by Tamara Leigh
But Gaenor would not be here, for she was departing with Christian in answer to the summons from Broehne that told his father was near his end and wished to speak to him. She could only pray that the two men would reconcile sufficiently to find some measure of peace before their parting.
“Garr will not let Abel go,” she said, shifting her gaze between Christian and Michael. “He will make him stay and fight.”
“Worry not, Lady Gaenor,” Michael said, “Your brother will be well-tended in your absence.”
She forced a smile, then crossed the chamber to stand alongside her sister.
Beatrix glanced up. “Gaenor is here, Abel.”
Gaenor was prepared as she had not been the first time she had seen him. Worse than his ravaged face, much of which was covered by bandages, including one eye, was what the blankets tucked up around him hid from sight.
“Abel.” Gaenor laid her hand over his and Beatrix’s. “Pray, hear me.”
His gaze stayed upon the ceiling.
“Christian and I must needs return to Broehne, but we will not be gone long.”
No response.
“If you would like, we shall bring John with us when we return.”
He blinked.
“And his mother, Helene.”
His uncovered eye shuddered, stilled, then swung to her. “Nay.”
Beatrix gasped. “Abel?”
“Nay,” he repeated with more force, though still there was not much voice behind the word.
Gaenor leaned nearer. “I am told she is a fine healer.”
“Do not!” His anger was unsettling, and yet it was also heartening, for out of it shone life.
She sighed. “As you wish.”
Beatrix reached for the goblet on the side table. “You need to drink.” She carried the vessel to Abel’s mouth, but he had once more ascended to the ceiling.
“Pray, brother,” Beatrix rasped, “do not go there. Stay with us.”
He remained unmoving.
Setting her jaw, she dipped her fingers in the wine and dripped droplets between his lips.
Still nothing.
She looked to her husband. “What can we do?”
“Keep trying,” he said.
“And praying,” Gaenor murmured.
And so Beatrix did, softly beseeching God as she slid drops of wine between Abel’s lips until he reflexively swallowed, then plying him with more.
Christian touched Gaenor’s arm. “I am sorry, but I must needs depart. If you prefer—”
“Nay.” She looked around. “I shall go with you.”
He inclined his head, and she knew he did so grudgingly—that he did not wish her exposed to his father, but even if she did come face to face with Christian’s sire and he cursed her, she would stand by her husband’s side.
Gaenor bent and gripped her hand over Abel’s where it lay upon the coverlet. “You fought bravely and well. You must do so again.”
“He shall,” Beatrix said and once more dipped her fingers.
“He comes?” Aldous winced at the sound of his graveled voice and the pain that accompanied it.
“Be assured, my lord, your son will be here anon.” The healer’s voice was as soothing as her hands that gently drew a cool cloth across his brow.
“Ere I pass? This you vow?”
“Ere you pass. This I vow.”
He closed his eyes only to spring them open and search her face above his. “Do not make vows you cannot keep, Woman.”
“Woman?” A sad smile curved her mouth. “Surely after all you and I have endured—and yet endure—I warrant being called by the name given to me by my father?”
His dry mouth going drier, he stared at her. When enough saliva collected that he might use his tongue again, he said, “You are happy now that you are reunited with your son?”
Something like disappointment flitted across her face only to be displaced by a smile, one that knew no sorrow. “I am most happy, my lord, as is John to have his mother returned to him.”
“John,” Aldous breathed as she shifted in her chair to dip the cloth in the basin of water perched on a table beside the bed. He liked her in profile. Pretty as she was with that dark red hair, there was strength in the straight edge of her nose, the smooth line of her brow, and her sure chin.
Gathering words, he opened his mouth, but it was drier yet. “Wine,” he croaked.
She retrieved the goblet, slid a hand beneath his head, and raised him just enough that he would not choke on the moisture she trickled into his mouth. “More, my lord?”
He jerked his head side to side.
She eased him back onto the pillow, returned the goblet to the table, and retrieved the cloth from the basin.
He watched her, also liking the hands with which she healed—small but with long, slender fingers and fine-boned wrists. He sighed. “I have not told you, but I had a daughter once.”
Her startle was so slight that, had he not been watching for it, he would not have known her to react in any way.
Unhurriedly, she wrung out the cloth and folded it. “This I know,” she murmured and reached to once more apply the cloth to his brow.
Aldous felt something cinch in the vicinity of his heart. “A misbegotten daughter the same as Robert, but unlike him, her hair was not the orange-red of a sunset. ‘Twas much darker.”
“Aye.”
He momentarily closed his eyes and savored the tenderness with which she drew the cloth across his scarred flesh. “She was gotten when I lay with her mother after my wife…” Eyes that had been nearly as dry as his mouth were suddenly moist. “…after she died birthing our third son.”
The healer met his gaze. “This I did not know.” She pressed the cloth to the inside of his left wrist.
“Some years later, when my daughter was two…or was she three?”
The woman alongside him lowered her head, but not before he caught the bunching of her brow.
“Near three, I think,” he said. “’Twas then her mother died, and so I sent the child to be raised at a convent.”
