Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  The thief regained his balance and stared at the inn incredulously. “Is it here you’re thinking of asking?”

  “I’ll do better negotiating if I don’t have a thief stinking of fish trailing me in.”

  Octavius leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. “I’ll wait here for the laughter that will follow you out.”

  The innkeeper did laugh, at first. Conor swiftly cut off his merriment by clanking his purse on the table between them. The familiar gleam of greed lit the innkeeper’s eyes. Stammering, he bustled into the back room and returned with a bulky ship of a woman whose face bore the stamp of the Vikings who’d once scoured these lands. Her watery red gaze took in Conor’s gold, clothes, and face with lazy avidity.

  Then the bargaining began, like an old dance. People never changed. The whole of a person’s character could be read with one glance into the eyes. Conor knew, staring into the flat, dun-colored orbs of the innkeeper’s wife, that she was already calculating heady profits. But though she couched her offers in vague language, Conor soon knew that this inn had no bed to offer, and the best he could get from them would be a straw pallet before the kitchen hearth, already crowded with a half-dozen other travelers, and at a price that would curl even a moneylender’s hair. Gathering his alms bag, he left the inn to search for another while Octavius clung to his heels.

  After Conor stormed out of the fourth inn in a row, Octavius swiveled into his path and wagged at him the greasy head of a chicken bone. “Are you ready to listen to me now, or are ye after asking every innkeeper in Troyes?”

  Conor seized the chicken bone and sent it flying into the gutter.

  “God’s Nails,” Octavius sputtered, “there was no need to be doing that—”

  “If you’ve something to tell me you’d best say it, or it’ll be your bones I throw into the street next.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Octavius began, “and I know of a burgher, a man as rich as Midas, with a ring for every finger and enough gold about his neck to put a king to shame. He’s in need of a doctor.” The little man edged closer. “He’s got a young daughter, an odd one, they say, fresh out of the convent. She’s sick near to death, and her father distraught, for he just lost a son. He’s full of fear of losing the daughter as well.”

  Conor rested an impatient gaze upon the thief, conveying wordlessly how little some burgher’s daughter’s fate meant to him, when in his endless life, he’d witnessed misery beyond any human’s imagining.

  “Don’t you see? The burgher has used every doctor in Troyes and none have been to his liking. You being a doctor and all, you could make a fine fee—”

  “It’s no fee I seek,” Conor snapped, “and I’ve no stomach to be pandering to some overfed burgher’s daughter with a bellyache.”

  “Aye, but this burgher’s daughter lives in a five-story house on the Grande Rue.” Octavius leaned back against a wall, crossed his arms, and toed one foot across the other. “There’s a soft bed in that palace, I suspect, for the doctor who cares well for the lass.”

  Conor’s eyes narrowed. “How would the likes of you know of the plight of a burgher’s daughter?”

  “I’ve ears, I do. Since the lass returned from the convent, she’s stirred up more than a mite of gossip.” With an odd, almost triumphant cackle, Octavius jerked away from the wall and danced a jig down the street. “Will ye be coming then? Or will you pass on a golden apple dropped in your lap from the skies above?”

  ***

  Conor prowled in the anteroom of a rich burgher’s post-and-beam home, waiting for the servant who had greeted him to announce his presence to Monsieur Mézières. Octavius pranced around the dark chamber, cackling with laughter.

  “It’s venison, I smell, stewing in its own juices.” The thief gorged his lungs with the scent. “If you take your time with the doctoring, you and me might be digging our teeth into a haunch of that stag afore the day is done.”

  “In your dreaming mind.”

  Conor planted a foot on the stairs and glared up at the door draped in black serge. He must be crazed with exhaustion to let this dwarf drag him halfway across Troyes on the slim chance that a wealthy burgher would let a strange doctor tend to his only daughter, and thus give him a bed for the night. This house groaned under the weight of its grief. Beneath the aroma of roasting meat lingered the sickly sweet stench of balsam and funeral ointment, and the air hung thick and still, as if neither window nor door had been cracked since the body of the burgher’s son had been carried out for burial three weeks ago.

