons,” Ivy said.
“I feel that way.” Henry shook his head in disgust at himself. “How did you forgive Tom?”
A truly wicked smile crossed Ivy’s face. “He groveled.”
Henry left to find Alya and commence the groveling. He was halfway across the yard when Gregory hailed him.
“I came as soon as we heard.” Gregory and Faye lived at Calder Castle. The news must have traveled like a hare. “I am to report back. How is Newt?”
Henry shook his head.
“He died?” Gregory paled and stepped back.
“Nay.” Henry grabbed the bigger man’s arm and steadied him. “I meant there has been little change in his condition.”
“Thank you, God.” Gregory lifted his gaze skyward. “For a moment there…” He shook his head. “Faye and I are very fond of Newt.”
Newt had played an important part in Faye and Gregory’s scramble to find each other. The path to love had been rocky for all his siblings. Arrogantly he had assumed it would be different for him.
Gregory caught his shoulder in one giant hand. “We should pray for them.”
“It has been a long time since I prayed.” Henry could not keep the bitterness from his tone. “It has been even longer since I have found God in the actions of men.”
With a nod, Gregory squeezed his shoulder. “You are not the first to come back from pilgrimage and think so. I fear there is nothing of God in what happens there.”
“This from a man of God?” Gregory’s words stopped Henry in his tracks. Of all the folk at Anglesea, it had been Gregory who had most readily accepted Bahir. Doing what none of them would and asking questions and discovering the man for himself. There was more of God in Gregory than in all the armies of God under the sun.
“And how fares my friend, the wise Bahir?” Gregory showed true to form. A good man to his marrow. “I will pray for him too. Although he might prefer if I prayed to his Allah.” Gregory looked around them warily. “I suspect there is not so much different between his God and ours as we would like to believe.”
A statement so close to heresy that Henry held his breath, half expecting a lightning strike to singe Gregory.
“Will you pray with me, Henry?” Gregory stared at him.
“I…” Henry searched for the right words and then went with the truth. “I fear I cannot.”
“Ah.” Gregory steered him around the side of the manor to where the noise and people thinned to nothing. Poised on the edge of a river, the back of the manor provided a pretty view. If a man believed in God, he might find him in such beauty. Leading the way to the river, Gregory said, “I lost God once.”
“You?” Henry found that impossible to believe. “You are the Godliest man I know.”
“Hardly.” Gregory pulled a face. “I have more questions than I can voice in this lifetime.”
“And yet, you still believe?”
“Aye.” Gregory nodded. “If I had all the answers and all the proof, then it would not be faith.”
True enough. Henry chuckled. “What made you lose God?”
“Faye.” Gregory grimaced. “After one beating, Calder left her bleeding on the floor of their bedchamber. I had to wait for him to leave before I could get to her.” Gregory stared over the river, his face haunted by the past. “I counted the heartbeats until he left the castle. When I found her…” He cleared his throat. “When I found her, it was so much worse than I had imagined. And I had spent hours torturing myself with my imagination.”
Another of Henry’s regrets was his treatment of Faye. She had come to her family begging for help, but only after her brute husband nearly destroyed the Angleseas. He had told her that her place was with her husband. “I should never—”
“I know.” Gregory sat on a log worn smooth by the river at high tide. “And Faye knows. You were a different man then.”
“Perhaps.” Not by his reckoning he wasn’t. “I often wondered how you kept your faith through all that happened to you and Faye.”
“I didn’t always.” Gregory selected a flat pebble and sent it skimming over the water. “I bore so much anger toward God, I think that is why they never admitted me to the monastery.”
“That and the way you were in love with my sister,” Henry said.
Gregory’s serious face relaxed into a brief smile. “And that.”
The river rushed over rocks in a soothing whisper. The sinking sun gilded the water and cast soft light on Gregory’s harsh features.
“I prayed all the time when I was first on pilgrimage.” A sense of relief swept through Henry. Speaking of this no longer came with jagged edges. “But what I saw there. What those people did in the name of God. At first I was confused, thinking I must not understand. Then I was angry at them. And finally,
angry with God for allowing it.”
“I was angry at God for not smiting Calder.” Gregory skimmed another pebble. “I stayed away from Faye out of obedience to God, and still, he allowed Calder to hurt her.”
