Asmara looked at him warily. “What are you going to do?” she demanded. “And why are you doing this? I did not give you permission to touch me.”
Jestin immediately stood up, looking at Blayth and pointing to Asmara. “Then you tend this ungrateful woman,” he said. “I can promise you have not tended nearly as many wounds as I have, but go ahead. Make a mess of her and I will not stop you.”
Frankly, Blayth wasn’t very good tending battle wounds. He’d seen many, of course, and could make do in rendering basic aid, but the tending of the wounded had always fallen to other men who were more specialized in it. In spite of his brusque manner, Jestin seemed much more comfortable around potions and needles. Blayth was confident in many things, but healing wasn’t one of them.
“Were you once a physic?” he asked. “Is that why you have potions and know so much about healing?”
Jestin lifted his skinny shoulders. “I read,” he said. “I read a great deal. I have treatises and books and documents from all over our world that tell of many things, so I have learned much. You have seen my collection of treasures; there is a good deal of information in these treasures and I have memorized it all. When anyone is wounded in the village, they come to me because they know I can heal them. That is why I asked if you had been sent.”
Blayth shook his head. “As I told you, no one sent us,” he said. “If you have knowledge on healing, then I would ask you to tend the lady. She will be still for you, I swear it. But know that I shall be watching everything you do and if I am not satisfied, you will not live to see the dawn.”
Jestin gave him an expression that suggested he wasn’t intimidated by the threat. “You will be satisfied,” he said. “And then you and your ungrateful wife will leave me and never return.”
It seemed like a fair deal, so Blayth nodded and Jestin returned to his position over Asmara. She didn’t seem thrilled by it, but she had little choice. She turned her head and closed her eyes as Blayth came up beside her, taking her good hand and holding it tightly as Jestin went to work.
Asmara did a good deal of grunting and wincing as Jestin picked bits of cloth from her wound, carefully, and periodically cleansing it with the wine. That seemed to hurt the most and she gasped whenever he poured the alcohol into the wound. Blayth held her hand tightly and had his arm around her shoulders, preventing her from moving around too much, as Jestin cleansed and picked. He took the iron stick-like implement and used the flat end of it to scrape out whatever debris he hadn’t been able to pick away. It had been excruciating for Asmara, who had her face buried in Blayth’s chest.
The cleansing and scraping seemed to go on for quite some time. Blayth was torn between anger that Jestin was causing Asmara pain, and gratitude that he was being so thorough. When the priest had finished picking and washing and scraping, he finally took a bone needle and fine silk thread and put six quick stitches in Asmara’s shoulder. She yelped a little, for it was clearly painful, but that was the extent of her visible pain.
When it was finally over, Jestin took the bandages he’d made and wrapped her shoulder up in them. The last step was to hand Blayth another cup that was half-full of a dark liquid that smelled horrific. He wanted Asmara to drink it, which she did, choking it down miserably because it tasted so badly. When Blayth handed the empty cup back to Jestin, the priest pointed towards the doorway to the second chamber.
“In there,” he said quietly, gathering his things. “There is a bed in there. Put her there to rest.”
Blayth obeyed. Asmara was exhausted and in pain, and the poppy potion had made her extremely sleepy. Bending over, he swept her into his arms and carried her into the second chamber, which was far more cluttered than the first, but there was, indeed, a small cot shoved against the wall. A cat was sleeping on it and he swept the cat away with his foot, depositing Asmara onto the straw mattress. She was nearly asleep when he pulled the rough woolen blanket over her.
“Sleep now,” he whispered, kissing her on the forehead. “I shall be nearby should you need me.”
Asmara didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed and she was asleep already. Pain, exhaustion, and the poppy had seen to that. Blayth’s gaze lingered on her a moment before wandering out into the main chamber.
Jestin was wiping out cups and cleaning the iron implement with wine as he emerged and headed over to the blazing fire. Now that Asmara was tended, he hoped to get some sleep before the night was through but, upon reflection, he thought that was a ridiculous hope. He’d be awake all night in case Asmara needed him. He and the surly priest were about to keep each other company.
“I will pay you for your services before we leave,” he said. “I am grateful for your assistance.”
Jestin snorted as he wiped the iron implement. “As if I had a choice,” he said. “You burst in without invitation.”
Blayth couldn’t disagree. “You are fortunate that is all I did, considering you called the lady fire-tongued.”
“Well… she is.”
“She most certainly is, but that is not for you to say.”
Jestin continued to snort as he put his things away. “I will grant you the husband’s privilege of insulting your wife, but I will not apologize for what I said,” he replied. “She said you were attacked. Where did this happen?”
“Gwendraith,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, after all. “And before you ask me why we came so far before seeking help, we feared that we were followed.”
“Were you?”
“I do not believe so.”
Jestin began pulling out other things. It seemed as if the man was constantly busy, unable to remain still. The cat that Blayth had swept from the bed came slinking into the chamber and the priest petted the cat, putting it up on the table and pouring it some goat’s milk.
“She also said that you were going to visit your family,” he said. “Where are you from?”