  “We’ll be getting a meal out of it, don’t you worry.” Octavius rubbed the well-worn wool of his tunic. “The burgher’s desperate for the likes of you.”

  Conor resumed his pacing, rolling his shoulders as if he could shake off the fog of human misery. He wanted none of the burden of sorrow he felt crushing this house. If he didn’t crave the feel of a fine bed beneath his back, he’d be off and think no more of it. “You’ll be leaving here with a full belly,” Conor argued, “but don’t be expecting the haunch.”

  “Leaving? Nay, nay.” Octavius fell into step beside Conor. “It’ll take time to do your healing, and you’ll need a man of your own. It’s expected of a fine doctor. Don’t let my beard fool ye, for I can shave a man as close and as smooth as a baby’s bottom.”

  A crack of light speared down the stairs and the shadow of a servant fell upon it. “Monsieur Mézières has agreed to see you.”

  The servant allowed Conor to pass, but halted Octavius and ordered him to wait below. The servant slammed the door shut on the cursing thief, then ushered Conor deeper into the dim room.

  A haze of wood-smoke permeated the air as thickly as in any ancient Irish mead hall. A single oil lamp suspended by chain from the ceiling illuminated a wedge of the blue haze and splashed feeble light over a trestle table. Two men presided at the table, one at either end.

  Conor entered the circle of light and thudded his pack to the floor. A derisive laugh burst from the younger of the two men.

  “Scraping the dregs, are we, Mézières?” The young man tipped in his high-backed chair and threw one calf over the corner of the table. His sword scraped the floorboards, tracing patterns in the rushes. “Soon you’ll be calling in the Jews.”

  From the other end of the table, Monsieur Mézières cast him a narrow-eyed glare. “If it takes a Saracen, Sir Guichard, then so be it. I will do whatever is necessary to restore my daughter’s health.”

  “Ah, yes, I know well that she’s your most valuable asset, more precious than a cart full of gold.” The man called Sir Guichard slammed his tankard on the table, rattling the scattered dishes. He cast a scornful glance over Conor’s worn, mud-splattered boots, the stubble growing thick upon his chin. “But even a burgher’s daughter shouldn’t be poked and prodded by every charlatan who wanders into Troyes. Toss this roaming vagabond out on his rump.”

  The rushes crackled as Conor swept up his pack and headed for the door, intending to oblige the drunken sot without another word.

  “Please forgive my guest, doctor.”

  Conor reluctantly paused at Monsieur Mézières’s words.

  “You must understand,” the older man said. “Sir Guichard believes I am a foolish old man, casting his gold about like bread crumbs to the birds. And perhaps I am foolish in my desperation.”

  The word reverberated in Conor’s head. Damn it. He wanted none of the muddy quagmire of emotions fluxing in this household. But she had taught him too well. The healer in him would not allow him to leave, not yet, not while someone suffered. Not while there was a chance he could atone once more for his former life.

  He twisted to face the table. The burgher appraised him with an even, level gaze, as he petted the fur that trimmed his purple surcoat with a hand glittering with jewels.

  “If no doctor has yet cured your daughter,” Conor said, casting a cold glare toward the nobleman, “then there’s no foolishness in seeking another.”

  The burgher unfurl
ed his fingers toward Conor’s dusty garments. “Then convince me that you can do better than the last.”

  Conor’s hand tightened on the slung leather of his belt. His was a skill taught to him by the greatest Irish healer south of Cruachan, a skill honed in the courts of Visigoth chieftains, on Viking ships, in the palaces of Saracens, amid the Jews of Spain, and on more battlefields than this man could ever imagine. “There is much medicine,” he said tightly, “that can be found outside the boundaries of this city.”

  “You overdo your modesty, charlatan.” Sir Guichard sloshed more wine into his tankard. “Where are the self-deprecating proclamations of skill? The reluctantly told tales of miracles done in foreign lands? The stories of wise Italian teachers? Come, come, you can bow and scrape better than that, if you want Mézières’s gold.”