“This I know.”
Aldous stared at the crown of her head, wishing her gaze and yet not. “I asked after her from time to time but then I began to forget her.”
“Aye.” She pulled the blanket over his left arm, reached across him, lifted his right arm onto his abdomen, and cooled that wrist as well.
He swallowed hard to unblock his throat. “After the fire stole all from me, after I had given the barony into Geoffrey’s keeping and there was none who had a care for me, I remembered my daughter and sent for her.”
“This I did not know.”
“Word came that she had left the convent when she was ten and seven. None knew where she had gone, and I was too infirm to look for her and too fearful to entreat Geoffrey or Robert to find her, so I forgot her again.”
“Aye.”
Aldous sought a deep breath, but it came so shallow it struck him that his breaths were numbered and he might not have enough with which to speak to Christian if ever he came. But he pressed on. “I wonder, do you think you could find my daughter for me?”
The healer turned aside, dropped the cloth in the basin, and filled her lungs enviably full. “Aye, my lord.” When she looked back, her smile was sad again. “I believe I can.”
Aldous turned his hand in hers and gave a squeeze so pitifully lacking in strength it was yet one more reminder that his end was nearly written. “I know I am not worthy of such…beneficence, but I would be grateful.”
She inclined her head. “’Tis as the Lord wills it.”
The Lord… Aldous used one of his precious breaths to clear his throat. “I have no right to ask another boon, but—”
She pulled her hand free, stood, and turned toward the door. “Methinks your son is come.”
When the sound of boots in the corridor reached Aldous, he silently thanked God as he had not done in… He did not know how long.
Sliding his gaze to the
door, he waited for the one upon whom he would spend his next breath—Christian who had come as the healer had promised, who would return honor to the name of Lavonne, whose sons would surely better follow the example set by their father than Geoffrey and Robert had followed the example set by Aldous. All would be restored through Christian, even if it was a Wulfrith who birthed his sons.
The boots halted on the other side of the door and Aldous’s straining ears picked out lowered voices. Did one of them belong to a woman? That woman?
Without a knock, the door opened and the big man whom Aldous thought must have looked odd garbed in monk’s robes strode inside without his Wulfrith bride, for which Aldous was grateful. He knew his sins and those of his sons—had let them all in when Christian had come for him in the cave—but still he could not fully release the Wulfriths from their responsibility for Geoffrey’s death.
His youngest son halted at the foot of the bed and swung his gaze from Aldous who could but stare to the healer who clasped her hands at her waist. “How is my father?”
“Though he makes ready to depart, my lord, he has remained that he might speak with you.”
Christian gave her a tight smile strung with what looked like apology. “I thank you for tending him, Helene. You may leave us.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Aldous was so gripped by the sight of Christian that he was only vaguely aware of the healer traversing the chamber, but when she neared the door, he was drawn to her again—and remembered the second boon he had wanted to ask. “Woman!”
She peered over her shoulder. “My lord?”
“When next you tend me, mayhap you would bring your son. I…” He glanced at Christian. “…long to hear a child’s voice.”
She was slow to respond but, finally, she dipped her chin. “Aye, my lord.”
Would she bring the boy? Or was she appeasing him, either because she knew he would not live long enough for her to tend him again or she feared exposing her child to so frightful a being as he? Not that it mattered. What mattered was that she was kind—and forgiving—enough to agree, even if only for the moment.
He tried to smile though he knew the expression would render his disfigurement more hideous. “I am sorry for what you have suffered because of me…Helene,” he said in a voice that shook as if it rolled around in a pouch of stones, shaming him for its desecration of so lovely a name.
He thought he heard her breath catch, but then the smile reserved for talk of her son appeared. A smile more lovely than her mother’s. “This I know,” she said and stepped into the corridor and pulled the door closed.
Wondering at their exchange, Christian looked to the man who had sired him and hoped that the Aldous Lavonne who had addressed the healer with civility never before extended in Christian’s presence, would indeed depart this world shed of the murderous anger and hatred that had marked his final years.
“Sit by me.” Aldous rasped.
Christian moved around the bed and lowered into the chair vacated by the healer.
Aldous swallowed. “Robert…?”
Christian had known it would not be easy to deliver tidings, but he had not expected to feel so deep an ache for his sire’s loss. “’Tis over. Your eldest son was mortally wounded and has been laid to earth.”
Aldous stiffened. “Was it you?”
He would have been the one to put down Robert had he been able to embrace death as Abel had said he must in order to preserve his own life, but he had not. Still, he had played a role, but it was one of which his father need not be told. “Nay,” Christian said, “it was not me.”
Shoulders quivering with the release of a breath that caused his sunken chest to sink further, Aldous lowered his lids. “It could not have ended any other way.” His misshapen mouth twisted as if he struggled to suppress emotion. “He was always difficult. Always angry, and more so after his mother passed. He blamed me, and he was right to, for ‘twas I who sentenced her to a hard a life.” His next breath rattled more loudly. “I who did not make things right when I was given another chance to do so.”
Christian frowned. “Another chance? You speak of the time following my mother’s passing?”