“Clearly, you and God have reconciled.” Henry counted three skips of Gregory’s next pebble.
“For the most part.” Gregory smiled. “I still have my questions, but he is fortunately patient with me. We have found a rocky sort of common ground.”
“How?”
Gregory smiled and said, “I realized that we do not need God’s help to do the evil we do. God had no part in what happened to Faye, just as he had no part in what happened here, or what happened on pilgrimage.”
Henry needed to think on that. His anger had kept him company for too long to be discounted in mere moments. “Why do you care if I pray or not?”
Gregory shrugged. “I do not, Henry. But I care that you hold so much anger and regret inside you it blocks the light from entering. Perhaps I see you making peace with God as a step toward making peace with yourself.” Crouched, Gregory sifted through the pebbles for another flat one. “You have a beautiful new wife who deserves a full man by her side, and not one who is still mired in the bitter past.”
And suddenly Henry needed no other reason. “Do you still believe he hears you?”
“Always.” Gregory smiled. “And how could our prayers hurt at this point?”
True enough. “You begin.”
Gregory bowed his head. “Heavenly Father…”
Chapter 36
Alya drifted around the manor like a ghost. Henry tried to reach her but was met with cool distance. Even anger would have been preferable to her serene indifference. The only time she seemed to be alive was when she nursed Bahir and Newt. She spent as much time there as Nurse would allow.
Gregory stayed for two days and left to report to Faye, whom he claimed would kill him if he did not return home soon. Faye was far too enamored of her huge husband to do more than huff at him.
Bahir’s wounds healed but he showed no sign of waking. Nurse feared for him the most because injuries to the head, she had always said, were a mystery and the outcome near impossible to predict.
Elizabeth hovered over Newt near constantly. Henry answered her questions as patiently as he could, but one always seemed to breed twenty more. Perhaps if she had met Newt before his injury, she would not have declared she would never marry. Then again, knowing Newt as he did, perhaps not. Newt could talk most women into lifting their skirts, but with a woman like Elizabeth that would not suffice.
More villagers joined the effort to restore the manor by the day. Frightened by his family’s anger and mired in shame, the villagers now sought to make amends.
Alya drifted past them, oblivious to their efforts. In an odd twist, the more she ignored them, the harder they worked to please her. Already repairs to the burned section of the manor proceeded faster than even Chester had dreamed possible. The women had sorted through Alya’s dowry and carefully salvaged as much as they could. Her cushions and bedcurtains had been brought from Anglesea and now adorned their chamber.
Their chamber? Henry snorted beneath his breath. If she could oust him from there, she would. Thus far, he survived by pretending not to notice how much she did not want him sharing the chamber with her.
“Sir Henry.” Bernard led a knot of boys toward him. Two of them fosters at Anglesea, and the other three, he knew from the village. They hid something in their midst.
“What is it?” He wanted to catch Alya as she took her turn beside Newt. Pathetic as it was, it was the only contact she allowed him and he guarded it jealously.
The older foster, Abel, stepped forward. “We have something here for my lady.”
“Lady Alya?”
“Aye, my lord.” Abel blushed. “Only we do not know how to give it to her.”
Henry strode to them.
The youngest boy held a puppy in his hand. No more than eight weeks old if Henry had to guess, and a similar color to Jamila. Henry had found Jamila’s body behind the manor and buried her quietly. The dog Alya had never wanted, but had wheedled her way into Alya’s heart anyway.
The boy turned big brown eyes up at him. “My dog had pups and when I heard about Lady Alya’s dog, I thought she might like a new one. But…she seems so quiet and sad, and I did not want to make her sadder.”
A sentiment Henry supported wholeheartedly. “Wait here. I will fetch her for you.”
* * * *
Alya bathed Newt and then Bahir in tepid water as Nurse had instructed her.
The door opened and Henry entered.
Tall and beautiful he stood in the doorway and stretched out a hand to her. “Come with me.”
“I cannot.” Her heart urged her to take his hand, but inside her heart felt as lacerated at Bahir’s ribs.
Henry smiled. “Please.”
“Why?” Already her feet moved her closer to him.
“Come.” He wrapped her hand in his strong, roughened grip. “You will not be sorry, I promise.”
“Run along, dear.” Nurse shooed her. “You are only disturbing my patients with your arguing.”
