“I think I can walk.”
“Down there, perhaps. But you’d be weak as a newborn kitten on the climb back.”
Rory muttered something beneath his breath, his gallantry expired with his strength. “I have my pride, woman,” he groused, slamming his fist on the table as if that would make her change her mind. “I’m weary of being coddled like a naked babe.”
Naked. His intonation told Brenna she wasn’t the only one growing more ill at ease … though it was silly on both their parts. She was a healer. “Such modesty is a bit belated, don’t you think, sir?” Before he could reply, Brenna put a finger to his lips, sheer mischief infecting her voice. “I promise I’ll touch nothing I’ve not touched before.”
“By my ancestors’ bones, you’re the saucy one.”
“Aye, and you’re the cantankerous one,” she shot back, swinging the bucket as she dashed out of the room.
But her smile faded as his parting words caught up with her. “Enjoy riding the high horse while you may, milady, for your privilege grows shorter lived by the day.”
Praise be for the barrenwort.
Rory had returned to the pallet by the time Brenna returned with the warm spring water. If his warning hadn’t knocked the sass out of her, carrying the loaded bucket up the sloping tunnel had. Perhaps he’d learned that he was not as strong as he thought himself to be.
“I thought you’d be out for a brisk walk to stir the blood by now,” she quipped, pouring some of the water into a smaller basin.
Rory grunted in response, eyes remaining closed.
Alarm shot through her. “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?” She rushed to his side. “Did you fall?”
“No, I’m tired. Too tired to listen to all this clucking.”
Heaven save her from such a childlike temperament. “Fine then.” Brenna spun about to fetch her supplies. “You’ll get your bath in silence, but a bath you will have.”
“Then do it and be done. Not that I could stop you, if I were of a mind, with this confounded shoulder.”
Ah, so that was it. His pride was sore. Well, what about hers? She’d spent countless hours, nay days, nursing him, and this was her reward?
“Move over,” she said, on returning to his bedside. “You’re not only acting like a petulant child, you’re taking up the whole bed.”
With another grunt, he complied, giving her room to kneel on the pallet rather than the hard stone floor. As she dropped to her knees, he turned his face away, straining the cords of his neck. Brenna hesitated, taking in the rise and fall of her patient’s chest beneath the sheet pulled to his chin. The way his beard clung to the clenched box of his jaw. She guessed at the disapproving line surely formed by his lips.
“I’ll be as fast—” She remembered her promise of silence.
Rory tensed as she tugged away the sheet to expose the dressing on his chest. It was still moist from the poultices, but no blood had congealed on it. A very good sign. Upon removing the bandages, she saw his flesh had begun to knit with little sign of the inflammation that had driven up his fever just days before. She had truly wondered if he’d survive, but God had answered her prayers. The worst had finally passed.
She probed ever so gently for any ooze of hidden infection. Nothing! Her spirit soared. She was at last her mother’s daughter. God had used her for healing as He had Joanna. Just as Ealga said, it was what Brenna was created to do.
If only she could do more of it. Be safe enough to move to the village near the river glen and help others like this, instead of sending her medicines through Brother Martin while hiding in the wild.
But that was impossible. Just as her mother’s gift flowed through her veins, Joanna’s curse imprisoned her. Lord, why give me such a gift, if I must keep it hidden?
Beyond the sudden blur of despair in her eyes, Rory’s shoulder came into focus. Brenna let go her longing for the future to grasp the present. The task now was to rebuild the strength he so sorely grieved.
With Your help, Father God.
Gently, Brenna sponged the healing mineral water over the wound, then dabbed it dry. She repeated the same process, cleansing Rory’s arms and chest to his waist. When she stopped to pour the liniment on her palm to rub into the muscles surrounding it, Rory glanced down to see the damage that had dragged him to the pits of hell and back, but his expression was veiled. In truth, the wound looked small, considering the great toll it had taken on him.
As Brenna massaged in the herbal oils, his tension grew palpable.