  Conor eyed the young knight. Puffiness softened the lines of his chin and waist. A jeweled brooch hung from the gaping neckline of his surcoat, revealing the frayed, gravy-stained embroidery of the linen beneath. Conor wondered why the burgher suffered such rudeness at his own table, and then wondered what a nobleman was doing dining with a burgher at all, and then wondered why the hell he was wondering. His only concern should be a bed for the night.

  “My skill will speak for itself, but there are those who can speak of it.” Conor repeated the names of the merchants of Genoa with whom he had journeyed for so many miles. “These men are here in Troyes. Find them, and they will speak well of my skills.”

  “It’s clear,” the burgher said drily, “that you lack a doctor’s light-tipped tongue.”

  “Pretty words won’t heal the sick. My skill may.”

  The burgher’s fingers stilled upon his cloak. “Your name, doctor.”

  Conor resisted the urge to shrug. A name was nothing but an empty label thrust upon a babe before the parents knew the pith of the child. It was best that a grown man choose his own, as he was forced to do.

  “I am called Conor MacSídh.”

  “Mag-she,” the burgher repeated. He scraped his chair back and stood up. His fine robes moved fluidly around him as he strode around the table to scrutinize Conor’s features. “You’re Irish.”

  Conor must be wearier than he’d thought for two ordinary men in one day to see so much of what he kept hidden.

  “How cunning of you, MacSídh.” Sir Guichard raised his tankard with a flourish and sloshed the spillage off the table with a swipe of his forearm. “But thicken your brogue, charlatan. The burgher’s own daughter has more of an Irish lilt than you—and it’s been over ten years since Monsieur Mézières rescued her from that savage island.”

  Something cold slithered up Conor’s back. The finger of the gods was in this. Only they would mock him so by leading him to a place where the Irish buzzed thicker than fleas.

  Then he remembered: Soon it would be Lughnasa. He should have sensed it coming, he should have known, but the road to Troyes had been long, and his senses too dulled to foresee it. The memory of that one life was a scar the gods refused to let heal. Every year it hardened over, and every Lughnasa the gods found a way to rip it open so it festered and bled anew.

  He clenched his fist around the strap of his bag. Damn the gods. He should convert to Christianity and spite them all for their ceaseless mockery. The Christians believed in redemption for their sinners—his gods had no mercy: They had cast him into Hell and abandoned him here to burn.

  “Come, come, doctor, why so silent?” The nobleman tipped his chair back. “There’s no need to feign ignorance. Everyone knows the good burgher’s last wife was Irish, and their children grew up on that savage island . . . that is, until the good burgher’s first wife died and he could finally bring her here—”

  “Pray to God,” the burgher interrupted, his blue gaze slicing across the room, “that this Irishman has half the healing skill of my late wife, Sir Guichard. For only then will you find yourself in better straits than you are now.” The burgher headed toward a flight of stairs, eddying angry currents behind him. “Come, Monsieur MacSídh. We shall see if you do honor to your countrymen.”

  Upstairs, at the end of a short hall, Conor plunged into a room as hot and humid as Baghdad in July. A great canopied bed loomed in the dimness, shrouded with thick serge. Black cloth muffled the windows. A single tallow candle flickered on a stand by the side of the bed, where an elderly maidservant plucked at her rosary and filled the room with the drone of prayer.

  “Enough of that.” Conor clanked his doctor’s sack upon a bedside table and cut off the servant’s devotions. “Strip those cloths from the windows.”

  The coverings tumbled down with a cloud of dust. Thin streams of light sifted through the cracks in the oiled parchment, threading a faint breeze. Conor yanked away the bed curtains. A black cat yowled and sprinted off the bed to dash into the shadows.

  He glanced dispassionately at the small, supine figure who lay swathed in wool and fur. His patient was a woman-child who looked as if she’d known barely eighteen winters, with softly rounded features and dark gold hair. Her breath came harsh through white lips.

  “She’s been like this for weeks.” Monsieur Mézières tugged a perfumed linen out of his sleeve and pressed it over his nose. “She collapsed when she heard that her brother had died in a hunting accident. She has lain in that bed restless and half-conscious ever since.”

