Another furious tug and he was draped over the rag-covered wooden slats beside her fire-wood, still unconscious but breathing steadily, thank Christ. Ruth used one of her ropes to lash him to the sledge, piled her cloaks on top of him and attached another cord to the man’s saddle.
“Go on,” she urged the fellow’s horse, but the black brute merely snorted and shook its mane.
“I have hay and mash at home,” she coaxed, trying again to sound agreeable and clicking her tongue.
Nothing, not a blink of movement, only the unrelenting fall of wet snow, tricking down the back of her neck and pooling into her boots. Ruth considered a mean trick her father had once done on the plough oxen back at home before he had died and she had run away from Argus.
“Move, or I will kick you on the flank,” she spat, lifting her foot.
The black horse curled its lips at her as if mocking her pathetic threat.
“Walk, before your master is a snow-man!”
That, astonishingly enough, stirred the creature and with a creaking of wood, leather, reins and harness, horse and sledge lurched forward. Ruth had to scramble to keep up but wasted no more breath on complaint. The quicker she could fetch herself and the big idiot to the old warren tower and indoors, the better.
Though I must ensure he makes no trouble for me, after I have gone to the effort of saving him. Ruth frowned at the thought. He is not yet safe, she reminded herself, hurrying back to smear their tracks. The one good of this drizzling murk was that wolves and boars were denned up and human beasts shivering over their fires.
Few venture in this part of the forest, any way, thanks to the snow troll.
With that satisfied thought to warm her numbed fingers and toes, Ruth tucked her hair plaits back into her belt and returned to the plodding horse.
****
The stale stink, old as a monastery library, made Tom sneeze. Blinking, he opened his eyes to a glare of fire and the hard stare of a girl.
“Do I thank you?” he rasped, after swallowing. His throat burned and his limbs sluggish to shift—indeed he could not stir, apart from his head. Where am I?
He did not realize he had spoken aloud until the girl answered.
“You are in my house and my care. You have been here for three days and nights.”
Even as he goggled at the time lost, Tom bit back, “Care as in if I have any I should do as you say?”
The wench’s eyes narrowed. “You should.”
Tom tried to move again. Instantly, his arms and legs rubbed against ties. She has roped me to a door, no, these are slats beneath my belly. I am on a sledge?
An unusual bed but a decent, fur lined one, he decided, too warm and comfortable to be worried. She could have stuck a knife in him earlier—three days and nights I‘ve been out!—but this strange girl had brought him indoors, rolled him onto these dusty wolf-pelts, bundled him over in clean sheets.
And tied me fast. Or as close as she could manage. It was a good attempt, Tom decided, flexing his legs carefully against his bounds. He could snap through these, but instead, chose to work the knots free. Less alarm for her and more surprise for me.
Abruptly, with his tiny movements, he realized that he was nude, save for his boots. His outer clothes—dark blue cloak, his favorite scarlet tunic with its gold trim, the fading but comfortable blue leggings—hung steaming over another small fire. Tom’s eyes widened as another small squirm revealed his loin cloth drying spread across a wooden rake with missing teeth. Sneaking a peep beneath his sheet, he realized had a soft pad of cloth draped across his right upper hip, over the old wound.
The wench must have spotted his peeking, for she instantly began to scold.
“Have you no healers in your castles? That wound is infected, which is probably why you took a tumble off your nag. You were within a spit of running a fatal fever, sir knight. I have poulticed it hourly and now with salve—”
“No salve.” Bad enough she has gawped at my backside for days. Hot with shame, jerking his head down so that he did not have to encounter the girl’s no doubt gloating expression, Tom thought of a remedy for boils that he had heard discussed in the bath-house. Boils had pus and bad matter in them, so the cure should work for him, too. “Get me a bottle, a clean glass bottle and heat its lip over the fire.”
“So you can burn yourself as well?”
“I will draw the poison with the bottle. The heat will help.” That sounded good to him.
“You think a bottle will encompass that wound of yours?”