Aldous was slow to answer. “Aye. I should have wed Robert’s mother. Instead…” He shook his head upon the pillow. “…I made life yet harder for her.”
“How?”
Aldous averted his gaze. “Helene knows.”
Feeling his jaw cramp, Christian leaned forward. “You share with her things you will not share with me, blood of your blood?”
To his surprise, moisture glazed his father’s eyes. “She has come to mean much to me. When ‘tis time, I trust she will speak to you of it.”
Christian nearly succumbed to resentment, but he reminded himself of all Helene had done and suffered for Aldous—that she was surely the only light come into his dark world, that it was likely her influence that allowed Aldous and Christian to speak as they had not spoken in all the years since Christian’s return to Broehne.
Easing the clench from his jaw, he returned to the matter of his misbegotten brother. “You did not wed Robert’s mother because she was not of noble birth?”
“That. More, though, because I knew Robert well by then. I knew that if I legitimized relations with his mother it would put him more in a mind to…” Something like a whimper slipped from Aldous. “Geoffrey was my heir, noble both sides of him, and I had to protect his position. And yours.”
Then he had feared Robert would have tried to do away with the legitimate heirs and claim the barony for himself—a warranted fear.
“I think sometimes of what I could have done differently,” Aldous said. “I wonder if I should not have acknowledged Robert as being born of my loins. Had it not been made known to him and had I not raised him above others of common birth, mayhap he would have been content with his lot. Mayhap the earth would not now know him so well.” He grunted. “Mayhap this, mayhap that.”
Christian laid a hand over the feeble hand that had held his with such strength, certainty, sometimes even affection, when he was a very young boy. “You did what you believed was right. Robert was as much your son as Geoffrey and I.”
Aldous labored over crackling laughter. “And I made good use of him. And well he did my bidding, did he not?”
That Christian could not argue or excuse, not after all that had happened, all who had died, all who might yet die.
Aldous slid his gaze to the nearby goblet. “Wine.”
Christian raised him up, held the rim to his lips, and slowly poured the liquid onto his tongue. Minutes and many labored swallows later, Aldous held up a trembling hand.
Christian eased him down and returned the goblet to the table.
“Ah, my son,” Aldous bemoaned.
Unsettled by the edge of affection in his father’s voice that he had not heard in many years, Christian looked near upon his sire.
“There can be no redemption for me,” Aldous said, “but still I would make right what I can while I can.”
Christian nodded. “The priest awaits your confession—”
“I do not require a priest. I require you.”
“I am no longer of the Church.”
Aldous snorted. “Were you ever truly of the Church? Ha! Know you how much it cost me to keep you at the monastery after you allowed yourself to be found beneath a harlot’s skirts?”
“I am sorry.”
Aldous expelled a shaky sigh. “I am the one who is sorry. Sorry for all I have wrought, for all I wrought through Robert. And Geoffrey, whom I indulged too often and whose behavior I excused many too many times.”
Christian stared at him, regretting that only now, with the end so near, his father should speak of such things.
“I knew he could be cruel, sometimes more cruel than Robert, but I believed it was because he grieved for your mother, and so I told myself he would grow out of it. And he might have had I not allowed him to keep company with his older brother while
I myself grieved, but…” Another rattling breath. “…it eased my burden to place the responsibility for Geoffrey elsewhere—for only a time, I vowed, and yet I never truly came back to him. Or you.” He swallowed loudly. “I know you remember the day I came upon Robert pinning you whilst he encouraged Geoffrey to bloody your face.”
Christian did remember, though it was only one of the many times his brothers had cornered and beaten him before his body had lengthened and broadened and thickened such that he was able to defend himself and give back much of what was given him.
“When they told me they but meant to teach you a lesson for running from your tutor that you might practice with your dagger as I had forbidden you to do, I did not punish them.”
Instead, he had yanked his bloodied and begrimed youngest son to his feet, marched him to the chapel, and made him prostrate himself before the altar through dusk until dawn. But for all the force-fed faith, it had only made Christian yearn more for a knight’s life.
“I am sorry,” Aldous said, “and yet I am not, for in giving you to the Church, my influence and Robert’s was deflected that you might become the man you are now, a worthy lord as I have not been for many years. As Geoffrey never was.”
The words Christian had longed to hear, but had never expected to be spoken—or even felt—nearly knocked him backward. And as he stared at his father, wondering if this shell of a man was, indeed, his sire, he felt the resentment he had tried so hard to keep buried uncoil and rise up and out of him.
“In spite of all I have denied you,” Aldous continued, “you are most worthy, my son.”
Worthy… But even as he wrapped his heart around the word, he wondered if, had he been reared the same as Geoffrey, weapons placed early and often in his hands and guided by a resentful, misbegotten brother, he might have turned the way Geoffrey had gone. Might Gaenor have had real reason to flee their marriage?
“And I am sorry for blaming you for Geoffrey’s death near as much as I blamed the Wulfriths—for my anger at your envy of all he had been given that you were not.” When Aldous next he spoke, his voice trembled. “Pray, forgive me?”