  Death glazed the girl’s skin like frost. Conor searched for her arm and then probed for her weak and irregular pulse. Higher up, by the crook of her elbow, scarlet slashes from recent bleedings mottled her skin. Conor let her arm drop to the bed. He knew by the limpness of her limbs and the Otherworldly expression on her face that, though she lay weak from leeching and bleeding, her true sickness was not of the body, but of the heart.

  He’d seen this form of human misery before.

  “I’ve already lost a son, Doctor MacSídh. She is my only heir.” The burgher’s voice grew gravelly with anxiety. “There is no price—none—too dear for her life.”

  “My price is a bed.” Conor seized the top woolen blanket and yanked it off the girl. “If you can offer room and board, then I’ll do what I can for her.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence while Conor yanked cover after cover off the bed.

  The burgher said, “That’s a paltry price for a doctor’s fee.”

  “Not compared to the king’s ransom the innkeepers of Troyes are asking for a cold straw pallet.”

  He nodded shortly. “You’ll have a bed, then. I’ll see to it. But if you heal my daughter, a king’s ransom will be yours. Think on that as you tend to her.” The burgher turned on his heel and headed to the door. “I’ve not yet met a doctor whose skills couldn’t be sharpened by the promise of gold.”

  The door clicked shut behind him. Conor rolled his forearm over his sweat-soaked face, and then barked for the maidservant to get rid of the covers. He planted his hands on his hips and glared at the small, shapely form of the woman lying in it.

  He supposed he could bring this one back to health. Beneath the glaze of her skin, a flush ebbed and flowed. She was just at the age when the sap of life surged strongest. It would take little more than rest and broth and an end to the bleedings to drag her back among the living. He’d heal her body, for that was a matter of dispassionate skill, like untangling ship’s rigging or caulking a hole in the hull. But her grief was her own. He’d be gone from this place before the tentacles he’d felt rising from the muck of Troyes bound him to this house and these people.

  She jerked, suddenly, in her sleep. He turned her face toward his. Her skin burned against his fingertips. He’d have to call the maidservant back. He needed a pot of boiling water to mix with yew leaves.

  He sat on the bed just as her eyes fluttered open.

  And Conor tumbled down, deep, deep down through the centuries, into the whirling colors of a misty forest glade, into the soft ripple of laughter echoing amid the rustle of leaves, into a place where his blood pumped hard in his veins and hi
s heart soared as unfettered as a sparrow gliding on a warm summer breeze. He clawed his fingers into the linens while his senses reeled in some sightless void, sucked into a vortex of memory. He knew these eyes like he knew the buck of a stallion beneath him, like he knew the sharp scent of summer’s green grass and blooming honeysuckle, like he knew the hills and valleys and growling gray mists of Erin.

  Her eyes fluttered closed.

  Conor sat still as stone.

  For one burning flash of a moment, he had stared into the eyes of Brigid.

  Thirteen

  “What’s this?” The maidservant clattered the breakfast tray upon a table and searched the silent room. A hot breeze breathed through the window and fluttered a hem of linen across the black serge of the bed draperies. “Deirdre Mézières, are you hiding from me on such a fine, soft morning?”

  From her hiding spot, Dierdre saw a smile slip across the maidservant’s wizened face.

  “Have you no sense of fair play, child?” The maidservant walked across the room and tugged the draperies aside. “You can see me, lass—but to my aged eyes, you’re no more than a will-o’-the-wisp.”

  “You’ve no shame!” Deirdre whirled out of the cloth, grinning. This was an old game. They’d been playing it near every morning since Deirdre had been weaned from her mother’s breast. “You have ears like an old hound, it’s a wonder I can keep my own thoughts from you.” Deirdre met Moira’s glazed eyes, their color long obscured by milky cataracts. “Now, an honest race, perhaps. That would be more sporting of you—”

  “There’ll be no talk of racing.” Moira’s jowls shook like twin bowls of porridge. “It’s daft enough that you’re standing in your naked feet with the sun hardly over the horizon, and you not a week from knocking at St. Peter’s gate.”

  Deirdre rolled her eyes. “You’d give me castanets and a bread basket like a leper.”

  “Haven’t you got the devil in you today.”