He could hear the disbelief in her question, which was a pity, because she had a pretty voice. Curious, he looked up again, stuttered on his next indrawn breath and flopped back into the cloud of dusty pelts. Covering his latest shock, he coughed.
“Why the devil am I mired in antique furs?”
Tom did not mean to complain, but he had scrambled to say something, anything, to recover his surprise. His rescuer was beautiful. A living, sculptured beauty of earth and fire, far beyond the bland blond looks fashionable in the courts. Thick, dark brows, a questing glance, parted lush lips, a strong jaw and a halo of springing black-to-brown-to-russet hair.
Mother of heaven what will it be like to kiss her, and still live?
Crouched by the sledge, she leaned in to him now, bright and spitting. “These musty pelts are what I had, sir knight. Not all of us have the riches of a fortress at our disposal.”
He tried to flap his hand in apology, reminded afresh that he was bound. “My name is Thomas.” Then he remembered the informality of his position and amended it. “Tom.”
Hoping to hear his name on her lips and even more wishing to learn her name in return, he was to be disappointed. The pretty girl with the astonishing dark blue eyes tucked her long brown-and-black hair plaits into the rough sash about her narrow waist—clearly an habitual gesture, he thought— and leaned back on her heels.
“Good morrow, Tom. It is the holy day of Saint Nicholas and the snow is still falling.”
Then it is the sixth day of December, Tom recollected. Once I leave here I can still make it in time to the other’s manor for Christmas. If I want to see Magnus, that is.
That idea made him sigh and smart in equal measure. To distract himself, Tom squinted at the hovering girl, trying to diminish her beauty. He failed. She had a tiny brown mole on her left temple and faded freckles on her chin, both considered flaws at any court; but here, in the wild-wood, marks of vitality and health and pretty on her, like the markings on a plover’s egg.
She was garbed in a dark brown tunic with heavy skirts that would make her blend in with most tree trunks. This girl, whoever she is, has her wits about her. No surprise if she has lived in the forest for a space. “Where am I?” He tried again. “Who are you?”
She smiled, not a pleasant smile, sat down on another heap of dusty furs and folded her arms across her middle. “I need a promise from you, the kind of vow you make with your knights and ladies, that you will not share where I live or who I am with any other living thing.”
“Including my horse?” Where is my horse?
With that near-uncanny ability to divine his thoughts, the girl said, “Your black brute is munching its head off in the corner yonder, along with my rabbits.”
Tom wondered if he had misheard. “I beg your pardon?” He asked, and certainly heard her unlady-like snort.
“Bunnies. In summer, they wander in and out. In winters, I den and feed them to keep them close.” She wrinkled her nose and even that made her look pretty. “I hope you like rabbit meat.”
He shrugged, an action hampered by the cords about his shoulders. This was swiftly becoming tiresome. “Release me.”
He watched the knuckles of her crossed arms whiten as her fingers tightened. Not so certain of herself after all. But what, or who, has made her so wary?
“Your vow, first,” she replied, her voice clipped. “And your promise not to attack me.”
Tom tried a smile. He had been told he was
handsome, and if she smiled in return that would be a gift. “Why should I do that? Attack my savior?”
Unimpressed by his small courtesy, the girl punched her seat and a cloud of dust flew up. “How do I know the reasons for your actions? You are a stranger.”
“If you fear me, why did you bring me to your home?”
She tilted her strong chin up at him, exactly as if they were two lads, facing off to each other. “I am a Christian. You might be a wolf-head outlaw or the kind of knight who thinks all peasants are nothing but turf.”
“You have a poor opinion of knights. Is that why you live here alone?”
She snapped her fingers, refusing to admit if he had guessed correctly or not. “Vow, please. On that crucifix about your neck.”
Tom fell silent. His father had given him the small silver cross. It was precious to him and any promise he made on it he would strive to keep. Squirming, he hooked his arm up, inching his fingers closer to the crucifix. The instant his stretching hand encountered the warm metal, he spoke.
“I vow on my father’s cross that I will tell no one of this place, or of its lady. Will you untie me now?”