“Relax, Rory. You must let me work the oil into your muscles.”
“I am relaxed.”
“I could crack an egg on your chest.”
“If it would restore my strength, then have at it, woman.”
She mimicked him. “Just turn your back to me, man … and pray your other wounds are healing as nicely.”
The exit wound from the frontal arrow was. The other, where the arrow had wedged in his shoulder blade, was not. At least it wasn’t as well knit as the others. But after careful examination, Brenna was satisfied there was no infection. That she’d had to cut a larger opening to retrieve the arrow from Rory’s back likely accounted for its slower healing. Brenna washed it, oiled carefully around it and its connecting sinew, and applied fresh poultices. Those she secured with strips of cloth.
“And now for the rest of you,” she announced, easing him on his back again.
“I’ll see to myself, thank you.”
This irritability was becoming infectious. “What is this? A warrior with a maid’s modesty?”
“Go below this blanket with that cloth, and I’ll not bear responsibility for any consequence you find, lassie.”
Brenna stiffened. Had the barrenwort failed? Is that what he wanted to hide?
“’Twas not my most favorite of chores anyway, Rory of the Road. I’ll leave the washcloth and towels here for you to tend to yourself then, though I venture to say, there’s naught for a maid such as myself to fear.”
Rory’s dark gaze sharpened. “How can you be so certain, Brenna of the hills?”
Glory be, what now? Brenna folded a towel to purchase time, but hot blood stampeded to her face. “If there be any mischief in ye, weak as ye are, Rory of the Road, methinks it’s in your mind and naught else.”
Taking his lack of response as the answer to her question, Brenna started to rise. “But I’ll leave you to whatever modesty you require—oh!”
Rory gripped her arm with iron fingers.
His strength and suddenness so startled Brenna that she lost her balance and fell across him with a gasp. “What are you doing? You’ll break open—”
“I think there is something on your mind, milady.” His voice rumbled low and threatening from his chest, not unlike Faol’s warnings. “Something you may wish to share with me.”
Ho, that she was not about to do.
But before Brenna could collect herself, the blanket hanging over the entrance to the chamber gave way, and Faol bolted straight for them. His growl and bared teeth left little doubt of his intention.
“Faol, no!”
Brenna covered Rory’s head and shoulder with her body before the wolf could reach his neck. With arm raised, she tried to ward off the attack. The move threw the wolf off balance. Faol’s teeth caught on her sleeve, raking the skin beneath, but the momentum of his leap slammed into her.
“Back,” she ordered, as the startled wolf threw itself away and landed, still snarling, head low. “To your rug. Now!”
The white wolf backed off a bit more, but not to the hearth. Brenna had never seen him so riled. But then no one had ever appeared to Faol to threaten her. He must have heard her gasp and the raised voices….
“Remain absolutely still,” Brenna said softly to Rory. Then, ever so slowly, she crawled away from him, keeping between him and the wolf. Her knees shook as she gained her feet. “Rory meant no harm, pup,” she cooed. “See? I’m not hurt.”
Through the torn sleeve,
her arm was red, but he’d not drawn blood. Faol would never hurt her intentionally. Brenna began to sing. “You’re my own little love ….”
It was a lullaby, one Ealga had sung to Brenna and Brenna to the wolf since it was a pup. And she petted him until his predatory stance relaxed. When he at last took his gaze off Rory and raised his head for more attention, Brenna grasped the loose skin behind his neck and herded him over to the hearth. There she knelt, making him sit on the rug as well.
“Rory was in pain,” she explained, as if the wolf could understand.
“You must be out of your mind to trust that beast,” Rory sang to the tune of the familiar lullaby. He actually had a decent voice.
“I trust him with my life. You must understand, Rory. He thought you were hurting me. If Faol so much as thinks I’m in danger, he … he becomes mad.”
“I will definitely keep that in mind.”
“He likes you, but not when you become so … so hostile.”