Blayth didn’t know how to answer that, considering he didn’t really know himself. “North,” he said, simply because that was the direction they were traveling. He found his attention turning towards the broadswords in the corner again and he meandered in that direction, hoping to change the subject away from him. “How did you come by these swords? They are quite beautiful and expensive, I would imagine. Did someone give them to you?”
Jestin came away from the table in the shadows where he had been standing. He had two cups in his hand and held one out to Blayth as he approached. “Go on,” he said. “Take it. It is cider.”
Blayth complied. He sniffed it before taking a drink of quite possibly the most potent alcohol he’d ever had the misfortune to drink. It was like a stream of fire going down his throat.
“God’s Bones,” he muttered. “That is cider?”
Jestin nodded. “I make it myself from the apples in the orchards surrounding Sanctiadd.”
“What is Sanctiadd?”
“My church.”
“I see,” Blayth said, taking another sup of cider and trying not to cough. “You make liquid fire from those apples.”
Jestin gave him a lopsided grin. “Mayhap,” he said. “Usually, I drink alone. It is rare I have someone to share it with. Even though you barged into my home and were rude, I forgive you. Now you will sit down and tell me of your journey. Your lady will sleep for a long while, so we will have time to converse.”
Blayth planted himself on a stool near the hearth, a small thing against his considerable size. “There is not much to tell of our journey, other than the attack,” he said. “I am more interested in knowing about all of these things you have collected. If I am not mistaken, you also have English shields against the wall.”
The potent liquid fire had the effect of loosening Jestin’s tongue because he had already downed nearly his entire cup, indicative of a man who was used to the strong drink.
“They are indeed English,” the priest said, moving to pour himself more of the cider. “You could say that I am the Keeper.”
Blayth looked at hi
m. “The Keeper of what?”
Jestin glanced at the man. “Of what you see,” he said. “I am the Keeper.”
“But where do you get it?”
Jestin brought the pitcher over to Blayth and poured more into his cup. From the tension they’d endured since pushing their way into the residence to the relative peace of the moment, it seemed rather strange to Blayth that they were now drinking together like old friends, but he went along with it. He was glad he didn’t have to spend the entire night protecting an injured woman from an irate priest.
“I get it from the battles in this valley and others,” Jestin said as he plopped down onto a chair that nearly gave way because he sat down so hard. He steadied the chair and himself before continuing. “This entire valley has seen many battles and there are always things left behind. Sometimes there are battles to the south, at castles along the southern hills, and sometimes I go there, too. When I hear of them, I go. I gather what I can and bring it back here for safe keeping.”
Blayth thought that was an extremely odd thing to do. “But why?”
Jestin pondered the question as he slurped his cider. “Why not?” he said. “These are the fragments of men that must be guarded. These represent men who have died in senseless ways. These are the remnants of lives and, in God’s eyes, they must never be forgotten.”
It was a touching thing to say and, in a sense, Blayth could understand. “So… you keep these to remind God of the men who owned them? Of the men who died?”
Jestin nodded. Then, he peered more closely at Blayth, studying the man in the firelight. “You look as if you have been badly wounded in battle,” he said, gesturing to the left side of his head. “You speak slowly, as if the damage is lasting. What happened to you?”
Blayth wasn’t sure how much to tell him. “I do not remember,” he said honestly. “It was a terrible battle and I was wounded, but I was eventually healed. It took time.”
“Then you understand when I say that these remnants of battle must be preserved. They are tributes to the dead.”
Blayth nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said. “There are a good many English remnants here as well as Welsh.”
Abruptly, Jestin stood up and went over to the great clutter against the far wall. He began to rummage through the wooden shields, once proud symbols of the men who had owned them, and he pulled one shield out to hold it up.
“Do you see this?” he said, displaying a blue and white striped tri-cornered shield. It was beautiful and well-made. “This is from Llandeilo. There was a great battle there a few years ago and the English army was badly destroyed. I found this near a dead de Valence knight. That is the Earl of Pembroke, you know.”
Llandeilo. Blayth’s heart began to pound when Jestin brought up that fateful battle, the one that had changed the course of his life. God, he knew so little about it, but hearing the priest speak of it, he was almost frantic to know what the priest knew. Had he seen anything? Did he witness the carnage?
What did the man know?
“I am aware of Pembroke,” Blayth said, sounding surprisingly calm. “You… you were at Llandeilo?”
Jestin carefully set the shield against the wall. “It is not far from here,” he said. “Panicked men came to tell me about it, so I took my cart and went to the battlefield.”
“Did you see the battle?”
He shook his head. “Only the aftermath,” he said. “Only when the English wounded were being killed and the Welsh were stripping the dead.”
Blayth wasn’t sure what more to ask the man even though he had a thousand questions on his mind. His speech simply wasn’t swift enough to keep up with them, so it was better if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t sound like a fool. But one prevalent thought came to the forefront – if the priest came after the battle, then the armies were already gone at that time. That meant the House of de Wolfe and the other English had retreated.
They would be heading north whilst the priest was heading south along the same road.
Did he see them?
“If you were heading to the battle when the English were retreating, the surely you saw their armies,” he said, feeling anxious and curious. “They must have come this way, heading to the Marches.”