“Give me your full name first.”
Tom sighed, jerking slightly as the new movement set the wound on his backside aching afresh. Thoughts of cupping the sore became more appealing. “Have you any glass here?”
“You can have your idiot hot bottle in a moment,” she scoffed. “Brand yourself for all I care, but you will not help that wound. Your name?”
Bossy creature. She must live alone, for no man would put up with her. Pretty or not, the wench needed management. Tom opened his mouth to say something similar and found himself saying, “Sir Thomas Guillelm—” He stumbled on the formal title, considering bleakly that he no longer deserved it—“Guillelmson of Tissaton.”
Her blue eyes hardened into steel. “You promised to speak truth!”
Giving him no chance to respond, the girl spun out of her crouch and disappeared off beyond the fire, dipping back from the shadows an instant later with a phial made of thick blue glass.
“Your bottle.”
Deliberately taunting, she placed it directly in front of the sledge where his bound arms could not reach it.
“Supper will be later. I must forage for your nag and my beasts and check the game traps, collect the pails and water—”
“Untie me and I can help.”
“To break open your wound once more, just as it is closing? No, sir, you have done enough.”
Her skirts swirling, she flounced toward the door and dragged it ajar. Tom scowled against the searing sunset light that pounded against his eyes but called out, before she vanished altogether,
“Wait! Please, wait.” Briefly he shut his eyes, ashamed of the dart of fury she glowered at him, and made himself admit more. “I do not know why you think I lied, but I say to you now that I have not. Why should you think it? But clearly you do, and for that, I am sorry.”
“Men are always sorry when they are discovered in wrong-doing.” Her face, turned toward the snowy lands outside, was ageless, impossible to read, but her answer contained a world of old hurts. Seeing her small, stiff figure, stark against the door, Tom found himself wishing to give comfort.
“Why?” he asked again. For some reason, he wanted her to trust him. He wanted her respect. “Please, tell me. At least, say what I have done or said amiss.”
The door shook in her sudden anger. “Do you think me a fool?” she returned smartly, this time without looking at him. “You with your thick black curls and deep brown eyes and face like a stone saint? You are the very image of Magnus the crusader, before he went off to Outremer, and if you go to him and lie, as you have to me, his witch-wife will curse you. I only wish I could do the same, Thomas Magnusson!”
The door slammed, piling in fresh snow, and he was cast into semi-darkness again.
****
Ruth wanted to remember the knight’s arrogant smirk but all she could bring to mind, slamming round the woods, re-baiting her traps, collecting whatever herbage and forage there was in sheltered, snowless hollows, was his stricken face.
He did not know how alike he is to his father in looks, or how Magnus used to be. She knew because the tale of the wounded crusader and Elfrida, his witch-wife, had been well-known in her village. It was claimed by the old women of the village that the wall paintings of the saints in their church were based on Magnus’s looks, before he had been scarred in the wars in Outremer.
In her younger days, Ruth had day-dreamed in front of those paintings while in church. They had shown the holy warrior saints with dark, ragged curls, a tall, lean body, and piercing dark eyes. Much like Thomas Magnusson, or Guillelmson, or whoever he is.
Ruth shook snow from her skirts and plunged her frozen hands into a splintered mass of dead wood surrounding a lightning-blasted tree to seize several good, thick ash branches from beneath that would burn for hours. She was wary of feeling sympathy for Thomas because he looked so much like Magnus had once, and not just because of his dark good looks. Once or twice, she had even been able to threaten her now ex-master Argus with Magnus Crusader, before even that threat would not stop Argus from trying to rape me “as his master’s rights” and I ran away.
The knight, whose name was Thomas, she reminded herself, while she tugged now on a fallen ash branch with more force than needed, had hesitated, too, when he had given his name as the son of Guillelm. Was Guillelm the man Thomas had thought to be his father? If so, why had the young knight been riding toward Magnus’s lands? And with a wound, no less?