It was a good while before Faol was at last satisfied that the aggression had passed. The wolf dropped on all four haunches, his gaze returning to Rory. But when Brenna ventured to rise, her pet started up with her. She pressed him down with her hand, petting him gently.
“Stay, anmchara.”
“You call a wild wolf your soulmate?”
“Aye, I do, Rory. You may have a fine life beyond the walls of this cavern, but Faol and this cave are all I have.” Leaving Faol at least semicontent, Brenna stirred the stew. “I’m sorry if I offended you, Rory. I only tried to lighten your sour mood and made you the worse for it.”
Brenna waited for a reply, but when she looked, Rory was glaring at the ceiling of the cave, his face a mirror of frustration.
Shame on her. Here was a man used to fending for himself, and no doubt his pride was offended by his dependence on her. Brenna longed to put him at ease and yet was vexed as to just what to say to him.
Instead, she said, “Come along, Faol. Let’s go for a walk and give Rory some time to himself.”
With the white wolf eagerly at her heel, Brenna moved aside the curtain to the outer chamber of the cave and left the silent man inside to his surly dejection.
Chapter Nine
The Leafbud Equinox was nearly at hand, when day and night were equal. The forested hills were glazed with hints of new green. Heather had begun to sprinkle the hillside leading down from the rocky crags of Brenna’s home with its purple hue, but it was the gorse that reigned over the landscape in bright robes of yellow. This year was surely its most glorious. But then, after the dark and dreary days of winter, Brenna thought that every year.
She carefully picked her way down a slope littered with scree, headed for the banks of the silvery spring that wound its way through the hermit’s glen. One misstep could send her sprawling on her backside and all the splendor of early spring would not take the sting away.
“Almost there,” she said to the equally cautious wolf accompanying her.
Upon reaching the spring bed, she spied smoke curling upward from Brother Martin’s hut. The priest was home. She spied him working in his garden near to the stone-roofed abode. Although she knew she should respect his ritual isolation during the Lenten season, the tension growing between her and Rory had become untenable. Faith, she spent more time out of doors than in—hunting, gathering … whatever might spare her Rory’s prickly humor or the multiplying of impulsive thoughts that invaded her mind.
Then had come last night’s dream. A dream like none she’d had before. One that left no doubt as to her future. Worse, she’d awakened in Rory’s arms, just as she’d seen in the dream. Except this morning, it had been in the innocence of sleep. Not so in her dream.
Leaving Faol sniffing the air warily in the cover of the forest, Brenna struck out into the sun-soaked clearing.
As though sensing her approach, the priest stopped his heavy labor with the stick plow and turned, straightening stiffly. “Brenna!”
She smiled. Though she was clad in tunic and breeches, her hair wound up beneath a cap, Martin knew her disguise well.
The voice of her mentor hastened Brenna’s step. Indeed, the priest had watched her grow into the woman she now was. Like a father, he’d taken her dressed as a lad to spring fairs for trading and taught her on academic and religious matters as diligently as Ealga had healing. According to Ealga, the priest from a noble family had been young when he’d first come to the isolated river glen. Now the reddish-gold hair that spilled down to his shoulders from a druidic tonsure was thick with threads of white and his still-broad shoulders were slightly rounded. Nonetheless, his stride was long and powerful as he closed the distance between them, his arms outstretched.
Brenna went into them willingly. “I have missed you over the Long Dark.”
“And I you, my child. But you look hale and hearty.” His wide smile wavered as he studied her expression. “At least on the surface,” he amended. “What is wrong? Has something happened to Faol?”
“Nay”—Brenna chuckled, nervous—“he lurks in the wood, watching us even now.” How was she to tell Martin of Rory? Worse, tell of these feelings her patient evoked in her? Or of her truly ungodly thoughts? Which was why she’d come up with a plan.
“But there is something,” Brother Martin observed. “I know my girl.”