A group of boys waited for them outside. They stopped talking and watched her approach. Excitement eked from them.
“What is it?” Alya turned to Henry for her answer.
Henry motioned the smallest boy forward. “They have something for you.”
The last time someone from this place had something for her, it had come from the sharp end of a pitchfork. “What?”
A small boy stepped forward. In his arms, he held a tiny bundle of flaxen fur. Two soft brown eyes blinked up at her as the boy brought the bundle to her. “Everyone knows Jamila was killed,” he said. “And my old dog died last year and they leave a hole right through the middle of a person when they go. I know she’s not your Jamila, but one of my da’s bitches had a litter and she might look a bit like your Jamila when she grows.”
Alya’s brain stuck and refused to start again. The boy held a puppy and he was offering it to her. She had never thought of a dog as anything other than a filthy animal before Jamila had forced her way into her life and heart. Then Jamila had proved her nobility, fearlessly and without hesitation, giving her life to save Alya. How could this small beast replace that bond? “You are giving me this puppy?”
“We can’t bring your friend back.” Bernard took the puppy from the boy and placed it in her arms. “But a new friend can help heal the pain.”
The puppy wriggled in her arms and yawned, displaying her tiny white teeth and pink tongue. Alya had never held something so sweet and fragile. The trusting way the puppy nestled against her astounded her. This baby animal had no protection from life and yet it gave its trust so willingly. “Jamila was my first dog.”
“Aye.” Bernard nodded. “And she was a great dog. Maybe in time this one will grow to be a great dog too.”
“I know nothing about puppies.”
“Bernard can teach you.” Henry put an arm about Bernard’s shoulder. “It will give you both a task until we can get your herb garden established.”
Her herb garden? Alya had not considered the future much, past getting Bahir and Newt well.
* * * *
Later that day Bahir woke first and in typical quiet, composed Bahir fashion. According to Nurse, who had been the only one present, he opened his eyes and looked about him. Sore, confused and missing pieces of his memory, but still Bahir.
Alya rushed to see him. One look at his open eyes and she burst into tears. Noisy, snotty sobs that would not stop. She had to stop when Nurse threatened to lock her out for upsetting the patient. Still sniveling, she sat beside Bahir with the puppy on her lap, and his hand in hers. He drifted back to sleep. An easier, more natural slumber this time.
Not even Nurse could oust her now. Bahir, her anchor, was alive and she needed him more than ever. Henry snarled her in
knots within knots. She loved so much about him, but being with him demanded that she become someone else, or pretend to be that which she couldn’t be.
A groan drew her attention to Newt. He tossed his head to the side and groaned again.
Alya ran to the door and threw it open. “Nurse! Ivy! Elizabeth!”
Ivy came running.
Newt had tossed his coverings to the floor and Ivy replaced them without a blush. But Newt…well, there was yet another reason he was popular with the ladies.
Ivy put her hand to his forehead. “I think he wakes. His skin is cooler.”
Alya touched his shoulder. His skin did feel cooler.
“Newt.” Ivy leaned over him and raised her voice. “You will rip your stitches if you do not keep still.”
Groaning, Newt attempted to roll away from her.
Ivy held him still, motioning Alya to help her. “Newt.” Ivy raised her voice. “You must lie still. Can you hear me?”
“Aye, I hear you. You are yelling in my face.” Breathy and raspy, Newt’s voice brought more tears. Hers, Ivy’s, and after she entered, Nurse’s as well. Even Elizabeth seemed moved.
Bahir made an excellent patient. He took what herbs were given to him, lay quietly and slept in between being tended to and ate or drank whatever was given to him.
Newt did not. He complained near constantly about being kept confined. He could barely contain himself from scratching at his stitches and his scabs. Gruel and beef broth set up a whining litany that had them all ready to smack him.
Alya spent even more time in the infirmary now. Outside repairs to the manor continued but her world had shrunk to Ivy, Nurse, Elizabeth, the two invalids and Amira, her puppy who had so much quiet dignity she could only be named a princess.
Henry floated around the periphery. Her attempts to get him to leave their bedchamber had ended in a stalemate of him sleeping on the floor in front of the fire and her on the bed.
Fortunately, after a couple of horribly awkward mornings he got up with the sun and left before she woke.
They could not continue like this indefinitely.