Ruth snorted at the idiocy of males and bottles and other foolish customs while a greater part of her chafed for having to be away from the man at all. She wanted to know more.
Perhaps I wish to apologise, too, and that is a hard thing for me, especially after living alone for so long.
Ruth sighed and dropped a branch that would take her too long to drag back to her tower. Justice and fairness demanded she go back. Plunging through the drifts, telling herself the sleet would soon cover her careless tracks, she hurried to return.
Her journey seemed too long a pilgrimage, but finally, she reached the stone warren tower that she had made her home and hovered a moment outside the door, before straightening and using her rump to push the door. Doing so, she thought of Thomas and the pus-filled wound on his right upper thigh—his high upper thigh. It was drained now and doing well and she would not see it worsen, now the idiot male was awake—though not now, it seemed.
Swiftly, seeing him asleep, she tucked her plaits into her sash then re-barred the door, dropping her firewood, bag of forage and bag of herbs in front of the warped wood to seal any draught. Shivering slightly as feeling crept back into her numbed toes, she set an old pot filled with water to warm in the fire ashes. She would make a willow-bark tisane, and she had some bits of old bread; she would make another poultice with those.
Tossing the greens to the horse and rabbits—the bunnies were still snug in the boulder-lined, timber-topped pit she had spent hours digging out last summer—Ruth leaned over Thomas, looking warily for signs of renewed fever.
She yelped as she was gathered into a pair of unyielding arms and sucked down onto the sledge beside her “guest”. Warm breath tickled her throat and she was swept in a tide of hot male sinew and flesh until her body rested flush on top of his.
“I believe we should now talk about trust,” said a smug voice directly into her ear.
Only a thin linen sheet was between them, and he was naked.
“Release me!” she countered at once, her head storming with wild new ideas as the tension between them hummed like a plucked harp string. He is so long and tall and hot to the touch, like a dragon. No, he is more of a unicorn, a dark unicorn, with tousled mane and shining muscles. And I am going mad, to be distracted by such shallow prettiness. Distracted, disturbed, she tried to win control between them. “I am not saying sorry to you now.”
A gruff chuckle met her attempt.
“Progress, though, in that you were considering it,” he replied, opening his legs so that she slid between them, more ensnared than ever.
“Peace,” he said quietly as she huffed in part-panic, part-anger. “I will never harm you, my lady of the woods who saved me. See?”
Astonishingly, he opened his arms. Amazed, Ruth could only lay still for a dazed instant before she shifted. Then she felt more and saw the red blush racing up his face.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, his brown eyes almost crossing as he strove to fix his gaze on hers. “I am but a man, an idiot male, as you call me.”
She stared at him, so close that she felt she could taste his honesty. For the first time in an age she heard his horse snort, as if amused by their clumsy interaction, and heard the bunnies scratching in their stone-lined den. Outside, no doubt the snow still fell. In here, they were in their own secret world.
“Onion and rabbit pottage?” she heard herself ask. I still have to somehow roll off him... and yet, he is so warm beneath me and I feel so sheltered—sheltered, and more.
His brown eyes widened and she snapped, “I am hungry if you are not, Sir Tom!”
“Sir Tom. I like it.” She felt his rumbling chuckle through her body and her limbs felt as if she was shifting in a thunder-cloud, the unseen hairs on her arms rising in response to the ready spark between her and this man. Each time either of them stirred, she sensed it.
“Sir Tom and?”
“Ruth,” she said in answer to his prompt. “My name is Ruth.”
Sir Tom nodded his head in acknowledgement and greeting and slowly rested his arms on the sledge, frowning as his movement no doubt set his wound aching afresh.
“Well met, Ruth. How may I help you?”
With that simple question, the rage Ruth had been carrying in her chest for months melted away like the snow off her boots. “We can work together,” she said, and meant it.
Chapter Three
Tom broke a few more kindling sticks and dropped them into the fire. He had been told, firmly, to keep any weight off his back. Since Ruth had blushed like a sunset when she said this, he guessed she meant his wound.
One Winter Knight Page 2