He put his arm about her shoulder and shepherded her over to a crude bench beneath a shaded grove of oak. It was from there the priest spoke the Word to any of the villagers or hill folk who came on the seventh day of the week. Even though Rome had ruled the Sabbath be moved to Sunday two centuries earlier, the Celtic Church stuck to the traditions of its first-century founders, celebrating Easter along with the Passover that Jesus once celebrated.
Sitting next to the bench was a bucket of water. The priest dipped a cup and offered it to her. “Fresh drawn from the spring early this morning.”
“Thank you, no.” She patted a goatskin of water slung over her shoulder. “You didn’t come up for your winter soak. Was the pass closed with snow longer than the first month?”
“No, I’ve been secluded, seeking God’s will regarding a request to build a monastery and school here.” Martin sounded as if he’d been asked to sin against God.
“But you are a wonderful teacher. Ealga said often that your gift was wasted on just one student.”
“I was called to educate you, Brenna, just as I was called to this isolation, that I might become closer with God.” He swung his arm wide, gesturing to his surroundings. “Look at this beauty. It was in the open-air forum of Solomon’s temple that the Hebrews heard the Word of God, you know. Jesus taught in the open air.” He shook his head. “What a shame to defile God’s handiwork with walls and clusters of huts.”
Brother Martin’s home was a special place. A sacred place once used by druids. Like so many Christian holy sites, it had been adopted from the older religion after countless druids of all degrees had heard the Word. Accepting Christ as their Druid, or teacher, they gave up their royal trappings for sackcloth and the humble service of teaching the Word to the common man per His example. Martin’s own grandfather had been a Christian druidic teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the university in Bangor.
Yet while Brenna shared the priest’s affinity for nature and loved Faol dearly, she would give anything to share her life in the wild with someone human.
“Do you mean it’s a shame to defile it or to share it?”
Brother Martin snorted in humor. “You were always my challenge, Brenna. Quick-witted as a fox. But you did not come down from the hills to discuss my quandary, which is already settled in the Bishop of Llandalf’s mind. He is sending twelve brothers to start the monastery after the Pascal celebration in Arthur’s court at Strighlagh.”
“Then why are you fretting if the church has solved your quandary for you?” she asked.
A sheepish look claimed the priest’s reddening face. “Always on the mark,” he lamented. “Now I must confess to my student t
hat I am second-guessing God’s decision.”
Brenna seized at the unexpected opportunity to broach the topic that had brought her here. “That is exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“I do not recommend it. In fact, I am praying God will help me to accept His will.” Gone was Martin’s gentle self-deprecation and in its place came steely conviction.
“But what if circumstances change?” She’d accepted the isolation imposed on her by her mother’s prophecy, yet now it would appear that God had sent her someone.
“You’ve met a man.” Martin’s statement of fact was cloaked in dread.
“Aye, a good man.” What would she do if her mentor refused her?
The priest reached over and folded her hand between his callused ones. “Tell me, child, all that is on your heart and mind.”
So Brenna did, just as she’d rehearsed again and again on the way down the mountainside. Throughout the whole story of Rory’s uncommon rescue by Faol and his healing over the weeks that followed, the priest’s face remained inscrutable. But he managed a terse question now and then.
“Did you notice anything about the assailant that might identify him?”
“No … although I managed to put an arrow through his hand. It should leave a scar, were he ever found.”
“You say the stranger rode a speckled horse?”
“Aye, a good three hands taller than our native stock.”
“Did the injured man tell you his name?”
“Rory.” The name rolled off Brenna’s tongue, wrapped in the feeling she could no longer ignore. A feeling she feared and longed for in the same breath. Is this what love is like?
“And you are certain he is not an O’Byrne.”
Brenna could still hear Rory’s fevered ramblings. Could see the bloodshed though the glass of his soul as she’d held him. All those things too horrid for Ealga to tell her. Things Brenna would keep to herself for now.
“Aye. He was a soldier of fortune on his way to join Arthur when he accepted the O’Byrnes’ hospitality and was attacked. I thought I’d lose him more than one night of fever, but by God’s mercy he is recovering well now.”
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