Jestin was pulling forth another shield. “I saw them,” he said. “They were fleeing quickly. They left their wounded; I know because I saw them. It was a slaughter, I am afraid. The English were ambushed, you see, and they could not take the dead.”
Blayth stared at him. They could not take their dead. He had no idea that just those few words could mean so much to him. Morys had told him that he’d been abandoned and unwanted, cast aside by the English, but the priest was telling him otherwise. A man who had been there, and who had seen the carnage, was telling him something completely different.
So Morys had lied to him yet again.
“You are certain of this?” he found himself asking.
“There is no doubt,” Jestin said. “I saw them fleeing and they could only take what they could carry. They left wagons behind, animals, and the dead and wounded. I was able to save some of the wounded from the Welsh, who were killing them all, but there were so many more I could not save. So… I brought their fragments back with me to preserve them. With me, they are protected, and they are remembered. They are not the lost dead.”
He sounded sorrowful as he said it, a man who seemed to have no country boundaries. He was a man of God and that was all that mattered to him. Before Blayth could respond, Jestin held up a big shield, tri-cornered, with a dark green background, gold around the edges, and a black wolf head in the middle. The wolf had its mouth open and big fangs, a very fearsome head, indeed.
“See this shield?” he said. “Someone told me this is the House of de Wolfe. This is one of the greatest families in England. I have one of their tunics here, somewhere. They left a good deal behind when they fled.”
Blayth stared at the shield, feeling something strange wash over him. He couldn’t stop looking at the shield because there was something oddly familiar about it. He was certain he’d never seen it before – or had he? Either way, he had a very strange feeling when he looked at it, as if he knew it but didn’t know it. It was both confusing and mesmerizing. Before he realized it, he was on his feet, moving to the shield even as Jestin set it down. Blayth took the shield from him and held it up in front of his face, looking at it, feeling oh-so-unsteady as he did.
And then it hit him.
He’d seen the shield in his dreams.
When he realized that, he almost dropped the thing. It was the strangest sensation he’d ever known but, as he continued to stare at the shield, he knew for a fact that he recognized it now. He had seen it in his dreams.
A de Wolfe shield.
Oh, God.
“What you have done,” he said, his voice trembling, “is noble. That you would remember men who have been left on the field of battle is one of the greatest acts of kindness I have ever heard. I am sure that if their families knew, they would thank you.”
Jestin could hear the quiver in his tone and turned to see that he was still looking at the de Wolfe shield. He seemed oddly awestruck by it.
“Sometimes, they do thank me,” he said.
Blayth was still looking at the shield. “What do you mean?”
Jestin began to look around at the other things in his collection. “Sometimes the fathers come looking for their sons,” he said. “In fact, a year after the battle, an older knight came looking for his son. Some of the villagers had told him that I collect things from the battlefield, so he came to see if I knew of his son. Unfortunately, I did not. It has happened before, you know, men looking for their sons. But so far, I have never been able to help them. What I keep here with me are the bones of what once was. I do not deal with the living, or even the bodies of the dead. Just the bones of battle.”
Blayth set the shield down, feeling more emotion than he’d ever felt in his life. It was such a monumental mo
ment to him in such an unexpected place. But something Jestin said stuck with him and the question that was poised on his lips was something he could barely force himself to ask.
But he had to.
For the sake of his soul, he had to.
“This older knight,” he whispered. “Who was he?”
Jestin was over by the broadswords now, pulling one forth. “He did not give his name,” he said. “But he asked if I knew of his son.”
“What was his son’s name?”
Jestin snorted, an ironic sound. “Your name, in fact,” he said. “James.”
Blayth’s breath caught in his throat. “Was… was he English?”
“He was,” he said. “He did look at my collection, in fact, and he saw the shields. He seemed to look at the one you were looking at, but he did not say anything about it. He did not ask to take it. I could not tell him about his son, so he simply went away.”
The de Wolfe shield. The old knight had been looking at the de Wolfe shield. Was it a sign that he was from the House of de Wolfe, looking for a lost son? Blayth closed his eyes, struggling with all his might not to weep because his eyes stung with tears. He turned away from the shields, the swords, and sat back down by the fire, laboring with everything he had not to break down.
You were left behind, Morys had said. You were unwanted. Was it possible that the older knight had been his own father, coming to look for the son he’d lost? How many other knights named James were at Llandeilo?
Something told Blayth that his father had, in fact, returned for him. He didn’t know why he should think so, out of all the men who had fought at Llandeilo, but his gut told him his father had returned.
My God, Blayth thought to himself. He came back for me.
Opening his eyes, he blinked away the tears, noticing his cup of cider nearby and he snatched it, draining it and feeling all of that liquid fire course into his belly. Jestin, however, was oblivious to his emotional turmoil, still rifling through the clutter he had in neat stacks against the wall. He had absolutely no idea that this conversation, and those few words he’d delivered, had such an impact on the man seated before his hearth. The clouds had parted, and the sun shone brightly now, the light of understanding and realization in that he hadn’t been abandoned.
The Original de Wolfe Pack Complete Set: Including Sons of de Wolfe Page 270